Lecture Diagram: Ground Plan of a Building

c.1823–8

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: II. Various Perspective Diagrams
Medium: Graphite and watercolour on paper
Dimensions: Support: 760 x 544 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D17023
Turner Bequest CXCV 53

Catalogue entry

Made in connection with Turner’s lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, this ground plan of an unidentified building seems to be related to another (Tate D17024; Turner Bequest CXCV 54). These diagrams are marked ‘No 1’ and ‘N 2’, and may be further associated with one depicting a vaulted arch in perspective marked ‘No 3’ (Tate D17120; Turner Bequest CXCV 149), which Judy Egerton has linked to an earlier diagram of a prison interior based on an etching by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Tate D17099; Turner Bequest 128, and see also D17090, D17091; Turner Bequest CXCV 120, 121).1 If this is the case, the first two diagrams in the later series may be plans of the prison and all three might have supplemented lecture material on the production of shadows.2

Judy Egerton [and Clifford Ellis], ‘JMWT PP’: A Selection of Drawings Made by Turner to Illustrate his Royal Academy Lectures as Professor of Perspective, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1980, p.[5] under no.20.

Turner, ‘Royal Academy Lectures’, circa 1807–38, Department of Western Manuscripts, British Library, London, ADD MS 46151 BL MS BB folio 12 verso.

Technical notes:

Peter Bower (unpublished notes)1 writes that the sheet is Small Imperial size Whatman paper made by Finch and Thomas Robert Hollingworth, at Turkey Mill, Maidstone, Kent.

Notes in Tate catalogue files.

Verso:

Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘53’ top left.

Andrea Fredericksen
January 2004

Supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Revised by David Blayney Brown
January 2012

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