0:00:03 > 0:00:08If Joseph Mallord William Turner is famous for just one thing,
0:00:08 > 0:00:09it's this,
0:00:09 > 0:00:10his sunsets.
0:00:11 > 0:00:14When I was a student and...
0:00:14 > 0:00:16growing up in Margate, you were aware of Turner,
0:00:16 > 0:00:18there was blue plaques and everything.
0:00:18 > 0:00:19And you were told about the fact
0:00:19 > 0:00:21there was this famous Victorian artist
0:00:21 > 0:00:24that came to Margate because of the beautiful sunsets.
0:00:25 > 0:00:30Turner stands above every other British landscape painter.
0:00:30 > 0:00:32His name conjures up images of dramatic skies,
0:00:32 > 0:00:36daunting crags and wild seas.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39But there's another side to Turner.
0:00:43 > 0:00:48Machines, technology, industry.
0:00:48 > 0:00:50The opposite of nature.
0:00:51 > 0:00:55Turner was much more than a painter of lyrical landscapes.
0:00:55 > 0:00:58He embraced the wonders of science and progress.
0:01:00 > 0:01:06In the years between his birth in 1775 and his death in 1851,
0:01:06 > 0:01:11Britain experienced the most tumultuous upheaval in its history,
0:01:11 > 0:01:13the Industrial Revolution.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16Essentially, Turner was born in the age of sail,
0:01:16 > 0:01:19and he died in the age of steam.
0:01:20 > 0:01:25A new was age was being created, fuelled by science and invention.
0:01:25 > 0:01:28Science has bestowed on man
0:01:28 > 0:01:32powers which could almost be called creative.
0:01:32 > 0:01:35The chemist Humphry Davy discovered new elements.
0:01:35 > 0:01:38Michael Faraday harnessed the power of electricity.
0:01:38 > 0:01:42The connection being now made, the copper wire immediately begins
0:01:42 > 0:01:45to revolve around the pole of magnet.
0:01:45 > 0:01:49Charles Babbage unveiled plans for the world's first computer.
0:01:49 > 0:01:54A machine capable of computing any table with the aid of differences.
0:01:54 > 0:01:57It was about finding out about the stuff of life.
0:01:57 > 0:02:00That feeds into technological change.
0:02:00 > 0:02:03You know, new engines, new techniques,
0:02:03 > 0:02:08canals, tunnels, steamships, factories develop.
0:02:08 > 0:02:09It's an enormous span
0:02:09 > 0:02:14where science and technology and industry all go together.
0:02:16 > 0:02:20Turner was at the heart of these momentous events.
0:02:20 > 0:02:24He painted the Industrial Revolution as it unfolded,
0:02:24 > 0:02:27and in the process created a whole new kind of art.
0:02:27 > 0:02:31He wanted to sort of instinctively see
0:02:31 > 0:02:34if belching smoke and a cantering train
0:02:34 > 0:02:38would generate that kind of beauty.
0:02:38 > 0:02:40He is telling his audience that it's here,
0:02:40 > 0:02:43and my goodness, it's rushing up at you.
0:02:44 > 0:02:46A new world was being forged,
0:02:46 > 0:02:49and Turner, more than any other painter,
0:02:49 > 0:02:51captured what it felt like to be there.
0:03:04 > 0:03:06London, 1807.
0:03:06 > 0:03:09Gas lamps light up Pall Mall for the first time.
0:03:10 > 0:03:14Britain is in the middle of a scientific revolution.
0:03:14 > 0:03:17The phenomena of combustion,
0:03:17 > 0:03:20the solution of difference substances in water,
0:03:20 > 0:03:22the agencies of fire!
0:03:22 > 0:03:24APPLAUSE
0:03:24 > 0:03:29At the Royal Institution, Humphry Davy is the star of the show.
0:03:29 > 0:03:33The production... of rain, hail and snow!
0:03:35 > 0:03:37Humphry Davy is extraordinary.
0:03:37 > 0:03:38He had huge crowds.
0:03:38 > 0:03:42In fact, Albemarle Street became the first one-way street in London
0:03:42 > 0:03:47because the traffic was so dense when people went to his lectures.
0:03:47 > 0:03:48For the first time,
0:03:48 > 0:03:52we see potassium kind of wonderfully flaring through the crust,
0:03:52 > 0:03:56or sodium bursting into flames on water.
0:03:56 > 0:04:01Barium, calcium, strontium all new elements.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04So the people that come along don't just come for the show.
0:04:04 > 0:04:08They come to go away thinking they are at the forefront of knowledge.
0:04:09 > 0:04:13This is the world in which Turner finds himself
0:04:13 > 0:04:16as a young painter at the beginning of the 19th century.
0:04:17 > 0:04:19He's fascinated
0:04:19 > 0:04:25by the visual manifestation of scientific...discovery.
0:04:26 > 0:04:28These ideas were bubbling up around him.
0:04:30 > 0:04:35People met, they talked with the same aim in view,
0:04:35 > 0:04:40which was understanding and discovering what goes on around us.
0:04:40 > 0:04:44These ideas began to fire him up.
0:04:56 > 0:04:59The Fighting Temeraire.
0:04:59 > 0:05:02The nation's favourite painting.
0:05:02 > 0:05:05Turner painted it towards the end of his life when he was 64,
0:05:05 > 0:05:08and it captures on canvas the extraordinary journey
0:05:08 > 0:05:11the world had taken over the course of his lifetime.
0:05:14 > 0:05:18So the painting is of the Temeraire
0:05:18 > 0:05:20being towed from Sheerness to Rotherhithe.
0:05:20 > 0:05:22It's on its last ever voyage.
0:05:22 > 0:05:26It's this great leviathan of the age of sail
0:05:26 > 0:05:30being towed up the Thames into the heart of London by a steam tug.
0:05:32 > 0:05:35The moon is rising on one side of the ship,
0:05:35 > 0:05:37and on the far side of the steamer,
0:05:37 > 0:05:40we have the sun in a big explosion of fiery red.
0:05:43 > 0:05:46For the Victorian public who first saw this painting,
0:05:46 > 0:05:49the Temeraire was a ship that had symbolised
0:05:49 > 0:05:51the best and worst of Nelson's navy.
0:05:52 > 0:05:56She'd been one the bravest battleships in the British fleet
0:05:56 > 0:06:01with a story that began in 1802, not in glory but in disgrace.
0:06:06 > 0:06:08A lot of the English sailors aboard her,
0:06:08 > 0:06:11they'd been fighting basically for nine years,
0:06:11 > 0:06:14and they just wanted to go home, and they weren't allowed to.
0:06:14 > 0:06:17They thought it was their right when, in fact, it wasn't.
0:06:18 > 0:06:20The mutineers were flogged,
0:06:20 > 0:06:23and the leaders of the mutiny, they were all hanged.
0:06:25 > 0:06:27From infamous beginnings,
0:06:27 > 0:06:31the Temeraire went on to become a national treasure because of this,
0:06:31 > 0:06:33Trafalgar.
0:06:33 > 0:06:35The British attacked in two columns.
0:06:35 > 0:06:38The Temeraire sailed just behind Nelson.
0:06:38 > 0:06:42Nelson, his ship, the Victory, was immediately attacked.
0:06:42 > 0:06:45It was at this moment that Nelson was shot.
0:06:45 > 0:06:47The captain of the Temeraire,
0:06:47 > 0:06:52he saw the Victory in trouble and piled straight in.
0:06:54 > 0:06:56So it was unmistakably heroic, what they did,
0:06:56 > 0:06:59putting themselves right in the heat of the action.
0:07:07 > 0:07:11After the peace with France was declared,
0:07:11 > 0:07:14ships like that came to the end of their useful life
0:07:14 > 0:07:18until finally the Admiralty decided there was no further use for it
0:07:18 > 0:07:19and it needed to be broken up.
0:07:22 > 0:07:25So what you're looking at is a tug boat
0:07:25 > 0:07:28owned by the ship-breaker Beatson,
0:07:28 > 0:07:30pulling the Temeraire up river
0:07:30 > 0:07:34towards its final destination at Rotherhithe.
