'Lecture Diagram: Ray of Light Passing through a Small Aperture', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Lecture Diagram: Ray of Light Passing through a Small Aperture

From IV. Diagrams after John Joshua Kirby's Dr Brook Taylor's Method of Perspective

Date c.1817-28

MediumGraphite and watercolour on paper

Dimensionssupport: 487 x 689 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Reference

D16977

Turner Bequest CXCV 8

View this artwork by appointment, at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

Lecture Diagram: Ray of Light Passing through a Small Aperture circa 1817–28

D16977
Turner Bequest CXCV 8

Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 487 x 689 mm
Watermarked ‘J WHATMAN | TURKEY MILLS | 1817’
Inscribed by Turner in red and black watercolour with various initial letters within diagram
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘8’ bottom right

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

References

Prepared in connection with his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Turner’s diagram is based on a plate from Dr Brook Taylor’s Method of Perspective Made Easy; both in Theory and Practice: in Two Books (London 1768, vol.I, pl.I, fig.1) by John Joshua Kirby (1716–74). Kirby used it to describe ‘the Eye and the Nature of Vision’.Turner also sketched the diagram in a manuscript probably used for lecturing in 1819.1

Turner, ‘Royal Academy Lectures’, circa 1807–38, Department of Western Manuscripts, British Library, London, ADD MS 46151 Y folio 2 verso. On the dating of this lecture material, see John Gage, Colour in Turner: Poetry and Truth, London 1969, p.249 note 170 and Maurice William Davies, ‘J.M.W. Turner’s Approach to Perspective in His Royal Academy Lectures of 1811’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, London 1994, p.279.

Technical notes:

Peter Bower writes that the sheet is from a batch of Super Royal size Whatman paper made by Finch and Thomas Robert Hollingworth at Turkey Mill, Maidstone, Kent. This batch shows ‘both very good sheets as well as some outside, or retree, sheets where the “back” of the sheet, size spots and streaking, and formation shadows are visible’.1

Notes in Tate catalogue files.

Verso:

Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘35’ bottom left.

Andrea Fredericksen
June 2004

Supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Revised by David Blayney Brown
January 2012

Read this catalogue entry in full

This catalogue entry is part of: David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, December 2012.