Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals @ Tate Britain, London

Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals

Tate Britain, London

27 November 2025 – 12 April 2026

J.M.W. Turner

Self Portrait, c. 1799 

Image courtesy of Tate

John Constable 

by Ramsay Richard Reinagle c. 1799 

NPG 1786 

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Tate Britain presents the first major exhibition to explore the intertwined lives and legacies of Britain’s most revered landscape artists: JMW Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837). Radically different painters and personalities, each challenged artistic conventions of the time, developing ways of picturing the world which still resonate today. Staged across the 250th anniversary years of their births, this exhibition will trace the development of their careers in parallel, revealing the ways they were celebrated, criticised and pitted against each other, and how this pushed them to new and original artistic visions. It will feature over 170 paintings and works on paper, from Turner’s momentous 1835 The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, lent by Cleveland Museum of Art and not seen in Britain for over a century, to The White Horse 1819, one of Constable’s greatest artistic achievements, last exhibited in London two decades ago.

JMW Turner 

The Burning of the Houses of Lords 

and Commons, 16 October 1834, 1835 

Cleveland Museum of Art. 

Bequest of John L. Severance 1942.647

John Constable 

The White Horse, 1819 

© The Frick Collection, New York 

Photo: Joseph Coscia Jr

Born only a year apart - JMW Turner in London’s crowded metropolis and John Constable to a prosperous family in the Suffolk village of East Bergholt - their contrasting early lives will begin the exhibition. JMW Turner was a commercially minded, fast-rising young star who first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1790 aged just 15, and created ambitious oil paintings like recently-discovered The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St. Vincent’s Rock, Bristol, before he turned 18. By contrast, largely self-taught John Constable undertook sketching tours to create early watercolours like Bow Fell, Cumberland 1807 and demonstrated a fierce commitment to perfecting artistic techniques, not exhibiting at the Royal Academy until 1802. Having both emerged amid an explosion in popularity of landscape art, the two were united however, in their desire to change it for the better.

The exhibition explores how both artists developed distinct artistic identities within the competitive world of landscape art, spotlighting their methods, evolution and overlap. Constable built his reputation on the Suffolk landscapes of his childhood, opting to sketch in oils outside amid the vast views of Dedham Vale and the river Stour, which often recurred in his work. Tate Britain will include his painting box and sketching chair, with visitors able to chart the development of Constable’s skilful draughtsmanship and radical handling of paint to add ‘sparkle’. A group of Constable’s cloud studies will be brought together for the exhibition. Reflective of his belief that the sky was key to the emotional impact of a painting they are now one of the most celebrated aspects of his output and underpinned the powerful skyscapes in the artist’s monumental six-foot canvases. Late works such as Hampstead Heath with a Rainbow 1836 will illustrate his deft interweaving of personal and historic memories.

JMW Turner 

The Passage of Mount St Gothard from the centre 

of Teufels Broch (Devil’s Bridge), 1804 

© Abbot Hall, Kendal (Lakeland Arts Trust)

By contrast, Turner travelled widely across Britain and Europe filling sketchbooks with quick pencil studies. This offered creative inspiration, influencing sublime Alpine scenes such as The Passage of Mount St Gothard from the Centre of Teufels Broch (Devil’s Bridge) 1804, as well as commercial opportunities to have prints made after his watercolours. The exhibition explores how Turner developed original ways to apply paint and depict light, capturing the raw power of nature. Some of Turner’s most celebrated late works will feature, including Ancient Italy – Ovid Banished from Rome, first exhibited in 1838 and not shown in London in over 50 years.

John Constable 

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, c. 1829

Image courtesy of Tate

By the 1830s, both Turner and Constable became recognised for taking landscape painting in bold new directions. The stark differences between their work spurred art critics to pit them against one another and to cast them as rivals. In 1831 Constable himself played into this, placing his and Turner’s work side by side at the Royal Academy exhibition. This showing of Turner’s Caligula’s Palace and Bridge next to Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, prompted a flurry of comparisons between the sun-drenched heat of Turner’s mythical Italian scene and Constable’s damply atmospheric Britain; they were ‘fire and water’. Now placed head-to-head at Tate Britain, the artists’ most distinctive and impressive paintings will highlight how, despite their differences, they made landscape a genre worthy of grand canvases and prime importance.

