|
November 9, 2021: The Fort Worth Botanic Garden |
|
September 26, 2021: A Visit to the Dallas Arboretum |
|
Return to the Index for 2021 |
Called "a roaring, wondrous whirlpool of a show" (The Guardian), "Turner’s Modern World" presents the astonishing paintings of J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), one of Britain’s greatest artists. Prudence and Nancy have come up from San Antonio to see Soon Warren, one of the gallery artists, who lives in west Fort Worth. They came up on Monday, November 8th, and the five of us (Prudence, Nancy, Fred, Soon, and I) met up again on Tuesday to go to the exhibit.
Meeting the Girls in Fort Worth
We came over to Fort Worth on Monday evening to meet Prudence and Nancy at the Kimpton-Harper Hotel in downtown Fort Worth for some wine and supper.
|
Add that to the fact that the restaurants she favors are all close by (the Capital Grille is right across 7th Street from the Hotel, and the Cheesecake Factory and Ruth's Chris are just blocks away) and the hotel is a good choice for her and Nancy.
The hotel front desk and bar are on the 24th floor of the old building, so that's where we usually meet them- to take advantage of the wine that is served at 6PM each evening. If memory serves, we had dinner at the Italian restaurant right in the hotel. We had a nice dinner with the girls and we returned to Fort Worth again the next day so we could meet up again with them and Soon to head over to the Kimbell Museum for the exhibit.
The Kimbell Art Museum
We have been to the Kimbell so many times that I am sure you have seen at least one page devoted to a visit we made there- most of them to special exhibits such as the one today.
|
The original building was designed by architect Louis I. Kahn and is widely recognized as one of the most significant works of architecture of recent times. It is especially noted for the wash of silvery natural light across its vaulted gallery ceilings.
The Kimbell is one of four museums and other attractions in Fort Worth's "cultural district". Nearby are the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and the Fort Worth Science Museum.
Kay Kimbell was a wealthy Fort Worth businessman who built an empire of over 70 companies in a variety of industries. He married Velma Fuller, who kindled his interest in art collecting by taking him to an art show in Fort Worth in 1931, where he bought a British painting. They set up the Kimbell Art Foundation in 1935 to establish an art institute, and by the time of his death in 1964, the couple had amassed what was considered to be the best selection of old masters in the Southwest. Kay left much of his estate to the Kimbell Art Foundation, and Velma bequeathed her share of the estate to the foundation as well, with the key directive to "build a museum of the first class."
|
On other pages, I have talked a bit about the Kimbell's permanent collection. Founding Director Brown set the tone for the collection by including this directive in his Policy Statement: "The goal shall be definitive excellence, not size of collection." Accordingly, the museum's collection today consists of only about 350 works of art, but they are of notably high quality. The museum owns only a few pieces created after the mid-20th century (believing that era to be the province of its neighbor, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth) and no American art (believing that to be the province of its other neighbor, the Amon Carter Museum).
|
In April 2007, the museum announced that Kahn associate Renzo Piano (The Art Institute of Chicago, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, the Pompidou Centre in Paris) had been chosen to design the new building. The 85,000 square foot structure would complement the original building but not mimic it. Unlike the original, its lines would be rectilinear, not curvilinear. Like the original, however, it would have three bays with the middle bay stepped back from the other two. The new Renzo Piano Pavilion was officially opened to the public on November 27, 2013.
Prudence still has a membership to the Kimbell, so that took care of our admission to the exhibit, but Fred and I got audioguides for everyone; we have found these to be a good investment over the years. Then we took some pictures of our group outside the exhibit entrance:
|
|
|
I happened to discover that two of the pictures we took outside the exhibit were almost identical- save for one tiny difference. Take a look at the image at left. Click on the little "Change" button in the lower right to see the second picture. Click again to return to the first. |
A Walk Through "Turner's Modern World"
Now for the main reason for this album page- a walk through the exhibit of the artwork of J.M.W. Turner- "Turner's Modern World".
|
Born in the late 18th century, Turner witnessed spectacular technological innovations and the industrialization of modern life. As the advances of industry and commerce brought Britain to world power, Turner immortalized these dizzying changes in vivid and dramatic compositions, with skillful brushwork that gave the impression of being wild and uncontrolled. In his last years, he surpassed any other artist by melding his contemporary subjects with a highly innovative style- an accomplishment that established him as one of the founders of modern art.
Despite his beginnings as a topographical watercolorist and landscape painter who was deeply enthralled by the history and art of the past, Turner proceeded to create a dynamic, inspired and comprehensive testament to his own era. He was not only a witness to modernity, but an interpreter and champion for his generation.
I photographed my way through the exhibit, listening to the audio guide, learning about and looking at each artwork, and then photographing it and its explanatory plaque. The exhibit was divided into some loose groups of items, and by and large the audio tour took me though one group at a time. There was not an audio entry for each item, but about fifteen of them had audio entries.
So how best to take you through the exhibit? I think the best way is to simply show you a picture of each piece, let you read the information from it's accompanying plaque, and, if the artwork was a "stop" on the audioguide tour, let you listen to what was said. For the information from the posted plaques, I have just OCRed the plaque and entered the information from it beside each artwork.
 |
We will travel through the exhibit seriatim, from the opening description of the collection through the various groupings of the items in it.
