He is uncouth but has a wonderful range of mind


With a crowd of family in tow in a sea of bustling fine art tourism, I took in the astounding Joseph Mallord William Turner retrospective at the Met last week, jostling through the headphone-wearers to gaze at a few of the finer works at some small length. Turner was an artist of empire, a prolific careerist who grew up as the son of a barber and wigmaker in London and set his sites on becoming the acknowledged heir to Europe’s great classicists. Yet his toil over a very long career spanned the tail end of the enlightenment, ignited as war swept the western world, and lasted long after, well into the industrial spread of the 19th century. And although Turner aimed for classical landscape fame, his later worked presaged expressionism in their layering of color and homage to light.

What a talent, and what range as well. There are the great historic paintings, of course - the Trafalgar images, The Field of Waterloo, and his near-journalistic work covering the great fire that destroyed the parliamentary campus in London in 1834. There are classical landscapes in strict diagrammatic patterns, and classical scenes. But there were two groups that stood out as favorites. One comprised everyday scenes of life in Turner’s times - times that also inspired the writing of a range of my favorite writers, from Austen and Dickens to the brilliant maritime series of Patrick O’Brian. The other was the later work, painted when Turner’s eyes were failing him, works that critics of the day dismissed as “the fruits of a diseased eye and a reckless hand.”

I stood longest before Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight, exhibited by Turner in 1835 and on loan from the National Gallery, where I’d seen it before. It is a media-sized oil painting of the waterfront at Newcastle, a portrait of every day toil in small boats and small ships. The sky is moonlit, almost like day, and the light and clouds form a sort of visual tunnel toward open water. The ships have that classic Turner lyric of beauty discovered in hull and sail, but it’s no longer the age of Napoleon - or the age of pure sail, either. Coal feeds steamship boilers, ships move under power, and the factories are open. There is work to be done even at midnight. Smoke sends its industrial signal into that brilliant sky, obscuring some masts.

You think: it would be the 1960s before England’s skies grew cleaner again. The coal-powered London fog of Sherlock Holmes was a wisp in Turner’s painting, but it was beginning to swirl. Jane Austen is dead, Charles Dickens had just started his journalistic career, and Wellington was his dotage. Victoria was a princess yet to ascend, Darwin was in the Galapagos, and on these shores, Texas won its independence and Mark Twain was born. I love images like this that blend a “wonderful range of mind” like Turner’s - as famously described by his rival John Constable - with a clear turn of history. Sometimes you can see so much, and come away the better for it.

Highly recommended: J.M.W. Turner, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, through September 21, 2008.

Possibly Related Classroom Projects From DonorsChoose.org Powered by Social Actions

Information and Links

Join the fray by commenting, tracking what others have to say, or linking to it from your blog.

Information
August 14th, 2008
Comments
Feeds and Links
Comment Feed
From This Author
Del.icio.us
Digg
Technorati
Categories
Art

Other Posts
Mad Men: “Tears rise in the heart and gather to the eyes”
All the Mad Men and all the mad women are the sons and daughters of Jimmy Gatz

Readers

Shop newcritics

Featured books:


Viewing 10 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    That was a excellent painting....The Art Institute of Chicago as if it were a lonely relative--all those interminable Monet haystacks!That is so great.....
    • ^
    • v
    That painting is so wonderful. We just moved into a new house and I want to buy paintings for our living room,
    • ^
    • v
    With Turner's talent, he'll be one of the most successful artist.. He'll be a rich person for paintings are loved by people that they buy too much just to display it in their homes. Paintings is really a good investment, so keep it up turner.
    • ^
    • v
    He may be uncouth and not in the best of health but the range of his talent is unbelievable. That's why a lot of people look upon him highly.
    • ^
    • v
    this painting is indeed an art,, boats are really significant ever since but imagine the boat in the past and the boat nowadays at he past time the boats are use to be so big because it is the only way of transportation people can use..but nowadays there are different kinds and designs of boat
    • ^
    • v
    this is indeed a beautiful painting no doubt about it this person really have the guts,, what a gifted hands not many people can do paintings i mean beautiful paintings like this
    • ^
    • v
    As a young artist I studied Turner’s techniques. He was the master of composing using the spiral as well as using colors that were out of the ordinary for the time. It’s been some time since I’ve seen his work. I went to the Turner exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and realized it is more than a feast for the eyes it’s a sensory experience. If you close your eyes can hear the storm, smell and taste the salty air and be engulfed by the coolness of the waves. You are truly there in the middle of the drama that he creates to give us an idea of what was going on at that point in history.

    Tom as you talk about the coal fed ships I exactly which Turner you are describing. You can almost sense the crewmen gagging as the smoke fills the ship and smell the coal as it burns.

    As I walked through the crowded exhibit I noticed sound of the visitors in each room would change. With Turner’s large dramatic epic ocean scene in which you could hear the spray of the water and angry storm above though uncertain which was storm and sea I could also hear a lot of discussion among the viewers. I moved though his more “serene” works the room was almost still expect for the shuffle of viewers feet across the floor.

    I wondered did Turner inspire music or were classical musicians of the time inspired by Tunner?
    • ^
    • v
    Yeah, the ambition complaint seems strange to an American ear, even in the halls of the Met - you're right Kathleen. I loved those late paintings, though I confess to lingering over the period details of the big military scenes. It was a form of journalism.
    • ^
    • v
    Many belive that represented a form of journalism, but the guy didnt meant for that, as many critics explained. Digg into it and you will find more
    • ^
    • v
    That exhibit fascinated me. Turner is so unlike the artists I grew up with, visiting The Art Institute of Chicago as if it were a lonely relative--all those interminable Monet haystacks!
    An English friend accompanied us on this adventure and he was distressed that two of Turner's most famous paintings were not included. He viewed the show with a keen awareness of the artist's significance among England's great painters. Since his loyalties seemed set, I resisted asking about the many digs at the man's horrible ambition--can one aspire to serious art casually?
    Nor did I wonder out loud about the complaint that Turner was uncouth. I resisted mentioning Van Gogh's rude eccentricities and said nothing about , those notorious Renaissance masters, who robbed graves to learn anatomy. Of course, they weren't English.
    My favorites paintings were the close-up boats and water by the shore, although all his work with light on water bouncing through the air and from the sky amazed and stayed with me. Like you I liked his later paintings and, as usual, felt admiration for an artist who kept working until the very end of his life.
 

Trackbacks

(Trackback URL)

close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus