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Materials and instructions

You will need:

Cardboard

Paint brush

Scissors

Paper clips or sticky tape or a glue stick

Paper

A cup of cold coffee and a cup of cold tea

Some patience!

Instructions:

1. Brew very strong cups of tea and coffee (ask an adult to help you). Leave them to cool, and make sure they are cold before you start!

2. Use the tea and coffee to paint a picture of a landscape.

3. Can you see that the tea is a lighter colour than the coffee? You can use the tea for large areas, like the sky, and then use the darker coffee to add details.

4. You could add in trees or buildings. What kind of weather will you include? Maybe a cloudy sky?

5. You could also paint an abstract picture of shapes and lines. Try alternating the tea and coffee for different shades.

6. Now comes the experiment! We're going to cover bits of the painting and expose it to sunlight so that parts of it fade!

7. Cut out a piece of cardboard and use paper clips to attach it to your painting.

8. Or, you could use a couple of pieces of cardboard. Make sure you only cover a bit of the painting.

9. If you don't have paperclips, you can use tape or glue to attach the cardboard to the edges of your painting.

10. Leave your picture indoors on a windowsill and wait! You'll need to be patient - it might take a week for the colours to fade.

11. When you remove the cardboard you will see how the sun has made the colours fade. The parts that were covered will be much darker. This can happen to watercolour paintings if they are exposed to sunlight.

Share your artwork!

Would you like to see your artwork featured on the Gallery's website? Take a photo of your artwork and send it to us by email ([email protected] ) or using this online form to upload your picture. We'll feature a selection of pictures in the Creative Challenge Gallery, so check back to see if yours is included!
Upload a picture of your artwork using this form
Inspired by ...

The Gallery has a beautiful collection of watercolours by English artist J.M.W. Turner. He liked to paint landscapes with dramatic weather and light, like this one of a storm at the mouth of the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. Watercolours are delicate works of art that can be damaged by sunlight.

Credits:

Activity by Kate Drinane, National Gallery of Ireland.

About our Gallery at Home videos:

Inspired by works in our collection and exhibitions, our creative activities encourage families to work together to create their own artworks. They are specially produced videos for babies, older children and for those who require sensory input. You can find all the workshops in this series here. Enjoy!

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National Gallery at Home: A Colour Experiment!

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Cardboard Paint brush Scissors Paper clips or sticky tape or a glue stick Paper A cup of cold coffee and a cup of cold tea Some patience! Brew very strong cups of tea and coffee (ask an adult to help you). Leave them to cool, and make sure they are cold before you start!

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J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours (Tate)

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J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours (Tate)

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Find out about a great Romantic artist

Landscape and history painter, master draughtsman and watercolourist, tireless traveller, poet and teacher, J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) exemplifies the energy, imagination and enquiring spirit of his time. For his admirer John Ruskin he was 'the greatest of the age'.

Explore the world's largest collection of Turner's sketchbooks, drawings and watercolours and its unique insights into the artist's mind and creative process. Follow him as he toured Britain and Europe, discovered new subjects, styles and techniques, and developed his pictures, poetry and prints.

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J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

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Find out about a great Romantic artist Landscape and history painter, master draughtsman and watercolourist, tireless traveller, poet and teacher, J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) exemplifies the energy, imagination and enquiring spirit of his time. For his admirer John Ruskin he was 'the greatest of the age'.

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In these three films of our series of 'How to Paint like Turner' Mike Chaplin demonstrates how to achieve quick and effective results with your brushes. We take a tour with him through the Watercolour exhibition which was at Tate Britain in 2011, as he demystifies how artists achieved specific techniques.

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In these three films of our series of 'How to Paint like Turner' Mike Chaplin demonstrates how to achieve quick and effective results with your brushes. We take a tour with him through the Watercolour exhibition which was at Tate Britain in 2011, as he demystifies how artists achieved specific techniques.

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Tate Britain is home to the largest collection of works by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851). A master of history, landscape and marine painting, he challenged the style of the old masters, trailblazing in technique and subject matter.

