Joseph Mallord William Turner

Lecture Diagram: Perspective Method for a Circle

c.1822–8

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: IV. Diagrams after John Joshua Kirby’s Dr Brook Taylor’s Method of Perspective
Medium: Graphite and watercolour on paper
Dimensions: Support: 550 × 757 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D17022
Turner Bequest CXCV 52

Catalogue entry

Prepared in connection with his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Turner’s diagram is based on one by John Joshua Kirby (1716–74) in Dr Brook Taylor’s Method of Perspective Made Easy; both in Theory and Practice (London 1768, vol.II, pl.XII, fig.7). Kirby used it to illustrate how to depict circular stairs in perspective. Turner’s lecture diagram would have supplemented existing lecture material.

Technical notes:

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

Notes in Tate catalogue files.

Verso:

Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘50’ bottom left.

Andrea Fredericksen
June 2004

Supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Revised by David Blayney Brown
January 2012

Read full Catalogue entry

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