Kim Onslow

Kim Onslow

MA Painting

Contextual Practice Essay

 

J. M. W. Turner and the 'Skies' Sketchbook

 

Joseph Mallord William Turner – 1775 – 1851

I am going to discuss how, and the ways in which different kinds of natural and current events from the time, affected the work in Turner's sketchbooks, and as a consequence his paintings etc. This includes the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia (formerly the Dutch East Indies) and how this affected the environment and 'Skies'. I will look at his influences, - literature and science, and in fact all of the elements.

 

I, myself, am looking at landscape, and recording and observing from nature, using sketchbooks. I am also looking at the sky, and the changes of colour, - viewed at sunset, for instance.

 

I will aim to show that there is a connection between events and his work in his sketchbooks, and I will focus particularly on the 'Skies' sketchbook. I have visited the Prints and Drawings Room at Tate Britain to see J.M.W. Turner's sketchbooks and individual sketches and drawings on paper. I have seen the 'Skies' sketchbook, which I was not permitted to touch myself. It was placed on a transparent, perspex bookrest, whilst an assistant flicked through it with their fingers, pausing on a particular page occasionally.

 

 

 

Introduction

How J.M.W. Turner Used Sketchbooks and Sketches

Turner's sketchbooks were private things that he kept to himself. They might live for some time in his coat pockets or travel bags, to be pulled out as the need arose. In the studio, they served as memory banks for future work. This does not necessarily mean that he used them haphazardly, but that their contents and outcomes can span years or seem disparate at first glance.

 

Recording and Observation

While Turner looked to 'Romantic' literature and the 'Old Masters' to give greater force to his work, the essential foundation for his painting, always remained his concentrated observation and recording of nature itself. His visual memory was such, that he could store the details of a particular weather effect, to reproduce it exactly in a work, painted years later. But despite this ability, he relied also on painting directly from nature. On each trip he made, either at home or abroad, he filled sketchbooks wih watercolours and drawings done on the spot, as had become usual for a topograhic artist. At a later stage, he classified the sketches by subject or theme, and stored them until needed, so that he had a huge reference file of fresh impressions, to be consulted when working on large canvasses.

 

This was the normal working method of the oil painters of the day, who would use such sketches as the raw material for a work conceived and painted in the studio, but as so often in matters of technique, Turner took practice one step further, producing small oil sketches as well as watercolours in the open air. He started this around 1806 – 7, slightly before his contemporary, Constable, began the same practice. Both painters were using oils in a new way, to record impressions rapidly and accurately at first hand, and this free and perosnal response to nature, was to make a great impact upon French painters, (more stifled by academic tradition than the English) when they developed, first, the Realist movement, and then the Impressionist movement later in the century.

Turner subsequently returned to watercolours as his customary medium for recording colour impressions, but his early oil sketches, painted from a boat in the Thames, remain an important step in establishing his own personality as a painter.

 

The drawings were catalogued in 1909 by A.J. Finberg, who gave each sketchbook and each group of drawings a number, set in Roman numerals, and usually, each separate sheet a letter and each sketchbook leaf a number. Only right-hand pages of the sketchbooks are numbered, the versos being identified as 2a, 3a and so on. The names of the sketchbooks are Finberg's, unless Turner had already provided one.

 

The 'Skies' Sketchbook

Besides many watercolour studies of sky effects, the sketchbook includeds pencil sketches, apparetly entered from the opposite end (the book as the pages are now numbered), of places in London and nearby associated with Turner's friend and patron, Walter Fawkes. Several of these are datable to 1818 or later, but the sketchbook could have been used earlier, as its pages, made by J. Whatman, are dated 1814 in the watermark. Organising his sketchbooks years later, Turner labelled it '79.Skies', positioning it immediately after one used in 1816, while visiting Fawkes at his Yorkshire seat, Farnley Hall.

