Eowyn Wilcox McComb - Housewife - Artist
  • Home
  • Paintings
  • Watercolors
  • Drawings
  • Biography
  • Journal
  • Contact

Water and Light

3/4/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
JSW Turner   The Blue Rigi, Sunrise   watercolor on paper  1842
My husband and I were lucky enough to go to the opening of the new Getty exhibition: 'Turner: Painting Set Free.'  It was more lovely than I had expected, given I have only seen his two paintings at the Huntington Gardens previously.  To see his work, row upon row, showed his strength in repetition and variation upon a theme: the watery, steamy, moist atmosphere carried from painting to painting, some calm, some tumultuous, some finished, some barely started.  His paint was simultaneously remarkably transparent and remarkably thick.  He seems to have been a precursor to Bonnard in his practice of placing an empty space or a void at the center of the canvas.  The paintings glowed. 

But it was his watercolors that were most revelatory to me.  I have never seen watercolor used so deftly, not even by Sargent or Winslow Homer.  His watercolors were fresh and light and luminous.  Some were as detailed as his oil paintings, but with even greater transparency and movingly delicate brushwork.  But the quickest and lightest of his watercolors on display, a set of paintings made on the spot of the tower of London burning at night, were also among the most vivid.  They felt so immediate still, as though you were watching the flames reflected across the water across more than a hundred years of time.  The sparks still falling, the colors still bright.

Picture
JMW Turner   Fire at the Grand Storehouse of the Tower of London   watercolor on paper  1841
1 Comment
Miranda
3/14/2015 03:33:56 pm

Someday you will go to the Turner wing at the Tate Britain and revel in the warmth of his brush strokes.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014

    Categories

    All
    Art History
    Art Shows
    Drawing
    Home
    Painting
    Poetry
    Printmaking
    Reading
    Studio
    Watercolor
    Writing

    Contact

    thegiftofasher@yahoo.com

Home

About

Contact

Copyright Eowyn Wilcox McComb © 2021. Please do not use or reproduce any images without my consent. Thank you.
  • Home
  • Paintings
  • Watercolors
  • Drawings
  • Biography
  • Journal
  • Contact