Abstract

Turner and Liebreich

In this journal, occurred a note on the lecture, in which the peculiarities of Joseph Mallord William Turner's art are set down as the result of a malady which puts his pictures "out of drawing." If physician Richard L. Liebreich were even correct in his diagnosis, it would not be the first case in the history of medicine that an unusually developed faculty had been treated as a disease, but to any one who has given Turner's art as much study as is needful to obtain a just appreciation of it, the fantasy of the speculative philosopher is simply so absurd as to make only merriment. From the time when Turner began to feel his individuality in art, and throw off the excessive reverence of previous masters which appears to have held him in a not unprofitable training for many years.