J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Switzerland 1802 > Studies in the Louvre Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Commentary on Nicolas Poussin's 'Deluge' (Inscription by Turner) 1802

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Commentary on Nicolas Poussin's 'Deluge' (Inscription by Turner)’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 41 Verso:
Commentary on Nicolas Poussin’s ‘Deluge’ (Inscription by Turner) 1802
D04327
Turner Bequest LXXII 41a
Inscribed by Turner in black ink (see main catalogue entry), on white wove paper prepared with a dark reddish brown wash, 128 x 114 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXII–41a’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
For Turner and the Louvre Poussins see folio 25 verso of this sketchbook (D04302). The Deluge, also called ‘Winter’ as noted by Finberg, formed one of a set of Four Seasons painted for the Duc de Richelieu between 1660 and 1664. The series as a whole was revered as Poussin’s swansong and The Deluge as supposedly his last painting. The subject is the biblical Flood described in Genesis. It was the only one of the set that Turner addressed in the sketchbook, struck by its monochromatic palette of leaden greys and aware of its reputation as a pioneering depiction of the untrammelled forces of nature. His comments begun here are concluded on folio 42 (D04328); for convenience they are transcribed in full here:
The Deluge by N Poussin | The color of this picture impresses | the subject more than the incidents | which are by no means fortunate either | as to place, position or color, as they | are separate spots untouched [Finberg: untoned] by the dark | color that pervades the whole. The lines | are defective as to the conception of a swamp’d world and the fountains | of the deep being broken up. The boat | in the waterfall is ill judged and misapplied | for the figures are placed at the wrong end | to give the idea of falling. The other boat | makes a parallel with the base of the picture | and the woman giving the Child is unworthy | the mind of Poussin. She is as unconcerned as is the man floating with a small piece of | board no current or effluvium [Finberg: ? ebullition] although a [continued on folio 42] waterfall is introduced to fill up the interstices | of the Earth. Artificially, not tearing | and desolating but falling placidly in | another pool. Whatever might have been said of the picture by Rousseau | never can efface its absurdity as to | forms and the introduction of the figures | but the color is sublime. It is natural | is what a creative mind must be | imprest by with sympathy and | horror. The pale luminary may | be taken for the moon from its size | & color. But the coloring of the figures denies it – and the half tint on the rock &c oppose the idea of its being the | sun. Upon the whole the picture would | have been as well without it although | a beautiful idea – but by being so neutral, become of no value.
Ziff notes the ambivalence of Turner’s comments, which challenge the high estimates of The Deluge then current and show how far he was from being overawed by the pictures he saw or by their critical history. Specifically, Turner discounts praise from ‘Rousseau’, presumably meaning Richelieu who, as he told in a later lecture, ‘is said to have declared that it absorbed his mind from all worldly concerns and that he could remain before it for hours as his only pleasure’. Turner added, in another double-edged compliment, that without its ‘singularly impressive, awfully appropriate’ colour, ‘Richelieu, or Poussin’s greatest admirers could not have remained long enough before it to have known its subject’. Turner went on to give an extensive analysis of the expressive colour of Poussin’s picture, regarding it as a supreme example of the artist’s skill in creating colour keys distinctly appropriate for his subjects rather than to conform to rules or systems such as the classical modes of music to which they had sometimes been compared.1
Turner’s own treatment of the Deluge, in a drawing in his Calais Pier sketchbook (Tate D05022, D05023; Turner Bequest LXXXI 120,121) and his picture possibly exhibited in 1805 (Tate N00493)2 were partly inspired by Poussin’s composition. However, Turner’s picture also set out to correct the deficiencies he had observed in Poussin’s. It replaced Poussin’s pale disc of sun or moon with a crimson sunset that casts a glow throughout the composition and Poussin’s essentially static composition with dynamic sweeps and surges of wind, rain and rising waves expressed in bold, painterly brushwork.

David Blayney Brown
July 2005

1
For Turner’s lecture see Ziff 1963 pp.315–16, 319–20, and Gage 1969, pp.109, 200.
2
Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.43–4 no.55 (pl.65).

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Commentary on Nicolas Poussin’s ‘Deluge’ (Inscription by Turner) 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2005, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-commentary-on-nicolas-poussins-deluge-inscription-by-turner-r1129736, accessed 25 April 2024.