English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321) Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321) One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea. In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.  Related Paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner :. | Study | Lake | Sunset | Storm | Centre market |
Related Artists:
Jan van Goyen
1596-1656 Dutch Jan van Goyen Galleries Dutch landscape painter. He studied at Leiden and Haarlem. In 1631 he settled at The Hague. His typically Dutch landscapes of harbors, canals, riverbanks, and winter scenes with skaters and sleighs are naturalistically painted in a grayish-green tonality. He was one of the first landscape painters to sacrifice minute detail for atmospheric effect and space, and he had a considerable influence on later Dutch landscapists. His paintings are in many collections in Europe and the United States. Famous examples are Panorama of The Hague (The Hague); Banks of a Canal (Louvre); and View of Dordrecht (Rijks Mus.). The Metropolitan Museum has five of van Goyen's works, and the Pennsylvania Academy, two.
Jean-Baptiste Van Mour
17th Century Painters of the Bosporus,was a Flemish-French painter, remembered for his detailed portrayal of life in the Ottoman Empire during the Tulip Era and the rule of Sultan Ahmed III. Van Mour was a native of Valenciennes, a Flemish town that at he time of his birth belonged to the Spanish Netherlands, but since 1678 to France. He studied art in the studio of Jacques-Albert Gerin, and his work attracted the attention of an aristocrat and statesman of the time, Marquis Charles de Ferriol. Van Mour was invited to go to Istanbul when De Ferriol was appointed there as the French Ambassador in 1699. De Ferriol commissioned van Mour to do one hundred portraits of the local people. In 1711 De Ferriol returned to France and van Mour worked for a variety of other diplomats. In the meantime De Ferriol published a series of one hundred engravings (after the paintings) in Recueil de cent estampes representant differentes nations du Levant. The book had a great influence in Western Europe and was published in at least five languages. Painting audiences with the Sultan became van Mour's speciality; he only had to change the setting and a few faces. Van Mour worked with assistants to fulfill all his obligations. In 1725 he was granted the extraordinary title of Peintre Ordinaire du Roy en Levant in recognition of both his and the Levant's importance to the French government. In 1727 the Dutch ambassador Cornelis Calkoen asked Van Mour to record his audience with Sultan Ahmed III on canvas. Van Mour was allowed to enter the palace during these ceremonies accompanying the ambassador and his retinue; therefore, he was familiar with the special protocol that prevailed in the Ottoman court for ambassador's receptions. Calkoen took many paintings of Jean-Baptiste van Mour with him, when he was appointed as ambassador in Dresden for the Dutch Republic. In his will of 1762 the bachelor Calkoen forbade his heirs to sell the paintings, which are now part of the Rijksmuseum collection.
Konstantin Savitsky
Russian Painter, 1844-1905 was a Russian realist painter born in the city of Taganrog in the village Frankovka or Baronovka, named after former governor Otto Pfeilizer-Frank. Today this area is occupied by Taganrog Iron and Steel Factory TAGMET. Savitsky's family lived in the building of Taganrog Gymnasium for Boys, where his father worked as a doctor. In Frankovka the family rented a summer house. Savitsky spent his childhood and youth in Taganrog. He showed an interest for painting in the early childhood. Being on the shore of Azov Sea with his parents, he loved to make sketches, and drawing lessons at Gymnasium were his favourite subject. When Konstantin was fifth-grader at Taganrog Gymnasium, his teenager's life changed unexpectedly. Both of his parents died suddenly. Kostya was taken by his uncle who lived in present-day Latvia and became his guardian. There Savitsky entered a private boarding-school and in 1862 he graduated and left for Saint Petersburg, where entered The Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. Personal contacts with outstanding representatives of Russian culture - Ilya Repin, Ivan Shishkin, Viktor Vasnetsov, Mark Antokolski, Stasov, Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin - made a great influence on development of the young artist. Soon Savitsky became one of the best students of the Imperial Academy of Arts. His student paintings were awarded with silver medals and for his painting "Cain and Abel"1871 he received a gold medal. House of Savitsky in Taganrog. TaganrogCity.ComAfter graduation from Imperial Academy of Arts and two years abroad, the artist becomes co-partner of mobile art exhibitions (Peredvizhniki, a group of Russian realist artists who in protest to academic restrictions formed an artists' cooperative, which evolved into the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions in 1870. The artwork "Repairing Railway" was one of the first paintings of that time dedicated to life of the working class. Konstantin Savitsky is a co-author of the famous painting Morning in the Pine Forest. On the original Peredvizhniki exhibition the painting was shown by two authors Ivan Shishkin and Konstantin Savitsky. It was assumed that Savitsky had painted the bears and Shishkin the forest but later the scholars found that preparational drawing of the pine forest were made by both Savitsky and Shishkin. Later Savitsky withdrew his signature from the painting and it is currently exponated as a sole Shishkin's work. The titles of his artworks as "Lost all their possessions in the fire", "To war", "Herdsmen", "Krutchnik",