Nineteenth-Century European Art - 6 of 9
Joseph Mallord William Turner
British, 1775-1851
Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Steamboats of Shoal Water
1840
Oil on canvas
91.8 x 122.2 cm
Acquired by Sterling and Francine Clark, 1932
1955.37
Notes:
Starting in the late 1830s, Turner’s style underwent a dramatic change, with the particularities of the landscape giving way to more poetic explorations of color, light, and atmosphere. In Rockets and Blue Lights Turner captured the fury of a storm on the coast and the drama of human attempts to avoid disaster. Sea spray, mist, smoke, and clouds merge and swirl around the focus of the painting: the crash of surf on a pier where rockets are fired to warn the ships of shallow water.
