Excerpts from the book “Landscapes for William Turner”
In painting, the term “landscape” did not exist until the 15th / 16th century. While the frescoes of Roman villas featured nature in their depictions of gardens, medieval art neglected it completely. It was the zeitgeist shift during the Renaissance that restored people’s interest in life before death, thus ringing in the radical changes that eventually led to the modern era. As people turned away from the afterlife, they began to explore nature, which led artists to incorporate perspective into their work. The element of landscape that had previously been perceived as dark and hostile was now elevated to a sublime means to express aesthetic beauty.
In this spirit, 44 artists from 22 countries have come together at the occasion of the 250th birthday of Willian Turner to celebrate the revolutionary shift in the significance of landscape painting with their boundless imagination. Turner was ahead of his time. The editor of this book has divided the artworks from around the world into chapters and added selected poems by Lord Byron, quotes, illustrations, and slogans describing the artwork presented. The result is a multifaceted homage from the animated perspective of modern artists.
In memory of the 250th birthday of William Turner
The text and the poems in this post are excerpts from the book “Landscapes for William Turner”.
Youtube playlist: William Turner
In the 15th century, landscape merely served as a backdrop for anthropocentric action. Only after 1500, figures became smaller and more numerous, while a greater focus on individual objects brought about significant developments in the depiction of space around them. Especially north of the Alps, landscape painting in the 16th century acquired great significance with its bounteous repertoire of motifs including hills, fields, paths, rivers, lakes, and villages. Not until the Baroque era did painters allow light to enter the scene independent of its objects, while significantly lowering the horizon line. Views of entire cities became landscapes, stretches of snow and ice added a harmonious touch through their homogeneous color scheme. The “classical” landscapes by Claude Lorrains and Nicolas Poussins used the staggered arrangement of objects to draw viewers into vast distances, while the artists of Romanticism emphasized individual objects gently dissolving towards the edges. Finally, painters overcame the limitations of composition and moved on to depict impressions rather than objects. Turner’s landscapes are the epitome of this delicate painting style that goes beyond the concrete depiction of objects. Cursory brushstrokes point to the artist’s inner picture, as he captures the moment for eternity. During Turner’s lifetime, there were no professorships for Landscape Painting; it took until the 19th century for it to be recognized as an academic subject. Through his own commitment to studying nature, young Turner taught himself whatever skills he needed. Inspired by Lord Byron’s poetry, his first trip abroad took him to the Rhine River. Heinrich Heine who saw Byron as a poetic mentor also admired his work and translated some of it into German during his student days at Bonn University.
The Poetization of Nature through Light, Color, and Atmosphere
It was the heyday of Romanticism when William Turner came to Cologne on the Rhine in the summer of 1817. Fortresses and ruins were among his favorite motifs as he traveled down the river and, inspired by the fertile mutual dynamic between poetry and painting, produced small format pencil and watercolor sketches, which he turned into oil paintings upon his return. His first solo trip abroad had made him more confident and led to many others fueling his artistic journey.
As the first steamships began to cruise the Rhine, the river quickly became an important international waterway. Between 1917 and 1844, Turner did not only travel all over Germany but also followed its shores all the way south to Italy. Born in 1775 as the son of a barber, he came from a modest background. Nevertheless, due to his artistic talent, he became a full member of the Royal Academy, and was granted a professorship for Perspective in 1807. His most outstanding achievement was the revolution he brought about in the significance of landscape painting. To him, Claude Lorrain’s work had been a major influence, but also Dürer’s studies in perspective. Turner left most of his paintings to the English nation, which, back then, had very close ties with Germany.
As the painter made no concessions to the taste of his contemporaries, his work can be seen as a highly individual and spontaneous response to the way he experienced landscapes, feeling equally inspired by nature and poetry. He made a conscious effort to forge a connection between poetry and painting, a fact he also emphasized in his verbal statements. The atmospheric brilliance of his later Rhine motifs clearly displays the light of the south he had brought back from his trips.Given to self-reflection, Turner traveled like a poet. The immediate experience of different hours and weather conditions is reflected in his paintings. His entire Rhine series poetizes the dynamics of nature, using light and color to make them reverberate like an omnipresent chord.
Combining landscape and emotion, Lord Byron’s poem “The Castled Crag of Drachenfels” set new standards in the world of poetry when it was published, and went on to become one of the most popular poems of his time, drawing throngs of British visitors to the Rhine. Drachenfels is located in Königswinter near Bonn. Taking Byron’s poetry with him, Turner retraced the poet’s trip along the river, drawing inspiration from his words. Heinrich Heine was also among those who admired and translated his work into German. From then on, traveling abroad became a fixture in Turner’s life. The fruitful dynamic between poetry and art can also be seen in the “Vignettes” he created for the paperback edition of Byron’s work.
In 1840, a good friend of Turner’s translated Goethe’s color theory into English, marking a connection between Turner and Goethe. It may well have been Goethe’s trip to Italy that inspired the painter to travel to Venice, Rome, and Naples. Undoubtedly, the colors of the south transformed his palette. Sunny cadmium yellow was one of his favorite colors, and his “Turner blue” has become a well-known term. His brighter overall tones and his inexorable experiments with light and color effects clearly reflect his trips to Venice and along the Rhine. Eventually, they led to a marked stylistic change in his artistic development. He began to apply color sparingly and delicately, using it as a central element of composition, adding colored pen strokes very sparingly to highlight details.
