Joe Turner’s Come and Gone… and Come Again
“The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, October 16, 1834” (1834-35), by Joseph Mallord William Turner. Philadelphia Museum of Art: The John Howard McFadden Collection, 1928
Joseph Mallord William Turner at the Getty
The thoughtful Turner show at the Getty mainly sets out to do two things. First, by focusing exclusively on the painter’s late work, from 1835 when he was 60-years-old, to the time of his death 16 years later in 1851, when he was 76, to prove that he’d lost little of his energy and talent. And second, by aiming to situate Turner in his own time, to try and see him from the perspective of his contemporaries and not to burden him with labels like proto-modernist or pre-Impressionist. Turner was Turner, and those “schools of the future” simply did not exist and should not figure into the conversation.
Partly that accounts for the title of the exhibition – “J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free.” He is being set free from the distortion of a 20th or 21st century interpretation, just as in his own time he freed himself from the artificial limitations of what art was expected to do or be. After all, who else painted like this?
Many artists were drawn to similar subject matter. Let’s take John Martin. Both painted tumultuous vistas and in this sense both were grandly Romantic. But Martin doesn’t venture much beyond realistic depictions, however fantastic, whereas in Turner’s tempestuous pictures (seascapes in particular) all the elements seem to be whipped up into a froth and yet conspire with one another to yield something totally new, something operatic and lyrically explosive. This took courage and conviction.
If we compare the later with the earlier work, we see quite a visual evolution. As Sam Smiles writes in the catalogue that accompanies the show, “Turner’s earlier work was not for him a rebuke, nor a closed book, but instead functioned as a spur to further effort; it was another resource for imaginative transformation.”
“”Peace – Burial at Sea” (exhibited 1842), by Joseph William Mallord Turner. Tate: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Some artists – and we see this especially in pop music – find a groove, which delights us, but soon enough the groove becomes a rut, and by then we want out. In the visual arts, James Ensor was a bit like this, I contend. His work lost its edge and he went from being an artistic firebrand to an artistic flameout. I’m sure the reader-viewer can call up his or her own examples. Turner, however, turned a corner and didn’t look back.
And so, how Smiles describes the later pictures would most likely not be the way he’d describe the earlier. He writes: “The world Turner shows is above all dynamic… in the sense of presenting the world as mutable, ever-changing, when solid forms become tremulous in light, water turns into vapor, diurnal and seasonal rhythms of light transmogrify the landscape they illuminate.”
This could leave us thinking that Turner’s true subject is atmosphere.
John Constable, an English master of similar stature, described Turner’s works as having been “painted with tinted steam.” That’s a good summation because many of Turner’s late works almost seem to have been painted on vapor, and then there are those swirling pinwheels of color and color diffused, especially in the late watercolors.
While the subject matter if not the meaning of the earlier work was fairly straightforward, this became less so as the years went by and the canvases became more abstract or obtuse. On top of which, Turner did not care to elucidate the meaning of his pictures, even to a staunch supporter like John Ruskin. Inquiring about “War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet,” Ruskin wrote this of Turner: “He tried one day for a quarter of an hour to make me guess what he was doing in the picture… giving me hint after hint in a rough way; but I could not guess and he would not tell me.”
“War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet” (exhibited 1842), by Joseph William Mallord Turner. Tate: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Speaking of “War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet,” it’s a pleasure to be able to see it alongside of “Peace – Burial at Sea.” Another pairing, works that should be displayed and seen side by side but rarely will since they now reside in collections some 6,000 miles apart, are the Getty’s own “Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino” and the Tate’s “Ancient Rome – Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus” (both exhibited in 1839).
There are many “showstoppers” in “J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free,” and for one of them – “Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth” (exhibited in 1842) – Turner claimed he was lashed to the mast for four hours so as to better observe the visual effects of a raging storm at sea. Other pictures that I might point out – and everyone will have their own favorites – are “The Burning of the House of Lords and Commons, October 16, 1834” (1834-35) and “The Dogano, San Giorgio, Citella from the Steps of the Europa” (exhibited 1842).
