Joseph Mallord William Turner

Lecture Diagram: Perspective Method for a Cube

c.1816–28

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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: 480 × 599 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D16985
Turner Bequest CXCV 16

Catalogue entry

Made in connection with Turner’s lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, this diagram depicts an unidentified method for drawing a cube in perspective. Along with another also from an untraced source (Tate D16982; Turner Bequest CXCV 13), it would have supplemented already existing lecture material, most likely the history of techniques in Lecture 3.
Technical notes:
Peter Bower (unpublished notes)1 writes that the sheet is Medium size Whatman paper made by William Balston, at Springfield Mill, Maidstone, Kent. This is ‘the best made of all the papers found amongst the perspective drawings’.
1
Notes in Tate catalogue files.
Verso:
Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘43’ bottom left.

Andrea Fredericksen
January 2004

Supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Revised by David Blayney Brown
January 2012

Read full Catalogue entry

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