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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Perspective lectures c.1809-28 > I. Numbered Perspective Diagrams > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Lecture Diagram 4: Top of Trajan's Column, Rome c.1810

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lecture Diagram 4: Top of Trajan's Column, Rome’ c.1810
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Lecture Diagram 4: Top of Trajan’s Column, Rome circa 1810
D17123
Turner Bequest CXCV 152
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 980 x 642 mm
Watermarked ‘J WHATMAN | 1808’
Inscribed by Turner in red watercolour ‘4’ top left
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘152’ top right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Turner accompanied Lecture 1 with various diagrams of ancient columns to illustrate how the Romans adjusted the proportions of their sculptures, especially those in spiral bas relief, to enhance ‘what would be lost by distance’.1 Based on prints published by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) in the 1770s, this view of the top of Trajan’s Column in Trajan’s Forum near the Quirinal Hill, Rome works as a comparison to that of the Column of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus in the same city (Tate D17124; Turner Bequest CXCV 153).2 According to Turner, ‘if we are to depend on [Piranesi’s] geometric sections we shall find that the space between the spiral line increases [in Trajan’s Column] in the first volutions and in the Antonine it increases a whole return at the top’.3
For other derivations from Piranesi among the lecture diagrams see Tate D17090, D17091, D17099; Turner Bequest CXCV 120, 121, 128, based on his prison scenes, and D17124; Turner Bequest CXCV 102, probably derived from his views of Paestum.
1
Turner, ‘Royal Academy Lectures’, circa 1807–38, Department of Western Manuscripts, British Library, London, ADD MS 46151 K folio 8 verso.
2
Turner, ‘Royal Academy Lectures’, circa 1807–38, Department of Western Manuscripts, British Library, London, ADD MS 46151 C folio 8 verso–9, K folio 10 and J folio 9.
3
Ibid., K folio 9 verso.
Technical notes:
Peter Bower states that the sheet is Double Elephant size Whatman paper made by William Balston, at Springfield Mill, Maidstone, Kent. The largest group within the perspective drawings, this batch of paper shows a ‘grid-like series of shadows that can be seen within the sheet in transmitted light. This appears to have been caused by a trial method of supporting the woven wire mould cover on the mould’. Because this is the only batch he has seen with such a feature, Bower believes that ‘it may have been tried on one pair of moulds and for some reason never tried again’. He also writes that it is ‘not the best Whatman paper by any means; the weight of this group is also very variable and the moulds have not been kept clean during use’.1
1
Notes in Tate catalogue files.
Verso:
Indications of Turner’s transfer process, a small sketch by Turner in red ink of an unidentified architectural element with measurements top right and an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘146’ top left.

Andrea Fredericksen
June 2004

Supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Revised by David Blayney Brown
January 2012

How to cite

Andrea Fredericksen, ‘Lecture Diagram 4: Top of Trajan’s Column, Rome c.1810 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2004, revised by David Blayney Brown, January 2012, 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-lecture-diagram-4-top-of-trajans-column-rome-r1136462, accessed 16 April 2024.