J.M.W Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner is an English Romantic painter, watercolorist and printmaker. Throughout his life, he produced thousands of watercolour and oil paintings that depict turbulent landscapes from an expressive application of colour. Most of his more famous paintings are made from oil paint, such as: 'The Fighting Temerine' in 1838, 'Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth' in 1842 and 'Northern Castle, Sunrise' in 1845.
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I believe that his oil paintings and particularly watercolour paintings, will help me demonstrate the impacts and effects of air pollution, by improving my paint application technique. These paintings by JMW Turner, i find to be the most interesting for demonstrating air pollution, because of how they are blurred and give a hazy effect. This smoky effect makes me think of air pollution because it is reminiscent of how smoke from combustion physically impairs your eyesight. When subjected to high levels of smoke, it causes your eyes to become irritated resulting in a production of water, which therefore impacts your vision, this is similar to these paintings where it is difficult to define clear shapes and detail. Moreover, the colour palette in these paintings of red and yellow paints is also symbolic of air pollution as fire is a key producer of carbon dioxide and other toxic air particles.
From these murky watercolour paintings produced by JMW Turner, they create a hot and flustered atmosphere that i wanted to reciprocate in my work, due to how this can style can be used to depict air pollution. I have taken primary source photographs of a range of landscapes, which i have collated into a gallery on this website. The purpose of these photographs, is to see how an environment would look after being afflicted by air pollution. I therefore achieved this by painting some of these landscapes, using this fluid and hectic paint application technique.
I initially replicated JMW Turner's most famous painting, 'The Fighting Temeraire'; but instead of using oil paint, i used graphite. I used graphite because i thought that it would be the most effective material for recreating the smoke being produced by the ship. It is fundamentally the smoke that initially attracted me towards this painting as that was an initial depiction of air pollution in an artistic format. You can see in JMW Turner's painting how the smoke being produced is polluting the sky by darkening it, which as a result creates a grim atmosphere. The use of graphite therefore enabled me to emphasise this as i could exaggerate the tonal range which would further develop a contrast between the light and dark and visually utilise chiaroscuro to connote the negative effects of air pollution. Moreover the exclusive use of grey further highlighted the dull nature of an environment after being corrupted by pollution.
I also tried recreating one of his paintings using watercolour paint as it is the most common material that JMW Turner used and because i wanted to experiment with how this paint would allow me to recreate this artistic style. The watercolour paint was successful in creating the bright colours present in the original painting, as well as creating the hazy effect from the fluid dilution of the water. I was able to bleed the colours together, making bold, striking and expressive patterns. This style therefore is an effective manner of presenting air pollution as i think the colours replicate the heat present in combustion which is a major cause of air pollution. Moreover the looseness of the paint, makes the painting have less defined detail which establishes a misty environment that is reminiscent of how a landscape would be when seen through the vision of someone's whose eyes have been compromised by air pollution.
