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 > Perspective Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Wayside Cross or Shrine in Perspective, after Viator (Jean Pélerin) c.1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Wayside Cross or Shrine in Perspective, after Viator (Jean Pélerin)’ c.1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 26 Verso:
A Wayside Cross or Shrine in Perspective, after Viator (Jean Pélerin) circa 1809
D07395
Turner Bequest CVIII 26a
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 88 x 115 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The diagram is not annotated. Maurice Davies has identified it as coming from Viator (Jean Pélerin), De Artificiali Perspectiva, Toul 1505, plate Bii.1 This rather quaint engraving shows a cross with steps all around, in a landscape of distant rolling hills and trees; below is a plan of the concentric steps, seen in perspective, with a ruled horizontal line underneath, as Turner shows.
There are further notes from this source on folio 27 recto opposite (D07396; see catalogue entry for more on Viator himself), and on folios 44 recto and 61 recto (D07429, D07458).
Andrea Fredericksen has linked Turner’s sketches of Viator’s diagram of a square in perspective on folios 27 recto and 44 recto to his perspective lecture diagram 27, showing concentric squares in perspective (see entry for Tate D17041; Turner Bequest CXCV 71). That diagram also seems to have been informed by the present drawing, combining the diamond shape here with the lines receding to three vanishing points set down on the other pages.
1
Davies 1994, p.288.
Technical notes:
There is some offsetting from the diagram and inscription in ink opposite on folio 27 recto (D07396).

Matthew Imms
June 2008

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Wayside Cross or Shrine in Perspective, after Viator (Jean Pélerin) c.1809 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2008, 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-a-wayside-cross-or-shrine-in-perspective-after-viator-jean-r1136591, accessed 25 April 2024.