James Alfred Turner

Who was James Alfred Turner?

James Alfred Turner was an Australian painter. Turner recorded in painstaking detail the life and daily pursuits of the small rural settler in the mountain ranges to the north and north east of Melbourne, the capital of the State of Victoria, Australia. At the time this was “battlers country”, life was hard and pleasures simple.

Photography was alive and well in Turners time, yet no camera could have captured the spirit of an age and lifestyle like he did. He painted in great detail and his pictures provide vibrant studies of daily life. He should be studied and valued for this skill alone. This was his great unrecognised contribution to Australian art.

Turner was quite prolific and his style instantly recognisable. Like S. T. Gill who became famous for his paintings of life on the Victorian Goldfields, Turner seems to have set out to record a specific facet of Victorian life. He painted mainly rural scenes and recorded faithfully the typical rural “situations” of the day. He signed almost all his paintings J.A.Turner or in the case of small works J.A.T.

Turner died just over 100 years ago and from this distance he needs to be viewed in a new light.