0:00:07 > 0:00:13On his deathbed, in 1851, the great painter of landscapes JMW Turner
0:00:13 > 0:00:17is supposed to have said, "The sun is God."
0:00:17 > 0:00:19Did he mean that light is everything?
0:00:19 > 0:00:23Light is certainly something everyone can get,
0:00:23 > 0:00:26but in art, it's not at all obvious what "light" is.
0:00:28 > 0:00:32Look at how that sunset over the River Thames is painted.
0:00:32 > 0:00:35Even today, after the whole history of modern art,
0:00:35 > 0:00:39Turner's surfaces are still startling.
0:00:41 > 0:00:43'Why are they so different?
0:00:43 > 0:00:46'And why is a painted sunset by him
0:00:46 > 0:00:50'so different to anyone's idea of a lovely sunset?'
0:00:50 > 0:00:54Broken light, light and dark, unpredictable shapes,
0:00:54 > 0:00:58Turner makes light the vehicle of feeling.
0:00:58 > 0:01:02And he found inspiration for an amazing variety of ways
0:01:02 > 0:01:06to express feeling from the River Thames.
0:01:38 > 0:01:40The play of light on its surface,
0:01:40 > 0:01:44the way the river reflects light, throws light, creates atmospheres.
0:01:44 > 0:01:48All this captured Turner's attention throughout his career.
0:01:48 > 0:01:53He stalked those effects first with quick sketches on paper,
0:01:53 > 0:01:57and then, back in the studio, with his strange techniques,
0:01:57 > 0:02:00mixing and merging materials and mediums,
0:02:00 > 0:02:03often moving paint around with his fingers
0:02:03 > 0:02:06in the search to find an equivalent in paint
0:02:06 > 0:02:08for the visual surprise and delight
0:02:08 > 0:02:11he experienced out here in reality.
0:02:11 > 0:02:15It isn't just the picture, but the way the picture is done,
0:02:15 > 0:02:18the treatment of it, that is important.
0:02:22 > 0:02:26'Turner trained his impulses and responses
0:02:26 > 0:02:29'so they served the big machine of his vision.
0:02:29 > 0:02:33'The landscapes he painted weren't already out there
0:02:33 > 0:02:36'just waiting to be magically transferred onto canvas.
0:02:36 > 0:02:37'He selected certain things,
0:02:37 > 0:02:40'he found a visual language for capturing them,
0:02:40 > 0:02:43'and he put them all into an arrangement
0:02:43 > 0:02:45'that suited a certain idea.
0:02:45 > 0:02:49'I'm here with my sketchbook drawing what I see in Richmond Park
0:02:49 > 0:02:52'with the River Thames nearby.
0:02:52 > 0:02:55'A place Turner used to haunt with his sketchbook.'
0:02:55 > 0:02:57What would be the difference
0:02:57 > 0:03:02if it was Turner up here 200 years ago drawing what he sees?
0:03:02 > 0:03:05The first thing to say is that we're biologically the same thing,
0:03:05 > 0:03:07so we're really seeing the same thing.
0:03:07 > 0:03:11And, because of millions of years of human development, we're probably liking the same thing.
0:03:11 > 0:03:14We're liking the light landing on those crackly branches,
0:03:14 > 0:03:17and the shapes of the clouds above,
0:03:17 > 0:03:20and the way that sometimes the light lights everything up
0:03:20 > 0:03:23and you get a certain kind of rhythm running across the scene.
0:03:23 > 0:03:25And sometimes that light changes
0:03:25 > 0:03:29and you get a sort of rather flatter swathes of different textures.
0:03:29 > 0:03:33But, of course, one big difference is that Turner is a genius
0:03:33 > 0:03:35and I'm just a TV presenter drawing.
0:03:35 > 0:03:37But the other thing is that
0:03:37 > 0:03:41Turner brings all the cultural baggage of his times
0:03:41 > 0:03:43to what he's seeing.
0:03:43 > 0:03:47So where I see crackly branches and twisty lines
0:03:47 > 0:03:49and the lovely sloping curve,
0:03:49 > 0:03:54I'm trying to describe them from a kind of zero upwards,
0:03:54 > 0:03:56cos my brain has been fried
0:03:56 > 0:04:00by modern art and surrealism and conceptualism,
0:04:00 > 0:04:04so I've got no sort of mental framework to really draw a landscape.
