May Alcott Nieriker, Author and Advocate by Julia Dabbs

Author:Julia Dabbs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Anthem Press

Alcott Nieriker’s Written Advocacy of J. M. W. Turner

This background on Alcott Nieriker’s work as a Turner copyist is, I believe, also significant in order to better appreciate her authority as a published writer on the artist. There is no denying the centrality of Turner’s creative genius for Alcott Nieriker, who writes about his paintings to a greater or lesser extent in three newspaper articles, in a chapter in “An Artist’s Holiday,” and in Studying Art Abroad. In her earliest article, the 1873 “Letter from an Art Student in London” (appendix A.3), Alcott Nieriker’s commentary is relatively brief given that her main goal is to describe the many advantages to studying art in London. Nevertheless, when first discussing art museums she starts with the National Gallery, and points out that 2 of the 12 rooms publicly accessible in the museum are devoted to Turner’s oil paintings, while his watercolors are available to see by appointment in the lower level. He is the only artist mentioned in respect to the National Gallery, and thus clearly is an artist of consequence to the author, and by implication, should be to the reader. This sentiment is underscored in the next paragraph on the Kensington Museum, described as having “numberless immense halls of curiosities, and a great collection of pictures from all schools.” Yet within this encyclopedic treasure-trove, Alcott Nieriker again singles out Turner’s works for praise:

Here also are some of Turner’s best, and two rooms of his studies in sepia and unfinished watercolors are most interesting and profitable, showing his conscientious way of working even the most minute detail. Particularly noticeable is this in a bird’s-eye view of Rome, not larger than a half a carte de visite, with its numberless domes, roofs, and steeples so correctly drawn and exquisitely colored that it made me dizzy to think of the time and pains he must have spent on it.

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