The mystery of the moon: Explore Turner’s Dawn after the Wreck (c. 1841)
How John Ruskin invented a tragic backstory for this seascape and even "corrected" the moon to make his false narrative fit the facts
This atmospheric watercolour is one of JMW Turner’s most renowned late works.
Dawn after the Wreck (Around 1841) by J.M.W. TurnerCourtauld
However, the title may be deceiving. It isn’t even Turner’s own title for this work.
At this point in his career, Turner was less interested in telling stories or even depicting a particular place in detail. His chief concern was capturing the ever-changing effects of light and weather…
…like the reflection of light on wet sand, or the foam on the crest of a breaking wave.
The critic John Ruskin was convinced that Turner’s seascape concealed a tragic event. When he wrote about the watercolour in his book Modern Painters (1860), he called it Dawn after the Wreck.
This title invites us to view the scene as the aftermath of a shipwreck, with the howling dog the only survivor.
The touches of grey in the sky could be read as the smoke coming from a sinking ship.
Although Turner probably made the watercolour on the coast of Kent, near Margate, where many shipwrecks did occur, this may not have been his intention at all.
Dawn after the Wreck (Around 1841) by J.M.W. TurnerCourtauld
He might not even have depicted the shore at dawn. The horns of the crescent moon face left: the position in which it appears at sunset, not sunrise.
However, Ruskin wasn’t about to let this inconvenient detail interfere with his story. In 1860, the year he published Modern Painters, he also made a print after Dawn after the Wreck.
In the print, he quietly ‘corrected’ the orientation of the moon, so it faces the direction of dawn, rather than sunset.
Dawn after the Wreck (Around 1841) by J.M.W. TurnerCourtauld
The moon faces the wrong way for a sunrise, but the critic didn't care. Ruskin "corrected" Turner’s sky to fit his own tragic narrative, proving that history is often written by those who look at art, rather than those who make it.
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