Creators of some of the most daring and captivating works in the history of British art, Turner and Constable changed the face of landscape painting with their two competing visions, elevating the genre with their recognition of its endless potential to inspire. The exhibition will end with a new film featuring contemporary artists Frank Bowling, Bridget Riley, George Shaw and Emma Stibbon reflecting on the enduring legacy of Turner and Constable.

TATE BRITAIN

Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

www.tate.org.uk

J.M.W. Turner: Romance and Reality @ Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

J.M.W. Turner

Romance and Reality

Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

March 29 - July 27, 2025

Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1775–1851 

Dort, or Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed, 1818 

Oil on canvas, 62 × 92 inches (157.5 × 233.7 cm)

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1977.14.77.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1775–1851

Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne: Morning, ca. 1845 

Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches (91.4 x 121.9 cm)

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1977.14.79.

The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) presents J. M. W. Turner: Romance and Reality beginning March 29, when the museum reopens following a two-year closure for a major conservation project. Born 250 years ago, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was one of the most virtuosic and complex artists of nineteenth-century England. This exhibition will draw from the Center’s rich holdings of the artist’s work, encompassing all media and phases of his nearly sixty-year career. This is the first show at the YCBA to focus on Turner in more than thirty years, displaying the complete arc of his radical artistic evolution. The exhibition examines the contradictory nature of this revolutionary figure, who was as inspired by the past luminaries of the European landscape tradition as he was determined to surpass their greatest achievements.

“We are thrilled to welcome visitors back to the museum to reconnect with our extraordinary collections,” said Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director. “Turner is an artist whose groundbreaking works continue to inspire. His work has long been a cornerstone of our collection and we are excited to show our returning and new visitors the full range of our Turner holdings.”

“The reopening of the museum on the eve of the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth offers a timely opportunity to commemorate the unmatched range of one of Britain’s most innovative artists,” said Lucinda Lax, Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the YCBA. “Turner revolutionized the genre of landscape painting in ways that continue to captivate contemporary audiences. This exhibition provides a wide-ranging overview of his transformative practice, beginning with his early meticulously rendered topographical views and ending with the evocative impressions of the natural world from his later years.”

Romance and Reality features some of the museum’s most iconic oil paintings. From Turner’s luminous masterpiece Dort, or Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed (1818) to the atmospheric, nearly abstract landscape Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne: Morning (ca. 1845), Turner developed a highly personal vision through his depictions of the landscape. Alongside these two major works, the exhibition will include outstanding watercolors and prints, as well as the artist’s only complete sketchbook outside of the British Isles. Together they reveal not only his astounding technical skill but also the powerful combination of his profound idealism with his acute awareness of the tragic realities of human life.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1775–1851

Staffa, Fingal's Cave, exhibited 1832 

Oil on canvas, 35 3/4 x 47 3/4 inches (90.8 x 121.3 cm)

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1978.43.14.

Turner’s celebrated later painting Staffa, Fingal’s Cave (1831–32) opens this exhibition on the third floor of the museum—a space designed especially for the display of light-sensitive, rarely seen works on paper. This iconic image typifies the artist’s expressive handling of paint, while his confident marshaling of a series of recurring motifs—most notably a storm-ridden sea—enables him to evoke intense emotions and articulate stunning visual effects. His enduring fascination with representing the vastness of the sea was indelibly shaped by his time in the coastal town of Margate and spans his entire career, from his first oil painting of a maritime subject exhibited in 1796 to his economical drawings of the English coast in the “Channel Sketchbook” (ca. 1845), a treasure of the museum’s collection that is also on display in this show.

