Varnish Day

Barrie Sheppard continues his illuminating discussion of J M W Turner’s artistic practice. Barrie writes: Varnish day at London’s Royal Academy during the nineteenth century would be more aptly named “varnish days”, for the contributing artists to its exhibitions were allowed as much as three to five days in which to “finish” their exhibited works before the opening of the exhibitions.

The original, main, activity was to allow artists time to make repairs to their works, often required of large works that had incurred damage during transit from their studios to Somerset House. The narrow spiral staircase that accessed the exhibition rooms on the upper floor was a particular hazard.

Of course, other “finishing” also occurred. Varnish was often applied to enhance the intensity of colours and tonalities of a work that the artist considered had suffered from its proximity to nearby works on the crowded exhibition walls.

Also, the studio varnishing of works on which the oil had not completely dried could ‘sink’ areas of colour; that is, reduce their “gloss”. Spot varnishing of the affected parts could be applied to correct this.

J M W Turner took full advantage of varnishing days, sometimes spending a whole day, or more, “finishing” a work.  Though his works were invariably hung either on the line (the ledge at eye level around the walls of the exhibition rooms), or just above it, his short stature proved a hindrance. He overcame it, however, by standing on a low bench to enable him to comfortably reach his works.

Contemporary artists and commentators noted that he often added all of his “finish’ on varnishing days. The practice was so extensive that art historian Joyce H. Townsend, in her How Turner Painted, used the term “performance art” to describe it. And so unusual was his practice that a number of contemporary artists captured these “performances”, some in paint, some in hurried sketches, if they could do so without Turner seeing them. Two contemporaries, Charles West Cope and William Parrott, made oil sketches of him working on varnish days at British Institution exhibitions –  the institution established in 1768 to promote the fine arts in Britain.

A notable example of him at work ‘finishing” at the Royal Academy was that of Norwegian painter, Thomas Fearnley who, during a study tour of England, painted Turner “varnishing” his Regulus at the Royal Academy (Turner, Varnishing 1837). Turner is shown, palette and brushes in hand, standing on a bench stool with a number of paint pots standing on the platform beside him.

Turner had painted the Regulus during a visit to Rome in 1828.The Claude-inspired painting draws on the ancient story of the Roman general Marcus Atilius Regulus who was blinded after being forced by his Carthaginian captors to stare at the sun after they had cut off his eyelids. The painting, though called “Regulus”, is essentially about the power and glory of the sun, Turner’s “God”. It dominates the composition, its incandescent light filling the distant sky and diffusing its glow across the entire composition. Regulus, himself, rendered in a few barely visible brushstrokes, is relegated to being a small figure standing on the quay in the right foreground.

The painting, after being shipped from Rome to Turner’s studio in London, was severely damaged, sustaining a large tear in its sky for having toppled apparently onto either a chair or the corner of a picture frame.. Turner repaired the damaged canvas in his studio, and “finished” the paintwork in the Academy, where Fearnley painted him. The blinding glow of the sun and the masts of the ships seen on the left tell us that it is the Regulus Turner is working on.

In their The Works of John Ruskin, art historians E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn quote Ruskin on Turner’s varnishing day practice:

His oil pictures were laid roughly with ground colours, and painted into with such rapid skill that artists used to see his finishing at the Academy sometimes suspecting him of having the picture finished underneath the colours he showed, and removing, instead of adding, as they watched.

Ruskin also quoted from the memories of Turner’s contemporary biographer, Charles Robert Leslie:

…on Varnishing Days… Turner stood working on… to my eyes nearly blank canvasses. There were always a number of mysterious little gallipots and cups of colour ranged upon drawing stools in front of his pictures. He used short brushes, working with thin colour over the white ground and using the brush end-on – he came, they said at six in the morning and worked standing all day…His colours were mostly in powder and he mixed them with turpentine, sometimes with size, and water. …

The painter Edward Villiers Rippingille wrote of Turner at one varnishing day:

…the picture when sent in was a  mere dab of several; colours and “without form and void”, like chaos before the creation…Turner for the three hours I was there…never ceased to work… it had been the same since he began in the morning….

With an observation such as this – “dabs of several colours without form and void” – we need to keep in mind that what today we see as finished late Turner works would have been seen by his contemporaries as “nearly blank” canvasses. Such a case would have been his A River Scene from a Hill (c.1840-45), a work not exhibited in Turner’s time, and not recognised as a painting until the mid twentieth century.

It seems that Townsend’s description of Turner’s varnish day practice as “performance art” was not all that off the mark.