Described as the 'father of modern art' by John Ruskin, Turner often shocked his contemporaries with his loose brushwork and vibrant colour palette while portraying the development of the modern world unlike any other artist at the time.

It is no wonder that Turner became the most celebrated painter in England and that over one hundred and fifty years later, we celebrate contemporary artists of the same innovating spirit through the aptly named Turner Prize.

You can discover Turner's incomparable talent for free in the Clore Gallery. Displaying a selection of our extensive Turner collection, the gallery includes some of his greatest masterpieces such as Self-Portrait, Peace - Burial at Sea and Norham Castle, Sunrise.

Many of Turner's major work can be seen in the exhibition, Turner's Modern World.

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Turner Collection - Display at Tate Britain | Tate

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Tate Britain is home to the largest collection of works by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851). A master of history, landscape and marine painting, he challenged the style of the old masters, trailblazing in technique and subject matter.

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J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

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Fishermen at Sea (Tate T01585, fig.4), its marine subject signalling wider ambitions as a painter and his refusal to be typecast as a topographer. In the following years his exhibited works diversified into history, literature and myth, challenged the styles of the Old Masters and made rapid advances in technique.

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Turner's views of Mount Rigi (Apollo Magazine)

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Turner's views of Mount Rigi (Apollo Magazine)

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When John Ruskin recounted his adventures collecting Turner watercolours he attached special importance to the sequence of continental views that the painter made in the early 1840s, when he was in his late sixties. Turner had worked in series all his life, often for published 'Picturesque Tours', and now, even when he had no need to do so, continued with the habit. He asked his dealer, Thomas Griffith, to find buyers for ten such views in 1842, and for another ten in 1843. More groups followed in 1844 and 1845 - a remarkable outpouring for a man of his age and stature, who certainly had no need to sell new work by that time.

But these watercolours constitute some of Turner's greatest achievements, both as records of his highly personal vision of the world, and as technical feats of extraordinary originality and beauty. Ruskin knew what they were worth aesthetically but thought they might be difficult to sell. Among the subjects he praised most strongly were three views of a mountain overlooking Lake Lucerne: Mount Rigi could be climbed and commanded fine views over the lake, but was also a striking feature of the landscape when seen from the water.

Turner made many watercolour studies of the mountain in his sketchbooks, sequences showing it in different lights and times of day. From them he created three finished works that are among the most ravishing essays in light and colour ever to have been produced by a landscape painter. They are known by the names Ruskin gave them: The Blue Rigi, The Red Rigi, and The Dark Rigi, which is currently under a temporary export stop, in the hope that it can be acquired by a British public collection. These all appeared in the first series of 1842. The Dark Rigi was bought by a well-established patron and friend of Turner's, the Scottish laird Hugh Andrew Johnson Munro of Novar (1797-1864), of a distinguished Ross-shire military family. The Red Rigi, also bought by Munro of Novar, shows the mountain fiery in sunset light; it is now in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. The Blue Rigi, a subtly misty scene of morning twilight, was acquired by the Tate in 2007.

Thanks to Ruskin, we know in some detail the rather unusual method Turner adopted to find buyers for his late 'Swiss' sets. (Two subjects are not Swiss: Coblenz Bridge, now in the Art Museum, Cincinnati, and Lake Constance, now in York City Art Gallery.) He had been to Switzerland in 1841 and was to return there in the three following years, and developed ideas that had particularly taken hold of his imagination while he was travelling. He was aware, it seems, that his style had changed of late, and he presented these new works as self-consciously experimental. He approached Griffith with four finished watercolours, which Ruskin calls 'specimens', and also produced a sheaf of 'samples', pages from his Swiss sketchbooks which he suggested might be shown to potential clients who could commission the subjects they wanted. Unusual as this procedure was, it preserved the dynamic, perhaps slightly risky, relationship between Turner and a critical public that he had always been used to. Griffith solicited responses from clients whom he knew to be Turner aficionados and managed to get takers for all but one. Ruskin himself (with his father's money) bought two; Munro of Novar three, including the Red and Dark Rigis; Elhanan Bicknell the whaling entrepreneur two, including the Blue Rigi. This left one, Lake Constance, which Griffith kept.

