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
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
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
Exhibition history
1966
Turner: Imagination and Reality, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, March–May 1966 (52).
1974
Turner 1775–1851, Royal Academy of Arts, London, November 1974–March 1975 (B54e).
1980
‘JMWT PP’ : A Selection of Drawings Made by Turner to Illustrate his Royal Academy Lectures as Professor of Perspective, Tate Gallery, London, July 1980–January 1981 (27).
1992
Turner as Professor: The Artist and Linear Perspective, Tate Gallery, London, October 1992–January 1993 (10, reproduced in colour).
2003
Aux Origins de L’Abstraction 1800–1914, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, November 2003–February 2004 (no number, reproduced in colour).
2004
Vanishing Point: The Perspective Drawings of J.M.W. Turner, Tate Britain, London, May–November 2004 (no number, reproduced in colour).
2007
Colour and Line: Turner’s Experiments, Tate Britain, London, April–November 2007 (no catalogue).
2008
Colour and Line: Turner’s Experiments [third hang], Tate Britain, London, October 2008–December 2009 (no catalogue).
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.596, CXCV 178, as ‘Colour diagram’.
1966
Lawrence Gowing, Turner: Imagination and Reality, exhibition catalogue, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1966, pp.23 reproduced, 61.
1969
John Gage, Colour in Turner: Poetry and Truth, London 1969, pp.114–16, 251 note199.
1973
Gerard Finley, ‘Turner’s Colour and Optics’, in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol.36, 1973, p.390, pl.65b.
1974
Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy of Arts, London 1974, p.181.
1980
Judy Egerton [and Clifford Ellis], ‘JMWT PP’ A Selection of Drawings Made by Turner to Illustrate his Royal Academy Lectures as Professor of Perspective, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1980, p.[6].
1992
Maurice Davies, Turner as Professor: The Artist and Linear Perspective, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1992, pp.23–4, reproduced in colour, fig.10.
1994
Maurice William Davies, ‘J.M.W. Turner’s Approach to Perspective in His Royal Academy Lectures of 1811’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, London 1994, p.285, BB folios 66–7.
1990
Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat, New Haven and London 1990, p.301.
2004
Andrea Fredericksen, Vanishing Point: The Perspective Drawings of J.M.W. Turner, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2004, p.30, frontispiece (colour).
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
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