Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey (Liber Studiorum, part VIII, plate 39)
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 he also developed the layers of tone, 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 around 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.
Artwork Details
- Title: Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey (Liber Studiorum, part VIII, plate 39)
- Artist and publisher: Designed, etched and published by Joseph Mallord William Turner (British, London 1775–1851 London)
- Date: February 11, 1812
- Medium: Etching, aquatint and mezzotint; second state of four
- Dimensions: plate: 8 1/4 x 11 1/2 in. (21 x 29.1 cm)
- Classification: Prints
- Credit Line: Gift of William Loring Andrews, 1883, transferred from the Library
- Object Number: 83.1.74
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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