Of the birth of William Turnerconsidered the most relevant among all English painters, precursor of French impressionists and abstract art, are fulfilled 250 years This April 23 and the anniversary is a reason for multiple tributes. But the novelty around the so -called “Master of Light” is that the Artzinwa gallery in Vienna has just released a Turner box for a price of 40 million dollars.
It’s about “Venice, seen from the Channel of Justice with the Santa Maria de la Salud Church”that it would be another version of one of Turner’s most famous paintings and that is exhibited at the Victoria and Alberto Museum, in London. According to the gallery, the new painting was discovered a year ago (“a sensational finding,” they said) and an expert committee certified their authorship. An Artzinwa spokesman said that “the attribution to Turner is sustained by multiple and exhaustive scientific and historical-artistic analysis.”
Venice, the city that portrays in the painting, It is one of the frequent protagonists in Turner’s works: He left a thousand pencil drawings, 150 watercolors and dozens of oils from the city of the channels. Turner was fascinated by Venice, who visited three times (1919, 1833 and 1840) and where he was influenced by the works of Canaletto.
Only in the United Kingdom thirty exhibitions were scheduled for this year with works by Turner and one of the most ambitious is Turner 250, in La Tate, where they will offer a “dialogue” between Turner and who was his competitor, John Constable. There are also samples in farther sites such as Shanghai (China) and Cincinnati (USA). And a complete online catalog will be presented, which will allow access to almost total legacy of the artist. He was a self -safe man whose aura is maintained: the 20 -pound ticket that still circulates through England carries as an image the self -portrait of Turner, who made it for another of his most famous paintings, “the last trip of the recklessness.” This 1838 painting is one of the most appreciated by the English. Turner had witnessed the moment, when the flagship ship of the Battle of Trafalgar was towed by the Thames river to be scrapped.
The sample in the Tate will only be seen in November and there they will explore the contribution to the landscape of the two great painters- Turner and constable- who gave their works of wide symbolism and sensitivity. But they brought the rivalry to the extreme. One of the anecdotes goes back to the summer festival of 1832 in the Royal Society: Constable presented “the inauguration of the Waterloo bridge”, a picture on which he worked ten years, and Turner arrived with “Helvoestluys”, a maritime view. Hours before the opening, and authorized by the organizers, Turner saw the picture of his “rival” and made a retouching to his. Constable knew: “He was here and shot a gun,” he said …
“Beyond his incalculable contribution to landscaping, Turner was an ambitious, competitive and entrepreneurial man. He collaborated in the creation of engravings after his work, aware of his dissemination capacity, and actively worried about the preservation of his legacy,” says one of his biographies. Unlike the image of other artists- solitary, humble, romantic- Turner led a life without so many constraints and received orders for royalty. His total work covers 500 paintings, 2,000 thousand watercolors and 7,000 drawings, but stated little, only what he considered essential and “concluded.” For some time, being the owner of “A Turner” is a seal of prestige and so far his most lucrative work is “Rome, from the adventine mountain” that was sold a decade for 48 million dollars to the Getty of Los Angeles.
Turner was born in 1775 in London, son of a hairdresser. With just 14 years he entered the Royal Academy and, in his early days, he specialized as a “copyist”. According to one of his biographers, PG Hamerton “Turner had two passions. One was the passion for art. And the other, the most widespread passion of kneading money.” At 24 he was admitted as a member of the Academy and, later, he presided.
He had to face critics in his time and even today, there are those who question him from the canon. But the Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina, after exhibitions in the Metropolitan and in the Prado, said: “I remember their sketches taken from the natural the night of the great fire of the Parliament in London: the red and yellow scribbles of the fire in the dark, his reflex unfair in the waters of the Thames. It was an art as turbulent and as new as that of the last quartets of Beethoven Of the black paintings. Faced with critics, he argues: “Returned to his own time, rescued from the limbo of genius, Turner does not lose height and gains consistency, we get closer and more present, an artist given to the achievement of his own style through tenacious work and the exercise of admiration.”
Buenos Aires connection
Seven years ago, the National Museum of Fine Arts offered an exposure of 85 watercolors of Turner, which arrived from the British Museum. But our city also has an important work by the English artist: it is oil “Juliet and her Nurse” (Julieta and his nurse), of 1836, in the Fortabat collection, in Puerto Madero. It is, in truth, the jewel of the crown of that room next to the “Census of Bethlehem”, by Pieter Brueghel the young man, five centuries ago.
Amalita leases I was fascinated by that painting and its delegate at the Sotheby’s auction Pujjo with an English until he got it for a price of 6.4 million dollarswhich extended to a million more for the house commissions. This happened in 1980 and It was a record for an auction paint until that moment, Considering that the previous one, of 1970, were the 5.5 million that had been paid for a Velázquez.
That work was also questioned when Turner presented her at the Royal Society but then became a “classic.” In addition to synthesizing the style and virtues of the painter, it exhibits a curiosity: the inspiration of Romeo and Julieta, but located in the Central Piazza of Venice. And there are all its attractions: El Campanile, the Basilica of San Marcos, the Ducal Palace, the columns of San Marco and San Teodoro. “Among the works of the second half of Turner’s production is one of the most evocative, with a fascinating climate: the overwhelming combination of a dynamic perspective with specific bursts of light clearly manifests,” says the presentation of the museum.
Joseph Mallord William Turner died in 1851 in London, a few months after his last exhibition, and was buried in the San Pablo Cathedral. He left all his works to the official institution (the Legacy Turner) and- among which the majority can be seen in the Tate.
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