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 43: Perspective Construction of a Tuscan Pedestal c.1810

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lecture Diagram 43: Perspective Construction of a Tuscan Pedestal’ c.1810
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Lecture Diagram 43: Perspective Construction of a Tuscan Pedestal circa 1810
D17063
Turner Bequest CXCV 93
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 673 x 1002 mm
Watermarked ‘J WHATMAN | 1808’
Inscribed by Turner in red watercolour ‘43’ top left
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘93’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Prepared by Turner for Lecture 3 as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Diagram 43 was presented as Turner continued his discussion of the architectural orders and their component parts (see note to Diagram 40; Tate D17058; Turner Bequest CXCV 88). Diagram 43 illustrates a method for drawing a Tuscan pedestal in perspective. Turner explains that ‘after the entablature and capital, the pedestal is a mere trifle. It can equally be obtained by the cube marked off either at its base or the original line of the entablature’.1 At the end of this passage Turner has written in graphite ‘End of Third Lecture’, which suggests to Davies that at some unknown date, possibly for the course given in 1811, Turner decided to divide Lecture 3 into two parts and to conclude it with this diagram.2
See lecture Diagram 52 (Tate D17070; Turner Bequest CXCV 100) for the likely first illustration of Lecture 4 according to this division of the material.
1
Turner, ‘Royal Academy Lectures’, circa 1807–38, Department of Western Manuscripts, British Library, London, ADD MS 46151 M folio 16.
2
Ibid., MS M folio 16 verso; Davies 1994, pp.257, 273.
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:
Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘93’ 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 43: Perspective Construction of a Tuscan Pedestal 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-43-perspective-construction-of-a-tuscan-r1136513, accessed 24 April 2024.