1. Buttermere Lake, with Part of Cromackwater, Cumberland, a Shower, Oil paint on canvas, 889 x 1194 mm, frame 1092 x 1400 x 85 mm, Photo: © Tate
Turner at the turn of the centuries
When the Fondation Pierre Gianadda presented to the public it's first exhibition about Turner in 1999 titled "Turner and the Alps", the curator David Blayney Brown and the public discovered quite an unknown artist outside of Britain. Now, the artist is more know by the Swiss public, due to this exhibition but also the recent exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Luzern in 2019 and to a recent acquisition of a watercolour by the Kunstmuseum Luzern.
This "New" Turner exhibition showcase most of the important periods of the artist, from his early works on paper, his process marked in his sketchbooks and his oils and watercolours. With David Blayney Brown as the curator (like the first one), he presents Turner into "The Sun is God" a remark he made due to the numerous works and his fascination to the start of the day and the sunrises. For him, the sunrises are a "joyful motif... the most beautiful of beings".
Turner
Turner or Joseph Mallord William Turner is born in London on the 23 April 1775 in a modest lower-middle-class family, while he stayed in London he had a classical childhood until he decided to study at the Royal Academy of Art at the age of 14. A year later he exhibited his first works at the age of 15, but his first years were complicated and beside his studies he also served as an architectural draftsman because he had a hard time selling his early works.
At the age of 27, he opened his own gallery in 1804 and became professor of perspective at the Royal Academy of Art in 1807, where he lectured until 1828.
During those years, he also had the chance to travel all around Europe, filling his sketchbooks with numerous notes, sketches and watercolours. He also took care o his two daughters Evelina (1801–1874) and Georgiana (1811–1843), while not being married to his housekeeper Sarah Danby.
When he died on the 19 December 1851, Turner was controversial. But he will become an important Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist, and he left behind more than 550 paintings, 2,000 watercolours and 30,000 works on paper.
Landscape and mythology, themes and genre in the works of Turner
The exhibition, which present a wide range of medium made by the British artist, paintings, watercolors and etchings/engravings are more or less divided into "sections", even tho the space of the Fondation Pierre Gianadda is not made for this kind of exhibitions which presents too much works, sometimes 3-4 watercolours on a small wall, spaces by only 10-15cm, which don't help the visitors to appreciate the works of the Tate Britain (the only and main lender of the exhibition). Some of the largess works can be found around the hall, while some of the works can be cramped into a small cube for 10-15 watercolours, with quite a terrible lighting and not much informations, even more for German or English speaking person who might visit the exhibition during the winter/sky season or even on their way to Italy or Lugano, because the translations are simply not existent.
If we read the curator presentation of the exhibition of the Fondation, the curator David Blayney Brown stated that the exhibition concept tries to focus on the landscape of the artist, which was at the time considered to be a minor genre in painting. In a sense the exhibition presents a lot of landscape, made with various mediums and at different state of his career, some of the early one are quite classic British landscape paintings such as the one of John Constable, but he later find "his style" with the use of quite diluted oil paints and his approach to light depicting the different weather conditions of the day.
Some of the works in the show present clouds, rainbows, storms or even fogs, fires and the moon, all of them becoming a recurrent motif in the artist career from the 1790s to the 1840s. Nowadays, the art of Turner is recognized as important landscape depiction of the Romantic period due to his mastery of light, colour and atmosphere.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Fondation Pierre Gianadda
Date: 3.3.2023 – 25.6.2023
Curators: David Blayney Brown
Ticket: Available at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Fondation Pierre Gianadda
Fondation Pierre Gianadda
Rue du Forum 59
CH-1920 Martigny
Phone: +41 27 722 39 78
Mail: info@gianadda.ch