J. M. W. Turner in 10 Paintings

1. Self-Portrait

Beginning our top ten list, this is one of Joseph Mallord William Turner’s first paintings, which he himself was the subject of. He was born to lower-middle-class parents in a small home on Maiden Lane in London, UK, in 1775. Like the very paintings he created, his life and self were colorful. From tragedy that befell his mother, to him always going against the grain of accepted painting styles and becoming hermetic in his later years, J. M. W. Turner is considered one of the most influential painters to have lived.

2. Fishermen at Sea

There is a sense of despair in this oil painting that imprints itself into the viewer. When we set berth with this wonderfully gloomy painting, it feels like a half-remembered dream or nightmare as the grim moonlit scene plays on our most primal anxieties of night. In life, we often feel as if we are sailing to uncertain fates filled with anxieties surrounding us like black water. Turner would become very acquainted with the feelings of loneliness and anxiety after his mother was admitted to St. Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics shortly after the completion of this early masterpiece.

In an expert use of light and atmosphere, the moon creates a ghostly spotlight that overlooks and frames a small fishing boat filled with shadowy fishermen. This is a motif that Turner looks to in many of his works–ships upon the ocean. The vessel of this painting is being tossed by violent waves, there is a dim lantern providing a waning flickering warmth to the men huddled around it. The ivory moonlight is diffused through the thick atmosphere diluting it to a sickly green vapor. The suffocating clouds close around the moon like fingers. The edges of the painting are silent and nearly black as the fishermen follow an identical boat into the night.

3. Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps

The use of scale in any art can serve as an emphasis of power. In portraits, for example, the depicted individual takes up much of the canvas space. After that, there is less room for background details like setting and props. In many instances, even the peripheral details still orbit the individual. So in the case of Turner’s painting about one of the greatest military leaders in ancient history, where does the power lie according to the use of scale? Let’s look at the details!

The small great army of Hannibal toils in the mouth of a black storm. It opens to consume the weary soldiers that border the very bottom of the picture, almost like insects. The snow is blotting out the sun and soon changing its flourishing yellow light into a sickly orange. The deathly white snow is roaring down the Alps soon to wash all away. The great Hannibal himself is hardly distinguishable from his men, who are hardly distinguishable from rocks. Through the size of the storm and the mountains, Turner showcases the frailty of men in the presence of nature’s raw power and demonstrates the savage beauty that changes the very light of the sun.

4. The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October 1834

Burning off the canvas like a biblical pillar of fire, the House of Lords and Commons blazes, staining the water with light and smothering the sky with thick smoke. We are witness to a tragedy in the advanced civilized world of London in The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons.

Turner is widely associated with the Romantic art movement, but many consider him to be the first Modernist painter as well. This painting is one of his first works that I would consider to thread both those movements perfectly. What feels so modern about this painting is the mixture of light within the atmosphere that creates the bold contrasting orange shape. It crosses at the center of the painting’s horizon and imposes visual control upon the landscape. Its size and lack of definition, which was traditionally used in Romantic art, lends to the nearly abstract feeling.

However, the detail shown from the light of the massive flame evokes an emotion of the harrowing event. The buildings in and around the flames are dwarfed and consumed by the fire. The people are massed together, watching, their gaunt faces illuminated in pale horror. This strong emotion felt by nature’s display of power is what makes Turner directly in line with Romanticism and one of its best painters!

5. Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino

Painted in a beautiful pastel color palette, Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino, shows off the vista of Rome, Italy in what appears to be an idyllic morning. Large columns of ancient ruins, of what once was the great Roman forum, now keep company to the goats that climb on its massive footstones. The herders of the modern era rest with the city as their backdrop.

The view of the city is staggering with old and new architecture basking above the morning mist, catching the golden glow of first light. It is like looking into a flower bed of pastel ruins and seeing time unfurl before us. We look into this painting to see that there is newer baroque architecture. The Catholic church stands taller than the ancient Colosseum. Old and new, spacious buildings and humble farmers living alike as the remains of fallen empires overlook the streets and fertilize the civilization that sprouted forth from its beautiful decay. Time flows on.

6. The Fighting Temeraire

In the painting before, we saw the theme of continuity of time. The Fighting Temeraire makes more of a solemn comment on the transition of old to new (for exactly that theme, this painting was used in the James Bond movie Skyfall for all you movie buffs out there!). As opposed to the sunrise of the previous painting, here the sun is setting and the moon is taking its place in the sky. We see the world transition to modernity. This is perfectly symbolized by the small steam-powered boat retiring the once great and powerful warship of a bygone era. There is an air of sadness that comes from the nostalgia of a mighty time. Every new era seems to abandon the romance of the last.

The composition of the painting is excellent in that it puts the older ships in the background as if they’re being pulled from back in time to the foreground of the new age. We are used to seeing ships departing from land, sailing towards the horizon not away from it. The colors Turner uses enrich the emotion and story: The dark gold sun is about to plunge into the ocean. The land and its buildings look like headstones of a graveyard that is dark and vacant feeling. The warship that serves as the focal point is beautifully pale, looming in the back like a noble ghost.

