A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, ArchitectureWaters, Clara Erskine Clement
History
A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture
Waters, Clara Erskine Clement
Art -- History
and exhibited some of his finest works. He usually exhibited eight
pictures each year, and although without a rival, gave evidence of anxious
care to sustain his reputation. He was especially successful with
children, and many of these pictures--as well as of celebrities--were
engraved, and have thus become known all over the world. Of his eight
pictures exhibited in 1829--the last he ever contributed--Williams says:
"It is difficult to imagine a more undeviating excellence, an infallible
accuracy of likeness, with an elevation of art below which it seemed
impossible for him to descend." Lawrence died on the morning of the 7th of
January, 1830, with but little warning, from ossification of the heart; he
was buried with much pomp and honor in St. Paul's Cathedral, by the side
of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
[Illustration: FIG. 73.--PORTRAIT OF TURNER.]
JOSEPH M. W. TURNER, R.A. (1775-1851).--It is believed, by those who have
investigated the question most carefully, that this eminent artist and
most remarkable man was born in Maiden Lane, London, April 3, 1775,
although the artist himself has stated that he was born in Devonshire,
April 23, 1769. Turner's father, William Turner, was a native of
Devonshire, but came to London while young, and did a fair business in the
Covent Garden district as a hair-dresser, wig-maker, and in shaving
people. The father was garrulous, like the traditional hair-dresser, with
a pleasant laugh, and a fresh, smiling face. He had a parrot nose and a
projecting chin. Turner's mother was a Miss Mallord (or Marshall), of good
family, but a violent-tempered woman, with a hawk nose and a fierce
visage. Her life ended in a lunatic asylum. The artist, who was always
impatient of inquiry into his domestic matters, resented any allusion to
his mother, and never spoke of her. The manifest peculiarities of his
parents had an impression upon Turner, and would have made him eccentric
had there been no other influences of a kindred nature. The parents were
under-sized, and of limited mental range; they were of very little
personal assistance to their gifted son, although the father in later
years busied himself in mixing colors, adjusting pictures to frames, and
sometimes he was entrusted with certain rough work at filling in
backgrounds. When Turner was but five years old he is said to have made,
from memory, a fair copy of a lion rampant engraved on a silver salver,
which he had seen while accompanying his father to the house of a
customer. Presently the boy began to copy pictures in water-colors, and
then to make sketches from nature of scenes along the river Thames. In his
ninth year he drew a picture of Margate Church. When he was ten years old
he was sent to school at Brentford-Butts, where he remained two years,
boarding with his uncle, the local butcher. His leisure hours were spent
in dreamy wanderings and in making countless sketches of birds, trees,
flowers, and domestic fowls. He acquired a smattering of the classics and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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