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CURRICULUM VITAEBorn 1944. Graduated Chelsea School of Art, 1966: Dip.A.D.in Painting (equivalent to B.A.).
PRIZEWINNER:Winner of the 1979 Yorkshire Post Art Book Award for the best art book published in 1979 (for Turner's Picturesque Views In England and Wales -- see below for details).
CURRENT CHAIRMAN AND A VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE TURNER SOCIETY (ALSO PREVIOUS CHAIRMAN 1989-1994)
AUTHOR:
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Turner: The Great Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, The Royal Academy of Arts, London, November 2000, for show held at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, between December 2000 and February 2001 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of the painter (see also 'Curator' category below). Sales (by April 2001): 11,015 (softback), 1,099 (hardback). |
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Turner's Watercolour Explorations, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, 1997. 2000 copies printed. Now out-of-print. |
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Impressionist London, published by Abbeville Press, New York, June 1994 (British distribution by John Murray). First printing: 10,000 copies. French co-edition. For a review of this book, see below. |
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Turner's Human Landscape, a lengthy, scholarly study of the processes of association, symbolism and idealism in Turner's work. Published by William Heinemann, 1990; 4000 copies printed, 1000 of which were taken by B.C.A. Now out-of- print. For some reviews of this book, see below. |
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Turner's England, published by Cassell and B.C.A (U.K.) and Trafalgar Square Books (U.S.A.), 1990. 16,500 copies sold, with one reprint. Now out-of-print. For some reviews of this book, see below: |
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Andy Warhol (in the 'Masterworks'/'Master Painters' series), published by Studio Editions, London, 1991, 20,000 copies sold. New edition summer 1993. Now out-of-print. Various foreign language co-editions, including French and Chinese. |
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Salvador Dalí (in the 'Masterworks'/'Master Painters' series), published by Studio Editions, London, 1990, 20,000 copies sold. New edition winter 1993-4. Now out-of-print. Various foreign language co-editions, including French and Chinese. |
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Constantin Brancusi, published 1989 by Abbeville Press, New York, in the 'Abbeville Modern Masters' series. Now in its fifth printing. 22,500 copies sold to date. Japanese language co-edition (3500 copies). |
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J.M.W.Turner: The Foundations of Genius, exhibition catalogue, The Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1986. |
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Turner's Rivers, Harbours and Coasts, published summer 1981 by Chatto and Windus and Book Club Associates; 20,000 copies sold. Now out-of-print. Described by Turner Society News, the journal of the Turner Society, as making 'a major contribution to a better understanding of Turner'. |
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Turner's Picturesque Views in England and Wales, published by Chatto and Windus, Book Club Associates and Harper and Row, summer 1979; 35,000 copies sold ( three reprints and the best-selling art-book ever published by B.C.A.). Now out-of-print. This book was awarded the Yorkshire Post Art Book Award as the best art book published in 1979. It was cited by John Gage, a leading Turner authority, as 'the most interesting book on Turner to have appeared for very many years'. |
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The Golden Age of Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, published by Merrell Publishing, September 2001. 3600 copies sold to date and the softback edition now out-of print. |
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Contributor of sixteen entries to The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford University Press, January 2001. |
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Turner in 1066 Country (catalogue of exhibition held at Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, September-November 1998). |
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Hockney Posters, introductory essay, published by Pavilion Books, London, 1987; 250,000 copies sold. Now out-of-print and superseded by an updated edition. |
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Jack Beal, American Realist, published by Hudson Hills Press, New York, 1993. Edition of 3000 copies. |
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J.M.W. Turner (in the 'Masterworks'/'Master Painters' series), published by Studio Editions, London, 1990, 20,000 copies sold. New edition summer 1992. Now out-of-print. Various foreign language co-editions, including French and Chinese. |
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Turner: The Rivers of France (Introductory Essay), published by Adam Biro, Paris, 1990, joint French- and English-language edition. |
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The Genius of the Royal Academy, a short history of the Royal Academy, published 1981 by John Murray in association with the Royal Academy; 9000 copies sold. Now out of print. |
SCHOLAR:
Appointed Magnox Electric Turner Scholar July 1995 to research Turner's 386 watercolour 'Colour-Beginnings' in the Turner Bequest at the Tate Gallery, London (see also 'Curator' category below).
