Journal to a Muse

JMW Turner (1775-1851) at the DMA

Today I gave myself a LONG artist's date at the art museum. All the artists I knew were making BIG fusses about this Turner exhibit. The Tate, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The National Gallery of Art (DC) and National Gallery (London) had all lent pieces so that a wide spectrum of his style could be seen in one place.
I had read about him in advance in The Turner Book: He was a sloppy fellow, exuded confidence, self-promoted and worked hard. What I had missed was his appellation as The First Impressionist.

And then there's the difference between an image in a book that is maybe 5 x 7 inches, and a canvas in front of you that is maybe 7 x 9 FEET.

170 x 241 inches = 14 feet by 20. I don't know about you, but that's bigger than the floor area of most of the bedrooms in my house. IT IS BIG. And you can see the brush strokes, which are even interesting when you are so close up you don't know whether they are representing sky, waves or clouds (but which are magical when you discover you are looking at three or four sailors with knit caps, beards and chapped faces. When you are too far away to see the brush-strokes, you see shapes, contrasts, lights, darks, atmosphere (ALWAYS atmosphere) as clearly as if you were there.
Now I have been known to take no-flash photographs in museums, but I didn't push it this morning. Instead, I made thumbnail sketches of what most appealed to me.
Shipwreck would work as an abstract. Lights and dark, pale and intense, simple and complex... Oh, and those three tiny triangles of red amongst SO much gray green!
As was the custom, Turner painted many scenes from history. His painting of Hannibal crossing the Alps had some historical tie in to the continuing battles the British were having with Napoleon. This painting mostly had lots of swirling weather and atmosphere, with only the tiniest elephant silhouette as the clue to the story. In another mammoth (!) painting, the elephant was not more than 1/2 inch square. I indicated it with the black blob to the left of the adolescent in the short ruffled skirt.
The audio narration pointed out that in the Waterloo painting Turner included a burning flare to allow for the illumination of the many mangled and bloody bodies in the left central foreground. Estimates say between 50,000 and 74,000 were killed. The emotional impact is heightened because surviving women folk are shown sorting through the battle ground and grimacing painfully at the viewer.


His largest painting and only Royal Commission is of the Battle of Trafalgar, the decisive naval battle in which Admiral Nelson and the British navy defeated the combined forces of France and Spain. The scale of my drawing is off. It was at least 20 feet tall and 30 feet wide.


As it turns out, I liked the impressionistic paintings best. When he arrived in Italy, he apparently carried a sketch book and did watercolors in his pension. There is a watercolor of the Castle D'Oro in Naples that seemed dashed off... but it is perfect. I may go back to the museum for a copy of Turner's Painting Techniques . I'd love to have Turner in Venice (which is mostly watercolors) but it is apparently out of print and goes for $100-$600 depending on the binding and edition. Perhaps the Tate will reprint it. Given the state of the dollar, $100 may not be far off. . In the Techniques book, it says he used a purple toned ocher color that was called "caput mortuum." do you think it is the color people turn when they are dead/caput?
I practiced my life drawing skills when this woman stood between me and the Castle D'Oro!
Below is the oil painting of the Burning of the Houses of Parliament. I didn't care for the "final" work as much as I liked a series of watercolor studies he did. The audio tour pointed out his use of contrast again: night/fire, hot/cold, focused and smokey.

I drew outlines of the shapes of the colors (mostly just fiery orange and dark, smoky blue) and then colored them in with wcp's and a niji brush. Again, they could work as abstracts!!

Can you tell I had a great time?