0:04:04 > 0:04:11Whereas Turner has a massively complicated, beautiful, poetic mental framework
0:04:11 > 0:04:14of what he's doing with his paintings.
0:04:14 > 0:04:18So with a drawing looking out at trees,
0:04:18 > 0:04:22he's looking for visual data that is going to go into those paintings.
0:04:22 > 0:04:27So his eye is honed, on the lookout for romantic subjects.
0:04:27 > 0:04:29What does romantic mean?
0:04:29 > 0:04:33It means the artist's feelings are really what are being conveyed.
0:04:33 > 0:04:36And they're feelings that are very highly strung.
0:04:36 > 0:04:38He's sort of feeling on behalf of his audience.
0:04:38 > 0:04:41So he's looking for things in the landscape,
0:04:41 > 0:04:44which can stand for a feeling, a feeling that perhaps
0:04:44 > 0:04:47originates in him already or in something divine
0:04:47 > 0:04:51rather than in the landscape - it's a kind of carrier for that.
0:05:02 > 0:05:06Throughout a life of travel all over Britain and Europe,
0:05:06 > 0:05:09Turner always returned to this relationship with the Thames,
0:05:09 > 0:05:12which went right back to the beginning of his own life story.
0:05:14 > 0:05:19He was born, in 1775, only a short walk away from the river.
0:05:19 > 0:05:22His father was a barber and a wigmaker
0:05:22 > 0:05:24with a shop in London's Covent Garden.
0:05:24 > 0:05:28It's likely Turner actually sold his first pictures from the barber shop.
0:05:28 > 0:05:34He also worked as a scene painter in the theatre in nearby Drury Lane.
0:05:34 > 0:05:36At different times in his life,
0:05:36 > 0:05:39Turner set up studios and homes on the Thames.
0:05:42 > 0:05:45'Let's join him on his own boat, in Isleworth, West London,
0:05:45 > 0:05:49'nine miles upriver from where he was born.
0:05:49 > 0:05:52'It's 1805, the year of the Battle of Trafalgar,
0:05:52 > 0:05:56'when Britain is an island fighting for survival
0:05:56 > 0:05:59'and Britons must fall back on their island's resources.'
0:05:59 > 0:06:02For Turner, that means the River Thames.
0:06:02 > 0:06:05He's already 30, wealthy and famous.
0:06:05 > 0:06:07In this year, he rents a house here.
0:06:07 > 0:06:10And, for month after month, he travels on his own boat,
0:06:10 > 0:06:15a floating studio, up and down the river sketching and painting.
0:06:26 > 0:06:28What I'm seeing now is very much
0:06:28 > 0:06:31what Turner himself would have seen 200 years ago
0:06:31 > 0:06:32and what he would have enjoyed.
0:06:32 > 0:06:36I think the particular quality it had for him
0:06:36 > 0:06:40was of being very gently dramatic.
0:06:40 > 0:06:42You know it's the river, you know it's the sound of the birds,
0:06:42 > 0:06:45you know it's the banks and the trees and the reflections...
0:06:45 > 0:06:50But you never experience any of those things the same way twice,
0:06:50 > 0:06:52including the kind of thing I'm seeing now,
0:06:52 > 0:06:57where there's so many gulls swarming about in the sky,
0:06:57 > 0:07:01all in a way making a sort of sculptural division of the sky,
0:07:01 > 0:07:05so the whole thing is becoming visually alive.
0:07:05 > 0:07:08It's both calm, quiet and placid
0:07:08 > 0:07:12and full of activity, and that's because of the effect of the light.
0:07:12 > 0:07:14So, for one thing,
0:07:14 > 0:07:16I'm seeing a beam of light hitting the water,
0:07:16 > 0:07:22breaking up into 1,000 different coloured points of light
0:07:22 > 0:07:27and crisscrossing the little tracks made by the ducks and the gulls.
0:07:27 > 0:07:30'We're having all this pleasure in the spontaneity and delight
0:07:30 > 0:07:35'of light on the water and the shapes going by.
0:07:35 > 0:07:38'But Turner didn't just want to be happy in nature.
