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; with a Diagram c.1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Notes on Sunlight; with a Diagram’ c.1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 87 Recto:
Inscription by Turner: Notes on Sunlight; with a Diagram circa 1809
D07502
Turner Bequest CVIII 87
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 115 x 88 mm
Part watermark ‘J What | 180’
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) above and below the diagram
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘87’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CVIII – 87’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole page is taken up with the following notes, including a diagram towards the top:
Suppose over an iregular horizon or hill | on which a building [...] but one more | elevated than the rest
Here there is a diagram of a building against a wooded or cloudy horizon with dotted arcs in the sky above, numbered ‘2’ above the building and ‘1’ to its right. The notes continue:
immediatly opposite to which will suppose | a flat surface upon the upper part the | first appearance of the sun will show it <[?power]> | approach by color and a small increase of light | but which imperceptibly loses itself downwards | without any visible shadow of an object upon | that surface positivly defined any more | the indefinite shadow that common daylight | makes and a pole at [blank] yards would only | be marked where the ½ [overwriting ‘small’] part of the pole strikes | its positive power while the shadow of the | pole would be wholy blended in shade causd | on the same flat surface as yet not illumined
This passage follows on from the verso of this leaf (D07503), and continues on the opposite page, folio 86 verso (D07501) – where the diagram appears to be referred to again. 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 back to folio 84 verso (D07497), in the context of Turner’s keen observations of light, weather and water, more commonly expressed visually in his sketches.4

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.
4
See Gage 1987, pp.71–3, and 247 note 74.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Notes on Sunlight; with a Diagram 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-with-a-diagram-r1136698, accessed 26 April 2024.