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Few British artists have ever achieved such a wide range of style in oil painting, watercolour, drawing and engraving as J. M. W. Turner. He had a precocious gift that was developed over a lifetime of experiment and innovation. This classic book in the World of Art series traces the artists career from youthful pictureseque views and watercolours of Gothic ruins to the romantic landscape and historical compositions of his maturity, and the astonishing art of his later years. In these late paintings Turners tragic sense of life is stated most profoundly and the work was unintelligible to his contemporaries but his reputation as the greatest British painter now rests on our understanding of these as pioneering explorations of abstraction, prefiguring the art of the 20th century. Graham Reynolds weaves together the artists biography with sensitive criticism of his work, through all phases of his career, in this classic work first published in 1969 that has long served as an outstanding introduction to Turners life and art. It has now been revised and updated by the curator of the Turner Bequest at Tate, David Blayney Brown, to reflect recent discoveries and interpretations, and the illustrations are in full colour for the first time. It will serve as the best available study of this perennially popular artist for a new generation of readers.
The life of one of Western art's most admired and misunderstood painters J.M.W. Turner is one of the most important figures in Western art, and his visionary work paved the way for a revolution in landscape painting. Over the course of his lifetime, Turner strove to liberate painting from an antiquated system of patronage. Bringing a new level of expression and color to his canvases, he paved the way for the modern artist. Turner was very much a man of his changing era. In his lifetime, he saw Britain ravaged by Napoleonic wars, revived by the Industrial Revolution, and embarked upon a new moment of Imperial glory with the ascendancy of Queen Victoria. His own life embodied astonishing transformation. Born the son of a barber in Covent Garden, he was buried amid pomp and ceremony in St. Paul's Cathedral. Turner was accepted into the prestigious Royal Academy at the height of the French Revolution when a climate of fear dominated Britain. Unable to travel abroad he explored at home, reimagining the landscape to create some of the most iconic scenes of his country. But his work always had a profound human element. When a moment of peace allowed travel into Europe, Turner was one of the first artists to capture the beauty of the Alps, to revive Venice as a subject, and to follow in Byron’s footsteps through the Rhine country. While he was commercially successful for most of his career, Turner's personal life remained fraught. His mother suffered from mental illness and was committed to Bedlam. Turner never married but had several long-term mistresses and illegitimate daughters. His erotic drawings were numerous but were covered up by prurient Victorians after his death. Turner's late, impressionistic work was held up by his Victorian detractors as example of a creeping madness. Affection for the artist’s work soured. John Ruskin, the greatest of all 19th century art critics, did what he could to rescue Turner’s reputation, but Turner’s very last works confounded even his greatest defender. TURNER humanizes this surprising genius while placing him in his fascinating historical context. Franny Moyle brilliantly tells the story of the man to give us an astonishing portrait of the artist and a vivid evocation of Britain and Europe in flux.
Between 1794, when he was 19, and his death at the age of 75 in 1851, Turner was involved in the production of over 800 prints based on his paintings, watercolours and drawings. The object of Turner Printsis to survey this corpus of graphic work and to place it in the context of Turner's art as a whole. The book provides ample evidence for the author's claim that the 'prints with which Turner was involved for over half a century must be considered as one of the major factors of his long working life'. The eight chapters into which the book is divided provide a broadly chronological survey of Turner's engraved work, ranging from the early topographical engravings of the 1790s to the marvellous copper and steel plates of his final years. One chapter is devoted to the Liber Studiorum, the most important of all Turner's printmaking ventures, and one to the later mezzotints. Two more deal with the topographical and illustrative steel engravings of the later 1820s and 30s, which formed the basis of his international reputation in the last years of his life. Another chapter discusses the great topographical series, such as Picturesque Views in England and Wales, in which Turner made his most influential contributions to the development of British engraving. Each chapter is fully illustrated, and great pains have been taken to achieve the highest quality of reproduction in the plates. The book includes two appendices, providing lists of all the engravings based on those in the relevant catalogues of W G Rawlinson and A J Finberg, a biographical outline and a glossary of Printmaking Terms. The first modern book devoted exclusively to its subject, Turner Printswill be essential reading for all those interested in the art and life of England's most popular artist.