Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey, part ViII, plate 39 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. This is one of the few instances where Turner also developed the tone, here using aquatint and mezzotint to describe the gloomy crypt of a ruined Norman (Romanesque) abbey in Yorkshire. Light streams from the left to reveal cattle resting by a pillar beneath round-arched vaults, with a pool of water at right. Trees are glimpsed through an open doorframe, and the "A" above the image indicates Turner's category of Architectural landscape.
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