TURNER'S MODERN WORLD
| What does it mean to be a modern artist? This exhibition presents J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) as an
artist who embraced his times, an outstanding painter of contemporary life. Joseph Mallord William
Turner, known as William during his lifetime, was born to a lower-middle-class family in London. He
lived through a tumultuous period of global change- witnessing revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars, the
violent expansion of Britain's empires, and the abolition of slavery in British colonies. He saw his country
quickly changed by industry, as canals were dug, machines entered the workplace, and steam engines
transformed travel at sea and on land. These powerful forces are seen throughout his work, from early
drawings of forges and kilns in the 1790s to paintings of steamships in the 1840s. Turner was unusual in depicting such a wide range of modern subjects. His themes were not limited to conflict and technology, as he also addressed social and political causes. He even found political meaning in unlikely topics, such as the ancient city of Venice- a once-great naval empire in decay. Looking upon a changing world, Turner transformed his painting practice, working in a bold new manner- a modern manner- that resulted in many of his most original works. As time passed, he employed increasingly luminous color and innovative brushwork, anticipating by decades the loose strokes of the Impressionists in the 1870s and the gestural abstract painting of the twentieth century. Turner's radical approach to paint and composition in his mature work shows the artist paying tribute to the transformed world of modern experience. Turner had a knack for marketing, and, during his lifetime, buyers eagerly acquired his finished oils and watercolors. Despite this, large portions of his oeuvre went unsold. He bequeathed nearly three hundred oil paintings and thousands of works on paper to the British nation. Although a dozen of these oils today reside in London’s National Gallery, the remainder of the bequest is held at Tate Britain, which organized this exhibition and lent the majority of works. Of the paintings that Turner did sell, many eventually came to America, including the Kimbell Art Museum's Glaucus and Scylla, on view at the end of the exhibition. |
Here is the first artwork:
|
|
Traditionally, donkeys or horses drove a rotating winch to life material up a mine shaft. By the time Turner painted this, animals were being superseded by steam-driven winding gear. While the landscape is by Turner, the donkeys were painted by his contemporary Sawrey Gilpin, an animal painter who often collaborated with other artists. He supported Turner's first attempt to be elected as Associate of the Royal Academy in 1798. This watercolor was left unfinished.
EARLY WORKS: SIGNS OF THE TIME
| The fourteen-year-old Turner began studying at London's Royal Academy in 1789, the year the French Revolution began. The traditional approach of the Academy contributed little to the development of his modern outlook. Students drew from antique sculpture and read Greek and Roman history; contemporary subjects were discouraged. After Revolutionary France declared war on Britain in 1793, the British government suppressed political activism, fearful of an uprising at home. While many artists were sympathetic to events in France, few depicted topical or political themes. Glimpses of modern life appeared in the young Turner’s watercolors of picturesque landscapes and historic buildings. First tentatively, then more confidently, he introduced workaday industrial features like mills and foundries, and he used paintings of historical events to make subtle comments on current affairs. During summer tours around Britain and travels on the Continent, Turner sketched urban, industrial, and coastal scenes, bringing contemporary society into sharper focus. These drawings and watercolors were more than documentary reporting. He recorded machinery, technology, and working people, but the awe-inspiring spectacle of landscapes and industries- and their capacity to evoke "sublime" emotions- also captured his imagination. |
|
The title of this painting made subtle reference to the effects of war on the lives of British civilians. Here, a blacksmith argues with a customer over the price of his services. Some trades had been forced to increase their prices after 1806, when a duty on crude iron was introduced to pay government war debts. Turner used this long explanatory title when he first exhibited the painting in 1807. You'll find similarly descriptive examples throughout the exhibition.
|
Turner's mastery of marine painting rests in his ability to capture the movement and energy of water. Here, white-capped waves undulate across the sea's surface. At right, fishermen in a small boat watch as a larger vessel veers uncomfortably close. Turner painted this from the Nore anchorage, a bustling naval and merchant center. In the distance, the coastal town of Sheerness can be glimpsed.
HOME FRONT
| Britain was at war for most of the first half of Turner's life, from the French Revolutionary Wars in the 1790s to the 1812 combat with the United States and the Napoleonic Wars that continued until 1815. Although he himself never fought, Turner was keenly aware of the impact that military conflicts had on his country. Sometimes he painted explicit views of soldiers or sailors, but he also offered subtle reflections on the impact of war on everyday people. His own motivations are not always clear. Some works hint at the vast inequalities in British society and his sympathy for the poor, while others celebrate prosperity and openly court royal patronage. From his early years, Turner was preoccupied with water as an element, fascinated by the ability of bodies of water to join and divide people and places. His keen interest in the waterways connecting Britain is evident in many of his oils and watercolors. His images, though, are sometimes enigmatic. A painting of a canal, for instance, could show his enthusiasm for commercial and engineering progress or his concern for the gradual alteration of the rural landscape. |
|
|
In 1822, King George IV traveled to Edinburgh, making him the first British monarch to visit Scotland in almost two hundred years. Turner was one of several artists present to record the occasion. He filled sketchbooks with drawings with the intention of making a series of large paintings. The project was abandoned, however, with only four paintings started, all left unfinished- an unsuccessful attempt at royal patronage. A mahogany panel like the one used here was an expensive and unusual support for paintings, though Turner employed panels throughout his career.
|
Turner attended a magnificent banquet that marked an important moment in the political relationship between Scotland and England: the first state visit of a reigning British monarch to Scotland in nearly two centuries. This unfinished painting demonstrates Turner's commitment to recording the great events of his time- in this case as an eyewitness. The grandeur of the hall and the seemingly endless banquet table, dissolving into mist, parallel his treatments of weather-related events.
|
Brighton's Chain Pier was only five years old when Turner made this picture. Brighton, a port and popular seaside resort, is on the coast directly south of London; packet boats left from the pier to take passengers across the English Channel to Dieppe, in France. Here, a paddle steamer is almost obscured by a traditional sail vessel, while the modern structure of the pier is carefully assimilated into an atmospheric marine landscape. This oil sketch was commissioned by one of Turner's most important patrons, the 3rd Earl of Egremont, who helped finance the pier.
|
The canal was intended to join an inland navigation system linking London and the south coast. It opened in 1822 but was little used, as railways soon took over its route. Turner's sweeping view of the placid canal seems both to lament the site as a commercial failure and to delight in the tranquil new landscape that came to pass.
|
With a population of more than one million, London was the largest, busiest city in the world at the time Turner painted this. He exhibited it in 1809, accompanied by his own poetry, which described a hecctic, oppressive city- a "world of care" beneath a "murky veil" of cloud, relieved only by the "gleams of hope" offered by its architecture. Greenwhich Hospital is framed by surrounding trees, while the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral towers above the distant city.
|
In fron tof All Saint's Church, the Whig Member of Parliament Lord Althorp- who was closely involved with reforming the voting system and extending suffrage through the REform Act in 1832- is being carried through the streets after winning his seat. One of the banners reads "The Purity of Elections and Triumph of Law." At bottom left, a man sits on a balcony, wearing an old-fashioned tricorne hat, his gouty foot on a stool. Marianne, the personification of France, taps this reactionary emblem on his shoulder. Revolt in France in 1830 had shown the danger of resisting reform and frustrating the will of the people.
|
This watercolor was for a series of engravings, Picturesque Views of England and Wales, published between 1827 and 1838. This lively scene shows the annual fair held at St. Catherine's Hill each October. A large beer tent at lower left bears the name of a local inn, the Red Lion, and townsfolk partake in festivities, such as a "backsword" fight between two men in the center of the crowd.
|
Turner collaborated with engravers George and William Cooke to turn his topographical watercolors into illustrations for the publication Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England. This example shows fishing on the Cornwall shore. The market had recently recovered from Napoleon's Continental Blockade of Cornish fishermen. Pilchards, a kind of herring, were exported in peacetime; during th eblockade, they were sold from the beach as cheap fertilizer.
|
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Kent harbor town of Hythe was visibly transformed, not only by an influx of soldiers stationed at new barracks, but also with a new military canal- both o fwhich can be seen in the valley below. The canal was constructed to defend nearby Romney Marsh from French invasion. The detailed soldiers in the foreground give way to a looser, more evocative view typical of Turner's landscapes at the time.
|
Turner visited Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, in 1801 and exhibited this watercolor at London's Royal Academy in 1804. It shows a city in transition, with the historic Old Town linked by the North Bridge (built 1763-72) to the New Town, under construction when Turner visited.
|
Turner witnessed the growth and eventual decline of canal building in England. Kirkstall Lock, on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, was situate on the outskirts of Leeds, a center for textile manufacturing. Here, Turner invites us to think about the passage of time and how a landscape might change. In the distance, at right, the medieval ruins of Kirkstall Abbey form a tranquil background to the bustle of the new canal, the road, and construction workers in the foreground.
|
BOTTOM LEFT
More Park, near Watford, on the River Colne
c. 1823 (Gouache and watercolor and paper)
Tate. Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest, 1956
Canals linking London with commercial centers to the north and west were begun in 1973 and expanded in the following decades. At center, Turner's focus on the infrastructure of the lock, combined with the windmill silhouetted against the sky, highlights the harnessing of nature for productive ends. At right, he depicts a canal lock near More Park, the former site of a sixteenth-century palace, where a newer mansion in the Palladian style was built. Noted landscape architect "Capability" Brown redesigned the gardens and grounds in the mid-eighteenth century. Turner's composition seamlessly joins picturesque artificial landscapes and the commercial canal.
|
This panoramic viewpoint from Greenwich looks upon the river Thames, crammed with boats, many of them steam powered. A figure on the hillside uses a telescope to observe powerful steamships speeding past, while a woman holds up various historical maps of London, referencing the rapidly changing landscape of the city. The Naval Hospital looms in the middle ground at right, with the dense skyline of London in the distance. An oil showing the hospital is exhibited nearby.
|
|
This watercolor shows the massive stronghold of Seringapatam after its conquest by the East India Company (seen in a work to the right) and the spot by the walls where ruler Tipu Sultan was killed. As a soldier reclines in the foreground, there is no sign of the fighting or looting by British troops.
|
Turner's war imagery includes placces he never visited himself. Seringapatam, in southern India, became important in the proxy wars between Britain and France. A longstanding conflict between its ruler Tipu Sultan, an ally of Napoleon, and Britain's East India Company came to a head in 1799, when the Company attacked the city and killed tipu. Here, the Company's army advances across the River Kaveri towards Tipu's island fortress. Turner's depiction of the siege was based on drawings by British soldiers and may have been intended for engraving.
|
Turner depicts the medieval fortress Castel Sant'Elmo on its hill to the left, with Naples spread out below. The arches of the Ponti Rossi aqueduct are visible beyond the trees to the right. The soldiers belong to the Carabinieri Reale, whih formed in the aftermath of the failed uprising in Naples on May 14-15, 1848. One of them points to the Castel Sant'Elmo. Its guns had signaled the counterrevolutionary forces to begin their successful recapture of the city. The image portrays the return of peace following hostilities.
