The Life and Masterworks of J.M.W. Turner

Throughout Turners art there is an unusually rich dramatic sensibility, an immense interest in the complexities of life, an unmatched responsiveness to the scale and grandeur of nature, and a profound inquisitiveness about the behavioural realities that underlie appearances what the painter himself called the qualities of causes of things. This curiosity led Turner to explore the universal constants of man-made and natural architecture, the workings of light and meteorology, and the dynamic of the sea. Increasingly his powers as a colourist became stronger and even more sophisticated, so that eventually he developed into not only one of the finest colourists in European painting but unquestionably the most subtle tonalist in world art. Everywhere in his uvre, but especially in his later works, we can witness the projection of an ideal word of colour, form and feeling.