Meet the Artist: J.M.W. Turner

If you really want to appreciate works of art, then the best thing to do is to visit a gallery and if you want to learn about the works of Romantic painter, printer and water-colourist J.M.W. Turner then you’re likely to head to the Tate which houses many of his hundred favourite works that he bequeathed to the nation.

In collaboration with the good folk at the Tate, illustrator Lizzy Stewart has created an art activity book that introduces some of Turner’s works to youngsters.

There are brief details of his life and information about sources of inspiration for his paintings: the landscape, the sea, the weather, buildings, literature and portraits.

The book contains small reproductions of a number of Turner’s works with accompanying snippets of information about them and activities to try. In all thirteen pictures are included, although many are little more than the size of a postage stamp – too small to really appreciate them.

Throughout the book, the reader is invited to try emulating the artist through suggestions such as carrying a sketch book and using it to record everyday sights and things; drawing or painting a landscape on a full blank page of the book, experimenting with capturing the moods of the sea in tiny rectangles, drawing a favourite building, or writing a story relating to The Fighting Temeraire.

Strangely, the pages are not numbered as the final spread giving page numbers for the specific works featured, their date, size and where they may be seen, is presumably intended as a pictorial index. Strangely too, Turner’s portrait is omitted altogether from this index. Editorial oversights perhaps?