J.M.W. Turner – my daily art display

Maritime Art. Part 2.

The Sea and the Workers who risk their lives for others.

In this look at Maritime or Marine Art I want to showcase those paintings which feature the people who have dedicated their lives to saving seafarers and those working the seas in a continual search for food to put on our tables.

For the first of my forays into the depiction of fisherman I want to delve into the work of the great Skagen painters. These were a group of Scandinavian artists who had come together in the small coastal village of Skagen, which is situated in the northernmost part of Denmark, from the late 1870s until the turn of the century. One of the Skagen painters was Peder Severin Krøyer. He was born in Stavanger, Norway on July 23^rd 1851 but moved to Denmark as a child. At the age of fourteen, he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Even at that young age he was a proficient portrait painter and was esteemed for his artwork and received many commissions.

Fishermen hauling nets, North Beach, Skagen by Peder Severin Krøyer (1883)

Krøyer depictions of fishermen were often in more serene situations rather than those showing the fishermen and their boats battling the elements. His painting entitled Fishermen Hauling a Net at the North Beach, Late afternoon, was one of his first works painted on the beaches of Skagen and he wrote to his patron the tobacco manufacturer Heinrich Hirschsprung that for this painting he wanted to be close to the fishermen who had been hauling a net at the North Beach one late afternoon sundown when the sun appears flat and the weather is clear. He had made many small preliminary sketches before taking the large canvas to the beach to complete the work en plein air. He wrote to his patron:

“…I was on Nordstrand for the first time with my large picture this afternoon, driving with all my goods and chattels. It was a huge treat. It was calm and clear, really important for me…”

Fishermen on Skagen Beach by Peder Severin Krøyer (1883)

In his painting, Fishermen on Skagen Beach, several fishermen are shown relaxing on the beach, two of them are catching up on some sleep. The sense of tranquility of this scene is reinforced by a calm sea. This is one of those depictions which invites the viewer to mull over what is going on. Have they had a successful day or had it been a day to forget? Whatever happened they seem to now be exhausted.

Fishermen on the Beach on a Peaceful Summer´s night by Michael Ancher (1881)

Michael Ancher was the first of the Skagen painters to settle in Skagen during the summer of 1881. In his work entitled Fishermen on the Beach on a Peaceful Summer´s night Michael Ancher depicts a group of fishermen from Skagen talking on the beach on a sunny summer evening. What are they chatting about? Perhaps they are exchanging news from Skagen, or simply planning tomorrow’s next fishing expedition. Ancher was a realist who always used living models, preferably fishermen and he knew their individual names and through his depiction they have come to life. They have had a hard life battling the elements which can be seen by their heavily lined faces. This painting which is owned by the National Gallery of Denmark, is currently exhibited in the Danish Parliament.

Fisherman Coming to Shore by Michael Ancher

Michael Ancher has depicted a completely different portrayal of a fisherman than the previous paintings. This is not a relaxed study of a fisherman, quite the opposite. Observe the fiercly determined look on the face of the fisherman in Ancher’s painting entitled Fisherman Coming to Shore. He is trying to steer the boat to the safety of the shore whilst battling against a mighty following sea which makes steering almost impossible.

On the Quay, Newlyn by Walter Langley

Between the Tides by Walter Langley (1901)

Walter Langley, the son of a journeyman tailor, was born on June 8^th 1852. At the age of fifteen, he was apprenticed to a lithographer and six years later he won a scholarship to South Kensington School where he studied design for two years. He returned to Birmingham but took up painting full-time, and in 1881 was elected an Associate of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA). In that year, aged twenty-nine, he received a £500 commission for a year’s work by the Birmingham-based photographer Robert White Thrupp, a wealthy patron, to spend twelve months in the Cornish town of Newlyn, and pictorially record the lives of the fisherfolk. Having been brought up in a poor working-class family environment Langley could empathise with the hardship faced by the fishing community and his paintings often depicted stories of family tragedies and loss of loved ones.

