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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Diagrams of Harmonic Proportions, after John Hamilton c.1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Recto:
Diagrams of Harmonic Proportions, after John Hamilton circa 1809
D07383
Turner Bequest CVIII 17
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 88 x 115 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink with letters ‘A’, ‘C’, ‘D’ and ‘B’, ‘a’, ‘c’, ‘d’ and ‘b’, ‘A’, ‘C’, ‘D’ and ‘B’, and ‘E’, working down the levels of the diagram
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘17’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CVIII – 17’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Maurice Davies has identified the whole sequence of notes and diagrams running from folio 15 verso to folio 18 verso (D40670, D07381, D07382, this page and D07383–D07386) as taken from John Hamilton, Stereography, or, a Compleat Body of Perspective, in All Its Branches, London 1738.1 Turner could have consulted the copy at the British Museum (since transferred to the British Library, London).
Andrea Fredericksen has noted that the diagrams here, from Hamilton’s plate 18 figures 55 (the line) and 56 (the more complex figure below), inform Turner’s perspective lecture diagram headed ‘Hamiltons Harmonic Proportions’ (see entry for Tate D17133; Turner Bequest CXCV 162).
The source diagram includes more letters than Turner’s version, relating to Hamilton’s complex explanation, transcribed on folio 16 verso opposite (D07382). The subsequent lecture diagram does not retain this lettering, and appears incomplete and inverted compared to the version here.

Matthew Imms
June 2008

1
Davies 1994, p.288.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Diagrams of Harmonic Proportions, after 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-diagrams-of-harmonic-proportions-after-john-hamilton-r1136579, accessed 19 March 2024.