Ruskin waxed lyrical about these watercolours. He described the Dark Rigi as 'seen from the window of his [Turner's] inn, La Cygne, in the dawn of a lovely summer's morning; a fragment of fantastic mist hanging between us and the hill.' It captures a moment slightly later than the Blue Rigi: there are more people about on the lake, including passengers waiting at a pier and men poling rafts of logs. As with the other two in this little set, there is a palpable sense of the expansive calm of nature just before life erupts into its sublime spaces and the working day begins. Looking at these magical evocations of the grandeur of nature in a context of vigilant human awareness, one finds oneself unconsciously holding one's breath.
Andrew Wilton's novel about Turner, The Painter's Boy, is out now.

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Turner's views of Mount Rigi | Apollo Magazine

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When John Ruskin recounted his adventures collecting Turner watercolours he attached special importance to the sequence of continental views that the painter made in the early 1840s, when he was in his late sixties. Turner had worked in series all his life, often for published 'Picturesque Tours', and now, even when he had no need to do so, continued with the habit.

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'The Dark Rigi: Sample Study', Joseph Mallord William Turner, c.1841-2 | Tate

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Artwork page for 'The Dark Rigi: Sample Study', Joseph Mallord William Turner, c.1841-2

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This book accompanied The EY Exhibition: Late Turner - Painting Set Free at Tate Britain (10 September 2014 - 25 January 2015). It is an intriguing piece of Turner scholarship with dedicated sections on his technique, and a study of how age may have effected his ways of seeing and painting.

The last sixteen years of Turner's life, from 1835 when he turned sixty, saw an extraordinary creative flowering when he produced some of his most dazzling, audacious and innovative works. His mastery of watercolour reached a spectacular peak while his oil paintings scaled new heights of imagination, virtuoso technique and understanding of light and colour.

For many admirers today, his reputation rests on this consummate achievement. At the time, however, the older Turner was a controversial and divisive figure, mocked, derided and misunderstood. Critics baffled by his radical approach believed he had wilfully cut himself off from the contemporary art world while even admirers like John Ruskin wondered if he was losing his faculties. More recently, a focus on abstract tendencies, especially in Turner's surviving body of unfinished work has created a modernist critique that obscures the artist's original intentions.

This beautifully illustrated book accompanied the first large scale exhibition to be devoted to Turner's late work. Written by leading Turner scholars and curators and drawing on new research it discusses a wide spectrum of the artist's subject matter, production, life and legacy: exhibition paintings, watercolours, unfinished sketches and experiments and sketchbooks in which his ideas first took shape. Challenging Victorian prejudices and stereotypes of ageing and aesthetics that confronted Turner himself, reductive later interpretation of his work and pervasive notions of 'late style', the authors bring 'Late Turner' back to life as a painter completely engaged in the culture and society of his time and as committed as he had ever been to communicating his art and ideas.

Edited by David Blayney Brown (Curator of British Art, 1790-1850 at Tate Britain), Amy Concannon (Assistant Curator 1790-1850, Tate Britain) and Sam Smiles (Professor of Art History and Visual Culture, Exeter University).

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This book accompanied The EY Exhibition: Late Turner - Painting Set Free at Tate Britain (10 September 2014 - 25 January 2015). It is an intriguing piece of Turner scholarship with dedicated sections on his technique, and a study of how age may have effected his ways of seeing and painting.

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416. [] Venice, Evening, Going to the Ball Exh. 1846

THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (543)

Canvas, 24 1/4 × 36 3/8 (61.5 × 92.5)

Coll. Painted for William Wethered, junior, of King's Lynn who, however, must have returned it to Turner before the artist's death (see Gage loc. cit. and entries for Nos. 421/2); Turner Bequest 1856 (one of 18-21, 36-40; see No. 383 []); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1921.

