Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Plates bright and vivid. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> These ‘unfinished’ watercolours were the germinating iridescent centre from which some of Turner’s best known works emerged. The Petworth Watercolours the ‘Colour Beginnings’ the sketches for ‘Rivers of France’ and other blue-paper sketches are all famous yet have never before been reproduced in useful quantity. Here the relevant pencil sketchbooks carefully but entertainingly annotated provide a chronological matrix. The range power and brilliance of these watercolours will astonish even those who know Turner well through his oil paintings. From his return from Italy in 1820 to the Burning of the Houses of Parliament in 1834 we see his work rise to a level rarely equalled in the story of art. In his colour sketches Turner reaches out to the precarious edges of artistic achievement. (MP)