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Jennifer Cernada

HART 307

Turner’s Sheerness as Seen From the Nore

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Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Fig. 1) is a seascape by the English Romantic painter

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851). It renders the confluence of the Thames and

Medway Rivers, with the sea town of Sheerness sitting on the horizon line. Two-thirds of the

background is taken up by a sweeping and tumultuous sky. The cloud at the very center

resembles a cresting wave, while the rest of the surrounding, sweeping overcast mimics the

thrashing surf. Directly below, the ocean is producing its own great wave, which is shown

pushing a sailboat towards the shore. Three fishermen sit in a boat directly next to this wave,

seemingly unfazed by the incoming tempest, as merely secondary characters. The sun on the far

left gives this painting a sense of perspective, guiding the viewer’s eye towards the right as it

rises, its rays attempting to fight back the darkness of the storm in the top left. By painting-in the

leftmost fisherman with his head turned, the artist has given his elements an audience. Turner,

considered by many to be the greatest landscape painter of his time, has chosen to make the

tempestuous ocean and sky the stars of the picture. The work is oil on canvas and measures 104.5

cm x 149.5 cm and is part of the collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston as of 2005.

Despite the overall grayness of the work, its dynamic nature serves as a true testament to

Turner’s mastery in manipulating color and light. He would spend the rest of his career

fascinated with these, eventually reducing nature to swirls of little else.

Sheerness first showed in Turner’s own gallery on Harley Street in 1808, away from the

eyes of the scathing Sir George Beaumont, whose harsh criticisms had hurt Turner’s sales at the

academy , and away from the hanging committee at the Royal Academy, with whom he had 1

occasional disputes . Despite showing his work from his own gallery as of April 1804, however, 2

he continued to show at the R.A., where he had been granted full membership in 1802. Because

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it is an early picture, the construction of the stretcher and the priming of the canvas were most

likely done by his father. Turner’s father was a barber and wigmaker, and so cost effectiveness

was an important factor in his artistic productions. According to Joyce Townsend, the homemade

stretcher would have had the diagonal cross-members typical of the 18th century (Fig. 2; an 3

example, not the Turner). The canvas itself has at least five visible seams: two vertical, one

located to the immediate left of the sun (Fig. 3) and the other towards the right side of the picture

(Fig. 4); and three diagonal, two protruding from the previous and seeming to end somewhere in

the gray sky (Fig. 5) and the other just above the central sailboat (Fig. 6). The vertical seams,

which seem to run down the full length of the canvas, could be evidence of he and his father’s

frugality. Because Turner’s other seascapes of this period tended to be larger (Table 1), it is

possible that rather than allow the three separate pieces of the Sheerness canvas to go to waste,

they preferred to join and use them (although, it is also possible that the picture has been cut

down). For the canvas priming, they would have used the medium of whole egg mixed with lead

white as the principal filler, although they also experimented with chalk and gypsum in place of

the lead white. The mixture would have been more economic and absorbent than commercially

prepared ones, facilitating Turner’s fast work.Turner was also known to use colored grounds in

the earlier years, but he adopted white and off-white universally around 1810. He generally did

not use a mid-tone priming, nor did he usually leave patches of exposed priming in his exhibited

works.

Turner was a passionate student of nature. Although he spent a great deal of time

studying the old masters, spending countless hours in the Louvre on his trip to Paris in 1802, he

was very much preoccupied with his own perception of nature. He wrote:

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He that has that ruling enthusiasm which accompanies abilities cannot look superficially. Every glance is a glance for study: contemplating and defining qualities and causes, effects, and incidents...Every look at nature is a refinement upon art. Each tree and blade of grass or flower is not to him the individual tree, grass, or flower, but what it is in relation to the whole; its tone, its contrast and its use...admiring Nature by the power and practicability of his Art, and judging of his Art by the perceptions drawn from Nature . 4

!Practicing what he preached, Turner made stacks and stacks of sketches, both in oil and

watercolor. He kept small notebooks in his coat pocket, always at hand for a quick sketch, poetic

verse, copied recipe, list of works, etc . The ‘Wilson’ sketchbook is one such document (4 ½ by 3 5

⅝ inches), one which specifically includes studies of marine scenes. Its paper is grey with a

brown wash, and the palette is restricted to a few chalky opaque colors (Figures 7 and 8) . His

preparations for seascapes included thorough studies of the sky at different times of day, the

behavior of the water, and the orientation of boats as they were displaced by the water in each

different direction.

