Description
“Vividly natural and effective. It can hardly be admired too much.” These words from La Belle Assemblée reflect the enthusiasm that greeted this magnificent painting when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1831. Turner had always shown an instinctive understanding of the sea, and Fort Vimieux with its vivid colors, typical of his work. After his first two trips to Italy, it recalls masterpieces such as The Fighting Temeraire (National Gallery), completed seven years later. In fact, it is interesting to note that Fort Vimieuxlater belonged to the celebrated American collector James Lenox, the first American owner of any work by Turner, who had unsuccessfully tried to persuade the artist to sell him Fighting Temeraire for any price he could name.
When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1831, Fort Vimieux had no specific title in the catalogue, but was accompanied by a lengthy quotation:
“In this arduous service (of Reconnaissance) on the French coast in 1805, one of our cruisers ran aground and had to endure the attack of the Flying Artillery along the coast, the Batteries and Fort of Vimieux, which fired hot shot, until she could get away on the rising tide, which set in with all the appearance of a stormy night.”
Turner refers to an action off Vimereux (now called Wimereux), a short distance from the coast of Boulogne. During 1804 and 1805, Napoleon had assembled a formidable invasion flotilla which, by July 1805, comprised 1,337 armed vessels and 154 unarmed ones. These were divided into six large divisions, and the fourth, commanded by Captain Daugier, occupied the port of Vimereux. During this period, the British fleet was involved in numerous small-scale actions, as it tried to lure French ships beyond the range of the batteries along the coast. One such action near Vimereux, on 18 July 1805, involved a squadron that included the Immortalité , the Hebe and the Arab. In 1829, Turner sketched the coast and the fort in a pen-and-ink study that appears on p. 17 of sketchbook CCLX in the Turner Bequest, where “Vimereux” is clearly inscribed (see fig. 1). He was probably there while gathering material for his ambitious plan to illustrate the scenery of the “Great Rivers of Europe” (a project that was ultimately limited to the French rivers).
Turner depicts the noble vessel lying on its side after running aground off the coast. It has been secured with two anchors, one in the foreground and the other on the distant beach to the right. The sea is calm, and the brilliant red setting sun lights the sky, sea, and wet sand with a fierce flame. The ship is in a very precarious position, under fire both from the distant fort and from the shore batteries from which the scene is viewed. Two shots from the latter have fallen short and can be seen in the foreground, while another shot from the distant fort has struck the ship on its port side. Smoke from the gunfire can be seen above the horizon. On the headland to the left, figures have gathered to observe the incident. The situation has been desperate, but the worst is now over because the light will soon fade.
The success of Fort Vimieux is the result of Turner’s lifelong understanding of the sea. Born within sight and sound of the River Thames, he was sent to stay on the coast at Margate when he was 11 years old. His love of the sea at Margate stayed with him throughout his life, and he continued to paint there until his death. His first exhibited oil painting was a marine subject, Fishermen at Sea (Tate Gallery); the first print made after one of his paintings was also a marine subject, The Shipwreck and his first major commission for a painting was The Bridgewater Seapiece.(private collection), one of his largest early marine compositions. He was an enthusiastic sailor and fisherman, and his sketchbooks contain numerous examples of his fascination with the sea. His personal experiences of the dangers of the sea certainly helped sharpen his powers of observation: one famous early example dates to 1802, when he visited France and his boat nearly flooded as he was disembarking at Calais. It is unsurprising that the famous Pier at Calais (National Gallery), although not directly related to this experience, certainly contributed to the vivid depiction of an elemental and uncontrollable sea. It is no surprise that in his later works, from the mid-1820s until his death in 1851, marine subjects outnumbered all others.
Fort Vimieux is part of a group of paintings in which Turner responded to Britain's struggle against the French in the Napoleonic Wars. As an islander and a passionate sailor, he could hardly have remained unmoved by Nelson's triumph and death at Trafalgar. He made a special trip to sketch the Victory when she entered the Medway and made detailed sketches aboard the ship. Soon afterwards, he painted The Battle of Trafalgar (Tate Gallery), as well as The Victory Returning from Trafalgar (Yale Center for British Art), and returned to the subject in 1823 with the enormous painting commissioned by the Prince of Wales (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich). He painted The Field of Waterloo(Tate Gallery) in 1818, and his 1842 Royal Academy exhibit entitled War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet (Tate Gallery) included the figure of Napoleon in exile on Saint Helena.
However, while the subject partly reflects Britain's valiant efforts to prevent a French invasion, the inspiration for the composition of Fort Vimieux probably came from Bonington, an artist whom Turner greatly admired. Bonington had died in 1828, and the sale of his studio took place in London in June 1829. This sale included several scenes of the beach at Calais, and in 1830 Turner exhibited Calais Sands (Bury Art Gallery—see fig. 2) at the Royal Academy, a painting that deliberately repeats a subject of which Bonington was a recognized master. Calais Sands and Fort Vimieuxare the same size, and both paintings draw on Turner's appreciation of Bonington's genius, although both also bear Turner's distinctive touch of a fiery sunset. Another painting closely related to the composition of Fort Vimieux is A Ship Enground of c. 1828 (Tate Gallery—fig. 3), in which a warship lies on its side in the light of the setting sun, though the image lacks the drama of the later work.
Fort Vimieux remained in the artist’s possession until around 1845, when it was acquired by Charles Meigh of Grove House in Shelton, Staffordshire. Meigh was the grandson of a successful Staffordshire pottery manufacturer and successfully ran the business himself, overseeing the company’s exhibition at the Great Exhibition in 1851. He was said to have a large and valuable collection that included works by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Wright of Derby, West, Constable and many Victorian artists. He also owned 3 watercolours by Turner: Maecenas’ Villa, View of Magdalen College and View of Box Hill, Surrey . The pictures were displayed in a private gallery attached to his house, “one of the finest and largest private collections of pictures in the country” (Art Union , December 1845, p. 367). In 1850, Fort Vimieux was sold, as part of a 2-day sale dedicated to Meigh’s collection, to the notable Colonel James Lenox, a strict Presbyterian and heir to one of New York’s great real-estate fortunes. Lenox lived at 53 Fifth Avenue, and his celebrated book collection was housed in a purpose-built building on Fifth Avenue, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, which eventually merged with the Astor Library to become the main branch of the New York Public Library. In 1845, Lenox had acquired, directly from the artist, Turner’s Staffa, Fingal’s Cave (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven), which became the first work by Turner to go to America. A few years later, Lenox tried to persuade Turner to sell himThe Fighting Temeraire but without success. Lenox gave his entire collection to the trust that owned his library, and it became the New York Public Library. The current owner’s father bought the painting at the Library sale in 1956.
Turner's contemporaries were enthusiastic in their praise of Fort Vimieux. The words of the critic of La Belle Assemblée have been quoted above, and The Spectator of May 7 considered Turner's two coastal scenes to be “full of beauty.” The most laudatory review appeared in the Library of Fine Arts (i, no. 5, p. 419):
“The red-hot shot, the sun of a sanguine hue ‘low, deep, and pale,’ the desolate and frightened sea-gull, the ball whizzing through the water, and the stranded vessel present a vivid picture of the event, while the imagination of the whole is grand and magnificent. When will Mr. Turner show symptoms of decline?... his genius is as green as when we first saw it in the infancy of our life”.
Fort Vimieux ranks No. 86 on the list of famous paintings