English Painter JMW Turner

choi

Karen Wilkin, A Painter's Many High Water Marks; An exhibition looks at the JMW Turner’s responses to the massive changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. Wall Street Journal, Mar 28, 2021, at page A13.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tur ... liament-11648246669
https://thetechagents.in/turners ... y-high-water-marks/

Note:
(a)
(i) This is an exhibition review on Turner's Modern World. Boston, Mass: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), March 27–July 10, 2022.
https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/turners-modern-world
(ii) The English surname Wilkin is "from the medieval personal pgiven] name Wilkin, a pet form William."


(b) "Contradictions and surprises abound. The large, vigorous 'Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen' (1805-06) dominates a gallery of early work"
(i) Joseph Mallord William Turner, Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen. MFA, undated ("about 1805–06 * * * [o]il on canvas")
https://collections.mfa.org/obje ... ine-at-schaffhausen
("In 1802 he visited the Swiss Alps")
(ii) Joseph Mallord William Turner, Falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen, Front View. Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art, "updated before 2020" (watercolor on paper)
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/19223
("Turner had visited the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen on his first visit to Switzerland and they became one of his favourite subjects. He returned to them and made several studies, some of which were worked up into larger paintings. For this study he prepared the paper with a wash of grey before applying other colours and then rubbed and scraped into the surface to achieve the effects of spray and moisture laden air. He conveyed the scale of the Falls by including the figures in the boats. Made in 1841, this is one of three studies of the subject in the National Gallery of Scotland's collection")
(iii) Schaffhausen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schaffhausen
("the nearby Rhine Falls in Neuhausen am Rheinfall, Europe's largest waterfall"/ section 1 Mame)
(iv) Rhine Falls
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine_Falls
("The falls are located on the High Rhine [(German: Hochrhein; qv (also see), where Alpine Rhine (Alpen rhein) and Upper Rhine (Oberrhein) are purple and green, respectively; Navy-blue Bodensee is German for Lake Constance]; table: Elevation  364 m [from sea level); Total height [or drop of the falls]: 23m)
(A) In English, a ram is "an uncastrated adult sheep."
(B) Latin-English dictionary:
* scapha (noun feminine; from Ancient Greek skáphē of the same meaning): "light boat; skiff"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scapha
(C) German-English dictionary:
* Schaf (noun neuter): "sheep"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Schaf
* Haus (noun neuter; plural  Häuser): "house"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Haus
   ^ In Modern German, "hausen" (with lower-case h) is a verb that means to dwell, reside.
* ober- (prefix): "upper"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ober-
   ^ In comparison to ober, German preposition (never adverb) über and English preposition over shares the same (unknown) German ancester, and means the same.
* hoch- (prefix; a prefixed variation of the adverb hoch [high]): "high, up"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hoch-
(D) German toponymy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_toponymy
(section 1 German names from prehistoric and medieval times. section 1.1 Suffixes: "-hausen ('houses'). Examples: * * * Schaffhausen")

(E) The most common place name in Germany is "Hausen" meaning "housing." Reddit.com, "8 years ago"
https://www.reddit.com/r/GermanF ... _germany_is_hausen/
(newboss: " 'Housing' isn't a very accurate translation of 'Hausen' at all. In modern German, 'Hausen' as a noun exists, but it means 'beluga'; the English 'housing' can be translated into German as 'Gehäuse' (meaning a box containing some kind of machinery) or 'Wohnbau' (meaning residential buildings).  The nearest English translation of the '-hausen' suffix is probably 'homestead'; this is what the '-ham' means in English place names like 'Nottingham,' 'Birmingham' and 'Rotherham' ")
(F) The h in BRITISH English place suffix -ham is not pronounced, but the h in City of Birmingham, State of Alabama is pronounced. Because of this, the a following h is pronounced in British and American English.
Birmingham
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/birmingham


(c) "the Battle of Trafalgar * * *  * * * for paintings of Battle of Trafalgar, a visit to Nelson's flagship Victory while she was being repaired. * * * We often have to work to find the main event, such as the dying Nelson, a small figure, collapsed on the crowded deck of the Victory."
(i)
(A) Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory. 1806–8. Tate undated ("[o]il paint on canvas")
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artw ... -the-victory-n00480

This painting in the Web page can not be magnified.
(B) The detail
https://www.alamy.com/detail-clo ... image442271900.html
does not show much of Nelson. because he was covered by "shrouds" (as the painting title says).
(C) mast (sailing)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mast_(sailing)
(section 1 Nomenclature)
(D) English dictionary:
* mizzen (n; etymology): "(also mizen) the mast aft of a ship's mainmast"
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/mizzen
(ii) The Battle of Trafalgar (painting)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Trafalgar_(painting)  
(1822; section 1 History: "Admiral Nelson, of the British Navy, took an unconventional approach to this battle and split his fleet into two lines, one led by his flagship Victory and the other by his subordinate Collingwood, to attack the Franco-Spanish fleet in columns perpendicular to their line"; ownership: "National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London")

