Print made by Robert Carrick, ca. 1829–1904, Britishafter Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1775–1851, British
Title:
Rockets and Blue Lights
Date:
1852
Materials & Techniques:
Chromolithograph on moderately thick,smooth, cream wove paper mounted to beige board
Dimensions:
Sheet: 22 3/8 × 30 inches (56.8 × 76.2 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.8422
Gallery Label:
This chromolithograph reproduces Turner’s celebrated oil painting Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand ) to Warn Steamboats of Shoal Water, exhibited to great acclaim at the Royal Academy in 1840. A powerful example of Turner’s later engagement with maritime themes, the painting depicts the early nineteenth-century use of flares — which, when burned, would glow bluish white — to alert ships to dangerous sailing conditions. --- The choice to reproduce Rockets and Blue Lights in the complex and costly medium of chromolithography clearly indicates the extraordinarily high regard in which the painting was held. In the adjacent display case, a bound album shows how Carrick produced an image so faithful to Turner’s original that it uncannily foreshadows the products of modern mechanical reproduction. Gallery label for J. M. W. Turner: Romance and Reality (Yale Center for British Art, March - 29, 2025 - July 27, 2025)
