JOSEPH TURNER

In the history of world art Turner entered as the father of a fundamentally new relationship to blossom, the creator of the rare light-air effects. The famous Russian critic V. Stasov wrote about Turner: ". . . Being around 45 years old, he found his own way and made great things here. He planned to depict the sun, sunlight, and sunlight with such righteousness, what to him in painting has not yet happened. And he began to seek the transfer of the sun in all its effulgence. He searched a long time, but its made and expressed on canvas, something that previously no one has really not given.

Joseph Mallord William Turner was born April 23, 1775 in London, in the family barber. He was an exceptionally gifted child, and yet the boy was selling their own paintings, which his father exhibited in the window of his shop and sold for 2-3 shillings apiece. Already at the age of twelve years, Joseph received his first order - color woodcut Henry Boswell. His first teacher was Thomas Malton, drew architectural forms, the prospects streets. In 1789, Joseph became a student at the London Academy of Arts. Here he studied until 1793.

At that time, Turner began working with Gertinom for Dr. Monroe. Artist J. Farington recorded in his diary: "The House of Dr. Monroe - like the evening academy. The owner gives the young people to copy pictures of their friends. Turner and Gertin "worked" at Dr. Monroe three years - drawing in the evenings at his home. They come in six and remained until ten o′clock. Gertin sketched the outlines and Turner, painted and finished. Mainly they copied unfinished drawings Cozens and others and made copies of these finished drawings.

Up to 1800, Turner wrote, watercolor landscapes. In 1790 the first of which was presented at an exhibition at the academy. In the future, here is exposed more and more of his watercolors. In 1796 their number reached ten.

Farington recorded in 1798 with Turner′s words, that he had "more orders than he could do," and in 1799, that he should have done "sixty drawings for different people. " Turner′s success - it is not only a great talent, but also the incredible hard work: it is almost always on my feet met the sunrise.

Photo — «Joseph Turner»

Gradually develops Turner oil painting. In the second half of the nineties, he created a few landscapes in the spirit of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century.

At the beginning of the new century artist performs a spectacular panoramic view on the war with the French, "The Battle of the Nile", and soon another rich in scenic effects picture of the "Fifth Egyptian penalty. This picture has bought a rich writer and philanthropist William Beckford.

In 1802 Turner was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts. After that he went to Paris, where he was able to get acquainted with the works of old masters in the Louvre. During the crossing to the mainland was a strong storm. Turner writes: "I almost drowned. " He made sketches later served as the basis for paintings in 1803 Mol in Calais. French fishermen go to sea, the British passenger ship arrives.

From the capital of France, the artist went to Switzerland. He did this over four hundred sketches, filling six albums. Throughout later life he used the Swiss motifs for his paintings. The peculiar nature of the wild region, the particular combination of shapes and colors have made an indelible impression on him and contributed to the formation of a mature style.

In 1804 Turner opened his own gallery, where going to put his best canvases. Gallery he opened the "shipwreck". MA Orlov writes about the film: "clearly palpable waves of the fierce resistance of the hurricane, all the force of its gravity, they are drawn back into the ocean. And with the same energy to the affected people and sailing boats, rushing to his rescue, silyatsya stay on the waves. This is quite a romantic painting is built on bold contrasts of light and dark, cold colors - dark sea with emerald overcrowded - and hot - spots of red and yellow, however sketched the figure in the courts. "

The audience, who took his etchings, most often rejected his unusual, fantasy-romantic landscapes. Most suppressed wizard attacks on critics of his works.

Around 1807 Turner moved with his father close to the Thames. Appears several landscapes associated with the river: "The Thames at Windsor (1807)," Eton College from the River "(1808)," The Thames "(1809).

Photo — «Joseph Turner»

Turner told me that to study the clouds, "he took a boat, lay on her bed on his back, dropped anchor in the river, and looked at the sky for hours and sometimes days on end until they caught some light effects that he would like to transferred to the canvas. "

In 1808, Turner became a professor. In a letter in 1811 to his publisher, John Britton, he protested against the definition given Fyuzeli landscapist as cartographers and surveyors art. Real refutation of Fyuzeli can serve as a canvas "Frosty Morning". "Frosty Morning" - motive, amazing in its extreme simplicity. Two-thirds of the canvas is the clear sky, one-third - the land, shrouded in mist, with barely rising above a thin trunks of the trees naked distant spire of the church, with the wagon, around which a few villagers are busy. And yet, this fabric is a plain untouched autumn frost with high light the sky - majestically beautiful "(MA Orlova).

John Constable acknowledged "Frosty Morning" Turner′s painting of the paintings on exhibition in 1813. "

After the first trip to Italy in 1819, the artist has been there several times. Gradually, his creative way of becoming more free and natural.

After working on sketches in Italy Turner, special attention was paid to color and paint. The main genre for him have always been landscapes, in which with the help of amazing light effects, Turner was able to make a live transmission of any state of nature. In his paintings as though it were real thunder storms, surging foaming waves across the canvas are mysterious chiaroscuro.

The dynamic free style artist from the twenties become more relaxed, color landscapes built on contrasts shimmering tones, often united in a common light spectrum, subject outlines merge and break up that foreshadowed the French Impressionist painting. Landscapes Turner 1820-1840-ies, courageous, not only in color, but also for the transfer of light and air, differ predilection for unusual effects, colorful phantasmagoria.

