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

The top two thirds of the page are taken up with the following notes:

Below is a diagram showing disks at two heights on the right, the lower with rays emanating horizontally from its edges to the left in parallel across the width of the page, with a further line below serving as the horizon. The rays continue through or across three lines representing vertical features. The light from the upper disk is implied only by a line running at a shallow diagonal from the top of the first vertical, reading as the edge of a cast shadow running down to the horizon line, below which is inscribed ‘1000 yds’.

This passage follows on from folio 85 verso (D07499) and continues on folio 83 verso (D07495). It is part of a sequence beginning on folio 91 verso (D07511), and running back to folio 82 verso (D07493). 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 Turner’s notes as ‘on light and shadow’, as part of a longer sequence running back to folio 72 verso (D07473).3

Gage has also mentioned this particular passage ‘on the development of a sunrise’ (running from folio 87 recto (D07502) to the present page), in the context of Turner’s keen observations of light, weather and water, more commonly expressed visually in his sketches.4

In referring to ‘my predecesor’, Turner presumably meant the painter Edward Edwards (1738–1806), an Associate of the Royal Academy who gave private tuition as the RA’s ‘Teacher’ in perspective (publishing A Practical Treatise in Perspective, London 1803), until his death in 1806 led to Turner’s appointment as the second Professor of the subject (the first, Samuel Wale, having died in 1786).5