Turner Vs. Rembrandt

A bath of light can create the same veil of  ambiguity and mystery as a bath of darkness. Darkness presents a bluer mood like hearing a song a in a minor key. An abundance of light gives the upbeat feeling of a song in a major key. And, a varnished surface reflects less glare over light  than  dark.

J.M.W. Turner turns the chiaroscuro tradition of sparkles of light popping through darkness upside down. He takes Rembrandt and Caravaggio’s unifying darkness and substitutes light.  This revolutionary substitution does not happen at once.  Turner develops his bath of light slowly through experiments in watercolor  which are transferred to his oils. His revolution extends to our tastes in art today.  Monet will adopt the his program of light dominating darkness.

Turner discovered that light offers the same obscuring and suggestive mystery as darkness with the advantage of more luminosity, a luminosity that resembles daylight, that evokes the yellow light of the sun. Look at a mid 1830s oil of Turner’s (example 1) then compare it to earlier  dark chiaroscuro artists whom he admired like Rubens (example 2) and J.Van Ruisdael ( example 3).   Observe how  Van Ruisdael simplifies the Ruben’s composition by substituting clouds for trees and flora.  Notice that Turner borrows Van Ruisdael’s compositional forms  in his seascape. Turner uses freer gestures and reverses ratio of dark to light areas.

example 1. J.M.W. Turner seascape 1835-40.

example 2. Rubens landscape.

example 3. J. Van Ruisdael landscape.

Turner lets the light blur the edges of his shapes just as Rembrandt let darkness blur his edges. This blurring creates a greater sense of motion and space.

Consider my next photo of a woodland and pond (examples 4 and 5).  In example 4 I  cropped the image to show more dark than light. I cropped example 5  to present more light than dark.  The mood changes with the ratio change in dark to light areas.

The level of contrast is low which gives a pale effect in example 6, an interior of Grand Central Terminal.  Look at the  same image after an application of darkening glazes ( example 7).  The apparent contrast is increased not only because of the application of  darker glazes but also because, example 7 has smaller areas of light in relationship to its areas of dark.  The mood moves with the darkness.

example 4. woodland photo with more dark.

example 5. same photo with more light and lower horizon.

example 6. Grand Central Terminal with less contrast and lighter palette.

example 7. the same image after darkening glazes.

Following the new tradition of Turner, I  employ a bath of light in Grand Central Station which results in example 8.   Or, I can put a veil of Turner’s yellow light  over  woodland  landscape as in example 9.  Example 10’s subject, winter mist, invites  further applications of pale obscuring light.

example 8. Light  and Luminosity in Grand Central.

example 9. Yellow and Violet Glen, oil.

example 10. Winter Mist, oil on anodized aluminum.

Use a pre-existing dark surface as another strategy for applying the bath of light.  Example 11 serves as the  dark under-painting for example 12.  It is an on copper which I over-painted with lighter colors (pale violet and pastel yellow-oranges) then, I cut away slivers of dangling dark shapes. These shapes are scattered like  hanging, dark,  calligraphic pictographs. They oscillate between being leaves or feathers or,  the suggestion of windblown shamanist prayer flags. I also liked the association with  American Indian lore.

example 11. original underpainting, oil on copper.

example 12. Repurposed example 11 as a Winter Meadow.

On January 31, 2015 Max Dunlop and I will have an exhibition of our collaborative paintings at the Watershed Gallery in Ridgefield, Ct.  At this moment Max and his wife, Natalie,  are hiking along the Strait of Magellan to the southernmost outpost in South America.