Christ and the Woman of Samaria, part XIV, plate 71 from "Liber Studiorum"

Christ and the Woman of Samaria, part XIV, plate 71 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 Reynolds here added mezzotint to describe a scene from the Gospel of John 4:4-26, where Jesus encounters a Samitarian woman by a well. After asking for a drink, he reveals that his teachings offers sustenance of a different type. Approaching figures on the road represent the disciples returning from town with food, while the classical setting derives from a work by Poussin, and the letter "H" in the upper margin places the work within Turner's category of Historical landscape.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Christ and the Woman of Samaria, part XIV, plate 71 from "Liber Studiorum"Christ and the Woman of Samaria, part XIV, plate 71 from "Liber Studiorum"Christ and the Woman of Samaria, part XIV, plate 71 from "Liber Studiorum"Christ and the Woman of Samaria, part XIV, plate 71 from "Liber Studiorum"Christ and the Woman of Samaria, part XIV, plate 71 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.