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 Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) circa 1809-11

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner)’ circa 1809-11
Folio 93 Verso:
Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) circa 1809–11
D07743
Turner Bequest CXI 93a
Pencil and pen and ink on white wove paper, 110 x 88 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil and ink (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Rosalind Mallord Turner’s reading of Turner’s inscription for the 1990 Tate exhibition is largely followed here:
[In pencil]
Rich in Imagination[s] flower[y] meeds fair minds
More willing and ordinary word than this
Sense soon lost within the wide expanse
Returning eer it thinks of failure [and deleted]
Encounters difficulties even to loss of life
Strong with the hope that such mothers cheerd
He panted to the course in hot pursuit
Led by thy power coy there strew in heaps
The jealous natures when natures truth
Thought[t] him a madman or a fool
[In ink]
Deservedly sent to perish not explore
Which could but then seem but inexplicable
To search for what to them but fabled nonsense
And such it proved to him, what to him
His hard hard bed and burning suns
Pouring intense heat upon his head
Fevering intense heat upon his head
Fevering his thoughts to madness and despair
And disappointment keenest made by mockery
Coy fair then left him on the Splas[h]y brook
Where Nilus oozes like another stream
Driven in a corner what could he but admit
No drooping Ocean from the clouds direct
These passages continue the poem on fancy and imagination begun on folio 95 of the sketchbook (D07745). The lines on the Nile seem to follow those on the river and its explorer James Bruce on folio 94 (D07744) and to be continued on the recto (D07742).

David Blayney Brown
May 2011

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Verses (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1809–11’, catalogue entry, May 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/verses-inscriptions-by-turner-r1131230, accessed 25 April 2024.