Entrance of Calais Harbour, part XI, plate 55 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. No preliminary drawing for this print is known, and the artist probably etched the image directly onto the plate from his related oil, "Fishing Boats entering Calais Harbor" (Frick Collection, New York). This is one of the few instances where Turner also developed the tone, using aquatint and mezzotint–normally a professional engraver executed this stage. We see fishing boats in the foreground negotiating a stiff breeze and high waves to approach the fortified entrance of a French harbor, with the city's skyline visible at left. The "M" in the top margin indicates Turner's category of Marine 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.