Joseph Mallord William Turner ra 1775–1851
NG 479 
Sun rising through Vapour:
Fishermen cleaning and selling Fish

Judy Egerton, 2000

Extracted from:
Judy Egerton, The British Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2000).

exhibited 1807

Oil on canvas, 134 × 179.5 cm (52¾ × 70⅝ in.)

Provenance

Purchased from the artist in December 1818 by Sir John Fleming Leicester, 5th Bt (cr. 1st Baron de Tabley of Tabley House, co. Chester, 10 July 1826, d.18 June 1827), by whose executors sold Christie’s 7 July 1827 (46), bt by Turner himself; with Dido building Carthage, specifically bequeathed by Turner to the National Gallery, to be ‘placed by the side of Claude’s “Seaport” and “Mill”’, on condition that they were accepted and so placed by the Gallery within twelve months of Turner’s death on 18 December 1851; by agreement with Turner’s executors,¹ placed in the National Gallery in accordance with Turner’s wishes, formally entering the Collection upon the Court of Chancery’s decree settling litigation over Turner’s will, 19 March 1856.

Exhibited

RA 1807 (162); BI 1809 (269, as ‘Sun‐rising through vapour, with fishermen landing and cleaning their fish’); Turner’s Gallery 1810 (1, as ‘Dutch Boats’²); Sir John Leicester’s Gallery c. 1819‐25 (7, first as ‘Sun‐Rise, through a Mist’ and later as ‘Dutch Fishing Boats; the sun rising through vapour’; Paris, Louvre, 1938 (141); New York, Chicago, Toronto and London, Tate Gallery, 1946‐7 (46); Moscow and Leningrad 1960 (52); Tate Gallery, Turner’s Holland, 1994 (5).

Literature

Farington, Diary, 7 April, 11 May, 19 June 1807 and 16 January 1819; William Carey, A Descriptive Catalogue of Paintings by British Artists in the Possession of Sir John Fleming Leicester, Bart., London 1819, no. 7, pp. 21‐5; John Young, A Catalogue of Pictures by British Artists in the Possession of Sir John Fleming Leicester, Bart., with Etchings from the whole collection … London 1821, reprinted 1825, no. 7, p. 3; Hamerton 1879, pp. 98‐100, 306‐10; Whitley 1928, pp. 120‐1; Whitley 1930, pp. 136‐7, 282‐3; Davies 1946 pp. 147‐8; Hilda F. Finberg, ‘Turner’s Gallery in 1810’, Burlington Magazine, XCIII, 1951, pp. 384‐5; Davies 1959, pp. 95‐6; Finberg 1961, pp. 134‐6,172‐3, 255, 302, 321, 331, 441, 468 no. 111, 478 no. 202, 512 nos 149a and 157a; ed. Douglas Hall, ‘The Tabley House Papers’, Walpole Society 1960‐62, vol. XXXVIII, 1962, pp. 93, 120; Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, pp. 10, 22, 26; John Gage, ‘Turner and the Picturesque’, Burlington Magazine, CVII, 1965, pp. 18 n. 12, 23; Wilton 1979, p. 121, and n. 20 (p. 133); Gage 1980 pp. 4, 44‐5, 75; Michael Kitson, ‘Turner and Claude’, Turner Studies, 2, no. 2, 1983, pp. 7‐8; Butlin and Joll 1984, cat. no. 69, pp. 53‐4 (including a more exhaustive bibliography to 1984), plate 79; Selby Whittingham, ‘A Most Liberal Patron: Sir John Fleming Leicester, Bart., 1st Baron de Tabley, 1762‐1827’, Turner Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 1986; Fred G.H. Bachrach, Turner’s Holland, exh. cat., Tate Gallery 1994, pp. 14‐15, cat. no. 5, pp. 34‐5, repr. with detail and three other figs. p. 35.

Engraved

Small outline etchings by John Young of this (no. 7) and other pictures in the collection were published in his Catalogue of Pictures … in the Possession of Sir John Fleming Leicester, Bart., 1821.

