Description:
Turner on the Seine brings together all the watercolor sketches the artist made for his 1834 book of views of the River Seine, together with hundreds of black-and-white related images. It constitutes a companion volume to Ian Warrell's Turner on the Loire, the painter's other river-views project, and it is every bit as handsome. The range of visual styles impresses the viewer, along with the compositional perfection and luminous sense of light that Turner demonstrates. Some of these images carry the mark of classic Turner, but others would not look out of place in a collection of impressionist paintings; it is not surprising to learn that Pissarro and Monet admired these images enormously. Others still seem even more modern, as with the near-abstract Sail Boat at Rouen; in some, the pen work overlaying the watercolor strokes resembles the work of the most proficient illustrators, like Paul Hogarth. It is hard to imagine an art book having higher production standards than this. The text is informative and sharply written; there is something to delight the eye on every page in black and white or color; and the reproduction of the plates is exquisite, particularly in the precision of the blue inks. --Adam Roberts, Amazon.co.uk
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