- 16 April 2025
- 6:00 – 8:00 pm
- The Forty-fifth Kurt Pantzer Memorial Lecture
- Paul Mellon Centre and Online
While great attention has been paid to Turner’s later career, much less has been given to his early work. This lecture will consider both definitions of and stakes in the concept of “Early Turner”. It will begin by addressing the challenges to even creating such a category: where, for instance, to begin and end it and on what basis – the work or Turner’s biography?
Next, even if no such category has previously been defined, Leo Costello will consider the role his earlier works have played in the minds of his critics during and after his lifetime, up to the present day.
Lastly, Costello will argue a more particular case for the modern relevance of “Early Turner”, not just for a fuller understanding of his overall work, but in the light of pressing contemporary concerns including climate change, disability and social justice.
Event format
18.00: Doors open at the Paul Mellon Centre
18.30-19.30: Lecture and Q&As
19.30-20.00: Drinks reception
Image caption: J.M.W. Turner, Self-Portrait, c.1799, 98.5 x 82 cm. Digital image courtesy of Tate (N00458).
About the speaker
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Leo Costello is an associate professor and Chair of the Art History Department at Rice University, Houston, Texas. He has published on British art from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. His first book, J.M.W. Turner and the Subject of History, was issued by Ashgate in 2012: his second, Early Turner in London, 1795–1819, is now under contract with Routledge. In 2023, he was co-curator of the exhibition To Speak of Everything: The Art of Raymond Mason. A twentieth-century British sculptor, Mason (1922–2010), is the subject of his next book project.