 

Turner drew and painted the sky, clouds and weather all his life. As a boy, he liked to go up to Hampstead Heath, lie on his back to draw the sky, and return to town to sell his day's work. Later in life, he made many coloured studies, often in kent – he believed that the Isle of Thanet had the finest skies in Europe. In notes made about 1810 for his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, he praised 'our variable climate, where the seasons are recognisable in one day...vapoury turbulence involves the face of things (and) nature seems to sport in all her dignity'; Gage (1969, p213). He planned to tell his audience of young artists that endless variety is on our side and opens a new field of novelty'. He was far from unique in the practice of what his fellow painter John Constable called 'skying'. For many artists it was part of a new quest for naturalism, an attempt to bring empirical or would-be scientifc observation to bear on natural phenomena, as Luke Howard did in his pioneering book, 'The Climate of London', published from 1818. For the 'Romantic' imagination, the sky was also a window into heaven, a glimpse of the divine or a space where earthly dramas were foretold or repeated. Constable declared that a painter 'who does not make his skies a very material part of has composition, - neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids' and his 'chief organ of sentiment'; Beckett (1968, p76). Turner could never be accused of such neglect. Even so, the sustained concentration on the sky, demonstrated in this sketchbook is exceptional, surely reflecting extraordinary weather conditions at the time.

 

On 10 April, 1815, Mount Tambora at Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) erupted in the most spectacular and devastating volcanic explosion in recorded history, throwing a plume of dust and gas into the atmosphere. For almost three years, skies around the world went dark or developed a baleful, infernal glow, as the sun or moon struggled to break through. Crops failed; famine, cholera and typhus ran rampant, killing millions; riots and insurrection broke out in many countries, threatening anarchy, terrifying governments and creating an apocalyptic, millenarian mood to match the prevailing gloom. Wounds veterans, of the Napoleonic Wars that ended at Waterloo in June, 1815, two months after the eruption, were joined by starving beggars on the streets of Europe's cities.

 

From 1790 to 1815, the countryside experienced a great agricultural boom, brought about by the wars with France. As the price of wheat and other raw commodities soared, two million new acres of land were brought into cultivation by enclosure; Plumb (1974, p152). Large wartime profits increased not only rents and tithes, but taxation as well, the burden of which was almost wholly carried by the farming community. The number of loans and mortgages increased dramaically, as farmers accelerated the enclosure and improvement of land. The value of land itself rose, as high agricultural prices and territorial aspirations of the newly rich industrial class, created competition for it. Thus, when prices fell after Waterloo, the countryside found itself economically overextended, - that is to say, left with very little liquid capital, and saddled with commitments it could no longer meet. While postwar taxation remained high, agricultural profits and the value of land dramatically declined. Large numbers of landowners and farmers went bankrupt, and the majoriy of agricultuaral labourers were left jobless. The result was a steady depopulation of rural areas. Whereas in 1815, the majority of males still worked in agriculture, just twenty years later, nearly half the population was employed in industry and lived under urban conditions; Thomson (1950, p11). As cities and towns began to swell, the countryside around them became more and more suburban. The postwar depression that brought about striking economic and demographic changes in rural England, dramatically sustained the mode of organising social and economic relationships begun about twenty five years before Waterloo.

 

Also, from the defeat of Napolean in 1815 to the middle of the nineteenth century, there was great debate over the question of representation. Should Parliament be made more representative, and if so, who should be represented, and by whom? At issue was a definition of the nation itself. Not only newly emergent classes, but also other constituencies competed for the right to represent nineteenth century England, or Great Britain. Was England rural or urban, local or national, agricultural or industrial? In this competition to define the nation and claim the right to represent it, literary and artistic depictions of Britain, were, not surprisingly, often understood as part of the debate. Turner undertook watercolour drawings, provided to publishers for books of engraved views. The most important of these were 'Whitaker's History of Richmondshire' (1816), Cooke's Picturesque Views of the Southern Coasts of England (1816 – 26), and Heath's Picturesque views in England and Wales. The first two books were small or moderate sized commissions on particular local subjects; the last, however, was an ambitious project of national scope; Helsinger (1994, p120). In Turner's hands, it became, over the years, the occasion not only for some of his most stunning work in watercolour, but also for what might be read as a commentary on the intertwined political and aesthetic problems of representing the nation. Conventional picturesque views adopted a fairly low point of view; Mason (1807, 2:267n). Turner's practice was much more variable. Low perspectives or references to roads are interspersed among other views that depict the traveller's experience from some other, unidentified perspective, or ignore it altogether.