0:07:35 > 0:07:39What Turner's got there is this sort of sense of a ghost,
0:07:39 > 0:07:44a veteran ghost of something grand and epic in British life.
0:07:44 > 0:07:47So it's coming to its last moment,
0:07:47 > 0:07:51but it's being pulled there by this tough little iron tug boat.
0:07:57 > 0:08:00The Temeraire when she came from Sheerness up to Rotherhithe
0:08:00 > 0:08:02was a very sad hulk.
0:08:02 > 0:08:06She had no masts at all, she was literally falling apart,
0:08:06 > 0:08:07but what Turner does
0:08:07 > 0:08:11is he paints almost like she appeared in her glory days.
0:08:11 > 0:08:13He's deliberately doing that
0:08:13 > 0:08:16to make such a visible important contrast
0:08:16 > 0:08:19between this steam tug that's pulling her along
0:08:19 > 0:08:22and the great sailing warships
0:08:22 > 0:08:24as they would have appeared in their pomp.
0:08:27 > 0:08:32I see it also as a combination of noise and silence,
0:08:32 > 0:08:36that you feel the thrashing of the wheels going round in the water,
0:08:36 > 0:08:39and the sound of the engines, the smoke coming out of the funnel,
0:08:39 > 0:08:42indicating all that kind of clanking industrial bustle
0:08:42 > 0:08:45you associate with the new technology.
0:08:45 > 0:08:49And behind it you just hear the ripple
0:08:49 > 0:08:52of this other ship being towed silently to its doom.
0:08:55 > 0:08:57Many people, when it was exhibited,
0:08:57 > 0:09:01saw it as a sort of elegy for the passing of the age of sail
0:09:01 > 0:09:04and its replacement by the new technology of steam.
0:09:07 > 0:09:12This is the time when the top guns of Victorian polemic
0:09:12 > 0:09:14are saying that we are damned
0:09:14 > 0:09:17if we become prisoners of the machine age,
0:09:17 > 0:09:22our Christianity is at peril, our national character is at peril,
0:09:22 > 0:09:24we can no longer be moral to each other.
0:09:26 > 0:09:28Turner didn't feel like that at all,
0:09:28 > 0:09:31and the Victorian public didn't want to feel like that at all.
0:09:33 > 0:09:35I don't think it is sad.
0:09:35 > 0:09:38It seems to me to be a familial picture,
0:09:38 > 0:09:43as if this young, tubby steam tug is the new generation,
0:09:43 > 0:09:45which is guiding
0:09:45 > 0:09:49some Miss Havisham-like ghost of the past!
0:09:50 > 0:09:52He called the painting, "my old darling",
0:09:52 > 0:09:56so he knew somehow this was the one that made people happy,
0:09:56 > 0:09:58because it did actually make them feel good
0:09:58 > 0:10:02about the fact they weren't just relying
0:10:02 > 0:10:06and leaning on wonderful memories of faded glory.
0:10:06 > 0:10:08The faded glory was being pulled on
0:10:08 > 0:10:12by an equally tough, glorious, solid, black, energised future.
0:10:23 > 0:10:29Steamships are, in Turner, a symbol of the modern world.
0:10:29 > 0:10:33Turner really embraced the idea of steam.
0:10:33 > 0:10:36I think that's incontrovertible.
0:10:38 > 0:10:43While there are very many wrecked sailing ships in Turner,
0:10:43 > 0:10:46there are no wrecked steamships.
0:10:47 > 0:10:50Steamships are everywhere.
0:10:54 > 0:10:56Turner's sketchbooks are really quite extraordinary.
0:10:56 > 0:10:58He kept them all his life.
0:10:58 > 0:11:03He often kept several of them in his pocket at the same time.
0:11:03 > 0:11:07And this is a steamer, just off a harbour.
0:11:09 > 0:11:10And quite typically,
0:11:10 > 0:11:13Turner has added a couple of little colour notes for himself
0:11:13 > 0:11:15just to remind himself of the effect,
0:11:15 > 0:11:19so where the smoke is fading away,
0:11:19 > 0:11:21he marks G for grey.
0:11:22 > 0:11:24And of course, it's not a composition,
0:11:24 > 0:11:27it's just a very quick record of something seen,
0:11:27 > 0:11:30and these sketchbooks are full of little memoranda like that.
0:11:32 > 0:11:35Turner was absolutely a chronicler of his times.
0:11:35 > 0:11:38He was interested in everything that was going on around him,
0:11:38 > 0:11:40and of course this was what made him
0:11:40 > 0:11:45such a wonderful portrayer of the Britain of his day.
0:11:49 > 0:11:54In the 1820s, international steam travel arrived,
0:11:54 > 0:11:56and Turner was one of the first to record it.
0:11:56 > 0:12:00In Dover, a steamer chugs merrily out to sea
0:12:00 > 0:12:02while oarsmen puff and pant in the foreground.
0:12:04 > 0:12:07Steamboats were soon a regular sight around the coast of Britain.
0:12:09 > 0:12:12It must have been a great relief to get on a modern steamer,
0:12:12 > 0:12:14instead of the old heaving hoys
0:12:14 > 0:12:17that used to make everybody horrendously seasick
0:12:17 > 0:12:19and took hours and hours to get there.
0:12:19 > 0:12:22It would have been a very exciting thing.
0:12:29 > 0:12:31But the world into which Turner was born
0:12:31 > 0:12:33couldn't have been more different.
0:12:33 > 0:12:38He came from another era 18th century Georgian England.
0:12:40 > 0:12:44Turner was born in 1775, the same year as Jane Austen.
0:12:44 > 0:12:48His father was a barber and wig-maker
0:12:48 > 0:12:51who practised his trade in Covent Garden.
0:12:51 > 0:12:52Just tuck you in, sir...
0:12:52 > 0:12:54It's an area where, because of theatre,
0:12:54 > 0:12:57the beginnings of opera and all that world,
0:12:57 > 0:13:01society is coming, and good society and dodgy society.
0:13:03 > 0:13:06Turner's dad was very ambitious for him.
0:13:06 > 0:13:08He was very keen that Turner should make money.
0:13:08 > 0:13:10He said that his father never praised him
0:13:10 > 0:13:13for anything other than saving a ha'penny...
0:13:13 > 0:13:15My own son, sir.
0:13:15 > 0:13:17..which seems to left its mark on Turner's character,
0:13:17 > 0:13:20because he became somewhat notoriously mean with money
0:13:20 > 0:13:21throughout his life.
0:13:23 > 0:13:27It was obvious from quite early on that Turner was very gifted.
0:13:30 > 0:13:34The good thing about his father having a barber's business
0:13:34 > 0:13:37was that lots of different sorts of people would come in there
0:13:37 > 0:13:40to have their hair trimmed or their faces shaved,
0:13:40 > 0:13:45and we know that some of the people who came in got to see Turner's work.
0:13:45 > 0:13:49One person who is known to have frequented the barber's shop
0:13:49 > 0:13:51was Thomas Stothard.
0:13:51 > 0:13:54And Thomas Stothard was actually a member of the Royal Academy.
0:13:54 > 0:13:56He was a painter.
0:13:56 > 0:13:58And Turner's father once remarked
0:13:58 > 0:14:00to Thomas Stothard, the Royal Academician...
0:14:00 > 0:14:03My son is going to be a painter.
0:14:06 > 0:14:11And he did, he joined the Royal Academy Schools at the age of 14.
0:14:16 > 0:14:20Joshua Reynolds, the first president of the Royal Academy, was in charge,
0:14:20 > 0:14:23and Turner absolutely revered Reynolds.
0:14:23 > 0:14:25The great end to all art
0:14:25 > 0:14:30is to make an impression on the imagination and the feelings.
0:14:30 > 0:14:34The imitation of nature frequently does this.
0:14:34 > 0:14:38Sometimes it fails and something else succeeds.
0:14:38 > 0:14:42You know, he was a scholarship boy, got into the Royal Academy School.
0:14:42 > 0:14:45He's sort of upwardly mobile through his wits,
0:14:45 > 0:14:48and you could at that time be such a person.
0:14:48 > 0:14:51And then he's on his way.