Exh. R.A. 1845 (117); Newcastle 1924 (160); Dresden (22, repr.) and Berlin (32) 1972; Lisbon 1973 (22, repr.); Hamburg 1976 (104, repr.); Mexico City (9, repr. p. 18) and Caracas (5) 1979; Athens 1980 (77, repr. in colour); Venice 1983-4 (11, repr. in colour as no. 13).

Lit. Ruskin 1843 (1903-12, iii, pp. 250-51); Bell 1901, pp. 152-3 no. 251; Armstrong 1902, p. 235; Finberg 1930, pp. 151, 158; Davies 1946, p. 186; Finberg 1961, pp. 407-8, 509 no. 565; Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, p. 66; Gage 1980, pp. 200, 207, 213-14.

Exhibited in 1845 with the caption ' MS. Fallacies of Hope '; see Nos. 355 [] for a possible explanation of the absence of any actual verses.

As the critic of the Spectator implied, 24 May, Turner's four Venetian scenes exhibited this year, two in the East Room and two in the Middle Room, cover the four 'effects of morning and evening, noon and sunset' (see Nos. 417 {N00544], 418 [] and 419 []); however, 'there may have been times when these different periods assimilated in nature as closely as they do in these pictures; only such must be exceptional cases!' Earlier, on 10 May, the Spectator had written of the first two 'with their magical effects of light and colour: the watery floor and aërial sky meet at the horizon in a gorgeous mass of orange and golden tints ... the intervening space being filled with the glowing atmosphere.' Similarly, The Times for 6 May spoke of 'a play of brilliant colours, sparkling as they vanish above smooth waters.' Unfortunately, today one has to take most of these qualities on trust. The Morning Chronicle for 7 May returned to the way in which Turner's late pictures made sense at a distance. In this picture 'the rising moon... with its long gleam of light coming across the waters, is really a curiosity worthy of study. Stuck on with the palette knife, or the thumb, who would think it would give the soft cool light it does? ... Regretting his apparently incurable mannerism, we cannot but admit that in the present instance he has somewhat cured it of its extravagance.'

Ruskin, in the later editions of Modern Painters i, writes 'Of the Exhibition of 1845, I have only seen a small Venice (still, I believe, in the artist's possession) and the two Whaling subjects. The Venice is a second-rate work...' He could be referring to this picture or to any one of Nos. 417 [], 418 [N00541] and 419 [N00542].

The early histories of the two pairs of Going to and Returning from the Ball exhibits of 1845 and 1846 are greatly entwined. For an attempt to disentangle them, see the entry for Nos. 421 and 422.

Published in:
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984.

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'Going to the Ball (San Martino)', Joseph Mallord William Turner, exhibited 1846 | Tate

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Artwork page for 'Going to the Ball (San Martino)', Joseph Mallord William Turner, exhibited 1846 Venice, rich in literary and historical associations, was a popular subject in the 19th century. Here, boats take revellers to one of the city's infamous masquerade balls as the sun sets and the moon rises.

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Catalogue entry

THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (5507)

Canvas, 48 1/2 × 74 (123 × 188)

Coll. Turner Bequest 1856 (256, '1 (Scriptural subject [)]' 6'2 1/2" × 4'0"; identified 1946 by chalk number on back); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1951.

Exh. R.A. 1974-5 (484).

Lit. Davies 1946, pp. 162, 190; Ziff 1980, p. 171; Shanes 1981, p. 46.

Listed in the Schedule of the Turner Bequest, no. 266, merely as 'Scriptural Subject 6'2 1/2" × 4'0"', but almost certainly the Vision of Jacob's Ladder, Genesis xxviii, 10-12, though Jacob is accompanied by his family and is being addressed by an angel rather than by the Lord God. Martin Davies describes this as a very early work but in fact it seems to have been worked on over a considerable period. The basic forms, and particularly the craggy hill in the centre, are close to such as The Goddess of Discord choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of the Hesperides and Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen, both exhibited in 1806 (Nos. 57 [] and 61) but the impressionistic technique and the way in which the whole picture is illuminated by the apparition suggest a much later date, probably close to the Vision of Medea (No. 293 []) which also reflects a return to earlier ideas and Venetian painting. The general effect owes much to Titian but the flicked-in forms of the angels are still closer to Tintoretto.

