Turner's Ruins: Sketches and the Sublime

Turner’s Ruins: Sketches and the Sublime Emily Hallman Hallman 1 Best known for his swirling visions of light and color, J. M. W. Turner’s (1775 – 1851) sketches and paintings of ruins, exemplified by his atmospheric View of the Forum, Rome, with a Rainbow (Figure 1), are often overlooked in discussions of the artist’s evident interest in the aesthetic theory of the sublime. From his beginnings as a topographical draughtsman to his final “modern” works, ruin – both natural and built – pervaded. The sublime, introduced in the first century AD and popularized in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is inseparable from humankind’s fascination with and fear of the incomprehensible, especially including death and destruction. Artists interested in the sublime’s relation to feelings via the senses have used various methods to create an intensely emotional experience for their viewers. One of the subjects most suggestive of the sublime in art and in literature is the ruin; they, as Rose Macaulay states, are the “haunts of the catastrophic imagination of man” and symbols of desolation, fallen greatness, and fantasy. 1 The interest in the sublime was thus associated with the development of the cult of ruins in the eighteenth century, which culminated itself in the art of British painter J. M. W. Turner. In 1819, Turner embarked on his first tour of Italy, filling twenty-three sketchbooks with depictions of the countryside and Rome’s famed ruins. The trip shaped his artistic practice, specifically in his visual communication of the sublime. His sketches show the artist grappling with how to portray ruins, especially for their experiential powers. Ultimately, he found the sublime to be the most profound and effective method to faithfully recreate the experience of ruins. When he returned to England from the Eternal City, Turner’s artistic experimentation and expression evolved and dissolved, as did the ruins he painted. The dissolution and abstraction of forms so central in Turner’s later paintings mirror the dissolution of the ruins he no doubt took inspiration from. 1 Rose Macaulay, “Art, Fantasy and Affectation,” in Pleasure of Ruins (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1984) 1. Hallman 2 The sublime was a philosophical theory that was repeatedly debated throughout the eighteenth century by scholars who narrowed its definitions and, at the same time, muddled it. As its basis was founded in the emotions and senses, the sublime found companionship among the popular empirical philosophies such as the picturesque. 2 The most significant and comprehensive study of the sublime was propounded by the philosopher Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797), who built on earlier theorists to elevate the sublime to a unique phenomenon separate from beauty. “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling,” wrote Burke in his seminal text of the late 1750s, A Philosophical Enquiry into Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. 3 Burke further divided the sublime into several categories, including obscurity, vastness, magnificence, suddenness, uniformity, and loudness. Published in 1757, Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry was a literary catalyst, with its rules and visual descriptions, that pushed artists to explore the sublime throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century. The aesthetic theory itself was introduced by a first-century Roman treatise. Known today as On the Sublime, it provides guidance to orators on how to effectively sway and heighten the emotions of their audiences. It states, “the Sublime is a certain eminence or perfection of language, and that the greatest writers, both in verse and prose, have by this alone obtained the prize of glory… For the Sublime not only persuades, but even throws an audience into 2 For the sublime’s relation to the picturesque, see Uvedale Price, An Essay on the Picturesque, as Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful (London: J. Robson, 1796). 3 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London: J. Dodsley in PallMall, 1767), 58-59. Hallman 3 transport.” 4 Further emphasizing the necessity of an emotional response, the treatise goes on, “If he finds that it transports not his soul, nor exalts his thoughts; that it calls not up into his mind ideas more enlarged than what the mere sounds of the words convey… he may conclude, that whatever pierces no deeper than the ears, can never be the true Sublime.” 5 On the Sublime teaches its readers how to reach sublime rhetoric by providing examples by Greek orators and laying out the five sources of the sublime: the Thoughts, the Pathetic, Figures, Expression, and Structure. 6 The most important of these to the author is the Pathetic, which is dependent on nature and possesses the “power of raising the passions to a violent and even enthusiastic degree.” 