Oil paint on canvas
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on loan
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>
Hurrah Whaler Erebus Another Fish
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
adults
agriculture and fishing
Arctic Circle
astronomy
Beale, Thomas, ‘The Natural History of the Sperm Whale...’
boat, fishing
countries and continents
figure
group
groups
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
people
places
sea
seascapes and coasts
ship, sailing
society
sun
transport: water
whaler
work and occupations
<p>No whaling ship was actually called <span>Erebus</span>, but the survey ship <span>HMS Erebus</span> had recently explored Antarctica, and Turner borrowed the name.</p><p><em>Gallery label, November 2022</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
9 June 2003 – 10 May 2004
2004-05-10
9 June 2003 – 8 September 2003
2003-09-08
2003-06-09
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, USA)
http://www.clarkart.edu/
24 October 2003 – 3 January 2004
2004-01-03
2003-10-24
Manchester Art Gallery (Manchester, UK)
http://www.manchestergalleries.org
15 February 2004 – 10 May 2004
2004-05-10
2004-02-15
Burrell Collection (Glasgow, UK)
2003-06-09
Turner: The Late Seascapes
Loan-out
4 September 2004 – 9 January 2005
2005-01-09
4 September 2004 – 9 January 2005
2005-01-09
2004-09-04
Statens Museum for Kunst (Copenhagen, Denmark)
2004-09-04
Turner and Constable and their European Contemporaries
Loan-out
20 March 2009 – 10 August 2009
2009-08-10
20 March 2009
2009-03-20
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2009-03-20
Turner and Rothko Introduction
Collection based display
12 August 2009 – 27 July 2010
2010-07-27
12 August 2009 – 27 July 2010
2010-07-27
2009-08-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2009-08-12
Waves, Whalers and Wrecks
Collection based display
22 July 2010 – 9 April 2012
2012-04-09
6 August 2010 – 9 April 2012
2012-04-09
2010-08-06
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-07-22
Late Turner
Collection based display
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
26 September 2022 – 15 September 2023
2023-09-15
26 September 2022 – 15 September 2023
2023-09-15
2022-09-26
Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/
2022-09-26
JMW Turner and Lamin Fofana: Dark Waters
Collection based display
6 July 2024 – 15 January 2028
2028-01-15
6 July 2024 – 1 September 2024
2024-09-01
2024-07-06
Grimaldi Forum (Monaco, Monaco)
30 September 2024 – 7 May 2025
2025-05-07
2024-09-30
Museum of Art Pudong (Shanghai, China)
21 June 2025 – 5 October 2025
2025-10-05
2025-06-21
Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane, Australia)
1 June 2026 – 1 October 2026
2026-10-01
2026-06-01
External
15 November 2026 – 15 March 2027
2027-03-15
2026-11-15
External
1 May 2027 – 1 September 2027
2027-09-01
2027-05-01
External
15 October 2027 – 15 January 2028
2028-01-15
2027-10-15
External
2024-07-06
Turner's Sublime Legacy
Tate partnerships & programmes
‘Hurrah! for the Whaler Erebus! Another Fish!’
support: 902 × 1206 mm
frame: 1228 × 1528 × 160 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>No whaling ship was actually called <i>Erebus</i>, but the survey ship <i>HMS Erebus</i> had recently explored Antarctica, and Turner borrowed the name.</p>
</div>

Display caption
2022-11-03T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><b>423. </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-hurrah-for-the-whaler-erebus-another-fish-n00546" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00546</span></a>]<b> ‘Hurrah! for the Whaler Erebus! another Fish!’</b> Exh. 1846</p>
<p>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (546)</p>
<p>Canvas, 35 1/2 × 47 1/2 (90 × 121)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856 (one of 76–8; see No. 414 [<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>]); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1929.</p>
<p><b>Exh.</b> R.A. 1846 (237); Exhibition of Modern Art, New Gallery, Edinburgh, March 1851 (see below); Amsterdam, Berne, Paris (repr.), Brussels, Liege (41), Venice (repr.) and Rome (repr.) (50) 1947–8; Whitechapel 1953 (99); Paris 1965 (36, repr.); Edinburgh 1968 (15).</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Thornbury 1862, i, p. 349; 1877, p. 467; Bell 1901, p. 155 no. 257; Armstrong 1902, p. 237; Falk 1938, p. 185; Davies 1946, p. 187; Finberg 1961, p. 413, 510 no. 575; Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, p. 72, pl. 125; Wilton 1979, pp. 213–14, 222; Wilton 1980, pp. 97, 153; Ziff 1980, p. 170; Venning 1985.</p>
<p>Exhibited in 1846 with the reference ‘—<i>Beale's Voyage</i>’. Despite this reference the picture is much less closely tied to the text than are the two whaling pictures of the previous year, Nos. 414 [<span>N00545</span>] and 415. As John McCoubrey pointed out in his lecture on ‘Turner's Whaling Pictures’ given at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, on 18 April 1975, there is no record of a whaler called the <i>Erebus</i>. In fact Turner seems to have been cashing in on the interest in the voyage of the <i>Erebus</i> and the <i>Terror</i> in search of the North-West passage. The ships set out in 1845, were still away in 1846, and were finally abandoned as lost in 1847.</p>
<p>In addition Barry Venning has suggested that the use of the name <i>Erebus</i> in the title of this, the first of a pair of pictures of whaling in the Arctic region, as opposed to the Antarctic scenes of the whaling pictures of the previous year, Nos. 414 [<span>N00545</span>] and 415, was an indirect allusion to the scene of a whaling ship entangling itself in the ice of the companion <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a>, No. 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>]: the Admiralty had promised to send out <i>Erebus</i>, together with the <i>Terror</i>, in an attempt to relieve the fourteen ships (including the <i>Isabella</i>, one of the two ships in John Ward's exhibit of 1840 which may have suggested these whaling subjects to Turner) which had been caught in the ice in the winter of 1835–6; in the event the Admiralty reneged on their promise, which would have served to strengthen memories of the role played by the <i>Erebus</i> and the <i>Terror</i> in connection with whaling ships caught in flaw ice. The disaster of 1835–6, which was followed by a similar disaster the following winter (which involved the <i>Swan</i>, the other ship in John Ward's 1840 exhibit) was a result of the over-fishing of the North Atlantic waters which had forced whalers further and further north with an increased risk of being frozen in. It is also relevant, as Ziff has noted, that Turner owned part v, on <i>Fishes</i>, of John Richardson's <i>Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Erebus and Terror</i>, 1845 (see Falk 1938, p. 258, and exh. cat., R.A. 1974–5, no. B117).</p>
