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 90 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: Notes on Sunlight circa 1809
D07509
Turner Bequest CVIII 90a
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)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole page is taken up with the following notes:
by the rays of the Sun and the interruption | of those rays by an <...> intervening objects | are parralell but all lights produced | by art and their shadow converge and | diverge to and from a point, tho there | can be no doubt in my mind that they are | the same and the difference produced in | nature is only by the various proportions | of light. Find the proportion of the inter | vening objects to produce shade and [?could] | we but place an object to be illumind or | cast in shade of the proportion in every | respect to magnitude of the O disk we | should conclude them parallel whereas | my young friends must be aware that I | feel disposed to think they [?increase], and | indeed philsopicaly considered I cannot | suppose them otherwise for the Theory of | G. L. principly depends upon the under | parts being always in shade and therefore | the suns rays must be always parall
This passage follows on from the opposite page, folio 91 recto (D07510), and continues on the recto of this leaf (D07508). 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

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-r1136705, accessed 26 April 2024.