AFA Winter 2019

Winter 64 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com W e often think we know all there is to know about J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), the English Romantic painter. Masterworks at The Met, the Clark, the Getty, and the National Gallery, all serve to remind us of Turner’s magisterial ability in oils, and to reinforce our view of him as a fully formed artist, a visionary ahead of his time, even a man on edge (famously denied patronage by Queen Victoria who thought him ‘mad, dirty, and dangerous’), and a sort of proto-Pollock for the nineteenth century. Nothing makes this final impression more impactful than Mike Leigh’s 2014 film, Mr. Turner , as actor Timothy Spall spits and scratches at his canvas, all the while reminding us that great artists needn’t also be great human beings. Missing from this picture are the realities of a complex individual; a man who succeeded beyond any reasonable expectations of his age—through talent, yes, but also dogged work, experimentation, failure, and above all, through a single-minded desire to create a visual archive of the wanderer’s experience in a moment of extraordinary transition. To find these qualities in Turner, we need to look beyond the obvious and to embrace his watercolors. Turner’s dexterity in watercolor defined what was achievable within the simple ingredients of water, paper, and pigment not long after interest in this art form took hold. Turner’s watercolors are not as easy to find as his oils—not because they are scarce—more than twenty thousand sheets of works on paper make up the foundation of the Turner Bequest held at Tate—but because they are so delicate. Watercolor is an inherently fugitive medium, easily damaged by exposure to light. by Nicholas R. Bell J.M.W. TURNER Watercolors from Tate Continues on page 71