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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Cheshire, Derbyshire, North Wales ... > Tabley No.3 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Design for Moulding of a Joist, Heating Pipes, and Notes on Blinds and Heating for a Picture Gallery (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1818-22

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Design for Moulding of a Joist, Heating Pipes, and Notes on Blinds and Heating for a Picture Gallery (Inscriptions by Turner)’ c.1818-22
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 77 Verso:
Design for Moulding of a Joist, Heating Pipes, and Notes on Blinds and Heating for a Picture Gallery (Inscriptions by Turner) circa 1818–22
D07085
Turner Bequest CV 67a
Pencil on white wove paper, 108 x 185 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue text)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
See Introduction to the sketchbook for Turner’s new gallery behind his house in Queen Anne Street West, opened in 1822.
Drawn with the sketchbook inverted, the main design here is for a joist and its moulding in section. There is a smaller outline, related to the notes on heating which read:
Flues from the Back Parlour or Kitchen to warm the Gallery | Ventilation of Gallery – and the Blinds to bow and set behind | a moulding to exclude the | Sun’s rays
Turner’s idea for heating sounds practical and in keeping with his economical nature. His specifications for blinds and moulding must relate to the sketch of a wall of pictures with blinds and a deep moulded cornice on folio 46 verso (D07043; Turner Bequest CV 42a). These schemes for protecting pictures from glare from roof lights all seem rather grand and expensive; were they ever carried out? Latterly, Turner used a cheaper solution – herring nets stretched across the ceiling to filter the light.
Gage suggests that Turner may have got the idea for blinds or nets from his visit in 1819 to the Brera, Milan, where they were widely used in the galleries, or from his reading of Leonardo da Vinci.1

David Blayney Brown
June 2010

1
Gage 1969, pp.162–3, 263 note 123; Leonardo, Trattato, 1817 ed., pp.70, 336, 357.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Design for Moulding of a Joist, Heating Pipes, and Notes on Blinds and Heating for a Picture Gallery (Inscriptions by Turner) c.1818–22 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2010, 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-design-for-moulding-of-a-joist-heating-pipes-and-notes-on-r1134620, accessed 19 September 2024.