The Genius of Light

continued from No. 3

Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. David Piper, the author of The Illustrated History of Art, calls his later pictures “fantastic puzzles.” The influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most “stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature.”

In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner’s work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.

Though Turner is primarily known for his seascapes (perhaps due to the romanticism of the subject), he is also regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Inspired by 17th century masters such as Poussin, he experimented with light and colour, creating masterpieces that pushed the boundaries of traditional landscape painting.

Suitable vehicles for Turner’s imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). The Shipwreck of the Minotaur is another case in point.

The Slave Ship

The Shipwreck of the Minotaur

Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but also human vulnerability and vulgarity amid the ‘sublime’ nature of the world on the other hand. ‘Sublime’ here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God – a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period.

The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God’s spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be ‘impressionistic’ and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena.

The first American to buy a Turner painting was James Lenox of New York City, a private collector. Lenox wished to own a Turner and in 1845 bought one unseen through an intermediary, his friend C. R. Leslie. From among the paintings Turner had on hand and was willing to sell for ?500, Leslie selected and shipped the 1832 atmospheric seascape Staffa, Fingal’s Cave. Upon receiving the painting Lenox was baffled, and “greatly disappointed” by what he called the painting’s “indistinctness”. When Leslie was forced to relay this opinion to Turner, Turner said “You should tell Mr. Lenox that indistinctness is my fault.” Staffa, Fingal’s Cave is currently owned by the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut.

Staffa, Fingal’s Cave

Here is what William Hazlitt wrote on Turner in 1816: ‘The artist delights to go back to the first chaos of the world... All is without form and void. Someone said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing, and very like.’ And Andre Derain at the beginning of 20th century: ‘Turner authorises us to create forms that go beyond conventional reality.’

Undoubtedly, of special value is the commentary granted by Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury on “Angel Standing in the Sun”(exhibited in 1846): The Angel Standing in the Sun is Turner demonstrating something of the terror of light: it dissolves, soaks away the specific reality, it isn’t just a benign glow or a clear spotlight. Other artists do astonishing things with light, but only Turner makes it frightening like this. All the more frightening because obviously irresistible and total.”

Angel Standing in the Sun

Turner was a master of capturing the intangible in paint, increasingly pushing his subjects to the point of vaporisation, pulling them back from the brink only when they threatened to disappear. How he must have loved the moody London fogs, with their uncertain atmospheres blurring the borders between solid and void, or else the Venetian mists, with their water particles suffused with incandescent light. Or the snowstorms, where sky becomes sea and land becomes sky. A barely recognisable detail often seemed an apparition…

And yet – Turner was quintessentially English: an artist who emerged apparently from nowhere, and died leaving no obvious successors in the cooler cultural climate that came after him. But nonetheless, he created a vision so powerful that it still shapes how we see the world today.

Turner left a small fortune which he hoped would be used to support what he called “decayed artists”. Part of the money went to the Royal Academy of Arts, which does not now use it for this purpose, though occasionally it awards students the Turner Medal. His collection of finished paintings was bequeathed to the British nation. And to all of mankind.