EDITOR:
Founder-editor of Turner Studies, published by the Tate Gallery.
Founder-editor of Art Book Review, an international quarterly review of books on art, architecture, design and photography.
ESSAYS:
'Turner and the Creation of his 'First-Rate' Within a Few Hours', Apollo, March, 2001.
'Identifying Turner's Chamonix water-colours', The Burlington Magazine, November 2000.
'A Canvas United in a World Divided; J.M.W. Turner at the British Institution in 1806' Apollo, October 1999.
'Summer Exhibition Power', RA Magazine, Summer, 1999.
'Tint by Tint by Tint: Turner and the Scale Practice in British Watercolour Art', Apollo, November, 1997.
'Brancusi's Studio Flattened', Apollo, December 1997.
'Brancusi and Plato: The Decisive Influence', Caiete Critice (Bucharest, Romania), 1-2, 1997.
'Power over the Artist: Turner Prizes and Modern "Dictators of Art", Apollo, October 1995.
'A Busily Majestic Prospect Rediscovered', Apollo, October 1994.
'Brancusi and the Caryatid: Raising Ideals onto a Pedestal', Apollo, August 1992.
'Making Plenty of Monet: An Appreciation of the Monet industry', Apollo, November 1990.
'The Apollo Portrait: Wolfgang Fischer', Apollo, March 1990.
'Bernard Cohen: Dealing with the Maelstrom of Reality', exhibition catalogue, Waddington Galleries, London, January 1990.
'The Apollo Portrait: Allen Jones', Apollo, November 1989.
'In the Beginning, Nearing the End; Two Views of Art Education in the 1990s', Apollo, August 1989.
'New Borders, Territories, Frontiers: Christo and the Boundaries of Sculpture', Apollo, August 1989.
'Brancusi in the Tate Gallery', Apollo, May 1989.
'Brancusi: A New View' [a survey of the Brancusi literature], Modern Painters, Summer 1989, pp.125-6.
'Chairman of the Board, Mark Kostabi and Art as an Industrial Process', Apollo, January 1989.
'The true subject of a major late oil painting by J.M.W.Turner revealed', The Burlington Magazine, May 1984, pp.284-8.
Essay: 'Dissent in Somerset House: Opposition to the Political Status-Quo within the Royal Academy Around 1800' (Turner Studies, 10/2).
Essay: 'The Mortlake Conundrum'(Turner Studies, 3/1)
Essay: 'New Light on the "England and Wales" Series' (Turner Studies, 4/1).
Essay: 'Turner's Poetic Imagination', Modern Painters magazine, Spring 1995.
'Picture Notes' essays (i.e. short studies of individual paintings and drawings) in Turner Studies on the following works by Turner: Aeneas Relating his Story to Dido; Babbacombe Bay; The Blue Rigi; Dunster Castle; Edinburgh from Calton Hill; The Fighting 'Temeraire'; Flint Castle; Fowey Harbour; Heriot's Hospital; The Lauerzer See, with the Mythens; Linlithgow Palace; Oxford, from North Hinksey; Tantallon Castle; The Victory Returning from Trafalgar; and Whitby. Also Windus's Library at Tottenham by J.S. Davis (for details of all the above, see Index to Turner Studies, Vol. 11/2, 1993).
Sixteen book and exhibition reviews in various issues of Turner Studies (for details of these and the above see Index to Turner Studies, Vol.11, No.2, 1993 for 39 entries).
Numerous other Turner essays, book and exhibition reviews published in Turner Society News, Apollo magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, Artscribe, The Artists and Illustrators Magazine and Arts Review.
