J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) was arguably Britain's greatest painter. Through a remarkable amount of groundbreaking research, and by rigorously examining the existing evidence concerning the artist's first 40 years. Eric Shanes has been able to unearth a mass of new information, forge many fresh links and provide a great number of original insights. His own training as a painter has enabled him to bring a profound understanding to the practical side of Turner, and thereby reveal many aspects of the output that have hitherto been overlooked. In order to intensify our grasp of the interrelationship between Turner the man and Turner the painter, this book contains over 450 illustrations that form an integral part of the story. As a consequence, we are able to perceive the exact trajectory of Turner's formative years and early maturity more clearly than ever before. Within a strictly chronological framework, Turner's personal and creative developments are charted in tandem, offering an exploration of his strengths and weaknesses of character, and his intellectual and emotional complexity. Shanes provides an unrivalled account of Turner's creative aims and responses, his imaginative and technical evolution, his poetic aspirations and identifications, his strong sense of duty and his educative ambitions. No less closely scrutinised are Turner's mastery of art-world politics, his wider political outlook, his professional relationships, his sales, financial dealings and investments, his travels, and even the buildings in which he lived and worked. Ultimately, we are shown that, despite his difficulties with verbal communication, Turner possessed one of the sharpest and most dazzling minds in the entire history of art. -- from dust jacket.

The life of one of Western art's most admired and misunderstood painters J.M.W. Turner is one of the most important figures in Western art, and his visionary work paved the way for a revolution in landscape painting. Over the course of his lifetime, Turner strove to liberate painting from an antiquated system of patronage. Bringing a new level of expression and color to his canvases, he paved the way for the modern artist. Turner was very much a man of his changing era. In his lifetime, he saw Britain ravaged by Napoleonic wars, revived by the Industrial Revolution, and embarked upon a new moment of Imperial glory with the ascendancy of Queen Victoria. His own life embodied astonishing transformation. Born the son of a barber in Covent Garden, he was buried amid pomp and ceremony in St. Paul's Cathedral. Turner was accepted into the prestigious Royal Academy at the height of the French Revolution when a climate of fear dominated Britain. Unable to travel abroad he explored at home, reimagining the landscape to create some of the most iconic scenes of his country. But his work always had a profound human element. When a moment of peace allowed travel into Europe, Turner was one of the first artists to capture the beauty of the Alps, to revive Venice as a subject, and to follow in Byron’s footsteps through the Rhine country. While he was commercially successful for most of his career, Turner's personal life remained fraught. His mother suffered from mental illness and was committed to Bedlam. Turner never married but had several long-term mistresses and illegitimate daughters. His erotic drawings were numerous but were covered up by prurient Victorians after his death. Turner's late, impressionistic work was held up by his Victorian detractors as example of a creeping madness. Affection for the artist’s work soured. John Ruskin, the greatest of all 19th century art critics, did what he could to rescue Turner’s reputation, but Turner’s very last works confounded even his greatest defender. TURNER humanizes this surprising genius while placing him in his fascinating historical context. Franny Moyle brilliantly tells the story of the man to give us an astonishing portrait of the artist and a vivid evocation of Britain and Europe in flux.

The definitive biography of J.M.W. Turner. 'A pleasure to read'.' A.S. BYATT 'With splendid clarity and shrewd humour, James Hamilton evokes the visceral world of a great artist and a fascinating character.' MIKE LEIGH In 1799, aged just 24, Turner became an Associate of the Royal Academy. While influential collectors competed to buy his paintings, he travelled widely, observing landscape and people and gathering material for a cycle of images that would come to express the collective identity of Britain. In this lucid blend of vibrant biography and acute art history, James Hamilton introduces Turner to a new generation of readers and paints a picture of a uniquely generous human being, a giant of the nineteenth century and a beacon for the twenty-first.

Stop in the name of love ... and of Motown, and read Tony Turner's dazzling insider's story -- updated with new material for the blockbuster 2000 Supremes tour!

Published to accompany the exhibition at the Tate Gallery, Liverpool 23 June - 1 October 2000.

"A thriller about Billy Zeets, a 14-year-old semi-delinquent in a deadly tango with a killer"--