Joseph Mallord William Turner

Tracing of a Perspective Construction of a Cross on a Cube

c.1810

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: V. Miscellaneous Preparatory Perspective Material
Medium
Dimensions: Support: 435 × 597 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D17130
Turner Bequest CXCV 159

Catalogue entry

This tracing was made from a perspective study of a cross on a cube (Tate D17129; Turner Bequest CXCV 159), drawn in connection with Turner’s lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy. The study was partly derived from a diagram of Samuel Marolois’s technique, described in John Joshua Kirby’s Dr Brook Taylor’s Method of Perspective Made Easie; both in Theory and Practice: in Two Books (1768, II, pl.XIX, fig.3).

Technical notes:

Peter Bower (unpublished notes)1 writes that sheet is Colombier size paper made by William Lepard, Hamper Mill, Watford, Hertfordshire.

Notes in Tate catalogue files.

Verso:

Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘153’ 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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