J. M. W. Turner was an illustrious English printmaker, watercolourist, and Romantic painter. He is renowned for his turbulent violet marine paintings, imaginative landscapes, and expressive colourization. He was a child prodigy and exhibited his work at the ‘Royal Academy of Arts,’ at the age of fifteen. In 1804, he opened his own gallery and in 1807, he became the professor of perspective at the academy. He remained a controversial figure throughout his career and left behind approximately thirty thousand works on paper, five-hundred and fifty oil paintings, and two thousand water colours. Read through the compilation of popular and enlightening quotes and sayings by J. M. W. Turner which have been excerpted from his works, paintings, thought, etc.
Painting can never show her nose in company with architecture but to have it snubbed.
J. M. W. Turner
Painting is a strange business.
J. M. W. Turner
There's a sketch at every turn.
J. M. W. Turner
Indistinctness is my forte.
J. M. W. Turner
I hate married men. They never make any sacrifices to the arts, but are always thinking of their duties to their wives and families or some rubbish of that sort.
To select, combine and concentrate that which is beautiful in nature and admirable in art is as much the business of the landscape painter in his line as in the other departments of art.
J. M. W. Turner
Light is therefore color.
J. M. W. Turner
If I could find anything blacker than black, I'd use it.
J. M. W. Turner
I don't paint so that people will understand me, I paint to show what a particular scene looks like.
J. M. W. Turner
It is only when we are no longer fearful that we begin to create.
J. M. W. Turner
I have no secret but hard work. This is a secret that many never learn, and they don't succeed because they don't learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty, and the great curse to a great blessing.
J. M. W. Turner
It is necessary to mark the greater from the lesser truth: namely the larger and more liberal idea of nature from the comparatively narrow and confined; namely that which addresses itself to the imagination from that which is solely addressed to the eye.
