The landscape and seascape painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in the same year as the writer Jane Austen—1775. But where she died in 1817, he lived until 1851. And while Austen is considered supremely rational and classical, Turner moved into decidedly Romantic territory, where his sense of the sublime was nascently, tumescently, modern. History and mist, light reflected, refracted, exploded! Important works by Turner from the Tate come to the Frist in February. —L.J.

J. M. W. Turner: Quest for the Sublime was featured in the February 22, 2020 issue of Air Mail. Read on