Joseph Mallord William Turner

This diagram is likely to be associated with Turner’s discussion, in Lecture 2 as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, of the terminology of the discipline. It is based on an illustration from Richard Haydocke’s translation of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge, Carvinge and Buildinge (1598, book V, p.204). It illustrates the terms Lomazzo assigned to the three main viewpoints: ‘from below the seen objects (anoptica), on a level with them (ottica) and from above (catoptica)’.1 Maurice Davies observes that although the diagram bears the heading ‘Lamatius and Moxon’ neither the terms nor the diagram can be found in Joseph Moxon’s Practical Perspective (1670).2 Turner’s description of the method is based on the elder Thomas Malton’s A Compleat Treatise on Perspective in Theory and Practice on the True Principles of Dr Brook Taylor (1775).3 Turner drew a similar diagram in his Perspective Sketchbook (Tate D07457; Turner Bequest CVIII 60 verso).

Technical notes:

Peter Bower states that the sheet is Royal size Whatman paper made by William Balston and Finch and Thomas Robert Hollingworth, at Turkey Mill, Maidstone, Kent. He writes that ‘all the group of papers with 1794 dates in the watermark show considerable process dirt and poor formation’. He attributes a lack of quality control to James Whatman’s stroke and the change of ownership at the mill.1

Verso:

Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘59’ bottom left.