Sketchbooks with Notes Relating to the Liber Studiorum c.1807–19
Studies of Hesperie for the 'Liber Studiorum'; a Diagram of Pulleys c.1817-19
(from the Aesacus and Hesperie sketchbook)
From the entry
Four otherwise unrelated sketchbooks are grouped together here owing to their containing manuscript notes relating to Turner’s Liber Studiorum series of landscape engravings, conceived in 1806 and published between 1807 and 1819. They do not relate to particular tours, but they do include a wide variety of sketches including topographical material, as well as miscellaneous notes; the Introductions to the sketchbooks address these aspects. For a comprehensive discussion of the Liber Studiorum, see the present author’s Introduction to the Turner Bequest watercolour studies for it in this catalogue (‘Liber Studiorum c.1806–24’); the significance of the notes contained in these four sketchbooks is discussed in a wider context there, with full references to the standard literature. The pages relevant to the Liber are: Finance: Tate D08321; Turner Bequest CXXII 25; and a separate sheet of calculations: D40900; Turner Bequest CXXII (4) verso Liber Notes (1): ...
Finance sketchbook c.1807–14
D08283–D08359, D40898–D40901, D41431, D41536
Turner Bequest CXXII (1)–(4) and 1–44a
D08283–D08359, D40898–D40901, D41431, D41536
Turner Bequest CXXII (1)–(4) and 1–44a
Four otherwise unrelated sketchbooks are grouped together here owing to their containing manuscript notes relating to Turner’s Liber Studiorum series of landscape engravings, conceived in 1806 and published between 1807 and 1819.1 They do not relate to particular tours, but they do include a wide variety of sketches including topographical material, as well as miscellaneous notes; the Introductions to the sketchbooks address these aspects.
For a comprehensive discussion of the Liber Studiorum, see the present author’s Introduction to the Turner Bequest watercolour studies for it in this catalogue (‘Liber Studiorum c.1806–24’); the significance of the notes contained in these four sketchbooks is discussed in a wider context there, with full references to the standard literature.
The pages relevant to the Liber are:
Liber Notes (1): Tate D40871 (inside back cover)
Liber Notes (2): Tate D12156–D12158, D12160, D12162–D12168, D12170, D12171; Turner Bequest CLIV a 23a, 24, 24a, 25a, 26a, 27, 27a, 28, 28a, 29, 29a, 30a, 31
There are a few Liber-related notes scattered through other sketchbooks, placed within specific tours elsewhere in the present catalogue:
list of mythological subjects in Tabley, No.1, 1808 (Tate D40721; Turner Bequest CIII inside back cover, in David Blayney Brown’s section on ‘Cheshire, Derbyshire, North Wales, Lancashire and Yorkshire 1808’)
financial notes in Hastings, c.1809–14 (Tate D07747–D07749; Turner Bequest CXI 96a, 97, 97a, in Brown’s ‘East Sussex c.1806–20’)
list of later Liber subjects and engraves in Farnley, 1818 (Tate D11998; Turner Bequest CLIII 2a, in David Hill’s section on Walter Fawkes and Farnley Hall, c.1808–24).
See in particular: W[illiam] G[eorge] Rawlinson, Turner’s Liber Studiorum, A Description and a Catalogue, London 1878, and the revised edition, London 1906; Alexander J. Finberg, The History of Turner’s Liber Studiorum with a New Catalogue Raisonné, London 1924; and Gillian Forrester, Turner’s ‘Drawing Book’: The Liber Studiorum, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1996.
Artworks in this grouping
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘Sketchbooks with Notes Relating to the Liber Studiorum c.1807–19’, September 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www