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Turner

On sale

18th September 2014

Price: £12.99

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Selected: ebook / ISBN-13: 9781444795158

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The definitive biography of J.M.W. Turner.

‘A pleasure to read’.’ A.S. BYATT

‘With splendid clarity and shrewd humour, James Hamilton evokes the visceral world of a great artist and a fascinating character.’ MIKE LEIGH

In 1799, aged just 24, Turner became an Associate of the Royal Academy. While influential collectors competed to buy his paintings, he travelled widely, observing landscape and people and gathering material for a cycle of images that would come to express the collective identity of Britain.

In this lucid blend of vibrant biography and acute art history, James Hamilton introduces Turner to a new generation of readers and paints a picture of a uniquely generous human being, a giant of the nineteenth century and a beacon for the twenty-first.

Reviews

Mike Leigh
With splendid clarity and shrewd humour, James Hamilton evokes the visceral world of a great artist and a fascinating character.
A.S. Byatt, Sunday Express
A pleasure to read.
Duncan Macmillan, Scotsman
Hamilton's life gives us a real person ... comprehensibly human and belonging clearly in the England of his time.
The Times
Hamilton writes ... with gusto, bringing Turner to vivid three-dimensional life.
Alan Judd, Daily Telegraph
Turner was a phenomenon, a one-man artistic revolution whose energy can be felt through the pages of this inspiring biography.
Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday
Hamilton's readable, unshowy life ... excellent.
Independent on Sunday
An excellent biography - revealing on the life, perceptive on the art.
Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Observer
Admirably clear
Los Angeles Times
A richly detailed biography . . . Hamilton maintains a steady course between academic respectability and an allowance for the drama and poignancy so clearly central to an accurate portrait of the subject
Washington Post
Very satisfying . . . detailed, judicious and confidently grounded in the period
New Yorker
Lively
New York Review of Books
Well researched and fluidly written