PAINTER:
Practising painter and printmaker. Two person exhibition: Splinter Gallery, London, 9 April-17 May 1992. Also see Art International, vol XVI, no.2, February 1972, essay by Michael Chanan, pp.26-27. Taught painting at Hammersmith College of Art, 1968-74, and at Chelsea School of Art, 1974-83. Numerous studio shows, 1966-1982. To see the paintings, visit the 'Paintings' section of this website; and also 'www.numasters.com', and go to 'S' under "Artists' Galleries".
EXHIBITION CURATOR:
Initiated and acted as Curator of the 'The Golden Age of Watercolours' exhibition held at the Dulwich Picture Gallery between September 2001 and January 2001; at the Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham, between January and March 2002; and at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Conn. USA between October 2002 and January 2003.
Initiated and acted as Curator of the 'Turner: The Great Watercolours' exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London between December 2000 and February 2001 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of the painter. Attendance figures for the exhibition: 162,842 visitors during the two-and-a-half month period of the exhibition.
Guest curator of the 'Turner's Watercolour Explorations' exhibition held at the Tate Gallery, 25 February-8 June 1997, and at the Southampton City Art Gallery, 27 June-14 September 1997.
Guest curator of the 'Masterpieces of English Watercolour from the Hickman Bacon Collection and the Fitzwilliam Museum', Cambridge which toured Japan between October 1990-March 1991. (Also wrote catalogue); currently engaged in cataloguing the entire Bacon collection.
Guest curator of the 'J.M.W.Turner: The Foundations of Genius' exhibition held at The Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, 18 September-1 November 1986. (Also wrote catalogue).
Joint curator (with Evelyn Joll) of the 'Turner's Picturesque Views in England and Wales' Series exhibition held at Agnew's, London, November 1979.
JOURNALIST:
Classical Music Critic, the Daily Mail, London, May 1988-September 1989. Regular contributor to Apollo and Modern Painters magazines; have also written for Artscribe, Art and Artists and Arts Review on several subjects ( mostly contemporary art ). Commissioned articles appeared in The Times, 18 July 1981; The Sunday Telegraph Colour Magazine, 26 July 1981; and The Sunday Times Magazine, 4 April 1982.
OFFICIAL VISITOR:
Autumn 1982, visited Romania on a British Council Cultural Exchange Award to study the origins and works of the sculptor Constantin Brancusi.
Autumn 1984, visited Czechoslovakia on a British Council Cultural Exchange Award to study the relationship of major Czech composers such as Smetana, Dvorak, Janacek etc. to the Czech landscape.
FESTIVAL LECTURES:
1985, lectured at the King's Lynn Festival.
1982, lectured at the Aldeburgh Festival.
SYMPOSIA:
1999, Invited Delegate to the Technical Symposium on the Restoration of Brancusi's Targu-Jiu sculptural ensemble, Targu-Jiu and Bucharest, Romania, June 1999.
1996, Brancusi 120th Anniversary Symposium held in the Romanian Academy, Bucharest, December 1996 under the auspices of the Romanian branch of UNESCO; paper entitled 'Brâncu_i and Plato: the Decisive Influence'. Chaired second session devoted to Romanian contributors to the conference.
1989, 'Towards a Modern Art World: Art in Britain 1715-1880' symposium organised by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art at the Clore Gallery Auditorium, London; paper on 'Dissent in Somerset House: Opposition to the Political Status-quo within the Royal Academy around 1800'.
1987, Turner Symposium, Clore Gallery for the Turner Collection, London; paper entitled 'Turner and Liberty -- The Seminal Poetic Pictures of 1800'.
1980, Turner Symposium, Alcuin College, York; paper entitled 'Re-masting the Temeraire: Turner and the Association of Ideas'.
LECTURER:
Have lectured regularly at the University of Cambridge Department of Art History, both on the history of the Royal Academy of Arts in London and upon J.M.W.Turner.
Between 1966 and 1988 was a part-time lecturer in the History of Art and Complementary Studies department of Chelsea School of Art, London, specialising in nineteenth and twentieth century art history, and offering complementary studies courses on the history of music, the history of the cinema, and the history of ideas.
Have lectured frequently at the Royal College of Music on the relationship of music to the visual arts.
