Get out at Pimlico tube and head south but instead of carrying on down John Islip Street, nodding to the statue of John Everett Millais, the PRB who became PRA, and entering Tate Britain by the back entrance, I turn off to the right. It’s another too hot day so I grab a can of coke from the corner shop, walk on down to Millbank, sit on one of the benches and have a drink while looking out over the Thames. The tree that’s thankfully providing some shade here is also blocking the view a bit but through the branches I can just about make out the famous MI6 landmark building as it squats next to Vauxhall Bridge. It’s a fantasy castle construction of sandstone and green glass that’s also presumably protected by an invisible kryptonite force field or something since it emerged unscathed from a mortar attack by the IRA some years ago. Although it has had bits blown out of it a couple of times in James Bond films by supervillains who perhaps thought it would help further their plans for world domination or maybe wished simply to critique the slightly jokey, pastiche architectural style of the building as being singularly inappropriate for a place whose occupants engage in such seriously secretive security matters.
Either way, I assume that some lowly clerical assistant level intern spook has penetrated my arboreal camouflage by now and is looking back at me, using facial recognition software to try to determine whether I’m really just a thirsty blogger with an interest in art and architecture or someone more sinister. And so, in order to add weight to my back-up cover story, I turn my gaze through 180 degrees and take a look at another, slightly smaller but no less showy, example of the subset of the Post-Modern architectural style that became popular for a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Clore Gallery, with its mash up façade of red and yellow brickwork with lime green window fittings, got jammed onto the side of the Tate Gallery’s Neo-Classical stonework a few years before construction of the MI6 building began but both share the same sort of light-hearted quirky design that, over the years, has come to look increasingly dated and heavy-handed. By contrast, the contents of the Gallery – dozens and dozens of works bequeathed to the nation by the great Joseph Mallord William Turner, on condition that he got his own gallery – remain timeless. Ok, that’s a bit of a cliché but it’s certainly true that Turner was very highly regarded and successful for most of his artistic career and that his critical and popular reputation has remained consistently high during the century and a half since his death in 1851.
Before taking a look at some of his paintings in the Gallery it’s perhaps worth having one final dig at the building by pointing out that although the Millbank entrance has the full, flashy façade described above, hardly anyone actually uses it and the large ground floor foyer looks empty, desolate and all rather sad. Consequently, the portrait of Mr Clore, whose money contributed so much towards the costs of the building, is left hanging here, unseen and unacknowledged by the vast majority of visitors to his Gallery who enter instead via a turning off from one of the rooms of the main Tate Britain building next door. Nowadays, I think the curators probably expect visitors to enter this way since those that do are greeted by the famous self-portrait that Turner painted showing a self-confident 24-year-old directing his gaze straight back towards all his future audiences. Of course, another reason that Turner decided to paint himself head-on could be that it helped to soften the edges of the rather large nose the artist had inherited from this father. Anyway, it’s a pretty good painting and the solitary portrait among all the displays here, for while Turner was happy to have a go at producing work in most stylistic genres, from history painting to religious scenes and classical narratives, by far his greatest successes were achieved when he stuck with the landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes that he produced in such prodigious quantities. There must be a couple of these hanging in the historical collections of just about every provincial art gallery in the country and, for an artist who produced so many oil paintings, watercolours and prints, the quality is surprisingly consistent. Although, it has to be said, that while Turner was the master at creating swirling seas, shimmering skies and striking scenery some of the figures he incorporated into these studies were decidedly awkward looking and he never seems to have really bothered very much about matters of anatomical accuracy. Limbs tend to be out of proportion or missing muscles and joints and vary from the awkward and uncomfortable to the downright odd and malformed though, fortunately, figures tend to play minor roles in the design of most of his paintings and so can usually be overlooked without detracting too much from the overall impact of his works.
I think it’s fair to say that the general creative arc of Turner’s fifty-odd year career shows the artist moving steadily away from the more precise, defined style of painting as epitomised by The Shipwreck of 1805, where the crashing white spume just as much as the slate gray skies and seas appear as if carved out of solid stone blocks. Thirty years later, having travelled extensively throughout Europe, Turner was fully aware of a different, more luminous, southern continental light and a whole range of atmospheric effects that come in its wake. And so by the time he produces St Benedetto, Looking towards Fusina in 1842, this idealised version of a Venetian scene includes gondoliers and churches that are almost as ethereal and insubstantial as the sunshine and clouds that overwhelm them in this hugely attractive atmospherical tonal study.
In similar vein, whereas Turner started off painting fairly rigorous topographical studies of places like Richmond Hill, on the Prince Regent’s Birthday in1819, he then moved on through all manner of exotic tales from history and classical mythology before coming up with the quasi-mystical oddities like The Angel Standing in the Sun of 1846. The curators of the Gallery have declined the opportunity of displaying the works in specific chronological order, preferring to go for a more thematic show, so I’m not sure just how clearly defined was Turner’s progression from a sort of precise, commonsense realism to a more looser, free form, impressionistic style of painting. But, either way, it’s clear that the artist was keen to experiment with different subjects and techniques throughout his life, a spirit of inquiry and challenge that imbues itself with many of his works and which may be one of the reasons that he still remains so popular today.
In addition to the dozen or so rooms devoted to Turner, the displays here also include a small selection of works by one of his contemporaries, the other great British landscape painter, John Constable. The contrast could hardly be more apparent, for if Turner shows an obvious delight in producing dramatic displays of risky painterly virtuosity, especially in his later, near abstracted colour studies, Constable doggedly pursues his own far more down-to-earth mission to record as accurately as possible the sights and scenes of everyday life in the depths of the English countryside. It’s true that, on occasion, Constable attempted to represent a more adventurous urban scene as with The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, which comes complete with a parade of grenadier guards and a procession of highly ornamental boats decked out in red and golds. And while such a work is indeed impressive, it’s hard not to sense that Constable felt a good deal more comfortable away from the city exploring all the more subtle variations of brown and greens that he found in the natural world.
Finally, for completion’s sake, I get back onto Millbank and take the fifteen minute bus ride on the 87 up to the National Gallery, where there are another half dozen top Turners to be seen. Head straight into the Gallery till you reach the Velazquezs, then take a right past the Caravggios, right again at the Ingres and Davids and you should get to 19th century British Art. And I’m pleased to be able to say that it’s actually a pretty good display. Reynolds, Gainsborough and Stubbs all make an appearance and then there are three of the nation’s best-loved paintings by two of the nation’s best-loved artists: Constable’s The Hay Wain; Turner’s Rain Steam and Speed and The Fighting Temeraire.
