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

D20817, D25343, D27527, D27529, D27532–D27536, D27578, D27582, D27607–D27608, D27610–D27611, D27616–D27617, D27625, D27679, D27685–D27709, D27711–D27721, D41513, D40175

Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 14, CCLXIII 221, CCLXXX 10, 12, 15–19, 61, 65, 90–91, 93–94, 99–100, 108, 162, 168–192, 194–204, verso of 175, verso of 197

In around 1830 Turner began work on a group of vignette illustrations for a luxury edition of Poems by Samuel Rogers,. Of all the poets whose works Turner illustrated, such as Byron, Scott, Campbell, and Milton, Rogers is probably the least well known today. However, the vignettes that Turner created for Rogers’s Italy (1830) and, shortly thereafter for Poems (1834), are considered to be his finest works of literary illustration.

Samuel Rogers (1763–1855), a wealthy banker turned poet, achieved literary renown with his enormously popular poem The Pleasures of Memory (1792).1 Although he would never surpass this early success, he nonetheless remained deeply engaged in the cultural circles of early nineteenth-century London. His famous breakfast parties at his house in St James Place brought together the artistic and literary luminaries of the day, including Turner and a number of poets whose works Turner would later illustrate. An imaginary version of one such gathering can be seen in Charles Mottram’s engraving of 1823 (Tate T04907). Turner’s first series of literary vignettes for Rogers was the immensely successful illustrations for Italy, published in 1830 (see the Introduction to Rogers’s Italy).

Turner probably began designing vignettes for a second volume of Rogers’s poetry even before Italy was published.2 Poems was published by Thomas Cadell and Edward Moxon in 1834, with the costs again being covered by the poet himself. The volume, which contained thirty-three illustrations by Turner and thirty-four by Stothard, was designed and printed in the same fine style as Italy. The production costs were again enormous, and Rogers later told a friend that he had spent a total of £15,000 publishing the two volumes.3

Poems contains a wide range of Rogers’s writings, beginning with his most acclaimed work, The Pleasures of Memory. Many of the poems in this collection are set in the English countryside, and Turner was again able to draw upon material from his own travels, in this case from his various tours in England and Wales. As with Italy, Turner owned a working copy of Poems, in which he marked potential subjects for illustration (see Tate D36330; Turner Bequest CCCLXVI).4 Although Turner’s painting style is much the same for the two projects, the designs in the later volume tend to be more boldly composed and to be painted in a brighter palette. His mastery of the vignette format is nowhere more visible than in Tornaro and The Alps at Daybreak, which capture enormous disparities of scale and dramatic light effects in their miniature compositions (Tate D27689; D27701; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 172, 184). The ethereal brushwork and shimmering palette of scenes such as Keswick Lake and St Herbert’s Chapel transform well-known English topographical sites into realms of magic and fantasy (Tate D27698, D27697; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 181, 180). A similar sense of enchantment pervades the illustrations to the final poem in Rogers’s collection, The Voyage of Columbus. The poem reflects the popular interest in Columbus’s achievements generated by the publication of Washington Irving’s The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1828. Rogers’s retelling casts the explorer as a noble and pious hero who brings the light of Christian revelation to the benighted pagan populations of America. Filled with evil spirits, warrior ghosts, and good angels, The Voyage of Columbus inspired some of Turner’s most beautiful and mysterious compositions.

Like its predecessor, Poems met with enormous success. The engravings after Turner’s illustrations were produced by Robert Miller, Robert Wallis, Henry Le Keux and Edward Goodall; their quality was such that Ruskin would describe them as ‘the loveliest engravings ever produced by pure line.’5 The Athenaeum again offered its hearty endorsement of the volume:

By 1847, a total of 50,000 copies of Poems and Italy had been sold making Turner’s art accessible to an unprecedented number of British viewers.7 Among them was the young John Ruskin, who received a copy of Italy on his thirteenth birthday and would later ‘attribute to the gift the entire direction of my life’s energies.’8 It is Rogers’s biographer, P.W. Clayden, who offers the most eloquent summary of the significance that these vignettes had, both for Turner and for his audience:

All of Turner’s finished watercolour vignettes related to Rogers’s Poems are in the Turner Bequest. There are also a considerable number of preparatory studies. Catalogue entries are listed below according to their order of appearance in Rogers’s text, with any related preliminary studies. This assigned sequence disrupts the partially consecutive run of Tate accession numbers and Turner Bequest numbers.

The titles given follow those listed by Jan Piggott in his catalogue of Turner’s vignettes, which in turn are those given by Samuel Rogers or the publisher Edward Moxon on the finished portfolio engravings and in the 1838 quarto editions.10

Note: Following ongoing research across the Turner Bequest, in 2016 two further studies for Captivity (p.172 in the table above) have been included here (Tate D20817, D25343; Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 14, CCLXIII 221). The text of this Introduction is otherwise unchanged.