J.M.W. Turner (23 April 1775 19 December 1851), was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style can be said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. 140 of his watercolors and oil paintings can currently be seen in a retrospective of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the beginning of his career, many of his paintings appeared more detail oriented. He is best known for his abstract images later in life, focused around form and light. These images spoke less about the description of the landscapes than his previous work, instead providing an intent to “stun the soul.”
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4 comments what a truely masterful painter i am researching my family tree as somewhere i am related how did he capture light and colour like that its like your there in the painting unreal
I need some research help on a painting I have with sihnature Turner.
I should like to hear more about Turner’s color. Do we know who influenced him and how he came to make his color so different from other British painters?
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Maurice Leon Says:
J. M. W. TURNER Exhibit
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM of ART
July 1 – September 30, 2008
Review by Maury Leon & Martha Halperin
07/05/2008
DID YOU KNOW that there are more Turner paintings in the United States than in any country other than England? That two of the best know Turner paintings, ‘The Slave Ship,’ is in the Boston Museum of Fine Ares and ‘The Burning of the Houses of Commons’ is Cleveland Institute of Art but, most Turner paintings are in the Tate in London.
Turner worked in London in the early-mid 1800s - at the height of British Empire, when Britain truly ruled the waves. The Empire was maintained by sea power and much of his work focused on the sea - with the emotion and danger of sky and sea. His ’style’ was leading edge - impressionist (Constable was a contemporary, painting in traditional - realistic, lyrical style) becoming increasingly expressionists (Burning of the House of Lords and Parliament). The series of oil-on-canvases he did on ‘Burning. . . Parliament’ could have been done by any impressionist - or 20th century expressionist. He was versatile, painting traditional landscapes, wonderful production while in Venice and Rome, concerned with historical themes, and, of course, Empire. Remarkably, he did not paint portraits.
When thinking of English painters, Gainsborough, Romney, Constable comes to mind – and Turner. J. M. W. Turner. Turner transcends these three masters. Gainsborough, Romney, Constable show an idyllic vision of the world of the gentry, their manners, gardens and estate houses. Turner painted in that style too, but there is another Turner, the Master whose works show another Britain, Britain at its most powerful, as Master of the Seas.
The Tate Modern has sent a treasure to the Met Museum. This massive exhibit of over 140 pieces presents an exhaustive, thrilling panorama defining heroic British art at the peak of Empire. Turner’s skill in oil-on-canvas is superb: he is a master of oil-on-paper and watercolor. Royal Academy at fourteen years, he is an excellent draughtsman. Turner’s rustic view of nature, the world of the gentry, his interest in mythology, the rise and dominance of the British navy, the advent of the Industrial Age, all are subjects of his artistic concern. His style ranges from classical to modern, from reproduction to representational.
When entering the exhibit the viewer faces a wall with the large painting, ‘The Shipwreck’. This is the heart of Turner, what Turner is about: his seascapes, the British navy, the advent of the Industrial Age, are subjects of his artistic concern. His style ranges from classical to modern, from reproduction to representational. Not quite all. His works on genteel England are seen in canvases like ‘Mortlake Terrace.’ In ‘The Falls of on the Rhine’ the viewer can hear the deafening roar of the tumbling water bouncing off cottage-size rock. Impressionist-like brush strokes and the seemingly random application
of paint give dimension to the scene. In more traditional landscapes, in ‘The Pass at St. Goddard,’ Turner paints thin paths in the mountains, working their way line-like along
the mountain edges.
It is in Turner ‘s seascapes that he achieves his greatest heights. There are tens upon tens of brilliant seascapes, each worthy of study. His paintings are the visual representation of the majesty and power of the British Empire as it emerged in the early 1800s and at its height. Sailing-ships were the lifeline that held empire together. Many battles were fought to secure and maintain Empire. The battle of Trafalgar was among the most important. Battle ships at close-range with the forest of masts and levels of gundecks illustrate power of the close-quarter chaos of such battles. Victory in dreaded sea battles, as seen in ‘The Death of Nelson’ is the price pay to made England the true world Empire. But it was not all grandeur and glory: ‘Disaster at Sea’ shows sick and lame women and children on a convict ship being thrown overboard in a heavy sea to ‘lighten the load.”
Turner shows the suffering of war and the dangers of arrogance in Empire. His painting of ‘Hannibal Crossing the Alps’ depicts the hardship of war. The cost to the defeated is shown in the painting of the ‘Roman women sending their children to Carthage into slavery.’
In he 1834 ‘The Burning of The House of Lords and Commons’ is a signature work. The brilliant colors, the intensity and heat of this event sear the imagination. Turner acknowledges the Industrial Revolution in his painting of a stream-engine and train: ‘Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway’ (1844) marking the beginning of the end of the age of the horse and wagon. The painting of ‘the fighting Temeraire being towed by a steam-powered tug to the breaking yard’ marks the transition from sail to steam.
On a lighter note, his stays in sea-rich Venice provided fertile ground for further exploration of water, land and sky. In his “Sun Rise and Sea Monsters, and Procession of Boats with Distant Smoke‘ the intensity of light in the blazing sun of yellow and white and red reveal him as a master impressionist, as do his views of the Grand Canal at ‘Salude’ and ‘S. Giorgio Maggiore.’
Turner’s watercolors and oils on paper deserve considerable attention. A contemporary painter could have done his sequence of oil on paper studies on the ‘Burning of the House of Commons and Lords’ and, his ‘unfinished works’’ seem finished to the contemporary eye.
For those who want more, there is a marvelous Turner in the Library of the Frick, at 1 East 70th St., a couple of blocks south on Fifth Avenue and a couple steps east. It is a painting of a working sailboat in Calais harbor, ‘Calais Pier.’ Walking past the painting, the boat appears to be turning into the wind.