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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country 1811 > Devonshire Coast, No.1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 207 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry 1811
D08736
Turner Bequest CXXIII 204a
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) on white wove printing paper, 75 x 117 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The top half of the page is taken up with the following lines of verse:
a [...] .. even the [?feather] Fish
Who [?‘congerate’, i.e. ‘congregate’] and waits the rising tide
Clamorus [?shriek in thrilling] note of care
And [?Bar...] .. ominous the rising air
That [?eddy] thro the caverns yelds a note
more [?harmoniously]1
Interspersed with drawings and the printed pages of Coltman’s British Itinerary, sixty-nine pages of this sketchbook are given over wholly or partly to these verses which Turner intended as a commentary for publication with the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England which he sketched on the 1811 West Country tour (see the introduction to the sketchbook). The first lines are on folio 18 verso (D08396), and these are the last, although they fail to bring the whole sequence to any definite conclusion.
The previous passage, on folio 204 verso (D08731; CXXIII 201a), presents a rocky West Country coast battered by winds and waves. Here the setting seems to be the same, with the cries of sea birds, perhaps in search of fish. Wilton and Turner give the second and penultimate words in the first line as ‘?justman’ [sic] and ‘?feather’, neither of which appears to be correct; nor does the last word of all appear to be ‘harmoniously’. However, Turner’s handwriting is resistant to more likely readings.

Matthew Imms
June 2011

1
See Wilton and Turner 1990, p.176 (transcription, followed here with slight variations).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Draft of Poetry 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-draft-of-poetry-r1137214, accessed 03 February 2025.