Courtauld Gallery
Paths to Fame: Turner's Watercolours from the Courtauld OUT OF PRINT
180 pages, paperback, 220 x 254 mm
PRICE: £20.00
ISBN: 978 1 905256 33 4
By Joanna Selbourne, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Courtauld Gallery, with essays by Cecilia Powell and Andrew Wilton
This catalogue accompanies an exhibition at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, and The Courtauld Gallery, London, which will be the first full display of the Courtauld’s outstanding collection of watercolours by J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851). The collection spans the artist’s career, ranging from an important early view of the Avon Gorge, Bristol, made when Turner was just sixteen years old, to examples of the monumental highly finished watercolours of his maturity and the celebrated expressive late works.
The catalogue will trace the evolution of Turner’s extraordinarily inventive approach to the making of landscape in watercolour. It will focus specifically on Turner’s travels in search of inspirational and commercial landscape views as well his entrepreneurial promotion of his work through print making. We follow Turner’s progression towards an increasingly poetic vision of landscape in which time, light and colour and the transitory effects of weather become his prime concern. Finally, his late works – characterized by a powerfully expressive experimentation which pushed the boundaries of watercolour technique – are considered.
The selection of works will include eight rarely seen, magnificent watercolours bequeathed to The Courtauld in 2007 by the late Dorothy Scharf. Comparison with closely related works from Tate and private collections will enable viewers to trace the development of certain compositions, including the celebrated panoramic view of the Crook of Lune, from early sketches and exploratory ‘colour beginnings’ to finished watercolours and, in some cases, published prints.
Accompanies an exhibition at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, 16 July – 12 October ’08 and at The Courtauld Gallery, London 3o October 2008 – 29 January ’09
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