0:07:38 > 0:07:40'His work was to find a way
0:07:40 > 0:07:44'to make paint actually capture those fleeting moments.'
0:07:46 > 0:07:49All the shapes made by those trees
0:07:49 > 0:07:55are reflected exactly in the river, they're never the same.
0:07:55 > 0:07:59The contours where the light meets the dark is always changing,
0:07:59 > 0:08:01changing because of the light and that's...
0:08:01 > 0:08:05The thing that would've been viscerally exciting for Turner,
0:08:05 > 0:08:09cos that's what he spent every day doing and thinking about,
0:08:09 > 0:08:12that was his practice as an artist.
0:08:15 > 0:08:20On the Thames, Turner built up a vast range of sketches -
0:08:20 > 0:08:22his painting language was as various
0:08:22 > 0:08:25as the scenes of life of the river that he recorded -
0:08:25 > 0:08:29ferries, passengers, architecture,
0:08:29 > 0:08:31all brought to life by light.
0:08:31 > 0:08:35Scribbly, loose, looping marks,
0:08:35 > 0:08:38scudding, jagged, stuttering marks -
0:08:38 > 0:08:41surfaces that seem seamless
0:08:41 > 0:08:44and surfaces that are exciting and broken.
0:08:44 > 0:08:47What he sees and how he sees it,
0:08:47 > 0:08:50the two cannot be delinked.
0:08:50 > 0:08:51And Turner's great instinct
0:08:51 > 0:08:55is to exploit this psychological fact of art
0:08:55 > 0:08:57in a totally original way.
0:08:57 > 0:09:02He carries over the surprise of a sketch done on the spot,
0:09:02 > 0:09:05where every mark is decisive and has its own dramatic power,
0:09:05 > 0:09:09into the oil paintings he worked up in his studio.
0:09:09 > 0:09:12Let's go back a few years to see an example
0:09:12 > 0:09:16of how Turner is beginning to make one kind of painterly language
0:09:16 > 0:09:18feed into another.
0:09:18 > 0:09:21'It's an early work first exhibited in 1797.
0:09:21 > 0:09:24'Today, it's housed in one of the storage racks
0:09:24 > 0:09:26'in London's Tate Britain.'
0:09:26 > 0:09:28This is one of the earliest
0:09:28 > 0:09:33oil paintings that Turner ever did of a Thames scene.
0:09:33 > 0:09:36It's called Moonlight, A Study At Millbank.
0:09:36 > 0:09:39A study is a kind of category of picture.
0:09:39 > 0:09:41It suggests that the thing is not
0:09:41 > 0:09:44at a polished, magnificent, finished stage.
0:09:44 > 0:09:47It's more like a step along the way.
0:09:47 > 0:09:49But it has enough energy, vivacity,
0:09:49 > 0:09:52beauty in itself to be worth looking at.
0:09:52 > 0:09:54And this certainly has that,
0:09:54 > 0:09:56considering it's done by an artist
0:09:56 > 0:09:58who's only 22 years old at the time.
0:09:58 > 0:10:01Turner by now was pretty sophisticated
0:10:01 > 0:10:03in the way he could use paint.
0:10:03 > 0:10:05He'd been using oil paint for two or three years
0:10:05 > 0:10:08and had been working in watercolour for much longer.
0:10:08 > 0:10:10And the fluidity and looseness
0:10:10 > 0:10:12of the watercolour medium
0:10:12 > 0:10:15is very evident in this oil painting.
0:10:15 > 0:10:18The way every single object in it
0:10:18 > 0:10:19seems to flow together
0:10:19 > 0:10:22to make a very convincing,
0:10:22 > 0:10:25yet crisp and focussed composition.
0:10:25 > 0:10:28It tells us that Turner's lifelong interest in light
0:10:28 > 0:10:30is not just as a natural phenomenon
0:10:30 > 0:10:33and not just as the absence of dark
0:10:33 > 0:10:37but it's actually about mood, feeling, emotion, ideas.
0:10:37 > 0:10:42It's very striking that this earliest of his pictures,
0:10:42 > 0:10:46of the Thames and light, it's in the middle of the night,
0:10:46 > 0:10:48when you'd expect there not to be any light at all.
