Paris, with its Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees and Notre Dame — not to speak of a limitless list of other iconic symbols that attract a great number of tourists from the world over — was hosting the Olympic Games from July 28 to August 11 this year. This was both good news and bad news!

Many unavoidable boulevards, streets, squares and public gardens were being used for the Olympic events, and driving or parking a car, taking a bus or even walking across these spots for one’s personal reasons had become an absolute nightmare, to say the least. So, I said to myself, why not spend some time in the calm and wonderful Monaco along the French Riviera, and continue enjoying life while the weather is pleasant and sunny?

One of the excitements in Monaco these days is the art exhibition ‘The Sublime Legacy of Turner’, which is being held at the Grimaldi Museum, in collaboration with the Tate Gallery of London. The exhibition showcases the mid-19th century British painter Joseph Mallord William Turner’s astonishing works, which he created at a very young age. However, Turner’s own story is as intriguing as his artworks.

Born in 1775 in a working class family in the Covent Garden neighbourhood, right in the centre of London, at the age of 10 he would surprise everyone, especially his own father (who was a barber by profession), with his incredible sketches of neighbourhood scenes.

A museum in Monaco looks back at the prodigious career of the famed British painter

As his family used to live by the Thames, most of Turner’s sketches at that moment were devoted to the waves in the river and, fairly often, to the thundering and stormy clouds above it. By the time he was 14, Turner would be accepted by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, following his brilliant performance in a contest for the admission. Once a student at the Academy, he would win its much coveted Silver Palette Award shortly afterwards.

After these astonishing successes, water colours remained his artistic passion for a long time. One of his primary major works, completed at the age of 15, A View of the Archbishop’s Palace, Lambeth, was the most appreciated piece at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition in 1790. A look at this chef d’oeuvre in the modern age of highly developed image-capturing technologies makes one’s head swim with amazement — more so when you think that a teenager accomplished this!

Only six years later, at age 21, Turner sprang a huge surprise on everyone by exhibiting his first oil painting, a large and perfectly detailed canvas titled Fishermen at Sea, showing the dramatic scene of boats under dark clouds, with a half-covered moon glittering behind. Art critics of the era said it was “the greatest oil painting of the period devoted to the sea as a background.”

Now grown up and totally independent, Turner would remain a restless traveller, visiting the art centres of Europe, especially Paris, where he spent many years learning newer techniques at the Louvre art centre. He also made frequent trips to Rome, Venice, Switzerland and Madrid.

Turner’s devotion to his passion and his restless prolificacy remained, and remains, astonishing to everyone. According to a catalogue published by the Tate, he was able to create no less than 2,000 aquarelles and 30,000 paper sketches during his lifetime, not to speak of the oil paintings that reached a mind-boggling figure of 550 works.

He peacefully died at home in Chelsea, London, in 1851 at the age of 76.

‘The Sublime Legacy of Turner’ is on display at the Grimaldi Museum, Monaco, from July 6-September 1, 2024

The writer is an art critic based in Paris.

He can be reached at zafmasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 25th, 2024