John Gage has kindly drawn the compiler's attention to a passage in the 'Catalogue of the Pictures Bequeathed to ... Dulwich' in the Annals of the Fine Arts, i, 1817, pp. 387 ff., referring to the picture of Jacob's Dream then attributed to Rembrandt: 'Instead of a material ladder of substantial steps, on which well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, with wings on their shoulders, have been walking up and down like waiters ... we behold a mysterious, solemn twilight, on which from a bright refulgence in the heavens, a stream of light beams an immensity from earth to heaven ...'. This description could have pointed the way to Turner's own magical treatment of the subject. Washington Allston had painted a picture of the same subject for Lord Egremont in 1817, exhibiting it at the Royal in 1819 and again at the British Institution in 1825.

Since the first edition of this catalogue Jerrold Ziff has suggested that the first stage of this painting was even earlier than here suggested, c. 1800-2 and that its intended subject may have been the first Plague of Egypt, the subject of a inscribed 'Water Turned to Blood' in the 'Calais Pier' sketchbook (LXXXI-42 and 43); the size is close to that of The Fifth Plague of Egypt, exhibited in 1800 (No. 13). Shanes has suggested rather that the underlying picture is the lost Army of the Medes destroyed in the Desart by a Whirlwind, exhibited in 1801 (No. 15).

This painting not only shared the general neglect of most of the works kept in Turner's studio but was even turned to the wall and used as an impromptu palette. The dabs of paint were only removed when the picture was restored at the Tate Gallery in the 1970s.

Published in:
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984

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'The Vision of Jacob's Ladder (?)', Joseph Mallord William Turner, c.1830 | Tate

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Display caption

Turner's , reproduced in this , seems to summarise modernity for Turner's generation. A steam train speeds along a bridge (probably Maidenhead Bridge over the Thames) whilst a vortex of rain swirls around it. Ahead of the train runs a tiny hare, a traditional, natural emblem of speed.

However, the power and significance of this image seems to lie as much in its purely formal evocation of the speed and power of modern life. Critics who saw the original painting were baffled, but also fascinated, by the artist's treatment of such an up-to-date theme, especially his dramatic evocation of speed.
Gallery label, September 2004 Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

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'Rain, Steam, and Speed, engraved by R. Brandard', after Joseph Mallord William Turner, published 1859-61 | Tate

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Artwork page for 'Rain, Steam, and Speed, engraved by R. Brandard', after Joseph Mallord William Turner, published 1859-61 Turner's painting, reproduced in this engraving, seems to summarise modernity for Turner's generation. A steam train speeds along a bridge (probably Maidenhead Bridge over the Thames) whilst a vortex of rain swirls around it.

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Rain, Steam and Speed (National Gallery London)

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Rain, Steam and Speed (National Gallery London)

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A steam engine comes towards us as it crosses the Maidenhead Railway Bridge in the rain. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the bridge was completed in 1838. We are looking east towards London as the train heads to the west. The exaggeratedly abrupt foreshortening of the viaduct, which our eye follows to the horizon, suggests the speed with which the train bursts into view through the rain. Turner lightly brushed in a hare roughly midway along the rail track to represent the speed of the natural world in contrast to the mechanised speed of the engine. The animal is now invisible as the paint has become transparent with age, but it can be seen in an 1859 engraving of the painting.

Turner frequently painted scenes of contemporary life and was particularly interested in industry and technology. As he often used new forms of transport, including steam trains, it is unlikely that the painting is a rejection of modernity. Instead, he saw both the train and the bridge as subjects worthy of being painted.