The exhibition unfolds in six thematic sections. These offer multiple insights into the rigor of his training as a draftsman, his relentless drive to outstrip his predecessors, his technical achievements, and his growing obsession with conveying light and atmosphere, as well as the sense of tragedy that tinged his later works. A broad selection of prints will illuminate the artist’s deep engagement with this medium, embodied in his ample notations for engravers, while his contributions to commercially successful print series enable visitors to glimpse his shrewd business acumen. With his “Little Liber” series (ca. 1824–26)—a body of prints apparently produced independently by the artist but never published—Turner expanded the tonal possibilities of the mezzotint, achieving new pictorial depths. Dramatic watercolor paintings such as his sublime Vesuvius in Eruption (1818), with its spectacular shower of molten magma, demonstrate his ability to render awe-inspiring scenes from the natural world with intensity and imagination without precedent in this medium. As a whole, the exhibition will convey a nuanced understanding of Turner’s artistic legacy, revealing with new clarity the tensions and contradictions that underlie his daring and brilliant oeuvre.

In spring 2026, the acclaimed oil painting Dort, or Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed (1818), along with a selection of other works by Turner, will be on loan to the Dordrechts Museum in the Netherlands. This will mark the first time that the Dort will be seen by audiences outside of North America and the UK.

About J. M. W. Turner

Born in the bohemian London district of Covent Garden to a barber and wigmaker, Turner began painting as a child. His early watercolor paintings of English monuments and landscapes reflect the precision of his initial training as an architectural topographer. By age fourteen, he started attending classes at the Royal Academy, considered Britain’s most prestigious artistic institution. He remained active with the academy throughout his career, becoming a full member by age twenty-six and assuming the role of Professor of Perspective only five years later. Over his six-decade career, he traveled extensively within England and around many countries in continental Europe, making hundreds of sketches on the spot. These drawings—admirable in their own right—were the source for some of his most extraordinary oil paintings. Following his death in 1851, three hundred oil paintings and more than twenty thousand works on paper entered the collection of the Tate Gallery in London by his bequest. 

Related Publications 

Turner, the inaugural installment in the YCBA’s Collection Series of illustrated books, explores the museum’s outstanding Turner holdings—the largest outside the United Kingdom—in a manner that engages the general reader and expert alike. Authored by Ian Warrell with an essay by Gillian Forrester, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the artist’s career, places the works within their historical and cultural context, and includes many new discoveries regarding the identification of locations, landscapes, and dates. It includes six sections of beautifully reproduced plates.

Turner’s Last Sketchbook

Published by the Yale Center for British Art 

Hardcover, 208 pages, 93 color illustrations

ISBN: 978-0-300-27584-1

Publication date: February 27, 2024

Turner’s Last Sketchbook is a facsimile of the artist’s last known intact sketchbook, now in the YCBA collection. Turner used it on the coast of the English Channel in Kent, in and around Margate, from June to September 1845. A poem by Tracey Emin (b. 1963), expressing her personal connection with Turner’s work, accompanies this book. Emin grew up in Margate, the seaside town that Turner returned to time and again to draw. Fittingly, J. M. W. Turner: Romance and Reality will coincide with the exhibition Tracey Emin: I Loved You Until The Morning, on view at the YCBA from March 29 through August 10, 2025.

YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART

1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut

britishart.yale.edu

Turner's Modern World @ Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

Turner's Modern World 

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth 

October 17, 2021 – February 6, 2022 

J. M. W. TURNER

Glaucus and Scylla, 1841

Oil on panel, 36 13/16 x 301/2 in.

Kimbell Art Museum, AP 1966.11

J. M. W. TURNER

Peace – Burial at Sea, Exhibited 1842

Oil on canvas, 34 1/4 x 34 1/8 in.

Tate Britain, London

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, D00528 

Photo © Tate, London, 2020

J. M. W. TURNER

War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet, Exhibited 1842

Oil on canvas, 31 1/4 x 31 1/4

Tate Britain, London

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, D00529 

Photo © Tate, London, 2020

The Kimbell Art Museum presents the U.S. premiere of Turner’s Modern World, a showcase of paintings by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), one of Britain’s greatest artists. Drawn from the collections of Tate Britain, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Yale Center for British Art and others, the exhibition features more than 100 key works that explore how Britain’s preeminent landscape painter found new, modern ways to interpret the extraordinary events of his time. 

