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Lot Essay
The present vignette is arguably one of Turner’s most successful watercolours in this format. His figures are drawn with confidence, his narrative dramatic and his imagery has a sublimity worthy of William Blake (1757-1827).
Turner lived and worked in a time when illustrated books of literature, topography and antiquities were at the height of their popularity. This, combined with the fact that the art of steel engraving, was at its peak, partly possibly due to Turner’s influence, resulted in a golden era of book illustration. As Jan Piggott notes, op. cit., p. 17, `he transformed the art from the literal, the narrative or the decorative into a vehicle for poetic landscapes.’ Although this area of Turner’s art is less well known than his romantic landscapes, it was these works that spread Turner’s fame. Rogers’s first biographer wrote that his illustrations to the two volumes of Rogers first made Turner known to `vast multitudes of the English People’. Ruskin assumes that the two volumes are in the library of every educated household, and frequently uses them as examples for his theories and teachings.
Turner worked on the illustrations for Milton’s Poetic Works from May to October 1835. Turner was an excellent choice to illustrate Milton, he had read Milton for many years; six of his oil paintings use epigrams taken from Milton and it was with Milton’s verse that his imagination became unfettered. The imagery Turner deployed in his Miltonic vignettes reached a new height of fantasy.
The accompanying quotation to the present watercolour, given in the index, is from Paradise Lost, book I:
`Hurl’d heading flaming from the ethereal sky
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition’
Satan’s rebellion begins when God calls an assembly of all the angels in Heaven in order to announce that he has appointed his Son to reign over them: `To Him shall bow / All knees in Heav’n’ (Book V. 607-608). Satan however believes that he and the Son are equal in rank and that God’s exaltation of the Son is unjust. He refuses to submit to the reign of the Son and appeals to the other angels to do the same, before leading his followers in an attack against Heaven. The battle between the loyal and rebel angels rages for days before the Son comes forth from his throne and defeats Satan and casts the rebellious angels from Heaven to Hell.
In the present drawing we can see the falling star, Lucifer, glowing as he falls down from the heavens. The rebel angels are on the right tumbling, like inverted flames; a mass of writhing bodies meshed together chaotically. One of the bodies in the centre of the composition, momentarily takes on a cruciform shape before he also falls downwards to bottomless perdition and eternal damnation. Out of the heart of light there issues the Hand of God and over the whole scene is a rainbow, God’s symbol of hope. The contrasting blues and reds of the watercolour create a particularly lurid image of terror as the bodies of the damned fall. Goodall, who engraved the present work was told by Turner to `put me in innumerable figures here’ in the upper portion of the vignette, representing the angelic hoards.
The effect of Milton’s verse description of The War in Heaven on Turner’s pen has resulted in one of his most successful literary illustrations. Piggott, loc. cit., notes that `The War in Heaven in the Milton series inspires Turner to perhaps two of his greatest vignettes’ namely The Mustering of the Warrior Angels, (Paradise Lost, book VI) and the present watercolour.
Turner lived and worked in a time when illustrated books of literature, topography and antiquities were at the height of their popularity. This, combined with the fact that the art of steel engraving, was at its peak, partly possibly due to Turner’s influence, resulted in a golden era of book illustration. As Jan Piggott notes, op. cit., p. 17, `he transformed the art from the literal, the narrative or the decorative into a vehicle for poetic landscapes.’ Although this area of Turner’s art is less well known than his romantic landscapes, it was these works that spread Turner’s fame. Rogers’s first biographer wrote that his illustrations to the two volumes of Rogers first made Turner known to `vast multitudes of the English People’. Ruskin assumes that the two volumes are in the library of every educated household, and frequently uses them as examples for his theories and teachings.
Turner worked on the illustrations for Milton’s Poetic Works from May to October 1835. Turner was an excellent choice to illustrate Milton, he had read Milton for many years; six of his oil paintings use epigrams taken from Milton and it was with Milton’s verse that his imagination became unfettered. The imagery Turner deployed in his Miltonic vignettes reached a new height of fantasy.
The accompanying quotation to the present watercolour, given in the index, is from Paradise Lost, book I:
`Hurl’d heading flaming from the ethereal sky
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition’
Satan’s rebellion begins when God calls an assembly of all the angels in Heaven in order to announce that he has appointed his Son to reign over them: `To Him shall bow / All knees in Heav’n’ (Book V. 607-608). Satan however believes that he and the Son are equal in rank and that God’s exaltation of the Son is unjust. He refuses to submit to the reign of the Son and appeals to the other angels to do the same, before leading his followers in an attack against Heaven. The battle between the loyal and rebel angels rages for days before the Son comes forth from his throne and defeats Satan and casts the rebellious angels from Heaven to Hell.
In the present drawing we can see the falling star, Lucifer, glowing as he falls down from the heavens. The rebel angels are on the right tumbling, like inverted flames; a mass of writhing bodies meshed together chaotically. One of the bodies in the centre of the composition, momentarily takes on a cruciform shape before he also falls downwards to bottomless perdition and eternal damnation. Out of the heart of light there issues the Hand of God and over the whole scene is a rainbow, God’s symbol of hope. The contrasting blues and reds of the watercolour create a particularly lurid image of terror as the bodies of the damned fall. Goodall, who engraved the present work was told by Turner to `put me in innumerable figures here’ in the upper portion of the vignette, representing the angelic hoards.
The effect of Milton’s verse description of The War in Heaven on Turner’s pen has resulted in one of his most successful literary illustrations. Piggott, loc. cit., notes that `The War in Heaven in the Milton series inspires Turner to perhaps two of his greatest vignettes’ namely The Mustering of the Warrior Angels, (Paradise Lost, book VI) and the present watercolour.