English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321) Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321) One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea. In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.  Related Paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner :. | )Peace - Burial at Sea | The picture with White line | Storm | Landscape | Stable |
Related Artists:
Charles Landelle
1812-1908 French painter. His father, a calligrapher and musician from Mayenne, moved to Paris in 1825 to take up a post as musician in the Tuileries. Ary Scheffer, whom Landelle met through his father's contact with the Orleans court, encouraged him to become a painter. He registered at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts on 2 October 1837 as a pupil of Paul Delaroche and made his debut at the Salon in 1841 with a Self-portrait (Laval, Mus. Vieux-Cheteau). His first success, Fra Angelico asking God for Inspiration , indicated a sentimental, religious tendency in his work, which alternated with pretty pictures of young girls. Charity. commissioned by Antoine Vivenel (1799-1862), was followed by Idyll and Elegy (untraced), which were bought by the dealer Adolphe Goupil on the opening day of the 1844 Salon. The contract to buy also included Goupil's right of first refusal on the reproduction of all Landelle's future work. Subsequently, he painted the Three Marys at the Tomb in the pious manner of Ary Scheffer and a sweet, angelic St Cecilia, commissioned in 1845 by the Prefect of the Seine, in which elements of the early Renaissance art seen by Landelle on a trip to Italy in 1845 combined with the soft, pale style common among some of his colleagues from the studio of Delaroche. He also painted religious works for St Roch (1850), St Germain l'Auxerrois (1856) and St Sulpice (1875) churches in Paris.
Edward Haytley
British Painter, active 1740-ca.1762,was an English portrait and landscape painter of the 18th century. Little is known about him, but the background of some of his sitters and professional contacts suggest he may have come from Lancashire. Few of his works survive, but he appears to have specialised in the "conversation piece" form popular with the landed gentry of mid-18th century England, a group portrait against an idealised backdrop of the subjects' estates. His works of this form include one of Elizabeth Robinson with her parents, Edward and Elizabeth Montagu, at Sandleford Priory near Hythe, Kent; six portraits of the Stanley family including one of Sir Robert and Lady Bradshaigh in front of Haigh Hall; and two of the Brockman family on its Kent estate, Beachborough, both showing the newly-constructed Temple Pond. One of the latter may include Susanna Highmore, daughter of the portrait painter Joseph Highmore. His best known works are the oil-on-canvas roundels of Bethlem and Chelsea Hospitals donated in 1740, at the behest of William Hogarth, to the Foundling Hospital, London. His last recorded work was a conversation piece of William Milner, second baronet, dated 1764, and he is assumed to have died shortly after this date
Carl Schuch
(30 September 1846 - 13 September 1903) was an Austrian painter, born in Vienna, who spent most of his lifetime outside Austria, in Germany, Italy and France. He painted primarily still lifes and landscapes. During the period 1882-94 he was based in Paris, where he was greatly impressed by the work of Claude Monet whom he described as "the Rembrandt of plein-air painting" although he was attracted most of all to Rembrandt and the artists of the Barbizon school. In 1884 and 1885 he spent the summer months in the Netherlands, studying the Dutch old masters as well as the contemporary painters of the Hague School, and filling notebooks with detailed descriptions of the colors he observed in paintings that he admired. Of all the artists belonging to the circle around Wilhelm Leibl (called the Leibl-Kreis), Schuch was the most devoted to color. His work marks the transition from the realist tradition to the modern movement in Vienna, esthetically, however, it is far from contemporary trends, and from its means and ends, comparable to Paul Cezanne (Gottfried Boehm, referring to Arnold Gehlen).