11/13/2015 Curator's Talk: Turner's Last Works – Frameworks and Meanings Downtown $10 - $19

City of Toronto All Events http://ift.tt/1NPgzXD The works Turner produced in his final years (1835 – 1851) were contentious. While his last watercolours found sympathetic buyers, Turner's oil paintings were subjected to extreme critical reaction, and even led to accusations of physical and mental decline. Modern commentators, in contrast, have presented Turner with a radical late style that had little connection with Victorian Britain and anticipated Impressionism and even Abstract Expressionism. Sam Smiles reviews the works Turner produced in these last years and the critical response to them, then and subsequently. He proposes that if we are to do justice to Turner's achievement, the final paintings need to be restored to their 19th century context rather than abstracted from it.