JOSEPH MALLARD WILLIAM TURNER RA 1775 - 1851 TURNER AND THE MARKET This pair of great oil paintings by JMW Turner, exhibited by the artist in 1846 when at the height of his powers are not only an extremely rare example of Turner producing a planned pair of pictures and indeed the only pair not in public collections, but they also represent two of only four important Venetian paintings by the artist still in private ownership. Thus, there will never again be an opportunity to purchase a pair of Venetian paintings by Turner. Venice, traditionally, is the most sought after of all the seascape subjects and a pair of Turners represents a unique opportunity. These paintings are Venetian masterpieces of a joyous and romantic kind, entitled Venice, Evening, Going to the Ball, San Martino and Venice, Morning, Returning from the Ball, St Martha. They represent a great high point in painting, that moment when Turner, perhaps the greatest British artist, achieved works of brilliance and narrative allure that represent the summit of his achievement, bridging the eighteenth century and modern art. In addition they anticipate the works of the Impressionists as well as foreshadowing modern art. It is truly extraordinary that Turner achieved this as early as the 1840s. The pictures are both exciting in terms of art history and as superb examples of the artist’s greatest works. There have been few major oils by Turner on the market over the last twenty-five years and certainly no other pair of late paintings has changed hands since the war. (Other, unfortunately, than the pair of late paintings Shade and darkness (Butlin and Joll, no 404) and Light and Colour (Butlin and Joll, no 405), the property of the Turner Bequest, Tate Gallery, which were recently stolen whilst on exhibition in Germany whilst insured for £24,000,000). The painting of 1836 Juliet and her Nurse, (see Butlin and Joll, no 465), which was a subject picture with a Venetian backdrop, which appeared at auction in 1980 achieving a price of $6,400,000, remains in some way a yardstick as to the desirability of Turner’s ethereal later works. Lord Clark’s fine English seapiece Seascape: Folkstone of the mid 1840’s (Butlin and Joll, no 472) made £7,400,000 at Sotheby’s in 1984 to Lord Thompson of Fleet and has more recently changed hands at a price in the region of $20,000,000. Another Dutch seapiece, Van Tromp, going about to please his masters of 1844 (Butlin and Joll, no 410) was sold in 1992 by Royal Holloway College to the Getty Museum for about £12,000,000. The only other substantial painting to appear on the market in recent years and, like the present canvases, a Venetian view taken from the water, was the Guidecca, la Donna della Salute and San Georgio (Butlin and Joll, no 391) the property of the Wood Prince family, and previously on a long loan to the Art Institute of Chicago, which was sold in the early 1990s for a figure in the region of $18,000,000. JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER Going to the Ball (San Martino); Returning from the Ball (St. Martha) An Essay by Martin Butlin These two paintings are the last in the splendid succession of Venetian subjects begun by Turner, in watercolour, even before his first visit to Venice in 1819. There were two views of Venice among watercolours painted for James Hakewill’s Picturesque Tour of Italy, done after Hakewill’s own drawings in 1818, and it was perhaps this commission, coupled with the influence of Byron, the fourth canto of whose Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was published the same year, that persuaded the artist to break his journey to Rome in the following year with five days in Venice. As well as a large number of pencil sketches Turner painted four miraculous colour studies, but, apart from a few further finished watercolours, the only product of this visit in oils was the vast but unfinished view of The Rialto, Venice, of about 1820, begun as a companion to Turner’s two exhibited tributes to European cities of the same size, (about 78 x 132 in): England: Richmond Hill, on the Prince Regent’s Birthday, exhibited in 1819, and Rome, from the Vatican. Raffaelle, accompanied by La Fornarina, preparing his Pictures for the Decoration of the Loggia, exhibited the following year. Large panoramic oil paintings such as these, far removed in scale from Turner’s later depictions of Venice, mark the culmination of Turner’s transformation of his early landscape style under the influence of Claude. Turner’s next visit to Venice was in 1834 but this had been anticipated by two Venetian subjects exhibited at the Royal Academy the year before. These exhibits, which probably prompted Turner’s renewed interest in visiting Venice, were deliberate responses to the artistic challenge of two more or less contemporary artists, Bonington and Clarkson Stanfield, but were also a tribute to the great artist of Venetian view-painting, Canaletto, as was borne witness by the title of Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom-House, Venice: Canaletti painting. A pigmy besides the giant Rialto, this measured 20 3/16 x 32 7/16 in. The other picture, now lost, was even smaller, probably 11½ x 9½ in. Turner’s interest in Venice was now