British painter JMW Turner was both prolific and wide-ranging in his work.He traveled throughout England and Europe, often with a small watercolor case at his side.Now a rare show of watercolors Turner made throughout his career is on view at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut through February.And it's the only North American stop these fragile works will make.Special correspondent Jared Bowen has our report.It's part of our weekly series on arts and culture, Canvas.JMW Turner moved from cathedrals to coasts, from the bright light of day to the deep dark of night,and from the moody tones of his native England to the luminescent glow of Venice, Italy.For the famed painter, they were wanders in watercolor.I think some of his most original and expressive and experimental, groundbreaking work was actually in watercolor on paper.That medium is where his ideas formed and flourished with a fervor.Starting with the first watercolor he painted of this gorge at age 17, Turner painted more than 30,000 in his lifetime.Drawing and, indeed, painting in watercolor was almost a compulsion.It was like a kind of a nervous tick. He just wasn't comfortable unless he was doing it.Turner scholar David Blayney Brown is a senior curator with Tate Britain, the London museum that holds the Turner bequest,
