Turner: Painting The Fighting Temeraire | National Gallery

hello ladies and gentlemen welcome to the National Gallery my name's Matthew Matthew Morgan I work here in the Education Department and I am incredibly lucky to have the opportunity next half now to talk to you about this remarkable painting not only by one of my favorite artists ever of all time anywhere JMW Turner but in my view one of his most intriguing fascinating and all-round amazing paintings it's a painting that I think is very well known perhaps lots of you recognize it and know it and have looked at it many times but hopefully by the time I'm finished I will have revealed some things about it that you've either never noticed never seen before or never thought about before Turner born not very far from where we are now born in Covent Garden and sometimes described as a cockney couldn't possibly be a cockney not born within the sound of Bow Bells but it's a way I think for particularly contemporaries to place in place and it's a working-class person a person who didn't come from a very privileged background his father was a wig maker and barber but Turner was something of a child prodigy not something of a child prodigy was a child prodigy he received his first payment for an art project at the age of 11 when he was paid to color in prints he exhibited his first watercolor at the Royal Academy at the age of 15 just 15 think what you were doing when you were 15 I certainly wasn't exhibiting at the Royal Academy and he became a full member of the Royal Academy at the exceptionally young age of 27 so he was a an amazing um young young turk I suppose we might say of the British art scene however by the time we come to this painting and Turner was an old man he was in fact I think 64 when this painting was painted and his career had um progressed very much further than the painter of landscapes and marine things that he had started off but by being he made his name largely a in some ways as a painter of marine things and we have a couple here a really fantastic dramatic amazing views of both on the feed and throughout his life Turner never forgot that marine painting was an integral part of his over he painted all sorts of ships all around Britain around the coast of Britain and into France Italy if you've seen his scenes of Venice you very often see ships there he knew about ships and shipping in fact there's a fantastic story that he was staying with one of his patrons Sir Walter Fox and and he was asked by his children to paint a watercolor and he took a piece of paper and Jeff started painting and they looked at him they couldn't see what he was doing he seemed to be just pushing the paint around on this piece of paper but out of it emerged this fantastic watercolor which we still have of a Royal Navy ship a ship of the line which he had painted from his memory entirely from his own memory Turner knew his ships to bring me very neatly to the painting in question what do we have here well course we have a ship in the background this gigantic ship are gliding almost along the water very high in the water gliding towards us a pale yellow color a very ghostly color almost agreeing in some places on the painting drifting towards us out of the corner surrounding the ship in the sky are these clouds these purple clouds almost a bruised sky and in some ways I when I look at this painting I think of this ship coming out of the clouds towards us there's nobody on it it's completely empty it is a Mary Celeste almost of ships it doesn't need any people at this stage because it's being towed it's being towed by this dark ship or dark boat in front this target pulling it along the tug it's smoke coming out covering the front of the ship behind but pulling us and we can see beautifully painted a fabulous piece of painting by Turner it wheels churning the water it's working very hard to pull this gigantic ship on the other side of the painting though we have this absolutely remarkable gorgeous Sun limpid Lehane an almost pink color but the sky lit by the Sun how dramatic how beautiful how wonderful how bright can you see these colors these yellows Turner very much a fan of yellow criticized by a lot of his contemporaries criticized below contemporary critics for using yellow often accuse of painting with mustard but look at that yellow not mustard at all I think this is absolutely gorgeous and beautiful and pinks and reds and purples what a dramatic Sun Sun are automatic colors in the sky the Sun is also casting its light on the water here now we know this is water because obviously these are ships but if you would just have a blow-up of this bit I challenge anybody to know that this is water look at the colors none of the colors that one associates with water here no blues very few whites hardly even any grays over here we have a more conventional painting of water but here Turner is showing us the color and the brightness and the effect of light on water something for which he was by this stage already very famous for or very well known for as a painter of light as a painter of light on water behind this large ship there are other ships stretching into the distance can you see them here going all the way back and you maybe you can't see it out there but do have a closer look here we have another tug pulling along we are on the Thames and the Thames at this point