The Life of J. M. W. Turner
Founded on Letters and Papers Furnished by his Friends and Fellow Academicians

A pioneering two-volume biography (1862) exploring the genius of this Romantic landscape and historical painter, printmaker and Royal Academician.

Walter Thornbury (Author)

9781108059428, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 February 2013

442 pages, 3 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.5 cm, 0.56 kg

This pioneering two-volume biography, first published in 1862, explores the genius of the groundbreaking Romantic landscape and historical painter J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851). As both journalist and historian, author Walter Thornbury (1828–76) has a light touch, yet he draws on a wide range of correspondence, sketchbooks, watercolours and etchings to give a detailed picture of Turner's artistic development and connections, and his increasingly eccentric character. Volume 1 traces the artist's progress from humble cockney beginnings, through youthful friendship and rivalry with Thomas Girtin and a stint as a drawing-master, to his establishment as a Royal Academician at the heart of the nineteenth-century art world. Thornbury sees Turner from all angles, covering his travels at home and abroad, his watercolour and printmaking techniques, his love of sea and sky and colour gradations, and even his fraught monetary dealings. The author also fully contextualises great works like Ulysses Deriding Polythemus and The Fighting Temeraire.

Preface
1. The curtain rises
2. The London of Turner's boyhood
3. The sky painter
4. Love and ambition
5. Turner's contemporaries in water and oil
6. Turner and Girtin at Dr Munro's
7. Turner's friendly rival, Girtin
8. Turner, the drawing-master
9. Rise and progress of water-colour painting in England
10. Turner in Yorkshire
11. Turner in Scotland
12. Turner's home and foreign tours
13. Turner's work for the engravers
14. Turner's art life (1)
15. The 'Liber studiorum'
16. Turner's art life (2)
17. Turner's art life: second period, 1820–35
18. The Polyphemus: 1829
19. Turner's art life, continued
20. The old Téméraire
21. Turner's art life: concluded
22. Turner's note-books and sketches
23. Turner's prices.

Subject Areas: The arts: general issues [AB]