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.
Contents
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.
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