Oil paint on canvas
Tate Britain
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Turner Bequest
Oil paintings
Collection
Turner owned by Tate
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/joseph-mallord-william-turner-558" aria-label="More by Joseph Mallord William Turner" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Joseph Mallord William Turner</a>
Whalers
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
adults
agriculture and fishing
agriculture, gardening & fishing
animals: fish and aquatic life
Arctic Circle
Beale, Thomas, ‘The Natural History of the Sperm Whale...’
boat, fishing
cloud
countries and continents
figure
group
groups
harpoon
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
objects
people
places
sea
seascapes and coasts
ship, sailing
society
transport: water
weather
whale
whaler
work and occupations
<p>This painting shows the violence and danger of a whale hunt. Turner uses an arc of white paint and downwards strokes of grey – a flurry of rain and wind – to draw attention to a whaler dressed in white. He draws back a lance, aiming for a bleeding whale. Turner had read about whaling in Thomas Beale’s <span>Natural History of the Sperm Whale</span> (1839). Describing a hunt in Japanese waters, Beale talked of the whale as ‘a victim to the tyranny and selfishness’ but also the ‘great power’ of man. Turner was no doubt drawn to this tension – between the idea of whalers as heroes and murderers.</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2023</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
23 July 2001 – 16 June 2002
2002-06-16
23 July 2001 – 16 June 2002
2002-06-16
2001-07-23
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-07-23
Painting Seascapes
Collection based display
2 June 2011 – 22 April 2012
2012-04-22
2 June 2011 – 11 September 2011
2011-09-11
2011-06-02
Bucerius Kunst Forum (Hamburg, Germany)
http://www.buceriuskunstforum.de
1 October 2011 – 8 January 2012
2012-01-08
2011-10-01
National Museum (Krakow, Poland)
28 January 2012 – 22 April 2012
2012-04-22
2012-01-28
Turner Contemporary (Margate, UK)
2011-06-02
Turner and the Elements
Loan-out
8 February 2013 – 13 April 2014
2014-04-13
8 February 2013 – 19 May 2013
2013-05-19
2013-02-08
Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide, Australia)
http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au
4 June 2013 – 8 September 2013
2013-09-08
2013-06-04
National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, Australia)
8 October 2013 – 18 December 2013
2013-12-18
2013-10-08
Toyko Metropolitan Art Museum (Toyko, Japan)
1 January 2014 – 13 April 2014
2014-04-13
2014-01-01
Kobe City Museum (Kobe, Japan)
2013-02-08
J.M.W. Turner: Makings of a Master
Loan-out
10 September 2014 – 20 September 2015
2015-09-20
10 September 2014 – 25 January 2015
2015-01-25
2014-09-10
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
24 February 2015 – 24 May 2015
2015-05-24
2015-02-24
J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, USA)
20 June 2015 – 20 September 2015
2015-09-20
2015-06-20
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum (San Francisco, USA)
http://www.famsf.org
2014-09-10
Late Turner: Painting Set Free
Exhibition
24 February 2015 – 31 January 2016
2016-01-31
24 February 2015 – 24 May 2015
2015-05-24
2015-02-24
J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, USA)
20 June 2015 – 20 September 2015
2015-09-20
2015-06-20
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum
31 October 2015 – 31 January 2016
2016-01-31
2015-10-31
Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, Canada)
http://www.ago.net
2015-02-24
Late Turner
Loan-out
9 May 2016 – 7 August 2016
2016-08-07
9 May 2016 – 7 August 2016
2016-08-07
2016-05-09
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA)
http://www.metmuseum.org
2016-05-09
Turner's Whalers
Loan-out
30 September 2017 – 14 January 2018
2018-01-14
30 September 2017 – 14 January 2018
2018-01-14
2017-09-30
Hull Maritime Museum (Hull, UK)
2017-09-30
Turner and the Whale
Loan-out
28 October 2020 – 10 July 2022
2022-07-10
28 October 2020 – 12 September 2021
2021-09-12
2020-10-28
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
17 October 2021 – 6 February 2022
2022-02-06
2021-10-17
Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, USA)
