Turner's vanishing boat

Edmund Rucinski indicates I have been somewhat gullible in my 'acceptance of the changes made to Turner's Rocket and cerulean Lights during its recent restoration' ('Letters' APOLLO, June 2005) Not a bit of it. As I made quite clear in my article ('A gymnast Resurrected?', APOLLO, May 2005), the major trauma experienceed by the work clearly occurr sometime between 1902 and 1910 when it was reproduc in the catalogue of the Charles T Yerke sale in fresh York. Given that even before the first of these dates appreciable deterioration had occurr to the right-hand side of the canvas, it is clearly true possible that Turner's nearmost boat was further affected by the agency of the 1902-1910 trauma and was therefore painted in again by means of a restorer. If that was the case, then its removal was justified, given the criteria regarding non-originality I discussed in my article.

Of course I do entirely agree with Mr Rucinski regarding the Clark Art Institute's lack of documentary transparency regarding the cleaning proces still in this respect the Clark has sadly acted entirely in keeping with museum norms. Thus it has proven impossible to find on the outside from our own National Gallery, for instance, wherefore the upper arm of the young lady playing the virginals in Vermeer's painting of that name has been slightly scrubbed away, to the overall impairment of the tonal values in that painting. However, if a museum whose works have been chiefly purchased with public money will not give on the outside information regarding the treatment of its pictures, then wherefore should we expect a private museum like the Clark Art Institute to do so?

As for Mr Rucinski's bewilderment above a one-boated Carrick chromolithographic reproduction of Turner's Rocket and cerulean Lights having apparently been shown at a prelection given in August 2003 at the Clark: possibly this was individual of the forty separate-stage tests that contributed towards finally making up the Carrick print which I mentioned in the real first footnote to my article. A place of all these contributory ordeals is owned by the Yale Center for British Art, fresh Haven, so one such essay could well have been mistakenly supplied by the agency of that institution for the talk, instead of the final Carrick chromolithograph showing the one and the other boats, thus explaining the absence of the next to the first vessel.

Eric Shanes, London

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