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The Whale ShipJMW Turner and the Sublime

by AMANDA MCCLEOD

I did not expect to escape, but felt bound to record it if I did.

- JMW Turner

The Whale Ship by Joseph Mallord William Turner hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was first exhibited at the 1845 Royal Academy show when Turner was 70 years old. He had been a full member of the Royal Academy since age 26, and in 1845 (as the Academy’s oldest member) had acted as the Academy president during the illness of Sir Martin Archer Schee. Along with three other paintings involving the subject of a whale hunting between the years of 1845 and 1846, The Whale Ship was received with some confusion from both the public and critical realms. These works, even when viewed in the spectrum of Turner’s incredibly dynamic and adventurous career, proved to be initially shocking for their subject matter.

Although the struggle between man and sea always captivated Turner and his patrons alike, these four paintings are the only works which discuss the subject of whaling specifically. Turner had been interested in a multitude of themes throughout his lengthy career, and often filled sketch books with preliminary studies for his paintings, as is the case for his Whalers series. Today it hangs in the Metropolitan Museum next to a work by John Constable and an earlier work by Turner himself entitled Saltash with Water Ferry.

Saltash with Water FerryBoth the Constable and early Turner appear impossibly still and calm in comparison to The Whale Ship, which still gives one the immediate impression of might and awe. Turner’s Whale Ship is a window into a completely different realm, into the vision of a painter late in his career, and into the sublime.

This is not the first time that we have seen Turner render sea creatures, man tossing amongst waves, or ships bracing themselves against unruly tides. In The Slave Ship or Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying - Typhoon Coming On of 1840, we see all of these elements incorporated. A ghostly ship appears to be consumed by the churning sea, a violent sky ignited by a glowering sun, blinds the viewer to the horizon, while in the foreground figures of slaves are rendered helpless in the wake. In the bottom right corner we see fish rushing to consume what has been abandoned and discarded by the condemned ship. The ravenous fish indeed seem born out of a dream, their cartoonish forms recalling early Minoan interpretations of sea life.

Slavers throwing overboard the death and dyingWhen The Slave Ship was shown first in the Royal Academy of 1840, Turner exhibited it with a poem he had written in 1812, entitled The Fallacies of Hope:

Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay;

Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds

Declare the Typhoon's coming.

Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard

The dead and dying - ne'er heed their chains

Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope!

Where is thy market now?

John Ruskin, a critic who championed Turner’s artwork and was the first owner of The Slave Ship, wrote "If I were reduced to rest Turner's immortality upon any single work, I should choose this." The Slave Ship, painted only 5 years prior to The Whale Ship, is a work which exhibits tremendous violence and struggle, just as the bloody battle Turner would later depict between man and whale. The Slave Ship is said to have been painted out of Turner’s desire to assist the abolitionist movement in England, so it is interesting to consider the motives behind yet another and infamous image of violent sea struggle. Was The Whale Ship as informed and impassioned as The Slave Ship, was it just Turner’s sheer fascination with adventure, or simply to attract a wealthy patron?

Ships in a breeze, 1808It is of popular opinion that The Whale Ship was painted with the intention of attracting a buyer, Elhanan Bicknell, who was involved in the fishing industry, and more specifically in arctic whaling. Bicknell purchased the work form Turner after coming to his Queen Anne Street studio in January of 1845 to see what Turner referred to as "A whale or two on canvas."

He bought the work, but later returned it to Turner after discovering the artist had finished some of the painting with water colors. This practice was not uncommon for Turner, who often incorporated water color and other finishing techniques into his work to achieve the transparency of light he desired. However, when Bicknell attempted to wipe the painting, he found some of the color had transferred onto his handkerchief. Feeling like he got less than he paid for, Bicknell returned the work to Turner claiming that it was not finished. It is said that before Whalers was shown in the Royal Academy show of 1845, Turner had painted in the major details of the work on varnishing day.

Fishing Boats Entering Calais Harbor, 1803Turner had a long history of actually adjusting, if not completely finishing, his works on varnishing day instead of simply applying a varnish, as was the custom. This practice may have been to make sure that the work was well received in the lighting of the Academy, as Turner was often referred to as a “the painter of light” and had a particular obsession with rendering it perfectly. Other accounts of this practice throughout his career point to the artist's pure showmanship, as he demonstrated his hand in front of the friends, family, and potential buyers that were in usual attendance on varnishing day. There are many accounts of his dramatic finishing brushstrokes, of readings of poetry before his works, and many other grandiose or theatrical gestures.