7 Here lies the concept expanded upon by Edmund Burke when he analogized the sublime to a feeling of fear that was, at the same time, enjoyable. Burke was indebted to the Roman treatise, which was translated into English only eighteen years earlier in 1739 by William Smith. 8 Smith attempted to provide a more accurate and nuanced reading of the text than earlier translators had, and his timely work surely would have inspired Burke. In his own exploration of the causes of the sublime, Burke focuses on the ability of terror to stir the emotions, which is what many artists contemporary to Turner, such as Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740 – 1812), attempted to replicate (Figure 2). In An Avalanche in the Alps, de Loutherbourg has caught a horrifying scene in which monstrous boulders crash down a mountainside, tearing apart ancient trees and kicking up dust that mixes with heavy clouds. Three unsuspecting travelers flee the terrifying sight in fear for their lives; the man on the bridge prays violently to the omnipotent God who commands nature. Burke himself offers a challenge to the artists he undoubtedly knew 4 William Smith, Dionysius Longinus On the Sublime: Translated from the Greek with Notes and Observations, and Some Account of the Life, Writings, and Character of the Author (London: B. Dod, 1743), 3. 5 Smith, 64. 6 Smith, 66-67. 7 Smith, 66. 8 See Smith, Dionysius Longinus On the Sublime. Hallman 4 would read his treatise: “When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight… but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be [sublime], and they are delightful.” 9 Here, Burke tasks artists, poets, and writers to find the sublime and recreate its experience. Turner was one of those artists who took up the challenge. Whether he read the Philosophical Enquiry or not, the sublime became the predominant theme in his later works when he abandoned realism in favor of explosions of pure light and color. However, before he created these well-known and highly-praised works, Turner was constantly exploring the natural and architectural sublime through his earlier watercolor sketches and studies (Figures 3 and 4). As Andrew Wilton has proposed, “Turner himself, who is often thought of as a painter sublimely free of the fetters of eighteenth-century theory, was fully aware of [the sublime] and its implications, and indeed built his art upon a foundation, and in a philosophical context, established by the theorists of the sublime.” 10 Turner was painting at a time when landscape art was coming into its own as a genre worthy of academic attention on an equal footing with history and portrait painting. 11 As a landscapist, Turner was caught in the struggle to elevate not only his works, but the entire pictorial category of landscape, in the eyes of his viewers. Trained from a young age as a topographical draughtsman, he appreciated the art of architecture and portrayed buildings in his landscapes to embody popular ideas of the sublime. 12 Impressive and especially ancient buildings were praised for their abilities to connote historic events and ideas of grandeur, drama, terror, and human achievement. Wilton argues, “In his great works in the mode of the ‘architectural sublime’ Turner strove not to merely inform the viewer of the appearance of 9 Burke, 60. Andrew Wilton, Turner and the Sublime (London: British Museum Publications, 1980), 11. 11 Wilton, 17. 12 Wilton, 65-66. 10 Hallman 5 the edifice he portrayed; he sought to imbue him with the same awe that he would experience in the building itself.” 13 Turner would continually experiment with his landscapes, populating them with crumbling castles, cathedrals, and abbeys to sway the emotions and move his audience to sublime experience. He found ruin, whether it be natural or man-made, to be the strongest communicator of the sublime. In the 1790s, Turner wrote essays on the architectural sublime, showing that “there was a new public for expressive and atmospheric topography designed to stimulate a romantic mood rather than gratify curiosity about scientific facts.” 