Is This a JMW Turner Self-Portrait? One Scholar Has Doubts

"Out of all that art, however, records indicate that Turner made only one self-portrait as a mature artist. That work, owned by the Tate, has become so iconic that it's printed on money. But, its attribution might be a misunderstanding. In the new edition of the JMW Turner Society's semiannual magazine, art historian James Hamilton will lay out his case that the actual author behind this painting was John Opie, a noted British portrait artist 10 years Turner's senior."

"Hamilton shared the broad strokes of his argument with the Guardian. There, he noted that although he'd used this very self-portrait on the cover of his 1997 Turner biography, he only properly reconsidered it far more recently. First off, this piece is an anomaly in Turner's vast oeuvre, which is better known for storms and vistas than portraiture's staid expressions. Instead, this work looks much more like one of Opie's, embodying that artist's known proclivity for lighting his subjects dramatically."

"Opie also immortalized other artists-like Scottish genre painter David Wilkie and English etcher Thomas Girtin -in this same, starkly lit style. He gave at least four away. Opie's activity also overlapped with Turner's, too: the former died suddenly in 1807, after the latter had already achieved acclaim. And Opie was a known Turner fan. Hamilton thinks he gave Turner this work, since it had "little or no commercial value to its creator.""

"There's also a very plausible explanation regarding how the authorship of this portrait got lost. Turner had penned his second will in 1848. In it, the artist declared his desire to donate every one of his finished artworks that he still owned to B"

Turner produced hundreds of oil paintings, thousands of watercolors, and tens of thousands of works on paper, yet made only one mature self-portrait that is owned by the Tate and widely reproduced. The attribution may be incorrect. A case proposes that John Opie, a British portrait artist about ten years older, authored the self-portrait. The painting is described as an anomaly within Turner’s body of work, which is more associated with storms and vistas than formal portraiture. The lighting and dramatic illumination are said to resemble Opie’s style, which he used in portraits of other artists. Opie’s death in 1807 and his known interest in Turner support the possibility of a gift. A will from 1848 is cited as a mechanism by which authorship could have been lost.

Read at Artnet News