Book Description

One of the world's most beautiful cities is pictured here through the eyes of one of the world's best-loved artists. J.M.W. Turner's translucent, atmospheric paintings and watercolors of Venice have long been celebrated as among the most extraordinary creations of this popular artist's later career. Few other artists have responded with such imaginative inventiveness to the magical combination of water, light, and architecture that is Venice.

This beautifully produced book, which accompanies a traveling exhibition that comes to the Kimbell Art Museum this spring, features the largest selection of Turner's paintings and watercolors of Venice ever published, some reproduced for the first time. The texts include contributions by travel writer Jan Morris and historian David Laven, who bring their perspective to the city as it was when visited by Britain's greatest painter. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Not Bad
This book was a typical biography, good for reports and whatnot, it has some of Turner's Paintings, and it has a lot of information. ... Read more

Book Description

J.M.W. Turner was a painter whose treatment of light put him squarely in the pantheon of the world’s preeminent artists, but his character was a tangle of fascinating contradictions. While he could be coarse and rude, manipulative, ill-mannered, and inarticulate, he was also generous, questioning, and humane, and he displayed through his work a hitherto unrecognized optimism about the course of human progress. With two illegitimate daughters and several mistresses whom Turner made a career of not including in his public life, the painter was also known for his entrepreneurial cunning, demanding and receiving the highest prices for his work.

Over the course of sixty years, Turner traveled thousands of miles to seek out the landscapes of England and Europe. He was drawn overwhelmingly to coasts, to the electrifying rub of the land with the sea, and he regularly observed their union from the cliff, the beach, the pier, or from a small boat. Fueled by his prodigious talent, Turner revealed to himself and others the personality of the British and European landscapes and the moods of the surrounding seas. He kept no diary, but his many sketchbooks are intensely autobiographical, giving clues to his techniques, his itineraries, his income and expenditures, and his struggle to master the theories of perspective.

In Turner, James Hamilton takes advantage of new material discovered since the 1975 bicentennial celebration of the artist’s birth, paying particular attention to the diary of sketches with which Turner narrated his life. Hamilton’s textured portrait is fully complemented by a sixteen-page illustrations insert, including many color reproductions of Turner’s most famous landscape paintings. Seamlessly blending vibrant biography with astute art criticism, Hamilton writes with energy, style, and erudition to address the contradictions of this great artist. ... Read more

Book Description

A Royal Academy of Arts Publication

J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) is considered Britain's greatest painter. While he is best known for his stunning oils, Turner also created major works in watercolor, many of which rival his oils in their breadth of scale, depth of tone, richness of color, and wealth of detail. This handsome volume, published on the 150th anniversary of Turner's death to accompany an unparalleled exhibition of his finished watercolors at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, is a milestone in Turner scholarship.

Eric Shanes, a well-known expert on Turner and curator of the related exhibition, places the artist's watercolors in the wider context of his painted work and provides individual commentaries on the approximately 200 lush colorplates. Evelyn Joll investigates the market forces that brought Turner's watercolors into being, while Andrew Wilton analyzes their extraordinary effect on the art of later watercolorists. Finally, Ian Warrell discusses the critical reception to the work of this prodigiously talented artist. Turner: The Great Watercolours will stand at the forefront of thinking on Turner for years to come. ERIC SHANES is a leading expert on Turner and founding editor of Turner Studies (1980-1991).

EVELYN JOLL is an independent art historian based in London.

IAN WARRELL is a curator at Tate Britain.

ANDREW WILTON is keeper and senior research fellow, Tate Britain.

200 illustrations in full color, 10 x 11" ... Read more

Book Description

Over a period of 30 years, J.M.W. Turner taught perspective to the students of the Royal Academy in London. To aid him in his lectures he produced a portfolio of striking diagrams in red and black watercolor on paper, demonstrating various artistic and critical theories on perspective. A selection of these extraordinary works, long held in the Turner archives at Tate and catalogued by John Ruskin, is published here for the first time, accompanied by an incisive and accessible essay by Turner scholar Andrea Fredericksen. AUTHOR BIO: Andrea Fredericksen has recently finished cataloguing J.M.W. Turner's perspective drawings in Tate's Turner Bequest. ... Read more

Book Description

J.M.W. Turner is one of the greatest artists the world has ever known. His output was prolific and astonishingly varied. Focusing on 125 paintings and drawings from the Tate, which owns the world's largest collection of Turner's work, this lavishly illustrated book provides a fresh and lively survey of his genius. Familiar masterpieces are reproduced along with less well-known prints and sheets from sketchbooks; subject matter ranges from landscapes and natural subjects to ancient and modern history; marine subjects; literary illustration; and images of contemporary life.

