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 Diagram of an Open Cube in Perspective, after Heinrich Lautensack c.1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Diagram of an Open Cube in Perspective, after Heinrich Lautensack’ c.1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 69 Recto:
Diagram of an Open Cube in Perspective, after Heinrich Lautensack circa 1809
D07469
Turner Bequest CVIII 69
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 115 x 88 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘Henry Lautersack Goldsmith Goldsmith & | Painter | 15 6 I I I I’ below diagram
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘69’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CVIII – 69’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Maurice Davies has identified the source of this sketch and the one on folio 68 verso opposite (D07468) as Heinrich Lautensack, Des Circkels unt Richtscheyts, auch der Perspectiva, Frankfurt 1564, ‘pp 13, 18’.1
The present diagram is from the top half of plate 20 on folio 18 recto, showing an open cube-frame on a shallow plinth, drawn in outline alone with the diagonals on all six faces indicated by dotted lines, as copied here rather perfunctorily. Lautensack repeats the forms immediately below, this time shown solid with shadows cast by a light source above.
Turner’s inscription translates Lautensack’s occupations, ‘Goldschmid und Maler’, from the title page, and renders the publication date half in Arabic and half in Roman numerals.
This is one of several diagrams of cubes which Turner noted in the Perspective sketchbook but did not use in his lectures.2 There is another diagram from Lautensack, which Turner probably consulted at the British Museum (since transferred to the British Library, London), on folio 45 recto (D07431).

Matthew Imms
June 2008

1
Davies 1994, p.289.
2
Ibid., pp.98, 289, 310 note 76

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Diagram of an Open Cube in Perspective, after Heinrich Lautensack 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-diagram-of-an-open-cube-in-perspective-after-heinrich-r1136665, accessed 26 April 2024.