Audio Stop 206

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We hover over a flax-yellow body of water lined with ships to our left and right, which are silhouetted against a moonlit, cloud-veiled sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition. The moon hangs to our left of center in the sky, its light reflecting on the clouds in a bright, hourglass shape to create a tunnel-like effect. The sea below turns from a gold color close to us to pale blue along the horizon. To our left, one ship with gray sails is cut off by the edge of the canvas and another, also with gray sails, is situated farther from us. A small, dark rowboat with two passengers moves between them. Light from the windows in buildings along the distant horizon to our left reflect in the water, and another building, a factory, spouts white flame from its chimney. More dark ships line the waterway to our right, their spiky masts black against the sky. Three flames, one orange between two pale yellow fires, flare in the darkness in front of the ship closest to us. The forms of men shoveling coal, crates, and barges are dark silhouettes against the firelight and smoke. More rowboats float among the boats in the distance. Near the lower right corner of the canvas, a broad, flat fragment of wood floats close to us. The hot orange and black on the right side of the painting contrasts with the silvery gray, light blue, and white that fills much of the rest of the composition. The painting was created with thick, blended brushstrokes throughout, giving the scene a hazy look. The texture of some of the brushstrokes is especially noticeable, as where the moon casts white light onto the water and in the clouds. The artist signed a buoy floating to our left with his initials, “JMWT.”

Joseph Mallord William Turner

Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight, 1835

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 57

Ecologist Joel Fodrie from the University of North Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences and Senior curator Franklin Kelly discuss Turner’s vivid depiction of industry and climate change in 19th-century England.

Read full audio transcript

NARRATOR:
In northern England in the early 19th century, the River Tyne was used to transport vast quantities of coal mined nearby, out to sea en route to London. Joseph Mallord William Turner shows us men heaving coal by night, from flat-bottom boats, known as keels, onto tall-masted, seagoing ships. Smoke billows from fiery torches that illuminate their labor. Here’s curator Franklin Kelly:

FRANK KELLY:
It draws me in most immediately by this remarkable display of moonlight. Where you see this not just in the sky but a line of reflected light on the water which draws you into the distance. The cooler light of the moon and the contrasting light of those torches immediately sets up a kind of visual pushing and pulling for our attention.

NARRATOR:
Turner’s view is a romantic one – but the work happening on the river was, in reality, not as picturesque.

FRANK KELLY:
And of course in the 1830s, the Industrial Revolution was taking hold and changing England dramatically - and what was driving most of the engines of the Industrial Revolution? Coal.

NARRATOR:
The coal transportation on the River Tyne would have had serious and lasting environmental impacts.

Professor Joel Fodrie of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is an estuarine and fisheries ecologist – an expert on rivers.

JOEL FODRIE:
I'm certainly struck by these activities as they were happening in this painting. They did not have the data or the long-term understanding of the changes that we now are beginning to understand.

We have built ports, we have built seawalls, we have built big docks. And so these are pervasive, and very profound changes to the form and nature of rivers and estuaries. These are acute local changes, that are happening everywhere.

And so I'm struck by the shift in mindset and the things that we’re concerned about now in terms of environmental health, environmental quality, human modification of the planet.

Our economies are important. Jobs are important - I look at this waterfront and I see jobs! And so trying to balance those things is really the fine razor’s edge that we seem to be on these days.

NARRATOR:
Turner’s striking painting gives us a glimpse into the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and raises questions on the state of the natural world, as the environment continues to evolve in response to human activity.

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