In 1802, Turner kept a sketchbook as he travelled to Paris by way of Calais, a town on the

coast of Northern France. Its many studies of the ocean are done in “lively, almost clownish

calligraphy” with chalk and pastels on blue paper washed in brown (Figures 9). These 6

immediately inspired Calais Pier, an oil painting exhibited by the artist in 1803 at the Royal

Academy (Fig. 10). This one is very similar to Sheerness in its treatment of the ocean, its waves

built up with quick strokes of thick, white impasto, and in its treatment of the sky as a grey swirl

with a blue opening in the center, like a heavenly oculus. Further studies of the sea during this

still relatively early period in Turner’s career are found in his Liber Studiorum, or “Book of

Studies,” an enterprise of about 100 drawings, etchings, and mezzotints irregularly published by

Turner between 1807 and 1819 (See Figures 11 and 12 for some of the seascapes from this

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enterprise). Done in part to emulate Claude Lorrain’s Liber Veritatis, Turner’s Studiorum

coincides with the works of this early middle period of about 1806-1810, when he was pitting

himself against masters like Claude, Poussin, and the Dutch Marine painters.

Turner was a natural competitor and showman. He wanted not only to surpass the old

masters, but to dazzle his contemporaries with his genius. Claude Lorrain’s influence on Turner

is overwhelming. From the French master, Turner would take his aerial view, the staging of his

landscapes with trees on either side, the dissolving of his landscapes into the background, and the

masterful rendering of atmospheric light, among other things. Turner’s close study of Claude was

such that he was nicknamed “the British Claude” during his time. The hazy, golden sunrise found

in Sheerness is strikingly similar to that which is found throughout Claude’s oeuvre; Cleopatra

disembarking at Tarsus (Fig. 13) demonstrates one example of this. Seeking not only to emulate

Claude but remain in a perpetual rivalry with him, Turner’s Bequest left two paintings to the

National Gallery of London, with the specification that they be hung between two of Claude’s

paintings. An additional influence on the artist were the Dutch Marine Painters of the 17th

century, whose maritime paintings were unparalleled until Turner’s seascape series, which began

in 1801 with the Bridgewater Seapiece (Fig. 14) and which Sheerness as Seen From the Nore is a

part of. Turner’s attention to how the sky’s tempestuousness parallels that of the ocean can be

traced back to artists such as Ludolf Backhuysen (1630-1708), a German-born Dutch Golden

Age painter who specialized in the rendition of ships caught in storms, contrasting the white

ocean spray with the greenness of the water and clouds. Examples of this are found in his

paintings Lightly Agitated Sea and Ships (Fig. 15) and Rough Seas with a Dutch Yacht under sail

(Fig. 16). The similarity to Turner’s work is extraordinary.

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For the actual construction of his paintings, Turner treated his oil paintings much like he

did his watercolors. Because he worked exclusively in watercolors for about ten years before

ever exhibiting an oil painting, many of his techniques such as the use of light ground and

thinned, slightly transparent paint, working with fingers, brush ends, thumbnails etc. run parallel

in both media. According to Townsend, Turner was seen at various times working on groups of

paintings simultaneously, applying the same brush-load of paint in each turn . Therefore, one is 7

justified in assuming that the materials and techniques Turner utilized for one one painting are

similar to his other works of roughly the same date. Townsend’s description of the construction

of the unfinished picture Shipping at the Mouth of the Thames (Fig. 17), of the same subject as

Sheerness and painted a year earlier, gives us insight into its [Sheerness’s] likely execution . 8

Turner would have begun by painting in large areas with a loaded hard brush made of hog’s hair

