The Life and Masterworks of J.M.W.Turner

135 illustrations

J.M.W. Turner was arguably the greatest landscape and marine painter ever. His output was prodigious: some five hundred and fifty oil paintings, over two thousand highly detailed and finely finished watercolours, and almost twenty thousand sketches, studies and rough watercolours. He excelled in every branch of landscape and marine painting, from elaborate history pictures and idealised scenes in the classical tradition, to tiny, jewel-like watercolours of contemporary life on land and sea made for subsequent engraved reproduction. This book takes us on a grand tour of the artist’s works.

The Author
Eric Shanes is a leading authority on J.M.W. Turner, and is himself a painter. He was the founding Editor of Turner Studies, a journal published by the Tate Gallery, London. He is a Vice- President of the Turner Society, and is currently its Chairman. He organised the Turner: The Great Watercolours exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of the painter in 2000-2001.
Eric Shanes has also written best-selling books on Constantin Brancusi, Salvador Dalí, David Hockney, Warhol and Pop Art and on the Impressionists in London. He has published widely on contemporary art issues, and is much in demand as a lecturer on art all over the world.