Capturing water on canvas
The Rhine Falls in Schaffhausen has been a popular subject matter in the art world for centuries. English painter J.M.W. Turner captured the power of the water on canvas particularly impressively in the early 19th century.
Barbara Basting
Barbara Basting worked as a cultural editor and currently heads the visual arts division in the City of Zurich’s Culture Department.
But the natural phenomenon was already depicted much more realistically a generation earlier. The painting ‘Taufe Christi’ (1521) by Flemish artist Joachim Patenier features a waterfall flanked by large rocks in the top left corner, similar to those found at the Rhine Falls. But Patenier’s ‘world landscapes’, as we can see here, are always like collages composed of various elements. The painter was not concerned with producing a recognisable portrayal of an existing topography. The artistic representation of nature as an end in itself was unusual in his day.
One outstanding exception is ‘Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen’ by J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), painted in 1802. The English painter whose full name was Joseph Mallord William Turner, went all out with this work. At the centre of his large-format painting are masses of water breaking through a narrow gap in the rocks and crashing downwards. The two lumps of rock on the left look as though they are about to fall into the water, lending the painting an ominous air.
The almost Impressionist, unusual and bold painting style that Turner uses for the water is not applied to the group of people in the foreground. Here, he resorts instead to the proven formulas of a realistic painting style. For example, we can even see the wickerwork of the baskets. This tension between the different treatments of the various zones of the picture increases the dramatic effect of the waterfall.
And to top it all, he adds the hint of a rainbow and gathering storm clouds in the top left. He also overturns all the rules of perspective, making the water look as if it’s about to gush out of the frame like a tsunami. In violation of all physical laws, it then flows away tamely from the left of the picture, sparing both the onlooker and the group of people in the foreground.
Through the anonymous figures (or staffage), Turner makes a connection between the power of timeless and untamed nature and the insignificance of human concerns. The tiny figures are dwarfed by eternal nature – this was a highly popular theme of Romanticism and one that Turner used to capture the spirit of the time. The servants, who are busying themselves with the luggage and animals, are a reminder of the tribulations of travel at that time. Before the invention of the railway, navigable rivers were the most important transport routes for those who wanted to avoid long journeys on foot, on horseback, or in the best case by horse-drawn carriage. Natural obstacles such as the Rhine Falls forced travellers to unload and transfer their luggage.
The fact that Turner stopped off here on the first of his six trips across Switzerland is no coincidence. Considering his artistic interest in landscapes, which he had proven through watercolours and drawings of his previous walking tours in Wales and Scotland, the Rhine Falls was an obvious choice of destination for him at the time.
This is very clearly shown by a brief comparison with the approach taken by an only marginally older contemporary, Austrian painter Joseph Anton Koch (1768–1839) from Tyrol. Koch was an esteemed painter in his day, was considered the inventor of landscape painting, and loved waterfalls. As part of the group of artists known as the ‘Deutsch-Römer’, he settled in Rome and worked there successfully. It was during his travels in 1791 – a decade before Turner – that he stopped at the Rhine Falls. He produced four sketches of it from different perspectives. Koch seemed to be aiming for a depiction that was as faithful as possible.
The differences compared with Turner’s painting style are striking: Koch’s landscape is so static, it almost seems like a stage prop. Apart from the tiny shepherd with his flock, which primarily makes the waterfall seem very far away, the scene is deserted.
The cascading waterfall that gushes into an immeasurably deep hole is somewhat unsettling, and there’s no way we’d want to go anywhere near it. Even though it subsequently flows into a gentle stream, becoming part of an idyll, Koch does his utmost to increase our feeling of awe at the primal force of nature. His subject matter – the Schmadribach Falls – had previously been understood by his contemporaries as a painted declaration of the natural freedom of the individual in the context of the Enlightenment.
Turner’s experimental, subjective painting style became increasingly established over the course of the 19th century. Since the triumph of Impressionism we’ve become so used to it that artists like Koch seem insipid and dull to our modern eye with their perfect Academic style. Even Turner himself became significantly more radical over time, as shown by his late work featuring expressive brushwork and hazy clouds of colour.
The exaggerated painterly depiction of the forces of nature indirectly underscored the achievements of humans, who had managed to tame them, or at least harness them for their own purposes. At the same time, the painters were creating an idealised counterworld to reality.
