J.M.W. Turner

For my Humanities 440 class, I was assigned to choose and analyze one of Joseph Mallord William Turner's paintings that is on display in the National Gallery. I chose The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broke up. Here is the paper that I wrote:

J.M.W. Turner: The Fighting Temeraire

Joseph Mallord William Turner was a great Romantic style landscape painter, and is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Out of the several Turner paintings in the National Gallery, I have chosen to analyze J.M.W. Turner’s painting The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, painted in 1838. It is a depiction of a tug boat pulling a war vessel into harbor in the setting sun to be broken up. In 2005, this painting was voted the greatest painting in a British art gallery. In this particular painting, Turner used thick and somewhat wild brushstrokes. The paint is thicker in some spots than it is in others, giving the painting an uneven texture. The image is much less precise than previous classical images; it is almost considered abstract compared to the preceding styles of painting.

Turner uses very vibrant colors to depict the scene. Although the scene is of a ship in water, there is nearly no blue used in the painting of the sea or the sky. He uses many different shades of red, orange, and yellow which makes the sky look as if it is on fire. The ship seems to be nearly colorless, which brings even more attention to the striking sunset. Perhaps he is using the setting sun and the dark colors of the tug boat to bring the viewer’s focus to the small tug boat to emphasize its power and strength. Earlier landscape painters mostly painted very picturesque and ordered scenes. There were many strict rules set by Gilpin that were to be followed in order to paint a correct landscape; many artists such as Constable painted happy and ideal scenes. Extremely bold and bright colors were rarely used. Turner stepped out of the box and broke all these rules. The Fighting Temeraire is proof that Turner could paint a genre-style landscape painting in a completely different technique and still create a masterpiece.

Turner’s thick and “messy” brushstrokes evoke a sense of excitement and power from the viewer. It is evident that hard work is being performed and that there is a lot of action taking place; this definitely isn’t a peaceful and quiet setting. The cloudy sky brings a type of mysterious wonderment to what is happening and makes the viewer curious, thus pulling him/her into the subject of the painting. The rather large size of the image also contributes to its magnificence. If it happened to be smaller, I believe that its emotional impact on the viewer would not be as grand. The painting has a theme of conclusion. Turner depicts a ship which played a role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, which is being pulled away to be destroyed. The sun is setting, bringing the end to a long day’s work. This could represent the end of an era, such as romantic landscape painting. The image also brings hope; after the end of one day is the start of another.