(his smaller, softer brushes were mostly of squirrel tail hair), and then he would have blocked-in

the major components of the composition with washes of oil paint thinned with turpentine. His

paint was premixed in a limited range of colors: yellow ochre in white cream for the horizon,

pure umber and darker cream for the sails, dark green-ish ochre for the principal ship, blue in

white and pink organic in white for the sailors’ costumes, and reddish ochres in white for the

flesh. The horizon line, boats, sails, and some waves would have been sketched in initially, very

quickly, and the rest of the picture would have been built up in glazes and scumbles of thinned

oil, plus with melgip used for the thick impasto.The use of melgip, which was usually linseed oil,

mastic resin, and occasionally copaiba balsam, was already notorious during Turner’s time for its

disastrous results . Unfortunately, these paint vehicles tend to have a greater heat sensitivity and 9

higher solubility than others, so the hot irons traditionally used for relining canvases and the

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solvents used for cleaning have flattened much of Turner’s impasto, most noticeable in the

clouds, waves, and buildings of the town (Figures 18, 19, and 20, respectively). Melgip is also 10

largely to blame for the extensive cracking in the sky (Fig. 18).

Just as he did not worry about the instability of melgip, Turner was not concerned with

the stability of his pigments. He was familiar with George Field, a chemist and specialist supplier

who published pigment treatises (Chromatics in 1817 and Chromatography in 1835), so Turner

would have known, and been completely unfazed by, which pigments were prone to fading and/

or incompatible with certain materials. He was most concerned with making his pictures

appealing for the duration of their exhibitions , and he sought to accomplish this through as 11

frugal methods as possible . Being that they are relatively inexpensive and less intensely colored 12

than other blues, he used cobalt blue and smalt as the under-layers for his skies. He also utilized

indigo, whose presence is observable in the sky’s faded and grey appearance (and the smalt is

also at fault for this). The visible edges among Turner’s clouds points to use of a palette knife to

paint in this area (Fig. 18). Opaque layers of pale yellow (likely orpiment) were either brushed

over the top or worked into the white impasto of the clouds to give a more complex, textured

effect. A brush was also utilized to blend the edges of the knife-applied areas into the rest of the

painting; an example of this is shown in the top left corner of the work, where the grey sky

extends in a series of brushworks just above the ship’s mast (Fig. 21). Townsend mentions that

the artist tended to paint in human figures specifically as vehicles for color contrast . To this 13

end, he used madder in the red hat of the rightmost fisherman and the pants of the leftmost

fisherman (Fig. 22). It was logical for Turner to use madder more sparingly due to its being

relatively more expensive.

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Even though it was also expensive, the artist used lead white extensively. In addition to

being used in mixture with most of the other pigments, lead white (with about 5-10% of extender

added) was used directly to highlight small details, such as the fishermen’s clothes (middle one’s

elbow, rightmost one’s cigarette) (Fig. 22) and the smoke stack in the background (Fig. 23). To 14

build up his waves, he seems to have flicked his brush from the bottom up, then used his brush

end and purposefully untrimmed thumbnail to add texture (Fig. 23). Just above the town on the

far right of the painting, one can follow a line of wet on wet white, applied from left to right (Fig.

24). The artist’s generous use of white is evident in the infrared image of his 1805 seascape,

Shipwreck, The Rescue (Fig. 25).

Drawing from the observations of past restorers, Turner’s earlier paintings were

varnished with a quick drying, mastic-like alcohol-soluble varnish, which has been removed in

most cases. He would have varnished the exhibited paintings that he sold at least a year after

their purchase, for this was the suggested wait time for a painting to dry sufficiently in the

English climate . The new owner would have either specified the varnish type, or asked Turner 15

to apply a varnish of his choice. Recipes for “amber” varnishes (amber referring to the color;

natural amber was not an ingredient) are found in Turner’s sketchbooks, but their use would have

likely been discontinued fairly early on in his career due to its destruction of contrasts in color

and opacity, which were Turner’s bread and butter. Turner is infamous for his behaviors during

the Royal Academy’s “Varnishing Days,” during which artists were allowed to come in and add

finishing touches to their paintings prior to exhibition. The artist would take these days as an

opportunity to showcase his genius, coming in to the gallery with half-completed pictures, which

he would complete as they hung on the wall. His showmanship caused such a stir that other

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artists, namely Thomas Fearnley and William Parrot, decided to record the phenomena, whether

they did so sartorially or out of admiration (Figures 26 and 27).

