Turner, Backswords (1810)

Attribution and technical note

The attribution, medium and probable function of this sheet are as set out in the Wrestling entry (YCBA B2001.2.1289), to which the reader is referred: Charles Turner (1774–1857), watercolour over etched outline, the printed contour supplying the linear armature and hand-applied washes the colour, on paper consistent with early nineteenth-century English wove stock. One point should be recorded for the archive. I was unable to retrieve the Yale catalogue record for this sheet directly (the collections site blocks automated access), so the title, dating and accession details given at the catalogue URL (tms:47402) should be transcribed from the record itself rather than from this entry. What can be said with confidence from internal evidence is that the sheet is a companion to Wrestling: the format, medium, palette, figure scale and compositional formula — a central bout framed by top-hatted gentlemen spectators before a rural building and encircling crowd — are so closely matched that the two almost certainly belong to a single designed set of rustic sporting subjects, though this remains an inference from visual evidence rather than a documented publication history.

Iconographic and historical commentary

The subject is a bout of cudgel play — also termed backsword or singlestick — at a rural revel or fair. The two players at centre, stripped to their shirts, adopt the sport’s signature attitude: each holds his stick aloft with the dark basket or “pot” guard clearly visible at the fist, the weapon angled downward behind the head in the hanging guard, while the unarmed side is defended not with a second weapon but by the raised elbow and the disciplined withdrawal of the free hand — the right-hand player’s left hand is tucked at the small of his back, in keeping with the convention that the off-hand took no part in the play. This is a game of the head: the bout was decided by “breaking the head”, that is, drawing blood above the eyebrow, and the elevated, close guards Turner records are precisely those a competent player adopted to deny his opponent that target. The guard positions depicted correspond recognisably to those preserved in the canonical repertoire — the hanging and St George’s guards among them (Devonshire Wrestling Society, 2024).

Two accessories anchor the scene in documented practice. At the far right, a tall pole rises above the crowd bearing what appear to be two hats — and the hat, frequently gold- or silver-laced, was the customary cudgelling prize, conventionally displayed aloft to advertise the sport. The documentary record is explicit on this pairing of prize and pastime: at the Cotswold games of 1725 a hat and six pairs of gloves were contested at cudgels, and at Plymouth in 1753 a silver-laced hat was “to be cudgelled for” alongside the wrestling for a gold-laced waistcoat (Douch, cited in Jaouen & Nichols, 2007); Tripp’s prize tables show laced hats as the standard secondary reward across Westcountry sporting meetings throughout the period c. 1750–1830 (Tripp, 2009, Vol. 2, Appendix 3). Second, in the lower right foreground lie a discarded basket-hilted stick and a heap of dark clothing — the kit of a player who has stripped for his bout, a quiet piece of narrative economy. To the left of the central pair, a man is being helped out of (or is carrying) a yellow-lined coat, presumably the next player preparing, and the open-shirted young man standing right of the bout in loose trousers reads plausibly as a competitor awaiting his turn.

As with Wrestling, the scene should be catalogued as an unlocalised English subject. Cudgel play in this period was strongest in the western counties — the styles preserved in the DWS curriculum originate in Wiltshire and Somerset, the tradition surviving there until its extinction in the 1880s (Devonshire Wrestling Society, 2024) — but it was by no means confined to them, and Turner supplies no inscription or topographical marker that would fix the location. The date, if c. 1810 is confirmed by the catalogue record, again places the image within the broader revival of prize sports in the first decade of the century, when rising attendances and escalating prizes were transforming rural games into commercial spectacles (Jaouen & Nichols, 2007). The pairing of subjects across the two sheets is itself historically apt: wrestling and cudgelling were habitual companions on the same revel programme, contested on the same greens for prizes drawn from the same repertoire.

Expert technical description

The composition repeats, with variations, the formula of the Wrestling sheet. The foreground is an open expanse of bare, sandy ground; the two cudgel players stand slightly left of centre, both seen from behind and three-quarter rear, their white shirts the brightest passage in the picture. The left player wears buff-yellow breeches and blue-white stockings, the right darker breeches; both raise basket-hilted sticks above their heads, the diagonals of the weapons and the lifted elbows generating the composition’s principal movement. Their cast shadows fall short and sharp on the ground, and thin etched lines describe the sticks against the pale wall of the building beyond.

The framing groups differ instructively from the wrestling scene. At left, two gentlemen in long pale coats and top hats stand in conversation, one gesturing with an open hand, a whip or cane under his companion’s arm; behind them the crowd is denser and more finished than in the companion sheet, including children at the far left margin. At right, a substantial knot of top-hatted men in greatcoats — five or six figures, several leaning on sticks — closes the composition, and behind them rises a raised timber stand or scaffold packed with spectators along a rail, a feature absent from Wrestling and suggestive of a more formally staged occasion. The prize pole with its hats punctuates the skyline at the extreme right. In the lower right corner, the discarded basket-hilted stick and dark garments form a still-life passage that leads the eye into the picture.

The middle ground holds the encircling crowd, a horse at left, and a group centred on the man with the yellow-lined coat. The background building differs from the thatched inn of the companion sheet: here it is a plain cottage or barn with a red-tiled roof, tall brick chimney and paling fence, flanked by full summer trees washed in grey-green. The sky, occupying the upper third, is worked in the same loose grey-blue washes over reserved paper. The etched line is again most assertive in the foreground figures, and the palette is the familiar economy of buffs and browns with distributed accents — the yellow coat, blue stockings, touches of red in the crowd — against the dominant warm ground.

Accessibility description

A wide watercolour scene of a stick-fighting contest at an English country fair, around 1810. In the centre of a bare, sandy clearing, two young men in white shirts, breeches and stockings fight with wooden sticks. Each stick has a dark rounded basket guard protecting the hand. Both men hold their sticks raised high above and behind their heads, elbows lifted to shield their faces, and both are seen mostly from behind. One keeps his free hand tucked behind his back. The aim of this sport was to strike the opponent’s head.

To the left of the fighters, two gentlemen in tall black top hats and long pale overcoats stand talking, one gesturing with an open hand. Behind them a crowd of men, women and children watches, and a man in the middle distance holds up a coat with a yellow-orange lining, perhaps helping the next fighter to strip for his turn. To the right of the fighters stands a young man in an open-necked shirt and loose brown trousers, possibly waiting to compete. Further right, a group of six or so men in top hats and heavy coats lean on walking sticks and watch. Behind them, spectators crowd a raised wooden viewing stand, and a tall pole rises above them with two hats fixed at its top — the prizes for the contest. In the bottom right corner, a discarded fighting stick with its basket guard lies on the ground beside a heap of dark clothing.

The background shows a plain whitewashed cottage with a red-tiled roof and tall brick chimney, a wooden paling fence, a horse among the crowd at left, and large soft green trees under a pale blue-grey sky with loose clouds. The colouring is warm and sandy throughout, with fine printed brown outlines visible beneath the transparent paint.

References

1. Devonshire Wrestling Society. (2024). Westcountry wrestling official textbook.
2. Jaouen, G., & Nichols, M. B. (2007). Celtic jacket wrestling.
3. Tripp, M. (2009). Persistence of difference: A history of Cornish wrestling (Vols. 1–2) [Doctoral thesis, University of Exeter].

Yale Center for British Art. (n.d.). Charles Turner, Cudgelling [Watercolour over etched outline]. Paul Mellon Collection. https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:47402