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The definitive biography of J.M.W. Turner.
‘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
In 1799, aged just 24, Turner became an Associate of the Royal Academy. While influential collectors competed to buy his paintings, he travelled widely, observing landscape and people and gathering material for a cycle of images that would come to express the collective identity of Britain.
In this lucid blend of vibrant biography and acute art history, James Hamilton introduces Turner to a new generation of readers and paints a picture of a uniquely generous human being, a giant of the nineteenth century and a beacon for the twenty-first.
‘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
In 1799, aged just 24, Turner became an Associate of the Royal Academy. While influential collectors competed to buy his paintings, he travelled widely, observing landscape and people and gathering material for a cycle of images that would come to express the collective identity of Britain.
In this lucid blend of vibrant biography and acute art history, James Hamilton introduces Turner to a new generation of readers and paints a picture of a uniquely generous human being, a giant of the nineteenth century and a beacon for the twenty-first.
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Reviews
With splendid clarity and shrewd humour, James Hamilton evokes the visceral world of a great artist and a fascinating character.
A pleasure to read.
Hamilton's life gives us a real person ... comprehensibly human and belonging clearly in the England of his time.
Hamilton writes ... with gusto, bringing Turner to vivid three-dimensional life.
Turner was a phenomenon, a one-man artistic revolution whose energy can be felt through the pages of this inspiring biography.
Hamilton's readable, unshowy life ... excellent.
An excellent biography - revealing on the life, perceptive on the art.
Admirably clear
A richly detailed biography . . . Hamilton maintains a steady course between academic respectability and an allowance for the drama and poignancy so clearly central to an accurate portrait of the subject
Very satisfying . . . detailed, judicious and confidently grounded in the period
Lively
Well researched and fluidly written