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 > Perspective Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Notes on Perspective, from John Hamilton c.1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Notes on Perspective, from John Hamilton’ c.1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 16 Recto:
Inscription by Turner: Notes on Perspective, from John Hamilton circa 1809
D07381
Turner Bequest CVIII 16
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 88 x 115 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘16’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CVIII – 16’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole page is taken up with the following notes:
The artist of that time exceels in groups of singles & | Figures in the same line giving them a | a beau grace a quiet expression of attitude | but respect to the animation and graduation of | objects in perspective & their distances was a | secret they were unaquainted wi<th> [‘ch’ inserted above] depending | upon the Science of optick their tessalated | pavement [?and] Bas reliefs, which for want | of Perspective, it is remarkable of all the | ancient authors, only one imperfect one of Euclid on | optics and not one on Persp1
Marquish dl’Hospital. Treatise | of Conick Sec has censured the method of demonstration
Maurice Davies has identified the notes and diagrams running from folio 15 verso to folio 18 verso (D40670, this page and D07382–D07386) as from various points in John Hamilton, Stereography, or, a Compleat Body of Perspective, in All Its Branches, London 1738.2 Turner could have consulted the copy at the British Museum (since transferred to the British Library, London).
The main body of Turner’s notes comes from the first page of Hamilton’s unpaginated ‘Preface’. Turner’s transcription is rather truncated and a little scrambled, as the passage about pavements and reliefs comes first in Hamilton’s text. He has qualified the opening words of the inscription here by the single word ‘Roman’ on folio 15 verso opposite (D40670), taken from Hamilton’s mention of ‘the ancient Greeks and Romans’, whose art he is discussing here.
The last lines, from the third page of the preface, refer to Guillaume François Antoine de l’Hôpital, Marquis de Sainte-Mesme, An Analy¿i¿k Treatise of Conick Sections, and their Use for Resolving of Equations in Determinate and Indeterminate Problems, translated by Edmund Stone, London 1723 (of which there is a copy which Turner could have consulted at the British Museum, since transferred to the British Library, London). The passage continues on the verso of this leaf (D07382).
1
See Venning 1982, p.44 for partial transcription from ‘it is remarkable’ (without identifying Turner’s source).
2
Davies 1994, p.288.
Technical notes:
There is a small hole towards the centre of the sheet, due to a fault or damage on the verso.

Matthew Imms
June 2008

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Notes on Perspective, from John Hamilton c.1809 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2008, 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-inscription-by-turner-notes-on-perspective-from-john-r1136577, accessed 18 April 2024.