Standing in the Sun [Hardcover]

Anthony Bailey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 1998

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Britain's greatest and most mysterious artist, was the son of a Convent Garden barber and a woman who died in Bethlehem mental hospital. During his lifetime (1775-1851), Turner achieved fame and fortune for a range of work encompassing seascape and landscape, immensely powerful oil paintings and intimate watercolors. His friend and colleague C. R. Leslie remembered him thus: "Turner was short and stout, and had a sturdy, sailor-like walk. He might be taken for the captain of a steamboat at first glance; but a second would find more in his face than belongs in any ordinary mind. There was the peculiar keenness of expression in his eye that is only seen in men of constant habits of observation."

For this new biography, the first comprehensive narrative of Turner's life in a generation, Anthony Bailey has searched through the archives, studied the scholarly literature, made use of much research done in the last thirty years, and looked at almost all of Turner's sketchbooks as well as many of his paintings and watercolors. He has uncovered fresh material and put together other facts, previously known, to shed new light on those complicated and secretive man.

Anthony Bailey has set out to write a biography of the man, not a book about his paintings, and J.M.W. Turner comes vividly to life in theses pages. Both reclusive and gregarious, private and vainglorious, tough and vulnerable, a long-tern bachelor who fathered two daughters, Turner was full of contradictions, and Anthony Bailey rises masterfully to the challenge of describing them here.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This is a remarkably balanced look at one of the most contradictory personalities in British art. By keenly appraising primary, secondary, and tertiary sources, New Yorker writer Bailey has painted a vivid image of a man who could be generous or mean, outgoing or withdrawn, flamboyant or precise, but always a keen observer of the world around him. The book is a delight to read, combining meticulous scholarship, vibrant description, and a wonderful sense of place and person. From the opening's splendid evocation of the London of Turner's birth through the trips to later descriptions of the harbors and ports of his inspiration, his secretive domestic arrangements, and the final days of his life, this work well serves the artist and the reader. Highly recommended.?Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Bailey displays all the assurance one would expect from a longtime New Yorker staff writer and author of 20 books in this brisk and enlightening biography of the great English painter of sky, sea, and storm. So energized is Bailey's portrait, the first in 30 years, that the extraordinary research and feats of interpretation upon which it is based are as invisible and taken for granted as the infrastructure of a metropolis. Bailey clearly relishes his subject's contradictoriness and penchants for "causing confusion" and keeping secrets, and he is intrigued with Turner's habit of writing inchoate verse, but most of all he is delighted by Turner's unrelenting artistic passion and commitment to hard work. As Bailey tracks Turner's steady rise from his modest home turf, the streets of a red-light district in late-eighteenth-century London, to art's highest echelon, he incisively describes his social circle and historical context, then grows expansive as he chronicles the journeys that so inspired this "child of the sea." Bailey has brought the feisty genius (who looked like a sea captain) out from behind the extraordinarily dramatic seascapes he is revered for, and sure enough, Turner himself is a force of nature. Donna Seaman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1St Edition edition (December 9, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061180025
• ISBN-13: 978-0061180026
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #933,888 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine Portrait of a Great Landscape Painter, July 2, 2000

By 

Tim Paris - See all my reviews

This review is from: Standing in the Sun (Hardcover)

Avid readers of biographies often note that great men and women in their fields exhibit striking contradictions in their personalities. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), England's greatest landscape painter, is no exception and those contradictions are highlighted in Anthony Bailey's excellent 1997 biography. Notoriously tight-fisted in his dealings in the art world, Turner was equally capable of striking magnanimity towards his few friends. Jealously protective of his paintings, he left dozens of his masterpieces rotting in his gallery at the time of his death, virtually uncared for. Indifferent towards his two, illegitimate daughters, Turner was reported to have burst into tears at the death of a patron. All these characteristics are illuminated in Bailey's fine study. Organized on thematic, rather than on strictly chronological lines, Bailey's portrait emphasizes the man instead of his work, although Turner's major works are not neglected. Like all good biographers, Bailey is also careful to describe his subject in the context of his times, a tumultuous period in western European history. At bottom, though, Turner was a man devoted to his craft and his political awareness appears rarely to have extended beyond the infighting and maneuvering accompanying his long membership in the Royal Academy. There are many specialist studies of Turner's work, but this may be the best portrait yet of Turner. Still, Bailey has not fully penetrated the sources of Turner's unique vision, (perhaps an impossible task),a vision that baffled many contemporaries and placed Turner "out of his time" in much the same way that Blake appears of a different time, out of synch with the poets of his age. This biography is highly recommended to anyone having more than a passing interest in art or art history.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant account of one of England's best painters, September 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Standing in the Sun (Hardcover)

Anthony Bailey provides the modern reader with a most readable and interesting account of the painter, Turner, and his life. Mr. Bailey, captures the essence of Turner's character and brilliance as a landscape painter. He leads the reader down a path of vivid description and imagery that encourages and entices one to go on and read more. Turner was a creator of illusion and mystique in paintings. He captured the mood and climate of his country in the mist, storms, clouds, sunsets, and sunrises created with his brush. I had the opportunity to buy Standing in the Sun recently in England, and I found it to be an excellent tribute to a fine English painter by a truly gifted English writer, Anthony Bailey.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine biography of a great painter by a fine writer, January 27, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (East lansing,MI,USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Standing in the Sun (Hardcover)

J.M.W. Turner was a great painter and a very strange man. His genius was recognized early,and he lived well and died rich. He was secretive exhibitionistic,miserly and generous by turns. His works are not too easy to see in the U.S. because he sold well in England and left his paintings to the nation. Bailey has written a superb biography of a man on whom it is difficult to understand. It compares well to his previous biography Rembrandt's House and displays tthe same graceful and lucid prose of his books on sailing,walking,and groeing up in England and America. I read the English edition and recommend this book unreservedly to anyone who likes great art and fine writing. Roger Marz