 

1816 turned into a 'year without a summer'. By Lake Geneva that July, Byron began his poem 'Darkness' with the words, 'I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd...'. His guest Mary Shelley, housebound by 'perpetual rain', started work on her nightmare novel, Frankenstein (1818). While writers indulged their imaginations with the supernatural, Turner had to battle the weather to fulfil the commission for one hundred and twenty views of Richmondshire. He spent the summer in Yorkshire, reporting from Farnley in September: 'Rain, rain, rain, day after day. Italy deluged, Switzerland a wash-pot...Lakes all in one'; Gage (1980, p70). News of the dire conditions on the Continent probably came from his host Fawkes, whose friend the Earl of Darlington had been travelling in the Rhineland. Even without a task that Turner could combine with a long visit to Fawkes – anyway now an annual fixture – it was not an auspicious time to venture abroad. His own tour of the Rhine and battlefield of Waterloo in 1817, may have been posponed from the previous year.

 

Dreadful weather everywhere, confinement to England, deferred European travel and the friendship and patronage of Fawkes and his circle, all underpin the images in the sketchbook. Rendered in a variety of watercolour techniques, wet and dry,tansparent and solid, the skies seem to fall into categories: damp, cloudy and breezy, typically English (folios 3, 4, 19); others more sombre or stormy with a heavy reddish tint; day, twilight and night-time (folios 45, 54). A pencil sketch inside the back cover has colour notes, recording direct observation. Elsewhere, as with all coloured sky studies where an artist must struggle to keep up with constantly changing effects, the question arises as to how true they are, seen outdoors or through a window, or how far remembered or invented, perhaps in this case to re-imagine or escape from the grim realities of 1815 and 1816. They are difficult to date or place exactly, lacking any features, save for a hint of a horizon or silhouette of trees (folio 41). Although overcast skies are present throughout the series of Rhine watercolours that Turner made in 1817, giving them what his biographer called a 'subdued and regretful air'; Thornbury (1877, p87) where indicated at all in the sketchbook, land is mostly flat or gently undulating, leading to suggestions that it was used in the low Countries en route. If so, it could also have been employed in the north of England immediately afterwards, as Turner still had the sketchbook from the tour with him, when he visited Lord Darlington and Fawkes in late summer. It has also been proposed that a few of the warmer-toned skies are Italian, dating from Turner's visit to Rome and Naples in 1819; there are glimpses of stone pines, and similarities to coloured studies Turner made in Italy (folios 42, 52). In the absence of other topographical markers, perhaps the most that can be said, is that while the extended weather shock, beginning in 1815, focused Turner's interest on the sky, the studies in this sketchbook show – in varying degrees – the recovery from it; the moon shines clear again,clouds thin, the artist can venture out, sketchbook in hand.

 

Another way to look at this sketchbook, is through watercolours and pictures painted in the few years, 1816 -19. These too have exceptionally vivid or significant skies, and it would be surprising if Turner did not refer to the sketchbook while mapping them out. As well as the Rhine watercolours, finished by Turner at Lord Darlington's seat, Raby Castle, shortly after returning to England, and sold to Fawkes as soon as he reached Farnley, Richmondshire watercolours like 'Lancaster Sands' – which Fawkes also acquired – include spectacular skies. Oil paintings are still more dramatic. While at Raby, Turner began work for Lord Darlington, on a view of the castle, its parkland and celebrated hunt. Seen from rising ground, the castle lies in a dip in the rolling landscape, sunlight and showers contending overhead. If such a battle of weathers sounds far-fetched, it is worth remembering that one of Darlington's hounds, drawn and identified by Turner in another sketchbook from 1817, was called Blucher, after the commander of the Prussian troops fighting alongside the British at Waterloo. Turner has matched the hunt careering across the estate, Blucher presumably at the forefront, with a sky where 'nature sports in all her dignity', just as he had once described.

