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

Engraved:
Etching and mezzotint by J.M.W. Turner and Charles Turner, untitled, published Charles Turner, 29 March 1809

There is no known direct source for Turner’s Liber Studiorum design, though he may have referred back to two 1796 watercolour studies of pigs in his Studies near Brighton sketchbook (Tate D00838, D00839; Turner Bequest XXX 93, 94), the second of which shows a sow and her litter. It is one of two early Liber drawings showing farm-yards; the other is known as The Straw Yard (see Tate D08111; Turner Bequest CXVI J).

Ruskin occasionally used the composition as evidence that nothing was ‘too low’1 or ‘too little’2 to deserve Turner’s attention, though he regarded it as ‘of a kind peculiarly simple’,3 noting the ‘decay and humiliation’ of the ‘disordered and poor’ yard.4 Rawlinson found the design ‘uninteresting’ and the failed result of ‘a challenge from his friend and patron Mr. Stokes, who had declared that not even he (Turner) could make a picture out of straight lines.’5 Stopford Brooke analysed the ‘careful’ composition, but found ‘the commonplace of the whole is too great to be redeemed.’6

Anne Lyles has suggested the influence of Dutch seventeenth-century artists such as Melchior d’Hondecoeter (1636–1695) and Paulus Potter (1625–1654)7 – although the present drawing was probably made a little early to have been influenced by Turner’s visits from 1808 onwards to Farnley Hall, where his patron Walter Fawkes owned comparable Dutch works. Gillian Forrester suggests a more immediate precedent in the rustic genre scenes of George Morland8 (see full catalogue entry for The Straw Yard, as noted above).

The published plate was untitled; the present title is the customary one established by early scholars and collectors of the Liber, and codified in print in 1872.9 The composition is recorded, as ‘4[:] 1 Cocks and Hens’, in the Liber Notes (2) sketchbook (Tate D12156; Turner Bequest CLIV (a) 23a), in a draft schedule of the first ten parts of the Liber (D12156–D12158; CLIV (a) 23a–24a)10 dated by Finberg and Gillian Forrester to before the middle of 1808.11 It also appears later in the sketchbook, as ‘1 Cocks and Hens’, in a list of published and unpublished ‘Pastoral’ subjects (Tate D12160; Turner Bequest CLIV (a) 25a).12

The Liber Studiorum etching and mezzotint engraving, etched by Turner and engraved by Charles Turner, bears the publication date 29 March 1809 and was issued to subscribers in part 4 (Rawlinson/Finberg nos.17–21;13 see also Tate D08122, D08123, D08125, D08126; Turner Bequest CXVI U, V, X, Y). Tate holds impressions of the preliminary outline etching (Tate A00943) and the published engraving (A00944). It is one of fourteen published Liber subjects in Turner’s ‘Pastoral’ category (see also Tate D08102, D08111, D08116, D08127, D08136, D08140, D08145, D08151, D08158, D08167; Turner Bequest CXVI A, J, O, Z, CXVII I, M, Q, W, CXVIII D, M; and Tate N02941).

Technical Notes:

The sheet was possibly washed in the initial stages. The sky is very evenly coloured, with the lights washed out; a dry brush was used for trees against the sky. Fingerprints are evident in the foliage of the dark trees at the upper right. Pencil sketching for elements such as the pigs is worked over with fine brushwork. There are local red washes for the hens, with the lights then scratched out. The overall mid-brown colour comprises two brown ochre/sienna shades, and vermilion.1

Verso:

Blank, save for inscriptions.

Inscribed in pencil ‘5’ [circled] centre
Stamped in black ‘[crown] | N•G | CXVI – T’ bottom left

Three-quarters of the sheet (except the right-hand side) is darkened, but this has not affected the composition on the recto.