Travelin’ man
From the works I’ve mentioned, one can see that Turner had a range of interests, and that he didn’t just remain rooted in one spot (e.g., he wasn’t a rock limpet).
In fact, Turner traveled extensively in pursuit of ideas and sensations. In the catalogue, Nicola Moorby writes that “between 1817 and the mid-1840s he undertook no fewer than twenty European tours, particularly focusing on the Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland.”
Always observing, always sketching, too. As Julius Bryant writes in “Turner: Painting the Nation,” “At the time of his death, his own collection alone contained 100 completed paintings, 182 oil sketches and studies, together with over 19,000 drawings.” Imagine if he’d had a pocket camera.
At least three trips were taken to Italy, and in Venice alone he made dozens and dozens of sketches and watercolors. He didn’t let the city seduce him so much as he engaged it in a kind of dance, influenced by it, yes, but in return applying his unique sensibilities to what he saw. Evidence of this can be seen throughout the exhibition.
“The Dogano, San Giorgio, Citella from the Steps of the Europa” (exhibited 1842), by Joseph Mallord William Turner. Tate: Presented by Robert Vernon 1847
Turner visited Paris and Versailles in 1837, and I wonder if it was during this time that he called upon the painter Eugène Delacroix. Interestingly, the French master was hardly overwhelmed. “I remember that the only time he came to see me,” Delacroix wrote in his journal, “I was not particularly impressed; he looked like an English farmer with his rough black coat and heavy boots, and his cold, hard expression.”
“J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free” is the first major Turner exhibition on the West Coast (it’ll be at the de Young Museum in San Francisco from June 20 to Sept. 20), but it’s nothing quite as expansive as what was shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., a few years back, or what one can see by visiting the Tate in London – and I did manage both of these. However, not to discourage anyone from seeing some wonderful Turners right here in our own backyard, a high percentage of the works that were in the initial version of the show at the Tate – whence the show originated – never did make the transatlantic crossing. You’ll see them all in the catalogue, of course, but it isn’t quite the same.
This is especially true of the fragile watercolors, the importance of which Amy Concannon makes sure to stress (the show itself features over 60 paintings and watercolors). While many of these watercolors are stunning, such as “The Blue Rigi, Sunrise” (shown here), others seem to be merely mood or atmospheric studies and quite a few of these might merely elicit a nod at best. We might wonder what they elicited 150 years ago.
“The Blue Rigi, Sunrise” (1842), by Joseph William Mallord Turner. Tate, London, 2007
As mentioned, John Ruskin was an advocate of Turner’s work, although it does appear that Ruskin on occasion changed his mind and may have had some strong, personal biases (reminding me a little of Nietzsche’s later reassessment of Wagner), and this could have influenced what he publicly stated about Turner’s work and stature.
Other critics often did mince words, and the later work both baffled the public and confounded the reviewers. Turner was a strange bird, a rara avis, no doubt about it. Sometimes, on varnishing day, with a picture already hung, he’d rework it completely.
Often, too, criticism of Turer was colored as much by a sense of morality as by a sense of impartial judgment. His early biographers portrayed him as reclusive and eccentric in his latter years (one of these who published a work in 1879 had the arresting name of Cosmo Monkhouse). But even so, there were astute men and women who realized that even though they didn’t understand exactly what the painter was up to, they understood that something important was going on. “It is all very well to treat Turner’s pictures as jests,” The Times wrote (6 May 1846), “but things like these are too magnificent for jokes.”
Years pass, and they tame or make quaint what was once new or startling in the arts. Turner, however, remains engaging and untameable to this day. Some lions grow old; this one remains young.
J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free is on view through Sunday, May 24, at the J. Paul Getty Museum in the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles. Hours, Tuesday through Friday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Free; parking $15 per car ($10 after 5 p.m. on Saturday). Call (310) 440-7300 or go to getty.edu. ER