0:14:51 > 0:14:53The academy in those days
0:14:53 > 0:14:56wasn't what we think of an art school being now.
0:14:56 > 0:15:00You weren't taught to paint at all, it was a drawing school,
0:15:00 > 0:15:03and you were very much on your own in a way.
0:15:05 > 0:15:10I wish you to be persuaded that success in your art
0:15:10 > 0:15:14depends almost entirely on your own industry,
0:15:14 > 0:15:18and that industry, I principally recommend,
0:15:18 > 0:15:20is not of the industry of the hands
0:15:20 > 0:15:22but of the mind.
0:15:24 > 0:15:27He taught himself to paint in oils,
0:15:27 > 0:15:30and at the age of 21, in 1796,
0:15:30 > 0:15:34he exhibited his first oil painting at the Royal Academy,
0:15:34 > 0:15:37and it was called Fishermen At Sea.
0:15:38 > 0:15:41It was an absolutely virtuoso piece of painting.
0:15:44 > 0:15:46It was almost as if he'd waited
0:15:46 > 0:15:49till he'd completely mastered oil painting
0:15:49 > 0:15:52and then demonstrated exactly what he could do.
0:15:55 > 0:15:57You know, I mean, if one thinks of an artist like Constable,
0:15:57 > 0:16:01he had to battle for years to get taken seriously
0:16:01 > 0:16:04and was an incredibly slow-burner compared to Turner,
0:16:04 > 0:16:06who came roaring onto the scene
0:16:06 > 0:16:10and continued to occupy the centre ground for the rest of his life.
0:16:13 > 0:16:15I think, by the time he painted the self-portrait,
0:16:15 > 0:16:18he probably felt he really had arrived.
0:16:18 > 0:16:20And it's a very flattering self-portrait.
0:16:20 > 0:16:22I mean, Turner didn't like his own appearance.
0:16:22 > 0:16:26He was quite short, quite rough in his manners,
0:16:26 > 0:16:29strong Cockney accent, which he never got rid of,
0:16:29 > 0:16:32never wanted to get rid of it.
0:16:32 > 0:16:35He was very pushy, very self-assertive,
0:16:35 > 0:16:37very ambitious,
0:16:37 > 0:16:41but...he had the talent to go with it.
0:16:41 > 0:16:44I would chiefly recommend an implicit obedience
0:16:44 > 0:16:49to the rules of art as established by the great masters.
0:16:49 > 0:16:53Reynolds pointed Turner towards certain painters
0:16:53 > 0:16:56who he regarded were models of great painting.
0:16:56 > 0:17:00But the practice of the Frenchman Claude Lorrain is to be adopted...
0:17:00 > 0:17:05He would recommend the 17th century French painters,
0:17:05 > 0:17:07Claude in particular.
0:17:08 > 0:17:13Claude was regarded as the absolute master of light in landscape.
0:17:16 > 0:17:18Claude painted classical scenes
0:17:18 > 0:17:22of gods and nymphs frolicking in nature.
0:17:22 > 0:17:26Ironically, it would be Claude, a painter of a mythical past,
0:17:26 > 0:17:28who would inspire Turner
0:17:28 > 0:17:32to paint the industrial Britain of 19th century.
0:17:32 > 0:17:34Turner certainly loved Claude's paintings.
0:17:34 > 0:17:37There's a famous story of him as a young man
0:17:37 > 0:17:40going to a collector's house
0:17:40 > 0:17:44and seeing paintings by Claude and bursting into tears.
0:17:44 > 0:17:45He said...
0:17:45 > 0:17:47I shall never paint like that.
0:17:47 > 0:17:51But of course as time went by, he did paint like that.
0:17:51 > 0:17:52He started to think
0:17:52 > 0:17:56about how he could apply the lessons of Claude's art
0:17:56 > 0:17:59to something appropriate to his own age.
0:18:08 > 0:18:11This is Turner's version of a Claude.
0:18:11 > 0:18:14Young women bathe in pastoral setting.
0:18:14 > 0:18:17It looks in every way like a Claude,
0:18:17 > 0:18:20except this is not the mythical past.
0:18:20 > 0:18:22It's Devon in 1815,
0:18:22 > 0:18:27and the Industrial Revolution is about to transform the landscape.
0:18:28 > 0:18:33If you look very, very carefully, you'll see an enormous water wheel.
0:18:33 > 0:18:37And this is the wheel for Gunnislake Old Mine,
0:18:37 > 0:18:40which was the biggest copper mine in the world at the time.
0:18:40 > 0:18:42So he paints this picture
0:18:42 > 0:18:45of the most Claudian scene he can find in England
0:18:45 > 0:18:47as though he were a modern Claude,
0:18:47 > 0:18:50but, unlike Claude, he includes in the middle of it
0:18:50 > 0:18:52a scene of modern industries.
0:19:00 > 0:19:02Ten years later,
0:19:02 > 0:19:05and Turner's hint of an industrial Britain
0:19:05 > 0:19:07becomes an onslaught.
0:19:07 > 0:19:09A Claudian seaport
0:19:09 > 0:19:12transformed into the fires and furnaces
0:19:12 > 0:19:13of modern Britain.
0:19:15 > 0:19:18It's the most resolutely industrial scene
0:19:18 > 0:19:21of coal being loaded onboard a ship
0:19:21 > 0:19:25to be taken from the Northumbrian coalfields to the rest of Britain.
0:19:29 > 0:19:30This is a moonlight scene,
0:19:30 > 0:19:34but this is modern industry on the Tyne.
0:19:34 > 0:19:35Industry never stops.
0:19:35 > 0:19:41It's a 24-hour productive effort, and this is about industrial might.
0:19:41 > 0:19:45These are the reasons that the England that Turner lives in
0:19:45 > 0:19:48has become that very place.
0:19:48 > 0:19:53It's because industry is a transforming factor in the world,
0:19:53 > 0:19:55and his picture is a response to that.
0:19:57 > 0:20:01I think Turner was very excited by this kind of progress
0:20:01 > 0:20:06and also its potential for him as an artist to make pictures.
0:20:09 > 0:20:13Keelmen is a modern British equivalent
0:20:13 > 0:20:17of a classical Claude seaport.
0:20:17 > 0:20:19It's a tradition bought up-to-date.
0:20:21 > 0:20:24Claude's seaport paintings were very distinctive,
0:20:24 > 0:20:27because you were invariably looking to the source of light,
0:20:27 > 0:20:29which was the sun,
0:20:29 > 0:20:33and you had parallel lines going off towards a vanishing point,
0:20:33 > 0:20:35and that was the way they were structured.
0:20:36 > 0:20:42And the structure that he uses for this very, very modern subject
0:20:42 > 0:20:44is essentially a Claudian structure.
0:20:47 > 0:20:51If you wanted to renovate the Claudian tradition,
0:20:51 > 0:20:55you're saying effectively that Claude understood something about landscape,
0:20:55 > 0:20:58this is how to compose, how to deal with light.
0:20:58 > 0:21:02But the Britain of the middle of the 19th century
0:21:02 > 0:21:06is no longer peopled with nymphs and gods.
0:21:06 > 0:21:09It's peopled with industry and the people who work in it.
0:21:13 > 0:21:16But this momentous scene could never have existed
0:21:16 > 0:21:20without one pursuit that had dominated the age
0:21:20 > 0:21:22science.
0:21:28 > 0:21:30Somerset House in London
0:21:30 > 0:21:33was home not just to the Royal Academy for artists
0:21:33 > 0:21:37but also the Royal Society for scientists.
0:21:37 > 0:21:40In the early 1800s, there was no great divide
0:21:40 > 0:21:42between art and science like there is today.
0:21:44 > 0:21:45They shared the same building.
0:21:46 > 0:21:49The intellectual world was much smaller.
0:21:49 > 0:21:50You'd meet at the same parties,
0:21:50 > 0:21:53you'd discuss the same ideas, you'd go to the same salons.