14 This quotation signals an important change: the population was no longer under the sway of the Enlightenment, but were looking for art and literature that would satisfy a new taste for the Romantic. Carefully studied anatomy and precise compositional arrangements gave way to the irrationality of emotion and sensory experience. Turner became a major supporter of Romanticism, veering away from representational accuracy and instead dramatizing his landscapes by adding both atmospheric, natural, and architectural elements. Turner began making studies for his large-scale watercolors around the year 1800, trying different methods to create more expressive artistic statements. His focus was on color and atmosphere rather than form, and he often placed a veiled ruin in the distance. In Evening Landscape with Castle and Bridge, a crumbling façade is barely discernable on the right edge of the composition (Figure 5). The bridge at the center emerges slowly from solemn backdrop of hills and trees. Mist hangs over the still water, which reflects the dim light of the purple sky. Another perhaps more provocative subject was Norham Castle: Color Study, made within the same year (Figure 6). Sublime nature – expansive water, sky, and mountains – meet sublime architecture and color. The castle covered in cool blue shadows sits in front of a soft pink sunset 13 14 Wilton, 66. Wilton, 78. Hallman 6 radiating around the cliff face and warming the rippling water below. It was a scene he returned to over forty years later when he was at the height of his creative expression, capturing it as the golden sun was rising in Norham Castle, Sunrise (Figure 7). Turner’s ruins, combined with color and abstraction, served to elevate his compositions and impart an emotional experience. For Turner, architecture became a mediator for the sublime, and no place would provide better stimulation than a city filled with thousands of years of ruins. In August of 1819, Turner, left Britain to tour Italy. Already an accomplished artist, Royal Academician, and professor aged forty-four, he packed up a copy of Heinrich August Ottokar Reichard’s 1818 Itinerary of Italy and several sketchbooks containing passages, notes, drawings, and advice for travel in Italy that he had compiled from friends and guidebooks. 15 During this six-month excursion, Turner filled twenty-three sketchbooks with illustrations of the ruins that established Roman civilization and culture as the driving force behind eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British education. 16 Turner, like other academic painters of his day, would have received the importance of studying Roman art and architecture for his own artistic development. The principal influence behind his decision was undoubtedly his status as a product of the Royal Academy. Other contributing factors in Turner’s personal decision to visit Italy were the patronage of antiquarian Sir Richard Colt Hoare, the publication of canto IV of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, James Hakewill’s A Picturesque Tour of Italy, which 15 Nicola Moorby, “First Italian Tour 1819–20,” in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012. Among the titles Turner consulted were John Chetwode Eustace’s A Classical Tour Through Italy (published 1814) and Select Views in Italy, with Topographical and Historical Descriptions, in English and French by John ‘Warwick’ Smith, William Byrne and John Emes (published 1792). 16 Most of Turner’s Italy sketches are reproduced in Cecilia Powell, Turner in the South: Rome, Naples, Florence (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987). All sketches are digitally reproduced by the Tate London, who received the sketchbooks in the Turner Bequest: Nicola Moorby, “First Italian Tour 1819–20,” May 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/first-italian-tour-r1132344. Hallman 7 Turner himself illustrated, and the encouragement of Sir Thomas Lawrence. 17 Colt Hoare played a large part in Turner’s education beginning in the 1790s, exposing him to the world of classical literature and art and cultivating in him a historically oriented mindset. Colt Hoare collected books on Italian history, Piranesi etchings, and watercolors of Italy, which Turner would have had ample opportunity to view. 18 Through Colt Hoare, Turner was directed toward Italian history, culture, and ruins, and when Byron published the fourth canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in 1818, he further felt the inescapable draw of Italy. Turner had long assimilated the poet’s writing into his own visual style, and Byron’s words in canto IV, which summoned images of the lost grandeur of the Roman civilization and city, were irresistible to the artist. When the canto was published, Turner was working on a series of eighteen watercolors to be engraved for James Hakewill’s Picturesque Tour of Italy. 19 The author and architect had commissioned Turner to illustrate the book with views of Rome and its ruins. Through the project, Turner became familiar with Roman sites, and when his own travels to Rome approached, Hakewill provided his friend with advice and an itinerary that Turner copied into one of his many sketchbooks. 