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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Italianate Landscapes and Classical ... > Studies of Landscapes, Townscapes and ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscriptions by Turner: ?Drafts of Poetry or a Speech c.1828-45

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscriptions by Turner: ?Drafts of Poetry or a Speech’ c.1828-45
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inscriptions by Turner: ?Drafts of Poetry or a Speech c.1828–45
D34852
Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 364
Pencil on white laid paper, 365 x 225 mm
Partial watermark ‘18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil with notes (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed in red ink ‘364’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXLIV 364’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole area is taken up with Turner’s pencil notes, which are effectively illegible apart from the obvious words such as ‘or’ ‘he’, ‘and’, ‘yet’ and so on, and do not appear to be structured as the rough verses which appear sporadically among the artist’s drawings.1 They may by a draft of a letter or speech. The first line of the second group may begin ‘Who lost the world’ or ‘words’.
The five full lines at the top, with insertions below the first and fifth, are separate from the seven below (with additions after the final line), and may have been written on different occasions while this part of the sheet was folded across the middle (see the technical notes below).
Tate D34851–D34856 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 363–368) are all on two sides of a quartered single sheet, as discussed in the technical notes; the other quarters were used for landscape studies, as described under D34851, where there is also a note on dating.
1
See Andrew Wilton and Rosalind Mallord Turner, Painting and Poetry: Turner’s ‘Verse Book’ and his Work of 1804–1812, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1990.
Technical notes:
Tate D34851–D34856 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 363–368) are all on two sides of a single sheet folded into quarters, with the watermark ‘John Hall | 1828’ exactly at the centre; each averages approximately 183 x 213 mm of the overall dimensions. Finberg listed them individually as ‘folded’,1 albeit without noting their all being on one sheet; once folded firmly into four, they were lightly folded twice more, leaving three parallel creases across each quarter.
D34851–D34854 (CCCXLIV 363–366) are on one side, at the top left, bottom left, top right and bottom right relative to each other. D34855 and D34856 (CCCXLIV 367, 368) are on the other side, at the bottom left and right relative to each other, the upper half being blank. D34855 is on the other side of D34854, and D34856 (CCCXLIV 368) is on the other side of the present work. The sheet is almost ripped in half by a jagged tear along the right-hand half of the horizontal fold; it also extends up to the left from the centre, across D34851.

Matthew Imms
August 2016

1
See Finberg 1909, II, p.1143.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscriptions by Turner: ?Drafts of Poetry or a Speech c.1828–45 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscriptions-by-turner-drafts-of-poetry-or-a-speech-r1185726, accessed 26 April 2024.