Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in April 1775 in Covent
Garden, London, England. Turner faced
several tragedies throughout his life, including the death of his younger
sister in 1796 and the death of his mother in 1804 (Andrew). Possibly due to the stress brought upon the
Turner family from these deaths, Turner lived with his uncle at Brentford,
Middox, as well as with other relatives at Margate, Kent, at various points in
his life. Turner attended the Royal
Academy starting in 1789, when he was about 14.
While there, he produced many works of art, working mainly with
watercolors and pencils and focusing on landscapes and architecture. At the Royal Academy, Turner’s art style was
molded by the artwork of both Richard Wilson and John Robert Cozen, but Turner
managed to use his own unique, slightly unconventional, techniques (Andrew).
Early in
his artistic career, Turner worked primarily in grays, blacks, and whites, and
focused on nature in his paintings. His
works appeared to be more studious than creative. However, Turner later transitioned to using
colors in his works. He also added imaginative
and creative elements, as seen in several of the dramatic scenes that he
painted, as compared to the calm landscapes that he had painted early in his
life (American Art-Union).
Turner used very unique techniques
in order to produce his works. Turner is
known for starting his works with dark colors, and thereafter working to remove
those dark colors in order to build up the light that he needed. In other words, Turner would wipe, scratch,
and cut the paint off the paper in order to create light as opposed to adding
paint to create darkness and shadows.
Another unique strategy implemented by Turner was brushing water over
the painting where light was needed of the painting in order to lift the dark
colors off of the paper. Additionally,
Turner often combined fine brush strokes and pencil markings with broad washes,
two seemingly contradictory techniques, in order to give his work more depth
and volume. Furthermore, Turner used
friction and his fingers while working with watercolors which enabled him to
add texture to his works.. Turner used
these unconventional techniques in order to produce very realistic and dramatic
landscape paintings (Wilton).
One of
Turner’s works that demonstrates his use of light and his focus on landscapes
is his watercolor painting from 1825 entitled Val D’Aosta, shown below.
This painting is a very realistic depiction of a landscape of water and
mountains in the background, combining two of Turner’s most painted
landscapes. The sky in this painting
demonstrates Turner’s use of light as you can actually see some scratch marks
in the clouds where Turner most likely wiped away the dark colors in order to
create the light that is seen now. At
the bottom of this work, there are 3 people shown working and washing
clothes. Although the people in this
painting, as in many of Turner’s paintings, are small and not the center of
attention, they play a vital role in the overall atmosphere portrayed by the
work. These people, for example, appear
to be washing clothes in the water, demonstrating the reality of the hard work
of daily life. Although there is not
much drama depicted in this painting, I find it to be an amazing and powerful work
of art due to the great detail placed in all aspects of the painting. The tremendous detail is found in the main
focus of the painting, such as the trees, bridge, and castle, as well as in the
small people in the foreground and the distant mountains and buildings in the
background (Wilton).
Turner’s work shown below, entitled
The Storm, was painted in 1823 using
watercolors. This work is one of my
favorite paintings created by Turner due to its emotional and dramatic
depiction of the scene. In the painting,
there is a shipwreck in a storm at sea.
Here, one can see how Turner scraped and wiped away the dark colors in
order to create the light that captures the power and violence of the sea so
well.
Furthermore, The Storm is another example of how Turner paints people in in his
landscapes, but he does not make them the focus of the work. In The
Storm, one can tell that the people on the ship are panicking and
attempting to save the ship, as well as save the people who fell into the sea,
adding more drama and action to the scene.
Although physically small in the painting, Turner pays great attention
to the people in his works, and therefore, the people that he paints greatly
contribute to the overall mood and message of each painting.
Although Turner worked with a lot
of grays, blacks, and whites, he did occasionally use color in his
paintings. One such work of art, painted
in 1815, is show below and is entitled The
Battle of Fort Rock: Val D’Auste, Piedmont, 1796. In this painting, Turner once again portrays
a mountainous landscape. However, unlike
in Val D’Aosta, this painting does
not portray a serene mountain landscape.
Rather, this painting shows the destruction and devastation that came
with The Battle of Fort Rock. This is
seen in the fallen trees and the person tending to the apparently injured individual
at the bottom of the painting. Once
again, Turner managed to use people to support and enhance the dramatic
ambiance that he intended to portray in his work. Additionally, Turner’s great attention to
detail in the trees and foreground of this work further contributes to the
beauty and compelling nature of this painting.
I greatly
admire Turner not only for his talent in creating beautiful works of art, but also
because of his ability to create detailed realistic scenes that evoke various
emotions in his audience. It takes tremendous
talent to be able to demonstrate the chaos and drama that is reflected in Turner’s
paintings. Furthermore, I have always
been more intrigued and impressed by realistic artwork as compared to abstract
art, and I admire Turner’s ability to create extremely realistic scenes using
watercolor as his medium. Finally, I
often use unconventional techniques in my artwork, such as using my fingers not
only to blend pencil marks, but also to add shading from the leftover graphite
on my fingers. Accordingly, I appreciate
and admire Turner’s development and use of his many unconventional techniques, such
as scraping away darkness to create light and submerging finished works in
water in order to create a softness throughout them. I focused on several of
Turner’s more realistic works of art in this analysis because of my personal
interest in and appreciation of more realistic works of art. However, Turner also created works that
tended to be more abstract in character, such as his Sunset Over the Sea with a Crescent Moon, and Petworth: In the Chapel.
Turner’s multitude of captivating works and his many different styles
and techniques, along with the expertise with which he created dramatic landscapes
that evoke a range of emotions, are among the many reasons that Turner’s works
are still admired by many today (Wilton).
Work Cited
Andrew Wilton. "Turner, J. M. W.." Grove
Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University
Press.Web. 20 Sep. 2016. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T086656>.
Turner, Joseph
Mallord William. The Val D’Aosta.
Digital Image. Artstor Library. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2016.
W. "J. M. W. Turner." Bulletin
of the American Art-Union 3 (1851): 37-39. Web.
Wilton, Andrew. Turner in the British
Museum: Drawings and Watercolours. London: British Museum Publications
Limited, 1975. Print.
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