Turner 5)

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Above: An Angel Standing in the Sun.

In the following year Turner painted "Crossing the Brook" (shown at the Academy in 1815), and reveals something more of the hope Turner held within himself. In "Crossing the Brook," he is casting off the cloak of the old self and seeking a new life and regeneration beyond. The well rutted track, cutting through the trees on the right hand side of the picture, echoes the image of the cave of Dido and Aeneas's tryst, but the picture looks beyond it to a horizon of extreme beauty. A desire not yet fulfilled waits there; one which he dreams of. It is probably no mistake either, that Turner has selected a lush tree to fill the largest part of this composition. From some of his early or biblical experiences he probably remembered the tree as a symbol for the fullness of life - 'the tree of life.' "Crossing the Brook," contains a delicate version of the spiral. The eye is gently lead from the left, across the stream to the grouping of trees on the right, back and around through the high cirrus clouds of early summer to the middle distance, and then off to the misty, blue, horizon. The rest dissolved in light.

Turner had a strong sense of conscience. It held him to visions like "Crossing the Brook." Sometimes, however, it also became a punishing element of the superego where it all but consumed the artist and his work. We only need look at "Regulus," to see this devouring element where this sun almost consumes. He railed against slavery in his work "The Slave Ship," without realizing, probably, part of it lay within him. Then, in "The Burning of the Houses of Parliament," Turner saw the workings of some form of divine retribution, almost as if a divine hand had reached down and torched the building on the banks of the Thames. He demonstrated his dissatisfaction with these principles held by the empire with a sense of urgency. He was suspicious about the empire he lived with so intimately, as many were during this time of revolution. The dark clue and his religious studies fused here creating for all some form of punishing apocalyptic nightmare which might soon ravage Britain. However, one year later "Norham Castle" came out, and presents to us, another image of pure pastoral serenity and peace, untainted by any artistic, psychological or social torment.

In "Norham," the spiral composition has almost unraveled in contemplative quietude. At this point his Aerial perspective is so well mastered as to leave us with an almost indefinable unity. There is no division between heaven and earth, just as there are no tangible boundaries between earthbound meadow and river. Here is Turner's portal to a different world. It contains nothing of the storm hiding in the subconscious, or the storms which ravaged continental Europe; pointing forward, as it does, to the capacity of creative imagination to touch upon some other etherial and archetypal reality. Image itself is dissolved into symbol, and leaves us with a piece of enigma and eternity to contemplate. I am reminded here of Pythagorean' "sige," "the great silence," out of which all was formed, so similar to it, is Turner's depiction of light at this point.

This is why we come back to Turner and to other artists like him, because they have presented us with an invitation to roam with them across the universe in search off "the ultimate ground." In doing so, might we find the eternal peace of a 'hearts desire." It is an irresistible invitation for many, and one that speaks to our time as strongly as it did then. Perhaps more so. Why then would such art works allow Turner to stand with some of the greatest philosophers of the next century?

This epoch was marked by a speeding up of events, politically, socially, industrially; it was also marked by philosophies to match it. By the early 19th century Schopenhauer had built a bridge to the East suggesting the classical tradition drew close to the conclusions of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. Hegel redefined the state, the nature of the social fabric only to see it torn down by Marx. Christian illusions suffered at the hands of Nietzsche. Diderot gave us the encyclopedia and Darwin the 'Descent of Man.' Existentialism and Psychology as we know it lay just beyond the horizon. Soon, Whitehead had changed the nature of classical philosophy throwing everything into process and change. Teilhard de Chardin did likewise for the field of theology as did Einstein in the world of physics. The old version in which the atom appeared as a hard shelled and static ball was over, as was any notion of a static universe.

