Interior of a Church, part XIV, plate 70 from "Liber Studiorum"

Interior of a Church, part XIV, plate 70 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. In a few instances he also developed the tone, here using mezzotint to develop interior contrasts of light and shade within a gothic church interior with a preacher standing in a pulpit and worshippers in the pews. Turner added the subject late to the series, mentioning it first in a note made around 1815, and based the composition on a painting he made in the late 1790s (now at Tate Britain). The letter "A" in the upper margin indicates Turner's category of Architectural landscape.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Interior of a Church, part XIV, plate 70 from "Liber Studiorum"Interior of a Church, part XIV, plate 70 from "Liber Studiorum"Interior of a Church, part XIV, plate 70 from "Liber Studiorum"Interior of a Church, part XIV, plate 70 from "Liber Studiorum"Interior of a Church, part XIV, plate 70 from "Liber Studiorum"

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.