Bonneville, Savoy, part XIII, plate 64 from "Liber Studiorum"

Bonneville, Savoy, part XIII, plate 64 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 and, usually etched the design onto the printing plate. Here, unusually, Dawe is believed to have undertaken the preliminary etched stage, then turned the plate over to Turner who added the mezzotint tone. The image centers on a stretch of river in a southeastern region of France bordering Switzerland, with the water receding towards an arched bride shadowed by mountains near a medieval town. The artist debated whether to place the design in his EP (Epic Pastoral) or Mountainous category, but eventually decided on the latter, as indicated by the letter "M" in the upper margin.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.