Turner: The Life of Britain's Greatest Painter

James Hamilton

Sep 2014 · Sold by Sceptre

Ebook

384

Pages

Eligible

About this ebook

THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF J.M.W. TURNER, REISSUED TO MARK THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH

'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, Academy Award-winning director of Mr. Turner

J.M.W. Turner became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1799, aged just twenty-four. As influential collectors competed to buy his paintings, he travelled widely - in an era defined by industrial change and social turbulence, he observed both landscape and people, gathering material for a series of works that would come to express the collective identity of Britain.

Blending vibrant biography and art history, James Hamilton paints a remarkable portrait of an eccentric and enigmatic figure. He examines the fascinating conflicts of Turner's life and legacy, revealing him to be a giant of the nineteenth century and a beacon for the twenty-first.

THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF J.M.W. TURNER, REISSUED TO MARK THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH '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, Academy Award-winning dire...

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About the author

James Hamilton, one of today's leading Turner scholars, is a writer, curator and painter. This pioneering biography of Turner, first published in 1997, was followed by Faraday: The Life (2002), London Lights: The Minds that Moved the City that Shook the World (2007), A Strange Business: Making Art and Money in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2014), and biographies of Thomas Gainsborough (2017) and John Constable (2022). He has organised a number of important exhibitions including Turner and the Scientists (1998), Turner's Britain (2003) and Turner and Italy (2008-09). During his career as an art gallery curator and director (1972-2013) he worked in Portsmouth, Wakefield, Sheffield, Leeds and the University of Birmingham. Exhibitions of his paintings were held at the Osborne Studio Gallery, London, in 2022 and 2024. James Hamilton is a Vice-President of the Turner Society.

James Hamilton, one of today's leading Turner scholars, is a writer, curator and painter. This pioneering biography of Turner, first published in 1997, was followed by Faraday: The Life (2002), London Lights: The Minds that Moved the City that Shook the World (2007), A Strange Business: Making Ar...

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