The Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl

Francesca Mauro
The Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl, J.W. Turner, 1823
By FRANCESCA MAURO

Turner's mid-career painting provides an excellent example of the artist's fixation on both natural and human phenomena. Many consider Turner the first artist to legitimize landscape painting as a serious genre. Turner creates a stunning landscape with the Bay of Baiae in the background, framed by gently rolling mountains. A pair of intricately detailed trees rise up dramatically in the foreground and draw attention away from the two figures in the bottom right corner. The rolling peaks of the mountains align with the dramatic shadowing. The shadows create a triangular shape leading the eye to the bay in the background.

This painting portrays a Roman myth in which Sibyl asks the Roman god Apollo to grant her a longer life. He promises to give her many years as the number of grains of sand she can hold in her hands. Unfortunately, Sibyl forgets to add any stipulation for eternal youth and quickly regrets her request for an extended life when her youth fades rapidly.

The colors used by Turner, along with the crumbling cityscape in the background, create the sense of decay and aging. The golden light cast over the entire scene evokes a sense of the impending sunset and nighttime. Turner's commentary on aging and decay comes as a response to the futile effort made by Romantic art to preserve and idolize political and cultural figures and ideals. Many political figures sought to immortalize themselves in stone and on canvas. These attempts to last forever often proved as ineffective and disastrous as Sibyl's deal with Apollo.


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Souls Aflame: The Burning of the Houses of Parliament

J.M.W. Turner
The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, J.M.W. Turner, 1935
Souls Aflame : Fire in Art

Curated By LIBBY ROHR

The Burning of the Houses of Parliament has been my favorite painting since I first saw it earlier in the year. There’s something about the violent streaks of fire and the shadows of the silhouettes against the inferno that keeps me from pulling away. The gold in this painting captivates me, as if the flame itself were a living expression of the precious metal. Even in the obvious tragedy of this scene, there’s something wild and freeing in how Turner portrays it, taking over the canvas and ripping across the sky and the water, untouchable. The shadow of the long gone Houses of Parliament looks so small in comparison with the sheer power of the flame. It imposes a sense of how small society is in comparison with the natural world. This force that we often feel has so much influence over our lives could be burned away in an instant.

Turner, uncontested as the most exciting British painter, was famous for his intense landscapes such as this one. His works were created in as violent a style as they come across, with thick swashes of paint and scraping edges. Forged literally in his blood, sweat, and tears, there is no painting that could convey the passion of an inferno better than a Turner, and therefore no better way to end this collection.  Split in half by the horizon, I love the way the fire reflects in the water. Obsessed with  natural disasters, this work is incredibly characteristic of Turner's powerful style. The fire consumes the whole painting, even leaving the darkness of smoke to hover around the edges of this work. One of Turner's greatest gifts is to turn this chaos into stunning beauty. Like the El Greco work I began with, the flame glows and shimmers throughout the work, unconfined and free. It touches the soul the way art is made to.

I don’t look at this work and feel helpless, I feel powerful. Yes, the figures and buildings are small and silhouetted, and I’m sure I’m supposed to relate to them, but I don’t. Looking at the violent brush strokes, I feel pulled to be part of the fire. I feel a rush of rebellion inside myself and the part of me that’s felt the desire to fight back against the status quo since I was in grade school. When I stare at this painting, I take it as a call to change the world because through that fire - be it literal or a metaphor for passion - can tear down in an instant. In an instant, nothing is the same.
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Venice, Looking East from the Guidecca, Sunrise

J.M.W. Turner

J.M.W. Turner, Venice, Looking East from the Guidecca, Sunrise, 1819

BY REID GUEMMER

"You throw the sand against the wind 
And the wind blows it back again 

And every sand becomes a Gem 
Reflected in the beams divine."
          "Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau," William Blake 

You’re looking to the horizon of Venice, the morning cool is slowly disappearing as the sun rises. This is the place for new opportunities. 

Venice, Looking East from the Guidecca was completed in 1819. A year afterwards Turner began experimenting much more with mixing watercolors. There was a series of paintings including one titled “color beginnings,”, that all looked very similar and shared many of the same techniques used in the creation of Venice, Looking East from Guidecca, Sunrise. What you’re seeing is the view of Venice from Guidecca, an island south of Venice home to the original Venetian ghetto. Whether Turner realized it or not the sunrise in Venice, Looking East from the Guidecca, Sunrise represented more than a sense of hope and new beginning for the people of Guidecca, but it marked the beginning of a new style for himself. 

