Joseph Mallord William Turner - Delphi Collected Works of J. M. W. Turner (Illustrated)

(17751851)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2014

Version 1

Masters of Art Series

J. M. W. Turner

By Delphi Classics, 2014

Masters of Art - J. M. W. Turner

First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2014.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 90890 962 6

Delphi Classics

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Turners birthplace, 21-22 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London

The same building today

The birthplace in 1850

THE HIGHLIGHTS

In this section, a sample of Turners most celebrated works is provided, with concise introductions, special detail reproductions and additional biographical images.

J. M. W. Turner is regarded by many as Britains greatest artist, whose works have become iconic symbols of the Romantic art movement. He became known as the painter of light, due to his increasing interest in brilliant colours and the contrast between light and dark in his many landscapes and seascapes.

Turner was born on 23 April 1775 in London. His father, William Turner (1745-1829), was a barber and wig maker and his mother, Mary Marshall, came from a family of butchers. In 1785, his mother suffered from severe mental illness and was admitted first to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in Old Street in 1799 and then Bethlem Hospital in 1800, where she died four years later. The young Turner was sent to stay with his maternal uncle, Joseph Mallord William Marshall, in Brentford, then a small town on the banks of the Thames, west of London. The earliest surviving artistic exercise by Turner is a series of simple colourings of engraved plates from Henry Boswell's Picturesque View of the Antiquities of England and Wales .

In 1786 Turner was sent to Margate on the north-east Kent coast. There he produced a series of drawings of the town and surrounding area foreshadowing his later work. Turner would return to the town many times in his adult life. By this time, Turners drawings were being exhibited in his father's shop window, selling for a few shillings. Many early sketches were architectural studies or exercises in perspective, as he worked for several architects in his adolescence. By the end of 1789, he had also begun to study under the topographical draughtsman Thomas Malton, who specialised in London views. Turner learned from him the basic conventions of the trade, copying and colouring outline prints of British castles and abbeys. Turner would later regard Malton as my real master".

That same year, the artist entered the Royal Academy of Art schools, at the age of fourteen; he was accepted into the academy a year later. Sir Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal Academy, chaired the panel that admitted him. The following canvas, Fishermen at Sea (1796), is the first oil painting that Turner exhibited at the Royal Academy, portraying a moonlit scene in the tradition of Horace Vernet, Philip de Loutherbourg and Joseph Wright, whose works fuelled the eighteenth century interest in nocturnal subjects.

In his younger years, Turner travelled around the British Isles extensively, filling his notebook with impressions he received wherever he went. When he was aged twenty, it was a visit to the Isle of Wight that inspired what would become his first great oil painting, Fishermen at Sea . It depicts a scene close to the famous Needles rocks, off the coast of the Isle of Wight. The sense of the overwhelming power of nature is a key theme of the painting, with the ascending brilliance of the moonlight contrasting strongly with the delicate vulnerability of the flickering lantern held by the fishermen, emphasising natures power over mankind. The jagged outlines of rocks and the violence of the waves enforce the impression of the fishermens perilous fate.

Detail

Detail

Detail

Moonlight by Philip de Loutherbourg, 1777 a likely source of inspiration

The Needles, Isle of Wight

Buttermere Lake, with Part of Cromackwater, a Shower was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1798 and depicts a Lake District scene conceived during Turners first tour of the region the previous year. The canvas is based on a sketchbook study, later worked up in watercolour to portray the stormy conditions, which the artist literally noted down for himself by writing the word Black on the surface of the lake. This strong use of black dominates the gloomy mood of the work, which is otherwise enlivened by the rainbow, a frequent motif employed by the artist. It is a work that concerns the power of the Sublime, encouraging the viewer to contemplate Natures grandeur.