It is time for me to revisit turner and remember his July show at the Metropolitan that I attended religiously six sunday mornings in a row. Turner is one of the first artists that I liked but never really understood until I saw a large body of his works in person. It was the Met show that brought me around and opened my eyes to his glory and genius. The thing with turner was that he knew his craft and was skilled as a draftsman so when he "let go" of his roots so to speak and Became the turner we know, he had the majesty and genius of a skilled hand behind him and if not for that he would have painted soup and barley (like the expressionists) who did not possess his skill and succeeded in only painting soup and barley and whose work look as dated as old copies of TV guides from 1983. No, turner stood the test of time and was not truly understood "in his time." My favorite turners are the ones that dip one toe into the unknown and the "otherworldly" and seem to take place in a completely foreign and strange world. Like many good artists he was an eccentric and never married, lived with his pops and painted away in some studio in a corner of england. His greatest titled work was titled "colour beginning" but only because it was a work he laid down colour for and never finished so the title is an accident---I like the idea of the "beginning of colour" although the "beginning of light" would be more apropos for turner. I do like his watercolors but I still think Moran had the edge on him but I am sure Moran gleaned a lot from the master somewhere, somehow. I have included a couple of scribbled notes I made at The Met about his work.
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