The distant city has clear, definite details. The closer the object is in view the hazier it becomes, showing the morning fog and dew slowly disappearing as the sunrises and a new day begins. In the viewer’s main focus is a boat painted in a blood red with brown staining at the bottoms. The off shade of red along with the brown splotches seem look like blood, perhaps representing what life used to be like for the people of Guidecca. Although as shades of yellow and orange creep into the painting and frame the city, the painting feels calm and soothes you.
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Yacht Approaching the Coast

Ellie Schneider



J.M.W Turner, Yacht Approaching the Coast, 1845
BY ELLIE SCHNEIDER

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies:
And all that’s the best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies
         “She Walks in Beauty” by Lord Byron

William Turner, the “painter of light,” started painting Yacht Approaching the Coast the same year as he completed his most famous work, the Slave Ship. He completed the work just six years before his death, so it does not look like the classic English landscape painting that his earlier paintings appeared to be. Like his later works, Yacht contains unrecognizable figures. Some described his later works as “fantastic puzzles” of color and light. In Yacht he plays with yellows and oranges as well as light and reflection in the water. While the painting appears happy, most of his later works came from a depressed place as his father, and former studio aid, died. His father’s death made a profound impact on his later works. His grief can be seen through his use of light, because the significance of the light was his way of viewing G-d’s spirit and heaven. While many works focus on ships or shipwrecks, when I look at Yacht, I am immediately drawn to the bright light. Even when I try to look at other parts of the painting, I am drawn back to the center of the light. It engulfs me and makes me feel warm and light.

Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” caught my eye because it describes lightness and darkness, which Turner plays with in his works, as well as, the “tender light which heaven to gaudy day denies” which made me think of the light as G-d’s spirit as Turner had. Also, I found the painting to be pleasant and I felt similarly when reading the poem. They both made me feel warm and calm.

I also enjoy the painting on its own. I like the playfulness of the light and reflection, but it also feels a little violent with the dark ships on bottom. I think of  Yacht is when I am driving and I see an extremely bright sunset, but there is a cloud just blocking the sun from burning my eyes and instead the light shines in every other direction. I feel that Turner painted the sun so we are not directly his by the wonderful sunlight, but it is spread throughout nature and the rest of the painting. Going back to the idea that the light is G-d’s spirit, once way to view the light in this painting is that the viewer will not be touched by G-d’s spirit but the water and the rest of nature in the painting will and that G-d is working to spread himself in all directions. Another way to view it is that the cloud is blocking the sun from its full brightness and so we cannot get close enough to G-d’s spirit until we ascend to heaven.

When this project was assigned, I knew that I was going to write about Turner, because I like his color palette and style. Everything morphs together and things can be viewed in so many different ways. I enjoy looking and trying to piece together his “fantastic puzzles."
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Mount Vesuvius in Eruption

J.M.W. Turner
J.M.W. Turner, Mount Vesuvius in Eruption, 1817
By MADLELINE VASQUEZ 

Joseph Mallord William Turner, an English artist of the Romantic era, was known for his contribution to beautiful landscapes and historical implementation tied into one. In a way, he was one of the first artists to make an impact on the world of Impressionism. His use of color and light allowed people to see the contrasting elements within his works of art and is known as “The Painter of Light.”Through light and dark colors, the mood of the painting is easily displayed. Through his exquisite oil and watercolor paintings, as his years of work progressed, the less clear the images in his paintings became. His fascination with the world, aspects of humanity, and God, are all presented in his paintings.

In Mount Vesuvius in Eruption, Turner creates a wonderful composition of beauty and catastrophe, just like how life is. The idea behind this painting all began when he began to study other artist works and the knowledge of volcanoes. He did not actually visit Mount Vesuvius until 1819, two years after the the painting was exhibited. The vision of the eruption of a volcano appealed to Turner and the transcendence behind the concept of everyday life. He never actually witnessed an eruption occur, but painted what he thought it would look like. The effect of using bright light colors, such as white, mixed with darker hues, the dramatic image of the volcano erupting is shown. With the choice of variations of orange, red, yellow, and brown, the audience is able to see the intensity behind the action going on in the painting.


William Wordsworth’s poem, "Mutability," not only encapsulates Turner’s painting of Mount Vesuvius, but also his perspective on the world. Mutability discusses how everything in nature eventually will fail and be destroyed completely in the end. Overtime, everything changes. Nothing ever stays the same no matter the circumstance whether it’s subtle or immense. The use of music is important to the poem because the references “melancholy chime” and “high to low, along a scale” in relation to “avarice” and crime,” which shows how something depressing and unpleasing can be beautiful in its own way. This relates to Mount Vesuvius in Eruption because it presents how something in nature that is so magnificent and awe worthy eventually gets demolished by a natural occurrence in nature.

