RIESGOS DE LA EXPOSICIÓN

Joseph M.W. Turner (1775–1851) was among the most original of nineteenth-century landscape painters. Inspired by Burke’s Sublime, Turner created evocative visual equivalents for physical and perceptual experiences in nature. Although Turner studied at the Royal Academy from 1789 to 1793, he also enjoyed sketching outdoors and during his career made hiking excursions to England, Wales, Italy, France, and Switzerland. In late eighteenth-century Britain, topographical painting was in high demand because landowners wanted portraits of their property, as well as of their families and pets. Topographical painting was Turner’s bread-and-butter for much of his career, just as portraiture was for Goya, David, and Ingres. By 1796, when Turner VXEPLWWHGKLVÀUVWRLOSDLQWLQJWRWKH5$Fishermen at Sea (Tate, London), he had a lucrative career as a topographical painter, and in 1799, he was the youngest member ever elected to the RA.

Turner was a savvy businessman in a world where patronage from church and state was waning. In addition to topographical painting, Turner opened a gallery, operated by his father in his London home. There Turner sold watercolors, oil paintings, and prints. Turner further supplemented his income from 1807 until 1837 by lecturing at the RA and had a circle of loyal patrons, some of whom owned as many as 200 of his works. These patrons included the liberal politician Walter Fawkes, the eccentric millionaire William Beckford, and George Wyndham, Third Earl of Egremont.

7XUQHUNHSWDKLJKSXEOLFSURÀOHE\H[KLELWLQJUHJXODUO\DWWKH5$DQGVLQFH

history painting continued as the most prestigious painting category, Turner submitted landscapes with historical motifs. He showed Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps (Figure 5.7) at the 1812 RA exhibition. Like Benjamin West, Turner

went to Paris in 1802 and visited nearby Versailles. There, he saw David’s Napoleon at the St Bernard Pass (Figure 3.5) with Hannibal’s name inscribed on a rock, which may have inspired Turner. Snow Storm also incorporated another layer of meaning:

DZDUQLQJWR%ULWDLQDERXWWKHPHQDFHSRVHGE\1DSROHRQZKRP7XUQHULGHQWLÀHG

with Hannibal. The scene itself was motivated by a storm Turner witnessed in 1810.

At that time he remarked to his host: “in two years you will see this again, and call it ‘Hannibal Crossing the Alps!’” (Walker 1976: 88). By the time Snow Storm was exhibited in Spring 1812, the United States had declared war on Britain, giving the foreground scene of violent pillaging particular relevance to a Britain threatened from enemies east and west.

7KH UDGLFDOO\ LQQRYDWLYH FKDUDFWHU RI  WKLV 7XUQHU·V ÀUVW VZLUOLQJ YRUWH[

composition, becomes clear when compared with contemporaneous landscapes by Constable, Koch, or Valenciennes. Turner wanted to convey the turbulence of the 1810 storm in such a way that his audience would understand the artist’s on-the-spot experience. To accomplish this, Turner abandoned Poussin’s formula—designed to represent an ideal world—in favor of a wild, chaotic composition in which the forces of nature dwarf human activity. Instead of the minute, brushless detail favored by academic artists, Turner painted thickly and coarsely in a kind of painterly equivalent to meteorological conditions. The result was an apocalyptic vision that some viewers thought evoked the end of the world. To Delacroix, this kind of originality constituted JHQLXV ZKLFK KH GHÀQHG DV ´WKDW GHOLFDF\ RI  WKH RUJDQV WKDW PDNHV RQH VHH ZKDW

others do not, and which makes one see in a different way” (Delacroix 1938: 28).

An avid traveler, Turner’s life was transformed by the rapid spread of railroads, developed to expedite transportation of goods and raw materials. Railroads enabled industrialization and urbanization to proceed at the dizzying pace they did during the nineteenth century. The mechanized speed associated with modernity came via the railroad. While many were exhilarated by trains, many saw drawbacks. In an 1844 letter to the editor of The Morning Post, British poet William Wordsworth complained DERXW ´WKH LQWUXVLRQ RI  D UDLOZD\ ZLWK LWV VFDULÀFDWLRQV LWV LQWHUVHFWLRQV LWV QRLV\

machinery, its smoke, and swarms of pleasure-hunters, most of them thinking that

Figure 5.7

Joseph M.W. Turner, Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps, exhibited 1812. Oil on canvas, 146 × 238 cm (4 ft 9 in × 7 ft 9 in).

Tate, London.

To compare scholarly interpretations of Snow Storm go to www.

routledge.com/textbooks/

facos

WKH\GRQRWÁ\IDVWHQRXJKWKURXJKWKHFRXQWU\>VLGH@ZKLFKWKH\KDYHFRPHWRVHH«µ

(Harrison, et. al. 1998: 220).

Turner sought to create a visual equivalent for weather, combustion, and movement in Rain, Steam, and Speed—The Great Western Railway (Figure 5.8), exhibited at the RA in 1844, the same year the Great Western Railroad Company opened its route from Bristol to Exeter. Although a recognizable spot—the new railroad bridge DW0DLGHQKHDG³DQGWKHPRVWPRGHUQFODVVRI ORFRPRWLYH³WKH´)LUHÁ\µ³7XUQHU

painted this, as all of his landscapes, from memory. He felt, as did Gauguin later (Chapter 13), that this was the best way to distill numerous impressions, sensory and visual, into a coherent whole. But with memory comes distortion, and Turner took liberties with his subject in order to convey the desired effect. For instance, the Maidenhead Bridge had two tracks (one of which Turner omitted in order to center the train) and the viewer is situated at a vantage point hovering in mid-air and outside the train. Turner painted a hare (common in the British countryside) scooting ahead and in the path of the train, suggesting that these powerful engines moved less rapidly than we might imagine. Turner contrasted this modern, mechanized, metallic machine with the small wooden boat below, occupied by a single rower-passenger. The old fades into the distance while the new catapults itself aggressively into the future. In Rain, Steam and Speed, Turner hinted at a pessimistic attitude towards technology, one that blossomed in the 1880s among Symbolist artists and writers. In his 1898 play, Les Aubes(The Dawn), Belgian writer Émile Verhaeren lamented:

The netted rails, upon the plains bestarred With golden signals, swarm;

Trains graze the meadowlands, and pierce the banks;

The grass bleeds, and the virgin herb, harvest itself, Feed on the sulpher’s poisonous breath.

‘Tis now

Figure 5.8

Joseph M.W. Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed—The Great Western Railway, 1844.

Oil on canvas, 91 × 122 (35⁷/8 × 49 in). The National Gallery, London.

That, terrible in victory, come forth ,URQDQGOHDGDQGÀUH

And hell itself comes forth with them!

(Verhaeren 1898: Act, Scene 1)

Turner communicated chaos, violence, and unpredictability in nature consistent with his Romantic belief in the limited control humans exercised over it. To communicate KLVLGHDV7XUQHUGHYLVHGDQRYHOYLVXDOODQJXDJHLQYROYLQJWKHÀOWHURI PHPRU\DQG

loose brushwork to evoke a particular emotional and visual experience.