As has been mentioned, Turner’s lack of concern for the stability of his materials and

total preoccupation with showmanship have made it so most of his works are in very poor shape.

He kept his paintings in extremely damp conditions in his studio, even allowing them to be

spotted or sometimes flooded by rain. This has caused mold to grow on his egg-based primings,

making it necessary for areas of his paintings to have been scraped and repainted in some

instances. The flaking of the ground, discoloration, and general embrittlement of the canvas due

to damp storage have made relining a necessity in almost every conservation treatment done on a

Turner. Relining is evident on Sheerness due to the prominence of the exposed canvas weaves in

areas where the paint is particularly thin (Fig. 28). Once again, his use of waxy, resinous melgip

has caused his paint surfaces to be flattened due to the hot irons traditionally used in the lining

process. Moreover, this has caused significant darkening of his paint, making shadows darker

and destroying the tonal balance of the surface, evident in Sheerness (Fig. 1). Also, the painter’s

use of excessively thin paint (an example of this visible on the broad side of the ship, Fig. 29)

have left many areas sensitive to abrasion, loss of the paint medium, and even removal when the

surface is cleaned with solvents and surfactants. In certain cases, however, Turner’s daring

practices have served debunk certain nineteenth century conventions. Some of his pigment

mixtures, for example, such as emerald green with viridian and chrome yellow, madders, and

cochineal carmine with lead white have stood very well, despite the previously accepted belief

that such mixtures were unstable. Additionally, the rapid deterioration of his works, even during

his own lifetime, engendered such concern over the stability of artists’ materials that scientific

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studies into the phenomena of paint fading and deterioration were undertaken towards the end of

the nineteenth century . 1617

After exhibiting in Turner’s gallery until 1809, he sold it to Samuel Dobree, a city

merchant and early patron of his. When Dobree’s son put the painting up for auction at Christie’s

in 1842, Turner was there to attempt to buy it back; this was an occasional practice of his . It 18

ended up selling to the Baring Banking family for 170 guineas, who then resold it in 1848 to a

William Wells for 550 guineas. Wells then sold the picture in 1890 for 7,100 guineas to Robert

Loyd Lindsay, where it would remain until 1991. Because the painting had been in private

ownership since its first exhibition in Turner’s gallery, it had not been seen by many until 1977,

when the Loyd family lent it to the Tate Gallery for the exhibition “Turner: A special loan

exhibition of 20 rarely seen paintings,” which was to open in conjunction with The Paintings of

J.M.W. Turner, a Catalogue Raisonné of all of Turner’s works in oils. In 1991, the painting was

sold privately to an anonymous collector for ten million dollars. After over one hundred years of

being in private hands, the painting came to auction at Christie’s in late 2001. An article in the

Telegraph quoted John Stainton, a British pictures specialist at Christie’s, as saying, “This is

among Turner's larger pictures and is unquestionably a masterpiece of his early maturity which is

in fabulous condition, having belonged to three leading English collecting families…we expect it

to be a challenger for the highest price paid for a Turner at auction…” Despite all of the 19

excitement, the picture ended up being a struggle to sell. The bidding stopped at only £3.3

million, well short of the £4.3 million to £5.7 million pre-sale estimate. A later article in the

Telegraph recounts the surprising events, claiming that the picture fared so badly due to rumors

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that it had been offered around prior to auction . After having the painting on loan from this 20

private collector, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston purchased it in 2005.

