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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Sandycombe Lodge c.1808-12 > Windmill and Lock Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Notes from an Anatomy Lecture by Sir Anthony Carlisle c.1809-11

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Notes from an Anatomy Lecture by Sir Anthony Carlisle’ c.1809-11
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: Notes from an Anatomy Lecture by Sir Anthony Carlisle circa 1809–11
D07968
Turner Bequest CXIV 6a
Pencil on white wove paper, 117 x 87 mm
Part watermark ‘man | 8’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole page, turned vertically, is taken up with the following notes:
Carlisle B Lecture
That the Bones of the Clavicals make | a right angle when in their true position | when the scapulas are brought together | the Clav, then is a right [?angle] the | scapula an irregular triangle the | Bone of the ilium a right angle | [?Fragile] that the Head move 120 | Degrees travel [?under] 60 [?dg] | old age the back bends | [?over] and is the same [?angle] | as the Knee bends 10 [?dg] | [?10 bends in ...]
The last line might equally read ‘So bends to’ and the words are followed by a rough squiggle which may be a schematic side view of a figure bending at the knees.
Maurice Davies has related the passage, which continues on folio 7 recto opposite (D07969), to early drafts of Turner’s first Royal Academy perspective lecture,1 delivered in January 1811 (see the Introduction to the sketchbook). John Gage has shown that they derive from a lecture by the surgeon Sir Anthony Carlisle2 (1768–1840), who had been appointed the Royal Academy’s Professor of Anatomy there in 1808 and gave his first course early in the following year.3 There are other notes from Carlisle in the Greenwich sketchbook (Tate D06775, D06776; Turner Bequest CII 28a–29).
1
Davies 1994, p.290.
2
Gage 1969, p.250 note 181; Gage 1984, pp.217, 254 note 34.
3
Sidney C. Hutchison, The History of the Royal Academy 1768–1986, London 1986, p.270; Gage 1969, p.250 note 181.
Technical notes:
A short tear towards the top of the left-hand side has been repaired from the blank recto of the leaf (D07967).

Matthew Imms
January 2012

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Notes from an Anatomy Lecture by Sir Anthony Carlisle c.1809–11 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-notes-from-an-anatomy-lecture-by-sir-r1134744, accessed 23 April 2024.