TurnerMalarz Żywiołów

About exhibition

For the first time in Poland, the National Museum in Krakow presents an exhibition of works by William Turner, greatest of the English Romantic painters and precursor of Impressionism and Symbolism, an artist who, in his landscapes of water and clouds, came close to abstract painting.

Compiled by the Bucerius Kunst Forum in Hamburg, the exhibition consists of eighty-four of Turner’s paintings of the elements, earth, air, fire and water. The works come from the Tate Gallery and several other English and American collections.

William Turner left well nigh thirty thousand works in all, most of which are sketches of landscapes. His concept of the genre was based on the theories of the French painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819), the first artist to paint landscapes directly from nature. De Valenciennes conceived the notion of the ‘landscape portrait’, an idea which resounded widely in artistic circles, prompting artists to paint real places, rather than composing imaginary landscapes. He was one of the artists instrumental in freeing landscapes from figures clad in historical or biblical costume and treating it as a subject in its own right. His outlook was shared by the painters of the English Romantic school. Unlike the politically engaged French Romantics, the two most famous of whom are Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix, their English counterparts formed a group who expressed themselves first and foremost through landscapes. Alongside Turner, the leading lights of the movement were Samuel Palmer, Richard Parkes Bonington and John Constable.

English landscape painting was an embodiment, glorification and metaphor of Nature and it underscored humankind’s place within the cosmos. The exhibition’s curators have assigned the drawings and paintings on show in line with the four elements, earth, air, fire and water, and with their fusion. This last category encompasses paintings within which the elements are juxtaposed and interwoven. These are compositions where Turner renounced a spatial division creating separate parts. Here, the evolvement is centric; the picture springs outward in all directions from the heart of the painting. In his later works, it swirls.

Light plays a particular role in Turner’s paintings. He himself stated time and again that his ideal was to paint pure light. In Modern Painters, first published in 1843, his friend, the painter John Ruskin, who was a great admirer of his work, wrote of him: And Turner – glorious in conception – unfathomable in knowledge – solitary in power – with the elements waiting upon his will, and the night and the morning obedient to his call, sent as a prophet of God to reveal to men the mysteries of this universe, standing, like the great angel of the Apocalypse, clothed with a cloud, and with a rainbow upon his head, and with the sun and stars given into his hand. It is to Ruskin, too, that we owe our gratitude for the information as to how in the final weeks before his death, Turner was wont to repeat, The sun is God. We see it in his paintings, as dawn’s delicate glow, the bright rays of the sunrise, the full light of noon and the blood-red and crimson flames of sunset. Yet it is also there in the dramatic light that permeates the clouds and mists of a storm at sea.

William Turner (1775-1851) was born and lived in London. He was a member of the Royal Academy of Art. He left well nigh thirty thousands works, of which he bequeathed almost twenty thousand to the nation.

In the main, Turner painted watercolours, only rarely using oils. He made his sketches in pencil or painted them in watercolours and gouache.

Curators: Ines Richter, dr Ortrud Westheidera
Curatorial cooperation on behalf of the National Museum in Krakow: Magdalena Czubińska
Coordinators: Olga Jaros, Beata Foremna
Arrangement of the exhibition: Anna Maria Bojarowicz

***

The Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, 2011

Organisers: The National Museum in Krakow, Bucerius Kunst Forum, Turner Contemporary

The exhibition is co-financed by funding from the Commune of the City of Krakow

Patron of the National Museum in Krakow: Grupa PZU

Educational activities sponsor: Nordea

Exhibition partners: Panta sp. z o.o, Goricane, City Service

Honorary media patrons: TVP1, Trójka

Media patrons: TVP Kraków, Radio Kraków, Gazeta Wyborcza, Art&Business, Modny Kraków, Czas na wnętrze, Magiczny Kraków, Cracow-Life, Krakow Post, Kurs na kurs, Telewizja M and Poka-Poka

William Turner

1775
William Turner is born in London’s Westminster district. His father is a barber and wig maker.

1786-1789
Turner begins to draw and colour engravings. His father displays Turner’s watercolours in the window of his shop and sells them for one to three shillings each. Takes drawing and watercolour lessons. Learns the rules of perspective and makes architectural drawings. In December 1789, he is accepted as a student at the Royal Academy of Arts, where he studies until 1793.

1790-1795
Participates for the first time in the annual Royal Academy exhibition with a watercolour. During the following years, his works are regularly shown at the Academy’s exhibitions.

Turner goes on numerous tours through England, Scotland and Wales to sketch the countryside.

He is awarded the Greater Silver Pallet for landscape drawing by Royal Society

of Arts in 1793. Turner copies watercolours by Alexander and John Robert Cozens and develops his own watercolour style.

