 |
| JMW Turner; The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory; © Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), The original can be at the Tate viewed by clicking here. |
The battle - and specific subjects such as the death of Lord Nelson - was a frequent subject of artists in the 19th century, but Turner's 1806 work is one of the earlier large-scale paintings and a good place to begin looking at how artists portrayed the clothing English sailors wore in the battle.
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was a prolific English Romantic landscape painter who is also well known for his nautical scenes such as "The Fighting Temeraire" and "The Slave Ship". Turned painted the Battle of Trafalgar twice, first in 1806 and again in 1824. Both paintings depart from the historical events; the 1806 painting simultaneously combines the flash of the sniper's muzzle in the French top with Nelson having already turned and fallen. Despite this inaccuracy, the Tate's caption of the 1806 painting notes,
Turner made close observation of the ships shown here, but the painting of the battle in which Admiral Nelson died is not simply detailed reportage. Sails and cannon smoke arrest the eye, creating a claustrophobic backdrop, while the action appears to thrust outwards. The viewer is confronted by both the chaos of battle and the intimate tragedy of Nelson’s final moments. A contemporary reviewer termed this a ‘British epic picture...the first picture of the kind that has ever...been exhibited’.The Tate's catalogue entry also quotes The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner" (Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll. New Haven and London: 1984)
Turner made a special trip to sketch the Victory as she entered the Medway and subsequently made a large number of detailed studies on board the ship in the ‘Nelson’ sketchbook (LXXXIX). There are also two larger studies of the deck of the Victory in the British Museum (CXX-c, and the Vaughan Bequest CXXI-S, repr. exh. cat. R.A. 1974, p. 60 no. 96). Farington recorded on 3 June 1806 that ‘Turner's I went to and saw His picture of the Battle of Trafalgar. It appeared to me to be a very crude, unfinished performance, the figures miserably bad.’
Perhaps because he had been so keen to show the picture as soon as possible after the event Turner seems to have felt the need to work on it further before exhibiting it again in 1808. According to the writer, probably John Landseer, of a long review in the Review of Publications of Art for 1808, ‘The picture appears more powerful both in respect of chiaroscuro and colour than when we formerly saw it in Mr. Turner's gallery, and has evidently been since revised and very much improved by the author’. Describing the picture as ‘a British epic picture’ the writer called it ‘the first picture of the kind that has ever, to our knowledge, been exhibited’. ‘Mr. Turner ... has detailed the death of his hero, while he has suggested the whole of a great naval victory, which we believe has never before been successfully accomplished, if it has been before attempted, in a single picture.’Whatever the painting may have looked like originally, its 1808 rework leaves it a striking scene that captures the feel of a critical moment in the battle. Turner's treatment of the moment stands in contrast to the other more intimate historic paintings of fallen heroes that he would have been familiar with, such as West's The Death of General Wolfe (1770) and Copley's The Death of Major Pierson (1783), and in even starker contrast to West's 1806 painting of the death of Lord Nelson and Devis's 1807 treatment of the same subject. All these paintings place the death of their hero - Nelson or otherwise - at the center of the action, whereas Turner's portrayal of the death of Lord Nelson is almost more in line with Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus: an important moment lost in a larger world.
The ongoing battle consumes much of the frame of the painting, as the visual confusion of smoke, distance, and the towering spars and masts of multiple ships obscures Nelson's fall - so much that the painting was criticized by a contemporary for being about mere "shipping" instead of the "MURDER" of a national hero.
The scale of Turner's painting makes it difficult to distinguish the figures on Victory's deck, and Turner’s particular arrangement of the figures on deck is an imaginary reconstruction. Fortunately for us his exhibit key to the painting survives.
 |
| JMW Turner; Key to 'The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory'; © Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here. |
 |
| Detail from JMW Turner's Key to 'The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory'; © Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here. |
 |
| Detail from JMW Turner's Key to 'The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory'; © Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here. |
 |
| Detail from JMW Turner's The Battle of Trafalgar... © Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), The original can be at the Tate viewed by clicking here. |
 |
| Detail from JMW Turner's The Battle of Trafalgar... © Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), The original can be at the Tate viewed by clicking here. |
In 1805 Turner filled a sketchbook with drawings from life of Victory and Temeraire, along with studies of officers, sailors, and marines; these drawings became the basis for his painting. Stay tuned for Monday, when I'll be looking at Turner's sketches of sailors from Victory. Also stay tuned for next Friday, when I'll compare and contrast Turner's 1806 painting to his 1824 treatment of the Battle of Trafalgar.
No comments:
Post a Comment