20 The final enticement came from Sir Thomas Lawrence, friend and fellow Royal Academician, who wrote letters encouraging Turner to visit. In 1819, Lawrence was in Italy and wrote a letter to another member of the Royal Academy, stating: Turner should come to Rome. His Genius would here be supplied with new Materials, and entirely congenial with it. It is one proof of its influence on my mind, that enchanted as I constantly am whenever I go out, with the beauty of the Hues and forms of the Buildings – with the Grandeur of some, and variety of the Picturesque in the masses of the ordinary Buildings of this City, I am perpetually reminded of his Pencil; and feel the sincerest regret that his Powers should not be excited to their utmost force. He has an Elegance and often a Greatness of Invention, that wants a scene like this for its expansion; whilst the subtle harmony of this Atmosphere that wraps every thing in its 17 Powell, 13. Powell, 13. 19 Inge Harold, Turner on Tour (New York: Prestel, 1997), 46. 20 Powell, 18. 18 Hallman 8 own Milky sweetness… this blending I say of Earth and Heaven, can only be rendered according to my belief, by the beauty of his Tones. 21 Lawrence would be correct in the effect Rome had on Turner’s own artistic growth, as can clearly be seen by the thousands of sketches Turner created. The so-labeled Rome: C. Studies sketchbook is perhaps the most famous and interesting of the various leatherbound books he always kept on his person for two reasons: firstly, it is devoted to cataloging the ruins and famous sites of the city itself, and secondly, Turner painted its sketchy images with watercolor and gouache in color, rather than the typical pen and ink. Because Turner kept no journal nor wrote any revealing letters that survive today, what evidence of his artistic thought and process remains is drawn from his sketches. 22 Turner’s main goal in studying the ruins seems to have been documentary; he was gathering information and inspiration from the ruins, just as artists had always done before him. However, some of his sketches demonstrate the artist experimenting with how to present the ruins in a way that engages and elicits an emotional response from his viewers. One of the most popular tourist sites in the early nineteenth century was the Temple of Minerva Medica, which Turner loosely sketched in watercolor and gouache to capture the lighting and color effects of the sun set (Figure 8). He placed the circular domed structure at the left foreground of the composition. The crumbling brick walls are suggested by the reddish tint of the tiny brush strokes delineating edges and arches. Vegetation encroaches on the sides of the building, growing in and around it. In a soft pink and blue sky, the setting sun casts long shadows over the temple, highlighting the building’s cracks and holes and, thus, also its ruined status. In the distant background, Turner has drawn the arched inner gallery of the Aurelian Walls and the towers of the Porta San Lorenzo. 21 22 Powell, 19. Powell, 36. Hallman 9 The abstracted and free quality of the sketch makes for a confusing pictorial recreation of the temple; the depth, size, and shape are difficult to decipher. Turner’s aim here was not to faithfully reconstruct the architectural details of the building. Rather, he was experimenting with color and light and the experiential qualities of the scene. Writing from 1817-18 for a guidebook that would be published in 1820, Charlotte Eaton describes the temple: In a lonely vineyard on the Esquiline Hill, stands the picturesque ruin of the Temple of Minerva Medica. Its form, though circular without, is decagonal within. It is built of brick, and is now stripped of every ornament. But the yawning chasms in its vaulted roof, the wild weeds that wave over it, the fallen masses that choke it up, the total destruction that threatens, and the solitude that surrounds it, give it an interest and a charm it probably never could have owned in a state of perfect preservation. 23 Eaton emphasizes the ruined nature of the building; “stripped of every ornament,” the structure left room for artists like Turner to focus on other elements of artistic creation. Eaton’s comments on the emotional effect of the ruins reflect their sublime qualities, which Turner paid homage to through his use of light and color. Further, the abstraction and dissolution of architectural and natural forms opens the composition to the fantasies of imagination. Burke spoke of the power of the sketch in communicating sublime infinity. “Infinity,” he writes, “though of another kind, causes much of our pleasure in agreeable, as well as our delight in sublime images… In unfinished sketches of drawing, I have often seen something which pleased me beyond the best finishing.” 24 For Burke, incompletion as well as incomprehensibility lent itself to the power of imagination and to the experience of the sublime. Writing on how obscurity mediates the sublime, he speculates: 23 Charlotte Eaton, Rome in the Nineteenth Century; Containing a Complete Account of the Ruins of the Ancient City, the Remains of the Middle Ages, and the Monuments of Modern Times (Edinburgh: James Ballantyne and Co., 1820), 363. 