Turner at the Met

The J.M.W. Turner exhibit had been going on at the Metropolitan Museum of Art all summer long and I kept bugging my husband that I wanted to go see it. I told him a little bit about Turner and then showed him some pictures online and he was interested in seeing it as well. So by and by we finally made it to the exhibit...the last day of the exhibit. Actually the last hour of the last day of the exhibit. Have I mentioned that my husband and I tend to be late...to everything? :)

So here's some fun pictures I took through our whirlwind tour of J.M.W. Turner. I didn't take any photos at the beginning (and inside they don't let you take photos) but I did snag this as we were leaving with the mass rush of people (photo is a bit blurry because people didn't like it if you stopped during the flood gate out doors):

But then I did stop to take some photos once we were outside:

We then decided to take a walk around the back towards Central Park. Right behind the building is this running/biking trail...that's my husband on the left:Also behind the museum is one of Cleopatra's Needles. I've seen all three of them now (London, Paris, New York). They actually don't have anything to do with Cleopatra but oh well. They are Ancient Egyptian obelisks and it's sad to see the heiroglyphics being worn away in our humid climate.

For more information on J.M.W. Turner, you can check out one of my favorite blogs, Art Blog by Bob or the image gallery here.

And here's just a couple of my favorite paintings (taken from Internet, hope no one minds):

This one's called The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October 1834, 1835

I think it's pretty cool how he went about painting this, capturing the color as Parliament was actually burning in London.

I also loved his night paintings. Here's just one:

This one's called Fishermen at Sea and is really impressive close up. He did a lot military, naval, seascape paintings. I first knew him from his watercolors but I was surprised how much he worked with oil. And he changed styles later on too. He had a lot of detailed paintings but then moved into the types of paintings I liked better. Like this one (I don't recall if this one was at the exhibit or not):

This one's called Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway

I feel like I can almost hear and feel the noise and motion of the train, the smoke and steam.

Next time I will make sure that I have more than an hour to browse around and maybe rent one of those headsets. :)