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 Inscription by Turner: Notes on Sunlight c.1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Notes on Sunlight’ c.1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 82 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: Notes on Sunlight circa 1809
D07493
Turner Bequest CVIII 82a
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 115 x 88 mm
Part watermark ‘man | 8’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole page is taken up with the following notes:
This holds good in viewing remote Bodies | in light and shade as at distance: | altho the rules of light and shade enforces | the nearer shadow to be the strongest it | not prove so but depends much upon | the distance of the object casting shadow | and not always that which is nearest | the Eye – a Building shall receive the | sun rays and the shadow of any | objects at a considerable distance hence | it becomes less [?directed ...] strength | but that building will make a positive | shadow upon the adjoining building – | positive and strong the shadows of | the [?first will] longer from the distance | they will stretch but the last will be | positive appears parallel and strong
This passage follows on from folio 83 verso (D07495) and is the last page of the sequence running back through the sketchbook from folio 91 verso (D07511). John Gage has discussed these provisional notes (not developed in the perspective lectures) as an example of Turner’s close observation of natural phenomena,1 in this case the question of sunlight travelling in parallel lines or otherwise, responding to a chapter of The Art of Painting by Gérard de Lairesse (1640–1711), in the English translation by John Frederick Frisch (London 1738 and later editions).2 See under D07511 for a discussion of Lairesse’s text.
Maurice Davies has registered the whole section as ‘on light and shadow’, and has grouped the part specified by Gage with other notes as part of a longer sequence running back to folio 72 verso (D07473); folios 81 verso (D07491) and 79 verso (D07487) are the next relevant pages.3

Matthew Imms
June 2008

1
Gage 1969, p.252 note 217.
2
Ibid., p.178, as ‘TB CVIII, pp. 99a–82a’ (first folio actually 91a); see also Davies 1992, pp.51, 108 note 85.
3
Davies 1994, p.289.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Notes on Sunlight 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-inscription-by-turner-notes-on-sunlight-r1136689, accessed 25 April 2024.