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Turner in Venice
Turner in Venice
POSTED APRIL 12, 2021
J.M.W. Turner was a Romantic era landscape painter, watercolorist, and printmaker. Along with several other Romantic painters, he is credited with raising landscape painting to the same level of prominence and respectability held by narrative and portrait painting.
To say Turner was ahead of his time is an understatement. His works anticipate the Impressionism of the mid-to-late 19th century and foreshadow the Abstract Expressionism of the 20th century. Known for his imaginative landscapes and turbulent marine paintings, Turner left behind more than 550 oil paintings and 2,000 watercolors.
He visited Venice three times, and the paintings he made of "La Serenissima" are among his most expressive, luminous works. These masterpieces capture the light, the water, the atmosphere of the city and show the evolution of his style, as it became more focused on light and color.
Turner was already 44 years old when he made his first visit to Venice in 1819. The Napoleonic Wars, which prevented safe travel to the continent, had ended in 1815 with the defeat of Napoleon. Turner's first visit to "the floating city" produced, among other paintings, two watercolors of the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore - Dawn (upper) and Early Morning (lower). It is a study of light and water in time 80 years before Monet's series of Rouen Cathedral paintings.
After Turner's second visit to Venice, his paintings took a more pronounced departure from photographic realism. His impressionistic "Venice from the Porch of Madonna della Salute" [below] from 1835 captures the unique quality of Venetian light. The painting also displays Turner's virtuosic command of color with brilliant blues, greens, reds and yellows framed by the white of the clouds and the buildings along the canal.
Turner's final visit to Venice came in the late summer of 1840. His style had evolved further - almost into abstraction as evidenced by his "Approach to Venice" from 1844. The painting is almost entirely one of pure color and light with only a few barges discernible as such in the foreground. When "Approach to Venice" [below] was first exhibited in 1844, Turner quoted Lord Byron in the catalog description: 'The moon is up, and yet it is not night / The sun as yet disputes the day with her.' "In Turner’s colorful view of Venice, a full moon shares the sky with the setting sun as a flotilla of barges and gondolas makes its way across the lagoon." [1]
J.M.W Turner was clearly a forerunner of 20th century modern art and recognized as such by Abstract Expressionists such as Mark Rothko. While walking through a Turner exhibition at MOMA in 1966, Rothko was struck by the similarity of Turner’s paintings to his own art. “This man Turner,” he reportedly said afterwards, “he learned a lot from me.” [2]
Turner is known for painting many other subjects besides Venice. Exhibitions of his works have been popular almost since the days he created them. His financial security allowed him to experiment freely and in turn he "set painting free".
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