J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > East Sussex c.1806-20 > Hastings Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Fragment of Verse (Inscription by Turner) circa 1809-11

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Fragment of Verse (Inscription by Turner)’ circa 1809-11
Folio 17 Recto:
Fragment of Verse (Inscription by Turner) circa 1809–11
D07617
Turner Bequest CXI 17
Pencil on white wove paper, 88 x 110 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘17’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXI 17’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s inscription reads: ‘Coil after coil – where the rocky ...| deep in ...| Until the monster weltered in his gore’.
Working through the sketchbook, this is the first of a many verses describing the slaughter of the dragon Python by Apollo. These were written in anticipation of the picture Apollo and Python (Tate N00488)1 exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1811. Turner showed it with his own adaptation of lines from Matthew Prior’s translation of Callimachus’s Hymn to Apollo; see especially note to folio 70 verso (D07704) where Callimachus is cited.2 Here however, Turner’s wording seems closer to John Dryden’s translation of Ovid’s account in Metamorphoses, Book I, describing how ‘Th’expiring serpent wallow’s in his gore’. Both texts were available to Turner in his copy of Robert Anderson’s Complete Edition of the Works of the British Poets (1795).3
James Hamilton sees Apollo and Python as a metaphor for ‘the artist hitting back at the critic’, in which case Turner’s conception of the picture and his verses for it would overlap with other writings in this sketchbook prompted by professional rivalries and disappointments (see Introduction).

David Blayney Brown
April 2011

1
Butlin and Joll 1984, p.82 no.115 (pl.119).
2
Callimachus (circa 310–after 246 BC), Hellenistic poet.
3
For Turner’s library see Andrew Wilton, Turner in his Time, London 1987, pp.246–7.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Fragment of Verse (Inscription by Turner) c.1809–11’, catalogue entry, April 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/fragment-of-verse-inscription-by-turner-r1131104, accessed 27 April 2024.