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 > V. Miscellaneous Preparatory Perspective ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Tracing of a Perspective Construction of a Cross on a Cube c.1810

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Tracing of a Perspective Construction of a Cross on a Cube’ c.1810
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Tracing of a Perspective Construction of a Cross on a Cube circa 1810
D17130
Turner Bequest CXCV 159
Transfer ink on white wove paper, 435 x 597 mm
Watermarked ‘LEPARD 1794’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘159’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This tracing was made from a perspective study of a cross on a cube (Tate D17129; Turner Bequest CXCV 159), drawn in connection with Turner’s lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy. The study was partly derived from a diagram of Samuel Marolois’s technique, described in John Joshua Kirby’s Dr Brook Taylor’s Method of Perspective Made Easie; both in Theory and Practice: in Two Books (1768, II, pl.XIX, fig.3).
Technical notes:
Peter Bower (unpublished notes)1 writes that sheet is Colombier size paper made by William Lepard, Hamper Mill, Watford, Hertfordshire.
1
Notes in Tate catalogue files.
Verso:
Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘153’ 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, ‘Tracing of a Perspective Construction of a Cross on a Cube 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-tracing-of-a-perspective-construction-of-a-cross-on-a-cube-r1136817, accessed 24 April 2024.