For JMW Turner, sketchbooks allowed him to capture the world around him while he was travelling 📚 The books came in all shapes and sizes, containing beautifully detailed watercolours and the quickest of pencil sketches, as well as shopping lists, medical advice and language survival phrases. Many were filled during his journeys to the coast, including time spent in Cornwall in 1811, where he was inspired by the dramatic light and sea 🌊 These drawings often formed the basis for large scale oil

J. M. W. Turner's watercolours were made using pigments such as Gamboge, umbers and siennas, Viridian and Cobalt Blue. He used watercolours in a block form, and there is also evidence he made some, if not all of them, himself. Turner followed pigment development closely and used new pigments as they appeared, such as Cobalt Blue instead of smalt. He also used the toxic Scheele's Green, which he later replaced with Emerald Green and Viridian. Turner used some pigments that faded, as he was passio

Celebrating 250 years of one of the most influential artists in history, J.M.W. Turner. | Newfields

“Light is therefore color.” – J. M. W. Turner 🌅 Admired for his stunning light effects and master renditions of natural landscapes, J. M. W. Turner dominated British landscape painting throughout the first half of the 19th century. In this painting from 1841, Turner depicts an episode from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” in which the sea god Glaucus hopes for the favor of the beautiful ocean nymph Scylla. Here, Scylla flees from the outstretched arms of her would-be lover, who has been transformed into