The new, spoke of an interactive and ever-changing reality. As Whitehead put it, "An advance into novelty". This was not alien to the Orient either. The Tao spoke of a similar dynamic in which Yin and Yang combined to create a new reality of perception. Cultural interpretation placed these different entities graphically and symbolically within a circular design and in a position to interact. Certainly the symbol for Yin and Yang is easily recognized here, as is the form of the Mandala which adds a Gestalt quality to divergent forces. Light and shade supplies another form as does square and circle. They all point to some form of interaction between seeming opposites in an attempt to reveal something more. Some of Turner's studies in 'Light and Color,' spoke the same language as did his 'Angel Standing in the Sun,' where he strove to pull it all together in one great cycle.

The extruded circle or helix advancing into novelty had given us a graphic for the philosophy of process. Creative advance spoke of eternity. It intrigued and excited and yet never drew us into anxiety. Each cycle being new, still contained elements from the past, recognizable similarities, affirming a powerful sense of security and belongingness. It confirmed something about our being, our ground and existence. Simply put, opening to meaning, at the profoundest level. A journey towards something concrete if seeking wholeness. The Angel in the Sun travelled as far as it might and now sought unity, the whole self set auspiciously within the greater context of a larger consciousness. This was his only belongingness in which he could trust, beyond Mrs Booth.

Beethoven touched upon this in his compositions. Vaughan Williams raised it to its dizzying heights in his work "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis." This short but remarkable pastoral, rolls endlessly onwards in cycle after cycle. It is always familiar because the cycles are familiar to each other and echo the stir of nature consistently. But in reality, the cycles are never quite the same, each one moving to different and ever higher creative ground. The composition unfolds in the form of the spiral; familiar, yet ever-changing and drawing us to some remarkable and totally new conclusion. There is no fear in it. How much of this Turner consciously understood is difficult to say.

We know he was, for the most part, comfortable with the dynamic changes which were taking place around him and in fact, welcomed the excitement of his times. In the same way he embraced visionary prophecy, to some extent, by implementing the spiral as a compositional device and by dissolving his images, so that they no longer stood for themselves, but became a symbol open to interpretation. In this he pointed to contemporary and in particular, 'color field' art. It is not dissimilar to the new physics which looks at existence and non existence found mysteriously in sub atomic reality. Turner foresaw the world of process and archetype. In "rain, steam and speed," Turner draws upon past, present, future, and a total involvement and excitement with motion through these dimensions. His interpretive thought and emotions must have run a similar course. In moments such as these Turner's work carry us beyond the pale, into a fresh world of contemporary exhilaration. The 'dark clue' which some say deprived him of the moniker of 'First Impressionist,' looses power here in the light of such works. In any case the color and the levels of abstraction place him beyond Impressionism and carry him into the mid 20th Century as an inovator par exellence. 'Dark clue' or not, he became a powerfull modernist in the best sense of the tradition.

Turner's work continued, by cycles, alternating between his sublime vision and depiction's of the monsters which plagued him. In "Shade and Darkness" (1843) and in "Light and Color-The Morning after the Deluge", his color theory, his passion for light and his terror of being consumed, created remarkable images which stand as an ode to his innovative compositions. They are not always comfortable but the monsters fade, for the most part, suffused in his light. In "The Angel standing in the Sun," we glimpse one of Turners most personal of visions. The terror of apocalypse, personal demons, angelic judgment from above, all conducted ultimately in a pool of redemptive light which he loved so much. It called him and at the top of the canvas the dove of peace, or so it seems, soaring, as sometimes his spirit must have, in the heightened moments of his innermost journey calls out in a warm embrace. Striving for the spiral, then the great circle; and the sense of oneness and completion it indicated, brought Turner to this point. Whole or not he stood on the threshold of another journey.

Sarah Danby, his mistress and mother of his two daughters, outlived Turner by some ten years. Mrs Booth died in 1878. By most accounts, "The sun is god," his final words, were spoken by Turner shortly before he died. He had, after all, placed light at the center of his convoluted universe on every occasion possible and this was his god who followed him through life faithfully. At ten o'clock on the morning of 19th December 1851, in a house in Chelsea, overlooking the Thames, the sun broke through, filling Turner's room with dazzling light. The great painter breathed his last. Turner was buried on the 30th December in St. Pauls Cathedral.

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