Fishermen at Sea
Fishermen at Sea, sometimes known as the Cholmeley Sea Piece, is an early oil painting by English artist J. M. W. Turner. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1796 and has been owned by the Tate Gallery since 1972. It was long considered the first oil painting by Turner to be exhibited at the Royal Academy. In 2024 the earlier The Rising Squall, Hot Wells was rediscovered and is an oil painting rather than a watercolour as previously believed. It was praised by contemporary critics and burnished Turner's reputation, both as an oil painter and as a painter of maritime scenes.
Description
The work measures and is in oils. Fisherman at Sea depicts a moonlit view of fishermen on rough seas near the Isle of Wight, and is a work of marine art. It presents the fragility of human life, represented by the small boat with its flickering lamp, and the sublime power of nature, represented by the dark clouded sky, the wide sea, and the threatening rocks in the background. The cold light of the Moon at night contrasts with the warmer glow of the fishermen's lantern. The chalk formations on the left of the work were traditionally thought to be the Needles on the western tip of the island; however, this has been contested, with some scholars suggesting that the chalk cliffs are instead the ones at the nearby Freshwater Bay.The work shows strong influence from the work of artists such as Claude Joseph Vernet, Philip James de Loutherbourg, and the intimate nocturnal scenes of Joseph Wright of Derby, especially in its handling of light and shadow.
Creation and history
Turner enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy of Arts at the age of 15. He began as primarily a watercolour painter in the early 1790s. His first public work was Lambeth Palace which he displayed at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1790. He likely experimented with oil painting privately while in the Academy's schools, but if so, these oil paintings were not publicly shown and were lost. In general, oil paintings were considered more prestigious in the era, and Turner recognized he would have to create them if he was to gain the recognition he desired; Fishermen would be his first major oil painting. Turner had also done maritime scenes in watercolour during the early 1790s, showing an early interest in them. He traveled to the Isle of Wight in 1795 and took a sketchbook with him; the drawings and watercolours made then may have been used as reference material when composing Fishermen at Sea. Turner had just turned twenty-one years old before the 1796 Royal Academy exhibition where Fishermen was unveiled to the public.The two paintings Fishermen at Sea and Moonlight, a Study at Millbank was sold together to an obscure person called "General Stewart" for £10. The painting was acquired by Sir Henry Charles Englefield; after his death in 1822, it was sold at Christie's on 8 March 1823, as View of the Needles, with the effect of Moon and Fire Light. It was bought by Englefield's nephew Francis Cholmeley, and it remained in the Cholmeley family for nearly 150 years, displayed at Brandsby Hall, and it became known as the Cholmeley Sea Piece. It was loaned regularly to the Tate Gallery from 1931, and sold to the Tate Gallery in 1972 by Francis William Alfred Fairfax-Cholmeley, with finance from the Beatrice Lizzie Benson Fund.