http://www.kimbellart.org
27 March 2022 – 10 July 2022
2022-07-10
2022-03-27
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA)
http://www.mfa.org
2020-10-28
Turner's Modern World
Exhibition
17 October 2021 – 10 July 2022
2022-07-10
17 October 2021 – 6 February 2022
2022-02-06
2021-10-17
Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, USA)
http://www.kimbellart.org
27 March 2022 – 10 July 2022
2022-07-10
2022-03-27
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA)
http://www.mfa.org
2021-10-17
Turner's Modern World
Loan-out
13 March 2023
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-03-13
Gallery 103
Collection based display
Whalers
support: 911 × 1219 mm
frame: 1300 × 1610 × 180 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the <a href="/search?gid=999999781" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Turner Bequest</a> 1856
<div class="text">
<p>This painting shows the violence and danger of a whale hunt. Turner uses an arc of white paint and downwards strokes of grey – a flurry of rain and wind – to draw attention to a whaler dressed in white. He draws back a lance, aiming for a bleeding whale. Turner had read about whaling in Thomas Beale’s <i>Natural History of the Sperm Whale</i> (1839). Describing a hunt in Japanese waters, Beale talked of the whale as ‘a victim to the tyranny and selfishness’ but also the ‘great power’ of man. Turner was no doubt drawn to this tension – between the idea of whalers as heroes and murderers.</p>
</div>

Display caption
2023-10-25T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><b>414. </b>[<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-whalers-n00545" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00545</span></a>]<b> Whalers</b> Exh. 1845</p>
<p>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (545)</p>
<p>Canvas, 35 7/8 × 48 (91 × 122)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856 (one of 76–78; see below); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1905.</p>
<p><b>Exh.</b> R.A. 1845 (50); R.H.A. 1846 (253); Moscow and Leningrad 1960 (56); Edinburgh 1968 (14); on loan to National Maritime Museum 1975–84.</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Ruskin 1843 (1903–12, iii, pp. 250–51); Thornbury 1862, i, p. 349; 1877, p. 467; Bell 1901, p. 151 no. 249; Armstrong 1902, p. 236; Davies 1946, p. 187; Finberg 1961, pp. 407, 509 no. 563; Herrmann 1975, pp. 53–4, 234, colour pl. 176; Wilton 1979, pp. 213–14, 222; Gage 1980, p. 205; Wilton 1980, pp. 97, 153; Butlin 1981, p. 45; Venning 1985.</p>
<p>Exhibited in 1845 with the caption ‘<i>Vide Beale's Voyage</i>, p. 163.’</p>
<p>On the 1854 Schedule Nos. 414 [<span>N00545</span>], 423 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-hurrah-for-the-whaler-erebus-another-fish-n00546" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00546</span></a>] and 426 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-whalers-boiling-blubber-entangled-in-flaw-ice-endeavouring-to-extricate-themselves-n00547" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00547</span></a>] are listed as 76, 77 and 78, ‘Whale fishing No. 1’ ‘,, No. 2’ and ‘,, No. 3’, each 4'0" × 3'0".</p>
<p>Turner exhibited four pictures of ‘Whalers’, two in 1845 and two in 1846 (see Nos. 415, 423 [<span>N00546</span>] and 426 [<span>N00547</span>]). Three, including this example, were given references in the R.A. catalogue to ‘Beale's Voyage’ by which Turner meant Thomas Beale's <i>The Natural History of the Sperm Whale ... to which is added, a Sketch of a South-Sea Whaling Voyage</i>, first published in 1835 without the <i>Voyage</i> and again, as above, in 1839. In fact, the page references given for this picture and No. 415 both fall within the main body of the text, not the <i>Voyage</i>.</p>
<p>Barry Venning has suggested that Turner probably hoped to sell all four pictures to his patron Elhanan Bicknell, an investor in the Southern Sperm Whale fishery. However, Bicknell's discovery that Turner's final touches of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/w/watercolour" title="Glossary definition for 'Watercolour'"><span>watercolour</span></a> wiped off No. 415, <i>q.v.</i>, coupled with a quarrel over the financing of the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraving</span></a> of <i>The Fighting ‘Temeraire’</i> (No. 377 [<span>N00524</span>]), seems to have put an end to this hope.</p>
