Turner Art Exhibit

It's hard to believe this incredibly detailed painting and this modern-looking abstract work were done by the same artist. The paintings are part of a retrospective at Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery of Art of a celebrated British artist who lived over 150 years ago, Joseph Mallard William Turner. He was one of the most ambitious and successful artists of the 18th and 19th centuries who still influences artists today. The associate curator of American and British paintings, Charles Brock, describes Turner as a visionary. He's very important to the whole history of Western art, particularly important to the history of American painting. In Europe, one of his most important influences is on the French school of Impressionism. He became skilled in drawing precise architectural details. At 26, Turner's artistic talent was recognized when he became one of the youngest artists ever to be a full member of the Royal Academy. He loved landscapes, but they were looked down upon by the artistic establishment, so Turner used his landscapes and seascapes as backgrounds to depict historical epic events. Here he captures the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars. Turner's views of war were not simply patriotic. He also shows the cost of war. Here he shows blood in the water and drowning sailors. Even the British flag has fallen into the sea. The artist was fascinated with the rise and fall of empires. He was also sensitive to the human condition, which he painstakingly detailed in some of his most famous works. This painting is the decline of the Carthaginian Empire. Carthage was the great empire which really preceded the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean. It was based in northern Africa in Tunis. The painting details the young people of Carthage being boarded on slave ships. As his career develops, he becomes more and more interested in very ethereal effects of light. Turner became known for a style which created an atmospheric mist and light, such as in his paintings of the fallen Empire of Venice. The style captivated viewers and inspired artists. These effects of yellows and lights dissolving forms in a way that makes them very, in many ways, indistinct were very much criticized during Turner's lifetime. A large section of the National Gallery exhibit is devoted to a remarkable series of paintings depicting the disastrous fire that destroyed Britain's Houses of Parliament in 1834. He was there at the moment and he took that opportunity to go around and sketch the burning of the Houses of Parliament using his incredible visual memory to conjure up in his studio these very evanescent effects of fire and light and water. The artist's oil paintings brought together in the same room with as many watercolors provides insight into Turner's working method. The last gallery of the exhibition features works that were never exhibited during Turner's lifetime. They were left by him in his studio and they were never meant to be exhibited. You can see why this sense of kind of pure effects of light, abstract effects of light and atmosphere appealed so much to the type of abstract painters of the 20th century. Many artists never attained fame or financial success in their lifetime. Turner was so enterprising, he even established his own gallery to exhibit his works. When he died in 1851, he left a huge personal fortune and hundreds of paintings. Carolyn Turner, VOA News.