Junction of Severn and Wye, part VI, plate 28 from "Liber Studiorum"

Junction of Severn and Wye, part VI, plate 28 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. This is one of the few instances where Turner also developed the tone, using aquatint and mezzotint to describe a low sun illuminating the confluence of two major rivers. Marking the border of England and Wales, the Wye flows past the ancient town of Chepstow to join the Severn, with their estuary emptying into the Bristol Channel. 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

Junction of Severn and Wye, part VI, plate 28 from "Liber Studiorum"Junction of Severn and Wye, part VI, plate 28 from "Liber Studiorum"Junction of Severn and Wye, part VI, plate 28 from "Liber Studiorum"Junction of Severn and Wye, part VI, plate 28 from "Liber Studiorum"Junction of Severn and Wye, part VI, plate 28 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.