Although the painting may have been completed swiftly, Turner did keep a sketch book for his Whale series, and the preliminary drawings give some indication that the four works were intended as a quartet. In 1840 Turner undoubtedly saw a painting exhibited in the Royal Academy by John Ward, a whale fishing scene depicting Hull, an arctic fishing town. Ward directly informed the viewers of the 1840 exhibition which ships were in the painting, and the direct history he was referencing through the exhibition title: "Northern Whale Fishery: portraits of the Swan, one of the vessels so long frozen up in the Arctic regions, and the Isabella, formerly commanded by Captain Ross when on discovery and afterwards commanded by Captain Humphreys at the time he rescued that distinguished navigator." Turner may have indeed been influenced by this, as his later whaling series would also directly confront historical events and include instances which occurred during arctic exploration.

In the 1840s, it was well known in Britain that the whaling industry provided some of the most dangerous and brutal work available to man. Turner himself was fascinated with accounts of whaling crews and sea expeditions, and took in many firsthand written accounts, many of which were published regularly in newspapers. Turner was good friends with George William Manby, a man who had experience in Arctic expeditions and Yarmouth barrack-master. George William Manby made a voyage to Greenland in 1821 in the company of a renowned whaler by the name of William Scoresby. Together they were testing out Manby’s newly designed harpoon guns, and upon their return had written an account of the voyage that was published, including many details about arctic climate and the hardships of whale hunting. Turner would undoubtedly hear of the trip, as well as other adventures which Manby had participated in.

Fire Aboard Ship, 1835This captivated Turner, as he had a career-long love of interpreting the sea, and these stories only furthered his fantasies of sublime struggle. The paintings, as well as Turner’s interest in the whale industry, were also influenced by Thomas Beale’s Natural History of a Sperm Whale, and were exhibited with reference to his text. Beale’s work captivated many artists of the time, as the whaling industry was of immense interest and profit, and not much was known publicly of these deep sea dwellers before his book was published. The Whale Ship does in fact depict a scene which was sourced from real life accounts, and Turner claimed that it related directly to a story depicted on page 175 in Thomas Beale’s History of a Sperm Whale.

The account describes the struggle of three whale boats which pursued a whale for several hours before harpooning it successfully. The whale sunk below the boats, rose again, and overturned one of the crafts violently, before sinking to the bottom of the ocean floor itself. In the original narrative the whalers' struggle is not one that entails success, and involves the loss of both their kill and crew. As dramatic as the original account may seem, in reality it took place on a relatively calm day and did not occur near the main whale ship.

On Turner’s canvas, of course, the drama of the scene is imaginatively enhanced as we see all of the whaling boats perpendicular to the horizon and the crewmen helplessly spilling out. The whale vessel itself rocks against a stormy current, and the sky and sea spray are almost indiscernible. The sails of the ship are thick and impasto like, as if smeared violently, they appear wind blown.

Just below we see a cluster of whale boats tumbling in what appears to be the force caused by the striking of the whale’s tail. Tiny figures fall helplessly from these crafts, which in themselves evoke a sort of futurist rendering in their frenzied motion. Everything in the painting is kinetic and yet frozen. Both the whale and the figures themselves are at the height of vulnerability, each threatened greatly by the other. The beastly whale is depicted violently thrashing and spewing blood. Its form appears as though painted swiftly, its skin rendered in a deep plum. The sky above hangs ominously, giving us no indication of distance, temperature, or time of day - only the notion of a great salty saturated mist. The canvas is predominantly white, and brings to mind the “White School" (Turner, Constable, Augustus Wall Callcott) described by Sir George Beaumont as painters who "discarded the brown and black tones traditional in landscape."

In his later works Turner had indeed developed a penchant for disregarding linear properties and the traditional of perspective. This shift in focus, from the linear to the frenzied and momentary, is crucial to note when considering the works produced in Turner’s later career. As one critic has said, “to do justice to Turner, it should always be remembered that he is the painter, not of reflections, but of immediate sensations."

These immediate sensations, the terror of the scene, were not born just of Turner’s creative imagination, but of real accounts of hardship reported at the exact time he was working on his Whaling series. Hurrah! For the Whaler Erebus: Another Fish! of 1846 depicts a scene of victory, in which the whalers' butcher their captured whale. However, the Erebus in reality was not a whale ship, but in fact a Bomber destined for Arctic exploration from 1839 to 1843. In 1845 the Erebus was under the command of Sir John Franklin, who was in search of the North-West passage.

