“Turner’s Whaling Pictures” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Mario Naves | Too Much Art | 6th July 2016

Turner repeatedly chose maritime settings where the power of Nature was on full display. Whaling pictures were a brief sideline, not as lucrative as he hoped. What catches the eye now is not a whaling narrative but the innovation in Turner’s style – the subtlety of light and image and, even more, his astonishingly rich surfaces. “Turner’s work can’t help but make the surfaces of most art look like thin gruel.” Images are here.