Solitude, or The Reading Magdalen (Liber Studiorum, part XI, plate 53)
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 describe the sun sinking between trees near a castle by the sea with a loosely clad woman, possibly Mary Magdalen, reading in the shade. The letters "EP" in the upper margin likely stand for Elevated Pastoral, and were applied by Turner to landscapes within the set that echo the Arcadian sensibility of Claude. Since no title was engraved on the print, scholars later developed two possibilities.
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