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| William Turner, Northam Castle, Sunrise, c. 1845 Oil on canvas, 121,9 x 90,8 cm Tate Britain, Londres |
During the 1906
Turner exhibition at the National Gallery, the displaying of Norham Castle, Sunrise caused a critic
to marvel: '
We have never seen Turner before!'[1]
This painting and other late pictures belonged to a series first shown for the
opening of the exhibition. Norham Castle
drew much attention from the press and art critics: praised as an achievement
in the late career of the British artist, it was then identified as an unknown
masterpiece. What is surprising, though, is that contemporaries of Turner did
not consider this type of pictures as successful at the time they were
produced. Why did this picture came to be so iconic both for Turner’s career
and the Tate collection?
Norham Castle, Sunrise, represents a landscape that Turner depicted
several times throughout his career. In the 1845 version, the realistic aspect
of the setting disappears to lay the emphasis on the atmospheric dimension of
the scene. In the first ground, the two banks of river Tweed act as foils to
direct the viewer’s attention to the reflections on the water, merging into variations
of yellow and blue hues. On the right, an animal stands out against the
golden-blue reflections: it indicates that it is an actual landscape, and not
an imaginary setting. The focal point of the scene, the eponymous castle in the
second ground, makes the site easily recognisable. The sun and the small
touches of yellow light in the upper ground function as echoes of the golden
reflections on the river. With the fluid handling of paint, light and loose
brushstroke, the components of the landscape are treated as a symphony on light
and colour. The overall picture is meant to create a sense of harmony in the
viewer.
The literary
inspiration of Norham Castle, Sunrise
derives from a poem by James Thompson called ‘The Seasons’. With the literary
quotation, and by creating a richly charged mood, Turner could fulfil his
ambition as a history painter. Even though the composition veers towards
abstraction, art historian Simon Wilson argues that it remains classical: the
banks of the river provide
‘balancing foregrounds (…) on each side, with
carefully orchestrated recession into a blue haze…’[2].
In the text
accompanying the picture at Tate Britain, it is indicated that this recurrent
motif of Turner’s career, representing a ruined castle surveying the border
between England and Scotland, was first spotted in 1797 during the artist’s tour
of Northern Britain.
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| Turner, Northam Castle on River Tweed, c. 1822 - 1823 Watercolour on paper, 15,6 x 21,6 cm Tate Britain |
Turner painted different versions of the site, by making
sketches on the spot, but in the 1845 oil version, he tried to achieve the same
effect he had created with watercolours. As visitors, we are also invited to
make comparisons with other Turner pictures from the room in which Norham Castle is exhibited, called ‘Academic
Ambitions’: while other works show sublime scenes inspired by the paintings of
Claude, Loutherbourg and Salvator Rosa, the display of this late painting,
along with Snow Storm (1842), implies that Turner released himself from the influence of his Masters, by producing a
pastoral scene in which the poetic mood prevails. However, the viewer is told
that this picture was not exhibited during Turner’s lifetime, because it would
have certainly lacked the finished aspect of the pictures displayed at the
Royal Academy. Art historians put forward many hypotheses accounting for the
non-exhibition of Norham Castle:
while Simon Wilson suggests that it might be a sketch for a more complete
picture[3],
William Vaughan explains that towards the end of his life, Turner became more
and more isolated, and his pictures had been so strange to his contemporaries that
most of them thought the painter had gone mad[4].
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| Turner, Snow-Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth, 1842 Oil on canvas, 91,4 x 121,9 cm Tate Britain |
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| Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, A Shipwreck off a Rocky Coast, 1760s Oil on canvas, 83 x 126,4 cm Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney |
Nevertheless, most
visitors now accept this picture as one of Turner’s masterpieces and, even
though Norham Castle, Sunrise might
have been regarded as lacking detail in its time, it is now considered as
belonging to the most important part in the artist’s career. When I visited the
exhibition ‘Turner and the Masters’ at the Grand Palais, Paris, art curator
David Solkin explained that he had received many criticisms by visitors who
complained of not seeing what they called ‘real’ Turners. The exhibition’s
focus was not on Turner’s final years but on the variety of his influences; this
example stresses how the perception of the public changed and how,
surprisingly, what used to be regarded as pictures unworthy of display came to
be considered as iconic works.
