'Late Turner’ to be explored and celebrated at Tate Britain

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Tickets are now already on sale on Tate Britain’s website for what promises to be the must-see show of the autumn.

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) continued to paint prolifically to the end of his life, despite living in a period when most people lived a much shorter life than he did, and when it was popularly supposed that senility set in at age 60! Sam Smiles, the curator of the planned Tate Britain show, argues that the artist’s late work, produced in the last 15 years of his life, has been misunderstood and misrepresented. Contemporary critics saw his light-filled canvases, with their indistinct figuration and frequent use of vortices to convey elemental forces, as evidence of mental decline, whereas later critics have seen the work as proto-Impressionism or even proto-abstraction.

Both sets of critics ignored how important subject matter was to Turner. The new exhibition will explore the wide range of subjects in Turner’s paintings: biblical and historical subjects and  current events, as well as the high technology of the day, such as whaling boats and railways. Like us, the artist lived at a time of rapid technological change and in his 60s and 70s he was still engaging with this through his work, not only in his choice of subject matter but also in his use of new techniques of painting.

The exhibition will cover the period from 1835 to 1850. No previous exhibition has concentrated on this period, some examples of which have usually been shown at the end of chronological displays. Here, they will form the content of the whole show. It will include watercolours as well as oil paintings and a number of major paintings from other parts of the UK and abroad. Not to be missed!

‘Late Turner: Painting Set Free’
Tate Britain, Linbury Galleries
Millbank
London
SW1P 4RG

10 September 2014–25 January 2015