JMW Turner: one of the greatest of England’s painters
JMW (Joseph Mallord William) Turner was the most original landscape painter of his day who worked both in oil and watercolour.
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JMW Turner, was perhaps the best-loved of English artists. He was known as the Painter of Light because of his interest in brilliant colour and ability to make skies and clouds look expressive and luminous. Recognised as one of the most original painters of seascapes and landscapes in Europe his works include watercolours, oils and engravings.
There were many contradictory reports about JMW Turner as a person, but shortly after meeting Turner, Ruskin confided in his diary that:
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JMW Turner was christened on 14 May 1775 at St Paul’s Covent Garden, but his date of birth was not recorded, although he claimed 23 April was his birthday. He grew up in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, which was not the fashionable area it had been, and was to become again. JMW Turner was accepted at the Royal Academy School of Art on 11 December 1789 when he was 14 years old. The following year he exhibited a watercolour A View of the Archbishop’s Palace, Lambeth at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy, the same year 1790 that BG Windus, who was to become one of his major patrons, was born.
His talent was recognised at an early age and by 1802 he had become a full member of the Royal Academy and in 1807 was made a professor of perspective. From that year onwards he participated in every annual exhibition, with only a few exceptions, until the year before his death in 1851. |
"My business is to paint what I see, not what I know is there"
A regular annual event in Turner’s life was his sketching tour. He travelled throughout the British Isles, and when the Treaty of Amiens was signed in 1802, he travelled to France and Switzerland and then, when was war finally over, more widely across Europe. The contents of the hundreds of sketchbooks he brought back were regularly used as the basis for finished drawings and paintings.
BG Windus had already begun collecting Turner’s watercolours by 1820, adding his Library extension to accommodate them after he inherited the family home in 1832. Letters from JMW Turner to BG Windus, sold at Bonham’s in 2009, show that they corresponded from 1833 – 1848 and that Turner was a regular guest for dinner at BG Windus’s home. The Windus collection at Tottenham Green was one of the few opportunities for the public to see Turner’s paintings at the time. In 1840 Turner met the critic John Ruskin, a frequent visitor to Windus in Tottenham, who became the great champion of his work. According to David Roberts: That he was not the recluse Ruskin has pictured him is well known to all who knew anything about him., for he loved the society of his brother-painters, and was in reality ‘ a jolly toper,’ never missing a night at the meetings of the Royal Academy Club… as a proof that he loved them and these jolly parties, he willed that £50 annually should be spent expressly for that purpose on his birthday. In 1845 Turner undertook two last sketching tours to France and his health broke down shortly afterwards. His health continued to decline over the next few years and his last appearance at the Royal Academy, the institution which had given him so much pleasure, was at the private view on 7 May 1851 followed by dinner at the Royal Academy Club. JMW Turner died on 19 December 1851. |
A watercolour and an oil in the Windus Collection
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On his death BG Windus received an invitation from Carrington Simpson, who wrote from Canterbury Place, Lambeth on 24 December 1851: I am desired by the Executors of the late J.M.W. Turner Esq. to invite you to accompany the remains to St Paul’s Cathedral on Tuesday next the 30th instant and the favor of your attendance is requested at No.47 Queen Anne Street Cavendish Square at 9 o’Clock precisely on that morning. |