|
Lord Byron wrote in "Don Juan" about the temple of Poseidon, where he had "dream'd that Greece might yet be free" from Ottoman domination. The poem makes reference to the ancient Greeks' destruction of the Persian fleet at Salamis. Here, Turner's image links their victory over Persia in 480 BC with contemporary Greece, which successfully gained independence from Ottoman rule in 1830. He includes a distant ship foundering in the waves, watched by wolves or jackals standing in front of a relief depicting Triton, Poseidon's son. The sinking ship may also allude to the 1827 Battle of Navarino, when the Ottoman fleet was defeated by allied forces from Britain, France, and Russia.
|
Turner was in high demand among contemporary poets and writers to provide illustrations for their publications. This vignette was made for Samuel Rogers's Italy, the poet's longest work. Previously published with little fanfare, Rogers's 1830 edition became a huge success with the addition of engravings after Turner's watercolors. Imagining a stunning Alpine backdrop, the artist depicts the French army traversing the Great St. Bernard Pass in 1800. The figure of Napoleon, on a white horse, is based on a famous equestrian portrait of the emperor painted by Jacques-Louis David.
|
The Old Swiss Confederacy (a precursor to modern-day Switzerland) was overrun during the Napoleonic Wars, eventually leading to civil war in 1802-3. Re-established as the Swiss Confederation, the country became a client state under the French Empire. When Turner visited the region in 1802, the country ws unsettled, with soldiers everywhere. The tense atmosphere matched its unstable mountain geology and climate. In this work, a soldier watches as lightning plays over Lake Thun.
|
BOTTOM LEFT
Ehrenbreitstein
c. 1832 (Watercolor on paper)
Bury Art Museum, Greater Manchester, UK
The spectacularly sited fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, above the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel rivers in Koblenz, Germany, was one of Turner's favorite places. He first saw it in 1817 and returned several times. In 1799, French troops occupied the city; they blew up the fortress two years later. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Rhineland became part of Prussia. A little more than a decade apart, Turner depicts the fortress first in ruins and then as it was rebuilt and enlarged by the Prussians. In the years that followed, Ehrenbreitstein became a symbol of conquest and resistance.
|
|
Turner exhibited this watercolor at the Royal Academy in 1815 as a depiction of war and peace. Like all of Europe, Turner thought the hostilities had concluded, but Napoleon returned from exile and was finally defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in June, during the run of the Academy exhibition. Set against a dramatic view of the Alps, this watercolor imagines a battle during the French invasion of northern Italy in 1796. Below the fighting on the hillside, Turner shows a man and a woman tending a dead or dying soldier.
|
Here, Turner comments upon current campaigns by depicting ancient history. Hannibal, ruler of Carthage, crossed the Alps in 218 BC to invade Rome from the north- as the Emperor Napoleon would do in 1800. In this sweeping view, Hannibal is a tiny figure atop an elephant. The work focuses on the whirling blizzard that overwhelms diminutive soldiers and mountain-dwellers who attack the troops. Shown to the public in 1812, Turner's picture became prophetic later that year, when the harsh Russian winter forced Napoleon to retreat from Moscow.
WAR AND PEACE
| Political upheaval and international conflict formed the backdrop to
much of Turner's youth and middle age. The French Revolution erupted
in 1789, alarming the British government and public. In 1793, France's new
republican government declared war on Britain. The brilliant young French
general Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Italy in 1797 and invaded Egypt
the next year before turning his sights on conquering Continental Europe
and attacking Britain. Turner’s commentaries on war reached large audiences starting in 1799, when he first exhibited a battle scene at London's Royal Academy. His paintings became a regular presence in these exhibitions, where pictures covered the walls, competing for the viewer's attention. While his earlier works glorify war, Turner's later paintings emphasize a compassion for suffering and death among all sides and ranks. Turner took pains to record modern military history. He researched his battle pictures by interviewing survivors, by consulting the works of military artists who had witnessed the fighting, and even, in some cases, by visiting the battlefields himself. Turner's Battle of Trafalgar celebrated Britain's triumph over the French navy, but by the time he painted the more somber Field of Waterloo in 1818, three years after the pivotal defeat of Napoleon, the artist’s political stance seems to have changed. |
|
Napoleon's plan to use Denmark's navy to block the Baltic Sea and strangle British shipping was foiled in 1807 when British forces attacked and seized the Danish fleet. Turner first exhibited this painting in 1808 with the title Two Captured Danish Ships Entering Portsmouth Harbor. If it was intended as a patriotic celebration, it was soon overtaken by political backlash. Denmark was officially neutral, and the British action had been seen as dangerously provocative. When Turner exhibited the picture again in 1809, he changed the title to Boat's Crew Recovering an Anchor.
|
Here, Turner collapses time. Nelson, mortally wounded by a shot fired from the French mast to the right, falls on the deck of the Victory at center- at the very moment that French commanders concede defeat by laying down the French flag at lower left. The picture was praised as the "first British epic," combining the death of a "hero" with "the whole of a great naval victory." The compressed backdrop of ships, sails, and cannon smoke heightens the onfusion and drama of battle, with the density making it appear as though the scene took place on land.
|
Turner drew this careful study after going aboard Admiral Nelson's Victory while the flagship was near the town of Sheerness for repairs after the Battle of Trafalgar. The drawing, depicting extensive damage to the vessel, and the related sketchbook (shown nearby) helped Turner complete the vast Battle of Trafalgar.
|
In his only royal commission, Turner was asked by George IV to paint another version of the Battle of Trafalgar to hang in St. James's Palace in London. This is one of two oil sketches Turner made for this monumental picture. While intensely dramatic, this is a more conventional, distanced view than his earlier, close-up depiction (displayed nearby). This version was criticized by military officials, and in 1829 the king gave Turner's finished painting to the newly established National Gallery of Naval Art at the Royal Naval Hospital at Grenwich.