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The Blue Rigi Lake of Lucerne at Sunrise

J.M.W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Blue Rigi of Lucerne at Sunrise, 1842 

By MEGAN GANNON

Within Turner’s work he attempts to rationalize the emotions that consume us. To document the struggle of humanity with his inconsistent brush strokes and captivating colors. His use of reflection between the sky and lake not only creates nice composition but reminds the viewer to stay objective.

Initially I saw Turner as another artist on our slide test, but as flipped through his paintings I felt a connection with The Blue Rigi Lake of Lucerne at Sunrise. Something about the looming blue mass in the center sucked me in. The Rothko Effect. The blue tones appear simplistic but spew out an almost hypnotizing aura.

The mass, perhaps a mountain, represents human emotion. Turner makes the lines rough yet delicate to capture the mutability of feeling. Upon staring into the painting or more accurately as I felt the painting gazing back at me, I felt a loss. I felt grief. A grief best described in "Dejection: An Ode: by Samuel Taylor Coleridge “A Grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief.”

Turner captures the grief that comes and goes like the ripples of the lake. I don’t see Trevor’s death in the blue tones. Instead I see his life in the golden reflection of the lake and the rising sun. Reminding me death does not have to be morbid or depressing.

Romanticism represents a connection with nature and emotion. Turner’s painting helped me to reconnect with Trevor. Remember bits and pieces of him that I was sure I had forgotten.

The Blue Rigi Lake of Lucerne at Sunrise sparks something inside of you. Something you may want to ignore or forget, but Turner won’t let you escape. Turner forces you to feel..which sometimes is the hardest thing to do.








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Rain, Steam, and Speed

Anirudh Vadlamani

J.M.W. Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway, 1844
BY ANIRUDH VADLAMANI

Imagine you were dropped onto a flat plain. There is a large gorge, and in it is a river that sits around twenty to thirty feet below you. Falling in would need immediate death. However, among many things concerning the beauty of the scenery, among them is clarity. You see the land on the other side of the gorge very clearly. Fast forward forty years. The two separate land masses are joined by a massive bridge with tracks extending both ways beyond the eye can see. The once clear air is filled with smog. All that is visible now is the dark outline of the bridge and the hard, defined lines of the new train, emerging from the darkness.

Standing at three feet by four feet, the water color portrait was one in a series of landscapes. Each of the series was set in a different location in nature and contains some allusion to the Industrial Revolution, a technological boom which saw an increase in ease of living. For Turner in particular, he used the new means of travel as still-lifes in these portraits. In this painting in particular, all the viewer can see upon first glance is the train and the smog excreted from the train. Upon further viewership, one can see the land mass beyond the bridge as well as the beautiful blue water and sky which lies below it and above it.

Turner's friends, or who he thought were his friends, called this series of paintings "yellow fever" because of his almost obsession with the color yellow. The color, as expressed by the smog in this particular one, dominates this series of paintings. The more and more you look at it, the more obscure everything becomes. Another major theme of this series was the industrial revolution. Turner was excited by the influx of new technology. In this painting in particular, Turner places a heavy emphasis on his fascination with the new technology, as it blurs and smears the surroundings. It also focuses only on the bright hue of the river readily visible alongside the train.

While I could simply say "What the Hammer" and say that this particular painting was an open letter of appreciation for locomotion (depicting one of the first forms of facilitated transportation), I will go a step further. I say, "What the anvil? what dread grasp,/Dare its deadly terrors clasp!" In my opinion, this painting is not an ode to the train, it is a warning. While today, nobody is surprised to hear that emissions from coal erodes the ozone, there was no scientific evidence of the consequence back in 1840. Turner foresaw the consequence of such an ease in movement. While he didn't know quite know what that consequence was, he knew it existed.






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Isolation: The Slave Ship

1840
Isolation
Solitude and Painting
Curated by Tommy Dunn

J.M.W. Turner, The Slave Ship, 1840

Slave Ship is now perhaps Turner’s most famous work. The painting contains a ship being tossed on a stormy sea as an even bigger maelstrom begins to cover up the sun. In the water we find desperate souls who are in the midst of drowning or perhaps meeting an even worse fate at the hands of the mystic sea creatures hiding in between the waves. The story behind this painting is as horrifying as the image suggests. In the 18th century, the most profitable action to take when a slave was dying was to throw him or her overboard; a slave lost at sea was worth more than a dead slave when ships made their destination. The storm itself represents a kind of divine retribution for the actions of the slave driver.