The text accompanying
Norham Castle, recording its
exhibition history, directs the viewer’s understanding of the painting and
entices him or her to consider the picture as a masterpiece embodying the
culminating point of Turner’s career. Its first display in 1906, among a group
of 21 unfinished canvasses at the National Gallery, enabled the public to
change its reception of Turner’s late productions, after the innovative
techniques of the Impressionists had been recognised as tokens of modernity.
The recurrent exhibition of the picture, touring around the artistic centres of
Europe and America, shows how successful it has been. The information available
on the Tate website reinforces the aura of the work by laying the emphasis on
the mystery that surrounds it. The fact that Norham Castle was discovered in Turner’s studio after his death and
the speculations on how it left the studio enhance the mythical status of
Turner as an original, independent artist. Moreover, this change of perception
by the public allowed art historians to strengthen the status of Turner as an
artist who may have been misunderstood in his time.
Nowadays, Norham Castle, Sunrise, is located in
the Clore Gallery, which is entirely devoted to the displaying of the Turner
collection. Interestingly, the gallery does not really follow a chronological
pattern, but rather a thematic one, in order to enhance the focal points in
Turner’s career and to put forward the stylistic traits or the subject-matter
he shared with his contemporaries, such as John Constable.
The viewer may be surprised to find Norham Castle in the first room of the Clore Gallery, called ‘Academic Ambitions’. Therefore, even though viewers would consider the pictures from the ‘Academic Ambitions’ room as landscapes, Turner and his contemporaries regarded these pieces as history paintings, because of their biblical references and poetic quotations. Pictures such as Aeneas and the Sibyl (1798) or Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812) derive from texts of the Antiquity by Virgil and Titus Livy. As a result, the visitor is invited to compare Norham Castle with other Turner paintings, to notice how the artist depicted a natural landscape incorporating the concept of the sublime, but with a radically different style. The same process of echo is emphasised through the juxtaposition of two paintings bearing the same title: the 1812 Snow Storm still contains the Latin source, while the other piece entitled Snow Storm registers Turner’s looser handling of paint through the depiction of some tormented, violent setting.
The viewer may be surprised to find Norham Castle in the first room of the Clore Gallery, called ‘Academic Ambitions’. Therefore, even though viewers would consider the pictures from the ‘Academic Ambitions’ room as landscapes, Turner and his contemporaries regarded these pieces as history paintings, because of their biblical references and poetic quotations. Pictures such as Aeneas and the Sibyl (1798) or Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812) derive from texts of the Antiquity by Virgil and Titus Livy. As a result, the visitor is invited to compare Norham Castle with other Turner paintings, to notice how the artist depicted a natural landscape incorporating the concept of the sublime, but with a radically different style. The same process of echo is emphasised through the juxtaposition of two paintings bearing the same title: the 1812 Snow Storm still contains the Latin source, while the other piece entitled Snow Storm registers Turner’s looser handling of paint through the depiction of some tormented, violent setting.
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| John Constable, Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow, 1836 Oil on canvas, 50,8 x 76;2 cm Tate Britain |
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| Turner, Aeneas and the Sybil, Lake Avernus, c.1798 Oil on canvas, 76,5 x 98,4 cm Tate Britain |
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Bibliography
Joseph Mallord
William Turner. Aeneas and the Sybil,
Lake Avernus, circa 1798. Oil on canvas, 76.5 x 98.4 cm. Tate Gallery,
London
---. Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing
the Alps, 1812. Oil on canvas, 146 x 237.5 cm. Tate Gallery, London
---. Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth,
1842. Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 121.9 cm. Tate Gallery, London
Books, essays
Wilson, Simon. Tate Gallery: An Illustrated Companion.
Tate Gallery: London, revised edition, 1991
Websites
Museology
‘Turner and his
Masters’, exhibition held from to at the Grand Palais, Paris
Vaugham, William,
audioguide accompanying Turner’s Norham
Castle, Sunrise
[4] See
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/norham-castle-sunrise-incomprehension-icon/norham-castle-sunrise-1
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