Alastair Sooke: the JMW Turner painting that launched modern art
JMW Turner is probably Britain's most famous painter. Constable might rival him for instant recognition, but it is Turner who each generation remakes in its image.
As Richard Dorment says in his review: "The phenomenon started in 1840 when John Ruskin, who was raised in the evangelical church, told readers of Modern Painters that Turner’s pictures should be read as moral allegories – to which Turner replied that the critic 'sees more in my pictures than I ever painted.’
More than a century later another critic and painter, Lawrence Gowing, staged an exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in which he presented the great man essentially an abstract artist, thereby turning him into a precursor of Pollock and Rothko."
The new exhibition at Tate Britain, Late Turner - Painting Set Free looks at the way that Turner's health and his increasing infirmity may have affected the way he painted in his later years. It asks us to look hard at the paintings and question whether they are as the artist intended, or whether some that we most love are simply unfinished.
These are the themes that Alastair Sooke examines in this video, in which he looks in detail at Norham Castle, Sunrise, painted in 1845 and always regarded as one of the great examples of the painter's late style.
There's a lot of interest in Turner at the moment, with Mike Leigh's film Mr Turner, starring Timothy Spall, about to be released on October 31. But ultimately it is in understanding the paintings and looking at them hard that we will understand a little more about the artist's intentions.
The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free, runs from September 10 until January 25. Tickets: +44 (0) 20 7887 8888; tate.org.uk
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