0:21:53 > 0:21:56There wasn't this separation of cultures
0:21:56 > 0:21:58between the arts and sciences,
0:21:58 > 0:22:01so that on one side of the wall there might be painters having a dinner,
0:22:01 > 0:22:03and then two rooms down the corridor,
0:22:03 > 0:22:06there might be a scientific lecture going on.
0:22:08 > 0:22:10We have reason to look upon the sun
0:22:10 > 0:22:14as a most magnificent opaque globe
0:22:14 > 0:22:18possessed of an atmosphere in which luminous clouds, ever varying...
0:22:18 > 0:22:23In April 1801, just as Turner was hanging his next big seascape,
0:22:23 > 0:22:27on the other side of the wall at the Royal Society,
0:22:27 > 0:22:29legendary astronomer William Herschel
0:22:29 > 0:22:32was giving a lecture on the sun.
0:22:32 > 0:22:36In order to obtain as intimate a knowledge of the sun,
0:22:36 > 0:22:40it is obvious that the first step must be to become well acquainted
0:22:40 > 0:22:43with all the phenomena that appear on its surface.
0:22:44 > 0:22:47Openings, flats,
0:22:47 > 0:22:50ridges, nodules,
0:22:50 > 0:22:53crankles, shallows,
0:22:53 > 0:22:55dimples and punctures.
0:22:57 > 0:23:01Herschel's lecture on the sun was published immediately.
0:23:01 > 0:23:02And it was at this point
0:23:02 > 0:23:05that Turner also began to look at the sun in a new way.
0:23:06 > 0:23:09Even here, in this most Claudian of landscapes,
0:23:09 > 0:23:12is hidden evidence of the latest scientific thinking.
0:23:12 > 0:23:16Young women dance around celebrating a new harvest.
0:23:16 > 0:23:20It looks like another Claude except for one thing the sun.
0:23:22 > 0:23:26There are many, many, many examples in Turner throughout his life
0:23:26 > 0:23:30of new science triggering ideas.
0:23:32 > 0:23:35In a sense, Herschel allows
0:23:35 > 0:23:38the way Turner paints the sun
0:23:38 > 0:23:40in the Macon.
0:23:40 > 0:23:42Without Herschel's observations,
0:23:42 > 0:23:45Turner might not have really... thought about it.
0:23:45 > 0:23:48That was the trigger.
0:23:48 > 0:23:49If you look closely at the picture,
0:23:49 > 0:23:55it does seem to have incorporated ideas that were announced.
0:23:55 > 0:23:59The way the paint is actually applied with a sort of ridge in it
0:23:59 > 0:24:02seems to be taking Herschel's discovery
0:24:02 > 0:24:04and manifesting it in paint.
0:24:05 > 0:24:09Whereas Turner's great hero Claude
0:24:09 > 0:24:13would paint the sun as a yellow disc hanging in the sky,
0:24:13 > 0:24:17Turner paints slashes of...
0:24:17 > 0:24:19little sharp lines.
0:24:19 > 0:24:22Turner is noted throughout his career
0:24:22 > 0:24:24for making the sun a very physical object,
0:24:24 > 0:24:26of using impasto, which is thick paint that sticks up...
0:24:26 > 0:24:28If you look at a canvas sideways,
0:24:28 > 0:24:31it would stick up like a boss of a shield.
0:24:31 > 0:24:34To bring the sun as a physical object
0:24:34 > 0:24:37very much closer to the spectator's attention.
0:24:41 > 0:24:46For the first time in painting, I think we can say,
0:24:46 > 0:24:49he sees the sun as a real object,
0:24:49 > 0:24:54but something you simply cannot look at without damaging your eyes.
0:24:54 > 0:24:57We are being blinded by that sun.
0:25:01 > 0:25:06"When I was a boy, I used to lie for hours on my back watching the skies
0:25:06 > 0:25:07"and then go home and paint them.
0:25:07 > 0:25:11"And there was a stall in Soho bazaar where they sold drawing materials,
0:25:11 > 0:25:14"and they used to buy my skies.
0:25:14 > 0:25:16"They gave me one shilling sixpence for the small ones
0:25:16 > 0:25:19"and three shillings sixpence for the larger ones.
0:25:19 > 0:25:22"There's many a young lady who's got my sky for her drawing."
0:25:26 > 0:25:27Turner's sketchbook from 1804
0:25:27 > 0:25:31contains a record of the stages of an eclipse.
0:25:32 > 0:25:35But it's not just the heavens that were being analysed.
0:25:35 > 0:25:39Turner was absorbing developments in the understanding of the weather.
0:25:41 > 0:25:44In December 1802, a young Quaker called Luke Howard
0:25:44 > 0:25:48gave a lecture to a small group of scientists in London.
0:25:48 > 0:25:52It would become a landmark moment in the creation of modern meteorology.
0:25:56 > 0:26:01My talk this evening is concerned with what may strike some
0:26:01 > 0:26:04as an uncharacteristically impractical subject.
0:26:04 > 0:26:07He decided to give his talk
0:26:07 > 0:26:09on a subject which had preoccupied him for many years,
0:26:09 > 0:26:13and he had no idea that this lecture to an amateur science club
0:26:13 > 0:26:14was going to make him famous.
0:26:14 > 0:26:18It is concerned with the modification of clouds.
0:26:19 > 0:26:22If clouds were merely the result
0:26:22 > 0:26:26of the condensation of vapour in the atmosphere,
0:26:26 > 0:26:27then indeed might the study of them
0:26:27 > 0:26:30be deemed a useless pursuit of shadows.
0:26:32 > 0:26:35But the case is not so with clouds.
0:26:36 > 0:26:40Howard made the simple but penetrating observation
0:26:40 > 0:26:43that there are many shapes and varieties of clouds,
0:26:43 > 0:26:46but only three basic forms, which he called...
0:26:46 > 0:26:48Cirrus.
0:26:48 > 0:26:50Cumulus.
0:26:50 > 0:26:51Stratus.
0:26:52 > 0:26:54Before that time, people thought
0:26:54 > 0:26:57that each cloud was somehow unique and on its own,
0:26:57 > 0:26:58and what Howard did
0:26:58 > 0:27:02was give a basic grounding to the science of meteorology.
0:27:04 > 0:27:07Turner would have known of Howard's cloud classification,
0:27:07 > 0:27:08because everybody did,
0:27:08 > 0:27:14and it was used in artists' manuals already by the 1810s and '20s.
0:27:21 > 0:27:24Hereafter I shall estimate the force of the wind
0:27:24 > 0:27:27according to the following scale.
0:27:27 > 0:27:30Nought calm.
0:27:30 > 0:27:34One faint breeze or just not a calm.
0:27:34 > 0:27:36Two light air...
0:27:36 > 0:27:40The sun was being mapped, the clouds classified,
0:27:40 > 0:27:46and in 1806 a ship's captain called Francis Beaufort measured the wind.
0:27:46 > 0:27:48Seven gentle steady gale.
0:27:48 > 0:27:51He came up with a fantastically simple idea.
0:27:51 > 0:27:53Instead of simply having a list of wind strengths
0:27:53 > 0:27:57from 1, light breeze, to 12, hurricane,
0:27:57 > 0:28:01why not measure the effects that those winds have
0:28:01 > 0:28:04on the sails of a ship?
0:28:04 > 0:28:06That was a brilliant insight.
0:28:06 > 0:28:11It used a visual sign for creating a new way of understanding weather.
0:28:13 > 0:28:16And Beaufort's scale, it's been amended a little bit,
0:28:16 > 0:28:19but essentially it's still with us.
0:28:19 > 0:28:21Southwest five to seven,
0:28:21 > 0:28:26becoming cyclonic gale eight or severe gale nine,
0:28:26 > 0:28:29occasionally storm ten in Portland and Plymouth.
0:28:29 > 0:28:31Well, you can't look at a painting by Turner
0:28:31 > 0:28:34and say, "Well, that was a showery day in 1831."
0:28:34 > 0:28:37But what you can look at Turner's paintings and see
0:28:37 > 0:28:38is a fascination with the weather,
0:28:38 > 0:28:42which is what everybody was feeling at that time.
0:28:47 > 0:28:51The root of that feeling is what philosophers called the Sublime...
0:28:54 > 0:28:57..an obsession with the powerful forces of nature.
