The Evening of the Deluge
J. M. W. Turner·c. 1843
Historical Context
Turner's Evening of the Deluge (c. 1843) at the National Gallery of Art depicts the biblical flood at the moment of its onset — the world dissolving into water and rain in a composition of almost total atmospheric dissolution. The subject was one Turner returned to in his late period, when his interest in extreme weather phenomena and their power to dissolve the solid world into light and color found its ultimate expression in scenes of cosmic catastrophe. Ruskin analyzed Turner's late flood paintings as the supreme achievements of landscape art, arguing that their apparently abstract dissolution of form was in fact a more truthful representation of extreme atmospheric conditions than any more conventionally descriptive approach could achieve.
Technical Analysis
The composition is dominated by swirling atmospheric effects rendered in thin, translucent layers of color. Figures and landscape elements are barely discernible within the maelstrom of light and water, pushing toward abstraction.
Look Closer
- ◆Notice the world dissolving into rain: Turner renders the deluge not as dramatic flood waters but as total atmospheric dissolution, the sky and earth becoming indistinguishable in the overwhelming precipitation.
- ◆Look at the barely visible figures of humans and animals escaping: their dark shapes, barely readable within the atmospheric chaos, make the human tragedy present without dramatizing it conventionally.
- ◆Observe the circular composition: Turner creates a vortex of swirling rain and cloud that draws the viewer's eye into the center of cosmic dissolution.
- ◆Find the dove or bird near the upper edge: Turner includes this small token of the biblical narrative within his predominantly atmospheric composition.
Provenance
The Rev. T.J. Judkin; passed to his wife; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 13 January 1872, No. 35, as _The Animals going into the ark-circle_); bought by (White). William Houldsworth, Mount Charles, Ayr, Scotland, by 1878;[1] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 23 May 1891, no. 59, as _The Deluge_, bought in); (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 16 May 1896, no. 54); bought by (Messrs. Shepherd Brothers), London. (Charles Sedelmeyer, Sedelmeyer Gallery, Paris), 1896. Maurice Kann [1839-1906], Paris; sold 1900 to (Thos. Agnew & Sons, London); purchased 1901 by H. Darell Brown, London; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London 23 May 1924, no. 41, as _The Eve of the Deluge_); bought by (Carroll Galleries). (Howard Young Galleries, New York), by 1926.[2] William R. Timken [1866-1949], New York; by inheritance to his widow, Lillian Guyer Timken [1881-1959], New York; bequest 1960 to NGA. [1] Houldsworth loaned the painting to the _Fine Art Loan Exhibition_, Corporation Art Galleries, Glasgow, 1878: no. 13. [2] The catalogue for the _Second Loan Exhibition of Old Masters: British Paintings of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries_, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1926: no. 48, states that the painting was loaned by "Mr. Howard Young, New York." [3] _A Century of Progress: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture Lent from American Collections_, Art Institute of Chicago, 1933: no. 206; the catalogue lists this work as lent by Mrs. Timken.
.jpg&width=600)