- Sheerness as seen from the Nore
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J. M. W. Turner has been called the most original genius in landscape painting of the 19th century. His work was highly controversial and violently attacked by some, but many regarded him as the outstanding painter of his day. “He seems to paint with tinted steam,” English painter John Constable famously wrote.
Turner had an extraordinary ability to paint light, especially as it affected his principal love, the sea. He sprang to fame with Fishermen at Sea, a 1796 work showing the influence of 17th-century Dutch marine painting. Over the next 15 years, he gradually developed a mastery, unrivaled in the history of art, of rendering the sea in all its motions and under every condition of light and weather. Sheerness as Seen from the Nore, exhibited at Turner’s own gallery in 1808, stands near the end of a decade of powerful and inventive marine paintings and is one of the masterpieces of his early period.
ProvenanceBelieved to have been purchased directly from the artist in 1808 by Samuel Dobree, Esq. (1759-1827); thence by descent to his son Harry Hankey Dobree, Esq. (1787-1841); his sale [Christie's London, June 17, 1842, lot 12]; acquired from the above by Bryant on behalf of Sir Thomas Baring, 2nd Bt (1772-1848)[1]; his sale [Christie's London, June 2, 1848, lot 61]; William Wells sale [Christie's London, May 10, 1890, lot 72]; Robert Loyd Lindsay, 1st Lord Wantage (1832-1901); by descent in the Loyd Collection, Lockinge, until 1991; Idenmitsu Kosan (Company), Tokyo, Japan; purchased by MFAH, 2005.
[1] According to a note in the Dobree sale catalogue in the Courtauld Institute
Exhibition HistoryTurner's Gallery, 64 Harley Street, London, 1808.
British Institution, London, 1852. (Exhibited as A Seapiece).
"Art Treasures of the United Kingdom," Manchester, 1857. (Exhibited as Sunrise, man of war at the mouth of the Thames).
"Old Masters," Royal Academy, London, winter 1875.
"Old Masters," Royal Academy, London, winter 1891.
Agnew's, London, 1897.
"Loan Collection of Pictures and Drawings by JMW Turner, RA, and a Selection of Pictures by Some of His Contemporaries," Guildhall, London, April–July 1899.
"Old Masters," Royal Academy, London, winter 1910.
"Turner's Early Oil Paintings (1776-1815)," Tate Gallery, London, July–September 1931.
Birmingham City Art Gallery, 1945–1952.
Agnew's, London, 1956.
"Turner: A Special Loan Exhibition of 20 Rarely Seen Paintings," Tate Gallery, London, October–December 1977.
"The Sun Rising Through Vapor: Turner’s Early Seascapes," Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, England, October 24, 2004–January 25, 2004.
"Turner E Gli Impresionisti. La grande storia del paesaggio moderno in Europa," Museo di Santa Giula, Brescia, Italy, October 28, 2006–April 9, 2007.
"J.M.W. Turner," National Gallery of Art, Washington, October 1, 2007–January 6, 2008; Dallas Museum of Art, February 10–May 18, 2008; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June 23–September 21, 2008.
"Turner and Marine Painting: Imagining the Sea, 1796–1899," Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, June 4–September 1, 2014.
"Turner's Modern World," Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, October 17, 2021–February 6, 2022; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, March 27–July 10, 2022.
Cataloguing data may change with further research.
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