JMW Turner was a bit of an eccentric, as well as a recluse, but on the rare occasion that he did attend a party or gathering, he always had interesting stories to tell. One of his most intriguing tales concerned the preparation for one of his most beloved seascapes, set during a heavy storm.
To depict the dramatic weather as accurately as possible, the artist allegedly tied himself to the mast of a ship that was heading into troubled water, remaining in place for over four hours. The final product, titled Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth making Signals in Shallow Water, and going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night the Ariel left Harwich (or Snow Storm for short) was first exhibited 1842 to a decidedly negative reception.
Turner was not surprised by the criticism he received. After all, Snow Storm hardly looks like a storm. Where other landscape artists of the time depicted nature in lifelike detail, rendering every falling leaf, blade of grass, and ray of sunshine, he was less concerned with depicting a blizzard than the experience of witnessing one first-hand.
His expressive brush strokes evoked chaos, danger, even fear. But that’s not what Turner’s audience saw. As far as they were concerned, the painter—second only to Constable in the eyes of the British public—had gone veritably mad.
The act of tying himself to a mast makes for an evocative image in its own right, so much so that subsequent generations of critics and art historians questioned the tale’s authenticity. Sure, Turner was a proud en plein air painter, preferring to produce his paintings out in the open as opposed to inside a studio.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Self portrait, age 24 (ca. 1754). Photo: Universal History Archive / Getty Images.
On the other hand, Turner would have been 64 at the time this episode is supposed to have taken place—an unlikely adventure for a person his age. As the title of his painting suggests, he claims to have set sail on a ship called the Ariel, but researchers have been unable to find proof of the vessel’s existence.
Some believe Turner got the name for his fictional vessel from William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, casting himself as the character Prospero, a powerful magician banished to a remote island, far removed from a society that failed to understand or appreciate him.
Real or invented, Turner’s adventure at sea has become such a recognizable part of British art historical mythos that, in 2007, the contemporary artist Bob and Roberta Smith attempted to recreate the experience on a self-made raft. “It is a bit like the crucifixion,” he said at the time of his experiment.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Slave Ship (1840). Photo: Barney Burstein / Corbis / VCG via Getty Images.
While technically part of the Romantic movement, which valued emotion and individuality over the grand narratives and ideas that typified many a work of Renaissance classicism, Turner could to some be seen as a precursor to 20th century abstraction, which (like Snow Storm) prioritized subjectivity over objectivity.
“Indistinctness is my forte,” Turner once told a critic who complained about the fact that the artist’s landscapes were becoming increasingly foggy and vague. What others saw as a weakness, he treated as an asset. In a way, he was tied to a mast.
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