11 minute read
PAINTER OF THE SEA
The Painter of the Sea
JWM Turner is not only one of our greatest painters, but is the creator of some of our best-loved seascapes.
The famous portrait of J M W Turner as a young man. Image: Janusz Pienkowski / Shutterstock
The South Coast and the Solent of the 1820s were very different places to today. The near constant threat of an attack by the French had seen the area heavily militarised and defended, but with the overwhelming victory at Trafalgar just two decades earlier and then the fi nal and decisive vanquishing of Napoleon at Waterloo, at long last the area started to be the focal point for more peaceful activities, such as the growing pastime of yachting.
This was still very much an elite sport, with the criteria for membership at the yacht club at Cowes being for a gentleman owning a vessel of more than 10 tons. Then, in 1820, the Prince Regent became King George IV, with his patronage allowing the elevated name change to ‘Royal Yacht Club’ (it became the Squadron in 1833) and in 1826, with organised yacht racing now established, the club would be laying down the rules that we still use today, such as starboard tack holding right of way over port tack.
Art of sailing With the fl eet full of both royalty and the leading personages of the day, the summer races were a draw for huge crowds, with reports on events appearing in the growing number of newspapers that were feeding the near insatiable demand for popular information. However, the one thing that was missing was any form of pictorial representation of the action.
There were, of course, pictures of boats afl oat, with the Dutch being the masters of this form of painting. The paintings were invariably quite stylised, dark and brooding, under heavy skies, with commercial craft or warships heeling before a stiff breeze that had kicked up an impossibly short sea state.
They might well be dramatic and full of artistic signifi cance, but as a record of sailing, they did little to inform the public of what it was really like. The other problem was that even if a more realistic painting had been made, this was before the time of public galleries. Instead, anything that today would be considered as ‘fi ne art’ would be in the hands of the rich patrons who commissioned the paintings for their luxurious houses.
There was almost nothing at this point in the way of art for the growing population of working people, but this was a population that was being liberated by easier travel and better education. The time was ripe for someone to step into the growing void and become not only a painter for the people, but one who had a lifelong love of the water.
Early promise Joseph Mallord William Turner - JMW Turner - was born in London’s Covent Garden in 1775 to parents who were just about middle class, for his father was a barber and wig maker whilst his mother came from a family of butchers.
From an early age the young Turner showed artistic promise, with pictures and drawings sold from his father’s shop. With some pride, the elder Turner proudly proclaimed that “my son is going to be a painter”. Such were his skills that by the age of 14 Turner was enrolled into the Royal Academy where, despite an interest in architecture, he was advised to focus on his painting.
Turner also enjoyed travel, though he
Often referred to as the nation’s favourite painting, Turner used a good deal of artistic licence when he painted the old warhorse from Trafalgar being towed to the breakers yard by a steam tug. This is far more than just a stunning painting, but it is also allegorical for the changes that were sweeping through the country at the time. Image: National Gallery
was rarely without his sketch books, as his questing eye took in all the sights of weather, light and everyday activity. As well as looking to it for inspiration, Turner loved the water, probably after he had been sent to stay with various relatives at Margate and on the Thames as his mother battled increasingly serious bouts of mental ill health.
Turner’s big breakthrough came in 1796 when, as a mere 21-year-old, his fi rst major work in oils was displayed at the Royal Academy. The work, titled ‘Fishermen at Sea’ is a wonderful study of two fi shing boats working in the western Solent on a moonlit night, with the Needles as a backdrop. Even allowing for artistic licence, from the angle of the background the scene would be set somewhere between Hurst Castle and the Shingles sand bank, so the tumultuous sea state is perfectly realistic in this instance. Not without criticism This one painting did much to help cement his reputation, not only as an artist of note, but as a man who could match the Dutch masters in the depiction of a sea scene. Even so, Turner’s work was not without its critics, a situation that was not helped by his use of paints that had a relatively short life once on the canvas.
Comments that the colours in his
Rotterdam Ferry-Boat, by JWM William Turner, 1833. Image: Everett Collection / Shutterstock
paintings faded too quickly fell on deaf ears with the artist, as he was more concerned with how they looked on the brush, rather than how much they remained into the future.
There would be further controversy over his one Royal Commission, after King George IV tasked Turner with creating a huge picture (12ft x 8ft 6in) for the state reception room in St. James Palace. The subject was the Battle of Trafalgar, and Turner fi lled the canvas with all the action, the desperation and despair of that fateful day. Yet, at the same time, rather than choosing a moment in time, he ignored the chronology and instead created an image that brought together a number of the key events.
Nelson does not even fi gure in the painting, although his famous signal to the fl eet is still fl ying on the main mast on Victory. Rather than a realistic depiction of an event in the battle, Turner’s painting is far more of an allegory about the action and the part it had come to play in the increasingly nationalist psyche of the time.
