Turner and the Masters
Tate Britain, until 31 January 2010
Professor David Solkin, this exhibition’s curator, opens his introductory chapter in the catalogue (a substantial tome, packed with scholarly exegesis, special exhibition price £19.99 in paperback) in the following way:
The first 15 words of that quote should be emblazoned over the lintel of every art school in the land, though it would mean that the teachers therein would have to be capable of demonstrating its truth; tragically, I’m not convinced that many of them are capable of doing so. Be that as it may, this exhibition sets out to demonstrate Turner’s complex relationship with his artistic predecessors and contemporaries by bringing together over 100 pictures from all over the world, both by Turner himself and by the other artists he copied and challenged. The show is in theory a great idea, in fact a risky enterprise. As Professor Solkin is the first to admit, Turner is not always shown in the most flattering light when compared with the Old Masters. Yet he continued to set himself up in this way, as much out of a spirit of rivalry and insecurity, as artistic ambition and the desire to make money. He risked his reputation to augment his reputation in a typically Turnerian way.
Ruskin noted that people dismissed Turner as vulgar and unintellectual. He wrote: ‘This I knew to be impossible. I found in him a somewhat eccentric, keen-mannered, matter-of-fact, English-minded gentleman: good-natured evidently, bad-tempered evidently, hating humbug of all sorts, shrewd, perhaps a little selfish, highly intellectual, the powers of his mind not brought out with any delight in their manifestation, or intention of display, but flashing out occasionally in a word or a look.’ It’s that keenness that fuelled the competitive spirit in Turner and accounted for the strange mixture of successes and failures in this show.
It’s another vast exhibition at Tate Britain. I can’t believe that visitors can possibly take in this much work in any depth or detail. The scale of the display may reassure them that they’re getting their money’s worth (normal admission is £12.50), but the overkill is considerable. The show begins with Willem van de Velde’s ‘Rising Gale’, paired with Turner’s ‘Dutch Boats in a Gale’. Turner’s picture was commissioned as a companion piece to the former, and is not only a mirror image of the Dutchman’s composition, but also a much livelier rendering. The hard, almost carved edges of van de Velde become newly vital, so much warmer and freer is Turner’s physical involvement with the paint. There’s also a very odd but rather good Ducros of the stables of the Villa Maecenas compared intriguingly with Turner’s ‘Transept of Ewenny Priory’ and Piranesi put with Turner’s interior of Durham Cathedral. All useful and instructive comparisons. But to hang Turner’s ‘Moonlight, a study at Millbank’ and ‘Limekiln at Coalbrookdale’ (both of interest without being great) with Rembrandt’s ‘Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ is just asking for trouble.
This is the pattern of the exhibition. In Room 2, Poussin’s ‘Deluge’ is hung next to Turner’s rather awful painting of the same subject, much to the latter’s detriment. Yet his ‘Crossing the Brook’ looks remarkably powerful next to Claude’s ‘Landscape with Moses’, despite the feebleness of Turner’s figures. In some ways this exhibition is simply a marvellous chance to see great paintings, yet the viewer can be satiated if not overwhelmed by looking properly at the work in the first three rooms only. (Some things, however, are best avoided, such as Turner’s ghastly ‘Holy Family’ juxtaposed with Titian.)
The main trouble is the spectator response. Will the average Tate visitor be able to distinguish sufficiently between the great, the good and the indifferent, and learn anything worthwhile from the comparison? Who is the exhibition for? Scholars? I’d like to think that art students might learn a great deal from it, but I’m not sure even those trainee-professionals would be able to garner much without guidance. I’m concerned that the general public may be bewildered by this curious hotchpotch. It would have been much more revealing to bring together some of Turner’s most experimental and radical work with paintings by Rembrandt. Some of the comparisons here are embarrassing. The best thing to do is to treat the exhibition as a mixed museum hang and select favourite paintings to linger over: Bonington, Girtin’s ‘White House’, Watteau, Rubens. Some of the finest Turners are in the last room, such as ‘Fishing Boats’ and ‘Snow Storm’. Here is the mystery and majesty we expect from this great painter: Turner is redeemed.
The exhibition will tour to the Grand Palais in Paris (22 February–23 May 2010) and then the Prado in Madrid (22 June–19 September 2010). This is deeply appropriate for a show that seeks to re-emphasise the place of British art within its European context, as well as demonstrating the shifting notions of artistic originality. What comes across most strongly is not just Turner’s reverence for European art and its traditions, but also his robustly critical attitude to his masters. This exhibition, like Turner himself, is driven by the ambivalent dynamic of homage and challenge, and if it offers a somewhat mixed message as a result (rather than the unqualified praise of most exhibitions), this is perhaps a useful querying of stereotypes.
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