1797-1799
Travels through the Scottish Borders and the Lake Country. At the Royal Academy exhibition in 1798, Turner shows four oil paintings for the first time, in addition to watercolours.

Begins a relationship with Sarah Danby. In November 1799, he is elected an associate member of the Royal Academy and a member of the Academy Club.

1800
Turners shows The Fifth Plague of Egypt at the Royal Academy exhibition and sells it for 150 guineas. The price for his works rises sharply. He is commissioned by the Duke of Bridgewater to paint a companion piece to Willem van de Velde’s A Rising Gale, which he shows the following year.

1802
At twenty-six, Turner becomes the youngest full member of the Royal Academy.

Following the Treaty of Amiens he travels to Paris. He visits the Louvre and copies works by the Old Masters. He soon continues on to the Alps, whose images he had seen in watercolours by John Robert Cozens.

1803-04
An argument breaks out at the Royal Academy concerning Turner’s artistic liberties. John Constable, who is not a member, criticizes Turner’s atmospheric and apparently unfinished

painting style. He is given the name “Over-Turner,” referring to what was seen as his overexcited artistic exuberance. Several of his colleagues at the Academy defend Turner’s style. He organizes his first solo exhibition at his private gallery.

1807
In his Liber Studiorum, Turner develops a series of engravings in which he presents the techniques he uses in various landscape genres (historical landscapes, mountain landscapes, pastoral scenes, seascapes, architectural landscapes). He is appointed Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy.

1809
Stays at Petworth House in West Sussex for the first time and works from nature. His repeated stays at Petworth help him prepare for his lectures.

1811-1815
Holds his first lecture on perspective at the Royal Academy. Criticism of Turner’s artistic idiosyncrasy comes to a head at the Royal Academy. Sir George Beaumont, landowner, amateur painter and founding member of the British Institution, is at the forefront of Turner’s critics. Beaumont’s harsh criticism of Turner’s paintings is met to some extent with great protest.

1816
The volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa the year before ejected enormous amounts of dust, ash and sulphur into the atmosphere, causing a drop in global temperature over the following years. The unusual atmospheric conditions following the volcanic eruption cause spectacular sunrises and sunsets that have a great influence on Turner’s colour palette.

1817-18
Visits the site of the Battle of Waterloo and makes his first tour of the Netherlands and Germany. He creates fifty views of the Rhine. In 1818, he completes the Skies Sketchbook, which he began two years prior with sixty-five watercolour sketches of different heavenly phenomena that he collected outside specific painting projects.

1819-1821
Travels through Italy for six months for the first time and collects motifs for the Picturesque Tour of Italy. In Rome, he studies works by Titian, Correggio, Guido Reni and Claude Lorrain, and draws statues and reliefs at the Vatican Museums. His travels also take him to Naples, where he makes sketches of light. For his series Rivers of France, he travels to France and visits Paris, Rouen and Dieppe.

1823
Sir Thomas Lawrence arranges for Turner to be commissioned by King George IV to undertake a painting of the Battle of Trafalgar as a companion piece to Loutherbourg’s The Glorious First of June. Completes The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805 for St. James’s Palace the following year.

1825-1827
Creates the series of engravings Picturesque Views in England and Wales. Turner is now a wealthy man. At auctions his works sell for much more than their original purchase price.

1828
Gives his last lecture on perspective at the Royal Academy, even though he retains his chair for another ten years. During a second visit to Italy, he spends more time in Rome, where he has become interested in tempera paintings by the Italian Masters.

1829-1833
His father’s death on 21 September 1829 affects him greatly. Draws up his own will the day after his father’s funeral, bequeathing the majority of his assets to charity. Commissioned to illustrate Sir Walter Scott’s Poetical Works, he travels to Scotland.

On his way to Venice he travels to Belgium, Germany and Austria and visits Munich and Vienna.

1834
On 16 October, witnesses and sketches the burning of the Houses of Parliament.

Meets the widow Sophia Caroline Booth in Margate, who is twenty years his junior, and begins a relationship with her.

1840
John Ruskin and Turner meet for the first time. Reads Goethe’s Theory of Colours in the English translation by Sir Charles Lock Eastlake as soon as it is published.

Dedicates two compositions to it in 1843. In August, travels to Venice for the third and final time.

1843
Turner travels again to northern Italy, the Tyrol and Switzerland. John Ruskin anonymously publishes the first volume of Modern Painters, in which he defends Turner’s depictions of nature against his critics. Ruskin’s book improves Turner’s public image. Now there is a demand for several of his unsold paintings.

