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Attr. JMW TURNER British 1775-1851 Watercolor

Currency:USD Category:Antiques Start Price:300.00 USD Estimated At:2,000.00 - 4,000.00 USD
Attr. JMW TURNER British 1775-1851 Watercolor
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Watercolor on paper. Featuring a landscape scene. Signed and attributed to JMW Turner on the lower right corner. 20.5 x 30 cm (8.1 x 11.8 inches). J.M.W. Turner was an English Romanticist widely considered one of the most innovative landscape painters of the 19th century. Radiating light from a particular source, Turner created tunnel-like luminosity within each painting. He is often credited for elevating landscape painting to a status it had not yet achieved in England. Like his contemporary John Constable, he made spontaneous watercolors and oil studies of fleeting weather phenomena, such as rainbows, storms, and volcanic ash. “I have no secret but hard work. This is a secret that many never learn, and they don't succeed because they don't learn it,” he once explained. “Labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty, and the great curse to a great blessing.” Born Joseph Mallord William Turner on April 23, 1775 in London, United Kingdom, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Art in 1789 at an early age. During the 1790s, Turner offset his living expenses by creating watercolor and etching reproductions for topographical books on landscapes. By the 1800s, he had been inducted into the Royal Academy, while his work had adopted the golden tones of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. Embarking on a tour of Europe during the 1810s, he filled his sketchbooks with studies of ruins and spectacular sunsets. During the latter decades of his career he led an eccentric and secretive lifestyle, about which few of his peers knew. Turner died on December 19, 1851 in London, United Kingdom. Today, his works are held in the collections of Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others. PROVENANCE: Private estate (Perugia, Italy)