A Joseph Turner Morning

Last night we had snow and this morning as it was turning warm everything was like impressionistic painting. It was a Joseph Turner morning.

Joseph Mallord William Turner was one of the most radical painters of the 19th century and maybe any century.  Known as a painter of light his works broke away from the realists and Romanticists of his times. Born in 1775 and died in 1851, Turner lived most of his life before photography was either practical or popular. 

Photography had changed the world of painting. Realistic depictions of people, places and events could be recorded with a camera. As the camera became easier and cheaper to use, artists shifted their focus from realism to impressionism. The artist began to paint the feeling, the impression the artist experienced instead of exact copy of what he saw.

Easily fifty years ahead French artists, who were to be deemed the avant garde of western art, was Joseph Turner.  His best know painting is The Fighting Tereraine, 1839. The Tereraine was the last important ship from the Battle of Trafalgar. It was being towed up the Thames by a steam tug to be broken up into scrap.

It was patriotic image but it also showed the power of the industrial revolution and how steam power was the beginning of a whole new world to come. It has been said a person from ancient Rome would be able to understand the world before the steam engine, afterwards the exponential growth of knowledge, power and wealth would have been incomprehensible unless you lived your whole life in the whirl of those changes. Unlike the Romantic artists of the early 1800's Turner both reacted to and embraced the changes that were coming. 

Turner was lucky enough to be independently wealthy which meant he could paint whatever he wanted and follow his muse where ever it took him.

Back to this morning. My old trusty digital camera is beginning to fail. It will no longer focus properly and the pictures are in a soft blur. I've taken to calling it my new porn camera. A few friends have already asked if I would take their pictures with it.  Things could get interesting.

Here's a fantasy come true, my pictures along side those of Joseph Turners.

On the left is Rain, Steam and Speed (1844); The Burning of the House of Lords and Commons (1834): The Slave Ship (1840); Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps (1812); Ovid Banished From Rome 1838: Sunrise with Sea Monsters (1848)