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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Vignette watercolours c.1826-1843 > Watercolours Related to Samuel Rogers's ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner St Julienne's Chapel, for Rogers's 'Poems' c.1830-2

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘St Julienne's Chapel, for Rogers's 'Poems'’ c.1830-2
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
St Julienne’s Chapel, for Rogers’s ‘Poems’ circa 1830–2
D27703
Turner Bequest CCLXXX 186
Pencil and watercolour, approximately 145 x 95 mm on white wove paper, 245 x 280 mm
Inscribed by the ?artist or engraver in pencil ‘x | Head Piece’ top centre
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 186’ bottom right-hand edge
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This vignette, St Julienne’s Chapel, was engraved by Edward Goodall and published in the 1834 edition of Rogers’s Poems.1 The illustration appears as the head-piece to Part III of a poem entitled ‘Jacqueline’, in which the eponymous French heroine is married to her true love, D’Arcy. Turner marked the start of the following lines with pencil in the margin of his own copy of the 1827 edition of Poems (see Tate D36330; Turner Bequest CCCLXVI p.176):
That morn (’twas in Ste. Julienne’s cell,
As at Ste. Julienne’s sacred well
Their dreams of love began)
That morn, ere many a star was set,
Their hands had on the altar met
Before the holy man.
(Poems, pp.151–2)
His illustration depicts two moments in the narrative. On the left-hand side in the middle distance the lovers are married by the cowled figure of the ‘holy man’, whilst on the right-hand side in the foreground the couple reappears by a fountain, presumably the ‘sacred well’ of St Julienne where they first met. The composition is unusual amongst Turner’s vignettes for its vertical format, as well as for its primarily human and architectural subject matter. The jewel-like palette and delicate light effects enhance the romantic tone of Rogers’s fairy tale.
1
Samuel Rogers, Poems, London 1834, p.151; W.G. Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., vol.II, London 1913, no.389. There is one impression in Tate’s collection (T04676).
Verso:
Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘24’ upper centre left and ’24 | a’ centre and ‘CCLXXX.186’ bottom. Also in red ink ‘30’ top right, inverted
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXX 186’ lower centre

Meredith Gamer
August 2006

How to cite

Meredith Gamer, ‘St Julienne’s Chapel, 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.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-st-juliennes-chapel-for-rogerss-poems-r1133359, accessed 21 November 2024.