“The Kimbell is thrilled to host such major paintings and watercolors by J.M.W. Turner, a towering figure in the history of European art,” said Eric M. Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “He is renowned as a landscape painter with an astonishing range of mood and atmosphere. In his work, Turner often drew from history, but he was also fully engaged with modernity and a keen observer of current events—from the Napoleonic Wars to the Industrial Revolution—which provided the subject matter for some of his most dramatic compositions.”

Born in the early years of the Industrial Revolution, William Turner witnessed spectacular technological innovations and the mechanization of modern life. As the advances of industry and commerce brought Britain to world power, Turner immortalized these rapid changes in vivid and dramatic compositions.

From the 1790s to the end of William Turner’s life, Britain’s economic and political fabric underwent continual and far-reaching alterations. Industrial development brought machines to the workplace, made possible the spread of steam power and resulted in a massive redistribution of the rapidly growing population from the country to newly industrialized cities. The speed of change was dizzying.

J. M. W. TURNER

The Interior of a Tilt Forge (Swans Sketchbook), c. 1798

Graphite on paper 6 9/10 x 9 9/10 in.

Tate Britain, London

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, D01735 and D01736

Photo © Tate, London, 2020

J. M. W. TURNER

The Interior of a Cannon Foundry, 1797-1798

Graphite and watercolor on paper 9 3/4 x 13 3/5 in.

Tate Britain, London

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, D00873

Photo © Tate, London, 2020

Turner’s Modern World explores British life—beginning with the artist’s earliest works, such as The Interior of a Tilt Forge from one of his pocket sketchbooks—and British politics, in such works as The Northampton Election, during the first half of the century. The great land and sea battles of the Napoleonic Wars—Trafalgar and Waterloo—are marked with monumental canvases, meant to bring modern history home to the public.

The advances of industry and commerce that brought Britain to world power—and the limitations of that power—were pictured by Turner in such paintings as Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth and Peace – Burial at Sea. Both works were completed in 1842, at a time when William Turner had developed a new and radical style of painting, his sweeping compositions achieved with his trademark brushwork—skillful handling of the paint that gave the impression of being wild and uncontrolled.

In his last years, he surpassed his contemporaries by melding his modern-day subjects with this highly innovative style—an accomplishment that established him as one of the founders of modern art. For a painting by William Turner to be “modern,” it did not have to depict a contemporary subject: the great painting from the Kimbell’s permanent collection Glaucus and Scylla, for example, tells the ancient myth of a nymph who flees her lover as a vengeful witch transforms him from a sea-god to a monster. The painting’s subject is taken from Ovid; its modernity lies in the way it is painted.

Though William Turner began his career as a topographical watercolorist and painter of beautiful scenery, he grew to be one of the greatest innovators of his century—and left behind him dynamic, inspired and comprehensive testament to his own era. He was not only a witness to modernity, but an interpreter and champion for his generation.

J. M. W. TURNER

Ship and Cutter, c. 1825

Watercolor and graphite pencil on paper, 9 3/8 x 11 3/8 in.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, gift of William Norton Bullard, 23.1240

J. M. W. TURNER

Staffa, Fingal's Cave, c.1831-32

Oil on canvas, 35 3/4 x 47 3/4 in.

Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut,

Paul Mellon Collection, B1978.43.14

J. M. W. TURNER

The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October, 1834 c. 1834-35

Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x 48 1/2 in.

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of John L. Severance, 1942.647

J. M. W. TURNER

Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Stearm Boats of Shoal Water, 1840

Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x 48 1/8 in.

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1955.37

“Turner’s Modern World reveals an artist who was determined—to use a phrase we hear often now—‘to be relevant.’ As we look at art from two centuries ago, it is important to remember, as one artist put it, that ‘all art has been contemporary,’” notes George T.M. Shackelford, deputy director and curator for the exhibition at the Kimbell. “Turner’s concern for and depiction of the issues facing British society in his lifetime should strike contemporary audiences as profoundly modern—and profoundly relevant.”

This exhibition is organized by Tate Britain in association with the Kimbell Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The curator for the exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum is George T.M. Shackelford, deputy director.

