Exh. RA 1842
Oil on canvas

Between 1840 and 1846 Turner exhibited a sequence of nine almost square canvases (see also nos.109-11; three others were prepared but left incomplete: B&J 443, 504, 532). It is clear that those of 1840 and 1841 were presented in frames with a circular opening, but that from 1842 Turner selected slips, inside the main frame, that covered only the corners of each image.

He would then continue to work on the pictures during the Varnishing Days, unintentionally causing the discrepancies between the colours in the main body of an image and those at its edges, now that both areas are visible. The initial aim of the series seems to have been a means of reworking classical or biblical subjects favoured by earlier artists such as Titian and Tintoretto, possibly stimulated by Turner’s visits to Venice. However, in 1842 he incorporated recent events into this series, effectively conferring a similar legendary status on the individuals he commemorated.

Heroic representation had become the norm in the case of Napoleon, who was the subject of the 1842 painting Turner entitled War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet (Tate; B&J 400). But this depiction was unflattering, showing the former emperor and would-be ruler of Europe in captivity on St Helena. The picture was paired with Peace – Burial at Sea, an imagined recreation of the burial off Gibraltar of Turner’s friend and erstwhile rival, the Scottish painter Sir David Wilkie (1785–1841). As elsewhere in his career, Turner seems to have viewed art as a product of civilisation, and the natural and necessary antidote to war. Wilkie had died on 1 June 1841 during his return journey from the Middle East and was buried at sea after officials at the British port refused to accept his body, fearing that he might have contracted cholera. As in the other paired canvases of the 1840s, the two works are characterised by sharply contrasting colours and tones: War utilises a strident yellow and red, while Peace is painted a cool blend of white, blue and black. This caused the critic of the Spectator to jest that Turner was ‘as successful as ever in caricaturing himself, in two round blotches of rouge et noire’. Other reviewers suggested that the pictures would look just as well upside down.

Colour was evidently absolutely integral to the meaning of the painting. This is apparent from Turner’s riposte to the marine artist Clarkson Stanfield (1793–1867), who complained about the unnatural quality of the black used to depict the sails of the steamship SS Oriental, on which Wilkie had died. In reply Turner conveyed his desire for the picture to be understood as a deeply felt tribute to his colleague, saying, ‘I only wish I had any colour to make them blacker’. As Turner would have known from newspaper accounts, Wilkie had actually been consigned to the deep at 8.30 pm, but the effect in the painting is much more nocturnal, something emphasised in the lines of verse (from his own unpublished poem ‘The Fallacies of Hope’) he added to its title:

‘The midnight torch gleamed o’er the steamer’s side
And merit’s corse was yielded to the tide.'

To the left of the ship a flare is sent up from Gibraltar, leaving a tower of brilliant fluorescence behind it. But the chief light in the image comes from the only area of the ship illuminated, behind the paddle-wheel cover, where the burial ceremony is taking place. Turner’s visual effect is wonderfully distilled in Judy Egerton’s description: ‘Red-gold light stronger than ship’s torchlight could produce is concentrated here, as if to celebrate the achievements of the dead artist, and as if darkness will fall when his body is committed’ (Egerton 1995, p.96). The bird, scudding over the water in the foreground has been identified as a duck, or mallard, and has suggested to some that Turner used this familiar pun on his middle name (Mallord) to imply his symbolic presence at the solemn rites.