Joseph Mallord William Turner Important English Painter English Literature Essay

Considered by numerous historians of the art like the most important English painter for all time, it demonstrated to be carrying of an unusual talent from very early age and in 1789, just by 14 years, its father, barber of profession, it registered it in the school of art of the Royal Academy of which it would happen to be effective member as of 1802.

Its life was signed by a capacity of artistic creation without rest and a total dedication to the drawing and the painting, in addition to the numerous trips that made until 1845, shortly before its death, and that was shaped of concrete way in the set of their works. Therefore, in 1795 it consecrated one of his first trips to the preparation of sketches in Wales of the south and the island of Wight. Soon, in 1802, during La Paz of Amiens, one went for the first time to the foreigner crossing France until Swiss the Alps and, to its return, one stopped in Paris to contemplate works of Claude Lorrain, Tiziano and Poussin in the Louvre. Later it crossed Belgium, Holland and the Valley of the Rin and, in 1819, stepped on for the first time Italian earth to which it would return in three opportunities. These reiterated visits had singulars repercussions in their art to which reference will be made more ahead.

Although, since it has been said previously, Turner prodigiously was equipped, had to fight hard to find its way. First from its watercolors of which it is had registry dates from 1787, when only it was twelve years old; in 1794 he was already a teacher of the style and the traditional technique of the landscape treated in drawing and watercolor, the ilustrativo-topographic planning. Nevertheless, as of this moment, a marked interest begins to demonstrate itself on the luminous phenomenon and the first indications of a romantic interpretation of the nature. Against this background, the work acquires great relevance that Tuner carried out, in collaboration with the watercolorist Thomas Gritin, in the residence of the Dr. Thomas Munro, English painting collector, that adjudged to both artists the preparation of some copies and the culmination to them of sketches and incomplete works of one of the parents of the English paisajismo: J. R. Cozens, that was, in addition, a recognized watercolorist. Therefore, from a deep reflection on the work of Cozens and the collaboration with Gritin, Turner was able to free itself of certain convencionalismos seeing itself favored, in this way, the manifestation of a more personal style in the one than their conditions of colorista were harnessed.

Through present work, it will be tried to put light on some coordinates that, is expected, allow to draw up the peculiar aspects of the art worked by the posrrevolucionario romanticism.

Therefore, in the first part of this monograph they will be exposed, sucintamente, some essential characteristics of this movement in which the emergency of the new sensitivity that found echo, in the artistic creation, the appeal to an unpublished freedom under the primate of the individuality and the introspection acquires a central place.

Finally, a route through the recognized work of paisajista English Joseph Mallord will set out William Turner, who managed to shape like few the tragic condition of escindido romantic I, a man to whom the access to the mysteries of the nature has been forbidden him and, therefore, of its own existence.

Irrationality and I disillusion

the irrational force deployment, that had been folded during the century of the lights, and that characterized to the romantic movement, an inheritance of the French Revolution can be considered. Although many contemporaries conceived in the revolution a potential arrival to the “Age of the Reason”, today we know of the vertiginous failure who suffered their ideals and programs. Nevertheless, and as it express H. G. Schenk: “[…] The explosion of the subconscious irrational impulses that characterized so many aspects of the revolution was the signal of battle of the romantic ones against the reason. Therefore, the revolution helped to send the romantic movement. “

Against this background, it turns out advisable to clarify that the love that the romanticism declares by the irrational aspects is not concomitante with the rejection to the reason but with the necessity of its extension taking care of questions marginalized by the hegemonic thought of century XVIII: sensitivity, the intuition, the imagination, the dreams, the passion. Therefore, the illustrated, happened project in scientific ideology of rationalization – technical of the world, he was questioned by the desatención which one was put under an essential part of the human nature.

The romanticism and, consequently, the art that east movement practiced are born like answer to this conjuncture: the triumph of the dehumanized scientific conception of the world and its intention of dominion of the man and the nature to which the frustration as opposed to the defeat of the revolutionary ideals must be added, germ of the restoration of a new tragic time.

The disappointed romantic man notices that a time lives that in the open leaves Gods them have left it, that have been expelled from the harmony with the nature. It feels that his I one is escindido in two: mind and soul, and will long for a mythical reconciliation, that is to say, the return to a “Golden age”, identified with the old Greece, in which the myth was language of the creation of the world and source of answer to the essential questions of the man which they cannot be solved from the scientific rationality. In frank rejection to division of fields of knowledge, romantic contemplates to Greece archaic, in that truth, beauty and nature formed an all only one to which the man acceded, like the moment where it materializes yearned for ideal of union of poetry and science. As it will be exposed more ahead, great part of the anguish and desolation of the romantic man is based in the conscience of which such reconciliation is, in truth, impossible.

The revolution of the art

Numerous historians maintain that the artistic creations of the revolutionary period do not present/display innovations at stylistic level but that, on the contrary, remain within the canons of the old clasicismo the Rococo. Nevertheless, in a specific sense, it is possible to speak of a revolutionary art since although these pictorial works present/display a continuity with the own style of the clasicismo, during this historical stage it dominates the classic forms a new content and a new sense to him. Therefore, as it express Arnold Hauser, with the revolution the art becomes a confession of political faith that finds its motor in the persecution of the social transformation.

The importance of “the revolutionary” art is based not as much in the art that practiced but for that laid the the foundations: the romantic movement. The stylistic innovations were supeditadas to the blossoming of a new society, a new conception of the world and the man that were materialized, soon, in the posrrevolucionario art.

The sign of the romanticism

As it is known, the romantic term is extremely multipurpose. The use of this word (derived from romance) is registered, primigeniamente, in the England of century XVII. In just a short time, the term romantic peyorativamente began to be used by the rationalism. Was used to describe it that remote thing of the reality or that had fantastic characteristics, strange, improbable, false it. At the same time the word was used romantic to allude to natural landscapes that presented/displayed unreal aspect, fantastic, huge.

These meaning stayed throughout the half following century and, little by little, they were taking a more positive shade. Finally, she was Rousseau who carried out a reinterpretación of the term that, this way, happened to indicate the qualities of an object to indicate the feelings of the subject.

This rousseauniana interpretation of the romantic term was inserted quickly in Germany where it was incorporated like the aesthetic category that corresponded with the new sensitivity that was being developed in Europe.