<p>More importantly, Barry Venning sees the four whaling pictures as two interlinked pairs, the first, exhibited in 1845, set in the Antarctic, while the second, despite the continuing reference to Beale for No. 423 [<span>N00546</span>], in the Arctic. He sees each pair in a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/n/narrative" title="Glossary definition for 'Narrative'"><span>narrative</span></a> sequence, leading from apparent triumph to disaster. Of the two pictures exhibited in 1845 both are given references to Beale's chapter XIII on the ‘Chase and Capture of the Sperm Whale’, but while No. 414 [<span>N00545</span>] follows the text fairly closely, at least up to but not including the moment of the kill, No. 415 departs fairly radically from the text: in particular, the mother ship, which in the text is some distance away from the incident, is brought sufficiently close to balance the ship in No. 414 [<span>N00545</span>] and to suggest that the later incident is a direct consequence of the activities in the first picture.</p>
<p>No. 414 [<span>N00545</span>] illustrates Beale's first account of the pursuit of the sperm whale (ch. XIII, p. 161–17), which is set in the North Pacific near Japan on a calm day, with ‘the sun pouring its intense rays with dazzling brightness’. The whale is harpooned by the leading boat just as it is about to ‘sound’ (p. 163), and then lashes the sea in its agony (pp. 163–4). It dives, and on resurfacing is lanced (p. 164). It breaks away but is pursued by two boats and again harpooned and fatally lanced (p. 166). It dies ‘a victim to the tyranny and selfishness, as well as a wonderful proof of the great power of the <i>mind</i> of man’. The picture is probably a conflation of several episodes in this account, and is probably also indebted to the fourth story on pp. 176–83, in which Beale describes how the harpooners stand in the bows of their boats (pp. 180–81).</p>
<p>There are a number of sketches of whalers in the ‘Whalers’ sketchbook of c. 1844–5 (CCCLIII-6 to 14) and a watercolour of a scarlet whale, annotated ‘I shall use this’, in the ‘Ambleteuse and Wimereux’ sketchbook of May 1845 (CCCLVII-6; repr. in colour Wilton 1980, pl. 16); there is another similar watercolour, annotated ‘He breaks away’, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (see Cormack 1975, no. 52, repr.). None is specifically related to this picture, though Venning suggests that CCCLIII-12 contains its main elements.</p>
<p>Turner had already painted four watercolours of whaling subjects, three of them vignettes and all probably for book illustrations though such illustrations never appeared (Wilton 1979, p. 457, nos. 1307–10, all repr.). Wilton tentatively dates these to about 1839, the date of the enlarged edition of Beale's <i>Natural History</i>, though Venning suggests that these are probably Arctic rather than Antarctic scenes. Even earlier, as Venning points out, Turner had written verses on the death of the explorer Hugh Willoughby while seeking a passage through the Arctic ice in his ‘Greenwich’ sketchbook of c. 1808 (CII, pp. 1 <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/recto-verso" title="Glossary definition for 'Recto / Verso'"><span>verso</span></a> to 6 verso). Another stimulus for Turner may have been the sole exhibit by the Hull painter of whaling subjects John Ward at the Royal <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/academy" title="Glossary definition for 'Academy'"><span>Academy</span></a> in 1840, a picture of the <i>Swan</i> and <i>Isabella</i>, two whaling ships frozen into the ice in the notorious winters of 1835–6 and 1836–7.</p>
