Joseph Mallord William Turner

Diagrams of the Hang of Pictures at the Royal Academy

c.1819

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Aesacus and Hesperie Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 119 × 87 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D13762
Turner Bequest CLXIX 6 a

Catalogue entry

With the page turned vertically, Turner has made two diagrams showing the relative positions of pictures, probably at the Royal Academy in 1819. There are notes on that year’s hang on folio 4 verso (D13758) and the recto of the present leaf (D13761); for other Royal Academy notes in this sketchbook, see under folio 4 recto (D13757).

The upper shows three tall portrait- and two shallow landscape-format rectangles, all aligned along their lower edges and labelled from left to right ‘[?D]’, ‘W’, ‘S’, ‘W’ and ‘S’; the first initial, presumably that of the artist’s surname, may alternatively be an ‘S’ written over an ‘O’, and the last seems to be written over a ‘T’.

Below are two tall landscape-format rectangles flanking a shallow landscape-format one, and flanked in turn by two smaller portrait-format rectangles, again aligned along their lower edges. The three central rectangles are initialled ‘’S’, ‘H’ and ‘O’ from left to right. The left-hand part of this diagram appears to be drawn over three tentative upright rectangles.

At the bottom left are further initials and numbers, apparently ‘B2 G2 [or ‘O2’?] T1 S1’.

Matthew Imms
September 2013

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