more purely topographical, enhanced by his claim to take his place in the succession from Canaletto. This was followed by a number of exhibits of Venetian subjects in Turner’s standard 3 x 4ft format, again combining the appeal of topography with aspirations to high art. Venice, exhibited in 1834, was painted for Henry McConnel, who the next year commissioned as a companion the painting Keelmen heaving in Coals by Night; in this pairing Turner compared the old decaying empire of Venice with the new economic empire of Great Britain. A further Venetian subject exhibited in 1835 was more purely topographical but the following year saw the exceptional Juliet and her Nurse in which Turner transferred the scene of Shakespeare’s drama from Verona to a Venice of high romance, enhanced by the effect of fireworks against a night sky. Shakespeare was again the inspiration behind The Grand Canal, Venice of 1837, two lines from The Merchant of Venice being quoted in the Royal Academy catalogue; in addition Turner enlarged the scale of his canvas to 58¼ x 43½ in. After this there was a gap in Turner’s Venetian exhibits until 1840 when (again just before Turner revisited the city) he initiated his final series of Venetian oil paintings with Venice, the Bridge of Sighs and Venice from the Canale della Guidecca, Chiesa di S. Maria dela Salute, &c. The catalogue entry for the first of these quoted Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and this sets the mood for the whole series of late Venetian oils and places them firmly in the mainstream of Romanticism. Turner here abandons his aspirations to high art and uses a new, small format (with one exception, Depositing of John Bellini’s Three Pictures in La Chiesa Redentore, Venice of 1841), for the series, 2ft x 3ft; as Turner wrote to a patron in 1843, ‘Venice size being best 2 feet 3 feet’. In the following years Turner continued to exhibit Venetian pictures, two in 1841 and 1842 and three in 1843 and 1844. It was not however until 1845 that he seems to have regarded his Venetian pictures, four in this year, as a group in some way unified by subject. They covered the four times of day, evening, morning, noon and sunset, but it is clear from the catalogue numbers that they were actually hung as two pairs fairly far apart, probably in separate rooms. The first pair, hung as companions,were further unified by a kind of story line, being entitled Venice, Evening, going to the Ball and Morning, returning from the Ball, St. Martino. It was this pairing that seems to have set the pattern for our two pictures of 1846 and indeed, if one can disentangle the highly complex early histories of the four paintings, seems to have led directly to their being painted as either companions to, or replacement for, the two 1845 paintings which were done for William Wethered Jnr of Kings Lynn and Francis McCracken of Belfast but which were returned to the artist and now form part of the Turner Bequest. Turner seems to have had no more luck initially with his 1846 pictures, apparently first painted for the same two patrons. That for Wethered was back in Turner's hands by 23 October 1846 and both were shortly after that bought by one of Turner’s more constant patrons, BG Windus of Tottenham. In the Venetian pictures of the 1840s Turner gradually withdrew his attention from the specific landmarks such as the Bridge of Sighs, The Doge’s Palace, the Dogana, San Giorgio and the Salute; even when such motifs can be detected they are placed further back in the picture and broken up by Turner’s ever more freely handled brushwork. In the 1846 Going to the Ball one can identify the general viewpoint, looking across the Lagoon from a point beyond the Public Garden; in the remote distance the city of Venice, with the Doge’s Palace and the Campanile of St Mark’s clearly to be seen a little to the right of the middle of the picture. The little known church of St Martino (which houses the body of Doge Francesco Erizzo, less his heart, which was buried in St. Mark’s) lies a little way back from the waterfront, a bit further to the right of St Mark’s. St Martino also appears in the title of the 1845 Returning from the Ball picture, where it is even more difficult to place; perhaps indeed it is a different St Martino, that on the island of Burano, that Turner is alluding to. The viewpoint of the 1846 Returning from the Ball is even more difficult to establish. It is clearly a view across the Lagoon, apparently with an island on which stands a large very distinctively shaped church with two campanile, though it is impossible to identify this building; in the distance on the right, one seems to see the distant snow-covered Alps. Although no church of St Martha is known, as included in the title of the other picture, there was an annual fiesta of that name connected with sole fishing, a subject that would have interested Turner. In both 1845 and 1846 the Going to and Coming from the Ball pictures received relatively good reviews for Turners of this date, though in 1845 Punch accompanied its review with two muzzy drawings entitled Venice by Gaslight – Going to the Ball and Venice by Daylight - Returning from the Ball. The review in the Spectator for 9 May 1846 gives a clue