In what can seem like a last rallying cry from Turner, he paints the warship to stand dominant on the canvas with its pearly sails proudly reaching high above. Its scale towers over the small tugboat and the even smaller boats that sail aside it in ceremony of one greater than them. As told through the title, Temeraire fights on, even if for its final time.

7. Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway

As you can tell by now, Turner’s works are a layered viewing experience. We first take in the painting as a whole, with light and dark forms hung upon a radiant void of light. When we take a closer look, we can see a highly detailed and familiar world. A black train rushes towards us like a steel arrow shooting out of obscurity. The rain streaks and bleeds the sky down, adding to the great motion of the scene. The machine cuts through the roaring elements of nature undeterred. A fisherman in a boat is made puny on the river that passes under the towering bridges. The people on the banks of the river are nearly ghosts as the light and atmosphere abstract and reduce all back to form and void.

Turner is fully embracing the modern era. The traditional horizontal lines of landscape painting are clashed against with the railway pointed toward the viewer. The vertical lines from the chosen perspective serve as a visual interruption. The technology of the train is forefront and its contrast appears aggressive against the calm farm landscape that sinks out of focus as the herald of the modern world charges at us.

8. Whalers

Coming out six years before Herman Melville’s magnum opus, Moby Dick, Turner’s Whalers can be considered the preeminent painting representation of the Romantic struggle of man hunting the sperm whale. In the book, the main character Ishmael fears the whale Moby Dick in large part due to its piercing whiteness, which represents to him the heartless void of the universe, the unflinching certainty of annihilation.

In Turner’s work, whiteness is above the water as the subjects seem almost as a discoloring of the painting, odd scratchings, or stains upon the ivory canvas. Again, his subjects are swallowed within the light and the atmosphere just as the whale is within the ocean. The sails of the large ship are ghosts in the mist, men in rowboats toil in the wake of the mighty whale they hunt, and the yellow waves stain red as the ocean gorges itself on the blood of the leviathan. The eternal battle of man against nature rages on across the face of the deep.

9. Lost to All Hope the Brig

One can reasonably surmise that viewing art in general breaks down into: “What do we actually see in the painting?” and “What do we feel from this image?” – the latter being the most important. At first viewing, this painting seems unfinished. But in fact, it is in its completed form. The main reason why it looks unfinished is that this is the only painting on this list to be done in watercolor, which gives it a faint color-stained appearance.

The sparse use of color and subject adds to the feeling of hopelessness. A theme that the title insinuates and one that runs in most of Turner’s works. If we are to wonder: “What constitutes a painting at its core?” then surely this would be Turner’s response. A painting bare of nearly all subject and detail aside from a horizon and a single focal point drifting upon it shrouded in a rosy watercolor glow.

There is a spectral shipwreck on the horizon. The sand wisps into the air and all seems transparent. The haunting poetry of Turner’s writings can be faintly seen on the bottom left: “Lost to all hope she lies / each sea breaks over a derelict / on an unknown shore the sea folk only sharing the triumph.” The entire scene appears as a mirage to our marooned viewing. Lost to All Hope the Brig is truly a testament of what is actually needed to create an image of powerful emotion.

10. Light and Color

The full name of this painting is Light and Color – Goethe’s Theory – The Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis. As the title suggests, there is so much to be said about this painting. Turner seems to look into light itself through the color theories of German polymath and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who wrote about the subjective experience of light perception; how light connects to us in individual and unique ways.

Turner is using the theories of Goethe as a spyglass to peer into his subject: light in its different variations both physical and metaphysical. The painting depicts a heavenly torrent; light and darkness swirling and clashing until they are entangled into color and beauty. Within this storm, we see multiple depictions of major biblical events: the morning after the great flood (deluge) God sent forth to cleanse the world of wickedness, sparing only the Prophet Noah and his family; the bronze serpent symbol which Moses raises up for the children of Israel to look upon; and Moses writing the Book of Genesis.

The previously discussed painting could be seen as perhaps the raw embodiment of the theme of hopelessness. In Light and Color, I would argue that we are seeing his most hopeful. If the use of light is Turner’s trademark, then this is one of its most bold examples. The subject of this painting is light itself. The painting is neither inherently horizontal like that of a landscape nor vertical either but circular. It is as if we have stared into a beam of light and are seeing the diffraction that creates a halo around the source of light. The source of the light which lays within the swirling storm could hold multiple answers to the question: “What is light?”

The moment after the Deluge was a time of peace when God Himself promised there would be no more destruction by water. That promise of peace was symbolized by a rainbow–light and color. The depiction of the bronze serpent on the cross was made for the Israelites to look on and by doing so they would be healed. Further back, encircled by this storm, we see the depiction of Moses writing the Book of Genesis which is the first book in the Bible. Genesis means the origin, or beginning of something.

So what is light? The subjective answers that Turner seems to show us in his experience with it may very well be: light is peace, light is healing, and light is knowledge. The origin of light that Turner suggests, can be fittingly summarized in Genesis 1:3.