A steam engine rushes towards us as it speeds along a bridge through the rain. The bridge is the Maidenhead Viaduct, which crosses the Thames between Taplow and Maidenhead on the newly laid Great Western line to Bristol and Exeter. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the viaduct was completed In 1838 and in use from July 1839. We are looking east towards London as the train heads towards the west of England. The arched bridge on the left is Taylor's road bridge, built in the 1770s. The engine, of the 'Firefly' class, pulls a train of unroofed open-goods wagons in which passengers, paying the cheapest rates, could travel. Average engine speed on the Great Western Railway (GWR) in 1844 was 33 mph, but on long level stretches, such as the Maidenhead Viaduct, an unprecedented 60 mph could be reached - faster than any galloping horse.

The 1840s was a period of 'railway mania', and by 1844 the GWR had already constructed over 100 miles of line, which Turner could have travelled on during the previous six or seven years. We cannot be certain if this picture was inspired by a recent journey, or if he had travelled on this stretch of track. However, in an account told to the critic John Ruskin, Jane O'Meara (later Mrs John Smith) related how, as a young woman aged eighteen, she had been travelling to London on that line during a stormy night in June 1843. A fellow passenger - 'with the most wonderful eyes' - had leaned out of the train window for almost ten minutes when the train had come to a halt at Bristol during the storm. On seeing Rain, Steam and Speed at the Royal Academy, she claimed the passenger must have been Turner.

Even if Turner had not travelled on this line, he would have known contemporary engravings of trains moving diagonally and at speed through the landscape. These engravings may have given him the idea for a railway painting based upon the principles of perspective he had taught himself through his study of Poussin and Claude, and which he had included in his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy. Turner had previously used this type of diagonal recession with great effect - for example, in the dramatically foreshortened perspective of Westminster Bridge in The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835, Philadelphia Museum of Art). Here he uses the exaggeratedly abrupt foreshortening of the viaduct, which our eye follows to the horizon, to suggest the speed with which the train bursts into view through the rain. Turner further accentuates this effect by reducing the double rail track across the bridge to a single narrow line.

The art historian John Gage observed: 'the title of the picture makes clear that Turner was painting not a view of the Great Western Railway, but an allegory of the forces of nature.' These forces of nature include the rain, which falls steadily but not so heavily as to entirely obscure the view or the gleams of sunlight that fall on the woods and fields either side of the bridge. Steam is represented by the three small puffs emerging from the engine's funnel - in 1844 engines did not produce the great clouds of steam often associated with steam locomotives. Speed is most obviously embodied by the train itself, but Turner included another detail - a hare, running along the track ahead of it. A late addition, the hare was lightly brushed on top of the existing paint, roughly midway along the rail track, and is now invisible because the paint has become transparent with age. It can be seen in an 1859 engraving of the painting by Robert Brandard, who specifically sought to clarify details in the painting. According to the artist George Leslie, who as a boy had watched Turner putting the final touches to the painting the day before it went on public exhibition in 1844, the hare, not the train, was meant to represent speed. Turner further emphasises the theme of speed by including two small details. On the river on the left, you can see a small boat and, barely visible near the right edge of the picture, a man drives a horse-drawn plough. Both the boat and the plough are examples of relatively slow, non-mechanised activity. As in The Fighting Temeraire, Turner contrasts the pre-industrial with the modern.

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway

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A steam engine comes towards us as it crosses the Maidenhead Railway Bridge in the rain. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the bridge was completed in 1838. We are looking east towards London as the train heads to the west.

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BOOK: J.M.W. Turner: The Man who Set Painting on Fire

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BOOK: J.M.W. Turner: The Man who Set Painting on Fire

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In 1802, at the age of 26, Joseph Mallord William Turner became the youngest ever member of the Royal Academy. A prolific painter and watercolourist, his paintings began by combining great historical themes with the inspired visions of nature, but his experimentation with capturing the effects of light led him swiftly towards an unusual dissolution of forms. Turner was a constant traveller, not only within the British Isles but also throughout Europe, from the Alps to the banks of the Rhine, from northern France to Rome and Venice. His death in 1851 revealed not only his zealously guarded private life but also a will that left both his fortune and more than thirty thousand drawings, watercolours and paintings to the nation. In this profusely illustrated book, Olivier Meslay invites us to follow the development of Turner's incandescent art, a bridge between Romanticism and Impressionism and one of Britain's most remarkable contributions to art history.