was a busy I'm packed working River it was not like it is today quiet yeah full of people rowing in that sort of stuff it was noisy it was dirty it was filthy it was like a motorway and Turner is showing us this by showing all of these ships on here this one I think behind the tug it looks to me as though the tug is slightly pushing them out the way come away I'm putting this big boat this others shippers go we better move don't want to be sunk Turner tells us what this boat is who this boat is because in some ways this painting is like a portrait but just like a portrait if you know who the sitter is it adds to your knowledge of what's going on so too if we know what this ship is well who this ship is it adds to our knowledge because this isn't just any ship turn there isn't just showing us a scene on a river he's showing us a particular scene at a particular time this ship is the temeraire turn the chose to call it the fighting Temeraire it was a hero ship it was a ship that had served in the Battle of Trafalgar the Battle of Trafalgar a huge naval battle between the British and the French in which the British had defeated the French Navy defeated the French and Spanish joint Navy and had wrestled control of the sea particularly on the Mediterranean the French were never able to get such a large naval contingent again after the battle and the Temeraire was well known for having been right in the thick of the fighting it had saved Nelson's flagship the victory from attack it had captured not one but two enemy vessels which it lashed to it five throughout the battle and if you ever see any other paintings of the Battle of Trafalgar you will very often see the temeraire depicted because it was so close to the victory so this isn't just a new ship this is a ship with a history this is the ship that has achieved great things however after the Battle of Trafalgar it never saw action again after it had been a hero ship that was the end of its story of fighting after that it still was in service but it spent most of the rest of its life our semi permanently moored off Sheerness as a supply ship you can see how large it is I wonder how many supplies I managed to cram into it and there it remained until the Royal Navy decided that it had come to the end of its life they no longer needed it however a ship like this you don't just think it and say well we have done with it it's a major expensive piece of equipment the Navy did what it actually had done with almost all of the ships that have fought in Trafalgar by this stage and will continue to do to all of them save the victory which is it sold them and it sold them for scrap it is said that the temeraire required five thousand oak trees to be built just think for a moment about the forest of five thousand oak trees Connor - one ship now you're not gonna just throw that away just think about the countless nails needed to attach the five thousand oak trees together you're not going to just throw those away either so the Navy sold the temeraire and here it is as Turner tells us being towed through its last birth being towed to the Breakers yard where it would be disintegrated and reuse for all sorts of other things so this is a painting of the last moments of a hero ship and I think we are expected to feel a particular way about this I think what Turner is doing here is he's using all of his considerable skills to play with our emotions to make us feel what he wants us to feel look at this Sun the Sun is setting isn't it it's going down sunset a symbol for the end of the day the end of days coming down and perhaps you might not have noticed up here in this corner is the moon coming up so the day is finishing the moon is coming up the hero ship ghostly empty gliding along pulled by this tug this modern steam-powered ugly looking thing that's exactly how almost all of the commentators who saw it when it was first exhibited in 1839 read this painting that was exhibited here in the National Gallery we shared our space with the Royal Academy at that time almost all of the contemporary reviews of this painting read it in that way that this is an elegy to this ship that is dying this hero ship that is being ignominiously pulled and then going to be ripped literally limb from limb there's something to be said about that I think and if you look a little bit closer you can see all sorts of other little clues that that might be what Turner intended so if we see the smoke from the tug billowing over the temeraire we can see that it is over this pit bit here this AB Dolphins Bert the front of the ship where the jackstaff the flag of the Royal Navy would have hung but of course there's nothing there because it doesn't belong to Iran every Navy anymore it's been sold and more than that that's now covered by this dirty smoke smoke that's almost alive with flame itself we can also see perhaps as this white flag here at the top can you see that tiny little flag at the top of the mast of the tug indicating again that the temeraire is no longer in the Royal Navy and isn't is in fact being pulled along by a merchant ship so too sad painting well maybe perhaps it is sad but one of the things that I love most about Turner is that it's not always easy to guess what he meant in fact and as he progressed in his career and he almost completely moved away from putting literal meanings and interpretations