Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
And William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

On the Occasion of the October 1, 2007 Openings in Washington, D.C. of the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Harman Center for the Arts and the National Gallery of Art’s "J.M.W. Turner" Exhibition

J.M.W. Turner enjoyed literature and referred to the works of William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Alexander Pope, and James Thomson throughout his career. His love of words, in addition to his travels, helped inspire his imagination.

The artist emulated Shakespeare, even selecting the playwright’s date of birth, April 23, as his own (Turner’s birth date is undocumented, though thought to be around that time). The two were also compared by others: John Ruskin, Turner’s most resolute defender, described the artist's imagination as "Shakespearian in its mightiness." And Alfred, Lord Tennyson called him the "Shakespeare of landscape."

Several works included in this exhibition depict or refer to the work of Shakespeare. In Juliet and Her Nurse (1836, Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat), Turner depicted Juliet as Romeo described her: radiant and gently resting her cheek upon her hand. Turner, however, was criticized for placing the scene in Venice rather than in Verona, where the play Romeo and Juliet is set, and for adding rockets and lamplights.

The title of one work, Snow Storm—Steam Boat off a Harbor’s Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and Going by the Lead. The Author Was in This Storm on the Night the Ariel Left Harwich (1842, Tate), evokes Shakespeare’s sprite Ariel from The Tempest. The name of the ship is uncertain; perhaps Turner remembered the name as Ariel because he had Shakespeare’s play in mind.

In nearly a dozen paintings and repeatedly in his sketchbooks, Turner depicted the glory and grandeur of Venice. These images were shaped in part by his reading of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Venice: The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore (1834, National Gallery of Art) is just one of several examples in which Turner’s love of the city is apparent.

Several works by Turner that are not included in the exhibition also show the influence of Shakespeare. In two of his paintings, he included characters from The Merchant of Venice: Jessica(1830, Tate and the National Trust, Lord Egremont Collection, Petworth House) and The Grand Canal: Scene—A Street in Venice (1837, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California). Jessica was first exhibited with the text "Shylock—‘Jessica, shut the window, I say’— The Merchant of Venice." This line, which does not occur in that play, recalls the scene outside Shylock's house (act 2, scene 5) when Shylock counsels Jessica: "Lock up my doors … stop my house's ears, I mean my casements." In The Grand Canal, the figures in the lower right are thought to be Shylock and Antonio.

Another character appears in Turner’s Queen Mab’s Cave (1846, Tate). Described in Romeo and Juliet as "the fairies’ midwife," Queen Mab reveals secret hopes in the form of dreams, which she creates by driving her chariot over people as they sleep. The painting also evokes the "moonlight revels" of Titania, queen of the fairies, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And the title of Turner’s What You Will! (1822, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown) is also Shakespeare’s alternative title for Twelfth Night.

In addition, Turner painted a watercolor of the monument dedicated to Shakespeare in Holy Trinity Church at Stratford-upon-Avon (when he was providing designs for an edition of Sir Walter Scott's prose works). The watercolor is lost, but was engraved, and a copy is in the collection of Tate Britain, as are the pencil sketches Turner made during his visit to Stratford in 1836.

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Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) And William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
And William Shakespeare (1564-1616)