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

This work on cream coloured wove paper is composed of rapidly superimposed washes of colour which have been tested out on the edges of the sheet. Turner’s brush-strokes overrun the edges of the sheet in some cases. Many Turner Bequest watercolours have been trimmed in the past, and it is impossible to know now how typical this sheet is of his working practice.

This sketch must have taken longer to complete than usual, since many of the horses and figures are developed in some detail. The application of dense black washes made form black pigment only is rather uncharacteristic of Turner, but entirely appropriate to the subject. Much of the paper is covered with multiple watercolour washes, while washing-out and small amounts of gouache were used for highlights.

The identification of the colours at the edges was done by removing 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, and therefore which pigments are likely to be present. Sometimes the lack of detectable elements, in combination with surface colour and appearance in ultraviolet light, can serve in combination to identify a material. For example, the traditional and fast-fading watercolour pigment gamboge (deep yellow) is likely to be present in yellow areas where no elements were detected, while in other yellow areas the detection of chromium and lead indicate that chrome yellow is definitely present. Lime green was created by mixing gamboge and black, an unusual combination for Turner, though for this subject black must have been abundantly available on his palette already. (More than one white ceramic watercolour palette of Turner’s has survived, none linked to any particular painting or period of his life.) Vermilion, Prussian blue, and brown ochre were also confirmed in this sketch. These analyses give more confidence to visual judgements on the materials that Turner was using at this time in other watercolours.

The existence of the colour trials also made it possible to take marginally larger samples in order to analyse Turner’s paint medium, the gum water. Several gums were available in Turner’s era: notably gum arabic and gum tragacanth. The former is today used alone in commercial watercolour paints. The latter could be a practical choice because it does not ‘wash up’. This nineteenth-century term means that a later wash in gum tragacanth, applied to dried paper, would not wet and re-activate an earlier wash as much as would happen when gum arabic alone were used. That makes it very useful for an artist who applies multiple washes, uses plain water for washing out, and generally works his paper extensively, all of which describe Turner’s working methods. A method of chemical analysis called gas chromatography was used, which separates out components of a complex mixture to allow later identification. This was combined with mass spectrometry for more precise identification of the separated components. The result was that the gum used here was a mixture: gum arabic as the largest component, with gum tragacanth, and some sugar or honey added.

Added sugar or honey give flexibility to the paint film, useful if the artist chooses to apply it thickly as Turner often did. This is quite a specific mixture, and it could have suggested that Turner might have mixed it himself, to obtain the working properties he sought from his paint, until further materials were analysed. Several analyses from this sketch gave the same result, which has also been obtained for Venice: Looking across the Lagoon at Sunset (Tate D32162; Turner Bequest CCCXVI 25), and (except for the sugar) from the analysis of several commercial watercolour cakes made up into a travelling watercolour palette by Turner.1 This example is today at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. A Turner watercolour palette, privately owned, proved to have gum arabic alone in its paint when analysed by the same method. Thus we know from the travelling palette that he chose his materials by purchasing so-called ‘hard’ watercolour blocks, which did not include sugar, but added it himself as needed. Commercially available ‘soft’ watercolour blocks included sugar as an easily-detected major component combined with gum arabic, as was found for a watercolour box labelled as containing ‘honey colours’, sold by Ackermann the colourman prior to1837.2

One of Turner’s most prominent contemporary advocates was the artist, Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830). The leading portraitist of the age, Lawrence was famed throughout Europe for his portraits of royalty, statesmen, military leaders and fashionable society, and his achievements brought him many honours including Principal Painter-in-Ordinary to the King, and also from 1820, President of the Royal Academy. Famously describing Turner as ‘indisputably the first landscape painter in Europe’,1 he not only owned some of the younger man’s paintings,2 but also supported his friend in other practical ways, such as helping to secure his only royal commission,3 and, in 1819, encouraging Turner to join him in Italy, writing to Joseph Farington: ‘Turner should come to Rome. His Genius would here be supplied with new Materials, and entirely congenial with it ... It is a fact, that the Country and scenes around me, do thus impress themselves upon me, and that Turner is always associated with them.’4 Following Turner’s arrival in Rome, Lawrence assisted him by introducing him to artistic society and facilitating his access to the Vatican and other artistic institutions.5 Turner was therefore greatly shocked by Lawrence’s sudden demise aged sixty-one on 7 January 1830, writing sorrowfully to fellow Academician Charles Lock Eastlake, ‘Do but think what a loss we and the arts have in the death of Sir Tho[ma]s Lawrence’.6 The news followed hard on the heels of other recent bereavements: that of Turner’s father in September 1829; another Academician, George Dawe in October; and finally, his close acquaintance, Harriet Wells, on 1 January 1830. In the wake of Lawrence’s funeral on 21 January, Turner poured his feelings of sadness and respect into this painted rendition of the event which he subtitled in an inscription ‘A sketch from memory’.