|
The 1805 Battle of Trafalgar inspired some of Turner's most significant nautical works, including the grand action-packed depiction of the battle on view nearby. This more subdued image depicts the battleship Victory returning to England. The ship, shown in full sail and from three different perspectives, presents a vision of triumph and glory. Turner conveys the magnitude of this decisive victory with quiet confidence.
|
CAUSES AND CAMPAIGNS
| Turner became increasingly liberal during his lifetime, and, more than any other painter of his day, he made reference To progressive Causes, including the reform of voting rights, freedom of expression, religious tolerance, and the abolition of slavery. Such works as "The Field of Waterloo" (previous gallery) or "A Disaster at Sea" bear witness to a fundamental concern for human life. Many of Turner's priorities resonate in our time. When Turner combined a radical approach with a subject drawn from contemporary life, the results could be riveting- whether the subject was a notorious shipwreck on the French coast or the destruction of a British landmark. On the evening of October 16, 1834, Turner joined tens of thousands of Londoners on the south bank of the Thames to witness the conflagration that destroyed the legislative seat of government, the Houses of Lords and Commons, on the opposite bank. In the paintings that he completed of the event- one of which is shown here- Turner suggested that powerful forces like fire could parallel progress, rather than inhibiting it. Along the banks and crowded into boats, Turner's fellow citizens observe the sweeping away of an old order, as if an inferno were expressing the expansive campaign of legislative reforms that had given greater voice to the people some two years earlier- a crucial political disruption that may be the inspiration for Turner’s mysterious "Fall of Anarchy". |
|
Turner's depiction, hinting at the passing of an old order with the destruction of its symboli seat of power, highlights the links between technology, industry, and forces beyond human control.
|
|
|
The "Wallhalla" of Turner's title is a neoclassical memorial built near Regensburg by the king of Bavaria to honor German history and culture and promote national unity. Seen here, the building perches on a hill overlooking the Danube River, while celebratory rowds look on. Turner mentions the temple in his poem "Fallacies of Hope," which he wrote to accompany his pictures. Verses were often printed in Royal Academy catalogues, including the one for this painting, which moves from the Napoleonic Wars to peace and liberation:
| 'L'honneur au Roi de Baviere' Who rode on thy relentless car, fallacious Hope? He, though scathed at Ratisbon, poured on The tide of war o'er all thy plain, Bavare, Like the swollen Danube at the gates of Wien. But peace returns - the morning ray Beams on the Wallhalla, reared to science, and the arts, For men renowned, of German fatherland. |
|
What looks like nothing more than a picturesque coastal view of Sidmouth might have political undertones. In response to the unrest caused by the economic hardship at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the government's Home Secretary, Henry Addington- Lord Sidmouth- introduced highly repressive measures to curtail civil liberties. Criticized for his political actions, Lord Sidmouth was also subjected to ridicule. In 1823, he had married a much younger woman, attracting bawdy comments. The sandstone rock stack emerging from the sea seems to indicate Turner intended a lewd association.
|
BOTTOM LEFT
Between Quilleboeuf and Villequier
1832 (Gouache and watercolor on paper)
Tate. Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest, 1856
Turner used prints to disseminate his ideas to wide audiences and earn a steady income. He sometimes printed the images himself but usually worked with professional engravers to translate his compositions into prints. Often, he was commissioned for a themed series of images that were then engraved for publication in a magazine or book. This print, made after the related watercolor, was part of a series published in 1833 featuring views along the Seine River in France. On a hard-to-navigate bend of the river between the towns of Quilleboeuf and Villequier, steam tugs escort sailing vessels to safety. New technology is supplanting the old.
|
By embracing modern motifs in his works, Turner could emphasize the contrast of old and new, on the Continent as well as in Britain. Depicting a sixteenth-century tower at the mouth of the river Seine in the Channel port of Le Havre, Turner contrasts black clouds of smoke from a steamboat with the pastel tones that fill the surrounding landscape. Starting in the 1820s, many British tourists traveled to mainland Europe under steam power, often with British crews. This led one passenger on a steamboat in France to remark that “only the food was French.”
|
BOTTOM LEFT
Newcastle-on-Tyne
c. 1823 (Watercolor on paper)
Tate. Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest, 1856
Turner's picturesque views are replete with reminders of progress. In the work above left, he offers a survey of maritime technology. Rowboats and a majestic sail ship, gliding in the distance, contrast with a packed modern steamship that charts its course, unconcerned with the direction of the wind.
Below left, a compact watercolor accentuates Newcastle’s dynamism and industry. Here, smokestacks and steeples silhouetted against the sky justify the city’s reputation as the "great emporium of the coal trade". The industria] emphasis probably also held patriotic meaning: notice the Union Jack, the British flag, presiding over the bustling : scene at the right.
|
Nocturnal scenes are typically tranquil. But in Turner’s Britain, the night was also a time of furious industrial activity. At Shields, a coastal town near Newcastle, “keelmen” worked all hours transferring coal from barges to larger ships called collier brigs. The lamps illuminating the workers at lower right outshine the full moon. Turner made this watercolor, and that of Newcastle (displayed nearby), for his engraved series Rivers of England. He celebrates the River Tyne and its role in shipping the coal that fueled Britain’s steam age.
|
In this color study, a haze of mist and smoke hangs over a Midlands industrial town. turning the sunset red. Turner often painted this phenomenon but may not have understood that it was an effect of atmospheric pollution. The town may well be Dudley. An industrialized mining center, where a steam engine was first operated in 1712.
|
As a powerful storm pounds the shoreline, ships use blue distress flares to warn other vessels of shallow water. Bystanders look on helplessly, as the fates of the ships hang in the balance. The disorientation is pushed to the point of abstraction as sea, clouds, and sky converge. A critic at the time sneered that the painting "would be equally effective, equally pleasing, and equally comprehensible if turned upside down."
STEAM AND SPEED
| Steam power was the defining technological advancement during Turner's lifetime. While steam-driven devices had been invented earlier, a only in the late eighteenth century was the technology applied to widespread practical uses. In the nineteenth century, steam transformed locomotion through steamships and railway trains, which revolutionized
perceptions of distance, speed, and even time. steamboats became common in British waters in the 1820s. Turner used them regularly as a passenger and often painted them. The first steam locomotive ran on a public railway in England in 1825, and rail lines would proliferate across the country and around the world in the decades that followed. Turner’s depictions of steam power have become symbols of nineteenth-century modernity, expressing the artist’s enthusiasm for new technology through their free, painterly execution. "Turner has outdone himself," his contemporary John Constable wrote in 1836. "He seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent, and so airy." Many observers thought Turner’s radical Style was slapdash or even ridiculous. "The public think he is laughing at them," Constable noted, "and so they laugh at him in return." |
|
|
|
In the final decades of Turner's life, steam power supplanted sail power. Here, a steamship comes to the aid of a foundering sailboat in turbulent waters, as wreckers plunder the cargo that washed ashore.
|
|
Even natural features as legendary as the "White Cliffs of Dover" did not escape Turner's urge to record modern life. In this example, depicting the port of Dover on the English Channel, the steamships with their funnels belching smoke are given less prominence than the sailing ship in the left foreground. Their presence, however, is crucial, situating this scene in the present day.
|
BOTTOM LEFT
Tintagel Castle, Cornwall
1815 (Transparent and opaque watercolor over graphite)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Anonymous gift, 1959
In the lower picture, the ruins of Tintagel Castle, a medieval fortification with legendary ties to King Arthur, sit atop a towering cliff. Men use a windlass to raise a boat from the waters below. The rugged Cornwall coast flourished as a center of copper and tin mining in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Whereas a more conventional artist would have ignored industrial Intrusion on the landscape, Turner made sure to give it prominence.
|
Combining thin washes of black watercolor with smudged strokes of black chalk, Turner manages to convey a richly atmospheric view with extremely limited means. Within the monochrome composition, he plays the diagonals of the leaning smokestack and wind-blown smoke of a steamboat against the flat horizon and the vertical lighthouse.
|
This work was described by Turner on the back of the canvas as a "first sketch" for one of his most famous paintings, The Fighting Temeraire (National Gallery, London), which depicts a tugboat towing a warship from the Napoleonic era, emblematic of the shift from wind to steam power. In this study, the steamer passes the Nore lightship, further down the Thames. If present at all, the Témeraire is a faint ghost on the horizon.
|
This picture appears to be a straightforward depiction of a historical event. But given the agitation for greater democracy in the early 1830s, choosing this subject offered a pertinent reminder of past efforts to reform the constitution. In that light, the "Stormy Passage" in its title refers not simply to William III's crossing from Holland but also to the recent legislative fight to extend voting rights. Turner showed this painting at the 1832 Royal Academy exhibition in London, which coincided with the Great Reform Bill's final passage through Parliament and the expansion of voting rights to a much larger population.
|
BOTTOM LEFT
The New Council Room, Salisbury
1805 (Watercolor on paper)
Cooper Gallery, Barnsley
Turner regularly populated his recordings of British sites with anecdotal details, including street performers, waxworks, wild animals, and food and drink vendors. The man in striped 'sailor' trousers resting on a crutch, above, and soldiers unloading packages and laying out rifles, below, are sobering reminders of the war with France, which sometimes had painful consequences.
|
In January 1792, the sixteen-year-old Turner witnessed the fire that destroyed the Pantheon Opera House on London's Oxford Street. This watercolor, exhibited at the Royal Academy that year, is one of Turner's earliest depictions of an event he saw firsthand. Framed in a theatrical manner, the facade of the building acts like a backdrop, with crowds of onlookers and a fire truck in front. Huge icicles dangle from the roof, evidence of the bitter cold.
|
This invented view shows Windsor Castle, one of the most important royal residences, and the River Thames in the distance. Depicting a prosperous, industrious England, the watercolor seems to belie the increasing hardship, shortages, and social unrest in the early years of the war with France. The large central building might be a cotton-spinning mill. Despite its scale and finish, Turner did not exhibit it— perhaps deciding against risking a potentially political statement.
|
Turner must have witnessed this scene from a boat, as the vessel called a "Man-o'-War" would have been too large to come close to port. This scene is all about contrast; two tiny boats alongside the hulking warship bring crew or supplies. A rope ladder has been lowered near two open gunports as several crewmen watch from the deck. This early example captures Turner’s attention to the churning, active surface of the water, which becomes central to his mature marine paintings.
|
BOTTOM LEFT
Shipwreck on a Rocky Coastline with a Ruined Castle
1792-93 (Watercolor and gouache on paper)
The Whitworth, The University of Manchester
Hector J. Wowlson bequest, 1969
The south coast of England fascinated Turner his whole career, especially during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815), when it represented a bulwark against invasion. Above, fishermen use a windlass, an apparatus rotated by a crank, to haul a boat ashore, while the fisherwomen stand by to collect their nets. Below, on what looks like a stretch of the Welsh coast, a medieval castle is juxtaposed with modern buildings that resemble the major iron-smelting complex at Coalbrookdale, Shropshire.
