Unlimited beauty

Paths to Fame: Turner Watercolours from the Courtauld
Courtauld Institute, Somerset House, WC2, until 25 January 2009

This is the first full display of the Courtauld’s holding of Turner watercolours, recently enriched by nine paintings from the Scharf Bequest. The exhibition is further enhanced by loans from the Tate, and offers a splendid introduction to one of the greatest English artists. Despite a lifetime of almost ceaseless travel, J.M.W. Turner was very much a Londoner. Born a barber’s son in Covent Garden in 1775 he showed early promise and the unflagging industry to put his talent to best use. He was ambitious as well as hard-working, travelling England to record notable architecture and natural scenery. He had a particular talent for depicting the effects of light and nature’s drama. Success early attended him: at 24 he became the youngest Royal Academician on record and continued to work ceaselessly. He set up his own gallery to exhibit and sell his paintings and when he died in 1851 he was a very wealthy man. He left behind him a huge body of work of unlimited beauty.

There is at least one fascinating first-hand account of the artist in action. Turner’s friend and patron, Walter Fawkes, asked him to draw a man-of-war. Apparently he began by pouring wet paint on to the paper until it was saturated, then ‘he tore, he scratched, he scrubbed at it in a kind of frenzy and the whole thing was chaos — but gradually and as if by magic the lovely ship, with all its exquisite minutiae, came into being’. Not many artists can summon forth beauty in this way from a misty, shadowy ferment, and bring definition to the amorphous.