The 19th Century Art History - Essay Example

19th Century Art History Museum Paper When John Constable exhibited his works in the Royal Academy near Turner’s paintings, he commented upon the brightness of colleague’s palette in the following way: “He has been here and fired a gun”1. Leo Costello refers to this quote in his chapter about Turner’s participating in Varnishing Days at the Royal Academy: “the cross-fire of colors”2. Some other anecdotes about Turner are no less violent and bright: “stay there until I make you white”, he is reported to have murmured to his yellow3. Contrasting bright paints smeared across Turner’s canvasses are part of the style so distinct that we recognize it now as firmly as Turner’s contemporaries. The Romantic drama of human will is expressed with color contrasts and anxious strokes in the master’s late picture Whalers (1945) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In reality, the first object that attracts attention in the picture is not a whaling ship and the boats that are going to turn over. It is a dark giant head of a dying sperm whale that looks like sucking the boats down into the funnel, together with their lines and color spots, as the dark figure stands apart the gray and beige background and at the same time suppresses the other tones. The whale and his reflection in the roaring waters are also marked with several red hues that indicate the presence of death (this is the whale’s blood). The same red deathly hues are noticeable in the boats and the figures of whalers, roughly sketched, rather suggesting the presence of people and vessels than really representing objects. These rough lines on intensively blurred background are characteristic for Turner’s approach to painting: “liberty requires to be curtailed”, that is, wild elements of nature in painting (the areas of brushstrokes of one main color theme) need to be marked with some clues to general meaning, some strict lines suggesting the sense of the image4. The division of the working area into visible big chromatic spots (the dirty fawn-colored sea with dark green and red hues rightwards near the whale; the black, red, and green whale; leaden sky; and the seemingly white ship) is also one of original artist’s techniques called “color-beginning”5. To achieve this effect, Turner marked the separate areas of different leading tones and proceeded working on them to create the interrelated whole (often he started several pictures simultaneously)6. The picture is not flat and homogenous: it is dynamic due to plenty of brushstrokes of different thickness and direction. Thus, Turner puts his viewer in an uneven position of the observer located in the place of the accident, conveying the feeling of vulnerability7. The ship in the background is contrasted to the figure of whale both by the colors and by the technique: it has more definite and thin lines, looking light and fragile but also more stable than the dying animal (and it is remarkable that the ship is in the position above the whale, which could indicate that it is going to survive). Both whalers and their capture look small in comparison with extensive, hostile seascape; this compositional feature suggests the fragility of life as such, but the contrast compensates this, conveying the grandeur of drama of dying and survival. Turner is reported to have painted Whalers as an attempt to attract the support of the art collectioner Elhanan Bicknell who had made his business on whale oil8. Some of the modern critics label whaling as an “unpopular topic”9; however, there is evidence that whales were actually popular in the literary and visual art works of Turner’s contemporaries (some of the examples are J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruise and Francis Olmsted’s Incidents of a Whaling Voyage)10. There were several social and cultural factors that shaped the powerful image of whale in Romantic art: 1) whales belong to the sea, the setting that was perceived as wild and inferior to humans11; 2) nevertheless, the middle of 19th century happened to be the birth of studies in comparative biology, and there was a clear parallel between the bodily suffering of whales and that of humans12; 3) the figure of whale was connected with the dominance over sea resources, which was no less hot topic for Britain than for the US13. Herman Melville (whose Moby Dick is actually the subject of Buell’s study cited here) saw Turner’s painting and could have been inspired by this bloody picture of the struggle for life (and for dominance also)14. Anyway, the conflict and the manner of its depiction are more or less typical for the Romantic painting, and some features of Turner’s technique allow for characterizing him as a Romantic painter. The sea and the sky occupy most of the picture’s space; they are the setting for battle between the whale (representing wild powers of nature) and whalers (who are attempting to tame these powers). The picture is called Whalers, which means that the author is mainly concerned with human drama. They fight with both the sea and the whale, and the whale is also struggling for its life. In the times of technical revolution (the growth of steam power’s popularity), nature was seen as dangerous and unfriendly; technology with both fear and respect to its powers15. The threat invoked by spectacular views was connected with such category in