J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

This composition was executed on white wove paper, which must have been very wet for much of the painting. The later, brighter washes of blue were applied to fairly dry paper, and they formed a hard outline as they dried. The neat, blank strips on both sides and the lower edges suggest that the paper was taped down on these sides during painting, and possibly along the top as well. Here paint has seeped in, as though from an adjacent sheet on the same board. Great numbers of works in the Turner Bequest have been trimmed, possibly by Ruskin: the survival of such evidence is unusual. It is possible to work with glue-sized linen-based papers such as Turner used without restraining the sheet at all, simply by placing it on a flat surface before wetting it with brush-loads of water. The whole sheet seems to be an experiment in overlaying a limited number of washes of different colours, while controlling the wetness of the paper.

Examination at moderate magnification, up to x40, made it clear that the blue washes were painted with Prussian blue, while the red paint trails are an (unusual) mixture of vermilion and Mars red, the latter being a manufactured earth pigment that is brighter in tone than any of the natural varieties, and in regular use by Turner in oil paintings. The identifications of these materials were in fact confirmed by removed tiny samples the size of a pin-point, and placing them in the sample chamber of a scanning electron microscope, under an X-ray beam. This beam interacts with the elements that make up each pigment, and the resulting spectrum makes it possible to work out which elements are present. Since it is already known that the washes are pure colours, it is then possible to work out exactly which pigment was used in each case. Examination at moderate magnifications also revealed a purplish red earth pigment which Turner used only intermittently, and which not have been easy to obtain. Yellow ochre and a black pigment were also used.

The white reflection of the moon in the rippling water was scratched out, while a simple horizontal scratch at the point where the shore meets the water instantly creates depth in the image. Washing-out would not have given such a dramatic highlight, in either case.

The ‘muted colours and bold shapes’1 here combine in a ‘record of a powerful motif’,2 which has been exhibited and published under close variations of Finberg’s title ‘Hulks on Tamar: Twilight’.3 With the characteristic curving mass of the decommissioned warship’s hull (or possibly more than one overlapping) largely an unmodulated brown against the grey silhouette of the wooded bank beyond, perhaps Finberg was thinking of an anecdote from the Devon journalist Cyrus Redding (1785–1870), who was one of Turner’s close companions during his extended stay in the Plymouth area in the summer of 1813 (see the introduction to the ‘West Country 1813’ section of this catalogue). As Redding later vividly put it:

A later variation has ‘the sun just setting, and the shadows becoming dark and deep’, allowing the demonstration of Turner’s prediction that ‘we should only see the hulls – a mass of shadow.’5

In 1812, the year after his first general West Country tour in search of material for the Southern Coast scheme (see the Introduction to this section), The River Plym6 was among several oil paintings shown at Turner’s gallery. Untraced ever since, it was possibly the scene now known as Hulks on the Tamar, with several vessels dark against a bright sky (Tate T03881; displayed at Petworth House, West Sussex);7 there are a few relevant drawings in the 1811 Devonshire Coast, No.1 sketchbook (for example Tate D08717; Turner Bequest CXXIII 192). The present study is, perhaps fortuitously, comparable with one off Saltash a few pages on (Tate D08721; Turner Bequest CXXIII 195).

Andrew Wilton has compared the setting with a similar view in the 1814 Devon Rivers, No.2 sketchbook (Tate D09702; Turner Bequest CXXXIII 28a).8 The waters around Plymouth were full of such vessels towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars, as recorded in a long sequence of pencil drawings in that book, used on Turner’s third summer visit to the area (Tate D09671–D09703; Turner Bequest CXXXIII 3–29);9 it was formerly associated with the 1813 stay, hence presumably the long-standing dating of the present work to about that year, extended a little here in line with all three West Country tours, although as a studio production it could easily have been made later. Andrew Wilton has suggested an immediate link to the Southern Coast series,10 while the concurrent Rivers of Devon project is another possibility (see the Introduction to this section). Wilton has also compared the evocative use of light and atmosphere to the effects in compositions associated with the ‘Little Liber’ (see the ‘Little Liber c.1823–6’ section).11

Technical notes:

The thin sliver of the new moon was carefully reserved when the pale wash of the surrounding sky was applied; the corresponding glitter of the reflection in the foreground was heavily scratched out. The torn edges of the sheet are somewhat irregular, and there are colour tests along the top edge.

Verso:

Blank; extensive brown staining; inscribed by ?John Ruskin in pencil ‘AB 79 P | O’ towards bottom right; inscribed in pencil ‘Box’ 97’ and stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CXCVI – E’ bottom right.