EPTAfter a lengthy reading week and midterms complete, I resume with more art blog. And now that I'm home sick with the flu, I get the chance to do some reading, so hopefully I get some good ideas for future weeks!
I don't really like Turner that much so the analysis is lacking. Any input from you guys would be grand.
J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851)
Joseph Mallard William Turner was born 23 April, in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London, England. Turner apparently had piercing blue eyes, and was very self conscious of his height (5'4" / 162cm) Turner’s father gave up his business (Wig maker) to help his son with his art practice; the “family firm”. Both parents were very supporting. Turner's Mother suffered from psychosis, possibly due in part to the early death of Turner's younger sister, Helen. She was admitted to bedlam (Bethlam Royal Hospital) in 1799, readmitted to Islington asylum and died there in 1804. Turner was apprenticed very young, his sketchbooks date back to 1789. Before his 15th birthday, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Art, where he worked with Thomas Walton, who taught him about perspective and topographical draftsmanship. In 1799, when he was aged 24, Turner became an associate of the royal Academy at the earliest possible age, then at the age of 27, he was declare a full member, then became a Professor of perspective at the Academy at age 32. In 1804, he Turner founded his own gallery where he exhibited his own work and had yearly exhibitions which usually opened in the spring and closed in July. In the interim he would travel (repeatedly to Italy) and paint.
Turner loved Claude Lorraine 1605-1682, who he saw himself in competition with. Apparently Turner wept at Lorraine's paintings, worried that he could never be able to paint like him. Similarly, Turner saw himself in competition with the masters. Turner was seen as a precursor for Impressionism, along with John Constable. Derain, Monet, abstract expressionists, fauvists were inspired by him. Turner had great reception for his artwork during his lifetime.
![[image loading]](http://www.friloux-art.com/tl/art/turner-slave-ship.jpg)
The Slave Ship / Slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying; taiphoon coming on 1840.
The painting was inspired by accounts that were familiar to him about slave ships that threw slaves overboard before going in to port, to collect on "lost at sea" insurance instead of paying for medical bills for sick persons, and to collect on dead persons who they otherwise could not collect insurance on. The Slave trade had been recently abolished in Britain (1839), and this painting reflects the contemporary moral outrage about Slavery. The violent power of the sea and the strange sea creatures represent the forces of nature punishing the guilty. The painting was widely admired for its use of colour and the way in which sea and sky merge around the distant ship. In the lower portion of the painting, hands of enslaved Africans can be seen still shackled.
This painting, as categorized as his "later work" strain the visual boundaries of traditional landscape painting. Turner's lifelong passion for nautical disaster paintings was married with near contemporary subject matter of moral outrage and social conscience. Here, "Turner pits the callous inhumanity of humanity against the vengeful moral authority of nature"*
Art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) wrote about this painting in his book, Modern Painters. Ruskin asked his father for the money to purchase the painting. He bought it in 1843, and installed it in his dining room, though later he sold it as he was "unable to live with the subject matter"
Nineteenth Century Art, Second edition Eisenman, Stephen F. p. 139.