1845-1848
Leads a secluded life at his home in Chelsea. His health worsens. Changes his will and leaves all completed works to the British nation, on condition he is given his own gallery at the National Gallery. In 1847, he shows a single work at the Academy exhibition, The Hero of a Hundred Fights, in which he pays tribute to Wellington and his statue.

At the Royal Academy exhibition the following year he is not represented for the first time.

1851
Visits the first Great Exhibition held in London.

On 19 December, Turner dies at the age of seventy-six. He is buried with great ceremony in the crypt in St. Paul’s Cathedral on 30 December, next to Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Opening hours

Gallery:

* The last visitors are admitted into the exhibitions half an hour before the Museum closes.

31th of December all Branches will be open 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.

1st of January all Branches will be closed

2-8 of January the exhibition will be open till 8 p.m.! On Sunday, January 8, the exhibition will be open to the last visitor. 

The exhibition will be open exceptionally at  Epiphany Day, January 6!

Tribeca Coffee :

Tickets

• 11 PLN - Adults (PROMOTION with Audioguide 15 PLN)
• 7 PLN – Children, students and senior citizens (PROMOTION with Audioguide 11 PLN)
• 25 PLN – Family * (PROMOTION with Audioguide 5 PLN / Person)
• 8 PLN – Adults group ticket ** (PROMOTION with Audioguide 5 PLN / Person)
• 5 PLN – Children/students/senior citizens group ** (PROMOTION with Audioguide 5 PLN / Person)

* Family ticket – adults + children, max. 5 persons
** Group tickets – price per person, 15 persons or more

Persons who borrow an audioguide are asked to leave in deposit their identifications other than an identity card.
The last visitors are admitted into the exhibitions half an hour before the Museum closes.

Gadgets

About museum

The National Museum in Krakow was established as Poland’s first national art collecting institution in 1879, the nation then stripped of its statehood and of its country by the partitioning powers. Until the end of the First World War, it was the only such large museum accessible to the public on Polish soil, and still today outranks all other such institutions in terms of the number of collections, buildings and permanent exhibitions.

The collecting process was begun with Nero’s Torches, a painting presented to the city of Krakow by its creator, Henryk Siemiradzki, on October 7th, 1879, with the intention of creating a gallery of national art in the Sukiennice (Cloth Hall). Within the next few days, more gifts were received from artists and collectors, and the City Council adopted a special resolution, founding the Museum. The rapid growth of the collection best demonstrated how potent was the need for this type of institution: the bequests included not only entire collections of great value but also buildings, which came to serve as new branches of the Museum.

Initially, the collecting focus was on works of contemporary Polish art, much less on foreign works. This profile evolved in time: at the beginning of the 20th century the holdings were expanded to cover also works of decorative art, numismatics, arms and armour, archaeological and ethnographic objects, historical documents and memorabilia, and art of the Far East. Plans were even devised to open a department of natural history, but after many years of transformations, the Museum withdrew from folk art, natural history and Slavic archaeology, and kept only a small collection of antiquities.

After Poland regained its independence in 1918, the Museum’s storage and exhibition space proved to be insufficient for its holdings, which at that time comprised upwards of one hundred thousand pieces. Fund-raising activities were thus begun with a view to building a new seat for the Museum. The design of what is now known as the Main Building was widely acclaimed as one of the most advanced museum concepts in contemporary Europe. Unfortunately, the outbreak of World War II interrupted the construction works and the building was in use unfinished until 1970, when the project was resumed, though it was not completed until 1990.

In 1950, the National Museum in Krakow absorbed the Princes Czartoryski Museum – along with its Library and Archives – the oldest private museum, opened to the public in 1801 in Puławy, moved, in 1876, from Paris – where it had found itself after the fall of the November Uprising – to Krakow. Since then, the National Museum has been the administrator of the holdings and buildings of the Princes’ Czartoryski Museum, despite the fact that in 1991 these were taken over by a foundation set up by Adam Karol Czartoryski, the heir and representative of the Czartoryski family.

The heart of the Museum is the Main Building on 3 Maja Avenue. In addition to this, the Museum has a further nine branches.

• The Sukiennice (Cloth Hall) in the Main Square (Rynek Główny), historically the first seat of the Museum, is home to a permanent exhibition of 19th-century Polish painting and sculpture, on the second floor. Fom 3^rd September after three years of renovation and modernization the New Sukiennice are open again.

• The Emeryk Hutten-Czapski Museum at 10-12 Piłsudskiego Street, the collections and seat of which were the Czapski family’s bequest to the National Museum over a hundred years ago (1903), was the first branch. Today the building complex – together with the adjacent Łoziński House presented by the Łoziński family in 1967 – awaits refurbishment, following which it is intended to accommodate not only the Czapskis’ but also other collections.