In his essay, David Blayney Brown reveals the paradoxes and contrasts that abound in Turner's life and work: as a painter he looked both backward and forward, bridging the gap between the 18th century and modernism, compelled constantly to reexamine and reinvent his own art, with astonishing success. ... Read more

Book Description

Compares the common concerns and impulses behind the works of four artists and writers, and demonstrates that the verbal and visual sides of romanticism are parts of a coherent whole. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Master of Atmosphere
The watercolors of JMW Turner have the concise, simplified vision of contemporary art even though they were painted in the mid 1800's. This survey shows the progression of this master of light and delicate color from tightly delineated landscapes to the atmospheric , nearly abstract vistas of his late career. The reproductions are supported by quotes selected from writings contemporary to the paintings. This book provides an inspirational overview of the work of Turner and belongs in the library of the serious watercolor artist. ... Read more

Book Description

The Turner Prize has played a vital role over the last 20 years in bringing British contemporary art to the attention of a wider audience. This book offers an opportunity to survey all the artists who have been shortlisted for the prize, from Howard Hodgkin and Richard Long to Damien Hirst and Chris Ofili. Their works are illustrated alongside a brief summary of their careers. A history of the prize, along with an essay assessing its impact, make this book an invaluable resource on contemporary art. ... Read more

Book Description

The son of a London barber, J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) was an artistic prodigy who earned the recognition of his peers while still a very young man, and subsequently dominated British landscape painting. His fame spread to Europe and America during his lifetime, and after his death his achievements were ranked alongside those of the Old Masters. He measured himself against such predecessors as Claude Lorrain, and yet the chromatic brilliance and unusual compositions of his later paintings have drawn comparisons with more recent artists, including the Impressionists and the Abstract Expressionists. ... Read more

Book Description

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Britain's greatest and most mysterious artist, was the son of a Convent Garden barber and a woman who died in Bethlehem mental hospital. During his lifetime (1775-1851), Turner achieved fame and fortune for a range of work encompassing seascape and landscape, immensely powerful oil paintings and intimate watercolors. His friend and colleague C. R. Leslie remembered him thus: "Turner was short and stout, and had a sturdy, sailor-like walk. He might be taken for the captain of a steamboat at first glance; but a second would find more in his face than belongs in any ordinary mind. There was the peculiar keenness of expression in his eye that is only seen in men of constant habits of observation."

For this new biography, thefirst comprehensive narrative of Turner's life in a generation, Anthony Bailey has searched through the archives, studied the scholarly literature, made use of much research done in the last thirty years, and looked at almost all of Turner's sketchbooks as well as many of his paintings and watercolors. He has uncovered fresh material and put together other facts, previously known, to shed new light on those complicated and secretive man.

Anthony Bailey has set out to write a biography ofthe man, not a book about his paintings, and J.M.W. Turner comes vividly to life in theses pages. Both reclusive and gregarious, private and vainglorious, tough and vulnerable, a long-tern bachelor who fathered two daughters, Turner was full of contradictions, and Anthony Bailey rises masterfully to the challenge of describing them here. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

If you enjoy reading about eccentrics...
This very well written biography works well on two levels - a portrait of Turner the man, an endearing eccentric, and Turner, the painter, an artist who painted in both an extremely academic style and a visionary and expressive one. Anthony Bailey artfully weaves in and out of the contradictions in Turner's work and his character. Highly recommended.