0:10:48 > 0:10:51And he takes that element of surprise
0:10:51 > 0:10:53and makes it into a whole drama.
0:10:53 > 0:10:58This mood of beautiful, soulful, night-time gloom.
0:11:05 > 0:11:12By the early 1800s, the Thames was Britain's key commercial waterway.
0:11:12 > 0:11:14And, through technological inventiveness
0:11:14 > 0:11:16and colonial exploitation,
0:11:16 > 0:11:21the nation had become the greatest trading power in the world.
0:11:21 > 0:11:24Turner benefited artistically from the beauty of the river,
0:11:24 > 0:11:28but also from all that prosperity through the wealthy aristocrats
0:11:28 > 0:11:31and new entrepreneurs who bought his work.
0:11:31 > 0:11:37Turner won new clients through innovation in business,
0:11:37 > 0:11:39as well as innovation in painting.
0:11:39 > 0:11:42The general public knew him from his offerings every year
0:11:42 > 0:11:44in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition,
0:11:44 > 0:11:47but his clients could also come to his house,
0:11:47 > 0:11:49here in a swanky part of London,
0:11:49 > 0:11:52which he set up as a showroom.
0:11:52 > 0:11:54This is how it looked inside.
0:11:54 > 0:11:57This is a painting by the Victorian artist George Jones,
0:11:57 > 0:11:59a great admirer of Turner.
0:11:59 > 0:12:03History records some of the aspects of his hero's existence here.
0:12:03 > 0:12:07'They tell us about the difference between the emotion of art
0:12:07 > 0:12:10'and the actual personality of Turner.
0:12:10 > 0:12:13'One is condensed, rich, universal -
0:12:13 > 0:12:16'anyone can be moved and transported by it.
0:12:16 > 0:12:18'The other is, well, cranky.
0:12:22 > 0:12:26'Turner was so clever that he made a huge amount of money from his art
0:12:26 > 0:12:27'when he was still in his 20s,
0:12:27 > 0:12:30'which enabled him to buy the Harley Street house.'
0:12:30 > 0:12:34And he was so audacious that he gradually turned that house
0:12:34 > 0:12:36into a gallery for selling his work.
0:12:36 > 0:12:39As a kind of alternative to the Royal Academy
0:12:39 > 0:12:42where only Turner's work was seen.
0:12:42 > 0:12:46The niece of Turner's mistress, when he first found this place,
0:12:46 > 0:12:49became a kind of gallery assistant for Turner,
0:12:49 > 0:12:53showing in the wealthy aristocrats who came to buy Turner's work.
0:12:53 > 0:12:57After a while, she got a disfiguring skin disease
0:12:57 > 0:12:59so she wore a load of bandages around her face
0:12:59 > 0:13:00when she showed them in.
0:13:00 > 0:13:05And Turner's father, who Turner referred to all his life as Daddy,
0:13:05 > 0:13:10worked as Turner's studio assistant for 30 years on his hands and knees
0:13:10 > 0:13:14preparing the new canvases that Turner was going to work on.
0:13:14 > 0:13:19While Turner himself on these studio visits would be in a side room
0:13:19 > 0:13:21looking on through a peephole
0:13:21 > 0:13:24making sure that nobody touched the work
0:13:24 > 0:13:26or, worse still, tried to sketch it.
0:13:26 > 0:13:29In which case, Turner would rush in and shoo them out.
0:13:29 > 0:13:34It was a combination of things we know very well in art today.
0:13:34 > 0:13:36Big money going with art
0:13:36 > 0:13:39with something absolutely separate from anything we know now
0:13:39 > 0:13:42and that is the sheer warmth
0:13:42 > 0:13:47of the extreme, almost comic, human eccentricity of the situation.
0:13:55 > 0:13:59'Turner's private gallery for his own paintings
0:13:59 > 0:14:02'showed his ambition as a modern artist.
0:14:02 > 0:14:04'But the previous centuries of classical art,
0:14:04 > 0:14:07'which I'm looking at now in the displays
0:14:07 > 0:14:10'at London's National Gallery, were very important to him.
0:14:10 > 0:14:12'A man just over five feet tall,
0:14:12 > 0:14:17'he wanted to be part of the heights of all that noble achievement.
