JMW Turner, Interior of Salisbury Cathedral, Looking Towards the North Transept (1801-5), watercolor, The Salisbury Museum
His works earned him an immediate fame which brought the watercolor technique to the attention of the public , which was generally considered a minor form of painting, usually used for preparatory studies and drawings. To make his works, I travel extensively to Great Britain, France and Switzerland.
It is good to remember that at the time there were no ready-made colors in tubes yet, it was not possible, therefore painting outside. The only exception was given precisely by the watercolors that could be purchased in small blocks composed of pigment and gum arabic (the same composition used today).
For this reason, watercolor was the primary painting technique used alongside drawing to make visual notes during travels and excursions .
Not only artists like Turner, but also writers and ordinary travelers always carried a travel set with them.
Meanwhile, Turner also devotes himself to oil painting. In 1739 he presented the painting Fishermen at Sea at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy, now in the Tate Gallery in London. His technique is already perfect at the age of twenty and will allow him to confidently conquer his own personal style.
The painting he presents in 1801 at the Royal Academy's annual exhibition, Dutch Boats in a Storm: Fishermen Trying to Pull Fish on Board , is appreciated by the painter Füssli (the author of the Nightmare ), but many others are critical of his comparisons due to the freedom of painting and the lack of contour lines .
With this painting, Turner moves away from the traditional school and takes a decisive turn in a romantic sense, showing himself more attentive to the luminous reflections on the surface of the water and the use of color. The overwhelming force of nature is the same as in romantic landscapes.
steal v. tr. [lat. carpĕre, with conjugation change] (I steal, you steal, etc.). - Snatch, take with violence or fraud, get with cunning ( source )
It is interesting to understand where Turner gets the impetus for his stylistic change. Obviously he too breathes the air of change that is spreading in Europe, but the direct study of the works of the artists of the past remains essential, a study that will accompany him throughout his life, together with the stimuli that also come to him from other English watercolorists who are they dedicate to portray the changeability of the sky. Among them, John Robert Cozens and John Constable .
Perhaps it is not superfluous to specify that 'studying' for an artist essentially means copying by making sketches, drawings, studying details, but also trying to steal the technical secrets used by the masters.
Turner, however, is an incurable visitor to art museums and wherever he is, he copies the works of the old masters to discover their secrets. Among the artists who attracted him the most were Rembrandt and Titian , especially in the works of the last period, which between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought painting to new levels of mastery, managing to obtain extraordinary light effects based on the use of a very dense mixture, with overlapping brushstrokes and often spread in spots , without trying to reproduce the illusion of reality . In addition to these also Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain , French painters of the Baroque period, who gave great importance to the landscape and the effects of light in the sky.
As already anticipated, Turner's works of these years were highly praised by romantic artists such as Füssli, but criticized by very influential people who did not understand the strong stylistic change of the artist, increasingly distant from the academic style.
It was for this reason that Turner decided to set up a private studio inside his London home, exhibiting his works there starting from 1804, in order to free himself from the Royal Academy.
This solution was much appreciated by Turner's admirers, who, in this way, could buy the canvases directly from the artist.
Meanwhile Europe was shaken by the Napoleonic wars. Turner suspended his travels across the Channel, but continued hiking in Britain.
JM William Turner, The Devil's Bridge , (1803-1804)
Oil on canvas, private collection cm. 78.5 x 62.8
In 1811 Turner began lecturing at the Royal Academy as a professor of perspective . The testimonies of the time tell us that he was not a great speaker, but, to explain the contents of his course to his students, he created many drawings and paintings. His lectures, accompanied by these examples, were collected and published by John Ruskin , a painter, art critic and great friend of Turner throughout his life. (If you want to see an example of Turner's drawings included by Ruskin in his Modern Painters work, follow the link linked to Ruskin and go to page 2182).
Turner is the son of a barber: therefore he comes from a humble class. He speaks cockney - the typical language of the London suburbs and which will create many problems in his relationship with others. Since childhood he shows a great talent for art. It is said that the father, very proud of his son, exhibited his first drawings and watercolors in the workshop and sold them to customers.
In 1789, at the age of 14, he entered the Royal Academy in London. His teacher was Thomas Malton, a watercolorist specializing in architectural and topographical subjects.
Turner's early works reflect this taste for detail and exactly reproduce reality .
From a stylistic point of view they are neoclassical works: supported by a precise drawing and painted in an accurate way, taking into account the perspective and the effects of light .
He was 15 when he exhibited his first watercolor at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy and devoted himself to this artistic genre from 1790 to 1830, becoming very fast and very skilled.
Turner in Italy
In 1818 the artist was commissioned to illustrate James Hakewill's The Picuresque Tour of Italy.
Because of this commission, Turner embarked on a trip to Italy which allowed him to deepen his artistic research on the use of color and light, profoundly influencing the development of his painting. As always, the trip was an opportunity to study the Italian masters and get in touch with contemporary artists.
On his journey, he touched Turin, Milan, Como, Verona, Venice, Rome, Naples, Paestum and Lerici.
JMW Turner, The Piazzetta, Venice (1835 ca.), watercolor and bodycolor, with scratching-out and details added using a pen dipped in watercolor
National Galleries of Scotland Collection
Description (source: National Gallery of Scotland):
A bolt of lightning flashes across the Piazzetta viewed from the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy, illuminating the Doge's Palace, the side and one dome of St Marks and the arcade of the Marciana Library as people run for cover from the rain. Turner conveys both the drama of the storm and the beauty of the Piazzetta with spectacular scraping off and rubbing into the paper's white surface .
