The Water-Colours of J. M. W. Turner

Charles Holroyd, himself a distinguished painter and former keeper of the National Gallery, guides us through the watercolours of Joseph Mallord William Turner - the artist who single-handedly transformed English landscape painting into something seismic and new. These are not gentle scenic views. Turner's watercolours crackle with storms breaking over mountain peaks, light fracturing through Venetian mist, and the terrible beauty of a coastline battered by sea. He painted the world as if seeing it for the first time, and his colours, those luminous and seemingly impossible washes of gold and violet, still have the power to stop a viewer cold. First published in the early twentieth century, this volume remains essential for understanding how a painter who began as a topographic draftsman became the prophet of modern art. Holroyd traces Turner's technical development while illuminating the audacious imagination behind every brushstroke. The watercolours reveal his singular gift: capturing nature's most fleeting moments with an urgency that feels almost illicit, as if the light might vanish before the paper dries.