Calm, part IX, plate 44 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 a fishing fleet waiting for the wind to come up. A laden skiff in the foreground moves slowly away from shore toward sails that form a pleasing pattern of darks and lights. The "M" in the top margin indicates Turner's category of Marine landscape, while general conception and translucent light echo the seventeenth-century Dutch master Aelbert Cuyp.
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