Turner
At fifteen, Turner was already exhibiting View of Lambeth. He soon acquired the reputation of an immensely clever watercolourist. A disciple of Girtin and Cozens, he showed in his choice and presentation of theme a picturesque imagination which seemed to mark him out for a brilliant career as an illustrator. He travelled, first in his native land and then on several occasions in France, the Rhine Valley, Switzerland and Italy. He soon began to look beyond illustration. However, even in works in which we are tempted to see only picturesque imagination, there appears his dominant and guiding ideal of lyric landscape. His choice of a single master from the past is an eloquent witness for he studied profoundly such canvases of Claude as he could find in England, copying and imitating them with a marvellous degree of perfection. His cult for the great painter never failed. He desired his Sun Rising through Vapour and Dido Building Carthage to be placed in the National Gallery side by side with two of Claude’s masterpieces. And, there, we may still see them and judge how legitimate was this proud and splendid homage. It was only in 1819 that Turner went to Italy, to go again in 1829 and 1840. Certainly Turner experienced emotions and found subjects for reverie which he later translated in terms of his own genius into symphonies of light and colour. Ardour is tempered with melancholy, as shadow strives with light. Melancholy, even as it appears in the enigmatic and profound creation of Albrecht Dürer, finds no home in Turner’s protean fairyland – what place could it have in a cosmic dream? Humanity does not appear there, except perhaps as stage characters at whom we hardly glance. Turner’s pictures fascinate us and yet we think of nothing precise, nothing human, only unforgettable colours and phantoms that lay hold on our imaginations. Humanity really only inspires him when linked with the idea of death – a strange death, more a lyrical dissolution – like the finale of an opera.
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Tate Britain
British Museum, London
Royal Academy of Arts, London
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK
Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, UK
University of Reading, Reading, UK
National Portrait Gallery, UK
Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford
Indianapolis Museum of Art
Foreword
“J. M. W. Turner is the only man who has ever given an entire transcript of the whole system of nature, and is, in this point of view, the only perfect landscape painter whom the world has ever seen… We have had, living with us, and painting for us, the greatest painter of all time; a man with whose supremacy of power no intellect of past ages can be put in comparison for a moment.”
John Ruskin, 1843
Self-Portrait, c. 1798
oil on canvas, 74.5 × 58.5 cm
Turner Bequest, Tate Britain, London
Biography
1775 Birth of Joseph Mallord William Turner in London on 23 April.
1787 Makes first signed and dated watercolours.
1789 Probably begins studying with Thomas Malton, Jr and also admitted as student to Royal Academy Schools.
1790 Exhibits first work at the Royal Academy.
1791 Tours the West Country.
1792 Tours south and central Wales.
1793 Awarded the ‘Greater Silver Pallet’ for landscape drawing by the Royal Society of Arts.
1794 Tours Midlands and north Wales.
1795 Tours southern England and south Wales.
1796 Exhibits first oil painting at the Royal Academy.
1797 Tours north of England and Lake District.
1798 Tours north Wales.
1799 Elected an Associate Royal Academician. Visits West Country, Lancashire and north Wales.
1801 Tours Scotland.
1802 Elected Royal Academician. Tours Switzerland.
1804 Death of mother after a long illness.
1805 Holds first exhibition in own gallery in London.
1807 Elected Royal Academy Professor of Perspective.
1808 Visits Cheshire and Wales. Probably pays first visit to Farnley Hall, home of Walter Fawkes.
1811 Delivers first course of perspective lectures at the Royal Academy. Tours West Country for material for the ‘Southern Coast’ series.
1812 First quotation from his own poem, ‘Fallacies of Hope’, in the Royal Academy catalogue.
1813 Completes Sandycombe Lodge in Twickenham. Revisits West Country.
1814 Again tours West Country.
1815 Tours Yorkshire.
1816 Tours Yorkshire to gain material for the ‘Richmondshire’ series.
1817 Tours Belgium, Germany and Holland.
1818 Visits Edinburgh.
1819 Walter Fawkes exhibits over sixty Turner watercolours in his London residence. Pays first visit to Italy, stays in Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples.
1821 Visits Paris and tours northern France.
1822 Visits Edinburgh for State Visit of King George IV.
1824 Tours south-east England, also the Meuse and Moselle rivers.
1825 Tours Holland, Germany and Belgium. Death of Walter Fawkes.
1826 Tours Germany, Brittany and the Loire.
1827 Stays at East Cowes castle, the home of the architect John Nash. Autumn, starts visiting Petworth regularly.
1828 Delivers last lectures as Royal Academy Professor of Perspective. Visits Italy a second time, stays principally in Rome.
1829 Exhibits seventy-nine ‘England and Wales’ series watercolours in London. Visits Paris, Normandy and Brittany. Death of father. Draws up first draft of will.
1830 Tours Midlands. Exhibits a watercolour for the last time at the Royal Academy.
1831 Tours Scotland. Revises will.
1832 Visits Paris, probably meets Delacroix.
1833 Exhibits 66 ‘England and Wales’ watercolours in London. Visits Vienna and Venice.
1835 Tours Denmark, Prussia, Saxony, Bohemia, the Rhineland and Holland.
1836 Tours France, Switzerland and the Val d’Aosta.
1837 Death of Lord Egremont. Resigns as Royal Academy Professor of Perspective.
1839 Tours the Meuse and Moselle rivers.
1840 Meets John Ruskin for the first time. Visits Venice.
1841 Tours Switzerland, and does so again in following three summers.
1845 Acts as temporary President of Royal Academy. Tours northern France in May; in the autumn Dieppe and Picardy, his last tour.
1846 Moves to Chelsea around this time.
1848–49 Growing infirmity. Revises will.
1850 Exhibits for the last time at the Royal Academy.
1851 Dies 19 December in Chelsea, London.
From darkness to light: perhaps no painter in the history of western art evolved over a greater visual span than Turner. If we compare one of his earliest exhibited masterworks, such as the fairly low-key St Anselm’s Chapel, with part of Thomas-à-Becket’s crown, Canterbury Cathedral of 1794, with a vividly bright picture dating from the 1840s, such as The Falls of the Clyde, it seems hard to credit that the two images stemmed from the same hand, so vastly do they differ in appearance. Yet this apparent disjunction can easily obscure the profound continuity that underpins Turner’s art, just as the dazzling colour, high tonality and loose forms of the late images can lead to the belief that the painter shared the aims of the French Impressionists or even that he wanted to be some kind of abstractionist, both of which notions are untrue.
Folly Bridge and Bacon’s Tower, Oxford
