Scene in the Campagna, part VIII, plate 38, from Liber Studiorum

The sun rises (or sets) within a classicizing landscape with Roman ruins, in which two trees dominate the composition. J.M.W. Turner himself referred to this scene as “Tall Tree,” reaffirming the formal analogies with the massive framing trees in the 17th-century landscape painting of Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, and Nicolas Poussin. In the foreground, a woman kneels by a stone trough in what may be an act of purification. Two shepherds, standing near their flocks, converse. The compositions in Turner’s Liber Studiorum, of which this forms a part, were divided into genres. This was labeled E.P. for “Elevated Pastoral,” a category that underscores its association with renewal and consolation and with a genre of moralizing landscape.