Painting and Poetry: Turner's "Verse Book" and His Work of 1804-12

Tate Publishing. Fine. 1990. Soft Cover. 4to 1854370456 Paperback. Book Condition: Fine. Qto., 181 pages, illustrated. Almost new condition. Dimensions: 26.7 x 21.1 x 2.5 cm. It is well known that Turner attached great importance to poetry, an art that, like all his contemporaries, he regarded as the sister of painting.. He put that belief o into practice by exhibiting many of his works with quotations from Homer, Milton, Thomson or Byron. He even went so far as to compose verses of his own to accompany some of 'his most important pictures. His efforts as a poet attracted ridicule from the beginning, and have consequently never been accorded the attention they deserve as a key to his mind and' creative processes. Now Andrew . Wilton re-examines 'Turner's relation to poetry, arguing that his shortcomings as a versifyer were due more to dyslexia than to defective education, analysing his passionate admiration for the writings of Pope and Thomson, and showing how a realisation of Turner's intimate knowledge of the poetry of all periods, including the Greek and Roman classics, sheds fresh light on familiar images and, suggests a new dimension of meaning in many of his most famous works. This valuable contribution to Turner studies also contains the most comprehensive transcriptions ever attempted of Turner's draft poetry in the period in which he was most prolific as a writer, between 1804 and I8I2, and the years immediately before and after. .