Turner: Romance and Reality (Yale 2025)

 Google photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/gZp8gVA4BiiV7tWx7

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner

https://britishart.yale.edu/exhibitions-programs/j-m-w-turner-romance-and-reality (archive)

Some bare minimum thoughts:

  • Earlier than I thought. I thought Turner was late 19th century, but he is earlier (1775-1851). A true Romantic.
  • And similarly, he is more romantic than I thought, at least early on. Like other Romantic artists he's interested in sublimity and power of nature (e.g. Vesuvius), and like Caspar David Friedrich he is interested in Gothic ruins in a nocturnal landscape.
    • cf. e.g. this Vesuvius by Dahl, Friedrich's friend. https://sammlung.staedelmuseum.de/en/work/the-eruption-of-vesuvius-in-december-1820



  • The Yale exhibit convincingly argues that Turner engaged in direct competition with his predecessors, especially the Dutch landscape artist Aelbert Cuyp (the Maas at Dordrecht) and Claude Lorraine.



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