Solitude, or The Reading Magdalen (Liber Studiorum, part XI, plate 53)

Joseph Mallord William Turner|William Say|Joseph Mallord William Turner

May 12, 1814 · Etching and mezzotint; first state of seven (Finberg) · Drawings and Prints

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.

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner|William Say|Joseph Mallord William Turner

Date

May 12, 1814

Medium

Etching and mezzotint; first state of seven (Finberg)

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of William Loring Andrews, 1883, transferred from the Library