Sunrise with Sea Monsters

Turner created this painting in the coastal town of Margate,[2] in about 1845, near the end of his career. The painting, which measures 91.4 by 121.9 centimetres (36.0 in × 48.0 in), depicts a hazy yellow sunrise over a turbulent grey sea. Lurking in the lower left corner are pink and red swirls usually identified as the eponymous sea monsters.[1] The painting first went on display in 1906.[3]

Detail of the "monsters"

Beyond these basic elements, though, interpretations of the painting are the source of much study and open to speculation.[4] The Tate Gallery maintains that the "monsters" are just fish.[1] The Tate and other sources posit that a small section of four or five black cross-hatches might be a part of a fishing net.[5] Critic James Hamilton speculates that the mist may hide a steam driven paddleboat being consumed by giant fish[2] or whales, which were the subject of many of Turner's later works.[6] This steamboat theory is consistent with the interpretation of many of Turner's other later works, as a response to the technological changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution.[7] Other sources claim that the monsters really are just that: Michael Bockemuhl suggests that the swirls combine to form a single behemoth with large eyes and open mouth that is swimming towards the observer.[5] They may also be compared to the monstrous creatures in the water of Turner's famous Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon coming on.[4]

An alternative interpretation is that there is nothing there at all; at least nothing corporeal. Gunnar Schmidt claims the painting has two zones—the warm sunny sky, and the cold dark water—and that at their interface is a mass of drifting steam that has particles and vortices but no shape or limit.[8] In his view, it is this thermal process that is being compared to the "monstrous" power of industrial engines and machinery.[9] Elizabeth Ermarth goes further, comparing this painting with Turner's Mountain Landscape and Seascape with Storm Coming On, and claiming they are "almost entirely abstract representations of space as pure atmosphere, as pure medium of light."[10]

Other shapes may also be interpreted from the painting. The Tate Museum suggests that a larger patch of red and white nearby may be interpreted as a marine float,[1] while a 1907 catalogue from the museum suggests that icebergs can be seen in the distance.[11] Bockemuhl sees a dog's head in a shape in the water on the left of the monster.[5] This varied and fantastic imagery is noted in many of the analyses of Turner's later works. A paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine draws a connection between these figures and Turner's possession of acetate of morphia (a drug related to morphine), possibly used for the treatment of a toothache.[12]

• Bockemuhl, Michael (2000). J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: The World of Light and Colour. Taschen. p. 96. ISBN 3-8228-6325-4.
• Ermarth, Elizabeth Deeds (1996). The English Novel in History, 1840–1895. Psychology Press. p. 256. ISBN 0-415-01499-9.
• Hamilton, James (2007). Turner. Random House. p. 496. ISBN 978-0-8129-6791-3.
• Schmidt, Gunnar (2001). Anamorphotische Körper: Medizinische Bilder Vom Menschen Im 19. Jahrhundert. Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar. p. 253. ISBN 3-412-07701-1.
• Schultz, Max F. (2009). Paradise Preserved: Recreations in Eden in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England. Cambridge University Press. p. 388. ISBN 978-0-521-11892-7.
• Tate Gallery (1907). Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures and Sculpture in the National Gallery, British Art (15th ed.). pp. 358.
• Woodruff, A. W. (May 1980). "J M W Turner and some of his predecessors and successors, from the viewpoint of medical history". Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 73 (5): 381–392. doi:10.1177/014107688007300520. PMC 1437464. PMID 7017132.