0:14:19 > 0:14:22'What unites everything here, except pictures by Turner,
0:14:22 > 0:14:26'is the way human beings dominate the scenes -
0:14:26 > 0:14:31'gesturing, posing, swooning, standing for symbolic great ideas.
0:14:31 > 0:14:33'The art of the past was considered
0:14:33 > 0:14:37'by the cultured people of Turner's time as connected to poetry.
0:14:37 > 0:14:40'Turner got hold of that idea, but pushed it
0:14:40 > 0:14:44'in ways that radically transformed what painting was expected to be.
0:14:44 > 0:14:46'He painted old myths and so on,
0:14:46 > 0:14:48'like the artist geniuses of the past did,'
0:14:48 > 0:14:53but also what it was like to be alive right now in his own times.
0:14:53 > 0:14:55And whether it was classical or modern,
0:14:55 > 0:14:59he gave them each the same epic poetic treatment.
0:15:00 > 0:15:03His greatest transformation was
0:15:03 > 0:15:06to make pictures of mere landscapes
0:15:06 > 0:15:10as important, as full of big ideas and feelings,
0:15:10 > 0:15:13as pictures of gods and heroes.
0:15:13 > 0:15:16He did it through his treatment of surfaces,
0:15:16 > 0:15:20the visual metaphors he came up with for the feeling of light.
0:15:38 > 0:15:42'A picture by Turner of the ancient city of Carthage,
0:15:42 > 0:15:45'supposedly founded by the legendary Queen Dido,
0:15:45 > 0:15:48'which Turner exhibited in 1815,
0:15:48 > 0:15:51'shows immediately where Turner always laid the emphasis -
0:15:51 > 0:15:54'not on individual human characters,
0:15:54 > 0:15:57'but on landscape and atmosphere.'
0:15:59 > 0:16:02The whole painting.
0:16:02 > 0:16:05Its visual, immediate appeal.
0:16:05 > 0:16:07The way it works as a painting
0:16:07 > 0:16:10as opposed to the story that it stands for.
0:16:10 > 0:16:13The whole painting is in that yellow
0:16:13 > 0:16:15and its repeat here.
0:16:15 > 0:16:19Above, it's a flat yellow glow.
0:16:19 > 0:16:23Here, it's patterned, refracted,
0:16:23 > 0:16:28almost geometric - this complicated illusion.
0:16:28 > 0:16:30Simple, complicated.
0:16:30 > 0:16:32A surface of water
0:16:32 > 0:16:34throwing off reflections.
0:16:34 > 0:16:37So it's a painting about reflection
0:16:37 > 0:16:40and you can imagine that everything else you're seeing in it,
0:16:40 > 0:16:43all this busy classical imagery
0:16:43 > 0:16:45of marble pillars
0:16:45 > 0:16:47and the ancient world,
0:16:47 > 0:16:50is all somehow made
0:16:50 > 0:16:52out of that glowing light.
0:16:52 > 0:16:54The mood of the picture,
0:16:54 > 0:16:56its emotion, the story,
0:16:56 > 0:16:58all comes from Turner's treatment
0:16:58 > 0:17:01of water and light.
0:17:01 > 0:17:04And its concentration in this painting on that treatment
0:17:04 > 0:17:07so that it's all about reflection.
0:17:33 > 0:17:36Turner was an awkward cuss as a personality,
0:17:36 > 0:17:41a social outsider who made good but never lost his cockney accent,
0:17:41 > 0:17:43but what he shared with his noble clients,
0:17:43 > 0:17:46who'd been brought up much more posh than him,
0:17:46 > 0:17:49was reverence for long ago giants of painting.
0:17:49 > 0:17:52And the most popular when Turner was growing up
0:17:52 > 0:17:55was the 17th-century French artist Claude Lorrain.
0:17:58 > 0:18:02'In his will, Turner donated certain paintings by himself to the nation
0:18:02 > 0:18:07'on condition that they were hung for ever near paintings by Claude.
0:18:07 > 0:18:11'A fishing scene by Turner next to his picture of Carthage.
0:18:11 > 0:18:14'Behind me a painting by Claude.
0:18:14 > 0:18:16'And here, another one by Claude.
