Stormy Sea Breaking on a Shore

Stormy Sea Breaking on a Shore

J. M. W. Turner, between 1840 and 1845

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Artist: J. M. W. Turner (British, 1775–1851)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 17 1/2 x 25 inches (44.5 x 63.5 cm)
Museum: Yale Center for British Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

This small but powerful late sketch exemplifies the painterly approach that one critic, writing of a contemporary exhibition work, derided as “soap suds and whitewash.” Turner furiously responded that his intention was not “to paint to be understood but to show what [it] was like.” Using rapid, gestural brushstrokes and a limited color palette, Turner conveys the dizzying intensity of the sea and wind.

Crashing waves scatter spray across the middle ground of the image, while light breaks through in a way that hints at the sharp breeze driving the clouds apart. It was this pursuit of sheer physical intensity, in both subject and style, that defied the proprieties of conventional landscape painting and bemused so many of Turner’s contemporaries, critics and public alike.

Text: Yale Center for British Art.

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