This unfinished watercolour has been identified by Jan Piggott as one of three preparatory studies for
Kosciusko,
1 a vignette illustration for Edward Moxon’s 1837 edition of
Thomas Campbell’s Poetical Works, circa 1835 (National Gallery of Scotland).
2 The design was engraved by Edward Goodall and accompanies the first part of Campbell’s famous poem ‘The Pleasures of Hope’, in which the poet celebrates the Republican hero Tadeusz Kosciusko (1746–1814).
3 In 1794, Kosciusko led an unsuccessful uprising to free his native Poland from Russian control.
Whereas Turner’s finished design shows Kosciusko and an allegorical figure of Poland standing before a besieged and smoldering Warsaw, this study seems to respond to an earlier moment in Campbell’s narrative, when he describes the great leader delivering his call to arms:
Warsaw’s last champion from her height survey’d,
Wide o’er the fields, a waste of ruin laid, –
Oh! Heaven! he cried, my bleeding country save! –
Is there no hand on high to shield the brave?
Yet, though destruction sweep those lovely plains,
Rise, fellow-men! our country yet remains!
By that dread name, we wave the sword on high!
And swear for her to live! – with her to die!
He said, and on the rampart-heights array’d
His trusty warriors, few, but undismay’d;
Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form,
Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm;
Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly,
Revenge, or death, – the watch-word and reply;
Then peal’d the notes, omnipotent to charm,
And the loud tocsin toll’d their last alarm!
(Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, 1837, p.13)
The dark figure of Kosciusko stands with his arm outstretched as if to deliver an oration or a military command. The pale mass of agitated brushstrokes in the bottom portion of the study evokes a crowd of armed figures. In the background are the square tower and vertical supports of the Praga Bridge which reappear in the lower right corner of Turner’s finished version of this illustration. Turner made two other preliminary studies for
Kosciusko (see Tate
D27562; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 45 and Tate
D27566; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 49), both of which are more closely linked in subject matter and palette to Turner’s final design.
The work is one of a group of more than thirty watercolour studies in the Turner Bequest that appear to be preliminary sketches for
Campbell’s Poetical Works. They are all painted on cheap, lightweight paper and executed in a rough, loose style. This study was once part of a parcel of works described by John Ruskin as ‘A.B. 40. PO. Vignette beginnings, once on a roll. Worthless’.
4 For an explanation of his meaning of ‘once on a roll’ see the technical notes above. Finberg records how Ruskin later described his phrasing in a letter to Ralph Nicholson Wornum as ‘horrible’, adding ‘I never meant it to be permanent’.
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