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

Turner’s inscription reads:

Thornbury described these notes as ‘Incoherences still more puzzling [than others in the sketchbook]’ but some of Turner’s meanings and sources can be explained. He cites the tradition that Joseph of Arimathea brought Christianity to England and built a cathedral at Glastonbury within decades of the death of Christ, thus being an apostle of architecture as well as religion. The same legend inspired William Blake to engrave his print Joseph of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion with its descriptive underline ‘This is One of the Gothic Artists who built the Cathedrals in what we call the Dark Ages’. There are further notes on the Emperor Claudius, based on the Lives of the Caesars by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (circa 70–circa 140 AD) on folio 91 verso of the sketchbook (D07112; Turner Bequest CV 81a). Here, Turner names the Greek-born historian of Rome, Cassius Dio (164–circa 235 AD) who told of Queen Boadicca invoking Andraste, the Icenic goddess of Victory, against the Roman occupation in 61 AD.

Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales ?1146–?1220), cleric and historian, was the author of a famous Itinerarium or Journey through Wales, discussing topography, architecture and history. Turner may have researched it in connection with his visit to North Wales in 1808 (see Introduction to the sketchbook). His interest in Welsh and druidical history could have been prompted by Richard Colt Hoare if he visited him at his holiday villa at Bala or travelled with him during his tour that summer. Hoare had published an edition of Giraldus in 1806 and was currently researching an Ancient History of Wiltshire. The construction of a ‘White House’ by
Hoel Dha (Hoel the Good) in 914 is described by various historians including William Camden and Thomas Fuller whose The Church-History of Britain (1655, book I, p.7) is mentioned, together with Giraldus’s account of the preference of the Welsh gentry for ‘houses constructed of wattles’ in Frank Sayers, Disquisitions, 2nd ed., Norwich 1808, p.220. Sayers also comments on the ‘great architectural skill’ acquired by the British in Roman times.1