The isolation here is Turner’s own. Even at the best moments of his life, he was no social butterfly. He epitomized the idea of the eccentric artist. However, this particular painting brought public condemnation down on him like no other. Critics had a field day. They almost didn’t know which aspect of the painting to lampoon first. They ridiculed its title—the full name is Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon Coming on—as well as the nine lines of self-authored poetry that Turner chose to exhibit next to it when it was first hung as an anti-slavery painting. They criticized it for being overwrought. Overall, the painting was initially a disaster. And yet, by the end of the 19th century, it had become his masterpiece. Its brilliance became clearer once it was removed from the political firestorm raging over slavery at the time of its initial reception. All this came too late for Turner, who died virtually alone in 1851.

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Procession of Boats with Distant Smoke and Waves

J.M.W. Turner
J.M.W. Turner, Procession of Boats with Distant Smoke, Venice, 1845.

Waves 
By Robin Robertson

I have swum too far
out of my depth
and the sun has gone;

the hung weight of my legs
a plumb-line,
my fingers raw, my arms lead;

the currents pull like weed
and I am very tired
and cold, and moving out to sea.

The beach is still bright.
The children I never had
run to the edge

and back to their beautiful mother
who smiles at them, looks up
from her magazine, and waves.

Editor's Note: Students were asked to match a poem to a picture. They could do so with or without comment; they could be serious or playful, profound or goofy. We will leave it to our dear readers to make their own connections.

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Slave Ship and The Mariner's Revenge Song

J.M.W. Turner
J.M.W. Turner, Slave Ship, 1840



Every time I hear this song, I burst into a one woman musical, singing as loudly as possible while everyone within a one mile radius cover their ears. I love this song, the creepy solo the mother has, the slightly concerning amount of detail The Decemberists went into while describing how the boy should avenge his mother. Lovely, isn't it? Then again, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the dark and creepy. 

But really what I love most about this song is the story it tells. The story of a con man who takes advantage of a young boy's single mother, seducing her then taking all that they have. The son never forgave the man, especially when his mother later dies of illness. In her last moments, she beckons him to seek revenge, a raw and hate-filled revenge for what that man had done to them. He spends many years, looking and sulking, but eventually locates the man as the captain of a ship while overhearing a sailor giving confession at the church the boy works at. Immediately, he takes to sea with a privateer, his mother's voice whispering to him a reminder of what he must do in the wind. When the ship is finally located, a giant whale attacks, swallowing and demolishing both ships. Coincidentally, the boy and his target are the only two left alive, alone in the belly of a whale. Hence my favorite line, "But oh what providence! What divine intelligence! That you should survive as well as me!" Then, the lyrics stop, and you're only left with an increasing instrumental tempo, but you know exactly what's happening.

That same turbulent, treacherous noise can be found in Turner's Slave Ship. Rather than the story of a young man's revenge, Turner retells how the cruel captain of a slave ship  threw slaves he suspected of being diseased into the sea, chained and alive. His reason? Money. The captain would not have been paid if slaves showed up dead, but would be given something if his human cargo had been "lost at sea." Thus, when disease inevitably broke out, he decided that it would be more fiscally responsible to throw anyone with sniffles overboard. Turner added some more monsters to the painting. What I can only assume are piranhas gnaw at a chained leg, while fish-monsters like the ones in the song close in on the abandoned slaves. It's gut wrenching and horrible, but that was the point. To capture your attention and tie your stomach into a knot so that you would never forget what true evil looks like. Turner was an abolitionist later in his life, and painted Slave Ship as a protest to such a monstrous institution. No one was ever convicted for the crime, and while the ghosts of the slaves the captain had thrown over board never met him in dark alley or the belly of a whale, I like to think that this is Turner's own form of revenge. A dish best served cold and covered in paint.

