Is Turner the true Father of Modern Art?
Born in Covent Garden, London in 1775, Joseph Mallard Turner is often hailed as Britain’s greatest artist. His face adorns banknotes, streets are named after him and, indeed, the Turner Prize takes his name.
With 2025 being the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth, it’s time to resolve the debate as to who is the true Father of Modern Art. And Turner has to be in there somewhere. Art historians almost unilaterally lean towards French artist Paul Cezanne [1836-1906]. And it’s interesting that Spanish painter Francesca Goya’s name is thrown into the hat moreso than Turner, his contemporary, even though the British painter created the more experimental works. However, Goya took more risks with his subject matter, painting ‘the poor, sick, and mad’ at a time when esteemed artists were effectively gagged by wealthy patrons who encouraged more morally-uplifting works.
No more Cezanne stargazing and Goya gazumping. Let’s examine whether Turner has a claim to being recognised as the true Father of Modern Art, and also consider the likes of Goya, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Pissarro, Cezanne and Gauguin. A trip to the National Gallery, celebrating its own 200th anniversary and Tate Britain which houses the largest collection of Turner works, might provide some answers.
Turner vs Goya
Turner and Goya are the earliest from our crop of contenders so an examination of their Romantic works may well unearth the foundations of modern art. Both were painting from around the early 19th century, and we find one or two well-marked modernist tributaries in their game-changing canvases. Goya is discussed as the father of modernism for his Boschesque foray into the macabre and fantastical with striking works such as Saturn Devouring One Of His Sons [1820-23]. Even before that, his Caprichos etchings [1799] show an increasing desire to move away from historical and mythological subject matter to dark, subversive works that questioned the nature of man. There’s little else in the Spaniard’s experimental portfolio during his mature period to draw from but it must be observed that the 14 demonic ‘black paintings’ he painted into the wallpaper of his home from 1820-23 are no less far-reaching and impactful despite the small number.
Turner’s exploration of tone, light and mass discoursed into unapologetic abstraction in an age where you were still expected to paint ‘real stuff. As early as 1812, his Snow Storm: Hannibal Crossing the Alps, shows traits that would flower in his later abstract works. He faced widespread criticism and mockery as his experiments with the Dionysian swirls and recoils of the forces of nature grew ever wilder. Even staunch supporters, like art critic John Ruskin, turned on him. Some art historians claim Turner was losing his sight around this time, hence the ‘messy’ style. However, Ruskin proposed this change in style was due to some form of mental illness. And bear in mind, some of the works were unfinished oil and watercolour sketches and bases exhibited after his death as abstract canvases.
TATE BRITAIN A room dedicated to Turner’s Unfinished Paintings
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TATE BRITAIN Snow Storm Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps, 1812. JMW Turner. The oil on canvas painting shows the artist’s earliest forays into abstraction and expressive brushwork.
TATE BRITAIN. Sunrise with a Boat between Headlands, 1840-45. JMW Turner. Turner’s later works show little desire to depict reality but dissolve into a haze of abstraction.
19th Century Art Critic: “To do justice to Turner, it should always be remembered that he is the painter not of reflections but immediate sensations.”
TATE BRITAIN A room dedicated to Turner’s Works on Paper: These sketches, drawings and watercolours are mainly prepatory studies so are not abstract works. We will never know how far Turner intended to take his experimentation.
TATE BRITAIN Turner’s Square Paintings 1840-45. These series of works have brighter colours and a sketchier style. These more experimental works are distinguished by their square frames.
So why was Turner never hailed as the Father of Modern Art – or abstract art? He is given the somewhat hazy epithet of Preface to Impressionism because of his canvas studies on light, but again, this is another lazy observation. Whether true or not, it’s too broad an essay and much repeated. Look a little deeper. Turner’s wondrous surveys of the seas and the forces of nature show a dizzying talent ahead of its time. These were amongst the first abstract works by a notable artist, painted in the last decade of his life [1840-51] when he had long since abandoned the draughtsman-like attention to detail that had won him a near monopoly of commissions to paint the Royal Navy’s duels with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.