Lawrence’s funeral was a public occasion of great pomp and pageantry, unrivalled by any since that of Lord Nelson twenty-five years earlier. At the request of the Royal Academy the body was taken the night before the ceremony to Somerset House where it lay in repose in the model room, transformed by candles and black cloth hangings.7 The following day, at about 12.30pm, the velvet-draped coffin was transferred to a hearse and taken in solemn procession to St Paul’s Cathedral. Vast numbers of people gathered to witness the spectacle and members of the recently established Metropolitan Police Force were drafted in to control the crowds and traffic along the Strand.8 The event was reported in exhaustive detail by the Times newspaper who recorded that the order of the carefully stage-managed funerary procession was comprised of the following dignitaries and attendants:

On its arrival at St Paul’s, the procession was met by the Dean, the Chapter and the Choir before proceeding according to a pre-arranged order into the cathedral.10 The service was held underneath Wren’s famous dome, with the mourners and Academicians arranged in a circle to the left and right around the coffin.11 According to Turner’s biographer, Walter Thornbury, Turner was seated in between John Constable and David Wilkie, the latter of whom remarked upon the fine visual effect created by the event, ‘from which untimely observation Turner turned away with disgust’.12 Finally the body was transferred to the vault of the crypt where it was buried near to other former Academy Presidents, Benjamin West and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and close to where Turner himself would finally be laid to rest over twenty years later. The painter, William Etty described the affecting atmosphere of the occasion:

Turner’s watercolour depicts the entrance of Lawrence’s coffin into the Great West Door of St Paul’s, followed by a line of mourners walking in pairs. The large black vehicle on the far left-hand side is the horse-drawn hearse topped with feathers and attended by pages, whilst entering from the left of the composition and circling round the statue of Queen Anne on the right in order to drop their inhabitants at the bottom of the steps are some of the numerous carriages which followed the coffin from Somerset House to St Paul’s. The unfolding drama of the parade is watched by groups of people lining the steps and the streets in front of the cathedral, and the crowds are held in place by several black-clad Marshalmen, responsible for law enforcement during this period. Also in attendance are at least two funeral mutes, men wearing hats and sashes and bearing staffs draped in black cloth who were hired to enhance the gravity and dignity of the occasion. One is standing near the central foreground, partially hidden behind another figure in a grey/green coat, whilst a second can be seen beside an empty carriage on the left-hand side of the cathedral steps. Beams of wintry afternoon sunshine stream in from the right-hand side, casting long shadows across the ground and adding to the sombre, melancholy mood of the scene.

Finberg catalogued a miscellaneous pencil sketch on cardboard as Outside St Paul’s: Sir T. Lawrence’s Funeral (see Tate D34940; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 440), thereby connecting it with the watercolour.14 The study shows a number of figures, some of whom are holding spears or staffs, grouped around the base of a statue. Finberg assumed this to be the sculpture of Queen Anne by Francis Bird which had stood outside St Paul’s Cathedral since 1712 and which appears on the right-hand side of his watercolour.15 However, the statue depicted here is missing the four female representations of England, Ireland, France and the North American colonies grouped around the base in the painting, and furthermore the railings encircling the plinth are too high. It is therefore unlikely that the sketch can be related either to Turner’s watercolour or to the artist’s observations of the funeral.

The visual details of Turner’s painting are confirmed in part by a written account of the ‘last sad ceremonies paid yesterday to departed talent’ which the artist included in a letter to his friend, George Jones, currently residing in Rome. Weighed down by his recent series of losses, and with the memory of the day fresh in his mind, Turner wrote:

As described in the letter, a covering of snow lies on the ground in front of St Paul’s and the assembled spectators are braced against the cold. Some, like the figures in the bottom right-hand corner are huddled together, whilst others like the trio of women standing nearby have their hands tucked inside large winter muffs. Despite Turner’s assertion that he was a pall-bearer, he was not in fact one of the eight official participants listed by the Times (the Earl of Aberdeen, Earl Gower, Earl Clanwilliam, and the politicians Robert Peel, George Agar Ellis, Sir George Murray, John Wilson Croker and Richard Hart Davis).17 The order of the cortege stipulated that Academicians followed behind the chief mourners, at some distance from the hearse. In any case, if Turner had been a pall-bearer he would never have witnessed the coffin being carried into the cathedral from the distant vantage point depicted in his watercolour. His claim, however, perhaps relates to the time spent by the body at Somerset House, when it is conceivable that some of the Academicians would have borne the coffin to and from the room where it was placed overnight.

