DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.67683#0519
FROM THE GOTHIC AGE
355
for by roughening the surface in this way he could obtain the
vibrating quality of the light and air, and the movement of the
foliage and clouds. The colors of nature he also followed more
closely, especially in the shadows, which he saw were not the
conventional gray or brown used by the Continental painters.
He not only used the colors that his honest observation revealed
to him, but gave them intensity by juxtaposing them without
the subtle blending of the traditional method. In these innova-
tions Constable was one of the forerunners of the French Impres-
sionists of the late nineteenth century.
Turner also was interested in light and air, but in an entirely
different way from Constable, as is clear from a study of the
Fighting Temeraire (Pl. 141 d). In the light of a sunset of tre-
mendous brilliancy, with the moon just rising above the horizon,
the old, worn-out battleship is being towed down the harbor by
an efficient, puffing little tug to the wrecking yards to be broken
up. The poetry of the subject and the poetry of the sunset hour
are in harmony. It is a “song of time and eternity.” The com-
position is free and unconventional. The forms are hardly more
than suggested. That Turner understood the fundamental prin-
ciples of composition and also the structure of the forms of na-
ture is clear from his drawings. But his interest lay, not in the
reproduction of nature, but in an interpretation, a poetical expres-
sion of the majesty that he felt in the sun, the sky, and the sea.
In such pictures as the Fighting Temeraire and Ulysses Deriding
Polyphemus, the human interest, in a highly imaginative way, asso-
ciates itself with the landscape. Later, however, Turner grew
away from this and made his pictures the expression of his own
ecstatic visions. He felt and he painted, as few have done, the
vastness, power, and grandeur of space with its light, air, and
color. Technically, Turner, like Constable, contributed to the
methods used in the oil medium, for he too juxtaposed rough dots
of pure color upon the canvas for the eye to blend, instead of
mixing them upon the palette and applying them with a smooth
finish.
One more movement is important in English painting, that of
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and its sympathizers. In 1848
seven young men6 formed this brotherhood. To break away from
the bad taste and empty artificiality of the times was the purpose
of the movement, and to substitute real ideas, a sincere study of
nature, and sound craftsmanship. The brotherhood sought to
1 Best known of the group were Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt; in close
sympathy were Ford Madox Brown, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and William Morris. A champion
of the cause was John Ruskin.
355
for by roughening the surface in this way he could obtain the
vibrating quality of the light and air, and the movement of the
foliage and clouds. The colors of nature he also followed more
closely, especially in the shadows, which he saw were not the
conventional gray or brown used by the Continental painters.
He not only used the colors that his honest observation revealed
to him, but gave them intensity by juxtaposing them without
the subtle blending of the traditional method. In these innova-
tions Constable was one of the forerunners of the French Impres-
sionists of the late nineteenth century.
Turner also was interested in light and air, but in an entirely
different way from Constable, as is clear from a study of the
Fighting Temeraire (Pl. 141 d). In the light of a sunset of tre-
mendous brilliancy, with the moon just rising above the horizon,
the old, worn-out battleship is being towed down the harbor by
an efficient, puffing little tug to the wrecking yards to be broken
up. The poetry of the subject and the poetry of the sunset hour
are in harmony. It is a “song of time and eternity.” The com-
position is free and unconventional. The forms are hardly more
than suggested. That Turner understood the fundamental prin-
ciples of composition and also the structure of the forms of na-
ture is clear from his drawings. But his interest lay, not in the
reproduction of nature, but in an interpretation, a poetical expres-
sion of the majesty that he felt in the sun, the sky, and the sea.
In such pictures as the Fighting Temeraire and Ulysses Deriding
Polyphemus, the human interest, in a highly imaginative way, asso-
ciates itself with the landscape. Later, however, Turner grew
away from this and made his pictures the expression of his own
ecstatic visions. He felt and he painted, as few have done, the
vastness, power, and grandeur of space with its light, air, and
color. Technically, Turner, like Constable, contributed to the
methods used in the oil medium, for he too juxtaposed rough dots
of pure color upon the canvas for the eye to blend, instead of
mixing them upon the palette and applying them with a smooth
finish.
One more movement is important in English painting, that of
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and its sympathizers. In 1848
seven young men6 formed this brotherhood. To break away from
the bad taste and empty artificiality of the times was the purpose
of the movement, and to substitute real ideas, a sincere study of
nature, and sound craftsmanship. The brotherhood sought to
1 Best known of the group were Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt; in close
sympathy were Ford Madox Brown, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and William Morris. A champion
of the cause was John Ruskin.