Joseph Mallord William Turner

Engraved:
Etching and mezzotint by J.M.W. Turner and Charles Turner, ‘Drawing of the CLYDE. In the possession of J.M.W. Turner.’, published Charles Turner, 29 March 1809

Turner based his Liber Studiorum design on a large watercolour, The Fall of the Clyde, Lanarkshire: Noon. – vide Akenside’s Hymn to the Naiads, which he had exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1802 (336), which, as indicated by the lettering on the engraving, remained in his possession in 1809 (Walker Art Gallery (National Museums Liverpool) 864).1 The setting was derived from pencil and watercolour studies from the Smaller Fonthill sketchbook (some sheets at Tate; Turner Bequest XLVIII), now at the National Gallery of Scotland, the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art;2 several other Liber designs were derived from the same book: Coast of Yorkshire, Rivaux Abbey and Dumblain Abbey, Scotland (Tate D08129, D08154, D08157; Turner Bequest CXVII B, Z, CXVIII C), and Solway Moss.3

Turner had visited the site near Lanark on his first tour of Scotland in 1801. The composition of the watercolour and the Liber design is deceptively simple, however, as its overt subject of women bathing by the falls is underpinned by the reference to the poem by Mark Akenside (1721–1770), dense with references to classical mythology but also to the modern world (for instance, the Thames and the Medway), expounding the relevance of the ‘nymphs, who preside over springs and rivulets’ (and other natural phenomena) contributing ‘to the fullness of navigable rivers, and consequently to the maintenance of commerce; and by that means, to the maritime part of military power.’4 As a more immediately visual image, Turner may have had in mind Akenside’s lines on the nymphs, under

Akenside also provided notes on the way the surrounding atmosphere, heated by the sun, is affected by the differences in temperature and motion of rivers and steams,6 thus enabling Turner to address both naturalistic and allegorical aspects.