Section 6 External link leads to the painting at National Maritime Museum, whose description includes "Nelson's presence, mortally wounded, is only implied in the highlighted crowd around 'Victory’s' mainmast. This powerful absence [of Nelson] * * * "
One can barely "the highlighted crowd around 'Victory’s' mainmast." Victory is the white warship looming in the background.
(A) detail:
Jonathan Jones, Punk with a Paintbrush: How Turner Sunk the Empire. The Guardian. Oct 21, 2015
https://www.theguardian.com/arta ... pire-trafalgar-day-
(in the foreground of this painting: "Men whose ships have sunk or who have been thrown overboard by cannon blasts (men on both sides) are clinging to boats and wreckage in the wild sea, with a huge union jack floating, like a shroud, over the grisly waters.  Turner is doing something even more daring here than first meets the eye. This focus on the dead, the dying and the wounded seems subversive in a picture of a great British victory")
(B) This is NOT the painting in the exhibition.
(C) "Admiral Nelson, of the British Navy, took an unconventional approach to this battle and split his fleet into two lines, one led by his flagship Victory and the other by his subordinate Collingwood, to attack the Franco-Spanish fleet in columns perpendicular to their line."  en.wikipedia.org for"The Battle of Trafalgar (painting)."
• line of battle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_battle
("typical for sea battle since 1675: two fleets sail alongside one another [two fleets moving in the same direction= or on the opposite tack -mmoving inopposite directionspl section 2 Effective use: lising Battle of Trafalgar as an exception)
• Battle of Tsushima
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tsushima  
(Japanese: 対馬沖海戦; mao caption "Routes of the Russian and Japanese fleets in the days leading up to the battle"shows line-of-battle formation)
(D) man-of-war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-of-war
(E) HMS Victory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Victory
is preserved.


(d) "the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo * * * A gallery evocative of the multilevel installations at the Royal Academy and at Turner's own gallery concentrates on themes of war and peace. Depictions of carefully itemized redcoats coexist with broadly painted meditations on qualities of light, such as the grim, deeply shadowed 'The Field of Waterloo' (1818), in which piled bodies are revealed by torchlight as women search for survivors."
(i) Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Field of Waterloo. Tate, undated ("oil paint on canvas")
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artw ... -of-waterloo-n00500
("Turner * * * visited the battlefield in 1817. * * * With the painting he quoted Byron's poem 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,' lamenting 'friend, foe, in one red burial blent!' ")
(ii)
(A) The painting's title came from that of a 1815 poem by a Scot named Walter Scott. Battle of Waterloo occurred on June 18, 1815, and Scott visited the battlefield in August of that year. The poem is very long.  en.wikipedia.org for "The Field of Waterloo."
(B) The en.wikipedia.org does not have a page for "The Field of Waterloo" -- the painting.
(iii) Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childe_Harold%27s_Pilgrimage
(section 3 Plot)
(A) In a long poem, a canto is much larger than a stanza. Check en.wikipedia.org for pages of these two terms.
(B) Childe (n; "Late Old English, variant of child [which is from Old English]")
"archaic, literary [in names]  a youth of noble birth   <Childe Harold>"  (brackets original)
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/Childe
(C) The Eve of Waterloo Summary. The Englicist, undated (but Google dates "Mar 28, 2017")
https://englicist.com/topics/the-eve-of-waterloo
("The poem 'The Eve of Waterloo' forms part of the Canto III * * * 'The Eve of Waterloo' relates the events that took place a night before the Battle of Quatre Bras fought near Brussels, capital of Belgium on June 16, 1815. This battle was a precursor to the Battle of Waterloo fought two days later")

pertinent part of the poem: "The thunder-clouds close o’er it, which when rent
The earth is covered thick with other clay
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
Rider and horse,—friend, foe,—in one red burial blent!"

analysis: "The stormy thunder-clouds surrounds the battlefield and are torn apart by the violence of war. And the earth is covered thick with the dead bodies (other clay). The earth’s own clay will again cover these heaped in a single bloody (red) burial. The poet is pointing towards the dead bodies dropping on the grounds irrespective of their own identities. Whether a rider and a horse, or a friend and a foe, all were to be heaped under one, single burial."

(D) English dictionary:
* rend (v; past tense, past participle rent)
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/rend
* blent (v): "archaic or literary past and past participle of blend"
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/blent
   ^ In Modern English, the verb blend has blended for both past tense and past participle.
   * Byron chose blent to rhyme with rent.


(e) "The heart of the show bears witness to Turner's increasing liberalism and his sympathy with England's burgeoning abolitionist movement. The glowing 'Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhon Coming On)' (1840) is a ferocious indictment of a brutal practice, but it takes a moment to get past the gorgeous light and subtly varied surfaces to discover the hands and (improbably floating) manacles in the waves, amid oddly sinister fish."
(i) Joseph Mallord William Turner, Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On). Museum of Fine Arts, undated ("[o]il on canvas")
https://collections.mfa.org/objects/31102
("He based the painting on an 18th-century poem that described a slave ship caught in a typhoon and on the true story of the Zong, a British ship whose captain, in 1781, had thrown overboard sick and dying enslaved people so that he could collect insurance money only available for those "lost at sea")
(ii) The Slave Ship
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Slave_Ship
("Another interpretation maintains that the slave ship that jettisoned the slaves is not the one depicted in the distance, but that the viewer stands aboard the slave ship. * * * the slave ship in the distant background, partially concealed by the hazy atmosphere * * * the terror and violence of the slaves drowning in the foreground of the piece")