Courtesy of The Frist Art Museum
Collective pulses will quicken at the fiery, sun-infused scenes in J.M.W. Turner: Quest for the Sublime, a collection of dramatic oil paintings, watercolors, and sketches by one of history’s most renowned landscape painters, Joseph Mallord William Turner.
Presented by The Frist Art Museum, the exhibit marks the sole U.S. appearance of this venerable collection, on loan from London’s Tate through May 31.
Turner, who lived from 1775 to 1851, revolutionized the genre of landscape painting and raised the level of reverence for watercolors, a medium once viewed as the province of amateurs. Organized by theme, this exhibit includes approximately 75 works.
“The sense of awe that Turner’s paintings inspire is as universally palpable today as it was two centuries ago,” says Mark Scala, the museum’s chief curator.
“Turner’s depictions of nature’s grandeur, the brilliancy of pure light, and the psychological drama contained within shifting weather conditions, all support the notion—widespread in Europe, Asia, and America, especially in the 19th century—that landscape paintings can encourage contemplation of our innermost feelings as they connect to the larger cosmos, with all its astonishing beauty, power and mystery.”
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Courtesy of The Frist Art Museum
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Courtesy of The Frist Art Museum
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from Fribourg, Lausanne and Geneva Sketchbook [Finberg CCCXXXII], Geneva, the Jura Mountains and Isle Rousseau, Sunset
Turner was a central figure in the Romantic movement, an eccentric man with a Cockney accent and a patent disregard for social niceties. He is now widely recognized as Britain’s greatest painter, rising above an enormous pool of talent.
“His ability to capture light and atmospheric conditions at different times of day was greatly inspiring to the Impressionists,” Scala says. “And the way he painted nature as a symbol for human emotions helped shape the way we look at art today, not as simply as a picture of something, but as an expression of deep feeling. Like such masters as Rembrandt, van Gogh, and Picasso, Turner carved his own path—he embodied the restlessness of the Romantic spirit.”
With a brush in hand, Turner captured the beauty of sunlight in a spectacular manner. Such was Turner’s obsession with the sun that there is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that his dying words were, “The sun is God.” Artists, long fascinated by light, have been inspired by him, and viewers of his work have found his meditations on light inspiring, whether he captured the sun’s rays over a mysterious Venetian harbor, an imposing mountain, a bucolic river, or a sail-festooned battleship. As a Romantic painter, Turner captured that movement’s thirst for untouched nature as a foil to ever-progressing industrialization—a notion not uncommon in modern times.
“Like viewers during Turner’s own time, we may be stirred by the innovative ways that he found emotional echoes in nature’s energy,” Scala says. “But we might also draw inferences from his paintings that are keenly relevant today, especially with regard to humanity’s relationship with the natural world.”