The Tenth Plague of Egypt, part XII, plate 61 from "Liber Studiorum"
Designed and etched by Joseph Mallord William Turner British
Engraver William Say British
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. Professional engravers usually developed the tone under Turner's direction, and Say here added mezzotint to detail a subject from Exodus 11, where the first born of the Egyptians perish in a climactic plague that convinces the Pharoah to release the Hebrews from bondage. Demonstrating Turner's close study of Poussin, the print derives from a painting exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1802. As lightning flashes from dark clouds, distressed womenmourn a dead child before a landscape filled by temples and towers clustered around a pyramid, with the letter "H" in the upper margin indicating Turner's category of Historical landscape.
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