Among the Missing by Walter Langley

Never Morning Wore to Evening but Some Heart Did Break by Walter Langley (1894)

The painting, Never Morning Wore to Evening but Some Heart Did Break, was completed by the English artist Walter Langley in 1894. The painting today, as was the painting before, is about loss. The title of the painting emanates from Canto VI of Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam, which reads:

That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break

The painting, Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break depicts a young woman being comforted on the quayside at Newlyn harbour by Grace Kelynack, the elderly widow of a Newlyn fisherman.

Old Grace by Walter Langley (1894)

Langley had also completed a portrait of Grace Kelynack entitled Old Grace.

The Ninth Wave by Ivan Aivazovsky (1850)

One of my favourite seascape paintings by Aviazovsky is his 1850 work entitled The Ninth Wave. It is also probably his best-known work. The title refers to a popular sailing legend that the ninth wave is the most terrible, powerful, destructive wave that comes after a succession of incrementally larger waves. In his painting, set at night, he depicts a raging sea, which has been whipped up by a storm. In the foreground we see people clinging to the mast of a vessel which had sunk during the night. Note how the artist has depicted the debris the people are clinging to in the shape of a cross and this element can be looked upon as a metaphor for salvation from the earthly sin. One wants to believe that the desperate will to survive will triumph over the raging ocean. The people clinging to the debris are lit by the warmth of breaking sunlight and this gives one to believe that they may yet be saved. For a life-or-death depiction the painting is not a gloomy one. In fact, it is full of light and air and thoroughly transfused by the rays of the sun which endows it with a feeling of optimism. The painting was originally acquired for the State Russian Museum of St Petersburg and was one of the first paintings in the collection of the Emperor Alexander III Russian Museum in 1897.

The Rainbow by Aviazovsky (1873)

Another of Aivazovsky’s works which is part of the Tretyakov Museum collection in Moscow is his painting entitled The Rainbow which features a sailing ship foundering on rocks while two lifeboats full of sailors from the doomed vessel are battling against the fierce seas as they try to manoeuvre their boats ashore. It is a truly remarkable work in which Aviazovsky created a scene of a storm as if seen from inside the raging sea. In the foreground, we see the sailors who have taken to a lifeboat and abandoned their sinking ship which had foundered on the rocky shoreline. They had spent the whole night in the boat. Suddenly they see a rainbow and feel that all is not lost. The reflection of the rainbow can just be seen to the left of the painting. Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist, was an admirer of Aivazovsky’s art and The Rainbow was his favourite work. Of the painting, Dostoevsky wrote:

“…This storm by Aivazovsky is fabulous, like all of his storm pictures, and here he is the master who has no competition. In his storms there is the trill, the eternal beauty that startles a spectator in a real-life storm…”

The Shipwreck by J.M.W Turner (c.1805)

Storms and shipwrecks were a popular theme for paintings during J.M.W.Turner’s life. He completed his painting The Shipwreck around 1805. It depicts fishermen battling the huge waves as they attempt the rescue of an overcrowded lifeboat. In the painting, we see a ship foundering and about to capsize and sink in the dark seas. Turner was fascinated by this dramatic theme which conveyed the danger of life at sea. To get us to better appreciate the peril the seafarers had to endure he places us close to the drama and with no sight of land it is as if we are part of the rescuing crews as they battle the ferocity of the sea,

It is thought that Turner was inspired by the re-publication in 1804 of the fourth edition of William Falconer’s poem, The Shipwreck, which was illustrated by another marine painter Nicholas Pocock, part of which (3^rd Canto, lines 640-645) is below:

Again she plunges! Hark! A second shock

Tears her strong bottom on the marble rock!

Down on the vale of death, with dismal cries,

The fated victims shuddering roll their eyes,

In wild despair; while yet another stroke,

With deep convulsion, rends the solid oak.