0:28:58 > 0:29:00It was the big idea for Turner
0:29:00 > 0:29:03and other Romantic painters in the early 1800s.
0:29:05 > 0:29:08The Sublime was a category of art,
0:29:08 > 0:29:13which represented nature at its most...terrifying and intimidating.
0:29:15 > 0:29:20Turner was fascinated with those aspects of nature
0:29:20 > 0:29:23that showed how fragile human life was,
0:29:23 > 0:29:25and this was a common Romantic theme.
0:29:30 > 0:29:34The idea that we humans are in awe of what the natural world can do,
0:29:34 > 0:29:38the volcanoes and hurricanes and floods and vast expanses,
0:29:38 > 0:29:39all of that.
0:29:41 > 0:29:47The category was defined in 1757 by the philosopher Edmund Burke,
0:29:47 > 0:29:52and Edmund Burke set out to explain why it was that we should be
0:29:52 > 0:29:55fascinated by things in pictures
0:29:55 > 0:29:59that would terrify us if we encountered them in real life.
0:30:06 > 0:30:09It's about being excited by high mountains,
0:30:09 > 0:30:13by a sense of scale and mystery in the world around us,
0:30:13 > 0:30:16and being taken to a point
0:30:16 > 0:30:21where you are almost on the brink, perhaps, of being destroyed.
0:30:21 > 0:30:23Certainly on the edge of being terrified.
0:30:25 > 0:30:29The Sublime, the terrible, is also beautiful.
0:30:32 > 0:30:35But Turner, unlike any other painter,
0:30:35 > 0:30:37would take the idea of the Sublime
0:30:37 > 0:30:39and re-cast it for the industrial age.
0:30:43 > 0:30:46This is his Bell Rock Lighthouse.
0:30:46 > 0:30:48The sea is wild and dangerous.
0:30:48 > 0:30:51It's everything a picture of the Sublime should be,
0:30:51 > 0:30:52except for one thing.
0:30:53 > 0:30:54The lighthouse.
0:30:56 > 0:30:59Man is not submitting to the power of nature.
0:30:59 > 0:31:01He's challenging it with technology.
0:31:03 > 0:31:07The lighthouse was built between 1807 and 1811
0:31:07 > 0:31:10by the Scottish engineer Robert Stevenson,
0:31:10 > 0:31:11who commissioned Turner to paint it.
0:31:13 > 0:31:16This is Robert Stevenson's classic account
0:31:16 > 0:31:18of building the Bell Rock lighthouse.
0:31:19 > 0:31:22This is a very special one with its water stains and all,
0:31:22 > 0:31:28because this is Robert Stevenson's own copy, and the chief item
0:31:28 > 0:31:30in the book is the frontispiece,
0:31:30 > 0:31:33and for this, he approached JMW Turner.
0:31:35 > 0:31:39The Bell Rock's this great big lump here, that is the rock,
0:31:39 > 0:31:4411 miles from Arbroath, and about the same distance from St Andrews.
0:31:46 > 0:31:51In 1799, something like 70 ships were wrecked
0:31:51 > 0:31:53in the vicinity of the Bellrock lighthouse.
0:31:54 > 0:31:57Most of the boats at that time were wooden ships.
0:31:57 > 0:32:01You can imagine the effect of that striking a rock.
0:32:01 > 0:32:04Stevenson wanted to build a lighthouse
0:32:04 > 0:32:08in an almost impossible situation.
0:32:08 > 0:32:12It was only at low tide you could actually get onto the rock,
0:32:12 > 0:32:15so the rock would totally disappear at high water.
0:32:18 > 0:32:23What made Stevenson's lighthouse special was not just its location,
0:32:23 > 0:32:26but also its revolutionary shape -
0:32:26 > 0:32:31a curved base calculated precisely to withstand forces of the sea.
0:32:32 > 0:32:36It's almost unbelievable that it was successful.
0:32:36 > 0:32:39Everything about this job was innovative.
0:32:42 > 0:32:44When Turner finished his watercolour,
0:32:44 > 0:32:47he sent it to Stevenson to be engraved for the book.
0:32:49 > 0:32:51If you look closely at the watercolour,
0:32:51 > 0:32:55the waves that are breaking on the lighthouse come up and almost grip
0:32:55 > 0:33:00it like a hand and there is a bit of wreckage in the foreground.
0:33:00 > 0:33:06These are indices of just how dangerous this spot actually is.
0:33:08 > 0:33:11But the ships in Turner's picture are not sinking.
0:33:11 > 0:33:14They're surviving.
0:33:14 > 0:33:16The lighthouse is protecting them.
0:33:18 > 0:33:21Turner understood precisely what these things stood for -
0:33:21 > 0:33:24that, built properly, they were going to save hundreds,
0:33:24 > 0:33:28and over years, thousands of lives.
0:33:28 > 0:33:32Here you have something that is a demonstration of human ingenuity
0:33:32 > 0:33:35in the face of an untamed sea.
0:33:39 > 0:33:44This engineering marvel marks a turning point in Turner's art.
0:33:44 > 0:33:48From now on, the Sublime would not just be about the power of nature,
0:33:48 > 0:33:51it would also be about humanity's inventive ways of challenging it.
0:33:59 > 0:34:02This painting by Turner looks, at first glance,
0:34:02 > 0:34:04like a classic shipwreck.
0:34:04 > 0:34:09But again, Turner has incorporated new technology in an age-old scene.
0:34:12 > 0:34:15This painting depicts an invention by a man
0:34:15 > 0:34:20called George William Manby, and it shows here this puff of air
0:34:20 > 0:34:23which has fired a shot,
0:34:23 > 0:34:26which is attached to a rope out to a shipwreck,
0:34:26 > 0:34:28and they are going to pull that rope tight,
0:34:28 > 0:34:32and they are going to try to ferry people to shore from the shipwreck.
0:34:33 > 0:34:36It was painted in 1831, the year that Manby was elected
0:34:36 > 0:34:38as a fellow of the Royal Society,
0:34:38 > 0:34:41and Turner always had his eyes on the newspapers.
0:34:41 > 0:34:44Manby was front page news, and that, I think,
0:34:44 > 0:34:45is why Turner's painted it.
0:34:47 > 0:34:51Turner met him though a patron, a Yarmouth patron called Dawson Turner,
0:34:51 > 0:34:56who was no relation, but Turner obviously admired this man,
0:34:56 > 0:34:58admired his work.
0:34:58 > 0:35:02It's one of those painting in which human ingenuity
0:35:02 > 0:35:04triumphs over the power of the sea.
0:35:07 > 0:35:09Manby was a barrack master at Yarmouth,
0:35:09 > 0:35:14and Yarmouth was renowned for being a very, very dangerous coast.
0:35:14 > 0:35:18And in 1807 we know Mandy witnessed a ship, the Snipe,
0:35:18 > 0:35:20going aground on this sandbar.
0:35:23 > 0:35:24And he was horrified by it.
0:35:24 > 0:35:27He could hear cries of these of the shipwrecked sailors.
0:35:29 > 0:35:31And the next day he came down to the beach
0:35:31 > 0:35:34and there were 144 corpses had been washed up.
0:35:38 > 0:35:41No-one could do anything to save those people,
0:35:41 > 0:35:44and Manby decided he was the man to solve this problem.
0:35:46 > 0:35:51A rope, so as to communicate in such circumstances with a ship,
0:35:51 > 0:35:57and a portable motor, the better to ensure a prompt
0:35:57 > 0:36:01and effectual communication at a period when each successive instant
0:36:01 > 0:36:06was big with the fate of an entire ship's company.
0:36:06 > 0:36:10And this is all brilliant stuff that Turner loved.
0:36:10 > 0:36:13Everyone was talking about Manby and his rather crazy invention.
0:36:15 > 0:36:18The entire coast of Great Britain, I hope,
0:36:18 > 0:36:22will be guarded with this additional belt of succour,
0:36:22 > 0:36:25and I am not without the exhilarating hope
0:36:25 > 0:36:29of living to that day when my project
0:36:29 > 0:36:33shall be hailed as the seaman's best friend.
