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The Life and Masterworks
of J.M.W. Turner
Eric Shanes
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Front cover illustration:
AStorm (Shipwreck), 1823.
Watercolour on white paper, 43.4 x 63.2 cm.
The British Museum, London, U.K.
Title page:
Self-Portrait, c. 1798.
Oil on canvas, 74.5 x 58.5 cm.
Turner Bequest, Tate Britain, London, U.K.
Back cover illustration:
MARXBOURG and BRUGBERG on the RHINE, 1820.
Watercolour on white paper, 29.1 x 45.8 cm.
The British Museum, London, U.K.
Text: Eric Shanes
Layout:
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© Parkstone Press International, New York, USA
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CREDITS
© The Trustees of the British Museum, p. 11, 14, 17, 22, 42, 49, 107, 129, 131, 134, 141, 148,
159, 174, 175, 178, 197, 199, 218 and cover
Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford, p. 99, 142, 143
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK, p. 57
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, USA, p. 64, 144, 149, 160
Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, UK, p. 58, 172, 236
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland
Photo © the National Gallery of Ireland, p. 117
Photo © National Museums Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery, p. 130, 173
Royal Academy of Arts, London, p. 86
© Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museum, p. 95, 186, 187
Tate Britain, p. 3, 18, 30, 33, 38, 41, 45, 54, 61, 62, 67, 68, 76, 89, 100, 103, 111, 115, 116,
122, 124, 127, 137, 147, 152, 153, 155, 163, 164, 170, 177, 184, 185, 192, 195, 196,
201, 202, 215, 216, 224, 226, 228, 241
Tate Gallery, p. 50
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, p. 25, 83, 240
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the
permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyright
on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers. Despite intensive research, it has
not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case we would
appreciate notification.
ISBN: 978-1-78042-959-5
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For two avid Turner admirers,
Marilyn and Jeremy Roberts,
with much love
This book is a revised, expanded and updated fourth edition of Turner/The Masterworks by Eric Shanes
which was first published in London in 1990.
Note to the Reader: Throughout this book Turner’s original titles have been used for his paintings
and watercolours, even where the spellings of names and words in those titles may differ from
modern ones, or even from each other. Similarly, all original eighteenth or nineteenth-century
spellings have been given below without the addition of the word ‘sic’. Short references to literature
within the text allude to full citations in the Bibliography. The abbreviation “RA” stands for either
Royal Academy or Royal Academician (depending on context), “ARA” for Associate Royal
Academician and “PRA” for President of the Royal Academy. "TB" denotes works in the Turner
Bequest, the vast holding of the painter's output in the collection of Tate Britain, London. Roman
Numerals appearing after TB provide the Inventory numbers of sketchbooks or individual works
within that bequest.
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Contents
Preface 9
The Life 15
The Masterworks 63
The Archbishop’s Palace, Lambeth
The Pantheon, the morning after the fire
Tom Tower, Christ Church, Oxford
Interior of King John’s Palace, Eltham
St Anselm’s Chapel, with part of Thomas-à-Beckets Crown, Canterbury Cathedral
Welsh Bridge at Shrewsbury
Fishermen at Sea
Woolverhampton, Staffordshire
Trancept of Ewenny Priory, Glamorganshire
The Dormitory and Transcept of Fountain’s Abbey – Evening
Warkworth Castle, Northumberland – thunder storm approaching at sunset
The Chapter House, Salisbury Cathedral
Dolbadern Castle, North Wales
Caernarvon Castle, North Wales
Dutch Boats in a Gale: Fishermen Endeavouring to put their Fish on Board
Kilchern Castle, with the Cruchan Ben mountains, Scotland: Noon
Interior of Salisbury Cathedral, looking towards the North Transept
Calais Pier, with French Poissards preparing for Sea: an English Packet arriving
Fall of the Reichenbach, in the valley of Oberhasli, Switzerland
The Shipwreck
Lake of Geneva, with Mont Blanc from the Lake
The Thames near Walton Bridges
Sun rising through Vapour; Fishermen cleaning and selling Fish
Pope’s Villa at Twickenham
Sheerness as seen from the Nore
Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire
Battle Abbey
The Fall of an Avalanche in the Grisons
Weymouth, Dorsetshire
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps
Ivy Bridge, Devonshire
The Mew Stone at the Entrance of Plymouth Sound
Mer de Glace, in the valley of Chamouni, Switzerland
The Devil’s Bridge, St Gothard
Crossing the Brook
The Battle of Fort Rock, Val d’Aoste, Piedmont, 1796
Mont Blanc from Fort Roch, Val d’Aosta
Dido building Carthage; or, the Rise of the Cathaginian Empire
