Audio Stop 406

00:00 00:00

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

Read full audio transcript

Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight, by Joseph Mallord William Turner, painted in 1835. Oil on canvas. The painted surface is about 3 feet high by 4 feet wide.

This description is nearly 2 minutes long.

In a seascape lit by a full moon, ships line a flax-colored, placid waterway. To the right, tiny people work in and among the boats, amid flares of reddish firelight; they are surrounded by a smoke-shrouded haze.

The scene is thickly painted with visible brushstrokes, especially in the luminous sky.

The sea spans the bottom third of the canvas.

The upper part of the painting is devoted to the sky. Dominating the sky is the full moon, just to the left of center.

There, a flood of white moonlight breaks through the thickly painted clouds, which extend out from the bright disk of the moon like an hourglass. The sky around the bright vortex deepens from slate blue and violet at the sides to deep, indigo blue along the top edge.

A band of moonlight on the sea makes a pathway of light reaching towards the viewer.

Two square rigged ships float with their sails unfurled near the left edge of the painting. Beyond them, a distant cluster of factory chimneys and ships are suggested with a few touches and thin lines in flint gray paint.

Along the right edge of the canvas, a row of dark, flat-bottomed boats is silhouetted against flares of orange and white flames from torches. Tiny people can be made out, transferring coal to more sailing ships under dark gray, smokey clouds.

More ships in the distance shimmer along the horizon, nearly blending into the moonlit sky.

West Building Verbal Descriptions