 

Not suprisingly, the most magnificently gloomy sky that Turner painted in this period, hangs over 'The Field of Waterloo', one of three pictures based on the 1817 tour. This is a night sky, lit up like the post-battle carnage by slivers of moonlight behind cloud, an exploding flare, and the fire still burning in the farm at Hougoumont, where some of the bloodiest fighting took place. Here, the darkness evokes the horror of war, but probably draws on memories of volcanic winter too. Turner exhibited the picture with an epigraph from 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' (Byron, 1812-18), describing the menacing thunderclouds that closed over the battlefield 'which when rent/the earth is covered thick with other clay'. A waterolour of the subject, painted around the same time for Fawkes, has similarly emotive sky, as do later illustrations made for Byron and Walter Scott, here it mirrors the conflict below; in the Scott illustration , a bolt of lightning strikes the spot where General Picton was killed. With 'Waterloo' in 1818, Turner exhibited a contrastingly tranquil Dutch canal scene, 'Dort or Dordrecht: the Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed'; together, they symbolise war and peace. In Dort, trade and travellers have returned to the Dutch waterways, if temporarily held up by lack of wind. With the weather back to its normal patterns, the vast sky is clear and sunlit, flecked with strands of pearly cloud, like those painted two centuries earlier, by the Dordrecht painter, Aelbert Cuyp. Perhaps the most remarkable sky from this period is to be seen in 'Entrance of the Meuse: Orange-Merchant on the Bar, Going to Pieces...' exhibited in 1819. It too is Cuypish, but breezier and unstable, to fit events below: The wreck of a cargo of oranges on a treacherous sandbank – a visual pun for the financial crash facing the Prince of Orange, King William I of the United Netherlands, after his wartime investments in Britain turned sour. This sketchbook could have provided inspiration for the dynamic cloudscape (folios 3, 4, 19).

 

Neither 'Waterloo' nor 'Entrance of the Meuse' sold, remaining on Turner's hands, but 'Dort'

was bought by Fawkes – as the greatest of his many works by Turner – and installed at Farnley. In April, 1819, at his London house, 45 Grosvenor Place, Fawkes honoured Turner with an exhibition of the finest waterolours he had bought from him during their years of friendship. Turner himself recorded the hang in the East Drawing Room, with many works recognisable today, as well as the décor of this handsome Regency interior. It is not quite the same as drawn in this sketchbook (folio 69a), where swagged fabric is gathered in rosettes below the cornice. Could this be a rejected idea for protecting the walls during the exhibition? Nearby in the sketchbook, Turner drew the exterior of the house (folio 66a), and a double-page spread of the view from its windows across the grounds of Buckingham House (shown before its redesign by John Nash in 1825) to Westminster Abbey, the City and St. Paul's Cathedral (folios 68, 67a) which he used as the basis of a watercolour for Fawkes, who had attended Westminster School (hidden by trees in the sketch). Turner was a regular guest at Grosvenor Place as well as at Farnley, adopted into the Fawkes family and taken on their outings. Sketches of the Fourth of June at Eton (folios 64a-66) and the nearby village of Salt Hill (folio 61a) must date from 1818, when Mrs. Fawkes wrote in her diary for 4 June: 'Went to Eton to see the boat race. Dined and slept at Salt Hill. Little Turner came with us'; Finberg (1909, p453). Perhaps the party stayed at the Windmill Inn, sometimes known as Botham's Hotel, the more fashionable of the village's two coaching inns, where in 1814, the Prince Regent had hosted a breakfast for the allied rulers, the King of Prussia, Emperor of Russia, and the aforementioned Prince of Orange, and the Shelleys stayed the following year. Despite good views of Windsor, the Castle Inn may have been less inviting, having famously poisoned some guests with its turtle soup.