The fourth edition of William Falconer’s The Shipwreck was published in 1772. This poem in three cantos of more than 900 lines each, recounts the final voyage of the merchant ship Britannia and her crew. This fourth edition of The Shipwreck is the first edition of the poem to be published after Falconer’s death, ironically due to a shipwreck. Falconer had been appointed purser onboard the frigate Aurora in 1769 when it was lost after rounding the Cape of Good Hope. An introduction to a 1798 edition of Falconer’s works supposes the loss was caused by the Aurora catching fire after rounding the Cape.

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt (1633)

A marine painting with a biblical connotation is the one by Rembrandt von Rijn entitled The Storm on the Sea of Galilee which he completed in 1633. It was one of his earliest large format works. It depicts a close-up view of Christ’s disciples as they grapple to gain control of their fishing boat. A large wave has crashed into the side of the boat, swamped the deck and ripped the mainsail. The vessel lurches dramatically in the rough sea. We see one of the disciples leaning over the side of the boat being sick. A man faces us as he clings hold of the rigging. This is a self-portrait of the artist. All the people on board the vessel are panic-stricken, except for one, Christ, who can be seen on the right, calmly looking ahead. The depiction is based on a passage from the bible (Luke 8: 22-25):

22 One day Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side of the lake.” So they got into a boat and set out. 23 As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger.

24 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!”

He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. 25 “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples.

In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.

In the third and final part of these blogs featuring marine art I will be looking at paintings that extoll the joys of the sea and shoreline.

Greta Bridge by John Sell Cotman

I try to visit my children, who live in London, every couple of months and take the opportunity to visit new art exhibition at one of the many city galleries. As they are all away on extended breaks in far-off lands I will not be heading south until the end of January and this will sadly mean I will miss the Dulwich Picture Gallery exhibition, Cotman in Normandy which is an exhibition of works by the watercolourist, John Sell Cotman, which ends on January 13^th. For most of the twentieth century, Cotman was the most widely admired English watercolourist, surpassing even Turner in popularity.

John Sell Cotman was a marine and landscape painter, mainly in watercolour, who was born in Norwich in 1782. He was the eldest of ten children. His father, Edmund Cotman, formerly a barber but latterly a draper by trade, had married Ann Sell. He initially studied at the Norwich School, which is one of the oldest schools in the world having been founded in 1096. John’s father had intended that once his son had completed his education he would join him in his family business. However during his time at school John Cotman had developed a love of art and being determined that he would not spend his working life behind a shop counter, at the age of 16, left home and went to London to study art.

Whilst in London he managed to earn a living by colouring aquatints for Anglo-German lithographer and publisher, Rudolph Ackerman, who in 1795 established a print-shop and drawing-school in The Strand. Ackermann had set up a lithographic press and begun a trade in prints. It was whilst he was in London that he also met Doctor Thomas Monro, who was an avid art collector. He was Principal Physician of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and one-time consulting physician to King George III. Besides being an amateur painter and art collector he was also a patron to a number of young aspiring artists including Thomas Girtin. He had a house in Adelphi Terrace, London where he had his studio and a country house in Merry Hill, a suburb of Bushey just fifteen miles from the capital. Monro liked to surround himself with other artists and J.M.W. Turner was a frequent visitor. He ran an art Academy where he would offer evening art classes, some of which were attended by John Sell Cotman.

John Sell Cotman managed to gain the patronage of Monro and through him met many of the leading British artists of the time and it was through his friendship with Turner, Girtin and Peter de Wint that Cotman continued his artistic development. He enjoyed taking trips out to sketch and it is believed that in 1800 he accompanied Thomas Girtin on a sketching trip to North Wales. Considering Cotman had had no formal art tuition it is amazing the artistic standard he had reached for someone of such a young age for when he was aged just eighteen, he first exhibited at the Royal Academy showing five works, four depicting scenes from the Surrey countryside and one was of Harlech Castle. The following year, 1801, John Cotman joined the Brothers, a sketching society, founded by Thomas Girtin, for both professional artists and talented amateurs. During the next two summers he spent much of his time travelling around Wales, sketching scenes many of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1801 and 1802.

