When a landscape artist finds it hard to paint figures well, there is one good solution: work with a figurative painter. The results can be spectacular.
Turner
Knowing when one of Turner’s paintings is narrative can be very tricky. But there are dangers in over-interpretation. Here are some ideas to assist in their reading.
Princess, sorceress, seductress, wife, mother, and vengeful filicide – one of the most complex characters to paint. Known from her letter in Heroides, and a lost work by Ovid.
Who was Ovid, and how did he come to write so much on mythology? Illustrated with some fine paintings of his life by Poussin, Delacroix, and Turner.
Is it really futile and impossible to try to paint the wind? Here’s a selection of evidence, drawn from landscapes and marines.
Never mock Cupid. As Apollo found it, he’ll get his own back in the cruellest of ways.
He recovered some of his youthful vision in the 1860s, when he painted rich rustic views lit by the setting sun.
He started topographic paintings when he returned to London, and during his extended working honeymoon in Italy.
Largely self-taught, he was a precocious painter whose major works started when he was only 20. This covers his early work and time in Shoreham, to 1835.
Certainly the most prolific, and probably the most successful, marine artist of all time. His paintings were even admired by JMW Turner.
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