Turner & The Sea, just opened at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, brilliantly illuminates JMW Turner's mastery of paint. Spaciously hung in the generous lower-ground gallery space, often in threes, the pictures show themes, influences and progress, from the first exhibited painting to the final work of the painter who had homes by the Thames, at Twickenham and Chelsea. "Trafalgar Square" is a room devoted to Nelson's victory, and Turner's great, humane painting of the event almost covers one wall. He was not a nostalgic painter: his scenes were contemporary. The Fighting Temeraire (above) shows the Thames at Rotherhithe, the old sailing ship towed upriver to the breaker's yard beside the coal barges that presage the age of steam.
Notebooks, sketches and engravings reveal Turner's technique, his tricks and his humour. On show too are prints from his Liber Studiorum (frontispiece pictured below), his Book of Studies with scenes around the coast, designed as a manifesto for British landscape art.
As curator Christine Riding points out, because his style was as restless and changing as the sea itself, artists have always been able to find something in his work to relate to. Famous in his own lifetime, he has never been out of favour in the 162 years since his death.
The exhibition is on at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich until April 21, 2014
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