The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire
The Vale of Ashburnham
Wycliffe, near Rokeby
Crook of Lune, looking towards Hornby Castle
Simmer Lake, near Askrig
Mount Vesuvius in Eruption
The Field of Waterloo
Dort, or Dordrecht, the Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam becalmed
Weathercote Cave when half filled with water
First-Rate, taking in stores
Loss of an East Indiaman
Borthwick Castle
England: Richmond Hill on the Prince Regent’s Birthday
MARXBOURG and BRUGBERG on the RHINE
Passage of Mont Cenis
More Park, near Watford, on the River Colne
Norham Castle, on the River Tweed
Dover Castle
AStorm (Shipwreck)
Roslin Castle
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Rye, Sussex
Totnes, on the River Dart
Boscastle, Cornwall
The Battle of Trafalgar
Rise of the River Stour at Stourhead
Grenoble Bridge
Portsmouth
Richmond Hill
Bolton Abbey
Prudhoe Castle, Northumberland
Richmond Castle and Town, Yorkshire
Forum Romanum, for Mr Soane’s Museum
Lancaster Sands
The Seat of William Moffatt Esq., at Mortlake, Early (Summer’s) Morning
Mortlake Terrace, the Seat of William Moffatt, Esq. Summer’s Evening
Orfordness
Petworth Park: Tillington Church in the Distance
Salisbury, from Old Sarum Intrenchment
Stonehenge
Ulysees deriding Polyphemus - Homer’s Odyssey
Stoneyhurst College, Lancashire
Funeral of Sir Thomas Lawrence, a sketch from memory
Northampton, Northamptonshire
Traitor’s Gate, Tower of London
Scio (Fontana de Melek, Mehmet Pasha)
Loch Coriskin
Mouth of the Seine, Quille-Bœuf
The Golden Bough
Temple of Minerva Sunias, Cape Colonna
Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute
The Burning of the House of Lords and Commons, 16th October 1834
Flint Castle, North Wales
Snow Storm, Avalanche and Inundation – a Scene in the Upper Part of Val d’Aousta, Piedmont
Modern Italy – The Pifferari
The Fighting ‘Temeraire’, tugged to her Last Berth to be broken up
Ancient Rome: Agrippina landing with the Ashes of Germanicus
Venice: the Bridge of Sighs
Venice: AStorm in the Piazzetta
Venice: the Grand Canal looking towards the Dogana
Heidelberg, with a rainbow
Heidelberg: sunset
Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying – Typhon coming on
The Lake of Geneva with the Dent d’Oche: tending the vines
Lake Lucerne: the Bay of Uri from above Brunnen
The Blue Rigi: Lake Lucerne, sunrise
The Red Rigi: Lake of Lucerne, sunset
Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth making signals in Shallow Water, and going by the Lead.
The Pass of Faido
Rain, Steam, and Speed – the Great Western Railway
Whalers
The Clyde
Inverary Pier. Loch Fyne. Morning
The Lungerer See, Switzerland
The Lauerzersee, with the Mythens
Yacht approaching the Coast
Turner and his Critics 242
Selected Bibliography 248
Chronology 250
Index of Illustrations 252
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Preface
W e gaze across a vast lake surrounded by huge, gleaming mountains. In the distance
a heavy storm has moved off, leaving in its wake an atmosphere brimming with
moisture and a world beginning to steam in the brilliant dawn sunshine. Not far
away a group of travellers which has been drenched by the storm while out on the waters is
alighting from a small ferry boat, their belongings and cargo strewn across the beach. On the right
a girl sniffles into a handkerchief, possibly crying over the spilt milk that lies before her but more
probably because her recent, chillingly damp experience has given her a head cold. Further off
more boats approach, while near the very tip of the headland in the far distance to the right can
just be made out the chapel first created in 1388 and rebuilt in 1638 that was dedicated to the
memory of the Swiss fighter for liberty, William Tell.
Such is the immediacy of the image that one might be forgiven for thinking that it was made on the
spot but that was certainly not the case. Instead, it was conjured forth from a very slight pencil
drawing made by the lakeside, plus an amalgam of memories and observations that were not
necessarily gleaned at this place. Above all it stemmed from an imagination that was powerful,
passionate and prodigious. Nobody knows exactly when Joseph Mallord William Turner created
Lake of Lucerne, from the landing place at Fluelen, looking towards Bauen and Tell’s chapel,
Switzerland but it probably dates from around 1810, and thus some eight years after the twenty-
seven year old artist had visited Switzerland. The work was developed in the medium of
watercolour, a vehicle that before Turner had usually been employed far less expressively to
communicate the dry facts about a place and its occupants. Because of the large size of the
drawing, plus its combination of spatial breadth, intricate detail and wide tonal range, it might
easily be mistaken for an oil painting. Such a misapprehension would only be intensified by the
ornate gold frame that first enclosed the image and which has remained around it ever since. Turner
certainly intended to mislead us in this way.
