Travels with JMW Turner, part 1
This is a companion piece to my Google Earth travelogue about the great English impressionist. The GE post is here.
“The painter of light”, “the great pyrotechnist”, one of the finest landscape artists in English history, if not the best, Joseph Mallord William Turner produced more than 20,000 paintings and drawings in his lifetime, and his frequent rambles across Europe happen to make him a perfect subject for Google Earth.
JMW Turner was celebrated in his own time, and deluged with commissions, but he was also the Jackson Pollock of his day, scathingly reviled for “hurling soapsuds and whitewash” at canvases with a mop – even Queen Victoria thought him mad – and his foul temper and reclusiveness lost him many friends. Just five foot four inches tall, he was hobbit-like in size, but he was the artistic giant of the early 19th century. See the rest.