0:36:36 > 0:36:39Lots of people were saved by his device,
0:36:39 > 0:36:43though one wonders exactly what terrors people had to go though
0:36:43 > 0:36:46between the ship and the shore
0:36:47 > 0:36:50If you think about the Sublime, and in this case, you know,
0:36:50 > 0:36:53raging winds, tempestuous seas,
0:36:53 > 0:36:56here you have a device that can't overcome them,
0:36:56 > 0:36:59but can give us a fighting chance among them.
0:37:05 > 0:37:07Turner's embrace of new technology was not just there
0:37:07 > 0:37:11in the subject of his paintings, it was in the very paint itself.
0:37:12 > 0:37:17He discussed pigment recipes with the scientist Michael Faraday.
0:37:17 > 0:37:22New fiery reds and chrome yellows - the colours of industry.
0:37:23 > 0:37:27He was also interested in the geometric rules of art.
0:37:27 > 0:37:29Since 1811, he'd been giving a series of lectures
0:37:29 > 0:37:31at the Royal Academy on Perspective.
0:37:32 > 0:37:36He gave the audience a great deal of pleasure
0:37:36 > 0:37:42by providing beautiful diagrams showing perspective in action.
0:37:42 > 0:37:45It has often been advanced that the study of perspective
0:37:45 > 0:37:48is a drudgery and a toil,
0:37:48 > 0:37:51while the observation of nature is pleasant and all must be abitted,
0:37:51 > 0:37:54but we, erm, we are not always so happily placed
0:37:54 > 0:37:57so as to be able to consult her unerring laws...
0:37:57 > 0:37:58The problem for Turner was that
0:37:58 > 0:38:01despite his pugnacious self-confidence,
0:38:01 > 0:38:05when it came to performing in public, he was a disaster.
0:38:05 > 0:38:08To these rules, the perspective lies an undivided claim.
0:38:08 > 0:38:11The trouble was he wasn't a very good speaker.
0:38:11 > 0:38:16The lectures really exposed his cockney accent.
0:38:16 > 0:38:20It often happens that the prevent the completion of the,
0:38:20 > 0:38:23the great concerns, and therefore I must waive saying...
0:38:23 > 0:38:26And this was thought to be not quite the thing.
0:38:27 > 0:38:31It was thought to reflect a bit badly on the Academy.
0:38:31 > 0:38:33Impetu...impetuosity of genius travels on without a guide.
0:38:33 > 0:38:35It too often finds itself in doubt about...
0:38:35 > 0:38:37'There is an embarrassment in his manner
0:38:37 > 0:38:42'approaching almost unintelligibly and a vulgarity of pronunciation
0:38:42 > 0:38:46'astonishing in an artist of his rank and respectability.'
0:38:48 > 0:38:50Next illustration, please.
0:38:50 > 0:38:55'Mathematics he perpetually called "mithematics", and so on.'
0:38:56 > 0:38:58Certainly he wouldn't have taken it very kindly
0:38:58 > 0:39:01if his friends had given him any advice,
0:39:01 > 0:39:04so, really, he just blundered on.
0:39:04 > 0:39:09Sir Joshua left to future art a volume rich and...
0:39:09 > 0:39:11His audience began to drift away,
0:39:11 > 0:39:15but one person who remained there was Turner's father.
0:39:15 > 0:39:19But it is the lot of all to follow, and mine is a humble one.
0:39:22 > 0:39:25Turner's father was his closest ally.
0:39:25 > 0:39:27he was his guide and his companion.
0:39:27 > 0:39:29His mother, though, was a different story.
0:39:32 > 0:39:34She was a family secret.
0:39:37 > 0:39:42There is some evidence from relatively early in Turner's life
0:39:42 > 0:39:46that his mother was accused of having "an ungovernable temper".
0:39:47 > 0:39:49His mum is going crazy.
0:39:49 > 0:39:53She's a really loose cannon at many times, so we're led to believe.
0:39:55 > 0:40:00And Turner has to incarcerate her. He has to effectively section her.
0:40:03 > 0:40:06Turner's mother was committed to Bedlam Hospital.
0:40:08 > 0:40:12Whether she was clinically insane, we simply don't know.
0:40:12 > 0:40:15What we do know, and this is, I think,
0:40:15 > 0:40:18a stain on Turner's reputation, and his father's for that matter,
0:40:18 > 0:40:21is that they could have elected
0:40:21 > 0:40:25a more humane, private treatment for her, and they didn't.
0:40:33 > 0:40:36The very year his mother was incarcerated, Turner left home
0:40:36 > 0:40:41and moved to Harley Street, home to rich connoisseurs and patrons.
0:40:44 > 0:40:49She died in 1804 in Bedlam.
0:40:49 > 0:40:55This was not something, I think, that Turner was keen for people to know,
0:40:55 > 0:40:58as he was moving up the ladder in his profession.
0:41:03 > 0:41:09There's one very small and poignant profile drawing
0:41:09 > 0:41:12of a woman in a mob cap in an early sketchbook.
0:41:13 > 0:41:18She's off guard, she's musing, she's looking down.
0:41:18 > 0:41:20I think that might well be her.
0:41:23 > 0:41:28With the mother gone, Dad comes to live with Turner,
0:41:28 > 0:41:30you know, he mixes his paints for him,
0:41:30 > 0:41:35so it is a kind of "me and me old dad" kind of cockney thing.
0:41:37 > 0:41:41Turner never married, and so his father, as time went on,
0:41:41 > 0:41:46gave up the shop and became the person who looked after Turner.
0:41:48 > 0:41:53As a personality, Turner was quite complex, very complex.
0:41:54 > 0:41:57His relationship with women was not at all conventional.
0:41:57 > 0:42:02He had a liaison with a widow of a musician called Sarah Danby
0:42:02 > 0:42:04and she bore him two daughters.
0:42:04 > 0:42:10But he doesn't seem to have been a particularly doting parent.
0:42:10 > 0:42:13They were maintained at a separate residence.
0:42:14 > 0:42:16As far as his character was concerned,
0:42:16 > 0:42:18it really depended who you talked to.
0:42:21 > 0:42:25When the French Romantic painter Delacroix met Turner in 1832,
0:42:25 > 0:42:30he described him as "uncouth, like an English farmer", he said,
0:42:30 > 0:42:33"with a hard, cold demeanour."
0:42:33 > 0:42:36Constable, who admired Turner's art, didn't like him either.
0:42:38 > 0:42:41But Turner was never going to fit in with his fellow Romantics,
0:42:41 > 0:42:44either as a person or as an artist.
0:42:48 > 0:42:51This is his picture of a factory in the West Midlands.
0:42:51 > 0:42:55For the Romantics, factories were the dark side of progress,
0:42:55 > 0:42:58but for Turner, they were a source of inspiration.
0:43:00 > 0:43:05He coaxes the most exquisite, beautiful pictorial effect
0:43:05 > 0:43:09out of the blast furnaces of industrial Dudley.
0:43:12 > 0:43:16Those people who visited Dudley, especially literary commentators,
0:43:16 > 0:43:19were often appalled by what they saw.
0:43:19 > 0:43:22Dickens was horrified by the Black country
0:43:22 > 0:43:25and the effects of industrialization.
0:43:25 > 0:43:27But what Turner is representing
0:43:27 > 0:43:30are not what Blake described as the Dark Satanic Mills.
0:43:32 > 0:43:36It is an image which certainly doesn't criticise
0:43:36 > 0:43:38the industrial revolution in any way.
0:43:38 > 0:43:42When Turner paints industry, he does paint it in a unjudgemental way,
0:43:42 > 0:43:48yes, and I don't think that kind of Romantic nostalgia
0:43:48 > 0:43:50that we perhaps tend to get rather obsessed with nowadays
0:43:50 > 0:43:53really occurred to Turner at all.
0:43:53 > 0:43:55If you went into the valleys
0:43:55 > 0:43:58and you went into the industrial cities, there it was,
0:43:58 > 0:44:00there was industry, this was now, this was progress,
0:44:00 > 0:44:02this was the modern world.
0:44:05 > 0:44:09The modern world in 1842 looked like this.
