J. M. W. Turner and Joseph Vernet
Landscape Artists from Wilson to Girtin
Séminaire #05 : The Sublime and the Picturesque : An Introduction [2]
Séminaire #09 : J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) par Charlotte Ribeyrol (05-02-13)
You can find all of Turner's works here if you like.
Séminaire #09 : J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) par Charlotte Ribeyrol (05-02-13)
You can find all of Turner's works here if you like.
Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely ; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. However, Turner was recognised as an artistic genius : the influential English art critic John Ruskin described him as the artist who could most 'stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature.'
Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were found in shipwrecks, fires (such as The Burning of Parliament (1834), an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). In Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects.
Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were found in shipwrecks, fires (such as The Burning of Parliament (1834), an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). In Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects.
Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand, but its vulnerability amid the sublime nature of the world on the other. Sublime here means 'awe-inspiring', savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God – a theme that romanticist artists and poets were exploring in this period. To Turner, light was the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he focused the subject matter of his later paintings by concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be impressionistic, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena.