This sketch belongs to a large group of preliminary studies which relate to Turner’s vignette illustrations for John Macrone’s 1839 edition of Thomas Moore’s
The Epicurean, a Tale: and Alciphron, a Poem. The study shares the same size, palette, and style as five other works in this group, suggesting that Turner produced them all at around the same time (see Tate
D27647; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 130).
The subject of this unfinished study is unclear. It may have been intended to complement a description in Moore’s fantastical prose tale, The Epicurean, of the spirits of sunset, who inhabit a heavenly realm:
Music, such as is heard in dreams, came floating at a distance; and as my eyes gradually recovered their powers of vision, a scene of glory was revealed to them, almost too bright for imagination, and yet living and real. As far as the sight could reach, enchanting gardens were seen, opening away through long tracts of light and verdure ... Vistas, opening into scenes of indistinct grandeur ... Over all this, too, there fell a light, from some unseen source, resembling nothing that illumines our upper world – a sort of golden moonlight, mingling the warm radiance of day with the calm and melancholy lustre of night. Through all the bright gardens were wandering, with the serene air and step of happy spirits, groups both of young and old, of venerable and of lovely forms, bearing, most of them, the Nile’s white flowers on their heads, and branches of the eternal palms in their hands
(Thomas Moore, The Epicurean, 1839, pp.59–60)
However, Jan Piggott has also linked the sketch to part of the composition for
The Chaplet, circa 1838 (untraced),
1 a finished watercolour vignette which was engraved for publication by Edward Goodall (see Tate
D27644; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 127).
2 The line of figures in the sketch may relate to the tiny frieze of human forms which appear through the upper window at the rear of the temple in the final illustration.
