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>
Deluge
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
adults
animals: birds
architecture
astronomy
Bible: Old Testament
birth to death
black
building
building - non-specific
coast
crowd
death
destruction
diseases and conditions
drowned
emotions, concepts and ideas
ethnicity
female
flood
Flood
groups
lightning
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
male
man
Milton, John, ‘Paradise Lost’, 1667
moon
nudes
objects
people
rain
religion and belief
rocky
ruins
sea
seascapes and coasts
society
stork
storm
townscapes / man-made features
universal concepts
urn
vessels and containers
wave
weather
woman
<p>This monumental painting depicts the Biblical flood. The raging sea and violent storm are typical of the Sublime. This category of landscape painting was intended to inspire a combination of awe, wonder and terror. In the bottom right-hand corner, a Black man in shackles rescues a white woman from drowning. Painted at a time when the cause for Britain to abolish its enslavement of people of African descent was gaining ground, this detail is significant. Decades later in 1828, (with enslavement still an issue in Britain and across the world), Turner dedicated a print of this work to Lord Carysfort, a pro-abolition MP.</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2023</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
25 April 2001 – 29 July 2001
2001-07-29
25 April 2001 – 30 July 2001
2001-07-30
2001-04-25
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-04-25
House and Studio
Collection based display
25 July 2005 – 26 July 2009
2009-07-26
25 July 2005
2005-07-25
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2005-07-25
Romantic Painting in Britain
Collection based display
21 September 2009 – 19 September 2010
2010-09-19
21 September 2009 – 24 January 2010
2010-01-24
2009-09-21
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
22 February 2010 – 23 May 2010
2010-05-23
2010-02-22
Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais (Paris, France)
2009-09-21
Turner and the Masters
Exhibition
22 February 2010 – 19 September 2010
2010-09-19
21 September 2009 – 3 January 2010
2010-01-03
2009-09-21
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
22 February 2010 – 23 May 2010
2010-05-23
2010-02-22
Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais (Paris, France)
21 June 2010 – 19 September 2010
2010-09-19
2010-06-21
Museo Nacional del Prado (Madrid, Spain)
2010-02-22
Turner and the Masters
Loan-out
29 July 2010 – 14 March 2011
2011-03-14
6 August 2010 – 14 March 2011
2011-03-14
2010-08-06
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-07-29
Romantics 2
Collection based display
30 July 2010 – 15 April 2012
2012-04-15
30 July 2010 – 15 April 2012
2012-04-15
2010-07-30
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-07-30
Romantics
Collection based display
9 June 2015 – 13 September 2015
2015-09-13
9 June 2015 – 13 September 2015
2015-09-13
2015-06-09
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2015-06-09
Fighting History
Exhibition
1 May 2016 – 8 January 2017
2017-01-08
4 May 2016 – 18 September 2016
2016-09-18
2016-05-04
Caumont Art Centre (Aix-en-Provence, France)
7 October 2016 – 8 January 2017
2017-01-08
2016-10-07
Turner Contemporary (Margate, UK)
2016-05-01
JMW Turner: From Shade and Darkness, to Light and Colour
Loan-out
3 March 2018 – 16 September 2018
2018-09-16
3 March 2018 – 16 September 2018
2018-09-16
2018-03-03
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, USA)
2018-03-03
Sublime Seas: John Akomfrah and J.M.W. Turner
Loan-out
6 July 2019 – 2 May 2021
2021-05-02
6 July 2019 – 13 October 2019
2019-10-13
2019-07-06
Kunstmuseum (Luzern, Switzerland)
http://www.kunstmuseumluzern.ch
8 November 2019 – 26 January 2020
2020-01-26
2019-11-08
LWL-Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Westfälisches (Munster, Germany)
http://landesmuseum.lwl.org
20 February 2020 – 7 September 2020
2020-09-07
2020-02-20
Frist Center for the Visual Arts (Nashville, USA)
15 October 2020 – 2 May 2021
2021-05-02
2020-10-15
Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec (Québec, Canada)
http://www.mnba.qc.ca
2019-07-06
The Sea and the Alps: Turner's Quest for the Sublime
Tate partnerships & programmes
8 June 2021 – 14 January 2024
2024-01-14
8 July 2021 – 14 November 2021
2021-11-14
2021-07-08
Museum of Art Pudong (Shanghai, China)
20 December 2021 – 8 May 2022
2022-05-08
2021-12-20
Buk-Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul, South Korea)
15 June 2022 – 13 November 2022
2022-11-13
2022-06-15
ACMI (Melbourne, Australia)
2021-06-08
Light
Tate partnerships & programmes
13 March 2023
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-03-13
Gallery 101
Collection based display
The Deluge
support: 1429 × 2356 mm
frame: 1800 × 2705 × 127 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 monumental painting depicts the Biblical flood. The raging sea and violent storm are typical of the Sublime. This category of landscape painting was intended to inspire a combination of awe, wonder and terror. In the bottom right-hand corner, a Black man in shackles rescues a white woman from drowning. Painted at a time when the cause for Britain to abolish its enslavement of people of African descent was gaining ground, this detail is significant. Decades later in 1828, (with enslavement still an issue in Britain and across the world), Turner dedicated a print of this work to Lord Carysfort, a pro-abolition MP.</p>
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Display caption
2023-10-25T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<div class="text">
<p>
<b>55. </b>[<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="/art/artworks/N00493" onclick="popTateObjects(event, -1, 'N00493');" title="View details of this artwork"><span>N00493</span></a>]<b> The Deluge Exh. 1805?</b>
<br/>
<br/>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (493)<br/>Canvas, 56 1/4 × 92 3/4 (143 × 235)<br/>