24 Burke, 138. Hallman 10 If I make a drawing of a palace, or a temple, or a landscape, I present a very clear idea of those objects; but then my picture can at most affect only as the palace, temple, or landscape would have affected in the reality. On the other hand, the most lively and spirited verbal description I can give, raises a very obscure and imperfect idea of such objects; but then it is in my power to raise a stronger emotion by the description than I could do by the best painting… In reality, a great clearness helps but little towards affecting the passions, as it is in some sort of an enemy to all enthusiasms whatsoever. 25 Obscurity, the quality inherent to ruins, inspired the emotions of the eighteenth-century population. Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), writing in 1790, refined Burke’s conception of obscurity by explaining that the sublime was not hindered by forms. In his Critique of Judgment, the philosopher introduces his views on aesthetics, particularly on the difference between the sublime and the merely beautiful. “The Beautiful in nature,” he says, “is connected with the form of the object, which consists in having boundaries. The Sublime, on the other hand, is to be found in a formless object, so far as in it or by occasion of it boundlessness is represented, and yet its totality is also present to thought.” 26 Obscurity, or incomprehensibility, Kant argued, was a direct gateway to sublime experience as it stimulated the imagination and encouraged reflections on infinity. Wilton explains, “Something that is inconceivable cannot be conceived as sublime or as anything else – but the act of imagining it, even though it is beyond the power of imagination to envisage it, is itself a strenuous exalted mental or emotional state which we may describe as ‘sublime’.” 27 Several pages from the C. Studies sketchbook show Turner chronicling the most famous of Rome’s ancient monuments: the Colosseum. Some present it from a distance, situating it among the surrounding natural and built environment (Figure 9). Others are devoted to a documentation of the architectural details of the well-known amphitheatre (Figure 10). However, 25 Burke, 101-103. Immanuel Kant, Kant’s Critique of Judgement, trans. J. H. (John Henry) Bernard (London: Macmillan, 1914), 101-102. 27 Wilton, 29. 26 Hallman 11 the sketch The Colosseum, Rome, by Moonlight is meant to be something else (Figure 11). Turner is inside the building, facing out toward the exterior walls punctuated by arches. The dark clouded moonlit sky envelops the surface of the cracked and deteriorated walls with a silvery light, casting looming and shifting shadows. It is an unsettling composition, but there is a beauty in the quiet eeriness. This is a building that would be “a habitation of dragons and a court of owls.” 28 Goethe (1749 – 1832) advocated for viewing the monuments of Rome by the light of the moon, writing in his Italian Journey, 1786-88, published 1816-17, “Unless a person has walked through Rome in the light of the full moon he cannot imagine the beauty of it. All individual details are swallowed up in the great masses of light and shadow, and only the largest, most general images present themselves to the eye.” 29 Turner has portrayed the Colosseum as pure light and dark. Like in the Temple of Minerva Medica, the loss of detail brought on by the absence of light allows Turner to play with abstraction, darkness, and color. As Burke argues, “darkness is more productive of sublime ideas than light.” 30 He goes on to state, “the cloudy sky is more grand than the blue; and night more sublime and solemn than day.” 31 This goes hand-inhand with his ideas of obscurity, or the terror that arises from things that are incomprehensible or imperceptible to the human eye. A ruin at night is doubly capable of inspiring the imagination to conjure wild and terrible fantasies. During his first trip to Rome, Turner did more than catalog the architectural details of the ancient buildings. He recorded for himself the experience of the ruins, something that he would draw on and incorporate into his later works. He was experimenting with light, color, and 28 Macaulay, 2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey (New York: Suhrkamp Publishers, 1989), 137. 30 Burke, 145. 31 Burke, 149. 