Joseph Mallord William Turner

Lecture Diagram: ‘Euclid’s Elements of Geometry’, Plane Trigonometry, Proposition 7

c.1817–28

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In Tate Britain

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
III. Diagrams after Samuel Cunn’s Euclid’s Elements of Geometry
Medium
Graphite and watercolour on paper
Dimensions
Support: 488 × 689 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D17012
Turner Bequest CXCV 42

Catalogue entry

Prepared in connection with his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Turner’s diagram is based on an illustration from Samuel Cunn’s Euclid’s Elements of Geometry (London 1759, Plane Trigonometry). It represents Proposition 7 on Plane Trigonometry, which Cunn defines as ‘Theorem. In small arcs, the sines and tangents of the same arcs are nearly to one another, in a ratio of equality’.1 There are sketches of the Proposition in Turner’s lecture notes.2
1
Cunn 1759, p.283.
2
Turner, ‘Royal Academy Lectures’, circa1807–38, Department of Western Manuscripts, British Library, London, ADD MS 46151 X folios 19, 26.
Technical notes:
Peter Bower states that the sheet is Super Royal size Whatman paper made by Finch and Thomas Robert Hollingworth, at Turkey Mill, Maidstone, Kent.1
1
Notes in Tate catalogue files.
Verso:
Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘25’ bottom left.

Andrea Fredericksen
June 2004

Supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Revised by David Blayney Brown
January 2012

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