Joseph Mallord William Turner
English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851
Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting.
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. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321)
Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 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).
Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena.
Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321)
One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea.
In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques. Related Paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner :. | Mountain | Construct of number four | Buttermere-See mit Teilansicht von Cromackwater | Venedig | Constructure number 8 | Related Artists: Jean GreuzeFrench 1725-1805
French painter and draughtsman. He was named an associate member of the Acad?mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris, in 1755 on the strength of a group of paintings that included genre scenes, portraits and studies of expressive heads (t?tes d'expression). These remained the essential subjects of his art for the next 50 years, except for a brief, concentrated and unsuccessful experiment with history painting in the late 1760s, which was to affect his later genre painting deeply. Though his art has often been compared with that of Jean-Sim?on Chardin in particular and interpreted within the context of NEO-CLASSICISM in general, it stands so strikingly apart from the currents of its time that Greuze's accomplishments are best described, as they often were by the artist's contemporaries, as unique. He was greatly admired by connoisseurs, critics and the general public throughout most of his life. His pictures were in the collections of such noted connoisseurs as Ange-Laurent de La Live de Jully, Claude-Henri Watelet and Etienne-Fran?ois, Duc de Choiseul. For a long period he was in particular favour with the critic Denis Diderot, who wrote about him in the Salon reviews that he published in Melchior Grimm's privately circulated Correspondance litt?raire. His reputation declined towards the end of his life and through the early part of the 19th century, to be revived after 1850, John Ritto PennimanJohn Ritto Penniman (1782-1841) was a painter in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He created portraits, landscapes, and allegorical paintings, as well as designs for engravings, such as the official seal of the city of Boston in 1822. He also worked as an assistant to Gilbert Stuart. Penniman died in 1841 in Baltimore. Francisco Bayeu y SubiasSpanish Painter, 1734-1795,was a Spanish painter, active in a Neoclassic style, whose main subjects were religious and historical themes. Born in Zaragoza, he received a broad childhood education. His initial art studies were with a local master, Jose Luzan[1] and Antonio Gonzalez Velazquez. He then moved to Madrid, winning a scholarship with the painting of the ????Tyranny of Gerion???? to study in the Academia Real de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. The death of his parents and the care of his brothers forced him to return to Zaragoza, until he was recalled by Anton Raphael Mengs to help decorate the Royal Palace of Madrid. In later years, one of his colleagues was Francisco Goya, who married his sister, Josefa Bayeu. He served as court painter to King Charles III of Spain. He was named a professor of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1765 and director in 1788. He painted in the Charterhouse of Aula Dei in Zaragoza. In 1767 he was named court painter for Charles III, king of Spain. He was involved in the decoration of various Royal palaces near Madrid.
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