Musée No:737.048
Regular price £25.00Venice Mouth of the Grand Canal
Artist: J.M.W. Turner
Date: ca.1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist, whose style can be said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. He is known for his expressive colourisations, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings.
Turner’s dazzling paintings and watercolours of Venice are among his most celebrated works, and his vision continues to shape our perception of the city today. Turner first visited Venice in 1819, stopping there to draw intensively for a few days en route to Rome. In a state of economic decline in the aftermath of Napoleonic occupation, the former maritime empire was rarely visited by artists at this period, though Lord Byron lived there intermittently between 1817 and 1820. Turner was a genius watercolourist, and the medium was particularly well suited to capturing Venice’s elusive and volatile atmospheric conditions.