<p><i>The Times</i> for 6 May 1845 recognised that Turner ‘has found a new field for his peculiar style in the whale fishery... The greater portion of the picture is one mass of white spray, which so blends with the white clouds of the sky, that the spectator can hardly separate them, while the whiteness is still continued by the sails of the ship, which are placed in defiance of contrast.’ The review goes on to talk of Turner's ‘free, vigorous, fearless embodiment of a moment. To do justice to Turner, it should always be remembered that he is the painter, not of reflections, but of immediate sensations.’ The <i>Morning Chronicle</i> for 7 May pointed out that ‘The only warmth in either picture [this and No. 415] is produced by the red clothing of the sailors in the boats, a selection of colour which, on a close inspection, seems so obviously inconsistent with their vocation, that the spectator is tempted to cry “how absurd”, and to walk away from the spot. But when he has got away some three yards, if he look back he will be astonished to find how these red tints become mellowed in their general effect, and how other rough patches of superfices seem to have melted into thin transparent air, and how in fact, by a wonderful combination of materials all his own, Mr. Turner has produced extraordinary aerial effects.’ The <i>Athenaeum</i> for 17 May, on the other hand, found that ‘no “distance” can “lend enchantment to the view”, nor, by receding, do sky and water, or the whale at No. 50 (computed to be some six hundred feet long) or the craft in all the pictures, gain more clearness and intelligibility than they possess when we are close before them.’ The <i>Literary Gazette</i> for the same date, after saying that ‘It is whispered that Mr. Turner does not mean to exhibit any of his productions after this season’, asserted that ‘His scale of colour has never, so far as we know, been approached by any other man; and however wild it may be, it must still be felt that it is a development of elements essential in nature, carried far above her usual aspects’. The <i>Spectator</i>, after describing the two whaling pictures on 10 May as ‘all light, spray, and clouds; beautiful as harmonies of colour’, added on 24 May that ‘the hues of light are of such prismatic brilliancy, that the sailors are painted of the same bright orange colour that the palaces and gondolas of Venice are decked in’ in Turner's Venetian exhibits of the same year. ‘As light is light all the world over, there may be times when the Northern seas welter in a flood of radiance as dazzling as that which pours down from a Southern sky; but such is not their most characteristic effect.’</p>
<p>Ruskin, speaking of Turner's 1845 exhibits in the later editions of <i>Modern Painters</i> i, describes the two whaling subjects as ‘altogether unworthy of him’.</p>
<p>This picture is painted on a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/canvas" title="Glossary definition for 'Canvas'"><span>canvas</span></a> bearing the form of T. Brown stamp that seems to have come into use in about 1839. The appearance of the picture is marred by the darkening of certain <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/resin" title="Glossary definition for 'Resin'"><span>resinous</span></a> areas of paint. There is also some <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/b/bitumen" title="Glossary definition for 'Bitumen'"><span>bituminous</span></a> crackle, flattened <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/i/impasto" title="Glossary definition for 'Impasto'"><span>impasto</span></a>, and cleavage that has produced numerous small losses.</p>
<p>The compilers are indebted to John McCoubrey's unpublished lecture, given at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore on 18 April 1975, and to Barry Venning's article, ‘Turner's Whaling Pictures’, to be published in the <i>Burlington Magazine</i> in 1985, for much of the information given in the entries on Nos. 414 [<span>N00545</span>], 423 [<span>N00546</span>] and 426 [<span>N00547</span>].</p>
<p><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, <i>The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner</i>, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-09-23T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
adults agriculture and fishing agriculture, gardening & fishing animals: fish and aquatic life Arctic Circle Beale, Thomas, ‘The Natural History of the Sperm Whale...’ boat, fishing cloud countries and continents figure group groups harpoon literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) objects people places sea seascapes and coasts ship, sailing society transport: water weather whale whaler work and occupations