: The sublime, floating city of Venice, described by Michelangelo
as a work of art in itself, has inspired an endless stream of
artists throughout the centuries. Each has attempted to capture
its beauty in his own way, from Canaletto in the Eighteenth
Century to Claude Monet and others in the modern era. Yet few
have found such a true echo of their own sensibilities in the
Venetian scene as British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)
during his more than 20 years of sojourns beginning in 1819.
"Turner and Venice," the first exhibition ever devoted to Joseph
Mallord William Turner's celebrated views of Venice, currently on
view at the Kimbell Art Museum and having recently concluded a
run at Tate Britain, London, is the second of only two venues and
the only US museum where the exhibition will be seen. The showing
at the Kimbell is the first Turner exhibition of such scale and
importance to be seen in the United States since 1966. It is on
view through May 30.
Turner, one of the greatest landscape and seascape painters of
the Romantic era, made his name in the early 1790s as a
topographical watercolorist. He made his debut as a painter in
oils at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1796, and was elected a
Royal Academian in 1802. A staunch supporter of the Royal Academy
throughout his career, from 1812 he showed some of his paintings
at the Royal Academy exhibitions with lines from his own poem
"Fallacies of Hope."