 

It will now be clear why Turner placed this sketchbook after one used at Farnley, and in Yorkshire in 1816 while naming it 'Skies'. It reflects friendships, interests and ativities, while being pervaded by the impact and memory of the crisis in the world's weather, beginning in the East Indies in 1815, and reaching Europe the following year. One subject remains to be mentioned, relating to Turner's long-standing series of landscape prints: The Liber Studiorum. The expedition with Mr. and Mrs. Fawkes, and a sketch of sheep dipping in the river with Windsor Castle in the distance (folio 62a), inspired a new design, which Turner called 'Salt Hill' or 'Sheep- washing'. It was never published, but the preparatory drawing, and a proof plate etched by Turner himself and engraved by Charles Turner, reveals a luminous pastoral, untouched by recent trauma.

 

Paintings of striking sunsets show effect of huge volcanic eruptions on climate.

J.M.W Turner said that his work was not to be understood, but ''to show what such a scene was like''. Now global warming experts are taking advantage of his prosaic nature to improve their predictions of the consequences of climate change.

 

The scientists are analysing the striking sunsets painted by Turner and dozens of other artists, to work out the cooling effects of huge volcanic eruptions. By working out how the climate varied naturally in the past, they hope to improve the computer models used to simulate global warming.

 

The key, according to the atmospheric physicists, is in the colour of sunsets they depicted.

The results, published in the journal 'Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics', reveal that when the Tambora volcano in Indonesia erupted in 1815, painters could see the colours of the sky changing. The volcanic ash and gas that was spewed into the atmosphere, travelled the world, producing bright red and orange sunsets in Europe for up to three years after the eruption.

 

Lead author, Christos Zerefos, a professor of atmospheric physics at the Academy of Athens in Greece, said: ''Nature speaks to the hearts and souls of great artists. But we have found that when colouring sunsets, it is the way their brains perceive greens and reds that contains important environmental information''. Dr. Zerefos and his team analysed hundreds of high-quality digital photographs of sunset paintings created between 1500 and 2000, during which time there were 50 large volcanic eruptions around the globe. They were looking to find out whether the relaive amounts of red and green along the horizon of each painting, could provide information on the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere. Dr. Zerefos said: ''We found that red – to – green ratios measured in the sunsets of paintings by great masters, correlate well with the amount of volcanic aerosols in the atmosphere, regardless of the painters and of the school of painting''. Skies more polluted by volcanic ash, scatter sunlight more, so they appear redder, and similar effects are seen with mineral or man – made aerosols. Air with a higher amount of aerosols has a higher 'aerosol optical depth' – a parameter that the team calculated using the red – to – green ratios in the paintings. They then compared these valuses with those given by independent proxies such as ice core and 'volcanic explosivity' data to find a good correlation.

 

To support their work, the researchers also asked an artist – P. Tetsis, to paint sunsets during and after the passage of a Saharan dust cloud over the island of Hydra in June, 2010. The painter was not aware of the dust event. The scientists then compared measurments of the aerosol optical depth made by modern instruments, with those estimated from the red – to – green ratios of the paintings and of digital photographs, and found that they all matched well. Since aerosols scatter sunlight, less of it reaches the surface, leading to cooling.

 

The Tambora eruption, which is thought to be the largest in recorded history, killed 10,000 people directly, and more than 60,000 others due to the starvation and disease during the 'volcanic winter' that followed.

 

Aerosol optical depth can be directly used in climate models, so having estimates for this particular parameter helps researchers understand how aerosols have affected the Earth's climate in the past. The information can also help improve predictions of future climate change.

 

Dr. Zerefos added: ''We wanted to provide alternative ways of exploiting the environmental information in the past atmosphere, in places here, and in centuries when, instrumental measurements were not available''.

