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

Made by Turner to accompany his discussion of height and relative proportion in sculpture in Lecture 1 as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Diagram 8 is based on an illustration from Joseph Moxon’s Practical Perspective; or Perspective Made Easy (1670, pl.XXXII). Turner owned a copy of the treatise.1 He describes the diagram as ‘whimsical’, working both as a tribute to King Charles II and as a representation of Moxon’s ‘principle of showing the necessity of increasing proportions so that the parts according to their elevations should increase in size’ and yet still appear ‘the same size by making the angle equal to vision upon a segment or radius’.2

Technical notes:

Peter Bower states that the sheet is Double Elephant size Whatman paper made by William Balston, at Springfield Mill, Maidstone, Kent. The largest group within the perspective drawings, this batch of paper shows a ‘grid-like series of shadows that can be seen within the sheet in transmitted light. This appears to have been caused by a trial method of supporting the woven wire mould cover on the mould’. Because this is the only batch he has seen with such a feature, Bower believes that ‘it may have been tried on one pair of moulds and for some reason never tried again’. He also writes that it is ‘not the best Whatman paper by any means; the weight of this group is also very variable and the moulds have not been kept clean during use’.1

Verso:

Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘55’ bottom right.