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

Turner prepared Diagram 32 for Lecture 3 as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy. It illustrates a perspective method for drawing a cube proposed by Pietro Accolti (1579–1642), an Italian painter, architect for the Medici family and author of Lo Inganno de gl’occhi, Prospettiva Pratica (1625, cap.XXXIV, p.46). During his research for his lectures, Turner made two sketches based on Accolti in his Perspective sketchbook (Tate D07432, D07434; Turner Bequest CVIII 45 verso, 46 verso). Maurice Davies observes that although Turner provides increasing detail in each version of Lecture 3, he fails to give a real sense of Accolti’s method.1

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 ‘78’ bottom left.