Technical Notes

Cleaned in 1968. In good condition apart from some abrasion in the sky. The original construction of the support was similar to that of Calais Pier (NG 472), that is, an unprimed canvas was stretched underneath the primed canvas on which the picture was to be painted. Although some repairs to the tacking edges of the painted canvas had been necessary, the support remained in its original state until 1986, when malicious damage by a visitor to the Gallery necessitated lining.

Discussion

Turner’s essential idea for this picture, a black and white chalk drawing inscribed ‘Study/ Calm’ in his ‘Calais Pier’ sketchbook (fig. 1), appears to have come spontaneously: the shipping, the sun ascending through ‘vapour’ or mist, its reflection in the shallows and the line of the shore are all present in this study and were only slightly modified in the finished picture. Turner used his ‘Calais Pier’ sketchbook, made up of large (45 × 27.3 cm) grey pages, for working drawings for most of his pictures painted between 1802 and 1805, including, of course, Calais Pier itself (NG 472, pp. 260‐5), and for Hannibal crossing the Alps, 1812.³ Another page from the sketchbook (TB LXXXI‐56), shows that the number of boats was reduced (see also pp. 26 and 34). The mood of ‘Calm’ was linked to human bustle by extending the composition to the right to include a beached fishing‐smack and a knot of figures cleaning and selling the catch ‐ skate, sole, whiting, dabs. Page 20 of the ‘Calais Pier’ sketchbook is a rapid idea for this extension of the scene.⁴ For the pierhead, Turner may have recalled one of the blue‐grey studies of boats at Dover he had made about 1793‐5 in Dr Monro’s ‘Academy’, in Girtin’s company, from ‘outlines’ by John Henderson;⁵ it may have suggested other details, including the figure of the man with his back to us, though he was by now familiar with many shores and boats.

‘Calm’, the key word inscribed on the first study for this picture, was a new ingredient in Turner’s marine paintings, compared with the wind‐tossed seas in such previously exhibited pictures as Calais Pier (1803), Boats carrying out Anchors and Cables to Dutch Men of War⁶ (1804) and Shipwreck⁷ (1805). Hamerton 1879 described Sun rising through Vapour as ‘the first decided expression on an important scale of Turner’s master‐passion in his art, the love of light and mystery in combination’. It is likely to have been primarily for the quality [page 267][page 268]of the light that this picture was to retain a special place in Turner’s estimate of his own work. When shown at the Royal Academy in 1807 it made no great stir. Farington, as usual collecting various artists’ opinions, reported that Richard Westall RA thought it ‘inferior to His [Turner’s] former productions’, and that Benjamin West PRA considered that ‘Turner has greatly fallen off in a large Sea piece’.⁸ Robert Smirke RA thought ‘Turner’s picture of Boats, & his Blacksmith’s Shop … excellent’.⁹ The ‘Blacksmith’s Shop’, the second of Turner’s 1807 Royal Academy exhibits, was A Country Blacksmith disputing upon the Price of Iron, and the Price charged to the Butcher for shoeing his Poney, painted to show that he could rival Wilkie’s success in low‐life genre; the same impulse may have inspired the Teniers‐like intensity with which the fishing folk on the right of Sun rising go about their business. But it was Wilkie’s The Blind Fiddler which attracted chief attention in the 1807 exhibition: Smirke told Farington that ‘The crowd prevented His approaching Wilkie’s picture’.¹⁰

