Joseph Mallord William Turner Land Discovered by Columbus, for Rogers's 'Poems' c.1830-2
Joseph Mallord William Turner,
Land Discovered by Columbus, for Rogers's 'Poems'
c.1830-2
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Land Discovered by Columbus, for Rogers’s ‘Poems’ circa 1830–2
D27707
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 190
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 190
Pencil and watercolour, approximately 130 x 115 mm on white wove paper, 242 x 310 mm
Inscribed by unknown hand in pencil ‘[?Checked] by the [...]’ in bottom right corner of sheet [erased]
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 190’ bottom right
Inscribed by unknown hand in pencil ‘[?Checked] by the [...]’ in bottom right corner of sheet [erased]
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 190’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1904
National Gallery, London, various dates to at least 1904 (248).
1936
Four Screens, British Museum, London, July 1936–February 1937 (no catalogue but numbered 8).
1963
Turner Watercolors from The British Museum: A Loan Exhibition Circulated by the Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, September–October 1963, Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, Texas, November 1963, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, December 1963–January 1964, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, January–March 1964, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, March–April 1964, Brooklyn Museum, New York, May 1964, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, June–July 1964 (50).
1983
J.M.W. Turner: Dibujos y acuarelas del Museo Británico, exhibition catalogue, Museo del Prado, Madrid, February–March 1983 (39, reproduced).
1989
Colour into Line: Turner and the Art of Engraving, Tate Gallery, London, October 1989–January 1990 (67, reproduced in colour).
1993
Turner’s Vignettes, Tate Gallery, London, September 1993–February 1994 (23, reproduced).
References
1903
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume I: Early Prose Writings 1834–1843, London 1903, pp.233, 244.
1904
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, pp.380–1.
1906
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XXI: The Ruskin Art Collection at Oxford, London 1906, p.214.
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings in the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.903, as ‘Dawn on the last day of the voyage’.
1966
Adele Holcomb, ‘J.M.W. Turner’s Illustrations to the Poets’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of California, Los Angeles 1966, p.94, reproduced fig.53, as ‘Columbus on the Last Night of the Voyage’.
1963
Edward Croft-Murray, Turner Watercolors from The British Museum: A Loan Exhibition Circulated by the Smithsonian Institution, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC 1963, pp.20 no.50.
1979
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.444 no.1205.
1983
Lindsay Stainton and Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: Dibujos y acuarelas del Museo Británico, exhibition catalogue, Museo del Prado, Madrid 1983, p.58 no.39, reproduced.
1989
Anne Lyles and Diane Perkins, Colour into Line: Turner and the Art of Engraving, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1989, pp.18 reproduced colour, 69–70 no. 67, reproduced.
1992
Jan Piggott, ‘Turner’s “Columbus” Vignettes’, Turner Society News, no.61, August 1992, pp.11–12.
1993
Jan Piggott, Turner’s Vignettes, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1993, pp.85 no.23 reproduced, 97.
This is one of seven illustrations that Turner produced for ‘The Voyage of Columbus’, a miniature epic poem which is the final work in the published volume of Rogers’s Poems (for a brief description of the poem, see Tate D27705; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 188). The seven vignettes in order of their appearance in Rogers’s text are: Tate D27705, D27706, D27714, D27707, D27708, D27719, D27709; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 188, 189, 197, 190, 191, 202, 192.
Chosen of Men! ’Twas thine, at noon of night,
First from the prow to hail the glimmering light;
(Emblem of Truth divine, whose secret ray
Enters the soul, and makes the darkness day!)
“PEDRO! RODRIGO! There, methought, it shone!
There – in the west! And now, alas, ’tis gone! –
’Twas all but a dream! we gaze and gaze in vain!
– But mark and speak not, there it comes again!
It moves! – what form unseen, what being there
With torch-like lustre fires the murky air?
His instincts, passions, say, how like our own?
Oh ! when will day reveal a world unknown?
(Poems, pp.249–50)
First from the prow to hail the glimmering light;
(Emblem of Truth divine, whose secret ray
Enters the soul, and makes the darkness day!)
“PEDRO! RODRIGO! There, methought, it shone!
There – in the west! And now, alas, ’tis gone! –
’Twas all but a dream! we gaze and gaze in vain!
– But mark and speak not, there it comes again!
It moves! – what form unseen, what being there
With torch-like lustre fires the murky air?
His instincts, passions, say, how like our own?
Oh ! when will day reveal a world unknown?
(Poems, pp.249–50)
Turner here shows Columbus looking out to sea as the ‘glimmering light’ appears, pointing the way to land. Rogers explains in a footnote that this vision of light in the midst of darkness is also meant to signify the light of Christian revelation that Columbus would spread throughout America.3 The cross formed by the ship’s mast, as well as the cross on the flag flying from the Santa Maria reinforce Rogers’s construction of Columbus as a Christian hero.
The shadowy and loose nature of Turner’s watercolour would have posed a particular challenge to the engraver, Edward Goodall.4 To assist him, the artist drew additional sketches in pencil of the two ships in the left-hand margin of the sheet. These studies clarify the design and indicate that certain changes, such as the position of the oar ports on the bow of the Santa Maria, should be integrated into the engraved version of the design.5
An anonymous reviewer writing in the Athenaeum, in 1833, had particular praise for this vignette, which he described as ‘perhaps the sublimest of all scenes; Columbus is standing calm and thoughtful on deck, his seamen are slumbering, the moon shines out, a curtain of mist is lifted up, and the promised land is shown to his anxious eyes’. He went on to suggest that the figure of Columbus was reminiscent of the Flaxman’s statue of Michelangelo.6 It seems likely this element of the illustration was re-drawn by Goodall himself, since the figure bears little resemblance to the man who appears in Turner’s original watercolour.7
Verso:
Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘26 [7 superimposed] | a’ top centre and ‘CCLXXX.190’ bottom centre
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 190’ lower centre
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 190’ lower centre
Meredith Gamer
August 2006
How to cite
Meredith Gamer, ‘Land Discovered by Columbus, for Rogers’s ‘Poems’ c.1830–2 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2006, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www