AFA Winter 2019

Antiques & Fine Art 69 2019 J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) Venice: Looking across the Lagoon at Sunset, 1840 Watercolor on paper, 244 x 304 mm Tate: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 © Tate, 2019. It is easy for us to forget today how rarified long distance travel could be in the early nineteenth century— both due to the lack of transport systems and the Napoleonic Wars, which largely kept Turner from visiting the Continent and Italy until he was middle aged. This ravishing color study of the Lagoon comes from Turner’s final visit to the city that profoundly impacted his art from the time of his first visit in 1819, through the rest of his life. J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) Whitby, ca. 1824 Watercolor on paper, 158 x 225 mm Tate: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 © Tate, 2019. This watercolor is clearly more finished than many in the Turner Bequest. This is because it was always intended for display—not as a watercolor, however, but instead via an engraving made from this original. Turner’s engravings of the coasts of England fundamentally shaped how Britons in the 1820s and 1830s viewed their homeland. Astonishing is how many people would have developed this view strictly through Turner’s engraving series—and thus in black and white, without the rich colors on display here.