Joseph Mallord William Turner

Exhibition:
Vanishing Point: The Perspective Drawings of J.M.W. Turner, Tate Britain, London, May–November 2004 (not in catalogue)

Prepared by Turner for his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Diagram 60 depicts four glass globes with various reflections and shadows. Maurice Davies groups together Diagrams 60–73, 73+, 75 and 76 (see Tate D17085–D17097, D17100, D17099, D17101; Turner Bequest CXCV 115–126, 129, 128, 130) as all dealing with the production of shadows. Although some of the diagrams are mentioned in Turner’s lecture manuscripts, many are not discussed at all, leading Davis to conclude that they may have been part of a lecture that is now lost, which ‘could have been given in 1811, possibly as part or all of lecture 4 or 5’.

Technical notes:

Peter Bower states that the sheet is Double Elephant size Whatman paper made by William Balston, at Springfield Mill, Maidstone, Kent.1

Verso:

Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘110’ bottom left