Art is divine

MUSEE JAQUEMART ANDRE

Paris

Until January 11, 2021

TURNER

Paintings and Watercolors

Tate collections

J. M. W. Turner (1775 - 1851), Quai de Venise, Doge's Palace, exhibited in 1844, oil on canvas, 62.2 x 92.7 cm

Tate, accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, Photo © Tate

The Tate, UK, houses the largest collection of Turner in the world. Thanks to its exceptional loans, the Jacquemart-André museum is hosting an exhibition of 60 watercolors and some 10 oil paintings, most of which have never been presented in France.

This retrospective by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) shows the work of the greatest representative of the golden age of English watercolor.

This great romantic painter exploited the effects of light and transparency on English landscapes or Venetian lagoons. Turner knew how to ignite the canvases with his wonders. The incomparable richness of his palette envelops his universe forever in the magic of golden dreams and mysterious mists.

J. M. W. Turner (1775 - 1851), An Idealized Italianate Landscape with Trees Over a Lake or Bay Lit by a Shaving Sun, c. 1828–29,

watercolor on paper, 31.2 x 43.9 cm, Tate, accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, Photo © Tate

Coming from a humble background, the young Turner, self-taught, first worked for an architect where he learned the mastery of perspective and topography. Then, at only fourteen, he entered  the Royal Academy school.

Insatiable traveler, he quickly freed himself from the conventions of the pictorial genre to develop his own technique. The exhibition allows us to retrace his career and his artistic evolution from his first more structured works to his flight in its fascinating and colorful lights.

Turner produced works for sale, but he liked to keep the most personal, leaving a considerable stock in his home and studio upon his death.

J. M. W. Turner (1775 - 1851), The Visit to the Tomb, exhibited in 1850, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 121.9 cm, Tate,

  accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, Photo © Tate

His experimental sketches are undoubtedly closer to the flame that inhabited his soul.

Imbued with that unique poetry that guided his enchanted hand, they were made "for his own pleasure" to quote the writer John Ruskin, who was one of the first to study the whole of this fabulous heritage.

Indeed, after the artist's death, the British nation in 1856 received an immense bequest comprising a hundred oil paintings, unfinished studies and sketches, as well as thousands of works on paper consisting of watercolors, drawings and sketchbooks.

J. M. W. Turner (1775 - 1851), Ehrenbreitstein with a rainbow, 1840, graphite, watercolor and gouache on paper, 14.1 x 19.3 cm

Tate, accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, Photo © Tate

J. M. W. Turner (1775 - 1851), Venice: San Giorgio Maggiore - Early Morning, 1819, watercolor on paper, 22.3 x 28.7 cm

Tate, accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, Photo © Tate

Now owned by Tate Britain, these works retain an exquisite scent of freedom and modernity.

The Jacquemart-André Museum exhibition unveils these intimate gems born of Turner's imagination in his secret garden, a pure symphony of freshness and dreamy beauties.

Musée Jacquemart-André

158 Boulevard Haussmann

75008 Paris 

musee-jacquemart-andre.com

J. M. W. Turner (1775 - 1851), Jumièges, circa 1832, gouache and watercolor on paper, 13.9 x 19.1 cm, Tate, accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, Photo © Tate

J. M. W. Turner (1775 - 1851), Venice, the Piazzetta with a Ceremony of the Doge marrying the sea, circa 1835, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 121.9 cm

Tate, accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, Photo © Tate