Swatch SO28Z700 Art Journey 2024: Turner's Scarlet Sunset
Quartz movement / 3 Bar water resistant
Diameter : 34.00 mm / Thickness : 8.75 mm / Lug-to-lug : 39.20 mm /
Strap Material : Silicone / Clasp Material : Polymer / Strap Clasp : Buckle /
Case Material : Bio-sourced material / Color : Pink / Strap color : Pink /
Dial color : Red / Case color : Transparent / Product family : ORIGINALS
충동 구매. 맘에 쏙 듦! 가볍고. 햇무리랑 윤슬이 14일 주기로 오묘히 색조 변화 중. 💞
어스름 깔린 일몰인데도 어쩐지 싱싱한 오렌지 기운이 난다.
c.1830
Watercolour and gouache on paper
134 x 189 mm
(C) Tate
This composition is painted with a limited range of colours, arranged to give strong contrasts between primary colours. It also incorporates the pale blue wove paper so that it makes a significant contribution to the image. [...]
Turner quite often used blue paper, especially at this period. It was usually of medium or heavy weight, made predominantly from linen fibres, and like all his papers it was prepared by the manufacturer with an animal glue size on both sides. This was done by dipping it in a gelatine-based solution when the paper was first made and dried, and it makes the paper fairly non-absorbent. Soaking it in water before painting would have washed out this size and made the paper extremely absorbent. Assuming it was not pre-soaked, the first brush-load of watercolour paint on this paper would dry with a fairly hard edge. A brush-stroke painted on top would begin to dissolve the size, and the paint would spread further into the paper, and dry with a softer edge. Each successive wash would make the paper less absorbent, and cause the same brush and colour to dry differently on the paper. This gives many possibilities for a detailed subject. These contrasts in the mark made by the brush were less obvious if the paper was placed on a flat surface before painting, then damped all over with a large, flat brush full of plain water, or a wet rag, before painting. However, this was not Turner’s painting process here.
It takes some time to grow used to painting on glue-sized paper made from linen fibres. Today very few artists do, since it is difficult to obtain, in comparison to the cotton-based papers of the present day, which are sized throughout their thickness with a synthetic material, and which are absorbent from the first brush-stroke.
For the pale bluish grey paint used for the bridge and buildings, Turner used lead white and a little natural ultramarine, painted onto dry paper and left to dry. This paint conceals the paper colour, but all the later washes are transparent, and allow the blue to shine through. In the gaps between washes, the paper acts as a blue tone in the composition. For the sunset, Turner used vermilion and chrome yellow. The red and yellow washes overlap only in the water, which has a fuzzy reflection of the pure yellow sun, itself painted into a reserve deliberately in the red paint of the sunset, and overlapping some red paint. This would be successful only with very opaque pigments such as these. The spit of land on the left has details in warm brown ochre applied over the same yellow paint used elsewhere, applied over thin washes of the same red used elsewhere. It would be possible to create many versions of this composition, with different brown ochre marks to represent figures, buildings and boats. The most difficult part would be to create the yellow reflection in the water, in one assured brush-stroke.
Joyce Townsend
March 2011
Much has been written about this watercolour, perhaps one of the best known of Turner’s drawings on blue paper. The vibrantly coloured design shows the setting sun, its light cascading across the river and illuminating the sky in a radiant display of reds, golds and yellows. The reflected sun light on the water is captured in a single, rapid curling brushstroke of brilliant yellow. The boldness of this motif contrasts with the hazy depiction of the bridge and the collection of buildings and towers in the distance. In the foreground, to the left of the composition, two horses with a cart and several figures are gathered at the edge of the water, their elongated shadows and watery reflections exaggerating their presence in the picture space.
[...] The drawing has repeatedly attracted comparison with Claude Monet’s celebrated view of the Seine from 1872–3, known as Impression, Sunrise (Musée Marmottan, Paris, W 263). Although Monet had seen unspecified Turners in London in 1870–1, it is unlikely that the French painter would have known the present work (and certainly not in anticipation of his own Sunrise), as it was not published in Ruskin’s catalogue until 1881. [Lochnan, Abélès, House and others 2004, pp.37, 92]
Hayley Flynn
April 2024
