Turner and the Masters

Having already been seen in London and Paris, Turner and the Masters will now be shown at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Its aim is to reveal to visitors the extent of Turner’s links with other historically important artists and the profoundly original way in which he assimilated their influence. This comparison will assist in an understanding of how Turner’s approach to and assimilation of other artists was intended not just as an homage to them but also involved a subtle and highly original type of transformation of their teachings.

Among the differences between this version of the exhibition and those already seen are the presence of a number of paintings not shown in London or Paris, including Shipwreck of a Cargo Boat, Snowstorm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps, Peace. Burial at Sea, Shade and Darkness: evening of the Deluge, and Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory): the morning after the Deluge, all absolute masterpieces by Turner.

The works by other painters to be seen in the exhibition include some particularly outstanding masterpieces that have never previously been exhibited in Spain, such as Girl at the Window by Rembrandt, Les Plaisirs du Bal by Watteau, both loaned from Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, and the latter only shown at the Prado, as are the major canvases by Claude Lorraine and Rubens, Port Scene with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula (London, National Gallery), and Landscape with a Cart at Dusk (Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen). Also on display solely in the version of the exhibition at the Prado is An English Ship in a north-west Gale trying to beat windward (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London) by the 17th-century, English-based Dutch painter Willem van de Velde the Younger.

During the 19th century Turner was one of the key figures within the modernisation of landscape painting due to the extremely innovative nature of his ideas. The foundations of his approach undoubtedly rest on the profound study of the work of the Old Masters that he undertook. From the outset of his career the artist was aware that to possess a truly broad formation required a knowledge both of the work of the great masters of the past and of the art of his own time.

Within the development of his own style, an extremely important role was played by 16th-century Venetian painting (Titian, Veronese) and, above all, French classical landscape painting (Claude, Poussin), whose models the artist closely followed. In addition to this dual tradition, which was highly appreciated in English academic art circles, he added the influence of northern painting, both the Dutch school (Rembrandt and Ruisdael, among others), and Flemish art (Rubens, Teniers), as well as Watteau and the work of other British painters closer to his own day, such as Gainsborough and Wilkie.

Turner’s interest in Old Master painting led him to pay explicit homage to some of the most important artists of the past, including Raphael, Ruisdael, Watteau and Canaletto, introducing their themes and motifs into his work or making them the actual subjects of his paintings. Throughout Turner’s career the issue of comparison and competition with the British artists of his time is an important one. Their works hung together at the Royal Academy exhibitions, and this confrontation was particularly significant with regard to another great British painter, John Constable.

Towards the end of his career Turner executed works that can be seen as re-thinkings and profound reconsiderations of his entire career, filtered through the dual influence of classical landscape (Claude) and Dutch naturalism (Ruisdael), and resulting in work of a remarkable intensity that led to an authentic transformation of the art of landscape.

This opening section shows how Turner’s conventional training as an architectural draughtsman and at the Royal Academy’s drawing schools from 1789 laid the foundations of his enormous ambition. It was here that he learnt his craft, and the all-important lesson that artists were meant to aspire to greatness by copying, then trying to rival, those who had come before.

Turner’s growing ambitions are apparent in the pictures he created in the later 1790s and in the first decade of the nineteenth century. He wanted to emulate the elevated poetry of classical landscape painting and the powerful naturalism of the seventeenth-century Dutch masters. These pictures show, too, that he had absorbed the lessons of the most adventurous recent art.

Perhaps in response to developments in contemporary French painting, from about 1820 Turner produced a number of pictures dealing with the theme of artistic biography. Around the same time he started to term himself a "Historical Landscape" painter, suggesting the widening range of reference and ambition that he brought to his work.

Turner’s first completed painting in this genre was the impressively large Rome, from the Vatican, showing the Renaissance artist Raphael displaying his masterpieces. Turner went on to create pictures that represented the Venetian artist Canaletto at work and the Flemish-born artist Watteau in his studio. His Port Ruysdael brought that master of Dutch painting to mind by the invention of a place named after him, as well as through an evocative pictorial style. Underlying these pictures is Turner’s growing sense of his own mortality, a questioning of whether he had achieved enough to merit a place alongside the predecessors he most admired. By focusing on celebrated and successful artists from the past, such pictures also implied criticism of the relatively neglected state of the arts in modern Britain.

Turner’s engagement with the Northern European art tradition was central to the formation of his artistic identity. During the nineteenth century, British artists increasingly looked to the technical dexterity and naturalism of Dutch and Flemish painting as a model for their own attempts to depict their native scenery. This was partly a response to the demands of the market, as skilfully rendered, illusionistic Northern canvases were highly prized by collectors and connoisseurs. Although Grand Style Italian works held a higher status within the academic hierarchy, smaller Netherlandish images, and their undemanding subject matter, were better suited for private collections.

Turner engaged with a broad range of Northern traditions. The early years of the nineteenth century witnessed a vogue for paintings of everyday life, by artists such as Rembrandt and David Teniers, whose example was emulated by Turner’s contemporary David Wilkie with great critical (and financial) success. Determined not to miss an opportunity, Turner staged a number of forays into genre painting. He further expanded his repertoire with Rembrandtesque subjects and images evoking Watteau’s decorative park scenes.

Perhaps in response to developments in contemporary French painting, from about 1820 Turner produced a number of pictures dealing with the theme of artistic biography. Around the same time he started to term himself a "Historical Landscape" painter, suggesting the widening range of reference and ambition that he brought to his work.

Turner’s first completed painting in this genre was the impressively large Rome, from the Vatican, showing the Renaissance artist Raphael displaying his masterpieces. Turner went on to create pictures that represented the Venetian artist Canaletto at work and the Flemish-born artist Watteau in his studio. His Port Ruysdael brought that master of Dutch painting to mind by the invention of a place named after him, as well as through an evocative pictorial style. Underlying these pictures is Turner’s growing sense of his own mortality, a questioning of whether he had achieved enough to merit a place alongside the predecessors he most admired. By focusing on celebrated and successful artists from the past, such pictures also implied criticism of the relatively neglected state of the arts in modern Britain.

The late Georgian art world was a fiercely competitive arena, with the heat of battle at its most intense in the summer exhibitions at the Royal Academy. It was here that Turner staged his most audacious attempts to outshine his contemporaries. In a space crowded with a noisy multitude, with hundreds of pictures vying for attention on the walls, painters had to exploit their talent and materials to the limit, if they were to succeed in catching the spectator’s eye.

Key to commanding attention were high colouring and dynamic compositions, both of which Turner exploited to great success. He was also an adept showman, and would take full advantage of the Academy’s ‘varnishing days’ —a short period before the exhibition was publicly open, when artists were allowed to make last-minute adjustments to their pictures— to perform acts of outright confrontation. In so doing, Turner was not only drawing attention to his work, but asking that it be seen as a response and challenge to those around it. If Turner’s engagement with the Old Masters demonstrates the height of his ambition, his rivalry with the moderns proves his determination to dominate his own era.

Even in his most innovative works, painted in his maturity as an artist, Turner reasserted his faith in the great tradition of European art. The main starting points in his career had been Claude’s classical landscapes and the more empirical approach to nature typical of Dutch masters like Ruisdael. Both influences were still bearing fruit in the late years in works whose execution reveals development towards a radically modern conception. At the same time and as a means to consolidating his place in the history of art, Turner planned the bequest to the National Gallery of two works representative of his way of interpreting that double tradition. Finally, in tackling themes in his mature years from religious history, particularly Genesis and the Apocalypse, he displayed the most universal facet of his art, significantly linked to modern conceptions on colour.