J. M. W. Turner's Pembroke Castle: Clearing Up of a Thunderstorm (1806)

Abstract

As the title of this watercolour suggests, its explicit focus is Pembroke Harbour, shortly after a storm. Like many of Turner's paintings, this one is about the interaction of human beings with the more powerful forces of nature. Sea and sky dominate the painting. The water is still rough, the winds still high. In the distance,Pembroke Castle stands like a fortified beachhead, yet in its dark stony stillness it seems dwarfed by the natural forces that surround it and which it seeks to withstand. In the middle distance, the boats that had previously sought refuge in the harbour now race out to sea. Two kinds of English power seem to be portrayed here. On one hand, there is Pembroke Castle which, like Constable's Hadleigh Castle, expresses an older idea of Englishness, linked to the power of its fortifications, a fortress that braves the weather. On the other, a new kind of power is expressed in the English commercial and fishing fleets, which derive their strength not from struggling against nature, but by precariously riding the waves and employing the winds to their advantage. For Turner, England was an island nation, its strength and security closely linked to the sea that surrounded it and to the power of its commercial fleets. Pembroke Castle: Clearing Up of a Thunderstorm can be said then to be both a marinescape and a historical painting, for it sets a new idea of English strength, the boats, against an older one, the castle, juxtaposing the present with the past.