For the next three summers John Cotman spent time at Brandsby Hall in North Yorkshire, which was the home of Francis Cholmeley, an avid art collector and a patron of Cotman. During his stay at the Hall, Cotman acted as the drawing tutor to the Cholomeley family. Whilst there he also met the politician and art collector, Walter Ramsden Hawkesworth Fawkes, whose stately home was Farnley Hall and who was a very close friend of the artist, J.M.W. Turner who often stayed at Farnley Hall.

The success he had hoped for in London never materialised and in 1806 Cotman returned to his hometown of Norwich and earned his living as an art tutor. On returning home he also joined the Norwich Society an art society formed the previous year by the Norfolk landscape painter John Crome. This society met fortnightly, held artistic discussions and organised exhibitions of their work. John Cotman became the vice president and he and Crome were the leading lights of the society. The ethos of the Society was laid down as being:

“…An Enquiry into the Rise, Progress and present state of Painting, Architecture and Sculpture, with a view to point out the Best Methods of study to attain to Greater Perfection in these Arts…”

The artistic styles of Crome and Cotman were different and the Society members were, to some extent, divided into those who followed Crome’s realist manner, and those working in the more free style of Cotman, who was not above painting pictures of places he had not personally visited, working from other artists’ sketches. The subjects of the Norwich School painters were typically landscapes, coasts and marine scenes from around Norwich and Norfolk. John Cotman became president of the Norwich Society of Artists in 1811.

In 1809, Cotman married Ann Mills, the daughter of a farmer from the nearby village of Felbrigg and the couple went on to have five children. During his time as a drawing master he taught the local banker, botanist and antiquary Dawson Turner and his children. They became close friends and Dawson Turner introduced him to many prospective students. Cotman issued the first of his sets of etchings in 1811. He moved from Norwich and for the next ten years he lived in the Norfolk coastal town of Yarmouth and this gave him the opportunity to complete a number of seascapes. It was around this time that Cotman concentrated on printmaking. The majority of his etchings were architectural in nature, with numerous ones of old Yorkshire and Norfolk buildings. It is more than likely that this move towards etchings and printmaking was due to, and inspired in part by, his friend and patron, Dawson Turner. In 1817, Cotman , with help from his patron, made the first of three tours of Normandy and out of these journeys came a book in 1822 entitled, Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, one of various books he illustrated with his etchings.

In 1824, for business reasons he moved back to Norwich. Cotman took up painting again with renewed energy, in watercolour and in oil; he exhibited more frequently in the city and also in London. In January 1834, through the good auspices of J.M.W.Turner, he gained the post of Master of Landscape Drawing at King’s College School in London, which he held until his death. He and his family moved home to the London borough of Bloomsbury. Two years later, his eldest son Miles Edmond Cotman was appointed to assist him. The taking up of the position at King’s College could not have come at a more fortuitous time as Cotman was beginning to have financial problems. Sadly, with these financial problems, which had afflicted him during most of his working life, came bouts of depression, ill health and despondency brought on by the poor sales of his work. During John Cotman’s tenure at King’s College he taught many artists including Dante Rossetti. His last visit to his homeland of Norfolk was in the autumn of 1841, just nine months before his death in London in July 1842.

The 20^th century art historian and painter, Charles Collins Baker, said of John Sell Cotman:

“…a great colourist, whose earlier palette produced that rare plenitude that only masters of exquisite simplicity and restraint compass: from his palette the brown glebe, the black reflection of massed trees in a still river, the grey and gold of weathered stone and plaster, the glinting gold on foliage and the gilded green of translucent leaves have a special and supernal quality of dream pageants rather than of actuality…”

