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 > II. Various Perspective Diagrams > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Lecture Diagram: Colour Circle No.1 c.1824-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lecture Diagram: Colour Circle No.1’ c.1824-8
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Lecture Diagram: Colour Circle No.1 circa 1824–8
D17149
Turner Bequest CXCV 178
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper 556 x 762 mm
Inscribed by Turner in red watercolour ‘No 1’ bottom centre
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘178’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Towards the end of his tenure as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Turner produced two diagrams dealing with aspects of colour theory (see also Tate D17150; Turner Bequest CXCV 179). John Gage provisionally dates the diagrams and corresponding lecture text to 1827, when Turner would have heard Thomas Phillips’s Academy lectures on colour, but also suggests that he assembled the relevant information earlier, possibly in 1825.1 Turner based his diagrams on a colour wheel from Moses Harris’s manual, Natural System of Colours (1811, p.5). Gage and Martin Kemp discuss how Turner rethought and reconfigured Harris’s wheel to explore the differences between ‘aerial’ or light colours, as in the spectrum (in the present Colour Circle No.1) and ‘material’ colours, as in pigments (in Colour Circle No.2, see Tate D17150). Gage explains how this diagram shows aerial colours changing according to the times of day, with light at the top giving way to dark at the bottom: ‘As primaries the colours are able to show light and darkness by themselves; in compounds the combinations of greys, browns and neutrals is infinite, in the progression towards black.’2
1
Turner, ‘Royal Academy Lectures’, circa 1807–38, Department of Western Manuscripts, British Library, London, ADD MS 46151 BB folios 66–7, 68–9 verso.
2
Gage 1969, p.114.
Verso:
Currently laid down.

Andrea Fredericksen
January 2004

Supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Revised by David Blayney Brown
January 2012

How to cite

Andrea Fredericksen, ‘Lecture Diagram: Colour Circle No.1 c.1824–8 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2004, revised by David Blayney Brown, January 2012, 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-lecture-diagram-colour-circle-no1-r1136799, accessed 26 April 2024.