In conclusion, Turner’s Sheerness as Seen from the Nore is a testament to Turner’s

genius, even at this early stage in his career. Turner would go on to world fame as one of the

most fascinating Romantic painters in history. Although the different characters of Sheerness can

still be differentiated at this point, his later works would be little more than beautiful swirls of

color dotted with slight impressions of trees, people, boats, etc., which make it impossible to see

where figures end and atmosphere begins. His increasingly abstract pieces, demonstrating a

preoccupation with perception over aesthetics, as well as showing his knowledge of color theory,

would go on to inspire the next generation of European artists, the Impressionists among them. A

charming metaphor for Turner’s work exists in the form of his own watercolor of his studio (Fig.

30). The sketch was done with pen and ink and watercolor, and finished circa 1808, the same

time as Sheerness. Rather than accurately rendering his workspace, Turner decides to represent it

in his signature style. The most important and most sharply represented part of the composition,

also the most important aspect of an artist’s studio, is the artist himself at the easel towards the

left of the picture. Behind him is his studio-hand, most likely his father, hard at work. Turner has

constructed the image entirely with brown pigment, suggesting forms through slight undulations

in opacity. The picture foreshadows where Turner will go with his art: it would become

increasingly abstract, and the individual components of his images would become increasingly

indistinguishable from one another. The next 40 years would see the development of a

competitive, controversial, but ultimately undeniable genius.

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Figure 1. JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER English, 1775 - 1851 Sheerness as Seen from the Nore 1808 Oil on canvas 41 1/8 x 58 7/8 inches !!!!!

!!!Figure 2. Example of what Turner’s stretchers might have looked like Image courtesy of Asiarta Foundation !!!!

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!Figure 3. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Detail).

Vertical seam visible

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!Figure 4. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Detail) Vertical seam visible

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Figure 5. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Detail) Two diagonal seams visible !!!

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!!Figure 6. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Detail) Diagonal seam visible !!!!!!!

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Table 1.

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Painting Title Painting Dimensions

Bridgewater Seapiece (1801) 162.5 x 221 cm

Calais Pier (1803) 172 x 240 cm

Shipwreck, The Rescue (1805) 170.5 x 241. 5 cm

The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen (1806)

171 x 239 cm

Sheerness As Seen from the Nore (1808) 104.5 cm x 149.5 cm

The Wreck of a Transport Ship (1810) 172.7 x 241.2 cm

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!

!Figure 7. Study from “Wilson”

sketchbook

!!!!!!!Figure 8. Study from “Wilson”

sketchbook

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!Figure 9. Study from Calais sketchbook

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!Figure 10. J.M.W. Turner Calais Pier Oil on Canvas 1803 !

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!Figure 11. J.M.W. Turner Scene from the French Coast c. 1806-07

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!!Figure 12. J.M.W. Turner Ships in a Breeze c. 1806-07

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!!Figure 13. Claude Lorrain Cleopatra Disembarking at Tarsus Oil on canvas 1642 !!!

!!!!Figure 14. J.M.W. Turner Bridgewater Seapiece Oil on canvas 1801 !!!!

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!Figure 15. Ludolf Backhuysen Lightly agitated Sea and Ships Oil on canvas 1664 !

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Figure 16. Ludolf Backhuysen Rough Seas with a Dutch Yacht under sail Oil on canvas 1694 !!

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Figure 17. J.M.W. Turner Shipping at the Mouth of the Thames c. 1806-07 !!!!!

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Figure 18. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Detail)

Figure 19. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Detail)

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Figure 20. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Detail)

!!!!!!!!Figure 21. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Detail)

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Figure 22. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Detail)

Figure 23. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Detail) Smokestack in the background and scratches visible in the water !

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Figure 24. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Detail)

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Figure 25. Infrared of Shipwreck, The Rescue

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!!!Figure 26. Thomas Fearnley Turner on Varnishing Day 1837

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!!!Figure 27. William Parrot Turner on Varnishing Day 1846

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Figure 28. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (detail)

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Figure 29. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore (Detail)

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Figure 30. J.M.W. Turner The Artist’s Studio Pen and Ink and Watercolor on Paper c. 1808 !!!!!!!!!

