JMW Turner & the Divine Sunset

                                Study of Sea and Sky, Isle of Wight 1827 Joseph Mallord William Turner

It's odd that in our current troubled relationship with the United States of America I couldn't imagine crossing the border from Canada for any reason other than a funeral. Ruth and I both have family in the States and fortunately everyone seems healthy at the moment. I am intrigued by a new exhibit of work by perhaps the greatest British artist, JMW Turner to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth, but the prospect of a trip to Connecticut and Yale is not appealing.

Turner spent his career experimenting with light in colour in ways that some have maintained were the precursers of Impressionism. Apparently Monet was an admirer while art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the "father of modern art' even though the devout Christian Ruskin was dismayed by his pantheistic tendencies. His artistic output was prodigious with over 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours and 30,000 works on paper. 

Turner was not religious in any conventional sense although he attended a Methodist school and formed a love of scripture that resulted in about a dozen biblical paintings. including the two below. His focus was more on Creation and the extraordinary variety and power of the natural world. His Jacob's Ladder work certainly displays this. One writer has opined that for Turner catching a sunset on canvas was like opening one's eye's to the Divine. 

He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral in London, at his request, amidst the tombs of other prominent artists. 

I wonder if the day will ever come when we feel comfortable heading south? I hope so. 

Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple, 1832

                                                        

   The Vision of Jacob’s Ladder, 1830