as to the original appearance of the works: ‘One of a pair of Venetian scenes, where an expanse of sky and water is flooded with golden atmosphere called Going to the Ball, is a blaze of sunshine that dazzles the sight; the pendant picture, Returning from the Ball, serving as a foil to the beaming brilliancy of its companion’. The Art Union for June 1846 wrote of the latter picture: ‘There is here less of the utter absence of definition, which has of late years distinguished these Venetian works’. Turner’s difficulties over the 1845 and 1846 commissions, rather than the actual merits of the pictures, seem to have been followed by further confusion. After passing through a number of other hands the pictures entered the collection of the Oakes family in 1937, only for the family to fall victim to a notorious murder in the West Indies. When offered for sale in 1982 a family disagreement led to their being withdrawn and in 1984 they were eventually sold by private treaty. What also counted against the two pictures was their apparent condition but this, although formerly criticised, is far better than one would expect and reveals far more of the paintings’ original appearance than was allowed. Until the 1980s the pictures had become more and more discoloured and obscured by dirty varnish but one feels that the misfortunes of their owner’s recent family history played as much a part in their condemnation as a thorough scrutiny of their appearance. Cleaned in the early 1980s, the pictures have been revealed in much of their original brilliance, although this is not reflected in the appalling reproductions to be found in the standard catalogue of Turner’s paintings by Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll. Those in the 1982 and 1984 Christie’s catalogues give a better idea but even they fail to reveal the cool brilliance of the two pictures and the fact that one can actually see the setting sun in Going to the Ball and that higher in the sky in Returning from the Ball. What the viewer does still notice is the result of a fault in the artist’s own use of paint, the use of megilp in some of the clouds and details of the buildings. This medium was used to facilitate the painting of a raised impasto which retained its three-dimensional form without slumping; it could also be used for thick glazes. To begin with, the substance retained its original glossiness and gave depth and beauty to Turner’s light-toned modelling and atmospheric touches, creating subtleties of texture that were impossible when using more orthodox oil paint. Turner did not realise the make-up of megilp, which combined mastic spirit varnish (using natural resin) with linseed drying oil which had been previously cooked with a lead compound, led to a darkening over the years. This, alas, is irreversible but, once allowed for, does not detract from the general effect of the paintings. They are much as they always have been, with a masterful feeling of recession and a subtlety of light and atmosphere that typifies Turner’s late, almost dream-like approach to Venice. Of Turner’s twenty-five exhibited Venetian subjects and the nine that remained unfinished in his Bequest, twenty-eight are now in public collections and one is lost, leaving only four examples, including these, not in public ownership (the other two are Juliet and her Nurse and Depositing of John Bellini’s Three Pictures which are in private collections). In addition, these are one of the only two pairs of deliberate companion Venetian subjects marking, even at the end of his long series of treatment of that city, yet another development in Turner’s approach. Essential bibliography CF Bell, A List of the Works contributed to Public Exhibitions by JMW Turner, 1901, pp154-5, nos 256 and 255 M Butlin and E Joll, The paintings of JMW Turner, 2nd edn 1984, pp265-7, nos 421 and 422 TURNER’S VISION These two paintings lie at an interesting and significant point in Turner’s oeuvre and illustrate varying aspects of his great Venetian oils and how he incorporated his vision with reference to his well established watercolour technique. In terms of subject matter, Venice was one of his central themes and this pair of paintings play a significant part in the succession of series paintings, including studies and finished works, such as the pairs considered here. It will be remembered that Turner was consistantly involved in producing sets of subject paintings, drawings and illustrations both for books and as exercises in the development of ideas and techniques. These later Venice theme pictures may also be considered alongside other subjects treated in the similar technique, such as Turner’s Whaling pictures of the 1840s and his Petworth paintings of the late 1820s. In terms of technique, this pair of pictures are extremely interesting amongst those groups of pictures in that they are indeed clearly related in mood to Turner’s watercolours. Andrew Wilton has pointed this out and how their visual effect is akin to Turner’s greatest watercolours, achieved by building up details on a prepared white ground canvas, producing the great luminosity, which is also such a feature of Turner’s greatest watercolours. As with the watercolours, these pictures and