Turner
The Extraordinary Life and Momentous Times of J. M. W. Turner
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
The man behind the paintings: the extraordinary life of J. M. W Turner, one of Britain's most admired, misunderstood and celebrated artists
J. M. W. Turner is Britain's most famous landscape painter. Yet beyond his artistic achievements, little is known of the man himself and the events of his life: the tragic committal of his mother to a lunatic asylum, the personal sacrifices he made to effect his stratospheric rise, and the bizarre double life he chose to lead in the last years of his life.
A near mythical figure in his own lifetime, Franny Moyle tells the story of the man who was considered visionary at best and ludicrous at worst. A resolute adventurer, he found new ways of revealing Britain to the British, astounding his audience with his invention and intelligence.
Set against the backdrop of the finest homes in Britain, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, this is an astonishing portrait of one of the most important figures in Western art and a vivid evocation of Britain and Europe in flux.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this excellent biography, Moyle (Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs. Oscar Wilde) forges a largely successful effort to undo the traditional view of the 18th- and 19th-century British painter as a "reclusive, squalid, seedy, and eccentric" man with beady eyes and dirty secrets. Instead, Moyle argues, Turner was "an arch manipulator and central player in the great game of art." She traces his life from his earliest ambition to become a painter through his adventurous travels throughout Europe, witnessing the landscapes and seascapes he sketched and painted, to his final illnesses and last days. The backdrop is the French Revolution and the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. Rather than delving deeply into the lives of Turner's mentally ill mother, common-law wives, and neglected daughters, as other biographers have done, Moyle illuminates Turner's devotion to the Royal Academy, fellow artists, and art patrons, business acumen, and astonishing artistic innovations. She excels at art description, bringing his paintings vividly to the mind's eye (though she doesn't detail his erotic drawings). Readers looking for an art-lover's understanding of the man Moyle characterizes as "one of the most ambitious, inventive, technically brilliant, and popular artists of his time" will be well rewarded by this fine depiction.
