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Home>Plan Your Visit>Tours, Guides, and Maps>Self-Guided Tours>Audio Stop 406

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Joseph Mallord William Turner

## *Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight*, 1835

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.  

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