J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Liber Studiorum notes c.1807-19 > Aesacus and Hesperie Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Diagrams of the Hang of Pictures at the Royal Academy c.1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Diagrams of the Hang of Pictures at the Royal Academy’ c.1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Verso:
Diagrams of the Hang of Pictures at the Royal Academy c.1819
D13762
Turner Bequest CLXIX 6a
Pencil on white wove paper, 119 x 87 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil with various initials in diagrams and bottom left (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned vertically, Turner has made two diagrams showing the relative positions of pictures, probably at the Royal Academy in 1819. There are notes on that year’s hang on folio 4 verso (D13758) and the recto of the present leaf (D13761); for other Royal Academy notes in this sketchbook, see under folio 4 recto (D13757).
The upper shows three tall portrait- and two shallow landscape-format rectangles, all aligned along their lower edges and labelled from left to right ‘[?D]’, ‘W’, ‘S’, ‘W’ and ‘S’; the first initial, presumably that of the artist’s surname, may alternatively be an ‘S’ written over an ‘O’, and the last seems to be written over a ‘T’.
Below are two tall landscape-format rectangles flanking a shallow landscape-format one, and flanked in turn by two smaller portrait-format rectangles, again aligned along their lower edges. The three central rectangles are initialled ‘’S’, ‘H’ and ‘O’ from left to right. The left-hand part of this diagram appears to be drawn over three tentative upright rectangles.
At the bottom left are further initials and numbers, apparently ‘B2 G2 [or ‘O2’?] T1 S1’.

Matthew Imms
September 2013

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Diagrams of the Hang of Pictures at the Royal Academy c.1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-diagrams-of-the-hang-of-pictures-at-the-royal-academy-r1147485, accessed 25 April 2024.