Room 2: From Landscape to Art
Oil sketches made in the vicinity of Plymouth in the summer of 1813
Turner made these sketches in and around Plymouth in July and August 1813. Oil sketching from nature was not his usual practice because it is a relatively slow and cumbersome procedure. He preferred to work in pencil, writing the occasional note about architectural details or effects of light and colour. His reluctance to sketch in the open air was overcome by the local artist A B Johns who prepared all the equipment Turner needed and showed him the local sketching grounds.
Some of the sketches have a black chalk drawing underlying them; others are painted with no visible under-drawing. This suggests that Turner adopted two approaches to sketching: one more careful and studied, the other more spontaneous and free. Eyewitnesses report that Turner worked quite rapidly (one sketch was made in less than half an hour) and produced a large number of oil sketches, but there was a defect in the paper and only a handful of them were found in Turner's studio after his death.
Colour beginnings and watercolours
The watercolour sketches known as 'colour beginnings' allowed Turner to establish the basic colour structures of his compositions. Those he was satisfied with he would take further into finished compositions, as for example the watercolours of Plymouth shown here. Some, like the study for St Michael's Mount, were radically altered as the composition of the finished watercolour was developed; others, such as Barnstaple Bridge and Sand landing by Moonlight were not further developed.
If we compare this version of Plymouth with that of c.1816
in the previous room, it is clear that Turner has subordinated the city's
topography to the majesty of colour and light, with an exuberant rainbow arcing
over the town. Comparing the sketch with the
finished watercolour, it is clear that Turner changed his mind over the use
of tonal contrasts, moving Mount Batten (on the left) from shadow into light
and setting off his rainbow with a lowering sky.
This colour beginning has been identified as a discarded sketch of St Michael's Mount, for it bears very little relationship to the watercolour Turner eventually submitted to England and Wales. In the colour beginning, a high vantage point and a placid sunset help produce an image of warmth, tranquillity and repose. In the finished watercolour, the viewpoint is much lower, the weather squally and threatening, the colour range cooler.
watercolour
University of Liverpool Art Gallery and Collections
Turner
Worldwide
Recently identified as Barnstaple Bridge, this colour sketch may have been produced on tour rather than in Turner's studio. It combines numerous pencil sketches of the subject and demonstrates that Turner's development of West Country scenes in compositional studies was not restricted to the 1820s and 1830s. Compared with the later colour beginnings, however, this is a relatively detailed composition and it is unclear why Turner decided to do no more with a Barnstaple subject. Despite having relatives living in the town it did not become a subject in any of his topographical series.
This colour beginning was not developed into a finished watercolour
and its subject matter remains elusive. It is possible that the scene depicted
here represents the beach at
Bude, which was well-known as a source of sand to improve agricultural soil.
Turner certainly visited Bude in 1811, but he did not produce an image of
it for any of the topographical series with which he was involved.