Illuminating the Legacy of 'The Painter of Light'

UT Dallas art and aesthetics professor Richard Brettell will provide an expert overview of paintings by landscape master  J.M.W. Turner in a McDermott Library Lecture Series  presentation Monday, March 24.

Richard Brettell

The lecture, titled “Reviewing a Blockbuster: The Turner Exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art,” is scheduled for 2 to 3 p.m. in McDermott Library Auditorium (MC 2.410). The dicussion is free and open to the public.

The artist, known as “the painter of light,” is regarded as the most prominent English Romantic landscape artist and one of the greatest in the history.

About 140 works by Turner (1775-1851) are on display through May 18 at the Dallas Museum of Art in downtown Dallas. This showing is the largest and most comprehensive Turner retrospective ever presented in the U.S.

Dr. Brettell, the Margaret M. McDermott Distinguished Chair of Art & Aesthetic Studies in the School of Arts & Humanities, will show images of Turner’s paintings in a critque of the artist and his career. He will also address the question of whether Turner was a modernist.

“Professor Brettell is one of the best-qualified people in America to address us on the Turner exhibit,” said Larry D. Sall, dean of libraries at UT Dallas. “The exhibit is magnificent in every respect, and I encourage everyone to see it both before and after Professor Brettell’s program. Then you will appreciate his gift of insight.”

The library is displaying images of Turner’s watercolors and oils with biographies of Turner and Brettell in its main lobby exhibit case.

For further information contact Pierrette Lacour, (972) 883-2475, or Tom Koch, (972) 883-4951.

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