Talking Turner
John Ruskin
art critic
‘Introduced to-day to the man who beyond all doubt is the greatest of the age; greatest in every faculty of the imagination, in every branch of scenic knowledge; at once the painter and poet of the day...’
‘I found in him a somewhat eccentric, keen-mannered, matter-of-fact, English-minded gentleman: good-natured evidently, bad-tempered evidently, hating humbug of all sorts, shrewd, perhaps a little selfish, highly intellectual, the powers of his mind not brought out with any delight in their manifestation, or intention of display, but flashing out occasionally in a word or a look.'
John Constable
artist
‘I was a good deal entertained with Turner... he is uncouth but has a wonderful range of mind.'
1813
Michael Palin
actor, writer and traveller
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps, exh. 1812 © Tate, London 2002
‘This is a work full of contrasts. The black cloud arches over a sunlit valley, a trick of the weather creating an awesome portal ahead of Hannibal's army. The sun whose power illuminates the Promised land shrivels to a sickly mustard-coloured disc when shrouded by the storm cloud. Cheering soldiers are juxtaposed with scenes of rape and looting.’
‘It appears to be a celebration but in fact it is a warning. A caution against over-weening pride, a reminder that whatever mankind may do, the elements will have the last word. We are the servants of nature, never its master.'
Leslie Parris
Tate curator
‘Turner is the great virtuoso of English landscape art, the man who took on everything and everybody, exploiting all media and genres and overriding established conventions when the spirit, or commercial necessity, dictated.'
1973
Ezra Pound on Turner
American poet
‘There are two kinds of artists: 1) Waterhouse who painted perhaps the most beautiful pictures that have ever been made in England; but you go from them and see no more than you did before. The answer is in the picture. 2) Whistler and Turner, to whom it is theoretically necessary to be 'educated up'. When you first see their pictures you say 'Wot't-'ell' but when you leave the pictures you see beauty in mists, shadows, a hundred places where you never dreamed of seeing it before. The answer to their work is in nature.'
1909
William Hazlitt
artist
‘The artist delights to go back to the first chaos of the world... All is without forms and void. Some one said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing, and very like.'
1816
William Powell Frith
artist
‘When I say that Turner should be the idol of painters, I refer to his earlier works and not to the period when he was half crazy and produced works about as insane as the people who admire them.'
1878
Michael Fish
Broadcast
Meteorologist
‘Turner is one of the greatest British Artists of all times. His paintings have a special significance for me, not least of all for his depiction of the weather but also for the highly sentimental View of Richmond Hill and Bridge, a view which is still virtually the same today.’
‘Some of his earlier works depicted lovely vivid sunrises, sunsets, rainbows and cloud formations. I do feel, however, that some of his later ones 'went off' and weren't really meteorologically correct, often being strangely wishy-washy.'
Richard Redgrave
artist
‘His short figure had become corpulent - his face was unusually red, and a little inclined to blotches... He generally wore what is called a black dress-coat, which would have been the better for brushing - the sleeves were mostly too long, coming down over his fat and not over-clean hands.'
about 1830