Overview
J.M.W. Turner was one of England’s greatest painters of the early nineteenth century – a whole wing at the Tate Gallery in London is devoted to his works. Famous for his landscapes, Turner painted a great selection including countryside, castles, dramatic scenes from history and mythology, fires, and marine scenes.
While his early paintings were topographical watercolours concerned with accurate observation of detail, his later works consisted mainly of sublime and historical landscapes. As with many Romantic painters, Turner sacrificed realistic detail in order to create an atmosphere. His landscapes, such as Buttermere Lake, with part of Cromack Water (about 1798), combine massive mountains or dramatic events like shipwrecks and fires, and have a theatrical, awe-inspiring grandeur. His later works were characterised by an expressionistic use of light and colour.
Born in London in 1775 of humble origins, Turner displayed his prodigious talent early – he liked to sketch landscapes in the countryside during his summer holidays. In his early years he was influenced by Welsh landscape painter Richard Wilson, who inspired Turner to take a more poetic and imaginative approach to depicting the countryside around him.
Turner was invited to join the Royal Academy as an associate at the age of twenty-four – the youngest permissible age. He became a full member in 1802 and in 1807, at the age of thirty-two, became Professor of Perspective. ‘His infrequent lectures were said to have been difficult to follow but worth it for his diagrams’ (1).
In 1802 Turner visited Europe for the first time. He made over 400 drawings on his trip and later painted many pictures from these sketches. He experienced the dramatic grandeur of the Swiss Alps and visited the Louvre, where he saw paintings by Claude Lorrain and Titian, who were later to influence his work.
In 1807 Turner started on one of his most enterprising works, Liber Studorium, a series of prints intended to show the range and variety of his work. Each of the fourteen parts contained five prints, categorized as historical, mountainous, pastoral, marine and architectural. Turner intended producing one hundred prints in the series, but never finished the collection, publishing seventy-one in all.
Over the next ten years Turner’s paintings became more luminous and atmospheric. Unlike his earlier topographical works, the details of his landscapes were diffused behind pearly films of colour.
In 1819 Turner toured Italy and made over 1500 drawings. These formed the basis for a large number of later works. The clarity of the Italian light had a big effect on his paintings – the colours became purer and more vivid. Turner’s palette became dominated by yellows, vermillion and white around this time, and he was ridiculed by critics for having ‘yellow fever’.
In 1828 Turner opened a studio in Rome, but the Italians disliked his work, preferring the crisp, detailed style of the Nazarenes – a group of painters who were fashionable both in Italy at this time, and later in England.
Turner died in 1851 and was buried at St Paul’s Cathedral. During his life this popular artist had amassed a fortune of over 140,000 pounds – an enormous amount in those days.
Championed by John Ruskin, England’s foremost art critic, Turner was immensely popular in his lifetime. His influence spread throughout England and to the colonies. Painter John Gully immigrated to New Zealand in 1852, a year after Turner’s death. Like many nineteenth century New Zealand painters, John Gully was greatly influenced by Turner’s style.
Reference
(1) The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. vol. 12. Chicago: Encyclopaedia
Britannica. p 135.
Text originally published in Tai Awatea, Te Papa's onfloor multimedia database.