Romantic aesthetics as ‘sublime’, the term used by German theorists and E. Burke; the collision of two wild powers is a distinctly “sublime” theme16. Turner’s technique is also directed towards the depiction of this sublime mood: dynamic brush strokes, color contrasts, and the very size of the painting (36 1/8 x 48 1/4 in., or 91.8 x 122.6 cm) simultaneously scare and fascinate the viewer, directing attention from the event itself to the subjective interpretation of this event. More subjectivity is added by the fact that most areas of the painting are blurred; these are only rough sketches of the ship and the boats with whalers that suggest human presence here. This way, mind and feelings of the viewers, in other words, their subjectivity, become actively engaged in this work. Turner’s marines communicate the sense of being lost in the sea, strengthening it with the dislocation of the source of light: suspense arises from “the sense of not knowing where the information – the power of vision – comes from”17. Turner had been through some of the sea accidents; he often admitted that those impressions were sources for his paintings. John Ruskin describes how harshly he reacted to the critics’ remarks about his Snowstorm (they claimed that the painting was “soapsuds and whitewash”): “I wish theyd been in it”18. Marines and landscapes that immersed viewers with their unusual depiction of motion and vivid color interplay were typical for Turner. The work’s formal elements may also be seen in most of the paintings of his oeuvre. It was already mentioned that Turner’s strategy was to convey the feeling of scene rather than produce the mimetic depiction of the scene. This is a feature typically associated with Impressionism; however, unlike French symbolists, impressionists were not so favorable about Turner’s paintings. They accused him of paying too little attention to the distribution of colors and too intensive work with the colors themselves19. Two different explanation of this outstanding color brightness may be found in the critical interpretations of Turner’s paintings. The first is offered by John Gage, the scholar whose main interest is color as a cultural and physical phenomenon. He puts Turner’s name near those of Monet and Renoir for the reason that all of these artists were experimenting with “relative value of color”20, that is, they constructed the color scheme of their works in the way that it could be perceived only as a whole, with all the connections and relations of colors. The only difference was that Impressionists tended to create harmonic schemes, while Turner’s aim was to “discriminate between objects”21. In Whalers, Turner clearly distinguishes between the white (victimized) ship, the black and blood-red whale (a dangerous creature which is dying), and the yellow sea (an unfriendly environment). Another explanation of such violent color use is provided by Leo Costello: Varnishing Days in the Royal Academy, when the academicians were supposed to finish their paintings while the latter were being exhibited, created such “jealousy” and competition between painters that Turner’s eccentric colors could be regarded just as a cry for attention22. The painter, Costello adds more calmly, was living in the period of rapid social disconnection, so the contrasts of his colors and the challenging individualism of his performance on Varnishing Days were in line with his time’s tendencies23. The first explanation, however, seems to be more justified. Anyway, it is clear that J. M. W. Turner uses big contrasting color areas, blurred and dynamic brush strokes, and sketches of the central objects to dramatize the struggle for life among two sublime powers. The conflict of technology and nature (that were equally strong and dangerous) together with the sense of being lost in the sea of the world and in the ocean of one’s subjective feelings is typical for Romantic painting. Bibliography Buell, Lawrence. Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the US and beyond. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2001. Costello, Leo. J. M. W. Turner and the Subject of History. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2012. Fisher, Marvin. “Melville and Turner: Spheres of Love and Fright”, review of Melville and Turner: Spheres of Love and Fright by Robert K. Wallace, The International Fiction Review 20.2 (1993), 138-140. Foster, Lauren. “Themes of Depression in JMW Turner’s Whalers”. Lauren Foster’s Personal Webpage. Fall 2004. Accessed Nov 1, 2012, < http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~lmf47/class/whalers.html >. Gage, John. Color and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999. Gallery Label, Gallery 808, Whalers by J. M. W. Turner, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Accessed Nov 1, 2012. < http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110002307 >. Rodner, William. J. M. W. Turner: Romantic Painter of the industrial Revolution. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1997. Ruskin, John. “Snowstorm”, The Origo Art Bin, Ruskin on Turner, n. d.. Accessed 2 Nov http://art-bin.com/art/oruskincontents.html. Wainwright, Steven P., and Clare Williams. “Biography and Vulnerability: Loss, Dying and death in the Romantic Paintings of J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851)”, Auto/Biography no. 13 (2005): 16-32. Read More