0:44:10 > 0:44:13A steamboat in a vortex of rain and snow.
0:44:13 > 0:44:15And Turner is doing something extraordinary.
0:44:16 > 0:44:20His painting has become loose, less figurative,
0:44:20 > 0:44:22more atmospheric, less solid.
0:44:24 > 0:44:29It's perhaps one of the most extreme pictures he ever showed.
0:44:29 > 0:44:33You cannot tell where the sea ends and the air begins.
0:44:35 > 0:44:40It has no sides, no middle, nothing to hold onto.
0:44:40 > 0:44:44The only solid thing is this little steam boat.
0:44:46 > 0:44:49But this isn't just a boat in a storm.
0:44:49 > 0:44:52There are other forces at work in this painting.
0:44:52 > 0:44:54There's an order in the chaos.
0:44:55 > 0:44:59An order which has everything to do with the scientific discoveries
0:44:59 > 0:45:01that were changing our understanding of nature.
0:45:03 > 0:45:06It all begins with the scientist Michael Faraday.
0:45:08 > 0:45:12In 1821, he demonstrated the theory of magnetic rotation,
0:45:12 > 0:45:15with the world's first electric motor.
0:45:15 > 0:45:18The connection being now made from the plates to the copper wire
0:45:18 > 0:45:20and to the mercury below,
0:45:20 > 0:45:23the copper wire immediately begins to revolve
0:45:23 > 0:45:24around the pole of the magnet.
0:45:25 > 0:45:29A decade later, Faraday showed that an electric current
0:45:29 > 0:45:32could be generated though exposure to a magnetic field.
0:45:32 > 0:45:36The relation that holds between the fixed magnetic pole,
0:45:36 > 0:45:38the moving wire or metal,
0:45:38 > 0:45:40and the direction of the current involved...
0:45:40 > 0:45:42At the same time, Turner and Faraday's friend,
0:45:42 > 0:45:46the mathematician Mary Somerville, was introducing the idea
0:45:46 > 0:45:50of electro-magnetism to a wider public in a bestselling book.
0:45:51 > 0:45:55"Dr Faraday observes that such is the facility with which electricity
0:45:55 > 0:45:58"is evolved by the earth's magnetism,
0:45:58 > 0:46:03"that scarcely any piece of metal can be moved in contact with others."
0:46:04 > 0:46:07Turner knew Mary Somerville very well indeed.
0:46:07 > 0:46:09They were good friends.
0:46:09 > 0:46:13Mary Somerville talked many times of going to Turner's studio
0:46:13 > 0:46:15and always being welcomed.
0:46:17 > 0:46:20"Even a ship passing over the surface of the water
0:46:20 > 0:46:23"in northern or southern latitudes
0:46:23 > 0:46:25"ought to have electric currents running directly across
0:46:25 > 0:46:28"the line of her motion.
0:46:28 > 0:46:31"Curious electro-magnetic combinations probably exist
0:46:31 > 0:46:33"which have never yet been noticed."
0:46:37 > 0:46:39What is Turner doing in Snowstorm?
0:46:40 > 0:46:42Is he describing just the kind of things
0:46:42 > 0:46:45Somerville and Faraday were talking about?
0:46:46 > 0:46:48Is this the visual manifestation
0:46:48 > 0:46:51of the invisible magnetic forces in nature?
0:46:53 > 0:46:57The key point for Snowstorm, in my view,
0:46:57 > 0:47:02is the visual parallel that it creates between the sea
0:47:02 > 0:47:08as a vast, uncontrollable force, and the invisible powers
0:47:08 > 0:47:10of the earth's magnetism.
0:47:12 > 0:47:15Underneath the chaos, there's a real regularity.
0:47:17 > 0:47:22The waves have a sort of a hairy quality that gets very near
0:47:22 > 0:47:27the effect of a putting iron filings in the magnetic field
0:47:27 > 0:47:30around with a bar magnet and how they gather around the bar magnet.
0:47:31 > 0:47:34I think there is a direct connection.
0:47:34 > 0:47:36Magnetism was in the air.
0:47:37 > 0:47:42Michael Faraday was working on it, Turner and Faraday had conversations,
0:47:42 > 0:47:45their mutual friend Mary Somerville
0:47:45 > 0:47:49was beginning to write about these and other scientific topics,
0:47:49 > 0:47:55and making them much more publically accessible.
0:47:55 > 0:47:59All these things go together, and suddenly Snowstorm appears.
0:48:02 > 0:48:09It's the idea of a ship as the focus of all this massive energy.
0:48:10 > 0:48:12This isn't a scientific diagram.
0:48:12 > 0:48:16Turner is not trying to explain the earth's magnetism,
0:48:16 > 0:48:21but he's trying to express what this power is.
0:48:21 > 0:48:24We are looking at a visual metaphor.
0:48:27 > 0:48:30Turner had found a new way of painting.
0:48:30 > 0:48:34He'd created a visual language to express nature's hidden forces.
0:48:37 > 0:48:41Whatever he's understood about magnetism and about science,
0:48:41 > 0:48:44the key thing he's taken from it is an understanding of flux
0:48:44 > 0:48:49and dynamism, and if you stand in front of the Snowstorm
0:48:49 > 0:48:53and look at that tilted horizon, and look at that vortex,
0:48:53 > 0:48:57you realise that you yourself have been caught up in that same rhythm.
0:49:03 > 0:49:08By 1840, Turner, now in his 60s, was making regular trips to Margate,
0:49:08 > 0:49:10a seaside town on the Kent coast.
0:49:12 > 0:49:14He'd been visiting Margate since his childhood.
0:49:14 > 0:49:16Now, it was a second home.
0:49:19 > 0:49:22The thing about Margate is Margate is very gritty,
0:49:22 > 0:49:26and has really strange light and amazing sunsets,
0:49:26 > 0:49:29and it's got a lot of fecundity in the atmosphere,
0:49:29 > 0:49:31there is something sexy about it.
0:49:31 > 0:49:34And I think artists and people pick up on that.
0:49:35 > 0:49:39In Margate, Turner settled in with a new mistress, Mrs Booth.
0:49:40 > 0:49:42This may be a picture of her.
0:49:43 > 0:49:46It's part of a stash of erotic drawings by Turner,
0:49:46 > 0:49:48found after his death.
0:49:49 > 0:49:52Of course, when he became close to Mrs Booth,
0:49:52 > 0:49:56his landlady in Margate, he used to called himself Admiral Booth
0:49:56 > 0:50:00and pretend to be a retired naval man.
0:50:00 > 0:50:03There are stories late in life when he was getting more reclusive.
0:50:03 > 0:50:07If he took a cab, he would get it to drop him off several streets away,
0:50:07 > 0:50:10so that people wouldn't discover his real identity.
0:50:13 > 0:50:16Turner loved to cultivate this air of mystery.
0:50:17 > 0:50:20Few people were allowed to see him at work.
0:50:20 > 0:50:23But one artist who did was Edward Rippingille,
0:50:23 > 0:50:25who witnessed Turner putting the final touches
0:50:25 > 0:50:27to one of his paintings.
0:50:30 > 0:50:33"In one part of the mysterious proceedings, Turner,
0:50:33 > 0:50:35"who worked almost entirely with his pallet knife,
0:50:35 > 0:50:38"was observed to be rolling and spreading
0:50:38 > 0:50:41"a lump of half transparent stuff over his picture."
0:50:41 > 0:50:43What is that he's plastering his picture with?
0:50:44 > 0:50:48"Presently the work was finished. Turner gathered his tools together
0:50:48 > 0:50:52"and then, with his face still to the wall, went sliding off."
0:50:55 > 0:50:59All it was for these witnesses was a master magician
0:50:59 > 0:51:02doing something that they couldn't comprehend.
0:51:02 > 0:51:06OK, you want to see how it's done, here's how it's done.
0:51:12 > 0:51:16This is how it was done in 1844,
0:51:16 > 0:51:18one of Turner's last great oil paintings.
0:51:19 > 0:51:23A train hurtling out of the canvas into the future.
0:51:23 > 0:51:27It's all there in this one extraordinary picture.