It became publicly known in 1846 that nothing, in fact, had been heard of the ship since July 1845, and that it was trapped in the ice. By christening one of his whale ships, the four of which (as indicated by studies done prior to the works) were meant to be a series, Turner draws a parallel between the dangers of Arctic exploration, which was highly criticized at the time, and Whale fishing, an often deadly profession. What we might know today through reality television shows such as The Deadliest Catch (a show premised around Alaskan king crab fishing, involving the dangers of drowning, freezing, and ships frozen into ice banks), Turner aimed to shed light onto through his four canvases. A crew member who had survived another well publicized arctic exploration ship wreck (that of The Jane) wrote of the experience, “We resigned ourselves to divine providence."

Turner, whose works frequently approached the sublime and otherworldly, would surely have read such accounts and aimed to evoke them in these works. His concern at the arctic exploration proved to be founded, when in 1848 it was discovered that indeed the Erebus had been trapped in ice, and none had survived. These events, Turner’s awareness of them and other sea faring losses and direct accounts, evoke the last lines of his 1812 poem; "Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope! / Where is thy market now?"

The reception of The Whale Ship was indeed mixed. Many critics felt that Turner was in fact losing his sanity in his old age, specifically because the works became less and less restrained and far more feverish in execution. What we might consider some of Turner’s most beautiful and revolutionary works today - for instance Norham Castle, Sunrise (also of 1845) - earned him much criticism and doubt.

Critics of his own time were not prepared to cope with his revolutionary and deeply involved approach to the canvas, and instead generally rallied to have paintings that made linear sense and did not allow for any confusion. A popular form of insult, it seemed, was to relate Turner’s paintings to unpleasant food items. William Thackeray exclaimed that Slavers Throwing Over The Dead and Dying: Typhoon Coming On resembled “huge slimy poached eggs." The Times reported that The Seat of Prince Albert of Coburg Near Coburg "represents nothing in nature beyond eggs and spinach. The lake is a composition in which salad oils abound, and the art of cookery is more predominant than the art of painting," while Ariel: a Snowstorm was written up by the Athenaeum as such: "This gentleman has, on former occasions, chosen to paint with cream, or chocolate, yolk of eggs, or currant jelly, — here he uses his whole array of kitchen stuff."

The critics were indeed relentless, and complained that Turner had not given them an honest account of this whaling experience but instead a giant mess of white mist. They unanimously felt that this work was hard to define, and that the scene was too washed over and unclear, as was the case with many of his later (and increasingly more immediate) paintings. The work was not completely overlooked, however, and is said to have inspired a short story by Herman Melville, which he later used as inspiration for his great romantic work Moby Dick. Melville owned many engravings by Turner, the subjects of many of them involving seafaring adventure. It is interesting to note this connection between an American author and a British painter, both involved in the romantic movement, and their unique interest in sea-faring struggle.

norham castle, sunrise, 1845William Thackeray wrote “That is not a smear of purple you see yonder, but a beautiful whale, whose tail has just slapped a half-dozen whale-boats into perdition; and as for what you fancied to be a few zig-zag lines spattered on the canvas at hap-hazard, look! they turn out to be a ship with all her sails." Here, it seems, that Thackeray joins with Turner’s regular defender, John Ruskin, in reveling in this new work. The Whale series which Turner executed towards the very end of his career, today, remains a mystery in its intent.

Though there are direct sources which link to the motivation behind these works being the possible patronship of Elhanan Bicknel, a great amount of evidence points to Turner’s direct relationship to, and interest in, the vulnerability of the whaling industry at the time. Shortly after this series had debuted, the industry took a dramatic plunge. Similarly, Arctic exploration was carried out with great precaution, and through public publishing of the horrors of sailor’s accounts, public awareness had grown and safety issues were finally addressed. The Whale Ship takes its place among Turner’s best and most evocative paintings. Visually stunning, disorienting, and disarming, we can see that even in his late career the artist was breaking new ground and intent on exploring his own boundaries.

The most arresting quality of Turner’s painting ability seems to be his absolute fearlessness and dedication to his own empirical vision, even if at the end of his life it was often times an empiricism born out of his own imagining. I believe strongly that The Whale Ship makes the point of the importance of personal vision, that of the same which would be debated only 33 years later in 1878 by John Ruskin and James Abbott McNeil Whistler. It is Turner’s undeniable vision, as Simon Schama put it, “shrouded with the poetic veil of memory and history” that triumphantly released the painting world from its own linear and logical confinement. In his free rendering, Turner aimed only to accurately express the sublime horror that one would not be able to experience unless one did indeed go to sea. Even at the end of his career, his allegiance was always to truth, to light, and to the sublime. The Whale Ship, viewed in the context of Turner’s lengthy career, ranks among Turner’s most tumultuous and brilliant proclamations in paint.

Amanda McCleod is a contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Brooklyn. She last wrote in these pages about James Ensor. She tumbles here.

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