Aesacus and Hesperie, Vide Ovid Metamorphosis, Book XI, part XIII, plate 66 from "Liber Studiorum"
Artist and publisher Joseph Mallord William Turner British
Not on view
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. In a few instances he also developed the tone, here adding mezzotint to evoke a wooded landscape centered on the water nymph Hesperia, watched drying herself on a river bank by Aesacus, a prince of Troy. The Ovidian theme ties the imag to poetry, and Turner weaves arborial layers, slanted rays of sun, and dappled shadows into a kind of magic naturalism. The letter "H" in the upper margin indicates the artist's category of Historical landscape.
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