other examples in the Tate Gallery (see, for example, Venice with the Salute, circa 1840-45 and St Benedetto, looking towards Fusina, exhib 1843) clearly demonstrate Turner’s fascination in working up a dazzling and sumptuous effect within blocks of light and shade. Here we have suggestions, none too fixed, of the archetypal Venetian landmarks, groups of boats, figures and areas of spectacular lighting in the sky and on the water. It is interesting to look clearly at the pictures and see precise detailing added deftly but with extraordinary vitality in an apparently superficial manner but contributing enormously to the overall image. Three canvases at the Tate Gallery demonstrate features of the effect achieved in this pair of pictures. One canvas is almost plain white with lightly shaded block forms ready for future development (Venice with Salute). The second canvas demonstrates Turner’s most specific painting of Venice where his admiration of Canaletto is apparent (St Benedetto, Looking towards Fusina). Here the architecture is clearly defined and easily identified, and also includes distinct features such as as gondolas, barges and figures. Thirdly (The Dogano, San Giorgio, Citella, from steps of the Europa) shows a magnificent finished painting similar in mood and technique to these with equal romantic illusion and allusion, superb lighting, mystical blocks of shape and colour, poetic suggestion in all the aspects of the subject - sky, water, movement and setting - all working together to glorious imaginative effect. Here, as in Going to the Ball, San Martino and and Returning from the Ball, St Martha the buildings have receded gracefully into a distant dream-like setting for the most charming and romantic of all landscapes and making a backdrop for the occasion they celebrate. BIOGRAPHIES OF PREVIOUS OWNERS Benjamin Godfrey Windus (1790-1867) Benjamin Windus was an eminent businessman from an established family firm of coachmakers and a director of Globe Insurance. He also patented ‘Godfrey’s Cordial’, a medicine for children. He amassed a vast collection of important English paintings and drawings and began to collect Turner’s watercolours from circa 1820. He was the owner of the largest single group of Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales series. Windus’ library, lined with Turner watercolours, was itself painted by John Scarlett Davis in 1835. The present pair of paintings stayed with Windus until his entire collection was auctioned by Christie’s in 1853. John Joseph Ernest Gambart (1814-1902) John Gambart was an art dealer and publisher who began his career working with his father in Belgium and finally settled in England in April 1840. He was one of the leading print publishers of the mid-Victorian period and by 1850 had established a gallery at 120-121 Pall Mall, London exhibiting British and European artists, including Turner. He befriended the leading artists, patrons and critics of the day, among them Joseph Gillott and John Ruskin. Henry Wallis (1805-1890) Henry Wallis had been Ernest Gambart's manager at the French Gallery, King Street, St James's, London and had subsequently opened his own gallery in the Haymarket. In 1867 Gambart sold the lease of the French Gallery to Henry Wallis, who continued to run the business under the same name. Joseph Gillott (1799-1872) Joseph Gillott made his fortune from a patent he secured for a pen nib and amassed a vast collection of paintings and drawings which filled three galleries in his Birmingham house and one in London. From the early 1850s, in his old age, he began to concentrate less on Old Masters and instead pursued contemporary pictures. His collection included a number of other notable Turner paintings including Calais Sands (RA 1838), as well as works by other eminent artists such as John Etty, John Linnell, TS Cooper, Francis and Thomas Danby, William Henry Hunt and Thomas Webster. The Earl of Bective (1844 – 1893) The family of the Earl of Bective (family name: Taylour) lived in Headfort House, Ireland, which was bought in 1660 by his ancestor Thomas Taylour of Sussex. He married Lady Alice Maria in 1867 (the only daughter of the Marquess of Downshire) with whom he had two daughters. He became an MP for Westmorland from 1871 to 1892 and was also Lord Lieutenant of Co Meath. James Price (d. 1895) James Price was an eminent collector of English paintings who amassed a substantial collection over a period of thirty years, which was sold by Christie’s on his death in 1895. Sir Donald Currie (1825-1909) Sir Donald Currie was a well respected businessman, whose many notable friends included Lord Tennyson and William Gladstone. He began his career working for Cunard, overseeing cargo shipments between Europe and America. In 1862 he set up the Castle Sailing Ship Service operating between Liverpool, London and the East Indies which was subsequently amalgamated with the Union Steamship Company to form the Union-Castle Mail Steamship Company. Queen Victoria awarded him the CMG in 1875 for assisting the government in connection with the Kimberley diamond mine in South Africa and in 1881 he received the KCMG for further services to South Africa. His political career spanned the years 1880-1894, during