Fifth Plague of Egypt (Liber Studiorum, part III, plate 16)

Fifth Plague of Egypt (Liber Studiorum, part III, plate 16)

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. Here we see his preliminary work on a plate that Charles Turner later completed using mezzotint. The subject comes from "Exodus" 9, a chapter that describes three of the ten plagues involked by Moses to persuade Egypt's pharoah to release the Hebrews from bondage. Curiously, the title mentions the fifth plague, directed against domestic animals, but the print focuses on the seventh, an apocalypic storm of hail and fire. The latter effects have yet to be developed, but the prophet stands at right with arms raised towards the pyramids. Published states of the print include the letter "H" in the upper margin to indicate Turner's category of Historical landscape.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fifth Plague of Egypt (Liber Studiorum, part III, plate 16)Fifth Plague of Egypt (Liber Studiorum, part III, plate 16)Fifth Plague of Egypt (Liber Studiorum, part III, plate 16)Fifth Plague of Egypt (Liber Studiorum, part III, plate 16)Fifth Plague of Egypt (Liber Studiorum, part III, plate 16)

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.