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Turner's Yellow Fever

J.M.W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Harbor of Dieppe, 1820s

Turner traveled to Italy for the first time in 1819 and returned in 1820. What began as a trip to collect inspiration in sketchbooks and watercolors for later commissions, turned into something quite unexpected. Turner contracted Yellow Fever, or rather, an obsession with the color yellow, as deemed by the English art viewers (a bit harsh, but it proved a point). Turner’s The Harbor of Dieppe had potential; it has his signature sky, beautiful boats and mirror like water, but it was yellow. Not the yellow that graces the sky during a sunrise or sunset, but a pure yellow tint across the canvas. Yellow seems to emanate from the center of the painting, dispersing its hue across the canvas, and critics did not like it. They had found the symptom of Turner’s artistic Yellow Fever, but now they had to derive its cause and suggest a treatment. Author Barry Venning explains that the critics claimed this “intensification of… colour… as a response to [Turner's] experience of Italy and its light.”  Critics were a bit more accepting of Turner’s color palate when he painted Italy, but he had transferred the palate to scenes of northern Europe, and “contemporaries were taken aback.”

The critics prescribed the treatment: no more yellow. And did Turner go to the pharmacy and pick up
Turner, Angel Standing in the Sun, 1846
his prescription? Quite the opposite, actually. Turner added more yellow, increasingly becoming more dependent on the hue. He didn’t immediately begin painting with exorbitant amounts of yellow, but rather gradually added more. Maybe this was an attempt to adjust the viewers to the specific color, or maybe Turner was experimenting with the color himself, not yet sure how it affected him, but nevertheless, yellow pursued. In paintings such as Angel Standing in the Sun and Light & Color (Goethe’s Theory): Morning after the Deluge, Moses Writing the Book of Genesis Exhib. at Royal Acad., both painted after The Harbor of Dieppe, the presence of yellow is striking. Turner blends the yellow with the darker palate in some areas, but then leaves spots of yellow that immediately catch your eye. In Chichester Canal, also painted after The Harbor of Dieppe, Turner tints the entire canvas an eerie yellow, resembling his style in The Harbor of Dieppe. Both paintings appear to have a central source of yellow light, a spot that shines brighter than the others, but the entire painting emanates a yellow hue as well.  

Turner, Chichester Canal, 1830-1
The yellow in his paintings varied in darkness, shading and concentration, some only having specks of yellow while others practically consisted of a solely yellow canvas. Turner’s works such as Wreckers – Coast of Northumberland, with a Steam-Boat Assisting a Ship off Shore, and Landscape with river and a bay in the far background contain large portions of yellow with slight accents of other colors, as Turner slowly developed more confidence with the color that was beginning to be coined to his name. Sunrise with a Sea Monster depicts Turner’s culmination of the yellow canvas. From a distance, the piece appears to be practically blank, just strangely tinted a faint yellow, but the closer one gets, the clearer the painting becomes.What at first seems to be two, maybe three shades of yellow mixed
Turner, Sunrise with a Sea Monster, 1840-5
with tan turns into many more strokes of different shades, all melding into one to create a bleak, slightly distressing artwork, complete with the remnants of a nightmarish sea monster lurking in the canvas. The viewer's eyes trace the shades of yellow, attempting to put together some kind of scenery around the monster, but to no avail. This painting’s only link to The Harbor of Dieppe is the color; nothing else is similar. No Turneresque sky, no mirror like water...just yellow
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Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps

J.M.W. Turner
J.M.W. Turner,  Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps, 1812

Turner’s works have always been an experience to look at. Yes, I said experience, because of the daring colorist he was, the raw, emotional depiction of nature, and the brilliant handling of light, as well as the historical importance he raised through art—all summed up on one single canvas. Although the use of light and color might be compared to the more vibrant and innovative Impressionist style, we must keep in mind that Turner came before the salon de refuses, some may even argue that Turner’s works inspired the Impressionists. The emotional approach to painting, choosing colors based on intuitive feelings rather than direct transcription of actual colors, is undoubtedly unprecedented in Turner’s years.

Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps serves as a great example of Turner’s emotional take on nature. Romanticism, in every aspect of the arts, painting, music, literature, and poetry, all stressed the glory and beauty of nature. Rather than John Constable’s idyllic pictures of the British country side, Turner chose to capture the awe-inspiring power of the natural world. In Snow Storm, our eyes are fixated upon the swirling vortex of snow and wind. The storm is so strong that the figures of Hannibal’s soldiers fighting in the foreground seem fairly insignificant. We can barely spot Hannibal, the title figure of the painting, riding an elephant in the far center. The heart of the picture is the black curving storm that threatens to swallow not only Hannibal and his troopers, but even the sun itself. 

So that’s why I find dauntingly beautiful about Turner’s oceans. We rarely find such intense light shining through pure, dominating dark colors and such powerful water splashing through the sky. Was it his spit, or even sharp fingernails? Perhaps. It was more, maybe, of Turner’s keen eye and intuitive sense towards nature.

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