which time he stood as the Liberal MP for West Perthshire. Sir Harry Oakes (d. 1943) Sir Harry Oakes was a self-made American millionaire. In 1915 he renounced his allegiance to the USA and became a British Citizen of Canada. Nineteen years later, in 1934, he moved his family to the Bahamas to avoid the Liberal government’s harsh taxation. A leading businessman and landowner in the Bahamas and friend of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (the Duke was Governor at this time), Harry Oakes was elected to the Assembly and in 1939 was knighted by King George VI. He gave large amounts of money to hospitals in England, and donated five Spitfires to the government. On 8th July 1943 Sir Harry was found murdered at his home in Nassau – ‘a murder most foul and unnatural … surpassing anything in the annals of this Colony’ as it was later described in the local press. The following day his son-in-law, Alfred de Marigny was arrested and charged with the murder. De Marigny had married Nancy Oakes, the eldest of Sir Harry’s three children, in secret in America when she was just eighteen years and two days old. She was his second wife. After the wedding she contracted typhoid fever while they were in Mexico together, and nearly died. During this time she also became pregnant. Sir Harry, who thought that De Marigny had treated his first wife badly, was incensed by this and shortly afterwards changed his will to prevent his own children inheriting any of his money before they reached the age of thirty. The De Marigny trial was acknowledged as a fiasco, clouded by confusion and allegations of incompetence, conspiracy and fraud but De Marigny was finally acquitted on 11th November 1943 and to date the murder has never been solved. Just five days later, however, he was charged with being found in possession of illegally acquired petrol. He was found guilty, fined £100 and ordered to leave the Bahamas. On 3rd December 1943 he and his wife sailed for Cuba. The Oakes family were well-known patrons of the arts whose collection included the famous Vermeer A Lady Writing, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. This had been purchased from Knoedler between 1935 and 1939, the same period that the Turners were with them. On Sir Harry’s death, his collection passed to his wife, Eunice.
Benjamin Godfrey Windus, probably acquired through Thomas Griffith, Turner's agent; sold at: Windus sale, Christie's June 20 1853, lot 1, Going to the Ball (San Martino), 520 guineas, sold to: Henry Wallis, printmaker and gallery owner in the Haymarket, and subsequent purchaser and manager of Ernest Gambart's gallery (trading as Gambart & Junin, The French Gallery, Pall Mall) in 1867; the pair sold on March 23, 1854, sold to: Joseph Gillott, Birmingham; sold at: Gillott sale, Christie's April 20 1872, lot 159 and lot 160 (1,700 and 1,500 guineas); sold to: Thomas Taylour, Earl of Bective, MP; sold at: Bective sale, Christie's May 4 1878, lot 62 and 63 (both unsold) James Price, Paignton by 1887; sold at: Price sale, Christie's June 15 1895, lot 62 and 63; sold for 2,800 guineas to: Thos Agnew & Sons Ltd, London; sold to: Sir Donald Currie, KCMG, MP; by descent to his grandson: Major FD Mirrielees; sold in 1937 through Agnew to: M. Knoedler & Co Inc., New York; sold to: Sir Harry Oakes, 1st Bt., Nassau, Bahamas, (d.1943); by descent to his widow: Lady (Eunice) Oakes; sold at: Oakes sale, Christie's New York, May 19 1982 (withdrawn by the family); Oakes sale, Christie's New York, 1984; sold by private treaty to: Private collections, USA, 1984 to 2000
London, Royal Academy, 1846, nos 59 and 74 Manchester, Fine Art Galleries, Royal Jubilee Exhibition, 1887, nos 614 and 620 (lent by Price) London, Corporation of London Art Gallery, Guildhall, Loan Collection of Pictures, 1897, nos 63 and 67 (lent by Sir Donald Currie) Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Academi For De Skonne Kunster, Udstilling of Aeldre Engelisk Kunst I Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek MDCCCVIII, 1908, no 42 and 43 London, Thos Agnew & Sons Ltd, 1922, nos 9 and 11 London, Royal Academy, Exhibition of British Art, 1934, nos 673 and 677(lent by Mirrielees) New York, M Knoedler & Co Inc, Allied Art for Allied Aid, June, 1940, nos 11 and 12 New York, M Knoedler &Co Inc, English Paintings to honour Queen Elizabeth II, May 1953, nos 15 and 16
J Burnet and P Cunningham, Turner and his Works, London, 1852, p120, nos 239 and 240 W Thornbury, The Life of JMW Turner RA, London 1862, vol 1, p349; 1877, pp467 and 581 CF Bell, A List of the Works contributed to Public Exhibitions by JMW Turner RA, London, 1901, pp154 and 155, nos 255 and 256 Sir Walter Armstrong, Turner, London, 1902, pp147 and 235 AJ Fineberg, In Venice with Turner, London, 1930, pp151 and 158 Commemorative Catalogue of the Exhibition of British Art, Royal Academy of Arts 1934, Oxford University Press 1935, p100, nos 376 and 377 AJ Fineberg, The Life of JMW Turner RA, London, 1961, pp413 and 509, nos 573 and 574 M Butlin and E Joll, The paintings of JMW Turner, New Haven and London, 1977, pp240-242, nos 421 and 422, pl 402 and 403 A Wilton, The Life and Work of JMW Turner, London, 1979, nos P421 and P422, p 289 (illustrated)