Through September 21 there is a special exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the paintings of JMW Turner. He was a late eighteenth century and nineteenth century English painter (1775-1851) who was, in many ways, the father of Impressionism. This is a the first big exhibit of this very important painter in decades.
I just saw the exhibit and it's really fascinating. His paintings range from modest watercolors to huge oil canvases. Turner's most iconic paintings are the burning Houses of Parliament (all done in 1834, they year of the big London fire).
What's interesting about the exhibit is seeing how Turner developed from a very conventional, classical painter into a really bold and original one. His early works begin as perfectly rendered scenes of London, Venice and the English countryside but, as you go along, the paintings get much more abstract and weird. While by today's modern art standards they are quite tame, for a painter to be putting out such unconventional stuff in pre-Victorian England, this was daring stuff.
Check out this exhibit if you can.
I just saw the exhibit and it's really fascinating. His paintings range from modest watercolors to huge oil canvases. Turner's most iconic paintings are the burning Houses of Parliament (all done in 1834, they year of the big London fire).
What's interesting about the exhibit is seeing how Turner developed from a very conventional, classical painter into a really bold and original one. His early works begin as perfectly rendered scenes of London, Venice and the English countryside but, as you go along, the paintings get much more abstract and weird. While by today's modern art standards they are quite tame, for a painter to be putting out such unconventional stuff in pre-Victorian England, this was daring stuff.
Check out this exhibit if you can.
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