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Humanity and Nature in the Steamboat Paintings of J.M.W. Turner*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

William S. Rodner
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Extract

The year 1851 witnessed the Great Exhibition, Britain's celebration of technological achievement. Thousands of curious and excited visitors from the world over flocked to Joseph Paxton's futuristic Crystal Palace to marvel at the various exhibits which underscored, not only Britain's commercial and industrial preeminence, but also the Victorian faith in progress and the triumph of the machine.

Less noticed, late that same year, was the passing of one of the most perceptive observers of the new age, the veteran artist J.M.W. Turner. This great English Romantic, famed for his paintings of bucolic landscapes, storms at sea, and Alpine avalanches, also had drawn significant inspiration from the new forces which were then rapidly transforming Britain and the world. A notable body of his work, particularly the efforts of his later career, exist as complex visual commentaries on the reality and the meaning of nineteenth century industrialism. Watercolors of blackened mills, polluted skies, and steam locomotion capture the face of change, while great oils such as The Fighting Temeraire and Snow Storm—Steam–Boat off a Harbour's Mouth symbolize a dynamic new age.

Type
The 1985 Denis Bethell Prize Essay of the Charles Homer Haskins Society
Information
Albion , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , Fall 1986 , pp. 455 - 474
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1986

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Footnotes

*

A version of this essay was presented to a meeting of the Turner Society, in London, at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Summer 1984. For illustrations of Turner works discussed in this article but not reproduced, see the parenthetical references throughout the text, to the following: for watercolors, Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner. His Art and Life (New York, 1979), cited as Wilton with page and catalogue number; and for paintings, Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, Plates (New Haven, revised ed., 1984), cited as Butlin and Joll with the plate number.

References

1 Gage, John, Rain, Steam and Speed (New York, 1972), p. 35Google Scholar.

2 Herrmann, Luke, “Turner and the Sea,” Turner Studies 1, 1 (1981): 12Google Scholar.

3 Lindsay, Jack, in J.M. W. Turner. His Life and Work (New York, 1966), p. 255Google Scholar, argues that “It was through the steamship that he [Turner\ most fully and deeply treated the advent of industrialism.”

4 Spratt, H.P., Handbook of the Collections Illustrating Merchant Steamers and Motorships, Science Museum. Part II, Descriptive Catalogue (London, 1968), pp. 91–92Google Scholar. The 1813 sketch of the “Comet” by William Daniell is reproduced in Klingender, F.D., Art and the Industrial Revolution (London, 1948Google Scholar; revised ed., New York, 1970), p. 250. Klingender mistakenly pre-dates the “Comet's” launching by one year, p. 107.

5 Spratt, , Handbook, p. 73Google Scholar.

6 For example, see Thompson, J.M.A. and Scrimger, K., The Spectacular Career of Clarkson Stanfield, 1793-1867. Seaman, Scene-Painter, Royal Academician (Sunderland, 1979), p. 93Google Scholar, for an illustration of Stanfield's c. 1820s watercolor The Thames at Battersea with its two docked steamers; and Holcomb, Adele M., John Sell Cotman (London, 1978), p. 103Google Scholar, for the steamboat drawing Dreadnought on the Thames of 1828.

7 Shanes, Eric, Turner's Rivers, Harbours and Coasts (London, 1981), p. 33Google Scholar.

8 Ibid, p. 35.

9 Ruskin, John, Works, ed. Cook, E.T. and Wederburn, Alexander, 39 vols. (London, 1903–1912), 35:414–15Google Scholar.

10 Ritchie, Leitch, Liber Fluviorum; or River Scenery in France Depicted in Sixty-one line Engravings from Drawings by J.M.W. Turner (London, 1853), p. 88Google Scholar, for Ritchie's description of the Havre scene: “A steam-boat is just about to leave the quay, probably for Southampton—no, for Honfleur—which will account for the unusual crowdh….” See also Alfrey, Nicholas, “The French Rivers. The Seine, the Loire and the North Coast of France,” in Jacqueline, and Guillaud, Maurice, Turner en France (Paris, 1981), p. 436Google Scholar, for a modern view of the importance of the steamer in Turner's French series.

