THE VORTEX AS A COMPOSITIONAL MOTIF
  • Paintings based on the vortex

see Turner's painting based on Goethe's theory: Light and Colour (1843)

 

to be found on the Tate Gallery website
  • The vortex and the frame of the painting

A vortex composition produces a circle as the main structural motif, favouring the square rather than the rectangle for the shape of the frame, as enveloping the circle more closely.

In Turner's companion paintings War and Peace (1842), the corners of the square have even been cut off to produce an octagonal form, closer to the circle, following the vortex composition.