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

D17126, D17128, D17131, D40012

Turner Bequest CXCV 155, 157, 160

This small grouping brings together three sheets not regarded by Andrea Fredericksen as relating directly to Turner’s lectures as the Royal Academy’s Professor of Perspective. Her entries for the majority of works in Turner Bequest section CXCV are set out in parallel subsections of the present catalogue, and her broadest dating of 1810–28 has been adopted here in the absence of more specific indications.

Two of the works here, D17126 and D17128 (Turner Bequest CXCV 155, 157), are related working drawings showing aspects of the same architectural scheme, on irregular, relatively small sheets of the same 1797 paper. The third, D17131 (Turner Bequest CXCV 160), is of a size and degree of detail more consistent with the lecture diagrams Turner prepared, but although quite elaborate it is unfinished and its potential purpose is unclear.