J.M.W. TURNER
Events Recorded by Miller for 1792-1793

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Abstract

In 'Turner and Girtin's Picturesque Views, Sixty Years Since' evidence for two tours of Kent is found on pages xxv and xxvi. It is found that the second tour took place in the summer of 1793 and the first 'on a previous occasion'. It is on that previous occasion that J.M.W. Turner started to paint in oil.

The first oil is said, by Miller, to be 'View of Rochester' started in Rochester using oil paints purchased in Rochester. He mentions a claim by Dr. Nixon, Bishop of Tasmania, to be in possession of Turner's first finished oil 'done during this journey' and finished in Foots Cray. In a footnote Miller describes a picture which he doubts is Turner's first finished oil and is said to be 'Rochester Castle with Fishermen Drawing Boats Ashore In A Gale of Wind'.

Miller's narrative alone is sufficient to place the date of the first oil to before the summer of 1793.

However, in order to understand his narrative around the first oil, additional information is required. On a purely evidence led basis it is found that for Turner's first oil painting, made in Rochester, there is an article in 'Once A Week' magazine and two auctions which identify the first oil as 'Rochester Castle and the Adjacent Ground'. Dr Nixon's picture therefore cannot be the first oil but having been completed during the same tour must be subsequent to the first, and there being evidence for only two oils painted during this tour, must be the second. Evidence for this second oil is found in exhibition catalogues, press cuttings and appearances at auctions. The title which best describes it is, 'The Country Waggon, Snowdon - early morning'. Additional support for the content of this picture is found in A J Finberg's 'The Life Of JMW Turner' (1939, reprint 1969) where Turner's first visit to Wales is recorded as being around May 1792, the first Kent tour in September 1792 and the second Kent tour in August 1793; so Turner would have had Welsh tour sketches drawn in May 1792; four months before the first Kent tour.

It is concluded that Turner painted two oils in September 1792:

1. 'Rochester Castle and the Adjacent Ground', at Rochester.
2. 'The Country Waggon, Snowdon - Early Morning', at Foots Cray.

and that 'Rochester Castle with Fishermen Drawing Boats Ashore In A Gale of Wind', as described by Miller (and which he doubted was Turner's first finished oil) whilst possibly just another description of 'Rochester Castle and the Adjacent Ground', could well be a red-herring.

Go To Discussion
11 pages

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Turner's First Two Oils
Painted during Kent Tour 1
Evidence summary with links

Turner and Girtin's Picturesque Views, Sixty Years Since
edited by Thomas Miller, published by Joseph Hogarth, 1854

• In Rochester JMW Turner painted his first oil, 'View of Rochester', the 'Douglas commission'.
  This picture is described in three sources; the so-called 'Nephew's Letter' (1857) as 'Rochester Castle and the Adjacent Ground' and two auctions, Christie's 14th May 1860 lot 168 and Christie's 29th June 1872 lot 91 as 'Rochester Castle'. In these sources it is clearly a picture in the possession of Dr. Hering from the collection of Rev. James Douglas. Nowhere in these three sources is there any reference to fishermen, boats or gales of wind.
  John Burnet wrote (in 1852) that Hering's picture, "shows a decided emenation from Loutherbourg and Wilson" (from an essay published in the Art Journal of January 1852).
  A footnote in Miller's text describes a picture 'Rochester Castle with Fishermen Drawing Boats Ashore In A Gale of Wind'
  There are, therefore, two candidates for the first oil picture and these may simply be different descriptions of the same picture:
  1. 'Rochester Castle and the Adjacent Ground', as named in the Nephew's Letter
  2. 'Rochester Castle with Fishermen Drawing Boats Ashore In A Gale of Wind', as described by Miller if he was refering to the Douglas commission in his footnote.
  
  Miller wrote of a second oil 'done in this journey' for Rev. Robert Nixon. Miller did not say that it was started in Rochester:
• In Foot's Cray Turner 'finished' his second oil. There are two candidates for the second oil:
  1. 'Rochester Castle with Fishermen Drawing Boats Ashore In A Gale of Wind'
     The title from Miller's footnote if he was referring to Rev. Robert Nixon's picture.
  2. 'The Country Waggon, Snowdon - Early Morning'
     This is the picture which Rev. Dr. Francis Russell Nixon, Bishop of Tasmania believed to be 'Turner's first production in oils' and which was painted for his father, Rev. Robert Nixon.
  This second oil remained with Rev. Robert Nixon at Foots Cray. Rev. Dr. Francis Russell Nixon, Bishop of Tasmania was Rev. Robert Nixon's second son; there is no record of the works that passed from Robert's collection to his first son, George Russell Nixon, there can, therefore, be no presumption as to which son the picture started on this tour and finished at Foots Cray actually descended to.(All that can be said with certainty is that if the second oil was 'The Country Waggon, Snowdon - Early Morning' then it definitely descended to Francis. Conversely, if the second oil was 'Rochester Castle with Fishermen Drawing Boats Ashore In A Gale of Wind' then it definitely did not descend to Francis and therefore it may have gone to George.)