J.M.W. TURNER

The Fighting Temeraire, Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth, Dido Building Carthage, The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, this book, new from Taschen, covers Turner's illustrious, wide-ranging repertoire to introduce an artist who combined a traditional genre with a radical modernism. Joseph Mallord William Turner's (1775-1851) landscapes and seascapes scorch the eye with such ravishing light and colour, with such elemental force, it is as if the sun itself were gleaming out of the frame. Appropriately known as "the painter of light," Turner worked in print, watercolour, and oils to transform landscape from serene contemplative scenes to pictures pulsating with life. He is well-known for his expressive colorizations, innovative landscapes, and stormy, sometimes violent maritime paintings. More than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours, and 30,000 works on paper were left behind by him. Turner attended the Royal Academy of Art at the age of 14 in 1789 and was admitted a year later by Sir Joshua Reynolds. He had an early interest in sketching building, but was urged to concentrate on painting instead. He was 15 when his first watercolour, A View of the Archbishop's Palace, Lambeth, was approved for the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1790. Turner's first oil painting for the school, Fishermen at Sea, was a nighttime moonlight picture of the Needles off the Isle of Wight, an image of boats in danger, completed in 1796. He anchored his work to the River Thames and to the sea, but in the historical context of the Industrial Revolution, also integrated boats, trains, and other markers of human activity, which juxtaposes the thrust of civilization against the forces of nature. 21 x 26cm, 96 pages.