TURNER & THE MASTERS, TATE BRITAIN, LONDON

  • TURNER AND THE MASTERS, TATE BRITAIN, LONDON

  •  J.M.W Turner (1775-1851), visionary founder of the Turner Prize, is given another lease of life with an exhibition examining artist jealousy. Jealousy, a fundamental emotion underpinning civilisation itself, perhaps providing the motor for art, innovation, even face stamping and acts of war. Turner is poised somewhere between all of these, an immensely ambitious young artist who wanted to be better than the Masters.  He realised, though somewhat immodestly, that he was the major figure in painting of his day.

  •  The exhibition details in some cursory then exhaustive way, Turner's palpable anxiety of influence, a creative dynamo that partly consisted of jealousy, grudging admiration, actual influence, sometime plagiarism, outrageous copying and everything else in between. Turner inherited his passion for sunsets, for warm, golden, seemingly oriental or mediterranean light from Claude Lorrain (1604-1682). His intense admiration for Claude led him to insist in his bequest that his paintings be placed beside Claude's in the National Gallery. But Turner went beyond Claude, and the other masters, such as Canaletto, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Poussin, by changing, as they had in their time, the language of art, which was built from the work and discoveries of the Masters themselves.

  •  Turner takes original artworks by the Masters then somehow manages to squeeze into form, to make palpable, to allow new, intriguing forms to happen. He sees in recent, already existing paintings the kernel of ideas, develops them, as in his interpretation of Poussin's The Deluge. The original is a static, narrative-oriented work which the audience is meant to 'get', but Turner's re-imagining of the piece imbues it with passion, with visionary significance. He challenges himself to better the work of recent masters, such as Van de Velde. The original is static, unemotive, conservative, the re-imagining forms a cloudy, hazy diaphanous assembly of elements, entirely subjective as if the artist is somehow implicated in the work. 

  • Turner's subject is art and nature, or rather how mere paint can portray elemental passions and yet still remain mere paint. The exhibition details whole series of influence as those between Turner, David Wilkie (1785-1841) and the Flemish Master David Teniers the younger (1610-1690). It demonstrates how works like Turner's The Country Blacksmith, Wilkie's Village Politicians (1806) and The Blind Fiddler re-interpreted the work of Teniers, providing sufficient creative tension between past and present. Turner embraces the influence of the great Renaissance Masters but is also drawn to smaller Dutch images, especially influenced by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) but even more so by Rembrandt Harmentz van Rijn (1606-1669). Rubens was especially admired by Joshua Reynolds, founder of the Royal Academy. Turner respected Reynold's opinions immensely, looking to works by Rubens such as Landscape by Moonlight (1635-40) which influenced his work The Forest of Beere. Ruben's cold pallete somehow collided with Turner's ascending, glowing colours. Turner deliberately emulated Rembrandt, making subtly attenuated likenesses, such as Pilate Washing his Hands (1830), a re-working of Rembrandt's Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (1644), a painting widely admired in Britain, becoming hugely influential. As was Rembrandt's work The Mill (1645-8). The Mill has a sombre, brooding menace, as if this technology somehow resembles the nuclear energy of our own day, invoking power, grandiosity, technological progress, yet also simultaneously implying a Luddite fear of progress, as the dark, almost supernatural atmosphere of the painting evinces. Turner's re-working of Rembrandt is brighter, opulent, figures are freer, less severely defined. Turner's approach is more 'impressionistic', defining the feeling behind the work as subjective, as being part of a process, rather than a static, limited vignette, with narrative at its very centre, the artist remaining outside the process as a seemingly omnipotent judge or god-like artificer. 

  • Another major positive influence on Turner was the Venetian artist Giovanni Antonio Canal or Canaletto (1697-1768). The exhibition details several series of depictions of Venice, the first being the work The Bacino de San Marco on Ascension Day (1733-4), then Turner's Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom House, Venice: Canaletti Painting (1833) and the Depositing of John Bellini's Three Pictures in La Chiesa Redentore, Venice (1841). The middle painting contains a little depiction of a Caneletto painting, for a sophisticated audience would have been expected to immediately make a palpable yet imaginary comparison between the works. Turner builds on Canaletto's earlier achievements, yet paints actual paintings, suffused with unbelievable light, rather than the mere architect's paintings of Canaletto that depict Venice yet tell us nothing really about that city. Canaletto's work is entirely accurate, convincing portrayal of Venice, yet his methods are rather flat and unconvincing, even primitive or preposterous, as in his attempts to paint waves which are really child-like ripples, wholly unlike Turner's mature studies of water. 

  • A painter who had definite creativity though, was John Constable (1776-1837). His work The Opening of Waterloo Bridge (1832) is a painting deliberately designed to challenge the dominant position of Turner at the Royal Academy's summer shows, where, on so-called varnishing days, (these were days before the opening of the Royal Academy summer exhibition when artist's could touch up their work) became contests or unofficial combats between artists eager to outdo the rest of the field. Constable's painting is unbelievably detailed, complex yet also painterly and visionary. The painting is an amazing reply to Turner and evidence of strong competition between the two artists. Turner ultimately acknowledged that Constable was his only rival. Turner and the Masters allows us access to Turner's studio and to the secrets of his art. All that remains is for us to make those connections that seem implicit yet also removed and impalpable. This is a fine exhibition for anyone beginning to uncover the major artworks of the past. 

  •  Paul Murphy, Tate Britain, London

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