CATALOGUE

In the beautifully illustrated exhibition catalogue (Tate Publishing), Turner expert David Blayney Brown, curator Amy Concannon and art historian Sam Smiles reveal how Turner updated the language of art and transformed his style and practice to produce revelatory, definitive interpretations of modern subjects.

Upcoming Exhibitions at Kimbell Art Museum:

The Language of Beauty in African Art

April 3 – July 31, 2022 

Murillo: From Heaven to Earth 

September 18, 2022 – January 29, 2023 

KIMBELL ART MUSEUM

3333 Camp Bowie Boulevard, Fort Worth, Texas 76107

www.kimbellart.org

Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Tate Liverpool, 2011-2012

Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings 

This exhibition will be on view this year and in 2012 at:

Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 8 October 2011 - 15 January 2012
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 11 February 2012 - 28 May 2012
Tate Liverpool, 22 June - 28 October 2012

CY TWONBLY

Untitled 2007

© Cy Twombly. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photography by Robert McKeever 

JMW Turner, Claude Monet and Cy Twombly are three of the greatest painters of the last 150 years. In the autumn of 2011, Moderna Museet will bring together a groundbreaking exhibition focusing on later works by the three artists. The exhibition Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings, curated by JEREMY LEWISON , is organized by MODERNA MUSEET and will tour to Germany and the UK in 2012. 

J. M. W. TURNER (1775-1851) was one of the most innovative painters of the Romantic era, whose works Monet admired on his stay in London in 1871 and challenged in his later depictions of London and Venice. CY TWOMBLY (b 1928) has also had a lifelong interest in Turner and in the last twenty years has demonstrated a strong affinity for the work of CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926) the founder of French Impressionism. The exhibition Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings is an unique opportunity to see these three important artists together and what unites them. 

"All three artists have been considered radical in their time and met with negative comment when pushing the boundaries of the conventions of painting. Their late work has a looseness and an intensity that comes from the confidence of age, when notions of finish and completion are modified", says Jeremy Lewison, curator of the exhibition, formerly Director of Collections at Tate and now working as an independent curator. 

Turner, Monet, Twombly: Later Paintings is an exhibition that examines each artist in some depth, and will introduce their work in new ways to both new audiences and to those already familiar with the artists’ work. The exhibition features more than 60 works, and will examine not only the art historical links and affinities between the painters, but also the common characteristics of and motivations underlying their late style. It highlights modernity and classicism in the work of all three artists, characteristics that will emerge by their unique juxtaposition in this exhibition. In their later phases the three artists are not only preoccupied by mortality and memory but retain an interest in the Romantic outlook and the sublime. 

Works by Turner will mainly be drawn from Tate’s Turner Bequest and works by Monet and Twombly will be drawn from museums and private collections across the world. 

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Hatje Cantz Verlag in three language editions, with an in-depth essay by Jeremy Lewison and graphic design by Patric Leo. 

Curator: Jeremy Lewison 

Assistant Curator: Jo Widoff 

MODERNA MUSEET

http://www.modernamuseet.se

Monet, Pissarro et Gauguin à Rouen - Exposition au Musée des Beaux Arts de Rouen

Une ville pour l’Impressionnisme  : 

Monet, Pissarro et Gauguin à Rouen

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Commissariat  : Laurent Salomé, Directeur des musées de Rouen

Jusqu’au 26 septembre 2010

Le rôle joué par Rouen dans l’histoire de l’art à la fin du XIXe siècle est considérable. Si la ville n’a cessé d’attirer les artistes depuis la Renaissance, la fascination qu’elle exerce atteint son apogée à l’époque impressionniste, alors que se mêlent les prestiges de son essor industriel, de son site spectaculaire et de son patrimoine architectural intact. Cette ville que Camille Pissarro trouve « aussi belle que Venise » devient dès lors un lieu emblématique de la peinture moderne.

Une centaine de chefs-d’oeuvre de Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro et d’autres grands peintres de la fin du XIXe siècle, sont réunis pour explorer l’un des derniers grands thèmes de l’histoire de l’impressionnisme qui n’ait pas fait l’objet d’une exposition  : la cité normande comme laboratoire de la nouvelle peinture, entre agitation urbaine et ruralité, vieilles pierres et industrie galopante, le tout vibrant des reflets de la Seine.