<p>It is possible that the title of this picture also echoes two passages in Thomas Beale's <i>Natural History of the Sperm Whale</i>. The first, in the chapter on the ‘Chase and Capture of the Sperm Whale’, comes in the fourth episode when nine boats from three different whalers pursue a whale; on p. 179 there is a description of shouted exchanges between the men in the boats, invoking the names of their parent ships much like the title of this picture. The second, in the appended <i>Sketch of a South-Sea Whaling Voyage</i>, and thus, unlike the 1845 references, actually justifying the reference to ‘<i>Beale's Voyage</i>’, is the account of the cheers that greeted the securing of the last whale of the voyage of the <i>Sarah and Elizabeth</i>
under Captain Swain.</p>
<p>Venning has noted the accuracy with which Turner has depicted the ‘cutting in’ of the whale, with its head being hoisted on deck while other members of the crew use their sharp spades to cut off and unwind a ribbon of blubber from the carcass which is being turned by a windlass. The next stage in the process is the boiling of the blubber, the subject of the companion painting No. 426 [<span>N00547</span>].</p>
<p>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/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawings</span></a> in the ‘Whalers’ sketchbook one is close in <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/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a> to this picture (CCCLIII-14). Venning sees the previous page, 13, as an earlier stage in the evolution of this composition, with figures in the bottom right-hand corner shouting ‘Hurrah’.</p>
<p>Of the two whaling pictures exhibited in 1846, this example mysteriously received by far the greatest abuse. The <i>Art Union</i> for June 1846 used it as a peg on which to hang a comparison with Turner's works of twenty years earlier, summed up in the phrase, of his recent works, that ‘they only share the <i>prestige</i> of earlier productions’. Of this picture the reviewer goes on, ‘but for the oracular catalogue, it is impossible to divine the subject of the picture: there is no <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/f/form" title="Glossary definition for 'Form'"><span>form</span></a> for the eye to dwell upon, save the topsails and ropes of the ship. ’ Hours of examination of the picture had passed without the critic ‘finding that severity of purpose which should characterize it’. The <i>Almanack of the Month</i> showed a cartoon of ‘Turner painting one of his pictures’ with a large mop dipped in a bucket labelled ‘YELLOW’ and wrote ‘The subject is, “Hurrah for the whaler <i>Erebus</i>— another fish”, but it should be called “Hallo there! —the oil and vinegar, —another lobster salad.” ’ The review continued: ‘Considerable discussion has arisen as to the mode in which Turner goes to work to paint his pictures. Some think he mixes a few colours on his <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>, instead of on his palette, and sends the results to be exhibited. Another ingenious theory is that he puts a piece of canvas in a sort of pillory, and pelts it with eggs and other missiles, when, appending to the mess some outrageous title, he has it hung in a good position in 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/a/academy" title="Glossary definition for 'Academy'"><span>Academy</span></a>. Our own idea is, that he chooses four or five good places, in which he hangs up some regularly framed squares of blank canvas. A day or so before the opening of the Exhibition, we believe he goes down to the Academy with a quantity of colours, and a nine-pound brush, with which he dabs away for a few minutes, and his work is finished.’</p>
<p>On the other hand <i>The Times</i> for 6 May wrote, ‘But surely the “Hurrah for the Whaler” (237) should check all those who regard the pictures of this great colourist as mere themes for mirth. It is a sea-piece, the ships in the foreground being the usual indistinct combinations of red and yellow. The spectator looks full against the sun, and the treatment of this blaze of light, with the delicate etherial indications of the clouds in the “cirrus” region, is most magnificent.’ Similarly the <i>Spectator</i> for 9 May wrote, ‘Turner has also another couple of <i>Whalers</i>, wonderful compositions of light and colour.’ The <i>Literary Gazette</i> of the same date found, of all Turner's exhibits of this year, that ‘So entirely is the eye carried away by a sort of indistinct and harmonious magic, that we seem to consent to the abandonment of solid truth and real nature altogether, and allow dark ships to be chrome yellow, whales glittering pink, human beings sun or moon beams, and little thick dabs of paint ethereal clouds.’</p>
<p>That this picture was included in an exhibition of modern art at the New Gallery, 90 George Street, Edinburgh in March 1851 is suggested by a reference in the <i>Scotsman</i> for 1 March 1851.</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 Arctic Circle astronomy Beale, Thomas, ‘The Natural History of the Sperm Whale...’ boat, fishing countries and continents figure group groups literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) people places sea seascapes and coasts ship, sailing society sun transport: water whaler work and occupations