JMW Turner, La Dogana, San Giorgio and the Spinsters from the steps of the Europa hotel (1835 - 40), oil on canvas, 91 × 122 cm, Tate Britain, London
Landscape in Turner's works
In the language of art criticism, ' picturesque ' indicates a work created with strong chiaroscuro effects that has as its object solitary landscapes often characterized by the presence of imposing architecture and ruins and sometimes animated by genre scenes with characters wearing typical clothing of certain cultures.
In Turner's works the landscape is always the protagonist , even when the theme is historical, biblical or literary: each painting is an opportunity to manifest his virtuosity and to put into practice his knowledge of the behavior of light in relation to the different materials that touches.
In his works we encounter the sense of the Sublime , which attracts and repels romantic men and this is how Nature portrayed in his works often has the characteristics of vivacity and violence, depicting tremendous spectacles, such as storms, shipwrecks, avalanches and fires . These are events that in their tragic nature arouse in the observer a pleasure full of disorientation and fear , "a sort of delightful horror", to use the words of Edmund Burke, creator of the concept of the sublime. (Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1785).
While responding mainly to the poetics of the sublime, Turner's paintings enhance the feeling of harmony between man and nature, in paintings in which these two elements confront each other in a serene balance, in full agreement with the picturesque.
JMW Turner, Ulysses Mocks Polyphemus (1829), oil on canvas (132.5 × 203 cm), National Gallery, London
This is one of several paintings that Turner made on the theme of the House of Parliament fire. The artist drew and painted watercolor sketches from different points of view and, in order to get closer to the subject, he had himself taken by boat as close as possible, risking, as he says, to end up being burned himself.
The approach to the subject to be painted is another very important element also adopted by the Impressionists.
JMW Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October 1834 (1835), oil on canvas (92.5 × 123 cm), Cleveland Museum of Art
Turner and light
Turner was an educated man and was certainly aware of Isaac Newton's research on color and light.
Also very important for Turner is the Theory of Colors by the German poet and scholar Johann Wolfgang Goethe (who had devoted himself constantly to drawing and watercolor). Goethe, in particular, argued that light does not come from colors, but rather the opposite. Specifically, according to Goethian doctrine, primary colors are phenomena generated by the interaction of light with darkness; according to this thesis, therefore, color exists only as a function of light.
To confirm the influence of Goethe's thought on Turner's work, we see an oil painting made by the artist in 1843 and kept at Tate Britain in London. It is not the only work that Turner dedicates to Goethe's theory. There are many examples, in oils and watercolors made for educational purposes, to explain the effects of light in painting to his students at the Royal Academy.
JMW Turner, Light and Color (Goethe's Theory) - the Morning after the Deluge - Moses Writing the Book of Genesis (1843), Tate Gallery, London
After the encounter with Rembrandt's painting (Turner reproduced many works by the Flemish artist to understand the technique) and the reading of Goethe's writings, Turner concluded that light was not limited to determining the spatial reality of the world, but that he could also modify them .
For this reason, in the representation of the landscape, Turner stopped shooting nature in a rigorously realistic way : indeed, what mattered most was the impression that a certain external stimulus aroused in his soul and, therefore, he was rather concerned with grasp the density of the atmosphere and light in a given landscape and translate it onto the canvas.
In this way Turner began to treat light no longer as a simple reflection on objects, but as a completely autonomous atmospheric entity , capable, with its throbbing intensity, of disintegrating the shapes and colors present in the paintings. His goal, his 'pictorial mission' was to block the light on the canvas, giving it a precise shape and color.
JMW Turner, Venice with the Salute (1840-45), 622 × 927 mm, Tate Gallery, London
This research will deeply affect Claude Monet when he sees Turner's works in London. Impressionism was born from this intuition.
In the painting proposed here, the subject is almost invisible in the luminous fog that pervades the Venetian lagoon.
Nohram Castle is barely distinguishable, seen in the distance in the light-filled atmosphere.
JMW Turner, Nohram Castle, Sunrise (c.1835), oil on canvas (908 × 1219 mm), Tate Gallery, London
Turner and technological progress
Turner was not only a landscape painter, but throughout his life he was fascinated by the scientific discoveries that were profoundly influencing society at that time.
In the painting reproduced here, the imposing vessel, Fighting Téméraire, used during the battle of Trafalgar, won by Admiral Nelson, although at the time of disarmament it was in very bad condition, is represented in its maximum splendor, as loaded with all the honors won. in battle.
Observing it well, however, we see how the sailing ship is represented in very light colors, as if it were a ghost, while in the foreground a steamship with large wheels that is towing it stands out.
The theme of the painting , therefore, is not simply the visual story of the last voyage of the Fighting Téméraire, but rather the passage from the 'ancient' age of sailing to the modern one, characterized by the new steam engines .
JMW Turner, The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up , 1838, oil on canvas (90.7 × 121.6 cm), The National Gallery, London
JMW Turner, Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhon coming on , 1840, oil on canvas (91 cm × 123 cm), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
JMW Turner, Snow Storm - Steam - Boat off a Harbor's Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night the 'Ariel' left Harwich (1842), oil on canvas (914 × 1219 mm), Tate Gallery, London
Compared to the shipwreck scene, in Snow Storm we see a steamboat in the whirlwind of the billows. In Turner's works, no steamboat is wrecked, thus underscoring Turner's confidence in progress.
JMW Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway (1844), oil on canvas (91 cm × 121.8 cm), The National Gallery, London
enlargement of part of the sky at the top right: you can see how the effect of the clouds is obtained with several layers of dense color, in this case, spread with a spatula
A curiosity: a hare runs in front of the train, as you can see from the enlargement.
What could that mean?