ART
Turner And The Masters
Tate Britain
5/5
IN A NUTSHELL
JMW Turner pits himself against the great names of art in a blockbuster exhibition that tells a compelling story.
Picture: JMW Turner, Dutch Boats in a Gale (The Bridgewater Sea Piece) Exhibited 1801. Private collection
REVIEW
It might on paper sound like a Channel 5 pop doc or a high-brow fantasy fiction mash-up, but JMW Turner going head to head with the Old Masters in the ultimate brush-off may well just be the 19th century painter's dream realised.
For as this blockbuster exhibition confirms, Britain's favourite artist actively sought comparison with the icons who went before. Less reverentially, he fostered a keen sense of rivalry with his contemporaries - sometimes coming off a poor second.
While he professed he paid homage to the past "con amore", there's no escaping the sense that Turner was constantly measuring his worth against the greats in a calculated strategy to fix his own immortality.
If you want evidence, there's evidence. John Constable's Opening Of Waterloo Bridge and Turner's Helvoetsluys are placed side by side for the first time since their unveiling in 1832.
Back then Constable was still feverishly adding colour as the painting hung on the wall at the Royal Academy when, with a flourish, Turner arrived and added a circle of red to his own more muted seascape as if to say - less is more, old friend. "He's been here and fired a gun," said Constable in response.
So there's drama in the juxtaposition of Turner and his heroes and rivals. But, away from the adrenalin of one-upmanship, the exhibition, room by room, offers a simple narrative on Turner's restless struggle to capture his trademark hazy style and his self-conscious challenging of artistic conventions.
From his slavish copying of his early days and his fidgety combative challenge to himself over technique, a singular voice begins to emerge. His attempts to emulate the Masters expose his weaknesses - form and figure - and his strengths - landscape impressionism - pinballing him towards the moment he fully flowers in an explosion of colour and energy.
"Atmosphere is my strength," he finally concedes, almost breathlessly, in the last of the six packed rooms once his long expedition through the history of art is done.
The Tate Britain has worked marvels to prise some heady masterpieces from the Louvre and other major galleries (Rembrandt's The Mill and Poussin's La Deluge are just two such coups). So, for the first time in many cases, direct and obvious comparisons can be made between Turner and Titian, Claude Lorrain, van de Velde, Canaletto, Rubens et al, just as he had wished.
This is close to perfect for the Turner newcomer, who can experience and understand what he was trying to do and when and why he was trying to do it.
The exhibition has been years in the planning and no doubt entailed lengthy emails, lots of arm twisting and sleepless caffeine-fuelled nights. Worth it, worth it, worth it.
This combination of beauty, context and big name art makes for a substantial exhibition and, crucially in its quest to capture a wider audience, a compelling story of feuds, trials, triumph and magnificence.
Turner And The Masters is undoubtedly the real thing.
Until January 31, 2010.
