Day 308 - Two Turners

 July 19, 2020

Gallery 808 centers on British landscape painters of the first half of the 19th century. It's anchored by three large canvases: an iconic John Constable painting of Salisbury Cathedral  and two works by Joseph Mallord William Turner.  The two Turners have similar formats (approximately 44 inches wide and 32 inches high), and both show Turner's skill in depicting the reflections of boats and buildings in water and in conveying atmospheric effects. I like one immensely, the other not, and it's easy to believe that the difference in subject matter accounts for the difference in my reactions.  

Turner has never been one of my favorites, but the painting I like so much makes me wish I'd seen the recent Turner show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  Made in 1835 and titled ""Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute," it shows a scene on the Grand Canal, lively with gondolas, cargo-laden boats, and people congregating on the steps of La Salute, and it does so in a way that's filled with air and light. The sky is a light blue broken by remarkable white, feathery clouds; white marble-facaded palazzi line the Canal and are reflected in the water, and the San Marco campanile rises in the distance.  It's a lovely painting of a beloved place in a beloved country. 

In contrast, an 1811 work, "Saltash with the Water Ferry, Cornwall" feels airless and joyless to me. (My photograph of the painting makes it look lighter than it does in the museum.) Saltash is, according to the caption, an old market town and the site of an old ferry service. Turner evokes the market, but what I note is the overcast sky, the old, crumbling buildings, and the debris or trash strewn on the ground; the brown palette does little to cheer me. I realize mine may be a minority opinion - John Ruskin described the painting as "what the mind sees when it looks for poetry in humble actual life."  But I see little poetry; to me, the work is just depressing. 

The gallery also contains a small copy after Rubens' "Wolf and Fox Hunt" by Sir Edwin Landseer. I have to wonder why it's here. Yes, it's a competent work, and yes, Landseer was a reasonably important artist. But the originality of the composition, with its swirl of bodies and use of color, is all Rubens.'  And given the originality of so much else in the gallery, it seems a mistake to include the Landseer.