A standout in an entire gallery devoted to Turner's views of the conflagration that engulfed the Houses of Parliament is the spectacularly hued "The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, October 16, 1834,” 1835. The Cleveland Museum of Art.
:One of the great landscape painters of all time, and arguably Great Britain's finest artist, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) depicted a wide range of subjects in his prolific career, ranging from seascapes, topographical views and mythology to historical events, modern life and images from his imagination. His paintings and watercolors, which elevated the standing of landscape art to unprecedented levels, are among the most familiar and most admired works in art history.
In the course of his career, he created more than 20,000 oil paintings, watercolors and drawings. While helping to define the romantic movement, his renderings of the subtle effects of light and atmosphere on the shape and color of things summed up notions of the sublime. His enormous talent, technical brilliance and stylistic innovations influenced many artists who followed, including the Impressionists.
His achievements are celebrated in the exhibition "J.M.W. Turner," on view at the National Gallery of Art through January 6. The show, comprising nearly 150 paintings and watercolors, was organized by a curatorial team headed by Ian Worrell of Tate Britain that included the National Gallery's Franklin Kelly, the Dallas Museum of Art's Dorothy Kosinski and The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Gary Tinterow.
Raised in the heart of London, the son of a barber and wigmaker, Turner had little formal education, but showed an early talent for watercolor drawings. Enrolled at the age of 14 at the Royal Academy of Arts, where he was schooled in the fundamentals of art, he began submitting watercolors to the Royal Academy's exhibitions in his late teens.
"The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805,” 1823–1824, Turner's largest work (102 by 144 inches), was commissioned by King George IV long after the decisive naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars. Lord Nelson's ship Victory looms behind boatloads of seamen struggling to survive amidst the chaos of battle. National Maritime Museum, London.
Turner followed a lifelong pattern of summer touring, initially exploring areas in England, Scotland and Wales that offered scenic sites. "The Chancel and Crossing of Tintern Abbey, Looking Toward the East Window," a 1794 watercolor, emphasized the sad grandeur of the old, overgrown Gothic ruins of the Welsh site. It reflects Turner's embrace of the picturesque aesthetic that stressed qualities of roughness and decay.
Determined to gain recognition as a serious, prominent artist, he took up oil painting and followed the advice of Royal Academy president Sir Joshua Reynolds by studying such Old Masters as Rembrandt, Claude Lorrain and Nicholas Poussin. Turner's first oil to be exhibited at the Royal Academy, in 1796, "Fisherman at Sea," growing out of the tradition of Seventeenth Century Dutch marine paintings, documents the liveliness and dramatic moonlit effects he achieved in the new medium — at age 21.
Eventually, Turner employed a more energetic style, geared to his era's sense of awe in the face of untamed nature — The Sublime, as it was called. "The Shipwreck," 1805, demonstrates man's vulnerability to the power of nature as survivors cling to small, overloaded boats, seemingly at the mercy of battering waves.
