Watercolor Artist - USA (2019-02)

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GIFT OF HAROLD K. HOCHSCHILD, 1940/THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

In the lower right corner, Turner added

the figure of a woman. She balances the

dominant shape of the castle, helps

establish a foreground plane and gives

scale to the painting. She leans into the

scene, inviting the viewer to do the same.

Pencil underdrawing was integral to many

of Turner’s plein air watercolors and can be

discerned throughout this painting, especially

in the tor, or high craggy hill, from which

Chatel Argent rises. Ruskin believed that

Turner drew on site, and only added

watercolor to his sketches later.

The surface of Turner’s watercolors was often complex,

featuring washes, sponging, drybrush and finely hatched

strokes. He made free use of both transparent and opaque

paint, blurring the distinction between his watercolor and

oil-based paintings. Here, broadly brushed passages

alternate with detailed topographical observations.

Turner used several reliable means to suggest

spatial recession: color temperature, with the

warmest hues in the near planes; variation

in edges, with the contours softening in the

distance; and overlapping shapes. The result

is that each successive level of land seems

increasingly swathed in a veil of atmosphere.