Isis, part XIV, plate 68 from "Liber Studiorum"

Joseph Mallord William Turner

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Turner distilled his ideas about landscape In "Liber Studiorum" (Latin for Book of Studies), a series of seventy prints plus a frontispiece published between 1807 and 1819. To establish the compositions, he made brown watercolor drawings, then etched outlines onto copper plates. Professional engravers usually developed the tone under Turner's direction, and Say here added mezzotint to describe a subject based on a painting of 1804-5 bought by the Earl of Egremont for Petworth House, traditionally titled "The Thames at Weymouth." In fact, the image does not represent a specific place, but combines elements, some sketched by Turner around Isleworth, west of London. A classical mood is established by the title, which may refer to an old name for the headwaters of the Thames, by the columned building at the water's edge, and peacock perched on a piece of half-buried entablature in the foreground. The letters "EP" in the upper margin likely stand for Elevated Pastoral and were applied by Turner to landscapes within the set that echo the Arcadian sensibility of Claude.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art