A sketchy life of Turner

 

Turner by Peter Ackroyd

Ackroyd delivers on the promise of a ‘brief life’ (as in the title of the series of which it is a part), but the portrait of Turner that emerges is sketchy. I found myself wondering how much of a hurry Ackroyd had been in as he wrote it. The constant refrain of “this year he exhibited x pictures at the Royal Academy, called a, b, c and d”, found every few pages, suggests the author had a comprehensive list of painting names and dates on his desk as an aid to filling out the sequence of chapters to which he had committed himself, named only by ranges of dates from Turner’s birth to his death.

To be fair, the book includes some nice anecdotes and insights into Turner’s character, work habits and unsettled domestic life. But themes which could have been developed, albeit at the expense of other details in order to keep the book to its 148 paperback pages, are no more than hints. The relationship between the elderly Turner and his young and increasingly influential fan John Ruskin, for instance, sounds worthy of more attention.

On the question of Turner’s emergence as an important artist, Ackroyd gives us a range of contemporary reactions to his work, both positive and negative. And he tells us about Turner’s extraordinary ability to work hard and sketch fast. But we don’t hear much about how Turner’s art was revolutionary or what made his detractors upset.

If you want a quick overview of the main facts of Turner’s life and an impression of his character and circumstances, this is useful book. But you may, like me, find yourself distracted by matters that you don’t want to be worrying about – such as the mistake on p. 131, where the date 1824 appears in the chapter called “1833-1834”, even though the previous paragraph includes the correct date, 1834 and later in the same paragraph, there’s a correct 1835. Also, wouldn’t a decent subeditor have changed the opening words of a chapter from “In 1833 he exhibited…” to “In 1833 Turner exhibited…”? Small points, I know, but once you lose faith in a writer or publisher’s attention to detail, it’s hard to be fully absorbed in the subject.

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