普利茅斯，来自北方

The paper used here is a heavy weight, wove, originally blue-grey but now mid-brown wrapping paper with no discernible watermark. It is an unusual choice for Turner: heavier than normal, stronger on account of its thickness, and in a colour he did not choose with great frequency until later in his life. The sheet is fibrous with many flecks, imperfections and additions of poor-quality hemp-like fibres. It has discoloured considerably with age. There are prominent tide lines across the bottom half. It is possible that this damage was caused during the 1928 Thames flood which damaged many of the items from the Turner Bequest.

This is a very delicately painted landscape scene, apparently in oil medium. Paper and oil is an unusual combination of materials for Turner, and the paper has to be heavily sized or painted first to prevent oil medium soaking in, making paper appear brown and transparent whatever its initial colour, and making it prone to grow darker and more brittle with age. Unusually Turner has painted the top half of the sheet in full but apparently left the bottom half of the sheet unpainted. First thoughts that water damage has carried away both paint and preparatory layer in this half are unfounded. Second thoughts that Turner painted the whole landscape and then thoroughly wiped away the dissatisfactory bottom half (using something like a turpentine soaked rag) with the intention of repainting it later do not fit the evidence either. Closer examination of the image at 200x magnification revealed that the brush-strokes where the image peters out are all complete and that none have been severed or partially removed, showing that this abrupt ending was created intentionally by the artist. There is little or no visual evidence for the preparatory layer that ought to be there. Peter Bower 1 has suggested it included indigo, and was itself therefore prone to lose colour.

Slight cracking of the paint film is visible in the centre of the sky and in the top left hand corner. In these areas some paint has been lost. Exposure to water might be the cause. The extreme colour change in the support indicates considerable exposure to light, which would be sufficient to fade the blue indigo probably used here, as well as to darken the support even beneath the paint, leading to a general shift of tone towards brown.

Helen Evans

June 2009 Revised by Joyce Townsend

February 2011

1

Peter Bower, ‘Turner’s Use of Papers and Boards as a Support for Oil Sketches’, in Leslie Parris ed., Exploring Late Turner , exhibition catalogue, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York 1999, pp.61–79. Read more