29 Hallman 12 abstraction as arbiters of the sublime, of emotional reactions. Turner’s first tour of Italy would resonate through his works for the rest of his life as he continually moved toward a dissolution of forms into pure color and light. The ruins themselves served as inspiration for Turner to turn to abstraction as a means to communicate the sublime. Armed with a new classical vocabulary and aesthetically inspired by the ruins he studied, Turner approached unfamiliar classical subjects with a newfound confidence. In 1834, he painted a view of the Temple of Poseidon at Sunium (Cape Colonna) (Figure 12). The ruin itself stands on the edge of a cliff, projecting rapidly from the right side of the frame. The viewer is thrown into the scene as the single-point perspective forces the colonnade to grow to the point where it no longer fits in the composition. Scattered inside and at the front of scene are sculptural relief and column fragments enveloped by vegetation. Two dogs crouch atop the ruins, raising their hackles in fear of the storm brewing around them. The sky is covered by chaotically churning clouds swirling around a full moon reflected in the wild waves below. A lightning strike flashes across the upper right corner, mirroring the perspectival tilt of the colonnade. Though Turner never saw the ruin in person, he knew of it from sketches and engravings by other artists. He had previously illustrated the same subject for a book of landscape illustrations based on Byron’s poems, who himself had visited the temple in 1810. While there, Byron wrote part of the work that influenced Turner’s travels abroad: his celebrated Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, in which he sung praises of Greece. 32 “Place me on Sunium’s marbled steep,” he wrote, “Where nothing, save the waves and I, / May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; / here, swan-like, let me sing and die.” 33 Another poet, William Falconer, set his epic The 32 David Blayney Brown, Turner and Byron (London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1992), 89. George Gordon Byron, “The Isles of Greece,” in The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, 691–94 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1918), 694. 33 Hallman 13 Shipwreck off the coast of Sunium, where he actually was shipwrecked. 34 His words are a reminder of the scene’s sublime terror: And o’er the surge Colonna frowns on high, / Where marble columns, long by time defaced, / Moss-covered, on the lofty cape are placed… / The circling beach in murderous form appears, / Decisive goal of all their hopes and fears; / The seamen now in wild amazement see / The scene of ruin rise beneath their lee. 35 Turner himself was familiar with the poem, and he placed a ship being swallowed by the rolling sea on the horizon of his work. The dramatic scene practically embodies the sublime ideal Turner strove for. He has succeeded in infusing the composition with several elements of the sublime following both Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry and Kant’s Critique of Judgement. Suddenness and loudness are found in the strike of lightning shooting from the clouds; obscurity in the darkness and thick clouds; terror in the storm and the sinking ship; vastness, uniformity, and magnificence in the ruin. Though the forms are clearly delineated, the subject matter is boundless: an unfettered storm let loose on the surrounding natural and built environment. The literary references are poetic epics filled with references to history. Turner elevated the ruin, and thus the genre of landscape, by altering its atmospheric qualities to invoke the sublime reactions he wanted from his viewers. Turner’s most famous works, such as The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (Figure 13), continue to surround themes of death, destruction, and ruin. The solid bridge towering over the river dissolves into an eruption of fire and smoke; Turner has painted here the process of ruination in an indecipherable flurry of wild color. The impressive and seemingly invincible bridge too may be reduced to ash and dust in a matter of hours by the uncontrollable flames. 34 35 Brown, 89. William Falconer, The Shipwreck: A Poem (London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1811), 122. Hallman 14 The sublime is not the key to uncovering the meaning of Turner’s works. However, it is significant in understanding how Turner wanted people to view his works, or in how his art affected others emotionally. The sublime, as debated by theorists such as Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, served as a foundation for him to experiment with the experiential qualities of his works. Natural and built ruin became a medium to express what he called the “architectural sublime.” In particular, his tour of Italy motivated and promoted his use of the ruin in developing sublime compositions that elevated his landscapes. The thousands of sketches he created while there are an homage to the inspiration he found in Rome’s great ruins. Hallman 15 Illustrations Figure 1. J. M. W. Turner, View of the Forum, Rome, with a Rainbow, 1819, pencil, watercolor, gouache and grey watercolor wash on white wove paper, 23 x 36.7 cm, Tate Britain, London, No. D16375. Figure 2. Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, An Avalanche in the Alps, 1803, oil on canvas, 111 x 160 cm, Tate Britain, London, No. T00772. Hallman 16 Figure 3. J. M. W. Turner, Llanthony Abbey, 1794, graphite and watercolor on paper, 34 x 44.5 cm, Tate Britain, London, No. D00679. Figure 4. J. M. W. Turner, Dolbadarn and the Pass of Llanberis, ca. 1799, graphite and watercolor on paper, 54.9 x 75.8 cm, Tate Britain, London, No. D04177. Hallman 17 Figure 5. J. M. W. Turner, Evening Landscape with Castle and Bridge, ca. 1798-99, watercolor, 18.7 x 26.7 cm, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, No. TMS-5498. Figure 6. J. M. W. Turner, Norham Castle: Color Study, ca. 1798, graphite and watercolor on paper, 66.2 x 83.8 cm, Tate Britain, London, No. D02343. Hallman 18 Figure 7. J. M. W. Turner, Norham Castle, Sunrise, 1845, oil on canvas, 91 x 122 cm, Tate Britain, London , No. N01981. Figure 8. J. M. W. Turner, The So-Called Temple of Minerva Medica, Rome, at Sunset, 1819, gouache on paper, 23 x 36.8 cm, Tate Britain, London, No. D16362. Hallman 19 Figure 9. J. M. W. Turner, View of the Colosseum from the Palatine Hill, Rome, 1819, graphite and watercolor on paper, 23 x 36.7 cm, Tate Britain, London, No. D16369. Figure 10. J. M. W. Turner, The Colosseum, Rome, from the South, 1819, graphite on paper, 23 x 36.8 cm, Tate Britain, London, No. D16349. Hallman 20 Figure 11. J. M. W. Turner, The Colosseum, Rome, by Moonlight, 1819, watercolor, bodycolor and graphite on paper, 23.2 x 36.9 cm, Tate Britain, London, No. D16339. Figure 12. J. M. W. Turner, Temple of Poseidon at Sunium (Cape Colonna), ca. 1834, graphite, watercolor, and gouache on paper, 38.2 x 58.8 cm, Tate Britain, London, No. T07561. Hallman 21 Figure 13. J. M. W. Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834, ca. 1834-35, oil on canvas, 92 x 123 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, No. M1928-1-41. Hallman 22 Bibliography Brown, David Blayney, ed. J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours. Tate Research Publication. December 2012. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/researchpublications/jmw-turner/project-overview-r1109225. Brown, David Blayney. Turner and Byron. London: Tate Gallery Publications, 1992. Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. London: J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, 1767. http://archive.org/details/philosophicalenq00burk_5. Byron, George Gordon. “The Isles of Greece.” In The Oxford Book of English Verse, 12501900, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, 691–94. Oxford: Clarendon, 1918. http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.73448. Costello, Leo. “Power, Creativity, and Destruction in Turner’s Fires.” 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, no. 25 (December 1, 2017). https://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.791. Eaton, Charlotte. Rome in the Nineteenth Century; Containing a Complete Account of the Ruins of the Ancient City, the Remains of the Middle Ages, and the Monuments of Modern Times. Edinburgh: James Ballantyne and Co., 1820. http://archive.org/details/romeinnineteent02eatogoog. Falconer, William. The Shipwreck: A Poem. London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1811. http://archive.org/details/shipwreckapoem01falcgoog. Finley, Gerald. “The Genesis of Turner’s ‘Landscape Sublime.’” Zeitschrift Für Kunstgeschichte 42 (1979): 141–65. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Italian Journey. New York: Suhrkamp Publishers, 1989. http://archive.org/details/italianjourney0000goet. Harold Inge. Turner on Tour. New York: Prestel, 1997. Kant, Immanuel. Kant’s Critique of Judgement. Translated by J. H. (John Henry) Bernard. London: Macmillan, 1914. http://archive.org/details/cu31924028104085. Macaulay, Rose. “Art, Fantasy and Affectation.” In Pleasure of Ruins. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1984. Moorby, Nicola. “First Italian Tour 1819–20.” In J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours. Edited by David Blayney Brown. Tate Research Publication. December 2012. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/first-italian-tourr1132344. Hallman 23 Powell, Cecilia. Turner in the South: Rome, Naples, Florence. New Haven: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1987. Price, Uvedale. An Essay on the Picturesque, as Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful. London: J. Robson, 1796. Riding, Christine, and Nigel Llewellyn. “‘British Art and the Sublime’ (The Art of the Sublime).” Tate. Accessed January 14, 2021. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/researchpublications/the-sublime/christine-riding-and-nigel-llewellyn-british-art-and-the-sublimer1109418. Smith, William. Dionysius Longinus On the Sublime: Translated from the Greek with Notes and Observations, and Some Account of the Life, Writings, and Character of the Author. London: B. Dod, 1743. Wilton, Andrew. Turner and the Sublime. London: British Museum Publications, 1980.