Interactive Article

Sublime Light

J. M. W. Turner’s Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight

4 min read
We hover over a flax-yellow body of water lined with ships to our left and right, which are silhouetted against a moonlit, cloud-veiled sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition. The moon hangs to our left of center in the sky, its light reflecting on the clouds in a bright, hourglass shape to create a tunnel-like effect. The sea below turns from a gold color close to us to pale blue along the horizon. To our left, one ship with gray sails is cut off by the edge of the canvas and another, also with gray sails, is situated farther from us. A small, dark rowboat with two passengers moves between them. Light from the windows in buildings along the distant horizon to our left reflect in the water, and another building, a factory, spouts white flame from its chimney. More dark ships line the waterway to our right, their spiky masts black against the sky. Three flames, one orange between two pale yellow fires, flare in the darkness in front of the ship closest to us. The forms of men shoveling coal, crates, and barges are dark silhouettes against the firelight and smoke. More rowboats float among the boats in the distance. Near the lower right corner of the canvas, a broad, flat fragment of wood floats close to us. The hot orange and black on the right side of the painting contrasts with the silvery gray, light blue, and white that fills much of the rest of the composition. The painting was created with thick, blended brushstrokes throughout, giving the scene a hazy look. The texture of some of the brushstrokes is especially noticeable, as where the moon casts white light onto the water and in the clouds. The artist signed a buoy floating to our left with his initials, “JMWT.”
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight, 1835, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.86

So much is happening in this painting that it’s hard to identify a single subject. Men shovel coal onto large ships. Boats glide to and fro across a shimmering river. Fires burn through the night, lighting the way for the workers. It’s a scene charged with the ceaseless activity of industry.

But notice where your eyes wander. Our gaze tends to follow the light. A white moon shines through an industrial haze, yellow and orange flames leap behind a veil of smoke, and water sparkles with the warm light of the fires and the cool gleam of the moon.

The creator of this work, British artist Joseph Mallord William Turner, was known for his striking and expressive depictions of light. Born in London in 1775, Turner became one of the most prominent Romantic painters in England. Romanticism was a European artistic movement that sought to convey the feelings of awe, terror, and admiration that nature can evoke in us. In Turner’s day, this combination of emotions was called the sublime, and many of his works aim to capture this sensation. Through his manipulation of light in Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight, Turner manages to transform a scene of labor and industry into a work of staggering wonder. 

A hub of activity

When Turner made this work, the Industrial Revolution was well underway in England. Rapid construction created tension between the natural world and the expanding built environment. Turner’s choice of subject reflects this friction. Keelmen depicts the meeting of nature and industry in a dramatic composition.

Work and pleasure in a pair of paintings

What meaning can we glean from this work? Its sister painting may hold some clues. Turner painted Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight in 1835 at the request of a textile manufacturer named Henry McConnel. The Manchester-based businessman commissioned the scene as a pendant, or companion painting, to another work by Turner in his collection. McConnel had purchased the other painting, Venice: The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore, in 1834.

In this pair of works, Turner contrasts two great maritime trading cities, pairing a bright afternoon in Venice, Italy, with a smoky English night. Both works are in the National Gallery’s collection and are often displayed side by side.

In terms of lighting effects, the two could hardly be more different. 

We cannot be sure what Turner wished to communicate with these two works. But he may have wanted to showcase England’s rising power as a center for trade and manufacturing—the source of his patron’s wealth—and contrast it with Venice’s declining economic influence.