0:18:16 > 0:18:18'All in the same space.'
0:18:21 > 0:18:24Turner amplified Claude's moody light effects,
0:18:24 > 0:18:26but instead of timeless calm and placidity,
0:18:26 > 0:18:30Turner brought in great turbulent feeling.
0:18:30 > 0:18:32In the effort to catch up,
0:18:32 > 0:18:35he takes over and creates his own thing -
0:18:35 > 0:18:39Turner becomes the great Romantic artist.
0:18:39 > 0:18:42Turner's Romantic ideal was that everything should seem to be
0:18:42 > 0:18:47either on the verge of dissolving or just about to be born -
0:18:47 > 0:18:49the whole of existence, God, humanity,
0:18:49 > 0:18:52the world, all arriving or departing
0:18:52 > 0:18:55in an awesome blaze of light.
0:18:57 > 0:18:59A glow. An inner glow.
0:18:59 > 0:19:01It actually seems to be coming
0:19:01 > 0:19:03from inside this painting by Claude
0:19:03 > 0:19:06and then spreading and expanding outwards,
0:19:06 > 0:19:08so everything is arranged
0:19:08 > 0:19:10and planned in the painting
0:19:10 > 0:19:12to make that glow dramatic.
0:19:12 > 0:19:16And that's happening whether it's a Claude or a painting by Turner.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19Turner brought these pictures together
0:19:19 > 0:19:22in order to show that visual idea.
0:19:22 > 0:19:25Claude was supposed to be a classical artist
0:19:25 > 0:19:29who was interested in a poetic vision of the world.
0:19:29 > 0:19:32Turner wonders what that form of words could mean.
0:19:32 > 0:19:35He wants to show that it has something to do
0:19:35 > 0:19:39with the way light is treated. This glow emanating from the painting.
0:19:39 > 0:19:42It's not just that Turner wants to be associated
0:19:42 > 0:19:44with a great man from art history.
0:19:44 > 0:19:48It's a particular visual idea that unites them.
0:19:48 > 0:19:51That unites Turner with that great man.
0:19:57 > 0:19:59Turner's imaginative flights
0:19:59 > 0:20:02come from near-at-hand inspiration.
0:20:02 > 0:20:03The water in Carthage
0:20:03 > 0:20:06is really the water of the Thames.
0:20:08 > 0:20:11He drew and painted imagined classical ruins
0:20:11 > 0:20:13on the river banks he knew very well.
0:20:13 > 0:20:17You can see one of his sketchbook pictures of the Thames
0:20:17 > 0:20:21becoming the ancient city of Carthage in its dawning light.
0:20:24 > 0:20:26Here's some other sketches
0:20:26 > 0:20:27of a kind of architecture
0:20:27 > 0:20:29inspired by classicism.
0:20:29 > 0:20:31This time it's plans for a villa
0:20:31 > 0:20:34Turner wanted to build for himself by the river,
0:20:34 > 0:20:35which he did, in Twickenham.
0:20:35 > 0:20:38He called the place Solus Lodge.
0:20:42 > 0:20:44And here it is.
0:20:44 > 0:20:47"Solus" is the Latin base for the word isolation.
0:20:47 > 0:20:49Turner got plenty of that out here -
0:20:49 > 0:20:53'a solo existence except for the presence of his father.
0:20:53 > 0:20:56'Turner was a bachelor all his life,
0:20:56 > 0:20:58'married only to his art.
0:20:58 > 0:21:00'He had mistresses he visited occasionally,
0:21:00 > 0:21:03'that he was very quiet about,
0:21:03 > 0:21:05'and illegitimate children by one of them,
0:21:05 > 0:21:07'about whom very little is now known.
0:21:07 > 0:21:10'His father did the shopping and cleaning in Solus Lodge
0:21:10 > 0:21:12'and prepared Turner's canvases,
0:21:12 > 0:21:16'while Turner carried on the business of being Turner.
0:21:17 > 0:21:20'In those days, Twickenham was rural,
0:21:20 > 0:21:23'the villa was surrounded by fields,
0:21:23 > 0:21:26'and he could see the glinting River Thames from his top window.
0:21:26 > 0:21:29'It was the dynamic visual element in a leafy paradise.
