Widely seen as an Impressionist well before his time, British painter JMW Turner changed the way the early Victorians saw the world.
His work was hugely evocative and breathtakingly beautiful. Even the titles contour up an atmosphere. I particularly admire his Snow storm. Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth.* You can taste the salt spray. It was first exhibited in 1842.
The fact that Monaco will be blessed this summer with the Turner summer expo is in no little part due to the Tate in London, where the show was held last year.
In all, 38 oil paintings and 40 water colours will form this exceptional exhibition, under the watchful eye of Elizabeth Brooke, who oversaw the expo at the Tate itself.
For reasons I can’t begin to imagine, Turner’s pieces will be shown alongside the work of a number of contemporary artists, painters and others whose work is usually to be found in Hauser & Wirth. But I imagine it will be possible to scurry past these things, one’s gaze averted.
Turner at the Grimaldi Forum follows on from last summer’s great success, Monet in Full Light, which brought in 120,000 admirers of the arriviste French Impressionist with a great fondness for Monaco and the Côte d’Azur.
For Residents on a budget there is more good news. Tickets are now on sale, until the end of June, at half price, just 7 euros. The show runs from July 6 until September 1.
* Tate’s label: This is one of Turner’s most daring paintings. In a battle between modern machine and nature, a steamboat faces a blizzard. Its black fumes join the whirling vortex of snow and sea. Turner claimed he ‘got the sailors to lash me to the mast to observe [the storm]…for four hours’. Although it can’t be proven, it shows that Turner wanted us to see this dizzying scene as an authentic record. When he heard it had been ridiculed as ‘soapsuds and whitewash’, he responded: ‘I did not paint it to be understood, but… to show what such a scene was like’.
The views expressed by Jeff Daniels do not necessarily reflect those of the publishers
