The Rise Of Landscape Painting

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

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The establishment of landscape in the popular estimation as a branch of art, equal to the highest achievements of portraiture or historical painting, was finally achieved by Turner, the greatest glory of British art. Joseph Mallord William Turner was born, appropriately enough, on Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23, 1775; appropriately, because he was destined to become the Shakespeare of English painting. He was the son of a London hairdresser in humble circumstances, who lived and had his shop at 26 Maiden Lane. Covent Garden. As a boy he showed ability as a draughtsman and colorist, and his father exhibited some of the lad’s drawings in his shop, where now and again they found a purchaser. One or two artists who went to the elder Turner to be shaved noticed his son’s drawings, and urged the father to give his son a proper artistic training. So at the age of eleven young Turner was sent to the Soho Academy and had lessons from Thomas Malton, who grounded him well in perspective, and also from Edward Dayes; and in 1789, when he was forteen, he was admitted to the school of the Royal Academy.

Meanwhile he was managing to support himself by selling a few sketches now and then, by putting in backgrounds for architects who wanted nice drawings to show their clients, and by coloring prints for engravers. While tinting prints for John Raphael Smith (1752-1812), the mezzotinter, who made a fortune by engraving the work of Morland, Turner met the brilliant water colorist, Girtin, with whom he made friends, and Girtin introduced him to friendly house of Dr Thomas Monro, at 8 Adelphi Terrace. Here the two young men and other students were welcome every evening, for Monro was an enthusiastic connoisseur who had a studio fitted up for his protégés to work in; he gave them oyster suppers, a few shillings for pocket money when they had nothing of their own, and free medical attendance if they became ill.

In 1797 Turner exhibited his first oil picture, a study of moonlight, at the Royal Academy, but most of the views he painted at this time were in water color. In 1792 he was commissioned to make a series of topographical drawings for a magazine, and this enables him to make the first of those sketching tours which ever afterwards were a feature of his artistic life and to which we owe his enormous range of subject. In the following year he opened his own studio in Hand Court, Maiden Lane, where he exhibited and sold the drawings he had made on his tours.

Turner never had any difficulty making a living, and we may account for his success where so many other landscape artists had failed by the fact that he established his reputation in water color before he proceeded to oils. From the time of Richard Wilson there had always been a demand for topographical drawings in water colors, and Wilson’s contemporary, Paul Sandby, R A (1725-1809), the ‘father of water color art’, was one of the first to popularize landscape by going about the country and sketching gentlemen’s mansions and parks. Landowners were pleased to purchase his and other artists’ watercolors of views on their estates, and their pride in their own property was gradually converted by these artists into a real appreciation of the beauties of Nature.

The Rise Of Landscape Painting (continued)