in his paintings he liked to make his painting a bit confusing a bit difficult read a bit difficult to say well it's all about this or it's all about that they're challenging they're challenging for the intellect as well as sometimes challenging aesthetically so if we spend a moment looking at the tug as I say Turner's contemporaries said that this tug was nasty and dark Turner spent a long time drawing tugs painting tugs in fact the first example of him drawing a target one of his sketchbooks was an 1815 quite some time before this and he continued to draw steamboats and steam tugs in about middle of the 1820s they start to appear in his watercolors as well and prior to painting the fighting Temeraire Turner had spent a summer in France in French rivers drawing tugs drawing all thoughts of vessels in French waterways intending to turn them into prints which would be used for a print book of French rivers so he had lots of experience of tugs lots of experience of steamboats and he knew them well and we've got no real evidence that he didn't like them in fact lots of his paintings and drawings seem to indicate that he was very interested in them we know that he used them extensively around Britain and around the continent so he clearly wasn't above getting into something like this he at this point was very often going down to Margate and Margate was serviced by steam vessels and we know that he took those so he perhaps isn't quite so auntie tug as some of his contemporaries thought that he might be or anti steamboat as his contemporaries thought he might be however again this uncertainty difficult to pin down because if we look at the tug at the steamboat and and we look a little bit below it look at the reflection of the tug and then look at the front of the Temeraire I hope you can see that they are surprisingly similar surprisingly similar in shape and size is Turner indicating that the target is about to replace a sailing boat or has perhaps already replaced the sailing boat is this in fact Turner say steam this is the future sail that's the past let's have a look at the Sun over here lighting the tug lighting the steamboat you can see the bright effects of the Sun on its front it doesn't touch the temeraire at all the temeraire maintains this yellow glow of its own again are we expected to connect the tongue to the Sun saying yes this is bright this is the future I don't know that's why I find it so fascinating the temeraire as I say was a Hulk ship a storage ship off the coast of Sheerness when it was sold by the Navy it had already had its mast cut down didn't need its masks very much and after the Navy sold it they went through and took out anything that they could use and they took out all the rigging all the guns obviously all the stores and all the masks fascinatingly described as being pulled out like teeth from a mouth sounds very painful so what are we looking at here well we can't possibly be looking at the ship as it really was however there are lots of reports of Turner being witness to this event watching it seeing it crowing it one of the ones I like best is that a Turner and some of his friends go down to Greenwich for a meal and on the way back and they see this boat and one of Turner's friends a marine artist called clots and Stanfield says to Turner Wow look at that that make a great picture now just for a moment imagine that you're sat next to one of the greatest artists of your generation and you're an artist yourself I find it very unlikely that you would see a scene like that and suggest it to him you'd think oh I'm going to paint that before he gets in there Clarkson Steinfeld denied this ever happened Turner never said that he saw this ship he never said that he saw the temeraire being towed but there's something about this painting that I think is crying out for us to address whether this is an eyewitness account to think about is this actually the way the ship really was and partly that's because Turner tells us this is a specific ship we don't know where Turner was at this time none of his sketchbooks have any sketches at this period he didn't attend a meeting of the Royal Academy at this time we don't actually have any records of him being anywhere he could have been in the UK could have been in London he could have been on the continent we just don't know was he sick was he at home again no evidence so it is possible that he saw this but if he did see it if he was there then this cannot be how the temeraire looked to him these masts cannot have been there this rigging cannot have been there so if Turner did see it that is not what he saw interestingly and Turner owned an in a pub in Wapping not very far from ruther height where the temeraire was broken up a Turner owned lots of property around London and if he had ever gone to this pub the ship and our broad blade I think it's called Burke bone blade in fact he could have seen the temeraire in the Breakers yard being broken up and I like to think that that's how he knew about this story is that he saw the ship and he immediately connected to connected to its story and wondered about it coming down the river Turner playing a bit fast and loose with the facts we know for instance that they were too steamed tugs here we only have one there is another one as I mentioned all the way over here but that wouldn't be much good for towing