Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey (Liber Studiorum, part VIII, plate 39)

Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey (Liber Studiorum, part VIII, plate 39)

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. This is one of the few instances where he also developed the layers of tone, using aquatint and mezzotint to describe the gloomy crypt of a ruined Norman (Romanesque) abbey in Yorkshire. Light streams from the left to reveal cattle resting around a pillar beneath round-arched vaults, with a pool of water at right. Trees are glimpsed through an open doorframe, and the "A" above the image indicates Turner's category of Architectural landscape.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey (Liber Studiorum, part VIII, plate 39)Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey (Liber Studiorum, part VIII, plate 39)Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey (Liber Studiorum, part VIII, plate 39)Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey (Liber Studiorum, part VIII, plate 39)Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey (Liber Studiorum, part VIII, plate 39)

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.