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In 1802, at the age of 26, Joseph Mallord William Turner became the youngest ever member of the Royal Academy.

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Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), A Ship against the Mewstone, at the Entrance to Plymouth Sound, c.1814. Photo © National Gallery of Ireland. Credit

In our ongoing adult learning series, we link works from our collection with key art historical, theoretical or philosophical texts. Aimed especially at third-level students, but accessible to all, this series aims to support in-depth engagement with our collection and the selected texts.

In this post, we consider the philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke's (1729-1797) writings on the sublime. His book A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful will support new ways of looking at George Barret's A Stormy Landscape, J.M. Turner's A Ship against the Mewstone, at the Entrance to Plymouth Sound, and Andrew Nicholl's, Baily Lighthouse, Howth, County Dublin, in Stormy Weather.

Key artwork:
J.M.W Turner's A Ship against the Mewstone, at the Entrance to Plymouth Sound, 1814

Supporting artworks:
Andrew Nicholl, Baily Lighthouse, Howth, County Dublin, in Stormy Weather, 1835 George Barret, A Stormy Landscape, 1760

Key text:

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Edmund Burke, 1757

The full book by Burke can be read here. This discussion focuses on Part II (pg. 73 - 147)

[via Università degli Studi di Ferrara]

Edmund Burke was an empiricist, which means his thinking gave privilege to our sensory experience of the world. Burke asserted that the formation of ideas and our knowledge of the natural world are not arrived at through intuition or reasoning, but from passions of our imagination.

He offers a parameter for defining the sublime; this is in contrast to his definition of beauty. According to Burke, the beautiful is correct, proportional and balanced, offering an uninhibited aesthetic pleasure. The sublime is that which has the power to compel us through astonishment and awe.

"WHATEVER is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure." Edmund Burke.

We can observe problems in Burke's writings. He establishes his inquiry of the sublime and the beautiful in gender terms, the sublime as masculine and the beautiful as feminine. Writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) challenged this. She stated that these are ideas that are explicitly viewed through the sensory experience of the male: the woman is beautiful through the gaze of the male and the whole subject position of the sublime is masculine.

Burke also approaches both beauty and the sublime in psychological terms. He uses medical theory from the time, writing about nerves and the inter-relation of the mind and the body. Burke claims that sensations that are occurring externally have an influence on the mind, and this is what produces the sublime. It is this claim that positions his thinking within a psychological paradigm.

After Burke, Immanuel Kant developed thinking on the sublime, as the power of reason over nature. He divided it into two types: the mathematical sublime and the dynamic sublime. The mathematical sublime is the power of the imagination in relation to the infinite. For Kant, it is our reason and sense of mathematics which allows us to conceive the idea of infinity. The dynamic sublime is closer to Burke's conception of the sublime. It is the ability of reason to overcome the feeling of fear that we get from seeing something which is potentially dangerous, but is if no current danger.

In Part II, Of Passion Caused by the Sublime, Burke talks about a state of astonishment with an underlying experience of horror, an all-consuming experience that does not cater for any other track of thought or awareness, and therefore becomes an experience of the sublime. The sublime overwhelms our faculty of reason, proving that in particular instances, we are incapable of rational thought.

George Barret (1728/32-1784) A Stormy Landscape

Andrew Nicholl (1804-1886) Baily Lighthouse, Howth, County Dublin, in Stormy Weather

The paintings by George Barret, JMW Turner and Andrew Nicholl, all depict storms. The experience of the artist, and indeed us the viewers, is that of the sublime, as we are observing something that is potentially dangerous, but we can gain pleasure knowing that we are observing it from a place of safety. There is an initial feeling of fear or distress, followed by pleasure, once the subject realises that the object that is posing these feelings is not a real threat. Burke claims that the most powerful passion is that of fear because it comes from an apprehension of pain. In this apprehension, an event of self-preservation takes place followed by pleasure. Contemporary examples of this could be the experience of riding a rollercoaster, or of watching a horror movie. One experiences the impression of fear while at them same time remaining assured in the knowledge of being safe. Also, for Burke, pain and pleasure have properties in common, mostly that they both oppose a state of indifference.