0:21:30 > 0:21:34'Ten miles away, down the winding course of the river,
0:21:34 > 0:21:36'Turner sold and exhibited his art.
0:21:36 > 0:21:38'And as a professor at the Royal Academy,
0:21:38 > 0:21:41'he gave lectures on art theory.
0:21:41 > 0:21:46'But up here, in his solitary haven, he created. He drew and sketched
0:21:46 > 0:21:50'and he did something else vital to his paintings - he read poetry.
0:21:50 > 0:21:53'As an artist, it wasn't just the traditions of painting
0:21:53 > 0:21:57'that influenced him, but also the traditions of poetry.
0:21:57 > 0:22:01'Radical new poets emerged in Turner's time -
0:22:01 > 0:22:05'Wordsworth and Coleridge and then Byron and Shelley.
0:22:05 > 0:22:08'Turner was the painter equivalent of those figures.
0:22:08 > 0:22:12'Like them, he expressed feeling through descriptions of landscapes.
0:22:12 > 0:22:16'But also like them, pushing forward and being advanced
0:22:16 > 0:22:22'went naturally with a profound interest in the poetic past.'
0:22:22 > 0:22:24In the culture of Turner's time,
0:22:24 > 0:22:27because of the poetry of Alexander Pope
0:22:27 > 0:22:29and other now lesser-known figures,
0:22:29 > 0:22:32the beauty of Thames-side scenes like this,
0:22:32 > 0:22:34with its glorious light,
0:22:34 > 0:22:37was appreciated as a portal
0:22:37 > 0:22:39on to another dimension.
0:22:39 > 0:22:42As well as the Thames being literally a link with the past,
0:22:42 > 0:22:45there was also a sense of a sort of golden age
0:22:45 > 0:22:47of the poetic classical past,
0:22:47 > 0:22:51the age of gods and goddesses in nature,
0:22:51 > 0:22:56that somehow lingered on in the look of the Thames in the modern present.
0:22:56 > 0:22:59Turner more than signed up to this idea,
0:22:59 > 0:23:03it was really the driving motor of his Thames landscapes.
0:23:03 > 0:23:08Their multi-layered meanings were possible because, in his head,
0:23:08 > 0:23:14the Thames was already a poetic, multi-layered experience.
0:23:43 > 0:23:46Turner wrote poetry himself.
0:23:46 > 0:23:48He stuck bits of it on the backs of his canvases.
0:23:48 > 0:23:52He had lines of it printed in the catalogues of his exhibitions.
0:23:52 > 0:23:56When he wasn't painting in his purpose-built villa in Twickenham,
0:23:56 > 0:24:00he was writing, making up poetry in the house or out here in the garden.
0:24:00 > 0:24:02Today it's not so important for us
0:24:02 > 0:24:06to worry whether or not Turner's poetry was any good.
0:24:06 > 0:24:08It tended not to have any endings,
0:24:08 > 0:24:12he just streamed it out in his notebooks and sketchbooks,
0:24:12 > 0:24:14without very much revision.
0:24:14 > 0:24:16As if, when he was doing his visual art,
0:24:16 > 0:24:18he was working hard and concentrating,
0:24:18 > 0:24:20whereas, when he was poeticising,
0:24:20 > 0:24:23he was on a kind of mental holiday.
0:24:23 > 0:24:28The important thing is that it was a poetic vision of art that drove him.
0:24:28 > 0:24:31Turner's written poetry was the ordinary sort of thing
0:24:31 > 0:24:35that was necessary to produce the absolutely stupendous thing -
0:24:35 > 0:24:37his poetic painting.
0:24:55 > 0:24:56Artists were conditioned to believe
0:24:56 > 0:25:00that poetry was superior to visual art
0:25:00 > 0:25:02because it could communicate more.
0:25:02 > 0:25:04The challenge for art
0:25:04 > 0:25:07was to get that multi-layered quality that poetry has.
0:25:07 > 0:25:09Turner does exactly this in a picture
0:25:09 > 0:25:12that poetically juxtaposes opposites -
0:25:12 > 0:25:16ordinary life and the life of the mightiest in the land.
0:25:25 > 0:25:28Turner often didn't know what finished pictures
0:25:28 > 0:25:31his quick sketches would end up serving.