|
BOTTOM LEFT
General View of Cyfarthfa Ironworks from the Brecon Road
1798 (Graphite on paper)
Tate. Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest, 1856
These two delicate but highly detailed sketches relate to Turner's first commission for a painting of manufacturing subjects, given by Anthony Bacon, who owned the Cyfarthfa Ironworks in southwest Wales— at one point the largest ironworks in the world. The center became so essential to the production of cannons and other weapons with Great Britain's ongoing conflicts that Admiral Nelson, the country's great naval hero, visited in the site in 1802. Despite the preparation revealed in these Sketches, no finished painting of the subject is known.
|
Kilns and furnaces glow amidst the clouds of a moonlit night. During a tour of South Wales in 1795, Turner observed this lime kiln near Llanstephan Castle, a twelfth-century fortress that encloses an Iron Age fort. He contrasts modern industry with the looming medieval structure perched dramatically above a river.
MODERN PAINTER
| The most outspoken and eloquent art critic of the age was John Ruskin, whose five-volume work, Modern Painters (1843-60), championed Turner's innovative approach to depicting the world around him. Other contemporaries recognized how closely Turner was attuned to his times. In 1843, a reviewer commented, "No painter of the present-day dare attempt such pictures as Mr. Turner produces." In his final decade, Turner experimented by moving beyond rectangular formats, employing square,
circular, or octagonal frames. He exhibited subjects in pairs to force contrasts and worked in extensive series. His exploration of color was unparalleled, and his paint handling became increasingly adventurous, giving greater prominence to the effects of light and atmosphere. Critics agreed Turner had developed a completely distinctive approach to painting; his late imagery emphasized an evocation of experience rather than a decipherable narrative. Some of his most abbreviated depictions were in fact works left unfinished in his studio at the time of his death in 1852. A critic in 1846 summed up the alchemy of late Turner: "So entirely is the eye carried away by a sort of indistinct and harmonious magic, that we seem to consent to abandonment of solid truth and real nature altogether." In his final years, Turner's modernity was not expressed in his choice of subjects. His modernity lay instead in his revolutionary— even visionary— approach to the very making of art. |
|
Recalling depictions of royal figures from decades earlier, this late work (and the related composition nearby) show Turner always eager to depict the great events of his day. These two unfinished oil paintings make much of the enthusiastic crowds witnessing the king's arrival but reveal little of the king's presence.
|
A generation after Waterloo, Queen Victoria invited the French king Louis-Philippe to come to Britain in a move designed to improve relations between France and England. This view highlights the energetic atmosphere amidst densely packed crowds who have gathered to witness the arrival of the distinguished visitor.
|
Turner traveled to Coburg in September 1840, producing several pencil sketches, which informed works like this watercolor. Despite the rapid sense of execution, Turner manages to identify key buildings in the town square. The bustling crowds highlight the square's liveliness, with Coburg's town hall seen at right and the tower of St. Moritz church at center.
|
BOTTOM LEFT
The Bock and the Rham, Luxembourg, above the Alzette Valley
c. 1839 (Gouache, pen, ink, and watercolor on paper)
Tate. Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest, 1856
The Treaty of London (1839) established the independence of the German-speaking part of Luxembourg. Perhaps in response to this, Turner revisited the region that autumn. The distant view here combines an accurate depiction of the topography with imaginary fortifications in the foreground. Its companion concentrates on the bulk of the defensive walls.
|
Turner traveled to Coburg in September 1840, producing several pencil sketches, which informed works like this watercolor. Despite the rapid sense of execution, Turner manages to identify key buildings in the town square. The bustling crowds highlight the square's liveliness, with Coburg's town hall seen at right and the tower of St. Moritz church at center.
|
Turner made this sketch during his last visit to Venice, in 1840. Evoking the magical transformation of the city as day turns to night, it is not an exact view but a poetic reverie. In the prominence of reflections and spindly figures, Turner anticipates by four decades the haunted Venice seen in the paintings and prints of James McNeil Whistler.
|
The three main structures in this painting— the Doge's Palace on the left (with its law courts and jail cells), the prisons on the right, and the Bridge of Sighs connecting them— had sinister associations for many visitors to Venice. By reputation, convicts would moan as they were led across this bridge, seeing the outside world for the last time. When Turner exhibited the painting in 1840, he accompanied it with lines based on Lord Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: "I stood upon a bridge, a palace and / A prison on each hand." Byron was a champion of liberty and independence across Europe. To the poet's dismay, the city was a pale reflection of its former glory.
|
In a study for an unfinished print series, Turner conveys the visual spectacle of a lightning storm over the ancient ort city of Datania using washes of gray, black, and pink. Working in reverse, he left bare paper exposed for the lightning bolts across the sky.
|
|
|
A nocturnal view of Venice, made during Turner's last visit, in 1840, hints at his political awareness. An Austrian soldier and his striped sentry box seen at right remind us that for all its lingering grandeur and icturesque decay, Venice was also a city that, in the post-Napoleonic age, was under foreign rule.
|
|
Venice has long been one of the densest cities in Europe, famous for its labyrinthine alleys and narrow canals. Today, as in Turner's time, venturing into its expansive lagoon by boat provides a dramatic contrast. Within minutes, the crowds are left behind, and the quiet can be peaceful or, particularly at night, eerie.
|
|
The monumental Baroque church of the Salute, with its great dome, dominates the entrance to the Grand Canal of Venice. Turner probably focused on this landmark in the hopes of finding a buyer. He left the work unfinished, however, barely defining the buildings on either side, and sea, land, and sky merge. The extraordinary, shimmering forms evoke the paradox of dense fog on a sunny day.
