Joseph Mallord William Turner
English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851
Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting.
Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321)
Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840).
Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena.
Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321)
One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea.
In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques. Related Paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner :. | No title | Burning of the Houses | Lifeimosi | Two part | Africa | Related Artists: Charles Ferdinand WimarGerman-born American Painter
b.1828 d.1862
was a painter of Western Native Americans and buffaloes. Born in Siegenburg, Germany, came to America at the age of 15, settled with his parents in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1846 he began studying painting with Leon Pomarede and went with his master on a trip up the Mississippi River. In 1852 he went to the D??sseldorf Academy to study with Emanuel Leutze. Wimar returned to St. Louis in 1856. He primarily occupied himself with the themes of Indian life, buffalo herds, life in the Great Plains, the theme of the wagon trains. He made three trips to the headwaters of the Mississippi. Beardsley LimnerAmerican Colonial Era Painter, active 1785-1805 Fritz Zuber-Buhler was a Swiss painter integrant of the style Academic Classicism, born in 1822 at Le Locle in Switzerland and died November 23, 1896.
At sixteen years old he moved to Paris, France where found his first teacher Louis Grosclaude. Later he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and then refined his technical skills with François-Édouard Picot, who followed the same lineage of contemporaneous artists such as Leon Perrault, Bouguereau, Alexandre Cabanel and many others. Afterwards he spent some time in Italy searching for inspiration and raise the quality of his art. Then, returning to Paris, he made his debut at the Salon in 1850 exhibiting alongside oil paintings, drawings, pastels and watercolors.
His painting Innocence shows his romantic view of the peasant childhood and their environments, expressing nature, softness and intense details. Also his works were drawn by popular themes at that period like mythology, religion and requested portraits. Zuber-Buhler produced exhibitions in the United States, comprising at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and achieved great admiration as a classic academic painter.
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