11 See Wilton, pp. 418-419, nos. 1001-1004, for illustrations of the other versions of this scene. In no. 1001, Study for Light Towers at La Heve, the steamer is placed to the left, yet highlighted against the high, sunlit cliffs. Alfrey, , “The French Rivers,” p. 400Google Scholar, ignores the steamer in this setting to concentrate comment on the Light Towers, symbolically “guarding the entrance into France itself.”

12 Turner's objective and intuitive abilities, important in the art of Romanticism, are discussed, within the context of architecture, in Wilton, Andrew, Turner and the Sublime (London, 1980), p. 66Google Scholar.

13 Speaking of the emissions from the Seine steamer in the watercolor Jumieges, Ruskin, in Modern Painters, distinguished between the character of steam, “an artificial cloud in the process of dissipation” and smoke, “an actual substance existing independently in the air, a solid opaque body, subject to no absorption nor dissipation but that of tenuity.” Ruskin, , Works, 3:401Google Scholar.

14 It is possible that one of the steamers pictured could have been the famous British vessel “Aaron Manby,” the first ship constructed of iron. It plied the route from Le Havre to Paris and later the Loire, between the years 1822 and 1842. See Spratt, , Handbook, p. 134Google Scholar, and Rolt, L.T.C., Victorian Engineering (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1980), pp. 82–83Google Scholar.

15 See Hawes, Louis, “Turner's Fighting Temeraire,” Art Quarterly 35 (1972): 34Google Scholar, for the statement of the former view: “The two vessels just happen to overlap at that moment; the conception is picturesque, not quasi-symbolic or even vaguely evocative.” In Rawlinson, W.G., The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., vol. 2 (London, 1913), p. 269Google Scholar, the author, in discussing the engraving of this watercolor, observed that the steamer has the sail ship in tow. This is highly likely considering the treacherous character of the river at this point. For contemporary accounts, describing navigation in the Quilleboeuf-Villequier area, see Sauvan, M., Picturesque Tour of the Seine from Paris to the Sea (London, 1821), p. 165Google Scholar, and Murray, John, Hand-book for Travellers in France (London, 1843), p. 53Google Scholar.

16 Ruskin, , Works, 35:576Google Scholar.

17 Hawes, , “Turner's Fighting Temeraire,” p. 23Google Scholar; Finberg, A.J., The Life of J.M. W. Turner, R.A., 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1961), pp. 372–373Google Scholar; Walker, John, Joseph Mallord William Turner (New York, 1976), p. 130Google Scholar; Ruskin, , Works, 13:170–72Google Scholar.

18 Finberg, , Life, p. 371Google Scholar; Hawes, , “Turner's Fighting Temeraire,” p. 24Google Scholar.

19 Boase, T.S.R., English Art. 1800-1870 (Oxford, 1959), p. 123Google Scholar.

20 Athenaeum, 11 May 1839, p. 357Google ScholarPubMed.

21 Spectator, 11 May 1839, p. 447Google Scholar.

22 See Thornbury, Walter, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., (London, 1877; reprint ed., 1970), pp. 461–62Google Scholar, for a perceptive discussion of the multiple meanings in Turner's art.

23 Hawes, in “Turner's Fighting Temeraire,” calls this painting “an elegy for the Romantic era, replaced by a hard, utilitarian age,” without recognizing the Romantic appeal, for an artist like Turner, of significant aspects of this new era.

24 Thornbury, , Life, p. 461Google Scholar.

25 Rolt, , Victorian Engineering, p. 96Google Scholar.

26 Dickens, Charles, The Anniversary Edition of The Works of Charles Dickens, 23 vols. (New York, 1911), 2:10Google Scholar.

27 Walker, , Turner, p. 2Google Scholar.

28 Thornbury, , Life, p. 579Google Scholar.

29 Butlin and Joll, Text, p. 248.

30 I am grateful to Andrew Wilton for this observation on Turner's use of black.

31 The Times, 6 May 1842, supplement.

32 Earlier, in 1830, Turner had used a similar device in Dudley, Worcestershire, a watercolor featuring a small, black factory in which the building's hidden fire and extruded smoke draw the viewer towards it and away from the picturesque castle on the hill above. See illustration in Wilton, , J.M.W. Turner, p. 180Google Scholar. A similar indication of human presence, indicated with a touch of yellow, has been pointed out in the steamer of Staffa-Fingal's Cave by Paulson, Ronald in Literary Landscape: Turner and Constable (New Haven, 1982), p. 97Google Scholar, although there it hardly draws the eye inward.