Fine Portrait of a Great Landscape Painter
Avid readers of biographies often note that great men and women in their fields exhibit striking contradictions in their personalities. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), England's greatest landscape painter, is no exception and those contradictions are highlighted in Anthony Bailey's excellent 1997 biography. Notoriously tight-fisted in his dealings in the art world, Turner was equally capable of striking magnanimity towards his few friends. Jealously protective of his paintings, he left dozens of his masterpieces rotting in his gallery at the time of his death, virtually uncared for. Indifferent towards his two, illegitimate daughters, Turner was reported to have burst into tears at the death of a patron. All these characteristics are illuminated in Bailey's fine study. Organized on thematic, rather than on strictly chronological lines, Bailey's portrait emphasizes the man instead of his work, although Turner's major works are not neglected. Like all good biographers, Bailey is also careful to describe his subject in the context of his times, a tumultuous period in western European history. At bottom, though, Turner was a man devoted to his craft and his political awareness appears rarely to have extended beyond the infighting and maneuvering accompanying his long membership in the Royal Academy. There are many specialist studies of Turner's work, but this may be the best portrait yet of Turner. Still, Bailey has not fully penetrated the sources of Turner's unique vision, (perhaps an impossible task),a vision that baffled many contemporaries and placed Turner "out of his time" in much the same way that Blake appears of a different time, out of synch with the poets of his age. This biography is highly recommended to anyone having more than a passing interest in art or art history.

Brilliant account of one of England's best painters
Anthony Bailey provides the modern reader with a most readable and interesting account of the painter, Turner, and his life. Mr. Bailey, captures the essence of Turner's character and brilliance as a landscape painter. He leads the reader down a path of vivid description and imagery that encourages and entices one to go on and read more. Turner was a creator of illusion and mystique in paintings. He captured the mood and climate of his country in the mist, storms, clouds, sunsets, and sunrises created with his brush. I had the opportunity to buy Standing in the Sun recently in England, and I found it to be an excellent tribute to a fine English painter by a truly gifted English writer, Anthony Bailey.

A fine biography of a great painter by a fine writer
J.M.W. Turner was a great painter and a very strange man. His genius was recognized early,and he lived well and died rich. He was secretive exhibitionistic,miserly and generous by turns. His works are not too easy to see in the U.S. because he sold well in England and left his paintings to the nation. Bailey has written a superb biography of a man on whom it is difficult to understand. It compares well to his previous biography Rembrandt's House and displays tthe same graceful and lucid prose of his books on sailing,walking,and groeing up in England and America. I read the English edition and recommend this book unreservedly to anyone who likes great art and fine writing. Roger Marz ... Read more

Book Description

For this beautifully illustrated book, David Hill has photographed many of the actual sites J. M. W. Turner sketched two hundred years ago while touring the north of England. Hill`s photographs, Turner`s first sketches (many previously unpublished), and the finished oils and watercolors that derived from them, together provide an intriguing look at the whole of Turner`s creative process as well as the quality and intensity of his travel experience. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Run away! Run away!
This book is basically unreadable. Impenetrable metaphysical terminology is used in dense, convoluted sentences to convey abstruse theories of meaning (at least I think that's what it is) in such a way as to be completely and utterly opaque. Half the time I didn't know what the guy was talking about, and I have a degree in this stuff and belong to Mensa. If you're interested in Turner, you'd do better to look elsewhere.

Some good reproductions though, and if you're just interested in the pictures, the price is right. Hence the two stars; the text would be zero, since it's useless. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Lives up to its title
Although certain Oxford Companions have been flawed -- that to "Film" had a lot of errors; and in my minority opinion that to "English Literature" wastes far too much space on tangential matters -- most are informative, authoritative, and endlessly browsable. This new Companion to Turner belongs among them. With all the detail it offers about Turner, it's a substantial work and one that will only appeal to those who already have one or more collections of his works; it's understandable that this volume does not duplicate these; if it did, its weight and size (and unwieldiness) and price would rocket.

My only disappointment so far is admittedly peripheral: why does such a scholarly (and expensive) volume not come in the black (or immensely dark blue) cloth that OUP gives to most of its hardbacks?

WORDY AND FEW PAINTINGS
Maybe I am silly but if you are going to call a book a companion on a painter you should have plenty of paintings from each of the periods in his/her life to share with the reader. This book is primarily sound even exciting scholarship with a paltry amount of paintings.
If you are taking a graduate course in art history it is right on target however if you are madly in love with the art of this giant go elsewhere for your pleasure. ... Read more