Spending a Rainy Saturday with JMW Turner

Awful, awful weather today. It was wet and miserably chilly for most of the afternoon, and venturing out was a really unappealing prospect. However the alternative of staying shut up in my room - which I had already done for the past week while mugging for my Art history exam - was even more distasteful. So between the cloisters and the rain, I chose the latter.

My destination was the National Gallery complex on The Mound, which is currently hosting a blockbuster exhibition, Turner & Italy. As the title suggests, the exhibition documents and celebrates English painter JMW Turner's enduring love affair with Italy, and its influence on his artworks.

Overall I quite enjoyed the exhibition. There are natural crowd pleasers in the form of large oil paintings including Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino, The Fountain of Indolence and Approach to Venice. I love Turner's luminous palatte, and his fixation with portraying light. His oil landscapes are all awash with a beautiful warm glow that simply dazzles.

JMW Turner's "Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino," one of my personal favourites in the exhibition!

In addition to the oil paintings, there are also many watercolour sketches and engravings which deserve closer attention. Turner's watercolour palette and paintbox also make an appearance, lending the exhibition a personal touch!

The works on display also chart Turner's changing style - by approaching the exhibition chronologically, you can see how Turner gradually blurs all figures and lines until they eventually dissolve into amorphous swirls of paint by the final room. Turner replaces solid form with incandescent light, movement and colour - and in so doing, he comes remarkably close to predicting the rise of modern abstract art in the following century.

I never really knew about Turner till coming to Britain, and I must say that this exhibition really allowed me to find out more about his life and his visionary art. Kudos to the National Gallery for staging this!

The Turner exhibit runs till June 7, and I think you should go check it out if you're in town. Student rates at 6 pounds, otherwise its 8 pounds for adults :) At a time when Edinburgh seems plagued by showers, Turner's dreamy, light-filled compositions will really be the silver lining on an otherwise bleak horizon.