William Turner. Une figure majeure de l'art britannique (1775-1851) (PocheCouleur No. 37) (French Edition)

Over a century and a half since his death, the unchallenged fame Turner won during his lifetime has continued to spread. International exhibitions and publications have cast light on a major figure of British art. These different approaches helped put his work in perspective with respect to those he admired (Poussin, Le Lorrain), to the painters of his day (Cozens, Girtin, Constable) or the writers (Walter Scott, Lord Byron), to the countries he visited (France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, etc.), to preferred techniques (drawing, watercolour, oil, engraving), without overlooking his paradoxes (Imagination and Reality, Painting nothingness). This allowed to nuance the hitherto rather oversimplified image of an artist of unprecedented poetic visions and formal daring, who in many aspects was a forerunner of contemporary painting, from impressionism to lyric abstraction... We now have a far subtler portrait of an artist, indeed singular, paradoxical, innovative, but heedful as well of the recognition of his peers in the specific artistic context of early nineteenth-century Great Britain.