Sun rising through Vapour was re‐exhibited at the British Institution in 1809. In the spring of 1810, Turner included it in an exhibition of seventeen works in the gallery of his house in Harley Street (open free of charge, to those who obtained tickets, while the Royal Academy exhibition was on). A printed list¹¹ shows that this time he gave the picture the short title of ‘Dutch Boats’. A more descriptive handlist also seems to have been available for visitors; this must have been what Turner himself referred to when he later told Sir John Leicester that ‘The description of the Picture was as follows. Dutch Boats and Fish Market ‐ Sun Rising thro’ Vapour’.¹² For the time being, and perhaps because the picture had not so far found a purchaser, Turner chose to draw attention to its ‘Dutch’ content before the quality of its atmosphere. Bachrach 1994 finds ‘strong Dutch echoes’ in the picture: ‘The boats on the left recall Van de Capelle, the man‐of‐war‐ in the centre is pure Van de Velde, and the group of figures on the right… is Teniers all over.’ After the picture’s acquisition by Sir John Leicester, William Carey’s Descriptive Catalogue of his collection (1819) notes: ‘This scene is supposed to represent a harbour on the coast of Holland; although the artist has not confined himself to the particulars of a local view. The shipping are built like those which were used by the Dutch towards the close of the sixteenth century.’ Six years later, when John Young engraved the subject, it was with the title Dutch Fishing Boats: The Sun rising through Vapour, to which he adds ‘Being a View of a Harbour on the Coast of Holland’. As Bachrach observes, ‘Holland’s North‐Sea coast faces West, i.e. where the sun sets, and so the locality depicted for a “sun rising” from open sea could not really be a beach on the mainland’: not that Turner himself, composing the picture in his studio, had ever made such a claim for it. He had not set out to paint a ‘view’ but ‘A Calm’, which was a favourite subject with Dutch marine painters; it is here, and in the sky above the calm, that ‘Dutch echoes’ from Cuyp and Van de Velde are most apparent.

A smaller picture now in the Barber Institute, Birmingham, is also known as The Sun rising through Vapour. The subject (but not the composition) is similar.¹³ The Barber Institute catalogues suggest that it may have been one or other of the pictures shown in Turner’s Gallery in 1810 as Fishing Boats in a Calm. Whatever Turner called it, it was bought by his friend and patron Walter Fawkes, and can be seen in Turner’s watercolour of about 1818‐19 of the drawing‐room at Farnley, hanging as a pendant to The Victory in Three Positions, on either side of Dort, or Dordrecht, the Dort Packet Boat from Rotterdam becalmed of 1818.¹⁴ Butlin and Joll suggest that Fawkes may have asked for a subject similar to the Sun rising through Vapour which Turner had exhibited in 1807 but which, evidently, he did not mean to sell except on advantageous terms.

On 12 December 1810 Turner answered an enquiry from Sir John Leicester, already one of his chief patrons, who had evidently asked what medium‐size marine subjects were available for purchase. In reply, Turner drew sketches on four pictures¹⁵ on one page (fig. 2) above a letter¹⁶ which reads:Queen Ann St West Dece^r 12 1810Sir JohnPerhaps the above slight Mem^m of the only four subjects I have near the size may lead your recollection in regard to their fitness or class, and if I knew when you would favour me with a call I would most certainly remain at homeYour most obliged S^tJ M W Turner A sketch of Sun rising through Vapour appears lower right, under its alternative title ‘Dutch Boats’; below the sketch Turner has written ‘This (6 feet long) wants Cleaning’, a fact he was to not to forget eight years later. Two ‘hand signals’ remind Sir John that this picture is ‘now in S^r J Ls Gallery in Hill S.ͭ ’ (that is, already in the prospective purchaser’s gallery in his own house, presumably on approval). At this point, discreetly, Turner adds ‘Pretium [price] 300 Gs –’. This was no doubt a carefully considered price and one which Turner was not prepared to lower.¹⁷

Eight years passed without a decision from Sir John Leicester. The picture may have remained in his gallery (not open to the public until 1818) in his house, 24 Hill Street, Mayfair, throughout those years. As Whittingham 1986 has shown, Leicester had been a good enough patron to Turner over the years (acquiring in all nine works, two of which were commissions to paint views of Tabley, his Cheshire seat) for Turner to oblige him by waiting patiently for a decision over Sun rising; it may also have suited him to have a painting hanging securely in Hill Street, perhaps drawing admiration from other possible patrons.