Turner is reported to have painted Whalers as an attempt to attract the support of the art collectioner Elhanan Bicknell who had made his business on whale oil8. Some of the modern critics label whaling as an “unpopular topic”9; however, there is evidence that whales were actually popular in the literary and visual art works of Turner’s contemporaries (some of the examples are J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruise and Francis Olmsted’s Incidents of a Whaling Voyage)10. There were several social and cultural factors that shaped the powerful image of whale in Romantic art: 1) whales belong to the sea, the setting that was perceived as wild and inferior to humans11; 2) nevertheless, the middle of 19th century happened to be the birth of studies in comparative biology, and there was a clear parallel between the bodily suffering of whales and that of humans12; 3) the figure of whale was connected with the dominance over sea resources, which was no less hot topic for Britain than for the US13.

Herman Melville (whose Moby Dick is actually the subject of Buell’s study cited here) saw Turner’s painting and could have been inspired by this bloody picture of the struggle for life (and for dominance also)14. Anyway, the conflict and the manner of its depiction are more or less typical for the Romantic painting, and some features of Turner’s technique allow for characterizing him as a Romantic painter. The sea and the sky occupy most of the picture’s space; they are the setting for battle between the whale (representing wild powers of nature) and whalers (who are attempting to tame these powers).

The picture is called Whalers, which means that the author is mainly concerned with human drama. They fight with both the sea and the whale, and the whale is also struggling for its life. In the times of technical revolution (the growth of steam power’s popularity), nature was seen as dangerous and unfriendly; technology with both fear and respect to its powers15. The threat invoked by spectacular views was connected with such category in Romantic aesthetics as ‘sublime’, the term used by German theorists and E.

Burke; the collision of two wild powers is a distinctly “sublime” theme16. Turner’s technique is also directed towards the depiction of this sublime mood: dynamic brush strokes, color contrasts, and the very size of the painting (36 1/8 x 48 1/4 in., or 91.8 x 122.6 cm) simultaneously scare and fascinate the viewer, directing attention from the event itself to the subjective interpretation of this event. More subjectivity is added by the fact that most areas of the painting are blurred; these are only rough sketches of the ship and the boats with whalers that suggest human presence here.

This way, mind and feelings of the viewers, in other words, their subjectivity, become actively engaged in this work. Turner’s marines communicate the sense of being lost in the sea, strengthening it with the dislocation of the source of light: suspense arises from “the sense of not knowing where the information – the power of vision – comes from”17. Turner had been through some of the sea accidents; he often admitted that those impressions were sources for his paintings. John Ruskin describes how harshly he reacted to the critics’ remarks about his Snowstorm (they claimed that the painting was “soapsuds and whitewash”): “I wish theyd been in it”18.

Marines and landscapes that immersed viewers with their unusual depiction of motion and vivid color interplay were typical for Turner. The work’s formal elements may also be seen in most of the paintings of his oeuvre. It was already mentioned that Turner’s strategy was to convey the feeling of scene rather than produce the mimetic depiction of the scene. This is a feature typically associated with Impressionism; however, unlike French symbolists, impressionists were not so favorable about Turner’s paintings.

They accused him of paying too little attention to the distribution of colors and too intensive work with the colors themselves19.

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