 

In conclusion, I have set out to discuss the contents of Joseph Mallord William Turner's 'Skies' sketchbook, and its connection to natural and current events in his life at the time, located around 1816 – 1818. The main questions centre upon the eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies (presently Indonesia), and its influences and consequences of this, environmentally, socially and politically, and how this influenced Turner and his work. This leads to the more contemporary scientific research carried out by Dr. Zerefos, a professor of atmospheric physics at the Academy of Athens, and his team, who have analysed Turner's work, and others, whose findings make correlations with the climate and change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 'Skies' Sketchbook

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Lancaster Sands c 1818, watercolour on paper, 28X36.6cms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Raby Castle, The seat of the Earl of Darlington, 1818, oil paint on canvas, 119X180.6cms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Field of Waterloo, 1818, oil on canvas, 147X238.8cms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dort or Dortrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed, 1818, oil paint on

canvas, 157.5X233.7cms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Entrance of the Meuse: Orange-Merchant on the Bar, Going to Pieces; Brill Church Bearing S.E by S., Masensluys E. by S., 1819, oil paint on canvas, 175.3X246.4cms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The East Drawing Room, 45 Grosvenor Place, 1819, watercolour on paper,

 

15.2X21.6cms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 'Skies' Sketchbook

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London, from the Window of 45 Grosvenor Place, 1819, watercolour on paper,

 

25X39cms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Windsor Castle from Salt Hill ('sheep-washing, Windsor') c. 1818, watercolour on paper,

 

22.7X31.6cms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 'Skies' Sketchbook

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scientific research – The researchers asked artist P. Tetsis to paint sunsets during and

 

after the passage of a Saharan dust cloud, over the island of Hydra in June, 2010

 

(pictured). They then compared measurements of the aerosol optical depth made by

 

modern instruments with those estimated from the red-to-green ratios of the paintings and

 

of digital photographs, and found that they all matched well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes/Reference

 

 

Gage, J. (1969) Colour in Turner, Poetry and Truth. Lecture Notes. 1st edn. London:

 

Studio Vista Limited.

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Beckett, R. B. (ed.) (1968) John Constable's Correspondence, vol. 6. 1st edn. Ipswich.

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Plumb, J. H. (1974) England in the Eighteenth Century. 1st edn. Middlesex: Harmondsworth.

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Thomson, D. (1950) England in the Nineteenth Century. 1st edn. Middlesex: Harmondsworth.

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Mitchell, W. J. T (1994 and 2002) Landscape and Power. Helsinger, E. Turner and the Representation of England, Essay. 2nd edn.

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Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Note 4. 'Initially, 120 engravings were envisioned; 96 drawings were engraved and published

 

before the series was terminated for financial reasons'.

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Mason, W. (1807) The Works of Thomas Gray; Containing His Poems, and Correspondence with Several Eminent Literary Characters,

 

To Which Are Added, Memoirs of His Life and Writings, 3d edn., 2 vols. 2:267n; quoted in Ousby, Englishman's England. ''The

 

Picturesque Point is always thus low in all prospects.''

 

Gage, J. (ed.) (1980) Collected Correspondence of J. M. W. Turner with an Early Diary and Memoir by George Jones. Oxford: Oxford

 

University Press.

 

Thornbury, W. (1877) The Life of J. M. W. Turner R. A. Founded on Letters and Papers Furnished by his Friends and Fellow

 

Academicians. London: Chatto and Windus.

 

Finberg, A. J. (1909) A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, vol. 1. 1st edn. London.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference and Extended Bibliography

 

 

Blayney Brown, D. (2016) J. M. W. Turner The 'Skies' Sketchbook. 1st edn. London: Tate

 

Publishing.

 

Hardy, W. (1988) The History and Techniques of the Great Masters. 1st edn. London:

 

Tiger Books Interntional Limited.

 

Wilkinson, G. (1975) Turner's Colour Sketches 1820-34. 1st edn. London: Barrie and

 

Jenkins Limited.

