Skip to content

Home
Search
Your album
Learn more

Images

Long Ship's Lighthouse, Land's End

Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program | Public Domain

Start Zooming Stop Zooming

Next
Previous
Current search
Add To Album

Date

c.1834-1835

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)

Collection

Image Link

http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/248/joseph-mallord-william-turner-long-ship's-lighthouse-land's-end-british-about-1834-1835/

Description

The Romantic painter and draftsman Joseph Mallord William Turner often revealed nature reigning supreme and obliterating human presence. Waves dash to pieces a barely visible ship in a storm several miles beyond Land's End, the westernmost point of England, guarded by a lighthouse called Long Ship's. Aesthetician John Ruskin wrote of this drawing that Turner captured "the whole surface of the sea . . undirected, bounding, and crashing, and coiling in an anarchy of enormous power."
To convey the experience of nature's turbulence, Turner used the full range of watercolor technique, from transparent washes in the sky to thick bodycolor in the water and rocks. He added highlights to enrich the texture and atmosphere, blotting the wash to reveal the white of the paper in the lighthouse and scratching directly into the paper to render the flecks of light in the waves crashing over the boat. With these bold techniques, Turner came close to modern abstraction in his efforts to expand the expressive and stylistic range of landscape painting.
He made this watercolor for a series of engravings entitled Picturesque Views in England and Wales, published between 1827 and 1838. Medium: watercolour and gouache, scraped by the artist.

Image Licence

Public Domain

Image Credit

Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program

Location

Longships Lighthouse, England

Country

Tags

Lighthouses
Seascapes
Storms

Category

Buildings & Architecture

Glossary
Search tips

© 2024 Watercolour World | Technology by The Museum Platform

© 2024 Watercolour World | Technology by The Museum Platform