The Mildmay Sea-Piece, part ViII, plate 40 from "Liber Studiorum"
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. Professional engravers usually developed the tone under Turner's direction, and Annis and Easling here added mezzotint to describe a sun setting over the sea, with barrels piled on the shore near a beached fishing boat. As two sailboats move past, a woman holds a child near an anchor, as a boy runs across the sand. The letter "M" in the top margin indicates Turner's category of Marine landscape.