Meteorology in Turner's Paintings

Abstract

Literature on J. M. W. Turner's contribution to art has been much concerned with the role of abstraction in his pictures. By a detailed consideration of meteorological phenomena depicted in some of his most famous paintings, this review proposes a number of additional tools for a precise evaluation of the borderline between naturalism and abstraction in his art. Readers interested in the history of climate will find information on weather in the first half of the 19th century as given by the paintings discussed, as well as other related written and visual source materials. Subjects treated include Turner's depiction of, and pictorial liberties taken with, colourful dawns caused by volcanic dust in the stratosphere; a white rainbow; thunderstorms; the Tyndall effect; and smog. A brief discussion of working methods is followed by a comment on the question of how the cited meteorological phenomena are integrated in the paintings' iconography. Some remarks on contemporary authors' observations of meteorology and on the accessibility of their texts to Turner as well as on the role of his meteorological interest in the context of 18th- and earlier 19th-century European painting offer additional information on Turner as painter of weather.