Employing newly available sketchbooks, Hamilton (Turner and the Scientists) contends that painter J.W.M. Turner (1775–1851) was a prodigy who first exhibited his work in his father's barber shop and owed his fame to innate opportunism as much as to matchless talent. The sketchbooks reveal a young man anxiously seeking institutional favor, painstakingly preparing his 1811 lectures on perspective in the hopes of defeating his famous inarticulacy. They trace Turner's charge through the English countryside, where he scaled improbable heights and expertly sketched scenes (many later completed from memory). Hamilton attributes this frenetic activity to Turner's obsession with the preciousness of both money and time, and suggests that the latter concern eventually prevailed. Once at home in the Royal Academy and convinced of his genius, Turner could afford to flout public opinion and devote himself to quixotic pursuit of the colors and tones churned by "the engine of the air." One critic, fearing Turner's influence on younger artists, dubbed him "over-Turner,
" while scientists esteemed his Prospero-like light effects. Somewhat dismayed by the discomfiting details of his subject's life—Turner apparently disregarded his children, enjoyed pornography and consigned his mother to an insane asylum until her death—Hamilton downplays them. His affectionate, dignified study is designed for scholars who will relish Turner's travel itineraries, housing plans and overwrought poems—trivia that serve less to illuminate Turner's work than to selectively humanize his myth. Three 8-page color photo inseres not seen by PW. (On sale June 3)
Forecast:Published in the U.K. in 1997, this title's release is pegged to a Turner exhibit this summer in Williamstown, Mass. , but the book's U.S. appearance now may have more to do with setting up Hamilton's forthcoming Random title, a biography of scientist Michael Farraday.
