Turner's pictorial composition derived from the comparison between British and French landscapes

Bibliographic Information

Other Title
  • 一九世紀初頭英仏風景画の比較から見るターナーの空間構成
  • 19セイキ ショトウ エイフツ フウケイガ ノ ヒカク カラ ミル ターナー ノ クウカン コウセイ

Search this article

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a prominent English nineteenth-century landscape painter, Joseph Mallord William Turner composed pictorial space from the viewpoint of comparison with contemporary French landscape and its theory. Contemporary French landscape painters including Pierre Henri de Valenciennes were deeply influenced by the style of neoclassical history painting and their pictorial space was ordered by the idea of plan. Valenciennes demanded in his perspective treatise landscape painting be composed with several plans disposed parallel to the picture plane. Objects were disposed tediously on plans, which Turner considered to show French inability to give depth in pictorial space. On the other hand, the idea of ground was used to represent pictorial space in the early nineteenth-century British landscape. This difference of idea to represent pictorial space was a reason why several Royal Academicians including Turner criticized spatial representation of contemporary French paintings for their inability to give depth. Turner himself aimed at representing depth of pictorial space with introducing deep ground and manipulating colour. That provided his landscape composition with great depth and recession which he considered French paintings could not represent.

Journal

  • Aesthetics

    Aesthetics 60 (2), 112-125, 2009

    The Japanese Society for Aesthetics

Citations (1)*help

See more

Related Projects

See more

Details 詳細情報について

Report a problem

Back to top