Sky to Sea and how the Ship Sailed Between

Caleb Aikens

Intro To Art History

Talking Objects: Sky to Sea and how the Ship Sailed Between

The sky and sea connect in the following paintings in uncanny ways to give the viewer something to answer about how sky and water are different. The 19th century was a period of technology that created a romantic ideal for the raw aesthetic of technology that sailing ships represented in the battle against the elements. These ships conquered the oceans 300 years before Turner painted expansive narratives of mariners. Sailing ships in the 19th century were the major carriers of information, goods, and resources; the danger and reward of sailing became the stuff of legend for painters to capture as part of the study of the landscape. That study moved from solitary land-based events of largely church centric paintings to in the 18th century to include evocative skies and seas that pushed narrative forms of painting to new heights. While misunderstood to their original audience, paintings at the end of Turner’s career featuring rough and loose brushstrokes and ambiguous forms would help push painting into Impressionism and ultimately to modernism. The growing revolution of painters experimenting with form, light, and the viewer would make European art reach powerful places. The first piece in this curation, Whalers is Turner’s evolution into a mover of Western art by the adoption of new values. The piece creates a space for an exploration of how the next fifty years would be altered because of the shift in technique on a large stage. The pieces are ordered by timeline after the primary research objects displayed.

Whalers | J.M.W. Turner | ca. 1845 | Oil on Canvas | 96.29

Whalers is a piece about a ship from a profitable but largely despised business that made the sperm whale an endangered species. Whaling was a dangerous business and the sailors who profited from whaling were not much better than privateers. Moby Dick was written with this piece in mind as well as the cutthroat nature of the industry. The piece is so atmospheric that it creates a powerful mood of adventure, making the viewer search the background of the piece for meaning. The sky is connected to the sea through a chromatic gray at the horizon line and the ship recedes while the whale breaks through the picture plane. The experimental technique of this piece is similar to the last fifteen years of Turner’s work, but it is the piece that captured the evolution of Turner’s Mariner series.

Marine | Salomon van Ruysdael | 1650 | Oil on Wood | 71.98

Marine is an idyllic Dutch painting from 200 years previous to Whalers. The sky’s relationship to the sea is what is most notable about this painting. Ruysdael was ahead of his time with the subtle exploration of the relationship of light in the sky reflected in the water. This is most recognizable in the value of paint in the middle-right section of the painting. The classic Dutch scene is not angry, evocative, or revolutionary, but in dealing with representing how the water can appear to be an extension of sky it is a piece with elements of change in the marine narrative.

Ships in a Breeze | J.M.W. Turner | ca. 1808 | Etching and mezzotint | 28.97.10

Forty years before Whalers, Turner’s ten year study of the Marine theme connects angry skies with angry seas. The separation between sky and sea is created with value in the etching, but the ships in this piece are the proof of the watercraft that inspired Turner’s later work. The painterly aspects of this piece can be seen in the clouds, which have motion and volume that the Ruysdael does not. It’s a choppy whitecap in Turner’s marina that tells the viewer that the weather is worse than, “Ships in a Breeze” implies.

The Monk by the Sea | Caspar David Friedrich | 1808-1810 | Alte Nationalgalerie

The striking water to sky relationship in The Monk by the Sea is what places this piece with Turner’s Whalers. Friedrich, as a romantic painter, also was interested in the powerful nature of two atmospheric forces, the sky and the sea. While no ship sails between the two forces, the monk at the bottom of the painting acts as the seperating figure in the painting. He’s a solitary figure and his position in the painting is one of contemplation before the angry atmosphere and brooding ocean. Although the color pallette is different than Whalers, The Monk by the Sea deals with a similarly romantic subject. The addition of imagined beach communicates the location to the viewer as opposed to placing the viewer in an empty ocean looking at stormy waves and a ship.

Sunrise | Claude Monet | 1872 | Oil on canvas | Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Sunrise is a newer painting and a new take on the 19th century landscape. For the viewer, it isn’t as easy to tell where sky ends and lake begins, but the loose light brush strokes of the impressionists came out of the romantics rough brush strokes. The cohesive ambiguity of the figures makes the viewer feel attracted to the landscape, peering and twisting the eye to take the viewer on a journey through the painting. This impression-era painting is like Whalers in how it makes the viewer come back to the water and the sky before trying to parse the middle-ground.