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

Greenwich Hospital was engraved by Edward Goodall and published as an illustration to Part II of a long poem entitled ‘The Pleasures of Memory’ in the 1834 edition of Rogers’s Poems.1 While the first section of the poem explores the relationship between memory and the senses, the next section discusses memory as the preserve of ‘the treasures of art and science, history and philosophy’.2 This idea is elucidated with the example of Greenwich Hospital:

Turner highlighted this passage with pencil lines in the margin of his own copy of the 1827 edition of Poems (see Tate D36330; Turner Bequest CCCLXVI p.39) and chose to picture the ‘splendid domes’ of Greenwich hospital in his illustration. The institution was established at the end of the seventeenth century as a residential home for retired sailors and remained open to pensioners until 1869. It represented a triumph of British architecture, having been designed by a number of great names including John Webb (1611–1642) and Christopher Wren (1632–1723). Turner’s drawing showcases the scale and elaborate façade of the building, while the myriad boats in the foreground highlight the hospital’s long-standing association with the British navy.

A reviewer in the Athenaeum singled this illustration out for praise: ‘From woods and brooks, Turner boldly wafts us to the Thames, puts us into a boat, and bids us admire the glories of Greenwich; the architecture of Wren, and the majestic river, harmonize well.’3 Another contemporary critic was especially pleased with the figure standing by a telescope in the left-hand foreground: ‘Every one must remember the bring-em-nears as they called their telescopes, by the loan of which they realise a few pence during the summer months’.4

There is one study for the vignette (see Tate D27611; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 94). Turner had also produced several earlier sketches of Greenwich Hospital, for example in the Wilson sketchbook (Tate D01167–8; Turner Bequest XXXVII 50–1), the Greenwich sketchbook (Tate D06769, D06773; Turner Bequest CII 25a, 27a), and the Skies sketchbook (Tate D12524; Turner Bequest CLVIII 68). The building also famously appears in a view from the south in Turner’s oil painting, London from Greenwich exhibited 1809 (Tate, N00483).5 However, in common with another vignette, Traitor’s Gate (see Tate D27694; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 177), Greenwich Hospital shows a local London landmark that would have been very familiar to Turner but which hardly appears elsewhere in his oeuvre.

Technical notes:
Watermark: [illegible]

Verso:

Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘12’ top centre and ‘19 | b’ centre and ‘CCLXXX 176’ bottom
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 176’ bottom centre