Turner's Modern World

A richly illustrated book exploring the artist’s responses to a quickly developing nation at the height of the Industrial Revolution and including some of his best-known works

Published to accompany a landmark exhibition of the art of J.M.W. Turner at the Tate, this book highlight Turner's contemporary imagery, the most exceptional and distinctive aspect of his work throughout his career and explores what it meant to be a modern artist, in his lifetime.

Turner's career spanned revolution and the Napoleonic War, Empire, the explosion of finance capitalism, the transition from sail to steam and from manpower to mechanisation, political reform and scientific and cultural advances that transformed society and shaped the modern world. While historians have long recognised that the industrial and political revolutions of the late eighteenth century inaugurated far reaching change and modernisation, these were often ignored by artists as they did not fit into established categories of pictorial representation.

This book shows Turner updating the language of art and transforming his style and practice to produce revelatory, definitive interpretations of modern subjects.

Details

• Authors: David Blayney Brown and Amy Concannon
• Pages: 240 pages | 200 illustrations
• Publication date: October 2020
• ISBN: 978-1849767125 - paperback
             978-1849767132 - hardcover
• Language: English
• Dimensions: 28.6 x 23.3 cm