After a second trip to Italy in 1829, Turner has shown the best of historical paintings - "Ulysses taunts Polyphemus" - its "central product," as Ruskin called it the most traditional of the plot and the pioneering of his incarnation.

Photo — «Joseph Turner»

"Ulysses" - painting, treating the same Homeric legend, how light and color. It has a unique connection to ancient mythology with the latest scientific data and specific observations. Ulysses Turner - one of the steps leading to the merger of history, reality and imagination in artistic images of his later things . . .

"Ulysses" was called melodrama, opera scenery noticed that galley Ulysses bathed in sunshine, even in those parts, which can not penetrate its rays, and the contrast between the darkness of the cave of Cyclops and brilliance of the morning sky was too big. But Turner never troubled inaccuracies naturalistic order, it′s safe to increase the size of locks or bell, moved them where they thought it necessary, if so required structure of the picture, increase the resonance of color, if, in his view, the expressiveness of a win.

EA Nekrasov also tells about the last decades of the artist′s work: ". . . works of this period are so different that they seem to belong to several quite different artists. Surprisingly, both the same artist in the same decade, he could write the "Evening Star" and "Snowstorm, avalanches and floods," "Hero and Leander" and "frigate" Brave ", towed to the site of the last parking on the scrap heap "," Golden Bough "and" Fire of Parliament "," coal miners, coal gruzyaschih night and Staffa, Fingal Cave ", not to mention quite separately petvortovskih cycle of things. "

Turner′s most famous works of the thirties-forties - "Fire of Parliament" (1835), "The last voyage of the ship" The Brave "(1838)," Rain, steam and speed "(1844).

EV Rippindzheyl in his memoirs describes how Turner was finishing the painting "The fire of Parliament on opening day at the British Institution in 1835:" He was already there and working even before I arrived, having begun as much as possible early. And indeed, he had to hurry, because the painting when it was sent, it was just a few strokes "formless and empty" (as once put Hezlit), as primordial chaos .

Photo — «Joseph Turner»

. . Etty worked with him (over his film "A musician playing the lute "). . . Little Ettie from time to time moved back to see what impression his picture, putting his head on the shoulder and his eyes half closed, and sometimes chatted with someone from the neighbors, as usual artists. But it was not so with Turner, for the three hours I spent there - and I realized that the same has been ever since it began in the morning - he never stopped working and never looked back or turned away from the wall where hung his picture. All spectators are amused observation of the figure of Turner and what he did on his picture . . . He worked almost a palette knife, twisting, and smearing the picture of a piece of translucent material size and thickness of a finger . . . Finally, the work was finished, Turner gathered his supplies, folded them, locked in a box, and then, still turned to the wall and all at the same distance from it, sideways left without saying a word to anybody, and, approaching the stairs in the middle Hall, quickly ran down. Everyone looked after him with a puzzled grin. A Maklayz, standing nearby, said: "This is done skillfully, he did not even stop to look at his work, it knows that it is finished, and leaves.

In 1839, William Thackeray, while still an unknown journalist, wrote to a friend:

"Frigate" Brave "- best picture at the exhibition at the Academy. The old frigate slowly dragged to his last dwelling small, snorted, rend the smoke and flames, a tugboat. The bright red sun that lights the whole host of flaring clouds and the river, the flotilla of ships gradually melting away, creating this effect, which is hard to find in painting . . .

It′s funny, you say, with such enthusiasm to talk about chetyrehfutovom canvas, representing the ship, barge, river and sunset. But it made a great artist. It makes you think about the great with those simple objects that are in front of you, he knows how to soothe or excite, to light a fire or suppress, using only a few colors.

But even Thackeray could not properly understand, perhaps, the most innovative and in its design and to implement the Turner painting "Rain, steam and speed" (1844).

Photo — «Joseph Turner»

"Rain is designated spots of dirty putty - wrote Thackeray, - nalyapannoy on canvas using palette knife; sunlight dimly flickering its way out from under a thick lumps of dirty yellow chrome. Shadows are transmitted kraplaka cool shades of crimson and vermilion patches of muted tones. And although the fire in the locomotive firebox and seems to red, I can not claim that it is not painted in cobalt or pea color. Another critic found in the colors Turner Color eggs with spinach.

These latest paintings are in the nature allegorical phantasmagoria, colorful, filled with symbols and semitones, had a tremendous influence on the formation of European Symbolism second half of the XIX century.

Painting remained the sole passion of the artist until the end of his days. After his father′s death in 1830, Turner never married and not started your own home, preferring to rent rooms in the hotel. He is rarely seen with friends, preferring solitude.

It is curious that his neighbors in Chelsea, his last place of refuge, have not learned that an elderly man, who lived near them, was a famous painter.

In 1851 the artist has come to Opening Day, but did not show any of his paintings. The cause of his death on Dec. 19, 1851 was a long illness, he did not want to contact a doctor. Turner left a huge fortune and was buried in the Cathedral of St. Paul.

Turner impressed all his capacity for work. He is the author of about 5000 oil paintings, watercolors and more than 20000 and 19000 pictures. Most of his works he bequeathed to the British people, and now most of them are exhibited in the Tate Gallery in London.