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

This evocative scene has long been associated with Venice,1 and indeed it can be related through its support to numerous specifically topographical watercolours associated with Turner’s 1840 visit (see the technical notes below). The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s laconic 1909 Inventory entry (‘Moonlight’, in one of the ‘Venice: Miscellaneous’ sections): ‘on the Lagune’.2 Lindsay Stainton has described this as a ‘particularly subtle and velvety example, using a limited range of colours, chiefly blues and blacks, against which tiny glimmers of light from the boats sparkle against the darkness’,3 while in the context of the stormy conditions Turner seems to have witnessed at times during his 1840 stay (see the Introduction to the tour), Timothy Wilcox has suggested that it ‘still conveys a strong suggestion of unsettled weather through many details, not least its cool colours and the broken reflections of the boats’.4

The ‘saturated, inky clouds’ here, ‘painted while the paper was still wet so that the marks ... diffuse into the design’ have been compared technically by Ian Warrell to those in the agitated contemporary daytime watercolour Storm at Venice (British Museum, London).5 Robert Upstone has noted how the ‘city is suggested by the subtle soaking up and removal of some of the colour, probably using a damp brush, while the eye is drawn to the lanterns of the boats, made with spots of bodycolour.’6 Warrell has detected ‘perhaps a suggestion of a dome and a campanile ..., but it is unnecessary to speculate on its identity, as Turner’s subject is less the specifics of place than a contemplation of the nocturnal Lagoon’, as ‘the subdued light opens out to the infinite.’7

Michael Bockemühl has considered the relatively ‘abstract’ nature of the dim, nocturnal composition, and the fleeting, ambiguous nature of the loosely defined compositional elements applied over or worked into the basic structure of horizontal zones: ‘The only spot where a representational element would seem to take on a solid form is the dark area in the centre of the picture, apparently floating there as if weightless. It is only when one views everything as a whole, including the blue zones above and below, that the thought occurs that we could be looking at a ship’. Such ‘colour compositions remain visible, as if they had their own form, thereby producing a purely visible effect’, in this case as a ‘counterpart for the realm of colour to the manner in which moonlight plays under boats in the water.’8 Warrell has discussed several of the Lagoon subjects grouped here in relation to Turner’s contemporary interest in Goethe’s colour theory9 (see the Introduction to this subsection).

Compare Tate D32192 (Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 334), another night scene on the Lagoon, where the brightest accent is the moon low over the water.

Technical notes:

The brightest white light in the foreground centres on a small patch washed and lifted out through to the bare support, with the red glow of a second light to its left modifying another washed-out area. In the middle distance another red lantern in indicated by a spot of pigment applied within a spot scratched through to the white paper, the glow being almost subliminally intensified by red hatching over the surrounding dark washes. Another small but conspicuous light and its reflection towards the bottom left was scratched out without further modification. Sarah Taft has observed that the ‘luminosity of this watercolour, despite being richly painted, seems to owe a lot to the choice of paper’, exploiting its inherent glow by contrast with the use of opaque white in many of Turner’s contemporary Venetian studies on mid-toned brown and grey papers1 (see for example Tate D32222; Turner Bequest CCCXVIII 3).

This is one of numerous 1840 Venice works Ian Warrell has noted as on sheets of ‘white paper produced [under the name] Charles Ansell,2 each measuring around 24 x 30 cm, several watermarked with the date “1828”’:3 Tate D32138–D32139, D32141–D32143, D32145–D32147, D32154–D32163, D32167–D32168, D32170–D32177, D35980, D36190 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 1, 2, 4–6, 8–10, 17–26, 30, 31, 33–40, CCCLXIV 137, 332). Warrell has also observed that The Doge’s Palace and Piazzetta, Venice (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin)4 and Venice: The New Moon (currently untraced)5 ‘may belong to this group’.6

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘15’ top right; stamped in black ‘CCCXVI – 39’ over Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom centre.