We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Projecting London: Turner and Greenwich.
- Authors
Bonehill, John; Daniels, Stephen
- Abstract
A prospect of a canonical cultural landscape, J.M.W Turner’s View of London from Greenwich (1825) stages a satire on speculative projects of ‘metropolitan improvement’ in and around the capital. The picture represents a range of complex and conflicting geopolitics, including long-standing tensions between the forces of crown and city. These conflicts had assumed a renewed prominence at the moment Turner made this small, if culturally dense drawing, with a number of plans being advanced to re-make the city post-war along royal and imperial lines. This essay situates Turner’s View in relation to the parkland’s long history as a site of observation and record, including the artist’s own earlier Greenwich pictures, as well as the place of this landscape and its historic buildings in contemporary developments. Turner’s drawing is a picture of the act of viewing itself, in which contrasting characters of the time, a Jack Tar, an Antiquary, and a Dandy, variously display, scrutinise and survey the landscape, its past, present, and future, as it features in drawings, maps, and plans, as well as in the prospect before them.
- Subjects
LONDON (England); ENGLAND; GREENWICH (London, England); TURNER, J. M. W. (Joseph Mallord William), 1775-1851; ENGLISH landscape drawing; ENGLISH drawing; ART &; politics; LONDON (England) in art; NINETEENTH century
- Publication
Oxford Art Journal, 2012, Vol 35, Issue 2, p171
- ISSN
0142-6540
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.1093/oxartj/kcs017