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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: A Draft List of 'Liber Studiorum' Historical Subjects c.1808-18

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 31 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: A Draft List of ‘Liber Studiorum’ Historical Subjects c.1808–18
D12170
Turner Bequest CLIV a 30a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 89 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned vertically, the upper half is taken up with the following list:
Historical
Rispath
Spenser Fairy Queen
Cephalus and Procris
Jason
Beckford Plague
10 Plague1
This is one of a series of working lists of subjects within the various categories of Turner’s Liber Studiorum series of landscape prints, running from folio 26 verso to folio 32 recto (D12160–D12171; Turner Bequest CLIV a 25a–31). An annotated version, with full details of the subjects and their publishing history, can be found in the present author’s overall Introduction to the section of this catalogue dealing with the watercolour studies for the Liber (c.1806–24). More ‘Historical subjects’ are listed on folio 32 recto opposite.
A provisional list of the first ten parts of a projected twenty, each part comprising five prints drawn from different categories, runs from folio 24 verso to folio 25 verso (D12156–D12158; Turner Bequest CLIV a 23a, 24, 24a); this has been dated to 1808. Since some of the subjects in the category lists appear to have been added as late as 1818,2 the pages are all dated here to c.1808–18.

Matthew Imms
September 2013

1
See Forrester 1996, p.163 (transcription, followed here with slight variations)
2
Ibid., p.14.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: A Draft List of ‘Liber Studiorum’ Historical Subjects c.1808–18 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-a-draft-list-of-liber-studiorum-r1147587, accessed 28 March 2024.