Gave the 1985 Kurt Pantzer lecture to the Turner Society,London (the first person to give the Pantzer lecture in both Indianapolis and London).
Lecture regularly at:
Modern Art Studies, London
Christie's Fine Arts Course, London
New Academy for Art Studies, London
Much in demand to lecture to National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies branches; often described in reports to NADFAS as 'The best lecturer we've ever heard'.
Have also lectured frequently at:
The National Gallery, London
The Tate Gallery, London
The Clore Gallery for the Turner Collection, London
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester
The Royal College of Art, London
Camberwell School of Art
Central School of Art and Design
High Wycombe School of Art
Norwich School of Art
University of Essex
University of Newcastle
Montpelier Modern Art Course, London
Gave ten-week lecture course on the life and works of J.M.W.Turner, at the Tate Gallery, Spring 1997. Gave pre-concert talks (on Mahler symphonies) for the Philharmonia and London Symphony Orchestras, London, in the autumn of 1997 and the spring of 1998 respectively (the latter talk being on the main stage of the Royal Festival Hall, London).
NORTH AMERICAN AND OTHER LECTURE TOURS:
1982: Indianapolis Museum of Art; Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.; Universities of Philadelphia, Illinois and Indiana.
1983: Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
1984: Concordia University, Montreal; Bishop's University, Lennoxsville, Quebec; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; The Frick Collection, New York.
Spring 1986: Guest lecturer, NADFAS tour of America; September 1986: National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Concordia University, Bishop's University, Quebec.
1987: Toured Switzerland on behalf of the Federation of Anglo-Swiss Clubs, lecturing on 'Turner in Switzerland'.
1988: Toured Malaysia on a lecture tour for the British Council, to accompany their touring exhibition, Contemporary British Drawings, visiting Penang, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.
Due to undertake American lecture tour October 2002.
PHOTOGRAPHER:
Photographic essay published in Donald Mitchell, Gustav Mahler, Songs and Symphonies of Death, London, 1985. Numerous photographs reproduced in Gustav Mahler: The World Listens, the official 455-page hardback programme book of the 1995 Amsterdam Concertgebouw Gustav Mahler Festival (photos also displayed in the related Concertgebouw foyer exhibition).
BOOK REVIEWER:
Contributed a regular 'Books in Brief' column to Apollo magazine 1988-92.
SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL ACTION:
Founder/Chairman of successful 'Save Acton Swimming Baths' pressure group campaign; Baths reopened September 1990 after £2½ million renovation programme by Ealing council.
Founder, NADFAS Lecturers' Forum (the professional association representing the 250-plus lecturers registered with the National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies organisation).
SOME REVIEWS OF BOOKS AND TV WORK BY ERIC SHANESTURNER'S HUMAN LANDSCAPE (1990):
'Turner's Human Landscape is a rich and important book....an absorbing and instructive study, which will challenge facile assumptions about Turner....in its main orientation this is a genuinely innovatory work, which will send Turner's admirers back to the painters and theorists of the two centuries which preceded his own lifetime. Mere vulgar prejudice against a "literary" approach will no longer avail. This is a coherent and well-marshalled case for seeing Turner as a painter deeply imbued with the associative, symbolic and referential aims of the masters of the recent past. Anyone who thinks differently will have to meet the challenge of Eric Shanes's book.'
The Times Literary Supplement
'...this is a book to be recommended. It contains a wealth of new information and draws thought-provoking conclusions....Shanes has undoubtedly enriched our understanding of Turner's subject matter.'
The Burlington Magazine
'...compliments should go to the publisher for the handsome design and enviably good colorplates. Compliments should also go to the author, who tackled the most ambitious of subjects: the intended meaning of Turner's art....If Turner's contemporaries understood his intentions, then what matters is active looking and imaginative engagement....In this, Shanes has succeeded wonderfully.'
College Art Association of America Art Journal
'Shanes's outstanding book casts new light on Turner's purposes and therefore his art. It helps us to see more'.
The Sunday Times, London
'A thorough study which contrives to say something new and worthwhile about our greatest painter'.
