
Windmill and Lock, part VI, plate 27 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. In this case he probably etched the image directly onto the copper plate without a preliminary drawing, deriving it from his 1810 oil "Grand Junction Canal at Southall Mill." The conception echoes a famous painting then attributed to Rembrandt ("The Mill", now at the National Gallery, Washington), but mostly celebrates the progress of British commerce. Directed by Turner, the professional engraver Say added mezzotint to detail the windmill, shown at sunset above men who work the gates of a lock near a white horse. The letter "P" above the image indicates Turner's category of Pastoral landscape.
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.