0:51:27 > 0:51:30The scientific discoveries, the engineering breakthroughs,
0:51:30 > 0:51:33the industrial upheavals come together
0:51:33 > 0:51:35in Turner's vision of the new Britain.
0:51:36 > 0:51:39It's about atmosphere - a train crossing a bridge
0:51:39 > 0:51:44puffing out smoke and soot on a rather wet, misty day
0:51:44 > 0:51:45in the Thames Valley.
0:51:47 > 0:51:50It just the title. Rain, Steam And Speed.
0:51:50 > 0:51:53Everything pouring, you know. It's kind of like, it's exciting.
0:51:54 > 0:51:57It's hitting the same note as Temeraire.
0:51:57 > 0:52:03The world of old motion drifting along in that little boat,
0:52:03 > 0:52:06while da-da-dun, da-da-da-dun - this sort of coming along.
0:52:08 > 0:52:11The fire box has almost eaten through
0:52:11 > 0:52:16the casing of the engine chassis as it roars towards you.
0:52:20 > 0:52:21This is the Great Western Railway.
0:52:21 > 0:52:27This is Brunel's fantastic engineering achievement.
0:52:27 > 0:52:31It's the jewel in the crown of the railway system.
0:52:31 > 0:52:34The railway bridge over which the train is going
0:52:34 > 0:52:36is Isambard Kingdom Brunel's.
0:52:39 > 0:52:42So it is a homage to one of the defining figures
0:52:42 > 0:52:43of Victorian Britain.
0:52:45 > 0:52:48When this picture is painted, we are about a decade-and-a-half
0:52:48 > 0:52:50into the history of the railways.
0:52:50 > 0:52:53Remember, before the railways arrived,
0:52:53 > 0:52:56nobody had gone faster than a horse could gallop,
0:52:56 > 0:52:59and now we have these railways that, even by 1844,
0:52:59 > 0:53:02when this picture is done, are going 30, 40 miles an hours,
0:53:02 > 0:53:07and soon to go 50, 60 miles an hour. Unheard-of speeds.
0:53:07 > 0:53:09It really is transformational.
0:53:12 > 0:53:15The Great Western was even responsible for standardising time.
0:53:17 > 0:53:21There was a time difference between, say, Exeter and London, of about
0:53:21 > 0:53:2515 to 20 minutes, because it was set by rising of the sun.
0:53:28 > 0:53:30And it was thanks to the Great Western
0:53:30 > 0:53:33that we have Greenwich Mean Time.
0:53:37 > 0:53:39If you look very closely,
0:53:39 > 0:53:44there's a hare running for its life in front of the train.
0:53:50 > 0:53:54The hare is, in Britain, anyway, the fastest natural animal.
0:53:56 > 0:53:58So you've got this contrast between the modern,
0:53:58 > 0:54:03industrial speedy machine and the natural speedy animal.
0:54:05 > 0:54:10The train in Rain, Steam And Speed is not just a train rushing at us.
0:54:10 > 0:54:13It's also a reminder of the modern world,
0:54:13 > 0:54:17and how the modern world is changing the landscape,
0:54:17 > 0:54:21changing society, changing individual lives.
0:54:21 > 0:54:25The coming of the railways, the destruction of many, many homes
0:54:25 > 0:54:28of ordinary people, especially building the stations in London
0:54:28 > 0:54:32and all the cities, driving though old England.
0:54:33 > 0:54:36The people that most resented it are, by now,
0:54:36 > 0:54:38the ageing Romantics like Wordsworth and Ruskin,
0:54:38 > 0:54:44who fear that these hoards would invade their beauteous landscapes,
0:54:44 > 0:54:47but Turner's painting is a great cheer for Brunel, I think.
0:54:48 > 0:54:51When the novelist and art critic William Thackeray
0:54:51 > 0:54:53first saw Rain, Steam And Speed,
0:54:53 > 0:54:57he knew he was looking at something completely new in painting.
0:55:01 > 0:55:07"The rain in the astounding picture is composed of dabs of dirty putty
0:55:07 > 0:55:10"slapped on to the canvas with a trowel.
0:55:10 > 0:55:14"The sunshine scintillates out of very thick, smeary lumps
0:55:14 > 0:55:17"of chrome yellow.
0:55:17 > 0:55:21"The world has never seen anything like this picture."
0:55:22 > 0:55:26He's using paint to make us feel what it was like to be there.
0:55:26 > 0:55:29I mean, Thackerary commented on the fact that when you got close
0:55:29 > 0:55:31to the picture, you really couldn't get away
0:55:31 > 0:55:33from the thickness of the paint.
0:55:34 > 0:55:39We shouldn't say that only Impressionism and the Modern movement
0:55:39 > 0:55:40had these revelations.
0:55:40 > 0:55:44I think what makes Turner extraordinary is that he came upon
0:55:44 > 0:55:47these understandings in the 19th century.
0:55:47 > 0:55:50Look at the rest of Victorian painting around this time,
0:55:50 > 0:55:53including mates of his like Wilkie, who he loved.
0:55:53 > 0:55:58I mean, it's pathetically rudimentary and laborious and literal.
0:55:58 > 0:56:03The notion that you, as a fellow of the Royal Academy
0:56:03 > 0:56:07would make this maelstrom of paint and deliver it as art.
0:56:07 > 0:56:10You tell me who else is doing that. The answer is no-one.
0:56:12 > 0:56:14It isn't simply nice, little curlicues of smoke
0:56:14 > 0:56:15coming out of a funnel.
0:56:15 > 0:56:18It's somebody who understands how steam power
0:56:18 > 0:56:23has harnessed heat and turned it into motion.
0:56:25 > 0:56:29Nobody else had found a way of painting that transformation.
0:56:31 > 0:56:35He wanted to instinctively see if belching smoke
0:56:35 > 0:56:40and a cantering train would generate that kind of beauty.
0:56:42 > 0:56:44What he does is the industrial Sublime.
0:56:46 > 0:56:48It is a kind of modernisation, perhaps, of the Sublime.
0:56:48 > 0:56:51It's making it applicable to a modern age,
0:56:51 > 0:56:56which is making scientific and technological advances
0:56:56 > 0:56:59and is leaning to harness nature.
0:57:00 > 0:57:04You know, the Sublime usually presupposes the intrusion
0:57:04 > 0:57:06of something mechanical as the enemy.
0:57:06 > 0:57:07It's not the enemy for Turner.
0:57:10 > 0:57:14The most atmospheric of all of Turner's paintings,
0:57:14 > 0:57:19where all the elements come together - earth, air, fire and water -
0:57:19 > 0:57:22becomes a celebration of progress.
0:57:22 > 0:57:25For Turner, industry becomes the Sublime.
0:57:29 > 0:57:35It's as though those natural forces have been harnessed by mankind
0:57:35 > 0:57:38for their own betterment.
0:57:38 > 0:57:41The volcanoes and hurricanes that might traditionally be associated
0:57:41 > 0:57:46with the Sublime now occur inside boilers and drive pistons.
0:57:47 > 0:57:51No-one had thought like that, painted like that, imagined it like that.
0:57:51 > 0:57:55And it's not going to be repeated, arguably,
0:57:55 > 0:57:58until one gets in to the 1910s.
0:57:58 > 0:58:02He was painting what was happening, the reality of that time,
0:58:02 > 0:58:04because he had his finger on the pulse.
0:58:04 > 0:58:07He managed to achieve something quite phenomenal,
0:58:07 > 0:58:09and that's what makes Turner a great artist.
0:58:09 > 0:58:12I think he's phenomenally important for the history of art
0:58:12 > 0:58:14and the history of Britain.
0:58:17 > 0:58:21This, then, is JMW Turner,
0:58:21 > 0:58:24Britain's great Romantic landscape painter,
0:58:24 > 0:58:27who delivered to us a visionary story of the Industrial Revolution.
0:58:30 > 0:58:33Who painted nature, and at the same time
0:58:33 > 0:58:35revealed the wonders of science and invention.
0:58:37 > 0:58:41Who used paint to herald a new world.
0:59:08 > 0:59:11Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd.