J. M. W. Turner
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Self portrait, oil on canvas, circa 1799 |
Joseph Mallord William Turner (born in
Covent Garden,
London on
April 23 1775 (exact date disputed), died
December 19 1851) was an
English Romantic landscape artist, whose style can be said to have laid the foundation for
Impressionism.
His father, William Turner, was a wig-maker who later became a barber. His mother, Mary Marshall, a housewife, became increasingly mentally unstable during her early years, perhaps in part due to the early death of Turner's younger sister in
1786. She died in
1804, having been committed to a
mental asylum.
Possibly due to the load placed on the family by these problems, the young Turner was sent in
1785 to stay with his uncle on his mother's side in
Brentford, which was then a small town west of
London on the banks of the
Thames. It was here that he first expressed an interest in painting. A year later he went to school in
Margate in
Kent to the east of London in the area of the
Thames estuary. At this time he had been creating many paintings, which his father exhibited in his shop window.
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The fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, painted 1839. |
He entered the
Royal Academy of Art schools when he was only 14 years old. He was accepted when he was 15 years old. Turner was interested in being a part of the Royal Academy of Art unlike some of his contemporaries. At first Turner showed a keen interest in architecture but was advised to keep to painting by the architect
Thomas Hardwick (junior).
Sir Joshua Reynolds, the president of the Royal Academy at that time, chaired the panel that admitted him. A
watercolour of his was accepted for the
Summer Exhibition of
1790 after only one year's study. He exhibited his first
oil painting in
1796. Throughout the rest of his life, he regularly exhibited at the academy.
He is commonly known as "the painter of light". Although renowned for his oils, Turner is also regarded as one of the founders of English watercolour landscape painting.
One of his most famous oil paintings is
The fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, painted in
1839, which hangs in the
National Gallery, London. See also
The Golden Bough.
Turner travelled widely in Europe, starting with
France and
Switzerland in
1802 and studying in the
Louvre in
Paris in the same year. He also made many visits to
Venice during his lifetime. On a visit to
Lyme Regis, in
Dorset,
England, he painted a stormy scene (now in the
Cincinnati,
Ohio Art Museum). He never married, although he had a mistress, Sarah Danby, by whom he had two daughters.
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The shipwreck of the Minotaur, oil on canvas. |
As he grew older, Turner became more eccentric. He had few close friends, except for his father, who lived with him for thirty years, eventually working as his studio assistant. His father died in
1829, which had a profound effect on him, and thereafter he was subject to bouts of
depression.
He died in his house in
Cheyne Walk,
Chelsea on
19 December 1851. At his request he was buried in
St Paul's Cathedral, where he lies next to Sir Joshua Reynolds. His last exhibition at the Royal Academy was in
1850.
Turner's talent was recognized early in his life, becoming a full art
academician at the age of 23. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate and create paintings that astonished many. According to David Piper's
The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognized as an artistic genius: influential English art critic
John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321)
Turner is a romantic painter interested in the
Sublime; he portrays the awesome, untamed power of Nature towards mankind.The subject of shipwrecks, fires or natural catastrophes as well as natural phenomena (like sunlight, storm, rain, fog) is a statement of the smallness of mankind towards Nature. In his paintings humans are depicted as mere peons of Nature.Like most Romanticists, Nature (landscape) is a reflection of the own´s soul or mood. He focused on the violent power of the sea, as seen in
Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and
The Slave Ship (1840).
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Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844). |
His first works, such as
Tintern Abbey (1795) and
Venice: S. Giorgio Maggiore (1819), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in
Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), his emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. Turner perfected his technique to develop the theme through his years. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolor technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and disappearing atmospheric effects. (Piper 321)
In his late years, he used oils even less, and turned to almost pure light with shimmering color. Examples of his later style can be seen in
Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable.
Turner, along with
John Constable, was at the forefront of English painting by his later years, and both were popular in France as well. Impressionists carefully studied his techniques, although they sought to diminish the power of his paintings. In the
modern art era, advocates of
abstract art were also influenced by Turner.
It has been suggested that the high levels of ash in the atmosphere during the 1816
Year Without a Summer, which led to unusually spectacular sunsets during this period, were an inspiration for some of Turner's work.
Turner left a large fortune which he hoped would be used to support what he called "decayed artists". His collection of finished paintings was bequeathed to the British nation, and he intended that a special gallery would be built to house them. This did not come to pass owing to a failure to agree where to site it and then to the parsimony of British governments. Twenty two years after his death, the British Parliament passed an Act allowing his paintings to be lent to museums outside London, and so began the process of scattering his pictures, which Turner had wanted to be kept together. In 1987 the main part of the Turner Collection was rehoused in the
Clore Gallery at the
Tate Britain, but the design was widely criticised.
A prestigious annual art award, the
Turner Prize, created in
1984, was named in Turner's honour, but has become increasingly controversial, having promoted art which has no apparent connection with Turner's. A major exhibition, "Turner's Britain" , with material, (including
The Fighting Temeraire) on loan from around the globe, was held at
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery from
7 November 2003 to
8 February 2004. [
1]
In 2005 Turner's
The Fighting Temeraire was voted Britain's "greatest painting" in a public poll organized by the
BBC.[
2] In April 2006
Christie's New York auctioned
Giudecca, La Donna Della Salute and San Giorgio, a view of Venice exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1841, for
US$35.8 million, setting a new record for a Turner. The
New York Times stated that according to two sources who had requested anonymity the buyer was casino magnate
Stephen Wynn.
*1799 -
Warkworth Castle, Northumberland - Thunder Storm Approaching at Sun-Set, oil on canvas -
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
*1806 -
The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory, oil on canvas -
Tate Gallery, London
*1812 -
Snow StormHannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps, oil on canvas, Tate Gallery, London
*1817 -
Erruption of Vesuvius, oil on canvas, Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven
*1822 -
The Battle of Trafalgar, oil on canvas,
National Maritime Museum,
Greenwich, London
*1829 -
Odysseus Deriding Polyphemus, oil on canvas,
*1835 -
The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, oil on canvas,
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
*1835 -
The Grand Canal, Venice, oil on canvas,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
*1838 -
The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken up, oil on canvas,
National Gallery, London
*1840 -
Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), oil on canvas,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston*1842 -
Fishing Boats with Hucksters Bargaining for Fish, oil on canvas,
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago*1844 -
Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London
*
English school of painting*
British art*
List of British painters*
Romanticism*
Turner's Gallery at the Tate Britain
*
Turner's Journeys of the Imagination*
J.M.W. Turner at Olga's Gallery*
The Twickenham Museum - J M W Turner*
The Independent Turner Society
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