The National Museum in Krakow includes monographic museums dedicated to the lives and work of some outstanding Polish artists:

• The Jan Matejko House at 41 Floriańska Street, the second oldest branch of the Museum;

•  The Józef Mehoffer House at 26 Krupnicza Street, with a backyard garden reconstructed, after sixty years, in 2004, originally designed by Mehoffer and acknowledged as Krakow’s most beautiful Modernist garden of the time.

• The Stanisław Wyspiański Museum in the Szołayski House, 11 Szczepańska Street, where three exhibition rooms are dedicated to one of the Museum’s great benefactors Feliks “Manggha” Jasieński.

• Another museum devoted to the life and work of an artist (in this case a composer) is located outside Krakow: the Karol Szymanowski Museum in the Villa “Atma” in Zakopane.

• 2006 saw the end of a few-years-long conservation and renovation of the Bishop Erazm Ciołek Palace at 17 Kanonicza Street – since 2007 the location of an exhibition of Polish art spanning the period from the Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century, as well as Orthodox art.

• A further integral part of the Museum are two branches housing pieces owned in part by the Princes Czartoryski Foundation and in part by the National Museum: the Princes Czartoryski Museum at 19 św. Jana Street, together with the adjacent Arsenal (accessible from Pijarska Street), and the Princes Czartoryski Library, located in a house built in 1961 by the National Museum in Krakow at 17 św. Marka Street.

• The Princes Czartoryski Museum building contains the seat of the Princes Czartoryski Foundation at the National Museum in Krakow.

• For ten years, the “Manggha” Museum of Japanese Art and Technology at 26 Konopnickiej Street, was an integral part of the Museum, built from funds raised by the Andrzej Wajda and Krystyna Zachwatowicz Kyoto-Krakow Foundation. In 2005, the Minister of Culture decided to make it an independent cultural institution. On the Minister’s instruction, the collection of Far Eastern art has been transferred to this institution as the Museum’s deposit.

The majority of the above-mentioned branches house permanent exhibitions. At the moment, with the exhibition rooms of the Hutten-Czapski Museum not yet ready, there are fourteen permanent exhibitions on public view. Furthermore, nearly all the branches have departments with holdings accessible for study purposes. These resources have grown considerably to around 780,000 objects (including deposits and library collections) divided into twenty-one departments. The Museum also offers three libraries, two of which are statutory parts of the National Library Resources System, and one is listed among the “scientific libraries” established by a Resolution of the Council of Ministers.

The resources of each department are discussed in more detail below, so let me just say at this point that the National Museum in Krakow has an excellent collection of Polish painting and sculpture of the 15th and 16th centuries, a magnificent collection of works of the Young Poland movement, a rich collection of prints, decorative art pieces, textiles and arms and armour. Its numismatic objects and art of the Far East are unrivalled in Poland and beyond. Adding class and splendour to these unique holdings is the Czartoryskis’ world-renowned collection of decorative art, arms and armour, and prints and paintings, among them the most valuable painting in any Polish collection, Leonardo’s Lady with Ermine and Landscape with Good Samaritan by Rembrandt.

The priceless heritage with which the Museum has been entrusted is not only stored, studied and preserved in ten in-house conservator’s workshops, but also promoted at permanent galleries and special exhibitions in Poland and abroad, and through extensive publishing activity. Education has a very special role in the Museum’s activity: its significance cannot be overestimated. The Museum’s offer of educational programmes addressed to children, youth and adult groups are described below.
A member of four societies and two foundations, the Museum also organises numerous concerts, meetings and lectures.

The National Museum in Krakow was originally founded as a municipal institution so as to evade control by the occupying government in Vienna. In 1950, then as a state museum, it came under the authority of the Ministry of Culture. It is financed both by the Ministry and from its own proceeds, which the institution is now able to generate despite being a non-profit organisation by statute.

The first statute of the Museum was conferred in 1881. The current, ninth statute of 2001 was the first in which the Museum’s mission was laid down:

“The mission of the Museum is to bear testimony to national and human values by promoting the art of the world and of Poland, especially of the Krakow milieu, as well as by curatorial activities embracing collections and works of scientific, historical and artistic merit which came into being as a result of the beliefs of those who shared a sense of belonging to or respect for Polish culture, regardless of their place of residence, nationality or religion”.

In fulfilling this mission, the Museum protects the national heritage that has been put in its care. In doing so, the Museum applies the latest technologies, though not without due respect for tradition. Hopefully, with this approach, the Museum will enjoy a prominent place in and play a major part in a united Europe.