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: Note on Perspective, from John Hamilton c.1809

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Note on Perspective, from John Hamilton’ c.1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: Note on Perspective, from John Hamilton circa 1809
D40670
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 88 x 115 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘Roman’ top right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Maurice Davies has identified the notes and diagrams running from folio 15 verso to folio 18 verso (this page and D07381–D07386) as from various points in John Hamilton, Stereography, or, a Compleat Body of Perspective, in All Its Branches, London 1738.1 Turner could have consulted the copy at the British Museum (since transferred to the British Library, London). His one-word inscription here and thus the page itself were not recorded by Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.2 There is some ink offsetting from the notes on folio 16 recto opposite (D07381) which ‘Roman’ qualifies; see the entry for the latter for the relevant passage from Hamilton.

Matthew Imms
June 2008

1
Davies 1994, p.288.
2
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, pp.287–91.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Note on Perspective, from John Hamilton 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-note-on-perspective-from-john-hamilton-r1136576, accessed 22 November 2024.