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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Perspective lectures c.1809-28 > I. Numbered Perspective Diagrams > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Lecture Diagram 14: The Terminology of Perspective of Joseph Moxon c.1810

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lecture Diagram 14: The Terminology of Perspective of Joseph Moxon’ c.1810
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Lecture Diagram 14: The Terminology of Perspective of Joseph Moxon circa 1810
D17028
Turner Bequest CXCV 58
Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour on white wove paper, 482 x 600 mm
Watermarked ‘1794 | J WHATMAN’
Inscribed by Turner in red watercolour ‘14’ top left and in red watercolour over red ink ‘MOXON’ top centre and in red watercolour and black ink ‘Horizon’, ‘Visual Point’, ‘Orthographic Line’, ‘Orthographic Plane’, ‘Section’, ‘Base Line’, ‘scenography’, ‘Ichnography’ and ‘Ithnographic Transfers’ at various points within diagram
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘58’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Diagram 14 is likely to be associated with Turner’s discussion, in Lecture 2 as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, of the terminology of the discipline. It is headed ‘MOXON’ and claims to show the importance attached by the author to ‘ichnography’, but as Maurice Davies points out, so such diagram is to be found in Joseph Moxon’s Practical Perspective (1670).1 Apparently Turner’s own design, it illustrates a method due to the elder Thomas Malton; see his Compleat Treatise on Perspective in Theory and Paractice on the True Principles of Dr Brook Taylor, 1775, pp.48–9.
1
Davies 1994, p.299 note 41. See Turner, ‘Royal Academy Lectures’, circa 1807–38, Department of Western Manuscripts, British Library, London, ADD MS 46151 BL MS L folio 3. For earlier versions of material, see D folio 2 verso and E folio 4.
Technical notes:
Peter Bower states that the sheet is Royal size Whatman paper made by William Balston and Finch and Thomas Robert Hollingworth, at Turkey Mill, Maidstone, Kent. He writes that ‘all the group of papers with 1794 dates in the watermark show considerable process dirt and poor formation’. He attributes the lack of quality control to James Whatman’s stroke and the change of ownership at the mill.1
1
Notes in tate catalogue files.
Verso:
Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘60’ bottom left.

Andrea Fredericksen
June 2004

Supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Revised by David Blayney Brown
January 2012

How to cite

Andrea Fredericksen, ‘Lecture Diagram 14: The Terminology of Perspective of Joseph Moxon c.1810 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2004, revised by David Blayney Brown, 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-lecture-diagram-14-the-terminology-of-perspective-of-joseph-r1136478, accessed 24 April 2024.