|
|
Even if dated a century later, this small work would dazzle in its boldness. Although Turner never voyaged on a whaling ship himself, maritime literature abounded and inspired his fascination with the subject. In this watercolor, he focuses on the vivid contrast of fire against black sky or water, evoked here in the simplest of forms.
|
A reviewer praised this work as a "free, vigorous, fearless embodiment of a moment. To do justice to Turner, it should always be remembered that he is the painter, not of reflections, but of immediate sensation."
|
No whaling ship was actually called Erebus, but the survey ship HMS Erebus had recently explored Antarctica, and Turner borrowed the name for this picture. Discussing another of the whaling pictures, one critic described "one mass of white spray, which so blends with the white clouds of the sky, that the spectator can hardly separate them, while the whiteness is still continued by the sails of the ship, which are placed in defiance of contrast." This description could easily apply to any of the whaling group, which all reveal subtle gradations across an expansive sky.
|
Whale oil was a valuable commodity for lighting and lubrication, and the Southern Whale Fishery in the South Atlantic Ocean was a major center for this industry in Turner's lifetime. By the 1840s, the British operation was in terminal decline. Its ships were increasingly uncompetitive, especially after the import tariff on foreign oil was reduced in 1843. In the ship at left, the crew boil the whale blubber, a fiery glow emanating from the heart of the vessel.
|
In a few strokes, Turner conveys a conflagration— meant to be the city of Warsaw in flames during a 1794 uprising instigated by Polish revolutionary Tadeusz Kosciusko. The color that makes the sketch so powerful was lost in the black-and-white engraving that illustrated a poem on the subject written by the British author Thomas Campbell.
|
An exercise in minimalism, this watercolor was inscribed by the artist, "Adieu Fontainebleau," referencing Napoleon's farewell after his abdication in 1814, when he departed this chateau outside Paris. Napoleon's legacy continued to haunt Turner's work twenty-five years after his defeat.
|
Turner traveled to Gosport, on the south coast of England, on October 8, 1844, to witness the arrival of the ship carrying the French ing Louis-Philippe on his state visit to Queen Victoria. Turner probably viewed the ceremonial proceedings from a boat. This watercolor combines extraordinary brevity and confidence.
|
A few months before Turner's 1840 visit to Coburg, Queen Victoria married her cousin Prince Albert, who was born at Schloss Rosenau, seen here high atop a hill. This study became the point of departure for a large oil painting Turner completed the following year.
|
The phrase "Sauve qui peut" (every man for himself) is found in Walter Scott's biography of Napoleon. Used to describe the turmoil in the streets of Paris as news of Napoleon's 1814 abdication spread, the phrase also recalls the French army's defeat at Waterloo, which may be the subject loosely indicated here.
|
By the 1840s, Napoleon's career had featured in Turner's output for more than thirty years. This is one of a series of late watercolor sketches, some of them inscribed with the letter "N" in which Turner developed Napoleonic themes. It may represent the French emperor's visit to Koblenz, in present-day Germany, in 1804. Years earlier, Turner had depicted the fortress at Ehrenbreitstein in much finer detail. Here, he offers a ghostly impression, painting the fortress in pale washes of red against a yellow sky. Gray strokes represent the river below.
|
|
War shows Napoleon in exile on St. Helena, a remote island in the South Atlantic, watched over by a British sentry. Perhaps painted as a response to the extravagance of Napoleon's state funeral, held in December 1840, Turner depicts the former emperor instead meditating on his fall from power. In the water near his reflection sits a tiny mollusk— a rock limpet— which might enjoy more self-determination than he does.
The lurid sky and a sluice gate at bottom right in the shape of a butcher's cleaver bring carnage and bloodshed to mind, the lives of thousands being the price of Napoleon's ambition. Decades after his death, the French emperor continued to preoccupy Turner's memories— as well as those of his countrymen.
|
Turner's contemporary and sometime rival, painter David Wilkie, died of typhoid on his return from the Holy Land in 1841. Fearing an outbreak of the disease, the Governor of Gibraltar refused to allow the body ashore for burial. Instead, Wilkie was buried at sea. Turner painted this canvas in his memory, placing a funeral carriage on the deck of the ship to stand for the public funeral Wilkie should have had. When asked about the unnaturally black sails, Turner said he wished he could make them blacker still, frustrated by the inability of art to overturn a premature death. Burial at Sea was first exhibited as a pair to The Exile and the Rock Limpet, hanging to the left. Its cool tonality answered the anxiety of War with the repose of Peace.
A Video Walk Through the Exhibit
When I was done looking at (and photographing) all the artworks and their descriptions, I went back to make a video of the exhibit. I did this video in two sections, since the exhibit was partly in the main building of the Piano Pavilion and partly in the second building. (I actually did not realize this until I went back to make my first movie, and realized that the exhibit continued on further.) These two movies will give you a physical impression of the breadth of the exhibit, and you can use the players below to watch them.
|
(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) |
(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) |
Our Visit Ends
Walking through the exhibit was very enjoyable, and I learned a great deal about Turner, an artist about whom I had known very little.
We still had a good deal of time this afternoon, so we decided to visit the Fort Worth Botanical Garden just down the street. On the way back to our cars, we went back through the main building of the Kimbell, and I saw what at first I thought was some kind of modern art installation- that is, until I noticed the man on the roof.
You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.
|
November 9, 2021: The Fort Worth Botanic Garden |
|
September 26, 2021: A Visit to the Dallas Arboretum |
|
Return to the Index for 2021 |