Turner and Byron were contemporaries and passionate travelers. Their impressions on the road inspired poetry and paintings. Turner often created hasty sketches, leading to a sense of motion blur. Unto this day, none of his works appear static. Motifs are not presented individually, but integrated into an overall mood of atmospheric light, making them appear like random details taken from a larger landscape. Turner received many commissions from wealthy aristocrats unwilling to embark on cumbersome trips themselves but longing for an authentic landscape experience. What they wanted was to look at his paintings, and glean a sense of the dangerous yet sublime wildness of nature with its atmospheric light.
Turner traveled through England, Scotland, and Wales. As long as he was not held up by wars, he also traveled abroad every summer; France, the Swiss Apls, Belgium, and the Netherlands were among destinations. On foot, horseback or boat, he made hasty sketches and went on to watercolor them into emotional snapshots. His pictures exert a powerful meditative draw. Working with oil at his studio, he used the same transparent painting style by diluting his paints. No definite sites can be associated with his paintings. He was not an illustrator but a free artist, heart and soul. Venice had an especially powerful impact on him, inspiring him to paint increasingly blurred light-flooded views imbued with a magical sense of mysticism. Especially his later works are marked by an extraordinary atmosphere. Instead of massive buildings, silhouettes, contours, air, space, and blurred colors dominate these paintings.
Bordering on the abstract, William Turner’s style has made him a significant pioneer in the development of impressionism and modernism. Turner’s work and personality exemplify the split between tradition and modernity. Paul Cézanne’s new way of composing images later enabled artists to create a world of objects based on color perception. Landscape went on to become an event for the eye, a cosmogeny culminating in Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies”, allowing everyone who looked at them to find themselves in the middle of nature. The historical shift towards abstraction was finally initiated by Wassily Kandinsky around 1910. Jackson Pollock saw the idea of creative automation as a symbol for his physical tension. Art does not reproduce the visible, emphasized Paul Klee, rather, it makes it visible. Observing it, we become part of a limitless world.
The castled crag of Drachenfels
by Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel)
The castled crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o’er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine,
And hills all rich with blossom’d trees,
And fields which promise corn and wine,
And scatter’d cities crowning these,
Whose far white walls along them shine,
Have strew’d a scene, which I should see
With double joy wert thou with me.
And peasant girls with deep blue eyes,
And hands which offer early flowers,
Walk smiling o’er this paradise;
Above, the frequent feudal towers
Through green leaves lift their walls of grey,
And many a rock which steeply lowers,
And noble arch in proud decay,
Look o’er this vale of vintage-bowers;
Bur one thing want these banks of Rhine, –
Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!
I send the lilies given to me;
Though long before thy hand they touch,
I know that they must wither’d be,
But yet reject them not as such;
For I have cherished them as dear,
Because they yet may meet thine eye,
And guide thy soul to mine even here,
When thou behold’st them drooping nigh,
And know’st them gathered by the Rhein,
And offered from my heart to thine!
The river nobly foams and flows,
The charm of this enchanted ground,
And all its thousand turns disclose
Some fresher beauty varying round:
The haughtiest breast its wish might bound
Through life to dwell delighted here;
Nor could on earth a spot be found
To nature and to me so dear,
Could thy dear eyes in following mine
Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine!
Memorial Sites of William Turner, Lord Byron and Heinrich Heine
Artists‘ houses
Sandycombe Lodge – turnershouse.org/the-house/ (Great Britain)
The former country house is the only surviving Turner museum house. William Turner used it as a retreat from the London art world. At that time, it was located outside the city on extensive grounds with beautiful views. It was built in 1813 according to Turner‘s designs and also served as a home for his father, who looked after the household. With his sketchbook, Turner walked to the Thames towpath where he met his fishing friends.
Palazzo Guiccioli – palazzoguiccioli.it/ (Italy)
The museum in Ravenna is dedicated to the events of the Italian Risorgimento period and the famous English poet Lord Byron, who lived for a time in the rooms of the palazzo (as a guest of Count Alessandro Guiccioli and his young wife, Teresa Gamba). Here he wrote some of his most famous works, including „Don Juan“ and „Dante‘s Prophecy“. The rooms also include his personal study. Terese Gamba exerted a profound influence on his literary work and later involvement in the Greek liberation movement.
Heinrich-Heine-Haus – heinehaus.de (Germany)
There are two Heine memorials in Düsseldorf on the Rhine: The Heine House on Bolkerstrasse stands on the site of the famous poet‘s birthplace. Events are held once or twice a week at the Literaturhaus, and regular exhibitions are organized as part of the „Art Meets Literature“ series. On Bilker Straße, however, is the Heinrich Heine Institute with the Heine Archive. The museum houses the poet‘s handwritten legacy, including manuscripts and letters. The most important exhibit is Heine‘s death mask.
Museums with works of art by William Turner:
- Tate Gallery Britain in London – tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain
- National Gallery in London – nationalgallery.org.uk/
- Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh – nationalgalleries.org/
- Indianapolis Museum of Art at Oldfields Country Estate – discovernewfields.org/visit
- National Gallery of Art in Washington – nga.gov/
- Frick Collection in Manhattan – frick.org/art
- Dallas Art Museum – dma.org/
Sources: Please see the authors, poet and bibliography in the above link to the online book (imprint at the end of the book)!