Review by Choice Review
This handsome book, and the exhibition it accompanies, celebrate Turner's later work as the culmination of a lifetime of experimentation by an aged painter who continued to exercise "extraordinary control ... over his medium." His heightened interest in atmospheric effect and dynamic color, the play of light on sky and water, the possibilities of circular or square layouts (as well as smaller oils prepared for a bourgeois clientele), the continued interest in classical subjects along with a commitment to acknowledging 19th-century technology, all testify to an artist constantly expanding and refining his art. Turner in his 60s and 70s produced some of his greatest works--the Slave Ship, the ubiquitous steamboats, the racing locomotive, the magnificent Swiss watercolors, especially the marvelous Rigi views so lovingly displayed here. The authors, many of whom are well-known Turner scholars, avoid overemphasizing the significance of unfinished works while correctly pointing to Turner's use of preparatory sketches and watercolors to develop later projects or to secure commissions. The well-written text (short essays and catalogue entries) comes with endnote documentation, an index, a chronology of Turner's last years, and a thorough bibliography. The illustrations are uniformly excellent. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. --William S. Rodner, Tidewater Community College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This meticulously annotated catalogue accompanies a remarkable exhibition of Turner's late work showing in 2014-2015 at the Tate in London, the Getty in Los Angeles, and the de Young in San Francisco. The catalogue includes extensive individual descriptions for each of the works that make up the exhibit providing historical, cultural, technical, and biographical context for the works that make up the exhibit, along side color reproductions of each work. In addition, five essays shed new light on Turner's later years as a man and an artist. Art conservationists and practicing painters will be fascinated by Amy Concannon's detailed essay on his virtuosic watercolor technique, and Rebecca Hellen and Joyce H. Townsend's discussion of the complexity and depth of surfaces of Turner's late paintings and causes of their physical deterioration. But Romantic art lovers and Turner fans will most appreciate the essays of Sam Smiles, Brian Livesley, and David Blayney Brown, who reveal the mature Turner oeuvre not as senile or disturbed as reported by his contemporary detractors, or precociously modernist, as interpreted from a 20th-century perspective, but rather the output of "a highly creative mind grappling with the problem of finding a more adequate way of representing what he knew, drawing on all his technical resources to develop an image rich enough to accommodate what he had discerned." (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Starred Review. This catalog of a fascinating traveling exhibition sets out to reexamine the "late works" as part of Joseph Mallord William Turner's (1775-1851) continuum of artistic development rather than an aberrant activity produced by age and illness. Essays by leading Turner scholars (and Tate British art curators) Blayney Brown and Amy Concannon and others dispel the long-held assumptions that the artist became more isolated from his own Victorian times. The works presented, a wealth of oils, drawings, and sketches, are visual proof of his engagement with his contemporary world, one that was transforming in many ways. These changes stimulated him to make new connections: his images altered as his surroundings did. It is too often a temptation to interpret the past in terms of the present, and this appears to be what has affected Turner scholarship for many years. The catalog entries offer a wealth of information interspersed with additional essays on such topics as Turner's travels, his formats, and his visions of sea and sky, all of which make this a splendid addition to the literature on the artist. Perhaps the most touching image is a metal paint box, which traveled with Turner everywhere and with which he was able to capture a world of his own, and now ours, forever. VERDICT This splendid work of scholarship and passion, with excellent reproductions and an impressive bibliography, should be on the shelves of every art library.-Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
