Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey (Liber Studiorum, part VIII, plate 39)

Artist and publisher Designed, etched and published by Joseph Mallord William Turner British

February 11, 1812

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 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)
Series/Portfolio: Liber Studiorum, part VIII
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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Seated Giant, Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) Spanish, Burnished aquatint, scaper, roulette, lavis (along the top of the landscape and within the landscape) — Seated Giant
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The Lake of Zug, Joseph Mallord William Turner British, Watercolor and bodycolor (gouache) with reductive techniques over graphite — The Lake of Zug
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1843

Concertina, Charles Wheatstone British, Rosewood, nickel-silver, leather, paper, ivory, tortoiseshell; case of mahogany, British — Concertina
Charles Wheatstone
1831–37

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