Turner has some golden visions, glorious and beautiful. They are only visions, but still, they are art, and one could live and die with such pictures.

—John Constable on the 1828 Royal Academy Exhibition.

Saturday was the first day of The Young Turner Exhibition at Blenheim Palace so we headed across and spent the afternoon with our new favourite English painter. The exhibition contained early works and many related to Oxford, which was wonderful for the children to see how Turner had captured many places familiar to us. It was a real treat to be able to take in the sketches and paintings as a family and for the children to admire up close Turner’s delicate use of light and colour that subtly pervade many of the watercolours.

As always before exhibitions and galleries, we do prepare ourselves and so we have been studying Turner this term.  The man himself has even joined us at the kitchen table, where I’ve stuck up one of his portraits! We have also been enjoying Emily Kiser’s work on Turner in this simple downloadable pdf, which includes a short biography. Now we just need to get ourselves to the Clore Gallery, Tate Britain in London to see more of Turner’s ‘golden visions’.

Some other Turner resources we have appreciated:

Short Animation: Art with Mati and Dada – Turner

Enjoy discovering this British landscape artist.

Previous Posts:

Museums and Galleries with little ones

Artist of the Term: Van Gogh

Artist of the Term: Michelangelo

American Modernism

Learning to love poetry

Classical Music

Getting Ready for the Ballet