Editorial Reviews

Also available in ACKROYD’S BRIEF LIVES
Chaucer

In this second volume in the Ackroyd’s Brief Lives series, bestselling author Peter Ackroyd brings us a man of humble beginnings, crude manners, and prodigious talents, the nineteenth-century painter J. M. W. Turner.

Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in London in 1775. His father was a barber, and his mother came from a family of London butchers. “His speech was recognizably that of a Cockney, and his language was the language of the streets.” As his finest paintings show, his language was also the language of light. Turner’s landscapes—extraordinary studies in light, colour, and texture—caused an uproar during his lifetime and earned him a place as one of the greatest artists in history.

Displaying his artistic abilities as a young child, Turner entered the Royal Academy of Arts when he was just fourteen years old. A year later his paintings appeared in an important public exhibition, and he rapidly achieved prominence, becoming a Royal Academician in 1802 and Professor of Perspective at the Academy from 1807–1837. His private life, however, was less orderly. Never married, he spent much time living in taverns, where he was well known for his truculence and his stinginess with money.

Peter Ackroyd deftly follows Turner’s first loves of architecture, engraving, and watercolours, and the country houses, cathedrals, and landscapes of England. While his passion for Italy led him to oil painting, Turner’s love for London remained central to his heart and soul, and it was within sight of his beloved Thames that he died in 1851. His dying words were: “The sun is God.”

Customer Reviews

Words About Visuals: A Biography, 2006-07-23
by Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States)

Peter Ackroyd is a fine writer and continues his Brief Lives Series with this insightful biography of one of England's greatest painters, J.M.W. Turner. But readers beware - this is a book about the artist's life and is not a book to examine the artist's works. But there are plentiful other resources for viewing the magnificent paintings of light that Turner created.

Ackroyd adroitly explores Turner's humble background, elaborating on how this most elegant gentleman of the canvas began as a Cockney lad with little formal education. When he was 14 he entered the Royal Academy and within a year's time he was exhibiting his work! Turner was a man of nature and his misty seascapes and landscapes of England have won him permanent status in the pantheon of great painters. He was fascinated by light and the effect that light has through mists and clouds, storms and tree filtered glades. He had a particular affinity for architecture and his early works are primarily in watercolor and etchings. His experience with oil painting opened with his introduction to Italy.

Ackroyd, with a zest for truthful telling, emphasizes that Turner's private life was spent in the taverns, fathering illegitimate children and maintaining a mistress. Apparently a miser, he was not the rarefied 'gentleman' his paintings would suggest.

This is a fine little biography, filled with the facts about the personal life of Turner and a bit lacking on his artistic influences, but as an adjunct to other volumes on his work, books that neglect to look at the man holding the brush, this succinct 'life' affords important insights. Grady Harp, July 06