Admitted at a very young age to the Royal Academy, Joseph Mallord William Turner precociously revealed an exceptional talent for topographical drawing. This British master lived through an era confronted with the industrial revolution, capturing the mutations of the natural and urban landscape. His work is at the heart of romanticism, a movement whose limits he constantly pushed through an innovative approach to the pictorial medium.

His visual language frees itself from descriptive realism to favor the expression of atmospheric forces. The painting of the sea, storms, and setting suns structures the essence of his aesthetic production. He deploys a dazzling and fluid palette, diluting forms in swirls of light and mist. Dramatic contrasts reinforce the emotional intensity of raging nature. His fascination for tumultuous elements is revealed in “Fishermen at sea”. The theme of industrialization replacing the old world is embodied with “The last voyage of the Bold one”. The melancholic dimension of his art also shines through in the work “Peace - Burial at Sea”.

The radicality of his luminous atmospheres upsets the aesthetic conventions of Georgian England. His innovative treatment of color dissolved in natural space earned him to be considered an essential precursor of impressionist research.

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