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 > III. Diagrams after Samuel Cunn's ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Lecture Diagram: 'Euclid's Elements of Geometry', Book 6, Proposition 33 c.1817-28

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lecture Diagram: 'Euclid's Elements of Geometry', Book 6, Proposition 33’ c.1817-28
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Lecture Diagram: ‘Euclid’s Elements of Geometry’, Book 6, Proposition 33 circa 1817–28
D17017
Turner Bequest CXCV 47
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 583 x 870 mm
Watermarked ‘J WHATMAN |1817’
Inscribed by Turner in red watercolour ‘3’ top left and ‘4’ top right, in grey watercolour ‘Coroll’ centre and in red and black watercolour over pencil with various initial letters within diagram
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘47’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Prepared in connection with his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Turner’s diagram of three equal circles is based on part of an illustration from Samuel Cunn’s Euclid’s Elements of Geometry (London 1759, Book 6, Plate 2). It represents Proposition 33: ‘Theorem. In equal circles the angles have the same proportion with the circumferences on which they stand, whether the angles be at the centres, or at the circumferences; and so likewise are the sectors, as being the centres’.1 Turner completes the Proposition in another diagram (Tate D17005: Turner Bequest CXCV 35). There is a related pencil sketch in Turner’s lecture notes.2
1
Cunn 1759, pp.186–9.
2
Turner, ‘Royal Academy Lectures’, circa 1807–38, Department of Western Manuscripts, British Library, London, ADD MS 46151 W folio 4.
Technical notes:
Peter Bower states that the sheet is Colombier size Whatman paper made by William Balston, at Springfield Mill, Maidstone, Kent.1
1
Notes in Tate catalogue files.
Verso:
Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘10’ bottom left.

Andrea Fredericksen
June 2004

Supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Revised by David Blayney Brown
January 2012

How to cite

Andrea Fredericksen, ‘Lecture Diagram: ‘Euclid’s Elements of Geometry’, Book 6, Proposition 33 c.1817–28 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 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.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-lecture-diagram-euclids-elements-of-geometry-book-6-r1136717, accessed 21 November 2024.