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 60: Four Glass Globes c.1810

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lecture Diagram 60: Four Glass Globes’ c.1810
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Lecture Diagram 60: Four Glass Globes circa 1810
D17085
Turner Bequest CXCV 115
Watercolour and chalk on white wove paper, 673 x 1004 mm
Watermarked ‘J WHATMAN | 1808’
Inscribed by Turner in red watercolour ‘60’ top left
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘115’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition:
Vanishing Point: The Perspective Drawings of J.M.W. Turner, Tate Britain, London, May–November 2004 (not in catalogue)
Prepared by Turner for his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Diagram 60 depicts four glass globes with various reflections and shadows. Maurice Davies groups together Diagrams 60–73, 73+, 75 and 76 (see Tate D17085–D17097, D17100, D17099, D17101; Turner Bequest CXCV 115–126, 129, 128, 130) as all dealing with the production of shadows. Although some of the diagrams are mentioned in Turner’s lecture manuscripts, many are not discussed at all, leading Davis to conclude that they may have been part of a lecture that is now lost, which ‘could have been given in 1811, possibly as part or all of lecture 4 or 5’.
Technical notes:
Peter Bower states that the sheet is Double Elephant size Whatman paper made by William Balston, at Springfield Mill, Maidstone, Kent.1
1
Notes in Tate catalogue files.
Verso:
Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘110’ bottom left

Andrea Fredericksen
June 2004

Supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Revised by David Blayney Brown
January 2010

How to cite

Andrea Fredericksen, ‘Lecture Diagram 60: Four Glass Globes c.1810 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2004, revised by David Blayney Brown, January 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-lecture-diagram-60-four-glass-globes-r1136530, accessed 25 April 2024.