Another interesting point from Turner’s written account of the funeral is the fact that many of the eighty or so carriages belonging to the nobility and gentry were actually unoccupied, and were sent by their owners as a gesture of respect to add to the grandeur of the occasion.18 Although this was common practice in the nineteenth century, where only the immediate family of the deceased generally attended the funeral, Turner’s letter suggests that he disapproved of the tokenistic nature of this ritual. Amongst the empty carriages was one belonging to the current Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, and Eric Shanes has suggested that Turner has retrospectively rectified his absence by inserting him within the picture.19 Wellington is represented by the man in the foreground wearing a red coat and feathered bicorn hat who seems to be the main focus of the crowd’s attention. This figure, who has his back to the viewer, is wearing the full-dress uniform of a field marshal in the British army with a black mourning band on his left arm.20 His presence is reminiscent of a famous portrait by Lawrence, Arthur Wellesley, 1^st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), 1814–15 (Royal Collection), which depicted the duke in the same attire standing with his back to St Paul’s and which Turner would have seen exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1815.21 Here, however, he has imagined the sitter turned in the opposite direction towards the cathedral as a tacit salute to his former portraitist.22

The red-coated figure plays an important role within the composition of the picture. Amidst the subdued tones of the rest of the scene the splash of bright colour provides an arresting detail which serves to draw the eye of the viewer down to the left-hand foreground. Here the artist has placed an inscription at the edge of the picture plane which reads ‘Funeral of Sir Tho^s Lawrence, PRA | Jan^r 21 1830 | SKETCH from MEMORY | IMWT’. The use of the term ‘sketch’ is interesting in relation to a finished work which was subsequently exhibited. Cecilia Powell has stipulated that Turner intended to explain and excuse the haste in which the watercolour was completed, and to justify the picture’s relative lack of finish, particularly evident in the backdrop of the architecture.23 Shanes, meanwhile, has argued that the artist also intended to stress the emotional immediacy of his view.24 A subtle mythical atmosphere is created by the spectral shadow cast across the sarcophagus-like structure bearing the inscription. The silhouette appears to indicate a man holding a spear, although no physical source for the shadow is apparent to the viewer. It is perhaps intended as a symbolic motif, representing a ghostly tribute to the dead man.

Funeral of Sir Thomas Lawrence was the only watercolour of its kind ever exhibited by Turner at the Royal Academy, and, in fact, was the last work in this medium that he showed there. Clearly intended as a homage to his late friend and colleague, Andrew Wilton has suggested that it illustrates Turner’s deep-seated affection, not only for Lawrence, but for the Academy as a whole.25 However, in the context of Turner’s wider oeuvre it can also be viewed as one of a number of pictures concerned with death, reputation and memory including Pope’s Villa at Twickenham, exhibited 1808 (private collection),26 Thomson’s Aeolian Harp, exhibited 1809 (Manchester City Galleries),27 and The Hero of a Hundred Fights, 1800–10, reworked and exhibited 1847 (Tate, N00551).28 Nicholas Alfrey, for example, has described the watercolour as setting a subject precedent for Turner’s later oil, Peace – Burial at Sea, exhibited 1842 (Tate, N00528), a painting which depicts the interment at sea of fellow artist, David Wilkie (1785–1841).29 Alfrey has argued that the ‘blocked, halting rhythms’ of the watercolour introduce an unsettling feeling of uncertainty, highlighting the gap between the outward ritualistic display of public grief and the authentic sense of loss felt by Turner himself.30 Similarly Peace – Burial at Sea was conceived as a pendant to another painting, War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet, exhibited 1842 (Tate, N00529) which featured as its subject, Napoleon Bonaparte, whose ashes had recently received state burial at Les Invalides in Paris.31 The pair was intended as an ironic juxtaposition, with the anonymous final resting place of the peace-loving artist contrasted with the former, but ultimately temporary, state of exile endured by the war-mongering Napoleon.32

The deaths of his father in 1829 and Lawrence in 1830 appear to have prompted Turner to think about his own mortality and legacy. In his previously quoted letter to George Jones he mournfully commented ‘Who will do the like for me, or when, God only knows how soon.’33 In the same piece of correspondence he also touched upon Lawrence’s financial difficulties and the circumstances surrounding his will, writing to Jones:

The cost of Lawrence’s funeral came to £1,000, a huge sum of money which should have been borne by the estate. However, despite his success as an artist, Lawrence was found to be insolvent at his death. A small part of the funeral expenses (£150) was paid by the Academy,35 whilst the rest was met following negotiations with his various creditors.36 Lawrence had hoped that his collection of old master drawings would be purchased for the nation in order to advance the study and appreciation of art in Britain. However, public funds for the realisation of this dream were never to materialise and the works were eventually dispersed amongst private collectors.37 This failure to honour the terms of Lawrence’s will provided a cautionary tale to Turner and probably led to the revision of his own will in 1831 and 1832. In new documents and codicils Turner formally set out his intention to bequeath selected pictures to the nation and to establish both a special gallery to house his works and a charity for poor and decayed male artists. By using his own estate to finance these schemes he hoped to avoid the fate which had befallen Lawrence’s collection. Eventually, after further revisions, Turner’s works did indeed enter the national collection as the ‘Turner Bequest’, although his other wishes were only partially met or ultimately unfulfilled.38

Verso:

Blank
Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘551’ top centre, ‘CCLXIII – 344 (551)’ and ‘L.3. (a)’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII 344’ bottom centre left

Technical notes:

The watercolour is mounted on a larger backing sheet which contains colour trials and excess paint. The overspill has enabled technical analysis of the pigments used,1 and traces of gum Arabic and gum tragacanth were identified within the picture.2