Turner;

Phaidon Colour Library

by J.M.W. Turner

J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) is the most masterly of British painters. His work exploits the great traditions of European painting, while anticipating the development of modern art in the twentieth century.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

16 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker.

Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting.

Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism. Some of his works are cited as examples of abstract art prior to its recognition in the early twentieth century.

Reviews

[Pete daPixie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to give this four stars. I've always loved Turner. Was he the painter who gave birth to impressionism, almost a century before the style became fashionable in France? William Gaunt's Colour Library, once past the rather long introduction, contains forty eight sample colour plates that span the output of this artists work. Turner captures the maelstrom of natural forces in 'plein air' many years before the term was first used by French impressionist artists. His works with watercolour and gouache are some of my favourites. 'The burning of the Houses of Parliament' from 1834 and 'The Fighting Temeraire', score high in my all time list of English art.
Great book, just to look at the pictures! Don't really want to return this to the library.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know absolutely nothing about art or art theory or art history, so a lot of the text went over my head and I can't speak to whether it was a good analysis of Turner's work or not. Even though I couldn't comprehend everything, I enjoyed simply the fact that someone cares so much about this art that they spent so much time and thought on it. I, of course, also appreciated all the images of the art, and was able to occasionally catch the drift of what the author was speaking about with some of the paintings. I appreciated most the contrast of light in many of his paintings. My laptop's desktop is a revolving background of art pieces that I like and more than a few from this book made it into the rotation.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well I think I've learnt a few more art critiquing terms than I knew before. A good book in discussing the paintings (although reading the introduction meant flicking through to the paintings all the time, which was a bit annoying, rather than putting these comments beside the images), but not a lot of background information, which would have been useful.

[Meredith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice history of Turners life and development of his style.....lots of colour plates and discussion of the paintings.