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

The tentative description of this subject as ‘Interior of Theatre (?)’ in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory was annotated by the Turner scholar C.F. Bell: ‘no A stage out of doors’.1 This idea was adopted by Finberg and later commentators,2 sometimes with reference to Tate D32237 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 18), an 1840 colour study on buff paper which is accepted as showing the interior of a conventional Venetian theatre.3 Technically similar figure scenes have also been linked with theatrical or literary subjects (Tate D32236, D32239; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 17, 20). In this instance, the swirling white forms in the right foreground could presumably be taken as members of the audience (compare D32237; see also Tate D32231 and D32244; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 12, 25), implying a substantial scale.

While retaining the theatrical connection, Lindsay Stainton called this ‘one of the more mysterious in the series; a blaze of vermilion on the left suggests a fire’.4 Ian Warrell has questioned this interpretation, noting that compared to the ‘gaily decorated theatres’ of Venice, the ‘stark lines’ of what might be taken as the illuminated proscenium on the right would appear ‘more modern’5 than seems feasible. While noting the alternative of an ‘improvised production in the Public Gardens’, he has proposed that Turner rather shows ‘a workshop of some kind, perhaps one in which glass was being manufactured. This would explain the boxed-in area which may represent the white heat of a furnace. Furthermore, the intensity of the red flames would be alarming outside such a context’. Warrell has compared the strength and brightness of these elements with those of the foundry in Turner’s oil painting The Hero of a Hundred Fights (Tate N00551),6 exhibited in 1847,7 albeit reworked over an originally much darker industrial interior apparently of the 1800s.

While not fully accounting for the undefined shapes in the foreground, the reading of the scene as a workshop is perhaps the most satisfactory, making it more comparable with Tate D32240 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 21), a contemporary study with loosely rendered objects catching the light in a shadowy interior, likely a wine shop. At any event, the subject, like other 1840 Venice interiors and figure scenes, show Turner’s continued interest in chiaroscuro effects and rich colours owing much not only to Venetian art but to a long-standing admiration for Rembrandt,8 as noted in the Introduction to this subsection.

In the context of adventurous developments in technique and composition among British watercolourists of Turner’s time, David Blayney Brown has also acknowledged the likely influence of the seventeenth-century Dutch painter, but also described how ‘bodycolour, thrown boldly on a dark-toned paper, created the impressionistic drama of some entirely personal drawings’ of Venice; here there is Rembrandt-like ‘magnificent chiaroscuro’ but also evidence of Turner’s ‘unique ability to match method to subject and mood; it is absolutely modern in its vibrancy and expressive power.’9 Responding to Brown’s comments, Jonathan Bate observed how ‘it looks every bit like a work of abstraction: a whorl of red to the left; vertical, horizontal and angular strokes of black; splodges of white where human figures cast their elusive shadows.’10 An equally strong red is seen accentuating a figure in D32237.

Technical notes:

This is one of numerous 1840 Venice-related works Ian Warrell has noted as being on ‘Grey-brown paper produced by an unknown maker (possibly ... a batch made at Fabriano [Italy])’;1 for numerous red-brown Fabriano sheets used for similar subjects, see for example under Tate D32224 (Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 5).

Warrell noted the grey-brown sheets as being torn into two formats: nine sheets of approximately 148 x 232 mm (Tate D32220, D32249–D32250, D32252–D32253, D32255–D32258; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 1, CCCXIX 1, 2, 4, 5, 7–10), and seven of twice the size, at about 231 x 295 mm (Tate D32223, D32226, D32228–D32229, D32231, D32233, D32242; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 4, 7, 9, 10, 12, 14, 23).

Verso:

Blank, with dark staining bleeding through from the recto; inscribed by Turner in ink ‘1’ bottom right (inverted?); inscribed in pencil ‘37’ above centre; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCCXVIII – 4’ bottom left; inscribed in pencil ‘CCCXVIII 4’ bottom right. For Turner’s ink numbering of many similar sheets, see the Introduction to the tour.