Despite the undoubted power of the painting, at the time it attracted a good deal of criticism for not only failing to portray an actual event, but for its inclusion of the dead and the dying, an inclusion that Turner had made to show that the fi nal victory had come at a very high cost in terms of human life.
Despite the negative comments, Turner was now rubbing shoulders with the great names of the time, which in 1827 saw him visiting the Solent. In the days before the construction of the Military Hospital at Netley, the most conspicuous building on Southampton Water was Netley Castle, with records showing that he went ashore there, before moving a short distance inland to sketch at the remains of Netley Abbey.
Love of seascapes From there he continued on to Cowes, where he was a guest at East Cowes Castle, and it was during this visit that Turner made some 70 sketches and pencil drawings of the action taking place in the Royal Yacht Club regatta. Two of these would result in fi nished oil paintings, showing scenes that we could recognise today. One is of the fl eet preparing to go afl oat on the River Medina, the other shows the regatta fl eet beating to windward in a breeze.
Although his paintings covered a huge range of subjects, Turner would increase his reputation for seascapes as he travelled around our coasts, from Wales and the far South West to the North East of England, producing paintings that were both informative and artistic.
Again, some of his work would attract scorn from art critics, such as Turner’s use of golden colours in the amazingly coloured skies that featured in his paintings. Once again though, Turner could point to art mimicking life, for after the volcano on Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted, the ash in the sky resulted in spectacular sunsets.
From the detail and perspectives used in his paintings, Turner must have spent a fair time afl oat making his preliminary sketches, but we know he would have been happy with this as one of his pleasures, when not working, was sailing his boat on the Thames.
There is also the dramatic story of how Turner had himself lashed to the mast of a vessel, so that he could see the effects of a stormy sea fi rst hand, but sadly there is little in the way of evidence that this was anything other than a mix of bravado or self-promotion from the artist.
Eccentric painter Events such as this could also have been part of a growing trend in Turner’s work that many thought to be signs of his descent into eccentricity. Turner had been focusing on light, shade and movement and wanted to create almost a new height Turner, who had never married, started to cohabit with a widow in Chelsea. His private life was something of an open scandal, as it is believed that he had already fathered two daughters with another widow, but now, seeking a peaceful separation from the public life he had created, he lived a second and more reclusive life as ‘Admiral Booth’.
It was in the modest house of Mrs Booth that he would live and ultimately die in 1851, possibly of cholera. A major and very public scandal was avoided when his body was recovered from the Booth house, so that it could lay in state at the Royal Academy before he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Incredible legacy A measure of the breadth of Turner’s prolifi c output can be seen in that after his death, he left more than 550 major oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours and in excess of 30,000 sketches and pencilled drawings. In his Will he had asked that his paintings be shown together, hoping that room be made for his work in the National Gallery in London, which had opened in 1824. Despite Turner’s express wishes, his work has become fragmented.
Turner did leave us one major legacy, which is not just on display in the National Gallery, but in survey after survey comes top as the UK’s favourite painting. That is, of course, the wonderful study of The Fighting Temeraire, the old warship being towed by a steam tug to the breakers yard.
HMS Temeraire had a special place in the hearts of the British people, for when Nelson’s Victory looked as if she might have been overwhelmed by the French, it was Temeraire that sailed in and added her 98-gun broadsides to the action. Built from the wood of ‘5,000 English oak trees’, the Temeraire would have represented to Turner everything that was happening in Victorian Britain.
A state-of-the-art ship in 1805, 33 years later she was obsolete and on her way to Rotherhithe to be scrapped. No matter that Turner exercised considerable artistic licence in this iconic painting, it is a great record of not just our maritime heritage, but our love of Turner as the man who painted the sea.
It is fi tting that The Fighting Temeraire ends this extended diary entry as it will be re-appearing very soon in another All at Sea special, the Power, but not the glory, which looks at the development of the tug and the role they have played afl oat, past, present and future.
Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight, by JWM Turner, 1835. Image: Everett Collection / Shutterstock
Cowes Regatta - Yachting at Cowes was just getting into its stride when Turner came and stayed on the Isle of Wight. Although he did much of his painting ashore, he also spent a lot of time out afl oat making sketches that capture the energy and action at the start of a yacht race. With grateful thanks to the Indianapolis Museum of Art
genre of painting, where the traditional two-dimensional image, frozen in time, suddenly becomes a swirling blend of colour that owed little to classical representation, but instead conveyed a sense of motion and action.
Again, the critics of the day questioned these works, but in France the painters who would go on to launch the Impressionist movement, such as Claude Monet, were keen followers of his work.
As Turner’s style of painting developed further, even in his favoured seascapes, we can see today that his work represents some of the earliest examples of abstract art.
Back home around London, Turner’s behaviour was seen as becoming ever more eccentric. Despite his wealth and his ability to move around in high society, he retained his Cockney accent and would often greet people with hands that were grimed with oil paint.
Nor was it just in his paintings that Turner would defy convention, for with the values of Victorian morality at their
