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 11: Spheres at Different Distances from the Eye (after Thomas Malton Senior) c.1810

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lecture Diagram 11: Spheres at Different Distances from the Eye (after Thomas Malton Senior)’ c.1810
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Lecture Diagram 11: Spheres at Different Distances from the Eye (after Thomas Malton Senior) circa 1810
D17145
Turner Bequest CXCV 174
Pen and ink and watercolour on white wove paper, 485 x 602 mm
Watermarked ‘1794 | J WHATMAN’
Inscribed by Turner in red watercolour ‘11’ top left
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘174’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This diagram is based on an illustration from A Compleat Treatise on Perspective in Theory and Practice on the True Principles of Dr Brook Taylor (1775, pl.1, fig.3) by the elder Thomas Malton (1726–1801). It provides a model of vision as a cone of rays travelling from various globes towards the eye. Turner used it for Lecture 2 as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy. He began this by discussing Malton’s first theorem, which he paraphrases as demonstrating that ‘all objects appear in proportion to their several angles under which they are seen’.1 Turner made sketches of the theorem in both the first draft and subsequent copy of Lecture 2.2
1
Turner, ‘Royal Academy Lectures’, circa 1807–38, Department of Western Manuscripts, British Library, London, ADD MS 46151 L folio 1 verso.
2
Turner, ‘Royal Academy Lectures’, circa 1807–38, Department of Western Manuscripts, British Library, London, ADD MS 46151 D folio 1, 1 verso and MS E folio 2 verso.
Technical notes:
Peter Bower states that the sheet is Royal size Whatman paper made by William Balston and Finch and Thomas Robert Hollingworth, at Turkey Mill, Maidstone, Kent. He writes that ‘all the group of papers with 1794 dates in the watermark show considerable process dirt and poor formation’. He attributes a lack of quality control to James Whatman’s stroke and the change of ownership at the mill.1
1
Notes in Tate catalogue files.
Verso:
Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘167’ bottom 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 11: Spheres at Different Distances from the Eye (after Thomas Malton Senior) 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-11-spheres-at-different-distances-from-the-r1136475, accessed 20 September 2024.