$45 million Turner goes on display at Getty

9 March 2011

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Modern Rome–Campo Vaccino, Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775–1851), 1839. Oil on canvas, 36 1/8 x 48 1/4 in. (unframed), 48 1/4 x 60 3/8 x 4 3/8 in. (framed). The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011.6

J.M.W. Turner’s Modern Rome—Campo Vaccino was finally placed on view Tuesday at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles after the U.K. failed to raise funds to keep the masterpiece on British soil.

The Getty bought the 1839 painting by the British master at a Sotheby's auction last July for a record $45 million.

It was consigned by a descendant of the 5th Earl of Rosebery who bought the painting in 1878 while on honeymoon with his wife Hannah Rothschild.

An export license was not immediately issued by the British government so that an attempt could be made to buy the picture and keep it in Britain.

Nine months after its sale, Emily Beeny writes about the art of writing the wall label for the Turner on the Getty's blog: "A master of light and color, Turner occupies a pivotal position in the history of art. His extraordinarily free brushwork and high-keyed palette redefined landscape painting, to the mingled shock and delight of his Victorian public."

Beeny continues, "Modern Rome—Campo Vaccino is a luminous, even iridescent, picture. It exemplifies both the artist’s skill at topographical description and his late visionary style. The picture’s extraordinary state of conservation—it is unlined and seems never to have undergone restoration—means that it comes down to us as if fresh from Turner’s brush. The painting is undoubtedly one of the Museum’s most spectacular acquisitions in recent years."

Read more at Getty Museum blog

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