# 197
APRIL 2014
PEM PRESENTS
TURNER & THE SEA
ON VIEW MAY 31 TO SEPTEMBER 1, 2014
SALEM, MA – The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) presents
the first and largest US exhibition of Joseph Mallord William
Turner’s maritime paintings. Turner & the Sea features more
than 100 works spanning the fifty-year career of one of Britain’s
celebrated painters. Encompassing oils, watercolors, prints and
sketches from the 1790s to the mid-1800s, this first full-scale
examination of Turner’s lifelong attraction to the sea follows the
artist’s evolution from precocious young painter to one of the
most important, controversial and prolific masters of his art.
Dramatic and roiling, sunlit and cloudstruck, the power of
Turner’s glorious canvases changed the maritime aesthetic and
influenced countless painters hundreds of years after his time.
Turner painted the sea more often than any other subject, and it
was central to his artistic vision from his earliest, careerestablishing works right to the very end of his productive life.
The sea in itself would provide endless pictorial inspiration with
its physical characteristics and inherent poetry. The infinitely
mutable nature of water and its relationship with light would
offer everlasting interest and challenge to any painter. Combined
with the sociopolitical realities of Turner’s surroundings, there
was no escaping the magnetism of the sea as subject matter. In
Turner’s time, Britain was engaged in decades of naval conflict
and life on the open seas was very much in the public
imagination.“Turner lived in one of the world’s most powerful
nations at the water’s edge for much of his life, at the very peak
of British sea power. As any great artist will do, he embraced the
atmosphere of his time and presented it through his work.
Turner’s talent was such that he went a step further and also
redefined marine painting, and perhaps all painting, forever,”
said Daniel Finamore, the Russell W. Knight Curator of
Maritime Art and History.
Turner & the Sea is organized in seven thematic sections:
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TURNER ON SHOW
Turner was an accomplished showman from the start of his
career, strategically displaying works to generate patronage and
publicity. He used marine painting to explore dramatic subjects
and introduce dynamic colors which commanded the viewer’s
attention in crowded and tightly hung galleries. Featured in this
section is the first painting Turner ever exhibited, Fishermen at
Sea, displayed at the Royal Academy in 1796. It shows the
young artist’s command of a rich Continental tradition of
marine painting. While studiously reflecting on the art of the
past, Turner also instills the work with contemporary relevance.
CHARTED WATERS
When Turner entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1789,
marine painting had a long and prestigious history, including
work by celebrated artists from the Netherlands and France.
Their legacy, alongside a century-old tradition of marine
painting in Britain, served as a benchmark against which
Turner’s early artistic efforts were judged. Turner studied the art
of the past at every opportunity and responded in new and often
unexpected ways. At the same time, political revolution across
the Channel, resulting in a new war with France from 1793 on,
gave added importance to the art of the sea for British artists and
their public.
‘M’ FOR MARINE
Turner wa s as well known for his works on paper as for his
larger exhibited oil paintings. Working in watercolor and other
media allowed him to explore the sea in different ways by
following stretches of the British coast through a series of
related images. At the heart of this enterprise was a collection of
prints called the Liber Studiorum or Book of Studies. It was an
ambitious print project intended to be a bold new manifesto for
British landscape art. Turner assigned different letters to each
category of landscape painting and included them at the top of
each image. Marine painting was identified by the letter ‘M’.
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