Delacroix
Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) was painting around the same time as the aforementioned. His daring and dashing use of colour and expressive brushwork marked a significant shift from the detail and line of Neo-Classicism. Check out his paintings The Giaour and the Pasha (1827) and The Death of Sardanapalou(1827), to see how his canvases simmered with violence and passion. Certainly, Cezanne was inspired by Delacroix’s expressive style and his readiness to stick a middle finger up at detractors and critics. We must accept that no Father of Modern Art is birthed in a sealed airtight vacuum. There’d be no Cezanne, the so-called Father of Modern Art, without Delacroix.
Courbet
Just to confuse the hell out of us, Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) is also regarded by many as the Father of Modern Art, but more so for his subject matter. The Frenchman wanted to paint real things and real people, not the polished and saintly icons of Neo-Classicism, and even historical figures were a big ask. It doesn’t sound like much to fuss about, but it was a big deal back then when Neo-Classicism lauded the big moral stories and Romanticism liked a lick of the dramatic. Realists like Courbet just wanted to paint peasants. Outrageous! Even though his Peasants of Flagey [1850-55] was accepted by the prestigious Paris Salon, the public outcry from the snooty French bourgeoisie was deafening. Large-scale paintings of peasants doing peasant stuff! Really? Today we say, three cheers for Courbet!
Manet
Another French artist worth a mention is Edouard Manet. Painting from the 1850s, he came from a wealthy upper-middle class family, so enjoyed the freedom and space to work on his talent. His family were pushing him to become a lawyer like his father, but let’s just say that when he politely but firmly turned that down, he wasn’t doomed to eke out a living knee-deep in a field with a scythe. What came was more scandalous paintings of everyday people doing everyday stuff in the Courbet tradition but not in his style. That, and his heavier brushwork and tendency to leave out detail and shadow, had him tiptoeing out of the country whenever the criticism got too bad. But he was a hero to young upcoming talent like Cezanne, who viewed his works as inspiring and game-changing rather than subversive.
Pissarro
In 1872, Cezanne took the extraordinary step of moving with his family to Pontoise, north of Paris, the hometown of one Camille Pissarro, to work side by side with the influential artist. For a couple of years, they enjoyed each other’s company on outdoor Impressionist jaunts. He learned much from his mentor, as did Paul Gauguin – another contender for Father of Modern Art. Cezanne….Gauguin, this can’t be mere coincidence. Even though both would go on to develop their own styles, the same name keeps cropping up.
Pissaro, the Father of Impressionism, fueled the modernist fire, there’s no question about that. Indeed, if it were not for Pissarro, there would have been no Cezanne, the superstar artist. By his mid-fifties, Cezanne was little known and had been all but forgotten by even his diehard disciples until Pissaro persuaded his close friend the influential art dealer, Ambroise Villard, to curate a solo exhibition for Cezanne – his first. With this powerful gatekeeper on board, Cezanne’s success was all but guaranteed, but no one foresaw such astronomical heights.
No one did it quite like Cezanne. He built his entire pictorial language around incessant risk-taking and messing around with perspective and form. He painted objects the wrong shape and at odd angles as part of this study. His blocky, angular geometric take on the world remarked upon both landscapes and human subjects. One has to admit that while Turner’s experimentation with light, tone and mass eclipsed the likes of Delacroix, Goya, Courbet and Manet, in relentless, unapologetic experimentation and sheer volume of work, Cezanne took it that much further.
While his counterparts could all be called painters who experimented, Cezanne seems to be an experimenter who painted. He is such at heart. And his later influence runs deep, we can see Picasso’s Cubist works were inspired by Cezanne’s ‘constructions from nature’. Cezanne’s considerable contribution to modern art cannot be disputed, but a wider examination of the history of art from the 1750s through to the late 19th century shows that these comfortable labels that we give art movements and their figureheads can sometimes be a little short-sighted, restrictive and taggy. Father of Modern Art? Perhaps, there is no one clear title-holder.
