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 63: Various Forms with Shadows c.1810

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lecture Diagram 63: Various Forms with Shadows’ c.1810
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Lecture Diagram 63: Various Forms with Shadows circa 1810
D17088
Turner Bequest CXCV 118
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 670 x 1000 mm
Watermarked ‘J WHATMAN | 1808’
Inscribed by Turner in red watercolour ‘63’ top left
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘118’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Prepared by Turner for his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, this is one of a group of diagrams thought by Maurice Davies to illustrate the production of shadows; see note to Diagram 60 (Tate D17085; Turner Bequest CXCV 115). Judy Egerton had previously described the present diagram as ‘shadow cast by the sun in a vertical plane not parallel to any face of the rectangular block from which the shadow is thrown. The vanishing point of the sun’s rays is the point nearly at the right hand edge of the bottom of the drawing; the semi-circle drawn around it indicates the illusion of a halo cast round the shadow of the spectator’s head...’.
Technical notes:
Peter Bower states that the sheet is Double Elephant size Whatman paper made by William Balston, at Springfield Mill, Maidstone, Kent.1
1
Notes in Tate catalogue files.
Verso:
Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘113’ bottom left.

Andrea Fredericksen
June 2004

Supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Revised by David Blayney Brown
January 2010

How to cite

Andrea Fredericksen, ‘Lecture Diagram 63: Various Forms with Shadows c.1810 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2004, revised by David Blayney Brown, January 2010, 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-63-various-forms-with-shadows-r1136533, accessed 25 April 2024.