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

As Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Turner used part of Lecture 1 to show his students why their draughtsmanship would benefit from an understanding of the subject. To achieve this he produced three diagrams (see also Tate D17141 and D17142; Turner Bequest CXCV 170, 171) based on illustrations from James ‘Athenian’ Stuart’s and Nicholas Revett’s The Antiquities of Athens (1762, vol.I, chap.V. pls II and IV). This four-volume treatise had inspired the revival of the Greek architectural style in Europe and North America by providing motifs and designs of previously-undocumented classical buildings. Stuart and Revett used measured plans and elevations to illustrate the exact layout and dimensions of each structure. Although Turner praises the publication as ‘a most respectable work,’ he argues that such geometrical drawings have their limitations and that draughtsmen should also prepare perspective views to present a varied and more accurate impression of a building in its surrounding space.1

Diagram 8/1 is a ground plan of a classical building described by Stuart and Revett as ‘a stoa or portico, commonly supposed to be the remains of the Temple of Jupiter Olympus’ (the Olympieion). The plan allows Turner to show the vantage point (indicated by the word ‘eye’ at the bottom) used in his other two diagrams of this structure. A comparison of the drawings enables him to reveal how some free-standing columns (circles) and attached columns (squares) are obscured in a side elevation of the building. He does not discuss the issue in the version of Lecture 1 delivered in 1811, although a reference made in pencil to ‘Stuart’s Athens Drawing’ in the margin of his text indicates that he may have introduced the topic in subsequent revisions of the material.2 A later manuscript also used for lecturing refers directly to all three diagrams.3 The material is also discussed in a lecture manuscript titled ‘Light, Shade, and Reflexies’.4 There is a preliminary sketch in a manuscript filled with Turner’s notes.5

Technical notes:

Peter Bower states that the sheet is Double Elephant size Whatman paper made by William Balston, at Springfield Mill, Maidstone, Kent. The largest group within the perspective drawings, this batch of paper shows a ‘grid-like series of shadows that can be seen within the sheet in transmitted light. This appears to have been caused by a trial method of supporting the woven wire mould cover on the mould’. Because this is the only batch he has seen with such a feature, Bower believes that ‘it may have been tried on one pair of moulds and for some reason never tried again’. He also writes that it is ‘not the best Whatman paper by any means; the weight of this group is also very variable and the moulds have not been kept clean during use’.1

Verso:

Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘163’ top left.