Turner [antikvár]

Introduction 64 A 11 lookers on were amused by the l\. figure TYirner exhibited in himself, and the process he was pursuing with his picture. A small box of colours, a very few small brushes, and a vial or two, were at his feet, very inconveniently placed; but his short figure, stooping, enabled him to reach what he wanted very readily. Leaning forward and sideways over to the right, the left-hand metal button of his blue coat rose inches higher than the right, and his head, buried in his shoulders and held down, presented an aspect curious to all beholders, who whispered their remarks to each other, and quietly laughed to themselves. In one part ofthe mysterious proceedings Tlimer, who worked almost entirely with his palette knife, was observed to be rolling and spreading a lump of half transparent stuff over his picture, the size of a finger in length and thickness." This description of Tlirner completing a picture — one of his several versions ofthe Burning ofthe Houses of Parliament— on varnishing day before a Royal Academy exhibition tells us much about the way he worked. It also sums up a popular view of the artist, who appears as a mysterious figure, obsessed by his work and oblivious to events around him, producing as if by magic a picture of the swirling elements from an intense smearing, brushing, scratching, sponging and blotting. The technical mastery that enabled Tlirner to suggest every subtlety of nature and its effects was barely comprehended by most of his contemporaries. Even today, to eyes accustomed to the freedoms of contemporary art, Turner's late work seems to stand on the extreme limit of oil painting — the work of a revolutionary who broke all the conventions and canons of taste of his day. However, like many other great painters, Tlirner attained these heights of virtuosity from the most down-to-earth training in the conventions and craft of painting. "D ~ d hard work" was what he once gave as the secret of his success, and every technical effect that he brought to his work was the result of just this. In the production of the pictures he J.M.W. Turner Self-portrait c 1798 Clore Gallery for the Ttirner Collection, London often referred to as his "children," all else was sacrificed to obsessive, continual work. Early training in watercolour Joseph MaUord William Tlirner came from a humble background, the son of a London barber in Covent Garden. His father quickly saw his son's talent and encouraged him by exhibiting and selling his drawings from his own premises. From this early beginning Tlirner acquired a keen business sense and an appreciation of the importance of financial success, which he realized was the only way to provide the freedom he needed to develop his work. He came to the notice of a well-to-do amateur painter, Dr Monro, who lived a few streets away and paid a group of young artists (among them Thomas Girtin) to make copies of his collection of watercolours. Through this mundane but valuable process the young Tlirner learned more or less at first hand the techniques and style of the leading watercolour painters ofthe day Although water-colour was considered a less elevated form of painting than oils, a thriving and highly skilled school of water-colourists had grown up in England by the late eighteenth century. These artists satisfied a strong and increasingly sophisticated public demand for "views" -of landscapes, towns and historical buildings, both at home and abroad. Engravers often worked alongside the painters, popularizing their work in a wider and more lucrative market through widespread reproduction. Tlirner quickly mastered the dry descriptive style of topographic drawing and painting, where the principal concern was for accuracy. He became a skilled draughtsman, able to produce faithful renderings of architectural detail, but also capable of conveying landscape and weather effects when necessary. These were favourite subjects of watercolourists, as the delicacy and subtlety ofthe medium is well suited to conveying effects of light and atmosphere; indeed, from the painters' point of view this was the principal virtue of the medium, and