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"'Ackroyd is the laureate of London' Daily Express 'gets closer to the heart of Turner than a book ten times as long.Everything seems pertinent, vivid and miraculously revealed.Ackroyd has a sure instinct for what matters' Mail on Sunday 'Distills Ackroyd's knowledge and inspiration in a dazzling work' Torquay Herald Express"
Book Description
Short and potent lives of creative geniuses by a master. The second in Ackroyd's series of BRIEF LIVES distils his knowledge and inspiration in a dazzling short life of another 'Cockney visionary', perhaps the greatest and most original of all English painters, J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Ackroyd is one of today's finest writers of the English language. Every word seems perfectly balanced and full of sensitivities of meaning that both enhance his subject and delight the reader. His love of English, and England, particularly London, shines though this book, making its reading pure pleasure as well as providing a wealth of detail on Turner himself, allowing an assessment of his work in the context of his times, his acquaintances and his humanity. I'm no specialist in art or art history, but for me this book provided a stimulating, pleasurable revelation of the man and his work.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (1775-1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker and anyone who has visited Tate Britain will know his work; his paintings are not everyone's taste as he experimented with light and weather in extreme situations.
Peter Ackroyd is a good writer with vast journalistic, novel and factual experience. He is an ideal writer for this "Brief Lives" series. Always meticulous in his research and careful in his writing, he usually writes on London, its river and its inhabitants; Turner, a Londoner born in Covent Garden, is an ideal choice.
This biography is full of fascinating information about this controversial painter and Ackroyd recreates his life with great skill.
Peter Ackroyd is a good writer with vast journalistic, novel and factual experience. He is an ideal writer for this "Brief Lives" series. Always meticulous in his research and careful in his writing, he usually writes on London, its river and its inhabitants; Turner, a Londoner born in Covent Garden, is an ideal choice.
This biography is full of fascinating information about this controversial painter and Ackroyd recreates his life with great skill.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is another fine offering in Peter Ackroyd's accessible and compact `Brief Lives' series of biographies of seminal figures in British cultural history, dealing with the painter Joseph Mallord William Turner. Although he's best known for his late masterpieces in which detail is largely sacrificed to vast tableaux filled with light, Turner was a much more versatile painter than this popular image of him suggests. Ackroyd's little book describes well the painter's prodigious energy, epitomised by his prolific output of sketches completed on regular walking and coach tours, both in the UK and in Europe. Equally at home in watercolour and oils, Turner was capable of both an impressionistic style, showing a preoccupation with light that preceded the Impressionists proper by half a century, and a neoclassical vision that sought particularly to emulate the 17th century master Claude Lorrain. The latter trait is seen particularly in Turner's series of paintings of the story of Dido and Carthage, one of which (Dido Building Carthage) is reproduced as a colour plate.
I didn't know a great deal about Turner before reading this book, and think it's a really valuable overview of both his life (while necessarily short on detail about a private, even secretive, man) and his work. While the number of colour plates isn't high - nine of his paintings, two of him (one a self-portrait) - there's enough description, particularly of those paintings inspired by his continental tours when his lifelong fascination with light was starting to produce some really remarkable effects, to whet the appetite. My only significant criticism is that Ackroyd perhaps doesn't do enough to set Turner in his broader, early 19th century context, or evaluate his work in its cultural setting against the background of, particularly, the Romanticism of the period. But a fine introduction nevertheless to one of Britain's greatest artists.
I didn't know a great deal about Turner before reading this book, and think it's a really valuable overview of both his life (while necessarily short on detail about a private, even secretive, man) and his work. While the number of colour plates isn't high - nine of his paintings, two of him (one a self-portrait) - there's enough description, particularly of those paintings inspired by his continental tours when his lifelong fascination with light was starting to produce some really remarkable effects, to whet the appetite. My only significant criticism is that Ackroyd perhaps doesn't do enough to set Turner in his broader, early 19th century context, or evaluate his work in its cultural setting against the background of, particularly, the Romanticism of the period. But a fine introduction nevertheless to one of Britain's greatest artists.
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