The English Romantic painter J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) is renowned for his sublime and dramatic landscapes and seascapes. This handsome book--written by Turner expert James Hamilton and published in conjunction with a traveling exhibition organized by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute--focuses primarily on the artist's spectacular seascapes dating from the 1840s, the last decade of his illustrious career.
Turner: The Late Seascapes provides new and provocative insights into these powerful works, relating them to the artist's interest in poetry and drama as well as his curiosity about science, optics, and photography. Turner's extensive travels and the relationship between Turner's paintings and seventeenth-century Dutch precedents are discussed in depth. Hamilton also examines the important role of the pendant in Turner's late art, arguing that his paired works have intentional associative narrative, stylistic, and chromatic meanings. Furthermore, Hamilton traces the evolution of Turner's famous Whaling series, offering a new source for it.
Including more than one hundred examples of Turner's dramatic and lively marine pictures--sixty of which are reproduced in full color--this elegant book sheds fascinating new light on one of the world's most beloved artists.
This book is the catalogue for an exhibition at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (June 15-September 7, 2003); Manchester City Art Galleries, England (October 24, 2003-January 17, 2004); and the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, Scotland (February 19-May 23, 2004).