Joseph Mallord William Turner Keswick Lake, for Rogers's 'Poems' c.1830-2
Joseph Mallord William Turner,
Keswick Lake, for Rogers's 'Poems'
c.1830-2
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Keswick Lake, for Rogers’s ‘Poems’ circa 1830–2
D27698
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 181
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 181
Watercolour, approximately 120 x 140 mm on white wove paper, 242 x 305 mm
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 181’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 181’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1904
National Gallery, London, various dates to at least 1904 (239).
1971
Watercolours by J.M.W. Turner (1778 [sic] –1851): Lent by the Trustees of the British Museum, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, January–March 1971 (3).
1975
Turner in the British Museum: Drawings and Watercolours, British Museum, London, May 1975–February 1976 (188, reproduced).
1982
The Lake District Discovered 1810–1850: The Artists, The Tourists, and Wordsworth, Grasmere and Wordsworth Museum, Grasmere, May–October 1982 (86).
1993
J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: Impressions de Gran Bretanya i el Continent Europeu / Impresiones de Gran Bretaña y el Continente Europeo, Centre Cultural de la Fundació ”la Caixa”, Barcelona, September–November 1993, Sala de Exposiciones de la Fundación ”la Caixa”, Madrid, November 1993–January 1994 (50, reproduced in colour).
1994
J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: Aquarelles et Dessins du Legs Turner: Collection de la Tate Gallery, Londres / Watercolours and Drawings from the Turner Bequest: Collection from the Tate Gallery, London, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Charleroi, September–December 1994 (50, reproduced in colour).
1996
Turner in the North of England, 1797, Tate Gallery, London, October 1996–February 1997, Harewood House, Leeds, March–June 1997 (91).
References
1903
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume I: Early Prose Writings 1834–1843, London 1903, pp.233, 244.
1904
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, pp.380–1.
1906
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds.), Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XXI: The Ruskin Art Collection at Oxford, London 1906, p.214.
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings in the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.902, as ‘Lodore’.
1966
Adele Holcomb, ‘J.M.W. Turner’s Illustrations to the Poets’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of California, Los Angeles 1966, pp.80, 81, 83, 85–6, as ‘Lodore’.
1971
Watercolours by J.M.W. Turner (1778 [sic] –1851): Lent by the Trustees of the British Museum, exhibition catalogue, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal 1971, p.[5] no.3.
1975
Andrew Wilton, Turner in the British Museum: Drawings and Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, British Museum, London 1975, pp.12, 20, 119 no.188 and 125 under no.203.
1979
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.440 no.1182, reproduced.
1983
Peter Bicknell and Robert Woof, The Lake District Discovered 1810–1850: The Artists, The Tourists, and Wordsworth, exhibition catalogue, Grasmere and Wordsworth Museum, Grasmere 1983, p.56 no.86.
1993
Jan Piggott, Turner’s Vignettes, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1993, p. 97.
1993
Ian Warrell, J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: Impressions de Gran Bretanya i el Continent Europeu / Impresiones de Gran Bretaña y el Continente Europeo, exhibition catalogue, Centre Cultural de la Fundació ”la Caixa”, Barcelona 1993, pp.162–3 no.50, reproduced (colour).
1994
Ian Warrell, J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: Aquarelles et Dessins du Legs Turner: Collection de la Tate Gallery, Londres / Watercolours and Drawings from the Turner Bequest: Collection from the Tate Gallery, London, exhibition catalogue, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Charleroi 1994, pp.164–5 no.50, reproduced (colour).
1996
David Hill, Turner in the North: A Tour through Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, the Scottish Borders, the Lake District, Lancashire and Lincolnshire in the Year 1797, New Haven and London 1996, p.108, reproduced pl.155 (colour).
1996
Ian Warrell, Turner in the North of England, 1797, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1996, p.[7] no.91.
This vignette, Keswick Lake, was engraved by Edward Goodall and published in the 1834 edition of Rogers’s Poems, illustrating Part II of a long poem entitled ‘The Pleasures of Memory’.1 The image complements Rogers’s ode to the sublime beauty of the Lake District:
Once, and domestic annals tell the time,
(Preserved in Cumbria’s rude, romantic clime)
When Nature smiled, and o’er the landscape threw
Her richest fragrance, and her brightest hue,
...
The rocky pass half-hung with shaggy wood,
And the cleft oak flung boldly o’er the flood;
...
Ere the rapt youth, recoiling from the roar,
Gazed on the tumbling tide of the dread Lodore;
And thro’ the rifted cliffs, that scaled the sky,
Derwent’s clear mirror charmed his dazzled eye.
Each osier isle, inverted on the wave,
Thro’ morn’s grey mist its melting colours gave;
And, o’er the cygnet’s haunt, the mantling grove
(Poems, pp.35–7)
(Preserved in Cumbria’s rude, romantic clime)
When Nature smiled, and o’er the landscape threw
Her richest fragrance, and her brightest hue,
...
The rocky pass half-hung with shaggy wood,
And the cleft oak flung boldly o’er the flood;
...
Ere the rapt youth, recoiling from the roar,
Gazed on the tumbling tide of the dread Lodore;
And thro’ the rifted cliffs, that scaled the sky,
Derwent’s clear mirror charmed his dazzled eye.
Each osier isle, inverted on the wave,
Thro’ morn’s grey mist its melting colours gave;
And, o’er the cygnet’s haunt, the mantling grove
(Poems, pp.35–7)
Turner highlighted many of these lines with pencil in the margins of his own copy of the 1827 edition of Poems (see Tate; Turner Bequest CCCLVI pp.42–3). His own rendering of the scene draws closely upon Rogers’s vision, described by Adele Holcomb as ‘Gilpinesque’.2 The ‘rapt youth’, appears in the foreground accompanied by a small dog, and like the viewer gazes upon the magnificent Keswick Lake, also known as Derwentwater. The ‘tumbling tide’ of the Lodore Falls, a well-known feature of the lake, occupies the entire left side of the image. Turner has effectively depicted the mass of water by leaving it as untouched white paper. The waterfall figures even more centrally in Turner’s preliminary study for Keswick Lake (see Tate D27608; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 91). In developing these compositions, Turner may have referred to his Tweed and Lakes sketchbook which he used during his 1797 tour of the Lake District (see for example Tate D01021, D01084, D01087; Turner Bequest XXXV 19, 82, 85). He later composed another watercolour of the view toward Lodore Falls, Keswick Lake, (Derwentwater) circa 1835, for the engraved topographical series Picturesque Views in England and Wales (British Museum).3
Verso:
Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘13’ upper centre left and ‘21 | a’ centre and ‘CCLXXX 181’ bottom and ‘D27698’ bottom left. Also in red ink ‘1036’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 181’ lower centre
Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘13’ upper centre left and ‘21 | a’ centre and ‘CCLXXX 181’ bottom and ‘D27698’ bottom left. Also in red ink ‘1036’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 181’ lower centre
Meredith Gamer
August 2006
How to cite
Meredith Gamer, ‘Keswick Lake, for Rogers’s ‘Poems’ c.1830–2 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2006, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www