Summer skywatching with the great painter J.M.W. Turner

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Yale Center for British Art, Public Domain

The 19th-century British painter J.M.W. Turner loved to look at the sky. His work is a reflection of our own attraction to God's glory.

The painter J.M.W. Turner loved to look at the sky. In particular, he loved the skies in Kent, just off the coast of southeastern England. He first visited the beaches there as a child in the late 18th century and continued to visit all his life. As a successful artist, he was much in demand back in London. In spite of our romantic visions of starving artists, happy and free, the career of a full-time artist isn’t entirely without responsibility. There are always deadlines to meet, pictures to be painted for clients that may not spark interest, and the demands of constantly selling pictures in order to put bread on the table.

Turner wasn’t immune to those pressures. For him, the skies of the North Sea just off the coast became a refuge from the big city. In the city, the sky is tame, framed by windows or glimpsed between buildings, but at the beach the sky is boundless.

Joseph Mallord William Turner looked for a long time at those skies and made sketch after sketch in his notebooks. He never sold the paintings. They were quick impressions, studies of mood and color. His more finished art pieces are often full of amazing skies, and the mood he could create was masterful. Those paintings are justifiably adored. For a long time, his watercolor sketches were ignored. But appreciation of them has grown over the years and they’re now extremely popular.

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