J M W Turner And The Subject Of History

J.M.W. Turner and the Subject of History is an in-depth consideration of the artist's complex response to the challenge of creating history paintings in the early nineteenth century. Structured around the linked themes of making and unmaking, of creation and destruction, this book examines how Turner's history paintings reveal changing notions of individual and collective identity at a time when the British Empire was simultaneously developing and fragmenting. Turner similarly emerges as a conflicted subject, one whose artistic modernism emerged out of a desire to both continue and exceed his eighteenth-century aesthetic background by responding to the altered political and historical circumstances of the nineteenth century.

J.M.W. Turner and the Subject of History is an in-depth consideration of the artist's complex response to the challenge of creating history paintings in the early nineteenth century. Structured around the linked themes of making and unmaking, of creation and destruction, this book examines how Turner's history paintings reveal changing notions of individual and collective identity at a time when the British Empire was simultaneously developing and fragmenting. Turner similarly emerges as a conflicted subject, one whose artistic modernism emerged out of a desire to both continue and exceed his eighteenth-century aesthetic background by responding to the altered political and historical circumstances of the nineteenth century.

This edited collection explores the intersection of historical studies and the artistic representation of the past in the long nineteenth century. The case studies provide not just an account of the pursuit of history in art within Western Europe but also examples from beyond that sphere. These cover canonical and conventional examples of history painting as well as more inclusive, ‘popular’ and vernacular visual cultural phenomena. General themes explored include the problematics internal to the theory and practice of academic history painting and historical genre painting, including compositional devices and the authenticity of artefacts depicted; relationships of power and purpose in historical art; the use of historical art for alternative Liberal and authoritarian ideals; the international cross-fertilisation of ideas about historical art; and exploration of the diverse influences of socioeconomic and geopolitical factors. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of the histories of nineteenth-century art and culture.

The man behind the paintings: the extraordinary life of J. M. W Turner, one of Britain's most admired, misunderstood and celebrated artists J. M. W. Turner is Britain's most famous landscape painter. Yet beyond his artistic achievements, little is known of the man himself and the events of his life: the tragic committal of his mother to a lunatic asylum, the personal sacrifices he made to effect his stratospheric rise, and the bizarre double life he chose to lead in the last years of his life. A near mythical figure in his own lifetime, Franny Moyle tells the story of the man who was considered visionary at best and ludicrous at worst. A resolute adventurer, he found new ways of revealing Britain to the British, astounding his audience with his invention and intelligence. Set against the backdrop of the finest homes in Britain, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, this is an astonishing portrait of one of the most important figures in Western art and a vivid evocation of Britain and Europe in flux.

In 1802, at the age of 26, Joseph Mallord William Turner became the youngest ever member of the Royal Academy. A prolific painter and watercolourist, his paintings began by combining great historical themes with the inspired visions of nature, but his experimentation with capturing the effects of light led him swiftly towards an unusual dissolution of forms. Turner was a constant traveller, not only within the British Isles but also throughout Europe, from the Alps to the banks of the Rhine, from northern France to Rome and Venice. His death in 1851 revealed not only his zealously guarded private life but also a will that left both his fortune and more than thirty thousand drawings, watercolours and paintings to the nation. In this profusely illustrated book, Olivier Meslay invites us to follow the development of Turner's incandescent art, a bridge between Romanticism and Impressionism and one of Britain's most remarkable contributions to art history.

This volume argues for the enduring and pervasive significance of war in the formation of British Enlightenment and Romantic culture. Showing how war throws into question conventional disciplinary parameters and periodization, essays in the collection consider how war shapes culture through its multiple, divergent, and productive traces.