JMW TURNER

Master of the sublime, JMW Turner, goes to Adelaide

• BY:MIRIAM COSIC 
• From:The Australian 
• February 02, 2013 12:00AM

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JMW Turner, The Fighting Temeraire (1838). From the exhibition: Turner from the Tate: The Making of a Master Source: Supplied

JMW TURNER was a very quirky man, but he doesn't fit the cliche of angst-driven creative genius. He was ambitious, organised, financially savvy and an effective self-publicist. He raised himself up from the working class to a position of wealth and influence, admired by powerful friends. The only secret to painting, he said, was "damned hard work".

He was in constant dialogue with the past and he remained an Academician all his life, but he was also deeply individualistic, both socially and artistically. He broke step, creating a world view that was both idiosyncratically subjective and enduringly influential. In him, English romanticism reached its apogee in the visual arts.

Turner baffled and irritated the critics of his day as much as the French impressionists were to in the coming decades. Harrumphing descriptions such as "eggs and spinach" and "soap suds and whitewash" come down to us from contemporary assessments, especially of his later, more abstract work. Despite unshakeable self-belief, Turner himself admitted, "Atmosphere is my style and indistinctness my fault