How To Paint Like Turner

A detailed examination of the painting techniques J. M. W. Turner used to create his masterpieces. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was a prolific master of landscape and marine painting in nineteenth-century Britain. His attention to color and atmosphere produced breathtaking images of nature, now immortalized in oil paintings, exquisite watercolors, and works on paper. How Turner Painted guides readers through the artist’s groundbreaking techniques, including experiments with modified paint media, innovative uses of watercolor, and painstaking processes for creating a composition. Author of the acclaimed Turner’s Painting Techniques, Turner expert Dr. Joyce Townsend returns to the subject with two hundred high-quality color reproductions and cutting-edge X-ray photography. Tasmania-based artist, writer, and teacher Tony Smibert also contributes a chapter about Turner from a contemporary painter’s perspective. Gallerygoers, artists, museum educators, curators, art historians, and conservation professionals are sure to treasure this authoritative guide to one of Britain’s most important painters.

When Turner died in 1851, the general view of an artist's late work was one of decline. Indeed, Turner's own painting from 1845 onwards was described as indulgent, eccentric and 'repulsive', and even his devoted champion John Ruskin commented on its 'wholly inferior value'. However, from the early 1900s there was a major reassessment of Turner's later paintings and sketches. Commentators hailed his study of light as a visionary precursor to the ideas of the Impression­ists. This continued into the twentieth century, with curato­rial choices in some museums presenting Turner's late and unfinished work as distinctly modern. Through a number of key themes and studies into his subject matter, technique and personal activities, this new analysis challenges the historical conceptions of Turner's late style. The idea that as an elderly artist Turner was seen as intro­verted and detached by the Victorian art world is set against the fact that his paintings from 1835 were some of the most popular, accessible and intellectual that he created. Mean­while, questioning the notion that Turner's late work articu­lated a conclusive, radical vision that was heedless of public reaction, the texts explore how Turner had a very firm idea of the workings of the art market at that time. Fully illustrated in colour, and with contributions by some of the foremost Turner scholars, this book breaks new ground in the continuing study of the life and legacy of one of art's greatest masters.

The life of one of Western art's most admired and misunderstood painters J.M.W. Turner is one of the most important figures in Western art, and his visionary work paved the way for a revolution in landscape painting. Over the course of his lifetime, Turner strove to liberate painting from an antiquated system of patronage. Bringing a new level of expression and color to his canvases, he paved the way for the modern artist. Turner was very much a man of his changing era. In his lifetime, he saw Britain ravaged by Napoleonic wars, revived by the Industrial Revolution, and embarked upon a new moment of Imperial glory with the ascendancy of Queen Victoria. His own life embodied astonishing transformation. Born the son of a barber in Covent Garden, he was buried amid pomp and ceremony in St. Paul's Cathedral. Turner was accepted into the prestigious Royal Academy at the height of the French Revolution when a climate of fear dominated Britain. Unable to travel abroad he explored at home, reimagining the landscape to create some of the most iconic scenes of his country. But his work always had a profound human element. When a moment of peace allowed travel into Europe, Turner was one of the first artists to capture the beauty of the Alps, to revive Venice as a subject, and to follow in Byron’s footsteps through the Rhine country. While he was commercially successful for most of his career, Turner's personal life remained fraught. His mother suffered from mental illness and was committed to Bedlam. Turner never married but had several long-term mistresses and illegitimate daughters. His erotic drawings were numerous but were covered up by prurient Victorians after his death. Turner's late, impressionistic work was held up by his Victorian detractors as example of a creeping madness. Affection for the artist’s work soured. John Ruskin, the greatest of all 19th century art critics, did what he could to rescue Turner’s reputation, but Turner’s very last works confounded even his greatest defender. TURNER humanizes this surprising genius while placing him in his fascinating historical context. Franny Moyle brilliantly tells the story of the man to give us an astonishing portrait of the artist and a vivid evocation of Britain and Europe in flux.

Focusing on the painting of the artists JMW Turner, Turner Monet Twombly, and Cy Twombly (1928-2011), this title highlights interests and themes they share, despite the differences in time and geography that separated them that include Romanticism, the sublime, memory and mourning.

JMW Turner is one of the greatest artists Britain has ever produced. His watercolours, with their extraordinary effects of shifting light and dramatic skyscapes, are especially highly regarded. For the first time, the secrets of Turner's technique are revealed, allowing present-day watercolourists to learn from his achievements.This book combines unrivalled knowledge of Turner's working methods from Tate curators and conservators with practical advice from some of the world's most respected watercolour experts. Twenty-two thematic exercises are illustrated with Turner's works. Expert contemporary watercolourists explain, step-by-step, how to paint a similar composition, learning from Turner's techniques. Packed with invaluable information, from the materials Turner used to achieve the masterpieces we know and love today, to the modern materials the twenty-first-century watercolour artist will need.Backed by the authority of Tate, the world centre for Turner scholarship, with a glossary of technical terms, this is an invaluable resource both for lovers of Turner's art and of watercolour painting.

Extraordinarily inventive and enduringly influential, J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) produced his most important and famous pictures after the age of sixty, in the last fifteen years of his life. Demonstrating ongoing radicalism of technique and ever-original subject matter, these works show Turner constantly challenging his contemporaries while remaining keenly aware of the market for his art. Bringing together over sixty key oil paintings and watercolors, this major international loan exhibition is the first to focus on the unfettered creativity of Turner's final years.

A beautifully produced book showcasing Turner’s depictions of the sea, published to coincide with a major exhibition This is the first publication to focus on J. M. W. Turner’s lifelong fascination with the sea, from his Royal Academy debut in 1796, Fishermen at Sea, to his iconic maritime subjects of the 1830s and 1840s such as Staffa, Fingal’s Cave. It places Turner and his work firmly in the broader field of maritime painting that flourished in nineteenth-century Britain, France, Germany, Holland, and America. The majority of the works illustrated here—paintings, watercolors, sketches, sketchbooks, and engravings—are by Turner, but there are also comparative works by some forty other artists including Winslow Homer, James McNeill Whistler, John Constable, Benjamin West, and Gustave Courbet. The book is organized thematically and chronologically, and the subjects range from “Contested Waters,” which examines what was at stake for marine painting during the Napoleonic Wars, to “New Wave,” an exploration of Turner’s international and often surprising legacy for the art of the sea.

The English Romantic painter Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775–19 December 1851) was a brilliant landscape artist, a watercolourist and printmaker. His style, powerful and fierce, melding the elements with humankind are thought by many to have prepared the way for Impressionism. In his time he was controversial, but his focus on land and seascapes widened the palette of artists and their audience, and his impressionistic brushwork prepared the way for the fragmentation of the modern era. This wonderful new book brings to life his greatest achievements, with such paintings as The Fighting 'Temeraire’, Inside Tintern Abbey and Rain, Steam and Speed (The Great Western Railway).

This survey and scientific analysis of J.M.W. Turner's oils and watercolours, combined with documentary research, shows that the artist experimented with new pigments and paint formulations throughout his life, as well as taking an interest in scientific t