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 Diagrams of a Cube in Perspective and a Pantograph, from an Unidentified Source c.1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Diagrams of a Cube in Perspective and a Pantograph, from an Unidentified Source’ c.1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 71 Recto:
Diagrams of a Cube in Perspective and a Pantograph, from an Unidentified Source circa 1809
D07471
Turner Bequest CVIII 71
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 88 x 115 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘Invention | by Christopher Scheiner 1653 | Parrallelogrammer or Pantagraher’ at top of page above diagrams
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘71’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CVIII – 71’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Maurice Davies has not identified the source of the main diagram, which does not appear in Christoph Scheiner, Pantographice, seu ars delineandi, Rome 1631,1 the first edition of which Turner could have consulted at the British Museum (since transferred to the British Library, London), where no later editions are listed.
A mathematician and astronomer, Scheiner (1573–1650)2 devised a form of pantograph (a pivoting trellis-like framework allowing the duplication or enlargement of an image through a parallel tracing process using simple geometrical relationships); the rough, smaller diagram on the present page appears to show the instrument.

Matthew Imms
June 2008

1
Davies 1994, pp.98, 289, 310 note 78.
2
See Albert Van Helden, ‘Christoph Scheiner (1573–1650)’, and Richard S. Westfall, ‘Scheiner, Christoph’, The Galileo Project, accessed 28 May 2008, respectively http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/scheiner.html and http://galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/scheiner.html.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Diagrams of a Cube in Perspective and a Pantograph, from an Unidentified Source 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-diagrams-of-a-cube-in-perspective-and-a-pantograph-from-an-r1136667, accessed 23 April 2024.