This striking engraving, entitled The Source of the Arveron is one from a collection of engravings of works by JMW Turner entitled Liber Studiorum, ‘Book of Studies’.

The subject of the engraving

Published in 1816, this engraving is based on a sketch that Turner made when he visited the French Alps in 1802. The original sketch can be seen in one of the pages of a sketchbook Turner used during his visit, known as the St Gothard and Mont Blanc Sketchbook. The book forms part of the Tate Collection. See an image of the relevant page here.

The Arve is a river in Haute-Savoie, France, a tributary of the River Rhône. The Arveyron (Turner’s ‘Arveron’ in the title of the engraving), is a tributary of the river Arve, rising in the famous Mer de Glace (a valley glacier located on the northern slopes of the Mont Blanc massif, in the French Alps) just above Chamonix. It flows into the Arve at Chamonix.

In the early 1800s one can imagine that the average holiday-maker would not have been able to travel to the Alps very easily. Not only was the mountainous terrain treacherous but England had been at war with France on and off from 1689 to 1815, which made France inaccessible to the British tourist. So Turner was bringing the British public a strikingly romantic scene which would spark their imagination.

The dramatic nature of the scenery which Turner depicts in the engraving is outlined in a travel guide in 1842:

The Liber Studiorum

Between 1807 and 1819 Turner published seventy-one mezzotints under the collective title Liber Studiorum. This series of landscape subjects was for nearly a century widely regarded as one of the most important achievements of his career. After the 1920s interest in the Liber Studiorum, and in Turner’s other engraved work, declined, and it is only in recent years that this important area of Turner’s artistic practice has once again received attention.

On several occasions during his career, Turner was approached by professional engravers to produce sets of sketches and paintings to be reproduced as engravings for commercial purposes. However, the Liber Studiorum was a commercial venture that Turner initiated himself.

His idea for the Liber Studiorum was to create several groupings of engravings which together would make a visual representation of the different categories of landscape pictures, which would, in turn, act as a showcase of the breadth of subjects he was able to depict. In the creation of these works Turner painted or sketched the original images. For some of them he also sketched the outline of the picture on the engraver’s plate, before passing it to the engraver to complete.

The Liber Studiorum was published in 14 parts, between 1807 and 1819, with each part containing five prints wrapped in coarse blue paper, one from each of five categories of landscape (defined by Turner himself) – Historical, Mountainous, Pastoral, Marine and Architectural. Also included with the prints was a frontispiece to introduce the whole series.

Each batch of five prints was offered for sale via newspapers and magazines and paid for by subscription by members of the public.

The engraving techniques used for the Liber Studiorum include hard gound and soft ground etching, mezzotint and aquatint, all on copper (as steel had not at that time come into general use). All works were produced in a sepia colour.

The engraving we feature in this article is a mezzotint and Turner assigns it the category of ‘M’ for ‘Mountainous’. (You can see the 'M' printed at the top of the print.)

An inscription on the published print states that Turner himself was the engraver of this work.

A note on copper engravings

Hundreds of prints could be taken from a copper printing plate, after which the plate would wear out. Later on in Turner’s career, engravings of his works were made on steel plates, allowing thousands of copies of each print to be made but the prints of the Liber Studiorum were made using copper plates, so are relatively rarer.

The Art of Mezzotint Engraving

Many forms of printing involve engraving lines or grooves into a metal plate, and the image being created from pressing the paper into the grooves which have been filled with ink. However, mezzotint engraving is the opposite, in that it begins with a surface which will print a solid black, with areas removed which will create patches of light. The special characteristic of mezzotint is that the black can be smoothed away to create shading or tonal effects; hence its Italian name ‘mezzotint’, translated as ‘half tint’. If you look closely at the print we are featuring in this article, you can clearly see the soft shading which is typical of the mezzotint style.

The ink is applied to the whole plate and then a cloth is used to wipe back the ink to a minimum. Ink is left in the rough, cross-hatched areas and is rubbed away from the smooth areas which have been burnished. A damp piece of paper is gently laid on top of the plate and they are passed under a heavy roller (a printing press). If using black ink and white paper, the unworked areas of the copper plate come out black and the smoothed areas which do not have any ink on them remain white. The areas which have been partially burnished will come out as ‘shaded’ areas.

Discover more about the mezzotint print making process

Watch a series of three fascinating videos showing the process of mezzotint printing:

A note on the engravings of JMW Turner’s works

Surprisingly, for an artist so renowned for his use of light and colour, JMW was regularly involved commercial projects to make black and white prints of his works. In fact, around 900 separate prints of his drawings, watercolours and oil paintings were published between 1794 and 1851. Turner was often involved in the production of these prints, ensuring that the engravers represented his work to a high standard.

Although prints of Turner’s work were occasionally commissioned to illustrate the work of writers such as John Milton and Sir Walter Scott, the majority of the engravings produced of his work depicted topographical landscapes, which were published in collections. Typically Turner was commissioned by engravers to make sketches of scenes, as part of a commercial venture initiated by the engraver. Such collections included, Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England and Picturesque Views in England and Wales.

Making initial drawing sketches of picturesque scenes, once back in his London studio, he would turn these into watercolours, from which the engravers created their black and white versions. Turner would be paid for individual paintings up front, as would the engravers.

People who subscribed to these collections would receive the engravings, a small group at a time, wrapped in paper. When they had received all the engravings in a collection they would have them bound in a book cover. It often took several years for the subscribers to receive a full set.

Acknowledgements

Google books

'How to Identify Prints' by Banber Gascoigne, Thames & Hudson, Second edition, 2004

Professor Sam Smiles

Tate - https://www.tate.org.uk/

'Turner and the Art of Engraving', by Sue Guy and Sam Smiles, University of Exeter, 2008

'Turner's 'Drawing Book' The Liber Studiorum' by Gaillian Forrester, Tate Publishing, 1996

Art Werger - https://artwerger.com/