Une destination pour les peintres voyageurs du XIXe siècle

Bénéficiant d’une situation privilégiée sur la Seine, entre Paris et la côte normande, Rouen est une ville prisée par les paysagistes dès le début du XIXe siècle. L’exemple donné par le peintre anglais Richard Parkes Bonington, dont le style résolument moderne s’exprime dans des œuvres aux qualités atmosphériques saisissantes, a profondément changé l’appréhension du paysage par les peintres français. Ayant parcouru la Normandie à ses côtés, Paul Huet, initiateur du paysage romantique, offre des vues de la campagne rouennaise en rupture avec le courant classique, tandis que Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot privilégie lui aussi le travail sur le motif et sur la lumière. Considéré par beaucoup comme « le premier des impressionnistes », Johan Barthold Jongkind livre également des vues de Rouen marquées par un sens aigu de la lumière et une recherche manifeste de l’effet pur. C’est néanmoins avec Joseph Mallord William Turner que Rouen devient un motif d’étude à part entière, ce dont témoigne un grand nombre d’esquisses et d’aquarelles. Non seulement les oeuvres qu’il réalisa sur les bords de la Seine lui valurent ensuite l’admiration de Claude Monet et Camille Pissarro, mais on note aussi que les Cathédrales de Monet ne sont pas sans évoquer les vues de cet illustre prédécesseur.

Une ville sur l’eau : reflets impressionnistes

Installée dans une boucle de la Seine, Rouen offrait aux peintres de nombreux motifs à explorer. La Seine, d’abord, devient le motif même de nombreuses toiles  ; à l’image de Claude Monet lors de son premier séjour en 1872 ou de Camille Pissarro en 1883, l’attention des peintres se porte principalement sur le fleuve, animé parfois des tours de la cathédrale gothique et de grands voiliers. La Seine se prête en outre à des études d’atmosphère particulièrement prisées par les peintres de la mouvance impressionniste ; Armand Guillaumin devait développer à Rouen un art du paysage teinté d’un certain romantisme, manifeste notamment dans les représentations enneigées des rives du fleuve. C’est ensuite l’effervescence du port que les peintres mettent à l’honneur dans leurs toiles. Claude Monet et Camille Pissarro certes, mais encore Albert Lebourg, se sont attachés à rendre compte de l’industrialisation de la ville. Enfin cette silhouette même de « ville aux cent clochers » se prêtait particulièrement bien aux variations impressionnistes ; quelques sites de la ville, particulièrement pittoresques, à l’image de la Rue de l’Épicerie, ont plus particulièrement retenu l’attention des artistes.

Une ville au coeur de la campagne normande

La campagne rouennaise offrait également aux peintres de nombreux motifs propres à stimuler leurs recherches esthétiques d’un nouveau genre. Parmi d’autres, Charles Angrand fut l’un de ces peintres de plein air qui mirent la lumière au cœur de leurs œuvres. De façon plus significative encore, la parenthèse rouennaise de Paul Gauguin, en 1884, est à l’origine d’une trentaine de tableaux, parmi lesquels une majorité de paysages. Dans ces vues peintes au rythme des saisons, de janvier à novembre, Paul Gauguin réalise des œuvres impressionnistes denses et équilibrées, dans lesquelles se lisent les influences conjointes de Paul Cézanne et de Camille Pissarro. De même, Alfred Sisley, qui séjourne chez François Depeaux en 1894, met à profit la proximité immédiate de l’eau et d’une végétation luxuriante pour traduire dans une gamme très diversifée d’effets colorés la richesse de la nature normande.

Rouen, objet de séries d’oeuvres

La série des Cathédrales de Rouen par Claude Monet constitue l’un des sommets de l’impressionnisme. Mené en deux campagnes distinctes dont les détails sont bien connus, ce travail est une étape majeure dans la disparition du motif, certes toujours identifié mais dissout dans l’étude atmosphérique. Chaque jour, le peintre, qui mène plusieurs toiles de front, se trouve confronté à d’importantes difficultés, inhérentes au motif lui-même, cette dentelle de pierre gothique animée de jeux de lumière en perpétuel mouvement. Ce sont incontestablement ces œuvres, dont la juxtaposition est saisissante, qui ont fait de Rouen un motif significatif de modernité et un jalon important de l’histoire de l’art.