Leicester finally bought the picture at the end of 1818, for 350 guineas; in a letter of 16 December 1818, Turner thanked him for part payment of £100 of this sum and, not forgetting that the picture ‘wants cleaning’, asked him to ‘have the goodness to send it to Mr Bigg’s [William Redmore Bigg RA ’s studio in Russell Street] for cleaning’.¹⁸ The spur for Leicester to purchase the picture was the fact that in January 1819 he was to re‐open his gallery of modern British painting (first opened in his house in Mayfair the previous year), and wanted to increase the strength of the collection.¹⁹ In 1819 he was to publish a catalogue of his collection, and discussed ‘the description of the picture’ with Turner once more. Turner’s reply has already been quoted in part: ‘The description of the Picture was as follows: Dutch Boats and Fish Market ‐ Sun Rising thro’ Vapour’; he then added: ‘but if you think “dispelling the morning Haze” or “Mist” better, pray so name it.’²⁰ Turner may have sensed that Leicester did not care for the word ‘Vapour’. In William Carey’s Descriptive Catalogue of Leicester’s collection, 1819, the title appears as ‘Sun‐Rise, Through a Mist’.

Leicester died on 18 June 1827, leaving his friend and executor T. L. Parker to discover ‘that the state of affairs is so bad, that everything must be sold that can be, and the house and gallery the first.’²¹ Within three weeks of his death, the pictures at Hill Street were sold in the gallery by Christie’s. Turner attended the sale. He bought back Sun rising through Vapour for 490 guineas, prompting the following newspaper item:²² The landscape of Dutch fishing boats with the sun rising through a morning vapour, by Mr. J.M.W. Turner, was purchased by the artist himself for four hundred and ninety guineas. This picture excited the admiration of the whole company, which was manifested by loud clappings of hands on its being brought forward. The biddings for it, which were most exciting, also produced great applause, and Mr. Turner, on becoming the purchaser, received the congratulations of his friends.The presence of Sun rising through Vapour in Leicester’s gallery had made it well‐known. W.F. Witherington’s painting A Modern Picture Gallery,²³ exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1824 , depicts an imaginary or ideal collection of British paintings, rather like P. C. Wonder’s Imaginary Picture Gallery of old masters;²⁴ in this, Sun rising through Vapour is clearly depicted on the left wall. In reality, Sun rising through Vapour had returned to Turner’s house for his lifetime. The collector Elhanan Bicknell (1788‐1861), who bought six paintings from Turner’s studio in March 1844,²⁵ reputedly offered him £1600 for Sun Rising through Vapour;²⁶ but well before then, Turner had reserved it in his mind for the National Gallery.

His wish to bequeath two specific paintings ‘to be placed by the side of Claude’s “Sea Port” and “Mill” that is to hang on the same line same height from the ground and continue in perpetuity to hang’ had been formed by 29 September 1829, the day after his father’s funeral, and the day on which he signed and sealed his first will. The idea that two of his pictures should hang forever beside the two Claudes which he always calls ‘The Sea Port’ and ‘The Mill’ (NG 14 and NG 12, both of which he had known ever since John Julius Angerstein bought them) did not change, nor did his wish that Dido building Carthage (NG 498, pp. 272‐81) should be one of them; but over the second picture he changed his mind. His first will of 1829 specifies The Decline of Carthage²⁷ as the second of the pictures to hang as a quartet with the [page [270]][page 271]two Claudes. His second will, signed and sealed on 10 June 1831, introduces the condition that the two pictures must be accepted within twelve months and ‘placed as directed’; and it substitutes Sun rising through Vapour for The Decline of Carthage. The reasons for this change of mind were not stated, and are unlikely to have been discussed with the Trustees of the National Gallery or with anyone else. Turner may have felt that as the two Claudes were different from each other in subject and in mood, so the two he selected to hang in their company should be different from each other; he may also have felt that two ancient seaport subjects might suggest too close an emulation of Claude. Or, perhaps, looking at Sun rising through Vapour, hanging in his dark house since he had succeeded in buying it back in 1827, he knew that in its sky alone he had achieved effects which could hold their own with Claude.

Notes