Preliminary sketch of Greta Bridge by John Sell Cotman

My Daily Art Display featured painting today is a watercolour entitled Greta Bridge (22cms x 33cms), which Cotman completed in 1805 can be found in the British Museum. A second version of the painting, a much larger one, (30cms x 50cms), was completed by Cotman in 1810 and is housed in the Norwich Castle Museum. Both watercolours recreate the rural solitude and tranquillity of the Greta area of North Yorkshire, where Cotman spent the summers of 1803 – 1805. The Greta Bridge in this painting spanned the river Greta in North Yorkshire near the gates of Rokeby Park. John Cotman had arrived at Rokeby on the evening of 31 July 1805, accompanied by his friend and patron, Francis Cholmeley. It had been arranged in advance that the two men were to stay as guests of the owner of Rokeby Park, John Bacon Sawrey Morritt. Cotman stayed at the house for about three weeks and when his hosts left on business, he remained nearby, taking up lodgings in a room at the local inn, which is the large building to the left of the bridge. Cotman then continued the work he had begun along the river Greta that skirts the park. It is a wonderfully balanced composition depicting the Greta Bridge, with its striking, single arch, which runs horizontally across the picture, in some way dividing it in two and yet uniting it into a single scene. The arch of the bridge epitomizes a great feat of engineering, which Cotman, with his love of architecture, admired. The structure we see before us was designed by John Carr of York, and built in 1773 for Morritt’s father, John Sawrey Morritt, who was a well-known collector of classical antiquities. The bridge replaced a Roman single-arched bridgeof the same design. Cotman had a love of bridges and sketched many. For him, a bridge was a meeting point or landmark for travellers, and would often be a point of reference on maps where rivers and roads meet. Cotman was fascinated by the interaction of this man-made feature and how it harmoniously interacted with a natural setting

Greta Bridge by John Sell Cotman (1810)Norwich Castle Museum — Greta Bridge by John Sell Cotman (1810)
Norwich Castle Museum

The foreground of the painting is dominated by its rocky intrusions. In the background, above the bridge we see in the 1805 version, a forest of trees and large white clouds and yet in the 1810 version a mountain ridge, which, in reality, does not actually exist, has substituted the individual clouds. So why did he make this fundamental change and add the idealised rocky structure? It is believed that Cotman decided to add the mountain ridge in the later watercolour so as to strengthen the sense of perspective and by so doing have the viewers eye drawn through the landscape, starting from the rocks in the foreground, through the arch of the bridge to the trees in the middle ground as far as the mountain ridge and the sky in the background.

Although John Sell Cotman and Turner were strongly influenced by the work of Thomas Girtin, Cotman’s landscape style in comparison to Turner’s was different. Cotman’s landscapes were not as detailed as either Girtin’s or Turner’s. In his landscapes, Turner’s was more precise with the details. Many believed his “every-single-branch-and-bud” precision was somewhat overwhelming, and said that the result was that the viewer stared at the same copse for too long. In contrast, Cotman’s landscapes could be taken in with just a single glance. In today’s work one can see the beauty of the watercolour despite the lack of minute detail. In these watercolours, Cotman strived to capture the feeling and atmosphere of a place through the use of pattern and abstract shapes. Look how he has painted the boulders, which we see in the river. They are smooth, rounded shapes sprinkled with spots of colour. Cotman’s technique of using colour washes has accentuated the smooth roundness of the landscape. His trees are rounded and block-like, in varying shades of green and brown and in the 1810 version the mountain ridge in the background is softly shaped.

This watercolour is a prime example of his balanced and sensitive technique which he used in his landscape work. In this work he has used very muted colours for his high cloudy sky, which echo the colour of the river surface. Below the dark clouds we see a suggestion of better weather to come with a hint of blue sky and thick white clouds. The watercolour is built up in distinct patches of restrained colour, held in a precise pattern of tone and line, which were the hallmarks of Cotman’s inimitable style. The presence of the sun and the large trees around the flowing river causes crisp shadows on the building, bridge and water surface.

I love this watercolour and would love to visit Norwich were a number of his works are housed. It would also be good to visit the Greta River area and take in the landscape, which inspired this talented artist.