33 Ruskin, , Works, 36:382Google Scholar.

34 Butlin and Joll, Text, p. 206.

35 Two years later the steamer “Forfarshire” was wrecked off the Fame Islands just north of Dunstanburgh. Turner's contemporary, J. W. Carmichael, painted the event as the ship lay on her side, with the famous Victorian heroine Grace Darling and her father rushing to the rescue. See Boase, T.S.R., “Shipwrecks in English Romantic Painting,” Journal of the Warburg & Courtauld Institutes 22 (1959): 343CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a description of this event. Carmichael's painting is reproduced in Montgomery, W.A. and Scott, M., Grace Darling (Seahouses, Northumberland, 1981), p. 18Google Scholar.

36 Gage, John, ed., Collected Correspondence of J.M.W. Turner (Oxford, 1980), pp. 209–210Google Scholar. Despite the dangers alluded to in this letter as well as the ominous sky pictured in the painting, Hawes nevertheless sees the steamer “advancing toward us confidently …” (“Turner's Fighting Temeraire,” p. 33).

37 Morning Herald 7 May 1832, p. 3Google Scholar. Paulson, , Literary Landscape, p. 97Google Scholar, in an interesting analysis of this work, sees the steamer as a symbol of human activity “pitted against the forces of nature.” It must be emphasized, however, that humanity and the steamer will be defeated.

38 The date, title, and setting of this watercolor has been the subject of some disagreement. In a 1977 exhibition it was labelled A Paddle-Steamer in a Storm, ca. 1830 (?), “possibly off the coast of Britain.” See White, Christopher, English Landscape 1630-1860 (New Haven, 1977), p. 81Google Scholar. More recently, Wilton has placed it on Lake Lucerne and assigned it the title and approximate date used here (J.M.W. Turner, p. 478, no. 1484).

39 Walker, , Turner, p. 2Google Scholar.

40 Butlin and Joll, Text, p. 239.

41 Athenaeum, 6 February 1841, p. 118Google ScholarPubMed. There is an 1852 chromolithograph of this painting by Robert Carrick in which two semicircular paddlewheels are clearly visible on the ship to the left, while on its companion, a crew is depicted in detail on the stern.

42 See Butlin, Martin and Wilton, Andrew, Turner, 1775-1851 (London, 1974), p. 170Google Scholar, for the relationship of this vortex to that of Snowstorm—Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth.

43 Note also the steamer's twisted smoke trail, pressed by wind and heat, in the watercolor Fire at Fennings Wharf, on the Thames at Bermondsey, c. 1836, now at Manchester. The arrangement is almost identical to Snowstorm. See the production of this watercolor in Wilton, p. 420, no. 1013.

44 Athenaeum, 14 May 1842, p. 433Google ScholarPubMed.

45 Blackwood's (Edinburgh) Magazine, July 1842, p. 30.Google ScholarPubMed; Art Union, 1 June 1842, p. 123Google ScholarPubMed.

46 Ruskin, , Works, 13: 162Google Scholar. It has been suggested recently that Turner may not have been on this particular boat on this fateful night. See Ziff's, Jerrold review of The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, 2 vols.Google Scholar, by Butlin, Martin and Joll, Evelyn, in the Art Bulletin 16, 1 (March 1980): 170Google Scholar. Nevertheless, Turner, who traveled at sea all through his life, certainly knew what such an experience was like.

47 Mockhouse, Cosmo, The Turner Gallery (New York, 1878), part 13Google Scholar.

48 There were other, less dramatic, steamboat studies painted after 1842. See, for example, Sea-scape: Folkstone, c. 1845, discussed in Butlin and Joll, Text, p. 289, and, with emphasis on the smoke of the steamship, in Paintings and Works of Art From the Collections of the Late Lord Clark of Saltwood (London, 1984), no. 200Google Scholar.

49 See two letters to F.H. Fawkes, 27 December 1850 and 31 January 1851, in Gage, , Collected Correspondence, pp. 224-25, 227Google Scholar.