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 :. | Landscape with Juntion of the Severn and the Wye | The passage of Mount St.Gothard,taken from the centre of the Teufels Broch Switzerland (mk31) | Expression | Bridge | Bolton Abbey,Yorkshire (mk31) |
Related Artists:
Hippolyte Sebron
(1801-1879 ) - Painter
lhote
Andre Lhote (5 July 1885 -- 25 January 1962) was a French sculptor and painter of figure subjects, portraits, landscapes and still life. He was also very active and influential as a teacher and writer on art. Lhote was born in Bordeaux and learnt wood carving and sculpture from the age of 12, when his father apprenticed him to a local furniture maker to be trained as a sculptor in wood. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux in 1898 and studied decorative sculpture until 1904. Whilst there, he began to paint in his spare time and he left home in 1905, moving into his own studio to devote himself to painting. He was influenced by Gauguin and C??zanne and held his first one-man exhibition at the Galerie Druet in 1910, four years after he had moved to Paris. After initially working in a Fauvist style, Lhote shifted towards Cubism and joined the Section d'Or group in 1912, exhibiting at the Salon de la Section d'Or. He was alongside some of the fathers of modern art, including Gleizes, Villon, Duchamp, Metzinger, Picabia and La Fresnaye. The outbreak of the First World War interrupted his work and, after discharge from the army in 1917, he became one of the group of Cubists supported by Leonce Rosenberg. In 1918, he co-founded Nouvelle Revue Française, the art journal to which he contributed articles on art theory until 1940. Lhote taught at the Academie Notre-Dame des Champs from 1918 to 1920 and later taught at other Paris art schools including his own school, which he founded in Montparnasse in 1922. Lhote lectured extensively in France and abroad, including Belgium, England, Italy and, from the 1950s, also in Egypt and Brazil. His work was awarded with the Grand Prix National de Peinture in 1955, and the UNESCO commission for sculpture appointed Lhote president of the International Association of Painters, Engravers and Sculptors. Lhote died in Paris in 1962.
plato
Born: c. 428 B.C. Birthplace: Athens, Greece Died: 347 B.C. Best Known As: The ancient philosopher who wrote The Republic