 

Bermingham, A. (1986) Landscape and Ideology. The English Rustic Tradition. 1740-

 

1860, First paperback printing-1989. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

 

Mitchell, W. J. T. (ed) (1994) Landscape and Power. Turner and the Representation of

 

England by Elizabeth Helsinger. 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

 

Adam, D. (2007) How Old Masters are Helping Study of Global Warming. The Guardian

 

Newspaper.

 

Griffiths, S. and Spencer, B. (2014) How 19th Century Art is Painting a Picture of Earth's

 

polluted past: Turner's Sunsets Reveal Volcanic Ash and Gas in the Sky. The Daily Mail

 

Newspaper.

 

Lean, G. (2007) Art and Science: Turner's Message from the Skies. The Independent

 

Newspaper.

 

Westheider, O. and Philipp, M. (ed) (2011/12) Turner and the Elements. 1st edn.

 

Hamburg, Krakow, Margate: Bucerius Kunst forum Publications.

 

Townsend, J. (1993) Turner's Painting Techniques. 1st edn. London: Tate Publishing.

 

Thornbury, W. (1862) The Life and Correspondence of J. M. W. Turner. This edition Ward Lock Reprints, 1970: Hurst and Blackett. This

 

revised and rewritten edition, 1877: Chatto and Windus.

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Gage, J. (ed) (1980) Collected Correspondence of J, M. W. Turner. 1st edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Gage, J. (1969) Colour in Turner, Poetry and Truth. 1st edn. London: Studio Vista Limited.

 

Blayney Brown, D. (1991) From Turner's Studio, Paintings and Oil Sketches from the Turner Bequest. 1st edn. London: Tate Gallery

 

Publications.

 

Lyles, A. (1989) Young Turner: Early work to 1800. 1st edn. London: Tate Gallery Publications.

 

Wilkinson, G. (1974) The Sketches of Turner, R. A. 1st edn. London: Barrie and Jenkins.

 

Forrester, G. (1996) Turner's 'Drawing Book' , The Libor Studiorum. 1st edn. London: Tate Publishing.

 

Francis, M. and Crary, J. (2000) J. M. W. Turner, The Sun is God. 1st edn. Tate Liverpool.

 

Warrell, I. (2007) J. M. W. Turner. 1st edn. London: Tate Publishing.

 

Blayney Brown, D. (1991) Oil Sketches from Nature, Turner and his Contemporaries. 1st edn. London: Tate Gallery Publications.

 

Wilkinson, G. (1972) Turner's Early Sketchbooks. 1st edn. London: Barrie and Jenkins Limited.

 

Wilton, A. and Lyles, A. (1993) The Great Age of British Watercolours 1750-1880. 1st edn. Munich, Germany: Prestel – Verlag.

 

Gage, J. (1972) Turner: Rain, Steam and Speed. 1st edn. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press.

 

Warrell, I. (2012) Turner Inspired in the Light of Claude. 1st edn. London: National Gallery Company Limited.

 

 

 

 

 

Landscape, Skies, Colour, Perspective, the Infinate, and the Sublime

 

Bibliography

 

Simon Morley (ed) - The Sublime (Documents of Contemporary Art), 2010, The MIT Press.

 

Richard Stemp - Painting the Weather, 2002, BBC Adult Learning.

 

Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe - Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime, 1999, Allworth Press.

 

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Tate Gallery website – The Sublime.

 

Radiolab – Blue Podcast.

 

Philip Shaw – The Sublime (New Critical Idiom), 2006, Routledge.

 

Timothy M Costelloe (ed) – The Sublime – From Antiquity to the Present, 2012, Cambridge University Press.

 

Paul A Crowther – The Contemporay Sublime – Sensibilities of Transcendence and Shock, 1995, St Martin's Press.

 

Claudia Bell and John Lyall – The Accelerated Sublime – Landscape, Tourism and Identity, 2002, Praeger Publishers.

 

Timothy Morton – Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World, 2013, University of Minnesota Press.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Landscape and the Sketchbook

 

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