Would anyone need to be told that The Lake of Lucerne, from the landing place at Fluelenis a work
of art? Does it not inherently define what constitutes such an object? After all, an image of this
quality could not have been made by just anyone. Clearly it must have been formed by a uniquely
endowed individual possessed of outstanding visionary powers, a high degree of insight into the
appearances and behaviour of the natural world (which of course includes our own species), a total
command of pictorial language, an absolute rule over the medium chosen for its creation and, not
least of all, a feeling for both enormous breadth and tiny detail, the latter of which was amassed by
means of an extraordinary degree of patience. In an age like our own, when cultural, social and
political levelling and relativism (not to mention critical cowardice) permits anything from a urinal
to an empty room, some cuttings of pubic hair or an act of self-mutilation to constitute “a work of J.M.W. Turner,
art”, a watercolour like the Lake of Lucerne, from the landing place at Fluelen still makes it clear Lake of Lucerne, from the landing place at
that a true work of art presents us with something superhuman, exceptional and magical. Why these Fluelen, looking towards Bauen and Tell’s chapel,
three things? Because any outstanding dramatic, musical, literary or visual work invariably draws Switzerland, signed on barrel to right JMWT,
upon powers far beyond our own to lift us onto a plane that is more imaginatively powerful, c. 1810, exhibited R.A. 1815, watercolour over
emotionally thrilling and intellectually stimulating than the mundane one we normally occupy. Like pencil with scratching-out, stopping-out and
many of Turner’s other works, Lake of Lucerne, from the landing place at Fluelenelevates us to that gum arabic in original frame, 66 x 100 cm
level most ardently and easily. (26 x 39 inches), Private Collection.
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Turner: Preface
It was with watercolours demonstrating exceptional qualities that Turner first attracted public attention
in the early 1790s, before he had yet turned twenty. As time went on, and as he developed his abilities
as an exceptional oil painter, draughtsman and printmaker as well as a watercolourist, so too
appreciation of his works flourished, to the extent that by 1815, the very year in which Lake of Lucerne,
from the landing place at Fluelen was first seen publicly, an anonymous writer could term the artist
“The First Genius of the Day”. In an age of creative giants such as Beethoven, Schubert, Goethe, Byron,
Keats, Delacroix et al., that was quite some compliment. Certainly it was not an overblown honour, for
Turner does stand tall within such company. Moreover, his popularity has rarely diminished, even if his
prices at auction did somewhat decrease between the 1920s and the 1960s. However, since then they
have more than bounced back, to the extent that today his works regularly elicit huge prices at auction
(as can be witnessed with the Lake of Lucerne, from the landing place at Fluelen, which fetched almost
two million pounds when sold in London in July 2005). And beyond the marketplace there are vast
numbers of art lovers whose admiration for Turner only grows by leaps and bounds. They simply cannot
have too much of him. In 2000-2001 the present writer organised an exhibition of many of Turner’s
finest watercolours at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in order to commemorate the 150th
anniversary of the painter’s death in 1851. Almost 200,000 people flocked to the show during its
eleven-week run; at peak times it could take up to four hours of patient standing in line to obtain entry.
Moreover, an even more striking assertion of Turner’s popularity was provided early in 2007 when Tate
Britain publicly appealed for funds to purchase the 1842 watercolour The Blue Rigi: Lake Lucerne,
sunrisethat is reproduced on page 226 below. Of the £4,900,000 sterling that the museum needed for
the acquisition to go through, £300,000 was sought directly from the public. Within just five weeks,
admirers of Turner both within and beyond British shores had sent in almost double that sum in a
ringing endorsement of the need to purchase such a drawing for a major public collection. Clearly, a
great many people still recognise a wonderful work of art when they see one, and feel it belongs to
them, rather than to some rich private collector.
Yet this is not to say that the acute responsiveness to Turner has not been without its problems. Even
in the artist’s own day there were many who could not stomach his daring. During the 1800s and
1810s he was severely criticised for his use of white, so much so that both he and other painters
who followed directly in his footsteps were dubbed “the white painters”. Moreover, from the 1820s
onwards the artist’s predilection for yellow led to many jokes and snide remarks being made in the
newspapers about his pictures. When Turner combined intense yellows with fierce reds, blues and
greens, journalistic comparisons abounded between his paintings and food, particularly scrambled
eggs and salads. Then there was Turner’s dissolution of form within areas of intense light (which, in
his late works, often took over entire images). Many members of a public that was becoming
increasingly habituated to the intense verisimilitude of Pre-Raphaelite painting and/or Victorian
bourgeois realism could not comprehend what was going on in a late-Turner canvas or watercolour.
Even collectors who had previously lined up to purchase the latter kind of works found many of the
artist’s late Swiss drawings difficult to understand and wouldn’t buy them.
Such problems of visual comprehension could be greatly compounded by Turner’s lifelong
construction of covert meanings. Only an entire book given over to this subject (such as the present
writer’s 1990 publication, Turner’s Human Landscape) could even begin to do it justice. But it will
J.M.W. Turner, suffice here to state that for Turner, landscape painting was a vehicle for expressing his responses to the
The Founder’s Tower, Magdalen College, Oxford, immense variety of human experience, not just a means of stating his recognition that the world around
1793, watercolour, 35.7 x 26.3 cm, us is a beautiful or a terrifying place. One way of doing that was to resort to associationism, the creation
The British Museum, London, U.K. of chains of ideas by means of visual linkage, metaphor, simile and punning. Because Turner was
10
