ContactBoston197.pdf Apr. 2014 | Page 36

# 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: 36 Контакт - Contact 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’. TO PLACE YOUR COMMERCIAL AD, PLEASE CALL TEL: 617. 277. 1254, FAX: 240. 368. 6224