Drawing of the Clyde (Liber Studiorum, part IV, plate 18)

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 Charles Turner here added mezzotint to describe an evocative rendering of Cora Linn, the highest of the falls of the River Clyde in Lanarkshire, Scotland. By placing nymphs on the river bank, the artist emphasized nature's generative power and elevated the image beyond simple topography. Slanted rays transform the mist into a backdrop that suits the mytical bathers. 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