Ashmolean The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

The falls in Vallombre, one of the vignettes to Roger’s poem of Jacqueline. The literature and the illustrations of the two volumes of Roger’s Works are in envious harmony. Roger’s Italy is a much less studied piece of writing than his other poems, and it is of far higher quality than any of them: Turner’s illustrations to the Italy never contain more than half the work of the illustrations to the Poems and are always at least three times as good. In this instance we have a pretty example which we may oppose directly to the subject of Martigny No. 133 . The Martigny is the illustration of a story in the ‘Italy’ called Marguerite, and this is the illustration of a story in the Poems called Jacqueline. Marguerite goes to a real place viz. Martigny whereat she keeps the inn of The Silver Swan. Turner draws the real place with perfect ease and produces a noble work of art. Jacqueline, on the contrary, goes to the falls in Vallombre, but there are no R. such falls and there is no such valley. The name is merely adopted by Rogers from Vallombrosa in order to help him out with a rhyme. Turner invents falls and valley, hesitating between reminiscences of the Tees and the Anio for the water, and between Rhymer’s Glen and the Via Mala for the valley; he elaborates the composition with his most exquisite care, and yet the utmost that we can say of it is that it is a beautiful bit of work entirely incredible. For all that the advanced student will find the greatest advantage in copying work so exquisite, and I have seldom seen a better illustration of the power of composition than the height and the extent given to the ravine merely by the placing of the figure of the stag. The cast shadows of the trees above are also of immense constructive importance.