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Notes

See Turner: Imagination and Reality for examples of Beaumont’s criticism. Gowing, Lawrence, and Joseph 1

Mallord William. Turner. Turner: Imagination and Reality: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1966. New York: Doubleday &, 1966. Print.

See Turner, J. M. W., and Evelyn Joll. Turner: A Special Loan Exhibition of 20 Rarely Seen Paintings. London: 2

Tate Gallery, 1977. Print. (vi)

Townsend, Joyce, and J. M. W. Turner. Turner's Painting Techniques. London: Tate Gallery, 1993. Print. Full 3

quote: “In the early years, many of Turner’s paintings not only have home-prepared primings, but also homemade stretchers with the diagonal cross-members generally found in the eighteenth century, or else their supports are panels of wood cut and used for quite another purpose” (18).

Taken from Turner: Imagination and Reality (13)4

Full quote: “In his sketchbooks, particularly in the small notebooks, one of which was always in his greatcoat 5

pocket, he also did his accounts, and he wrote out itineraries, lists of works and patrons, copied recipes, planned his new house, and composed verses.” (10) Taken from Turner’s Painting Techniques

! “A special class of sketchbooks of various sizes contain cheap blue paper for the rapid working out of 6

compositions in black and white chalk - and in two very early books, one with brown paper, in pastel. These books are often labeled “Studies for Pictures” in Turner’s hand. The earlier sea pieces, particularly, often went through several stages of development in this manner. There are many attractive seascapes which exist only in this form of chalk calligraphy. Turner’s handling of ships and sails is always irresistible” (10-11).

See “Introduction” from Turner’s Painting Techniques 7

See Turner’s Painting Techniques (28)8

White, R., Pilc, J. 'Analyses of Paint Media'. National Gallery Technical Bulletin Vol 17, pp 91–103. 9

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/technical-bulletin/white_pilc1996

Egerton, Judy. Making & Meaning: Turner the Fighting Temeraire ;. London: National Gallery, 1995. Print.10

Ruskin said, “No picture of Turner’s is seen in perfection a month after it is painted.” Taken from Turner’s 11

Painting Techniques (62)

Turner was quoted as saying, “Cobalt is good enough for me.” Taken from Turner’s Painting Techniques (48)12

Turner’s Painting Techniques (32)13

Turner’s Painting Techniques (46)14

Turner’s Painting Techniques (66)15

W.J Russel and W. de W. Abney, Action of Light on Watercolours, Report to the Science and Art Department of 16

the Committee of Council on Education, 1888

Ruskin wrote, “The fates by which Turner’s later pictures perish are as various as they are cruel; and the greater 17

number, whatever care be taken of them, fade into strange consumption and pallid shadowing of their former selves. Their effects are either attained by so light glazing of one’s colour over another, that the upper colour, in a year or two, sank entirely into the ground, and was seen no more; or else, by the stirring or kneading together of colors chemically discordant, which gathered into angry spots; or else, by laying on liquid tints with too much vehicle in them, which cracked as they dried; or solid tints, with too little vehicle in them, which dried into powder and fell off; or painting the whole on an ill-prepared canvas, from which the picture peeled like the bark of a birch-tree; or using a wrong white, which turned black, or a wrong red, which turned grey, or a wrong yellow, which turned brown. But, one way or another, all but eight of ten of his pictures have gone to pieces, or worse than pieces - ghosts, which are supposed to be representations of their living presence.” Taken from Turner’s Painting Techniques (77).

Turner, J. M. W., and Evelyn Joll. Turner: A Special Loan Exhibition of 20 Rarely Seen Paintings. London: Tate 18

Gallery, 1977. Print. (8)

Burton, Simon De. "Turner's Mastery of the Waves Tipped to Set Auction Record." The Telegraph. Telegraph 19

Media Group, 30 Dec. 2001. Web. 26 Apr. 2014.

Bennet, Will. "Turner That Failed to Set Sail." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 29 Jan. 2002. Web. 26 20

Apr. 2014.

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