C’est à Rouen, en 1896, que Camille Pissarro lança ses premières vraies séries de paysages urbains. L’influence picturale de Claude Monet joua probablement un rôle dans le choix de Rouen, que Camille Pissarro arpenta en 1895 juste après la présentation de la série des Cathédrales à la Galerie Durand-Ruel. A son tour, il produit en tout trente-huit vues de la ville en 1896, dix-neuf en 1898, caractérisées par une large touche et une rapidité d’exécution inédite. Pour la première fois, toutes les oeuvres de la série sont centrées autour de la Seine, sujet éminemment pictural autant que poétique.

Un attachement durable des artistes à Rouen 

La permanence des motifs impressionnistes caractérise un large pan de la production picturale des années 1890-1920. Qu’il s’agisse de Charles Angrand, de Paul Signac ou de Raoul Dufy, nombreux sont les peintres à s’installer à Rouen, pour une période plus ou moins longue, mais toujours pour s’approprier à leur tour un site peint par d’illustres aînés. Le fleuve, les ponts qui le traversent et le port qui l’anime, ainsi que la ville et ses clochers, restent au début du XXe siècle des sources d’inspiration fécondes. On peut lier à cet attachement le développement spectaculaire de « l’école de Rouen »  : les « mousquetaires » (Charles Angrand, Charles Frechon, Joseph Delattre, Léon-Jules Lemaître), ont produit dès les années 1880 un certain nombre d’authentiques chefs-d’œuvre, et la génération suivante apporte d’autres grandes figures, dominées par Robert Antoine Pinchon qui, après une période fauve au tournant du siècle, prolongent le rayonnement de l’impressionnisme au-delà de la première guerre mondiale.

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen
4 juin - 26 septembre 2010

William Turner Watercolours from The Courtauld - Paths to Fame, The Courtauld Gallery, London

Paths to Fame: 

William Turner Watercolours from The Courtauld

The Courtauld Gallery, London

30 October 2008 - 25 January 2009

Nine magnificent watercolours, recently bequeathed by the late Dorothy Scharf, are among a collection of thirty outstanding works by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) held at The Courtauld Gallery.  The Courtauld’s collection includes work from across the artist’s career, ranging from an important early view of the Avon Gorge, Bristol, made when Turner was just sixteen years old, to examples of the monumental highly finished watercolours of his maturity and the celebrated expressive late works.  Paths to Fame:  Turner Watercolours from The Courtauld, on view from 30 October 2008 to 25 January 2009, will be the first opportunity to enjoy this superb collection in its entirety.

Throughout his life Turner orchestrated his career with fame in mind.  Intensely ambitious, he travelled the length and breadth of Britain and the Continent in search of inspirational and marketable views.  Following in his footsteps, the exhibition traces the evolution of his extraordinarily inventive and entrepreneurial approach to the making of landscape in watercolour.  The exhibition stresses the vital contribution of patronage and print publication and the role of collectors and friends, most notably the influential art critic John Ruskin, as champions and promoters of his work.

The son of a Covent Garden barber, Joseph Mallord William Turner spent his early years acquiring the traditional skills of architectural draughtsmanship, learning also from earlier topographical watercolourists such as Paul Sandby and Edward Dayes.  He showed precocious talent, entering the Royal Academy Schools in 1789 at the age of thirteen and having a watercolour accepted for the prestigious annual exhibition only two years later.  He was elected an Associate at twenty-four, the youngest age allowed, becoming a full Academician in 1802.  The Academy was then housed in the Strand block of Somerset House, now home to The Courtauld Gallery.