Burke specifically acknowledges a terror that is derived from the ocean: "...the ocean is an object of no small terror. Indeed, terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime." [Part II, Terror, Edmund Burke]

In J.M.W. Turner's A Ship against the Mewstone, at the Entrance to Plymouth Sound, 1814,the Mewstone dwarfs the ship, which is likely to be a Royal Naval vessel. The Mewstone, which lies at the eastern end of Plymouth Sound off Wembury Bay, notoriously claimed many lives over the centuries. Here we see a depiction of an object known to be dangerous, set in the dangers of a storm. Turner often positioned himself extremely close, or within his subject. In one instance, he tied himself to a steam ship for four hours during a nocturnal snowstorm, which resulted in the painting Snow Storm-Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth making Signals in Shallow Water, and going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night the Ariel left Harwich, 1842 (now in the Tate Collection). Consequently, the painting is both a forensic record of this specific storm and a masterwork of painting. Considering Turner's approach to these natural scenes, we can question if Turner himself experienced the sublime as a safe observer or if he himself was of the sublime in particular moments.
Questions:
What is Edmund Burke's definition of the sublime?

What interpretation of the sublime might we attribute to the artworks A Stormy Landscape, A Ship against the Mewstone, at the Entrance to Plymouth Sound and Baily Lighthouse, Howth, County Dublin, in Stormy Weather?

Do you think that the sublime takes place exclusively in art?

Can the sublime be experienced through direct encounters with nature?

From this text, how would you distinguish the sublime from the beautiful?

What political or social connotations might the sublime have had in the 18th century?

What political and social connotations might the sublime have in the contemporary world?

Written by: Jennie Taylor, National Gallery of Ireland

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Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), A Ship against the Mewstone, at the Entrance to Plymouth Sound, c.1814. Photo © National Gallery of Ireland. Credit In our ongoing adult learning series, we link works from our collection with key art historical, theoretical or philosophical texts.

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Edmund Burke and the Sublime (Wordsworth Trust)

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Edmund Burke and the Sublime (Wordsworth Trust)

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The Fall of an Avalanche in the Grisons (Tate)

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The Fall of an Avalanche in the Grisons (Tate)

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‘The Fall of an Avalanche in the Grisons’, Joseph Mallord William Turner, exhibited 1810 | Tate

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Artwork page for ‘The Fall of an Avalanche in the Grisons’, Joseph Mallord William Turner, exhibited 1810 Dramatic Alpine scenes were a stock feature of Sublime landscape. Though Turner had visited the Alps in 1802, there is no evidence that he visited the area represented in this picture, or that h…

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J M W Turner was a prolific master born to a barber in Covent Garden in 1775. When he died in 1851, he left over 19,000 artworks. Selecting which to include in this book was a major feat in itself. Turner was a Romantic when it came to landscapes, with an inimitable flair for seascapes, and was ...

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For over 250 years, the RA has existed to champion art and artists. Enjoy our expanded campus with free displays, new spots to eat, drink and shop, and much more.

We're run by the Royal Academicians, artists and architects elected by their peers in recognition of their exceptional work. We're home to Britain's longest established art school, the RA Schools. Every year since 1768 we've held an annual Summer Exhibition, the largest open-submission art exhibition in the world. We present our collection of art and architecture in free displays throughout our home on Piccadilly. And we put on world-class exhibitions of art from around the world, welcoming hundreds of thousands of people to our galleries each year.

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For over 250 years, the RA has existed to champion art and artists. Enjoy our expanded campus with free displays, new spots to eat, drink and shop, and much more. We're run by the Royal Academicians, artists and architects elected by their peers in recognition of their exceptional work.