SPECIFIC IDENTIFICATIONS

March 2021

Common Remarks About the 'Lost Oils'

During the course of this investigation some features have emerged which may have a bearing on the early oils generally.

We have tried to discuss these with various experts in key positions but these people have been unwilling to enter into discussion. They simply dismiss the evidence without explanation. We have found the same position reflected in the modern literature including Butlin & Joll. We have therefore assembled the evidence and drawn conclusions based on that evidence. Amongst those conclusions is the discovery of a mistake in the 1793 Royal Academy Exhibition catalogue whereby Turner's two 'St. Vincent's Rock' titles were transposed [List of RA exhibits]

Much evidence suggests that Turner's early oils were stylistically different from his works of 1796 onwards and there is a clear break between 1793 (first exhibition of an oil) and 1796 (second exhibition of an oil) [List of RA exhibits]. Some sources deny that an oil was exhibited in 1793 but the evidence for it is clear.

From 1796 onwards the records are more consistent and, although some of these pictures are lost, their existence is not questioned except in the case of 'Battle of the Nile' (1799) where there is some suggestion that it may not have been an oil.

Commentaries listed in the presentation show that Turner's early oils on canvas are stylistically and methodologically different from those that began to emerge in 1796 with 'Fishermen at Sea'. It is inconceivable that Turner simply stopped painting in oil throughout the remainder of 1793, 1794 and 1795 and entirely possible that these works have been lost (that is: dismissed as not being his work) simply because they do not meet the criteria demanded by connoisseurs with decades of experience of his later work.
These commentaries illustrate that the concept that 'experts' have many years of experience (connoisseurship) of Turner's early oil paintings on canvas is mistaken. Of Turner's pre 1796 oils only two are not lost (or misidentified) and one is on paper; the other is 'Self-Portrait age Sixteen', No.20 in Butlin and Joll, and in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The self portrait does not fit connoisseurship criteria and there are suggestions that it has been repainted; its provenance is beyond doubt so the self portrait, which exhibits elements mentioned in the commentaries, cannot be so easily dismissed and indeed suggests that connoisseurship cannot be relied upon.

The dearth of known examples indicate that anybody faced with an previously unknown early oil would be sufficiently unfamiliar with Turner's early oils so as not to recognize it. Our 'Squall at St. Vincent's Rock, Bristol' was not recognised as a 'work by Turner' (hence the seller was not quizzed about its origin) it was, after many hours of searching images of landscapes, recognised as 'St. Vincent's Rock' by reference to the rock complex which JMW Turner happened to paint in D00389.