Focusing on Turner’s early career, the opening section of the exhibition explores the ways in which he set about achieving success.  When only sixteen he embarked on the first of his many sketching tours around the country.  An avid self-promoter, Turner was quick to recognize the value of prints for disseminating his art to the widest possible audience, and from the 1790s his career revolved around travelling, painting and publishing.  Accurately rendered topographical watercolours such as Chepstow Castle (fig.1), produced as a model for an engraving (the second print to be made after his work) for the popular Copper-Plate Magazine, show a technical mastery that was to earn him a fortune as a mature artist.  A later section of the exhibition is dedicated to his watercolour designs for book illustrations, most notably Colchester, Essex (fig.2), made in preparation for an engraving for Picturesque Views in England and Wales (1827-38), the largest and most ambitious series of engravings ever produced from Turner’s designs. 

On his first visit to the Continent in 1802, made possible by the brief peace between Britain and France, Turner headed for Switzerland, attracted by the stupendous Alpine scenery and aware that such awe-inspiring views of mountains, lakes and rivers were increasingly sought after by the art-buying public.  From the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 he took to travelling annually through France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, filling sketchbooks with visual records that he later used as reference material for watercolour and oil painting subjects.  The superb view of Rome from San Pietro in Montorio (fig.3) was painted for Turner’s close friend and major patron Walter Fawkes in c.1820.  This work celebrates the artist’s first visit to Italy in 1819 and reflects his response to its beauty, grandeur and light.

Turner’s habit of rearranging the landscape for a more dramatic effect is evident from the exaggeratedly steep mountain slopes he depicted in Mont Blanc from above Courmayeur (fig.6).  The atmospheric image of On Lake Lucerne looking towards Fluelen (fig.7), on the other hand, presents a radically different approach to landscape – a poetic vision that intensified in the 1840s when, dogged with ill health in the last decade of his life, Turner became increasingly conscious of his mortality.  By this time, light and colour and the transitory effects of weather were his prime concern, most vividly evoked in the semi-abstract images of sand, sea and sky displayed in the final section of the exhibition.

In his later years Turner paid frequent visits to the Kent coastal resort of Margate, attracted by the wide expanse of sea and ever-changing sky.  Works such as Heaped Thundercloud over Sea and Land, Storm on Margate Sands and Margate Pier (fig.9), exemplify Turner’s response to the drama of nature observed on the Kent coast.  One of the highlights of the exhibition, this group of watercolours once formed part of the same sketchbook that was later acquired by the artist and critic John Ruskin from Sophia Caroline Booth, Turner’s landlady and companion.  These late works are characterised by a powerfully expressive experimentation which pushed the boundaries of watercolour technique.  Ruskin described Margate Pier as a ‘study of storm and sunshine...entirely magnificent…’   He was equally enthralled by Dawn after the Wreck (fig.8), writing ‘some little vessel – a collier probably – has gone down in the night, all hands lost: a single dog has come ashore.  Utterly exhausted, its limbs failing under it, and sinking into the sand, it stands howling and shivering.’  Ruskin’s passion for Turner’s late watercolours and his sentimental interpretation of their subject matter helped to perpetuate Turner’s fame as England’s greatest painter in watercolours.

The works from The Courtauld Gallery will be supplemented by closely related loans from Tate and private collections, enabling viewers to trace the development of certain compositions, including the celebrated panoramic view of the Crook of Lune (fig.5), from early sketches and exploratory ‘colour beginnings’ (fig.4) to finished watercolours and, in some cases, published prints. 

The exhibition is being sponsored by The Bank of New York Mellon.

Paths to Fame:  Turner Watercolours from The Courtauld will be accompanied by a special display of selected British watercolours bequeathed to The Courtauld Gallery by Dorothy Scharf in 2007.  This will offer an opportunity to consider Turner’s work in the broader context of British watercolour painting of the 18th and early 19th century.

Paths to Fame:  Turner Watercolours from The Courtauld

A fully illustrated catalogue, Paths to Fame: Turner Watercolours from The Courtauld Gallery published by The Courtauld Gallery and the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere, accompanies the exhibition. 220 x 254 mm, 180 pages, softback, ISBN: 978-1-905256-33-4, Price £20.

The Courtauld Gallery

Somerset House, Strand

London WC2R 0RN