Arts Review
'This is a major interpretation of Turner's landscape art that will interest students of literature as well as painting. Shanes shows, more thoroughly and imaginatively than any previous scholar, the profoundly literary dimensions of Turner's pictorial art.'
South Atlantic Review
'...an absorbing book, well written and beautifully illustrated'.
Country Life
'The most consistently interesting and stimulating treatment of Turner's subject-matter to date....a very original and worthwhile book, which takes up with great vigour and learning an approach to Turner which has been little pursued since Ruskin.'
Dr John Gage, University of Cambridge
'The "human landscape" of the title is ultimately a view of Turner himself more intimate and convincing than any we have been given before...a wonderful book with wide appeal to the intelligent and intellectually curious reader,as well as to specialists.'
Professor John McCoubrey, University of Pennsylvania
'This is an important book. It breaks new ground, and explores new readings and interpretation of Turner's work in general, and a number of major paintings in particular.'
Robert Cumming, Christie's Education
TURNER'S ENGLAND (1990):
'Whether or not one agrees with Shanes's interpretations, he consistently responds to Turner with imagination and sympathy and this is surely the approach that the pictures are designed to deserve and reward. Shanes has done Turner a great service by making this approach to the pictures popular amongst a widespread audience and not just among a coterie of scholars. Anyone interested in the pictures discussed in [this book] would be well advised to see what Shanes had to say about them. Agree with him or not, Shanes is always essential reading.'
Turner Studies
'From the artistic point of view, this assembly of paintings is of the utmost importance....Eric Shanes very skilfully combines a scholarly and informative analysis of the topographical aspect [of the works] with those of techniques, materials and documentation; aesthetics, influences and moral symbolism....As a production and a compendium, this book leaves little to be desired.... Throughout, one is reminded of Carlyle's dictum about the "transcendent capacity for taking trouble'....deeply impressive.'
English Heritage Magazine
'Certainly the most accessible book on Turner's watercolours in print at the moment.'
Ian Warrell, Clore Gallery for the Turner Collection, London
'No more exciting art book has been published in the past decade.'
Homes and Gardens Magazine
'This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Turner.'
The World of Interiors Magazine
'Eric Shanes [is] one of the most consistently stimulating writers on Turner around....excellent....with a lively and informative text, and a wealth of colour plates that intrigue the mind as well as the eye.'
Country Life
TURNER/THE MASTERWORKS (1990):
'Eric Shanes's Turner/The Masterworks offers, as we should expect from the editor of Turner Studies, an unusually rich and stimulating read, incorporating as it does the results of much recent research.'
The Burlington Magazine
IMPRESSIONIST LONDON (1994):
'When Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet originally moved to London in 1870 from war- torn France, they were both much struck by the Turners in the National Gallery....They paid him homage in paint as well as words, so who better than Eric Shanes, a noted student of Turner's paintings, to provide this dazzling romp through Impressionist London...? [This] is an expensive book but it is worth it. The text is lively, and the plates, mostly colour, are pleasurably adjacent to the relevant texts.'
The Times, London
TURNER: THE GREAT WATERCOLOURS (2000):
'[Turner's working methods] are detailed by the art critic Eric Shanes in Turner: The Great Watercolours, a book of rigorous scholarship and beauty. Shanes looks at Turner's career through the focus of his work in watercolour, a medium in which he achieved a spontaneity he never quite matched in oil'.
The New York Times Review of Books
Preview of Turner: The Man Who Painted Britain [TV programme,BBC1 Television, Sunday 7 April, 2002 at 8:p.m.]:
Tim Marlow presents this ultra-light breeze through the life of Turner. It provides a salutary example of why it is a bad idea to talk down to viewers -- the thin commentary and dramatisations simply skid across the screen. But there are a couple of astonishing moments when the art historian Eric Shanes describes the techniques that Turner used: the way he painted numerous watercolours at the same time and soaked his paper in buckets of paint. For that alone it is well worth watching.
The Times, Saturday 6 April 2002
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