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<b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856 (61, ‘The Deluge’ 7'10" × 4'10 1/2"); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1929.</p>
<p>
<b>Exh.</b> ?Turner's gallery 1805; R.A. 1813 (213); Tate Gallery 1931 (23); R.A. 1974–5 (81); Paris 1983–4 (13, repr.).</p>
<p>
<b>Engr.</b> By J.P. Quilley 1828 (perhaps significantly only two years after John Martin exhibited the first of his two large pictures of the subject); also, with considerable variations, by Turner or H. Dawe for the <i>Liber Studiorum</i>, R. 88, but not published (repr. Finberg 1924, p. 352; Turner's preliminary pen and sepia drawing from the Vaughan Bequest, CXVIII–X, is also repr. <i>loc. cit.</i>).</p>
<p>
<b>Lit.</b> Farington <i>Diary</i> 21 February 1805; A. Pichot, <i>Voyage historique et littéraire en Angleterre et en Ecosse,</i> 1825, i, p. 188; Ruskin 1843 (1903–12, iii, p. 519); Thornbury 1862, i, p. 295; 1877, p. 431; Bell 1901, p. 93 no. 129; Armstrong 1902, p. 220; Finberg 1924, p. 353; Whitley 1928, pp. 88, 210–11; Davies 1946, p. 187; Finberg 1961, pp. 113, 117–18, 171, 195–6, 304, 475 no. 184, 512 no. 94a; Ziff 1963, p. 320, pl. 47; Lindsay 1966, pp. 87, 230 n. 9; Reynolds 1969, p. 61; Wilton 1980, pp. 136–9; Ziff 1980, p. 168; Verdi 1981, pp. 397–9, pl. 5.</p>
<p>A note in the <i>British Press</i> for 8 May 1804 stated that ‘Mr. Turner is engaged upon a very large picture of the Deluge, which he intends for the exhibition next year’. By ‘the exhibition’ is probably meant that at the R.A., but, apparently owing to some dispute in the <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/academy">Academy</a> Council, Henry Thomson told Farington on 21 February 1805 that ‘Turner will not exhibit at the Royal Academy but at his own house’. It is likely therefore that <i>The Deluge</i>, like <i>The Shipwreck</i>, was on view in Turner's own gallery from early May to the beginning of July 1805. J. P. Quilley's <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/mezzotint">mezzotint</a> was dedicated by Turner to the late John Joshua Proby, first Earl Carysfort, who is not known to have owned any works by Turner but whose name appears in a list of patrons in the ‘Academies’ sketchbook of <i>c.</i> 1804 (LXXXIV–67 <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/recto-verso">verso</a>) against an unnamed ‘Historical’ work priced at £‘300’; Wilton has therefore made the plausible suggestion that <i>The Deluge</i> was intended for him but for some reason not purchased.<br/>
<br/>When exhibited again at the R.A. in 1813, the same year as <i>Frosty Morning</i> (No. 127, [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="/art/artworks/N00492" onclick="popTateObjects(event, -1, 'N00492');" title="View details of this artwork"><span>N00492</span></a>]), it must have looked rather conservative, but the <i>Morning Chronicle</i> for 3 May praised it as ‘a good <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition">composition</a>, and treated with that severity of manner which was demanded by the awfulness of the subject’. The catalogue contained the following lines from Milton:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>‘Meanwhile the south wind rose, and with black wings<br/>Wide hovering, all the clouds together drove<br/>From under heaven              <br/>              the thicken'd sky<br/>Like a dark cieling [<i>sic</i>] stood, down rush'd the rain<br/>Impetuous, and continual, till the earth<br/>No more was seen.’</blockquote>
<blockquote>(John Milton, Paradise Lost)</blockquote>
<p>As in the case of his Plague pictures Turner may have been spurred on by the example of Poussin, whose own picture of the subject he had studied closely in the Louvre in 1802 (for his notes see the ‘Studies in the Louvre’ sketchbook, LXXII–41 verso, 42). The first French critic to note this work, A. Pichot, who saw it in Turner's gallery in 1825, compared it not however with Poussin but with the <i>Scène de Deluge</i> of 1808 by Girodet (Louvre). But Turner's main inspiration, particularly in the vivid colouring of the figures on the right, came from Titian and Veronese.<br/>
<br/>The <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing">drawing</a> inscribed ‘Study for the Deluge’ in the ‘Calais Pier’ sketchbook shows an alternative composition, and that inscribed ‘Whirlwind’ is also related (LXXXI–120, 121, 163). The group of a man supporting a girl on the right is close to a figure study in the ‘Studies for Pictures’ sketchbook of <i>c.</i> 1800–02 (LXIX–66). Another drawing, CXX–X recto (repr. Wilton, <i>op. cit</i>., p. 136) and verso, does contain studies for this composition, while CXX-Y shows a group of figures struggling in the water.<br/>
<br/>This picture was priced at £300 in a note, probably of <i>c.</i> 1810, in Turner's ‘Finance’ sketchbook (CXXII–36; for the date see Nos. 53 and 56 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="/art/artworks/N00474" onclick="popTateObjects(event, -1, 'N00474');" title="View details of this artwork"><span>N00474</span></a>]).<br/>The back of the original <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/canvas">canvas</a> bears the inscription ‘JMWT 20’. The <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting">painting</a> has suffered from extensive flaking and losses.<br/>
<br/>
<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</p>
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Catalogue entry
2021-04-09T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
adults animals: birds architecture astronomy Bible: Old Testament birth to death black building building - non-specific coast crowd death destruction diseases and conditions drowned emotions, concepts and ideas ethnicity female flood Flood groups lightning literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) male man Milton, John, ‘Paradise Lost’, 1667 moon nudes objects people rain religion and belief rocky ruins sea seascapes and coasts society stork storm townscapes / man-made features universal concepts urn vessels and containers wave weather woman