The incredible British painter born 250 years ago this week – is he UK’s best artist ever? | UK | News

He was known as the “painter of light” thanks to his atmospheric all-weather landscapes illuminating scenes from natural life. But Joseph Mallard William Turner, who was born on April 23, 1775, in London’s Covent Garden, and raised in the tumultuous shadow of the Napoleonic Wars, was more than the hero of Romanticism – he was a disruptor.

And as the National Gallery and other major cultural institutions host a series of public events this year to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Turner, Britain’s greatest and most influential artist, many of his evocative paintings are bringing fresh perspective to this little-known aspect of his legacy.

Take his masterpiece, The Fighting Temeraire, which the prodigal son of a barber and a butcher’s daughter, called “my darling” and was voted the nation’s favourite painting in a 2005 BBC poll, narrowly pipping The Haywain by Constable – a contemporary and rival of Turner – to the post.

Today, it is one of the highlights at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, where it is on permanent display and free to view.

But its warm aesthetic sometimes belies its radicalism. The 1838 painting depicts the famous battleship Temeraire, a symbol of national pride due to its role in helping Britain’s Admiral Nelson defeat the French Emperor Napoleon at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Rendered redundant due to its obsolete sail-power, it is pictured being dragged along the River Thames by a newer steam-powered tug, to be broken up for scrap.

Typifying Turner’s pragmatic approach to the need for technological progress, tempered by a nostalgic lament for the passing of a bygone age, it has even featured in a James Bond film.

Symbolically, in 2012’s Skyfall when Daniel Craig, playing a maturing 007, meets his new, younger quartermaster or “Q”, played by Ben Whishaw, at the National Gallery in front of Turner’s ‘Temeraire’.

Christine Riding, the National Gallery’s Director of Collections and Research, says the painting, and Turner’s artworks generally, were extremely progressive compared to what other artists were doing at the time.

“No-one else was painting like this,” she tells the Express.

“It’s not so much his subject matter [which was radical] but his technique and his palette; his use of colour and of yellow in particular.

“He was one of the first artists to utilise chrome yellow because it was only invented in the first part of the 19th century. This is where he really starts to test and irritate his critics who talk about being blinded by him and his use of bright yellow.”

It is believed Turner did not bear witness to the Temeraire’s final voyage but recreated the scene from contemporary reports, framing it against a sunset for poignant impact.

Riding adds: “But I think the moment when Turner really starts pushing the boundaries is when he applies his mastery of watercolour technique to his oil paintings. In a watercolour you generally apply paint layers from light to dark, whereas in an oil painting it’s the other way around.

“Turner often reversed that and created oil paintings on a grand scale that look like they might have been painted in watercolour.”

In doing so, the Royal Academy artist eschewed the clearly defined realism of his contemporaries, focussing instead on the light and atmosphere of a scene in order to create a swirling mass of colour that worked on a more subliminal, rather than rational level.

He also innovated by using experimental techniques such as scraping and even scratching into the canvas to create his artworks – considered shockingly controversial at the time.

Whilst Turner is generally associated with the Romantic movement, he was also, in effect, a pioneer of Impressionism – a field of art later to be dominated by Claude Monet.

“And, as Monet himself recognised,” Christine continues, “the example of Turner allowed artists to set themselves free. Without Turner, [artists] wouldn’t have had that route to [their] own sense of artistic integrity. He did his own stuff and [they] then felt emboldened to do it too. That’s what makes him still exciting in the 21st century.”

It’s no surprise then that the annual award given to contemporary artists who seek to push the boundaries of art – occasionally courting public outrage along the way – is named after him. Previous winners and nominees of The Turner Prize include Damien Hirst with his installation Mother and Child, Divided – featuring a cow and its calf bisected and preserved in formaldehyde –and Tracey Emin whose work, My Bed, consisted of her unmade and soiled bedding surrounded by personal detritus such as underwear and condoms.

Emin grew up in Margate, a seaside town that Turner often visited and painted. Once considered an enfant terrible of the art world herself, she has acknowledged the influence Turner had upon her work and has even suggested the dirty, tangled sheets of My Bed bear a striking resemblance to the waves and clouds of Turner’s landscapes.

One of the public galleries this year celebrating the 250th anniversary since Turner’s birth, isTate Britain on London’s Millbank, whose Clore Galleries contains the largest number of his artworks anywhere in the world.

Dr Amy Concannon, Manton Senior Curator of Historic British Art at the Tate, explains: “Turner left around 300 oil paintings and thousands of drawings, sketchbooks and watercolours to the nation as part of the Turner Bequest.”

During his lifetime, the artist, who was deeply patriotic, declined generous offers for his artworks from private collectors – including one of around £5,000 for The Fighting Temeraire (equivalent to over £500,000 today) – opting instead to bequeath them to the British public so that they can be enjoyed by everyone for free.

“Housed for a time at the National Gallery and the British Museum, in 1910 the bulk of the Bequest was transferred to Tate Britain. In 1987 a dedicated Turner wing – the Clore Galleries – was added to the building. Here you can see many of his masterpieces today, seven days a week, entirely for free,” continues Dr Concannon.

“Just walking around the Clore Galleries, you realise how closely Turner’s work is woven into our lives, from instantly recognisable oil paintings like Norham Castle, Sunrise (1845) to his self-portrait, which some of us are probably carrying around with us already: it’s on the back of the £20 note (along with his signature and an image of The Fighting Temeraire).”

Another venue taking part in the ‘Turner 250 Year’ celebrations is the artist’s former home, Sandycombe Lodge in Twickenham, which he designed himself (Turner initially trained as an architectural draughtsman) with guidance from his friend John Soane, who designed the Bank of England. The small but charming villa and its immaculate gardens on the outskirts of London, where Turner lived with his “old Dad” (to whom he was a devoted son), has been turned into a museum that offers a fascinating glimpse into the personal life of Britain’s favourite artist.

Director Mike Leigh visited the house as part of the research for his multi-award-winning 2014 film, Mr. Turner, in which he directed Timothy Spall in the title role.

Turner loved nature as a keen angler; the location of Sandycombe Lodge was partly chosen for its proximity to the rivers Brent and Thames – and this is one aspect of his life examined in a new exhibition there, Turner’s Kingdom: Beauty, Birds, and Beasts, which runs until the end of October. It is curated by art historian Nicola Moorby whose latest book Turner & Constable – Art, Life, Landscape has recently been published by Yale University Press, and who agrees with her fellow experts at the National Gallery and Tate Britain.

“There is something about Turner that continues to speak to people. His work still astonishes, even today. He has seeped into the national consciousness so that, in some respects, we now see the world according to Turner,” she explains.

“You hear people talking about him in common parlance. They talk about Turner sunsets or Turner skies, seas or storms and so on. And that’s a very deep intrinsic thing for a nation which is very sensitive to its landscape and its environment – and especially its weather. Turner has, in a way, become part of what it means to be British.”

● For details of the events taking place in Turner 250 Year, visit nationalgallery.org.uk; tate.org.uk and turnershouse.org