We hover over a flax-yellow body of water lined with ships to our left and right, which are silhouetted against a moonlit, cloud-veiled sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition. The moon hangs to our left of center in the sky, its light reflecting on the clouds in a bright, hourglass shape to create a tunnel-like effect. The sea below turns from a gold color close to us to pale blue along the horizon. To our left, one ship with gray sails is cut off by the edge of the canvas and another, also with gray sails, is situated farther from us. A small, dark rowboat with two passengers moves between them. Light from the windows in buildings along the distant horizon to our left reflect in the water, and another building, a factory, spouts white flame from its chimney. More dark ships line the waterway to our right, their spiky masts black against the sky. Three flames, one orange between two pale yellow fires, flare in the darkness in front of the ship closest to us. The forms of men shoveling coal, crates, and barges are dark silhouettes against the firelight and smoke. More rowboats float among the boats in the distance. Near the lower right corner of the canvas, a broad, flat fragment of wood floats close to us. The hot orange and black on the right side of the painting contrasts with the silvery gray, light blue, and white that fills much of the rest of the composition. The painting was created with thick, blended brushstrokes throughout, giving the scene a hazy look. The texture of some of the brushstrokes is especially noticeable, as where the moon casts white light onto the water and in the clouds. The artist signed a buoy floating to our left with his initials, “JMWT.”
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight, 1835, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.86
We look across a glittering waterway lined with long, low boats and sailboats at an ivory-white church in the distance to our right in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition, and wispy white clouds sweep across the brilliant azure-blue sky above. A row of buildings comes into view lining the canal to our right, with a terracotta-orange building followed by a cream-white building beyond, both angled toward the church. The church has a high dome rising over the temple-like front, which has columns supporting a triangular pediment. A tall bell tower rises to the left of the church. The low boats, gondolas, to our left are packed with people while a few gondolas floating in the center of the canal appear occupied only by their gondoliers who stand holding their poles. Painted in tones of ivory and peach, the sails of boats behind the gondolas to our left billow in the breeze while the sails of vessels docked to our right are furled. The structures, boats, and people cast shimmering reflections on the gently rippling surface of the water in the canal. Rows of boats and buildings lining the canal extend into the deep, hazy distance to our left.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Venice: The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore, 1834, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.85

Turner’s Legacy

A critic in Turner’s day described the artist’s blurry, atmospheric paintings as “pictures of nothing.” Indeed, Turner’s later works moved closer to abstraction than almost any Western artist had before. They are pictures of light, emotion, and weather, capturing the sublime feeling of being dwarfed by powerful forces of nature.

Butter-yellow clouds and water, a periwinkle-blue sky, and pale plum-purple buildings blend in hazy, indistinct bands across this horizontal landscape painting. The paint is thickly applied in some areas, especially along the top of the sky, and the scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes throughout. The blurry horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition and the small, round, white sun shines low in the sky to our left. The sky or clouds around the sun are painted with shades of pale sapphire-blue with touches of lavender, which give way to a lemon-yellow clouds or haze in the right two-thirds of the sky. Buildings along the horizon, deep in the distance across the right three-quarters of the canvas, are loosely painted with vertical swipes of heather pink and cream white. The water, closest to us, reflects the yellow of the sky with additional touches of celery green. Brown boats spaced along the harbor carry people and objects away from us, toward the town.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Approach to Venice, 1844, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.110

Turner’s thoroughly modern works still have much to teach us. His paintings have inspired countless artists—from Claude Monet to David Hockney—who explored the same themes. They will no doubt continue to do so for generations to come.

You may also like

The top three-quarters of this horizontal landscape painting is filled with roiling, deeply shadowed clouds that tower over a line of buffalo crossing a grassy meadow below. Small in scale, the buffalo form a line that extends away from us at a diagonal into the distance to our right. Sunlight creates a bright reflection on the stream where the frontmost buffalo crosses, but the other animals are nearly backlit in the raking light. Trees, with branches whipping in the wind, rise along the left side of the painting, and the mountainous landscape to our right is lost in darkness under heavy clouds. The clouds above lighten from navy blue in the lower right corner of the sky to slate blue and white at the center of the painting. Small patches of blue sky are visible between a few breaks in the clouds, and sunlight falls on a cliff-like mountain face in the distance beyond the trees to our left. Another bank of parchment-colored clouds in the upper left corner, closer to us, contrasts with the glimmering light highlighting some of the clouds nearby.

Article:  Artistic Visions of Our Nation’s Nature

See how artists interpret our nation’s natural beauty—from a fluttering Baltimore oriole to a towering redwood tree. 

Article:  From Old Car Tires, Chakaia Booker Reveals Beauty and Devastation

Transforming discarded tires into monumental sculptures, the artist reflects on the environmental impact of our daily commutes.