a boat imagine that you have this gigantic ship and you are towing it down the Thames attends it already full of lots of other ships you're going to need some help it cannot do anything itself it is dead in the water so you have a tug at the front and a tug at the back which is I'm pulling it slightly Turner doesn't show that perhaps the other tag is all the way over there we don't know but I don't think he's terribly interested in showing the veracity of how gigantic ships are tug down rivers I think he's interested in showing us the emotions the emotional impact and content of what's going on some years after this painting was exhibited and somebody also noticed a small factual inaccuracy with it if you think about your geography if you think about where the thames meets the sea and think about where london is this sun could not possibly be a sunset because this sun if it was where it's supposed to be is um in the east so this is a sunrise so suddenly this painting takes on a completely different aspect is this a sunrise is Turner saying well this is the end of this ghost ship and hurray for steam steam is coming forward we are going to now have a steam future I don't think so I think that Turner knew which side of the world the Sun rose and sunset I think Turner knew where he was adding bits to the temeraire Turner understood exactly what he was doing he had painted many sons are Ulysses to riding Polly Phoenix as a fantastic sunrise and he clearly spent many many many hours looking at weather features the Sun particularly and this son I am certain we are intended to engage with directly the way in which Turner has painted the imposter of the paint put on you can almost feel the physical action of Turner pushing the paint onto the canvas absolutely remarkable absolutely gorgeous particularly here the Sun is as much a part of this painting as much a key player I think in the way we are expected to read it as these ships Turner isn't here trying to tell us about what actually happened he's not interested in saying I stood on this spot and I thought this event Turner is trying to tell us how to feel he's trying to evoke an emotional response in this event he is playing with our emotions perhaps we might say we think this must be real because it is a real ship which really existed and this really did happen but we don't imagine that he genuinely saw Ulysses de riding Polyphemus that doesn't bother us whether he was actually there and really saw it it's a product of his imagination and that is okay we struggle to imagine this is a product of Turner's imagination just I suppose as we might struggle if we were told that the portrait painter hasn't had never seen the thither that they were painting however Turner's not interested in getting us to connect to being on the banks of the Thames and seeing this ship Turner's trying to convey something deeper and that's one of the reasons I love this painting because what is Turner trying to convey well maybe he is genuinely sad about the demise of this amazing ship if you've ever seen portraits paintings rather of the final moments of Nelson particularly there's one by I'm Arthur deivis there's no one by Benjamin West and Nelson is very often shown surrounded by dark figures and he's very often lit almost glowing Easterner connecting his painting to that of Nelson or the last moments of Nelson is he say it is wrong of us to be just throwing away these hero ships today we live in a world where preservation or particularly in this country preservation is very big we don't tend to throw things away but we anthropomorphize this ship don't we just like a sitter in a portrait we connect to it but really it's just a hunk of wood it has no feelings it is nothing except a tool a very large complex tool but it is a tool Turner is making us think beyond that making us think of it almost like a person turn them up you're saying something else however he might be talking about the end of empire china was very concerned about the British Empire very concerned about the British Empire in the world is Turner saying that this is the end of the Empire this is the end of the British Empire after this it's all going to go wrong one last thing just to think about looked at this tug quite a lot if you ever get a chance to look at portraits of Turner himself I think very often he looks a bit like this tug he is short and squat and he often wears a top hat and I can't help but imagine that somewhere in Turner with his working-class background his love of Britain his love of the working people of Britain and somewhere in there he is actually pleased that this tug still exists thank you very much indeed you

Channel: The National Gallery

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Keywords: JMW Turner, Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, Matthew Morgan, working class painter, Royal academy, Turner techniques, British Art, Marine Painting, contemporary art, ship, light on water, Thames, temeraire, battle of Trafalgar, JMW Turner paintings, art history, art composition, artist, painter, painting, art education, painting techniques, contemporary Art, fine art, museum, National Gallery, London, Trafalgar Square, Paintings, Art history, National Gallery London, Royal Navy

Id: 8O-fna8HrWw

Length: 25min 55sec (1555 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 18 2016