| Sunrise with Sea Monsters | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | J. M. W. Turner |
| Year | ca. 1845 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 91.4 cm× 121.9 cm(36 in× 48 in) |
| Location | Tate Britain, London |
Sunrise with Sea Monsters is an unfinished oil painting by English artist J. M. W. Turner.
It is in the permanent collection of Tate Britain. [1]
Turner created this painting in the coastal town of Margate, [2] in about 1845, near the end of his career. The painting, which measures 91.4 by 121.9 centimetres (36.0 in × 48.0 in), depicts a hazy yellow sunrise over a turbulent grey sea. Lurking in the lower left corner are pink and red swirls usually identified as the eponymous sea monsters. [1] The painting first went on display in 1906. [3]
Beyond these basic elements, though, interpretations of the painting are the source of much study and open to speculation. [4] Initially, when the title of the painting was created, it only specified a single monster. [5] The Tate Gallery maintains that the "monsters" are just fish. [1] The Tate and other sources posit that a small section of four or five black cross-hatches might be a part of a fishing net. [6] Critic James Hamilton speculates that the mist may hide a steam driven paddleboat being consumed by giant fish [2] or whales, which were the subject of many of Turner's later works. [7] This steamboat theory is consistent with the interpretation of many of Turner's other later works, as a response to the technological changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. [8] Other sources claim that the monsters really are just that: Michael Bockemuhl suggests that the swirls combine to form a single behemoth with large eyes and open mouth that is swimming towards the observer. [6] They may also be compared to the monstrous creatures in the water of Turner's famous Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon coming on . [4]
An alternative interpretation is that there is nothing there at all; at least nothing corporeal. Gunnar Schmidt claims the painting has two zones—the warm sunny sky, and the cold dark water—and that at their interface is a mass of drifting steam that has particles and vortices but no shape or limit. [9] In his view, it is this thermal process that is being compared to the "monstrous" power of industrial engines and machinery. [10] Elizabeth Ermarth goes further, comparing this painting with Turner's Mountain Landscape and Seascape with Storm Coming On , and claiming they are "almost entirely abstract representations of space as pure atmosphere, as pure medium of light." [11]
Other shapes may also be interpreted from the painting. The Tate Museum suggests that a larger patch of red and white nearby may be interpreted as a marine float, [1] while a 1907 catalogue from the museum suggests that icebergs can be seen in the distance. [12] Bockemuhl sees a dog's head in a shape in the water on the left of the monster. [6] This varied and fantastic imagery is noted in many of the analyses of Turner's later works. A paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine draws a connection between these figures and Turner's possession of acetate of morphia (a drug related to morphine), possibly used for the treatment of a toothache. [13]
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