0:25:31 > 0:25:34Here, they provide the information for a scene
0:25:34 > 0:25:39that has Windsor Castle more or less in the middle in a misty haze.
0:25:39 > 0:25:43The light effect he's dealing with here is atmosphere -
0:25:43 > 0:25:46the very particular mood that light can be the cause of,
0:25:46 > 0:25:48as it divides up reality,
0:25:48 > 0:25:51creating a certain atmosphere.
0:25:51 > 0:25:53He's concocting all this
0:25:53 > 0:25:55so that the real focus is down here.
0:25:55 > 0:25:58Farm labourers in a moment of rest
0:25:58 > 0:26:00on a hard day's work.
0:26:00 > 0:26:02The picture is called
0:26:02 > 0:26:05Ploughing Up Turnips Near Slough.
0:26:05 > 0:26:09The year is 1809. We're at war.
0:26:09 > 0:26:12Our little island must sustain itself
0:26:12 > 0:26:15because there can be no foreign trade at the moment.
0:26:15 > 0:26:20The King, King George III in his castle, is known as Farmer George.
0:26:20 > 0:26:22This is a rich example
0:26:22 > 0:26:26of where the Thames can take Turner imaginatively.
0:26:26 > 0:26:30It's Turner, the social commentary artist.
0:26:30 > 0:26:32You've got this very real scene below,
0:26:32 > 0:26:34of the cows and turnips
0:26:34 > 0:26:36and the workers and their baskets,
0:26:36 > 0:26:40and then, way above them in the misty distance, the monarch.
0:26:40 > 0:26:45Where is Turner mentally in all of this and where are we?
0:26:45 > 0:26:48Remember, it's 200 years ago, not today.
0:26:48 > 0:26:50I think we're the middle-class
0:26:50 > 0:26:53looking down affectionately at the workers
0:26:53 > 0:26:56and up respectfully at the King.
0:26:56 > 0:26:58We're all patriots.
0:26:58 > 0:27:03Even Turner, even though he's none of these social classes.
0:27:03 > 0:27:05Turner is the maverick artist,
0:27:05 > 0:27:08the visionary who's using the Thames
0:27:08 > 0:27:11as a trigger for an idealised scene
0:27:11 > 0:27:17that evokes the texture of everyday life as it was lived in 1809.
0:27:52 > 0:27:53For Turner, the waters of the Thames
0:27:53 > 0:27:57also suggested another big idea of his age.
0:27:57 > 0:28:01"How sublime!" we might say today of a sight like this.
0:28:01 > 0:28:03The beautiful river with its glowing light,
0:28:03 > 0:28:07not really thinking what the word "sublime" means.
0:28:07 > 0:28:10The Sublime is a concept from the 18th century
0:28:10 > 0:28:12with roots in the classical past.
0:28:12 > 0:28:14The philosopher Sir Edmund Burke
0:28:14 > 0:28:17looked at the way reality is apprehended
0:28:17 > 0:28:19through sense perceptions
0:28:19 > 0:28:21and he developed the idea
0:28:21 > 0:28:24that there was a dimension of the irrational and the terrifying
0:28:24 > 0:28:27that was something like beauty, but separate from it.
0:28:27 > 0:28:30He called this the Sublime dimension.
0:28:30 > 0:28:33Burke was influenced
0:28:33 > 0:28:36by strange old anonymous writings from Ancient Rome,
0:28:36 > 0:28:38which historians have agreed to attribute
0:28:38 > 0:28:41to a fictional author called Longinus.
0:28:41 > 0:28:43These said that the effect
0:28:43 > 0:28:47of Sublime emotions and Sublime language in poetry
0:28:47 > 0:28:51was a kind of elevated moral ecstasy.
0:28:51 > 0:28:53The poet Wordsworth in Turner's own time,
0:28:53 > 0:28:56writing about the Sublime and the Beautiful,
0:28:56 > 0:28:58said that the poetic imagination
0:28:58 > 0:29:01elevates man like "an unfather'd vapour"
0:29:01 > 0:29:04and makes him forever unsettled.
0:29:04 > 0:29:06Artists were enthralled by the notion.
0:29:06 > 0:29:11It meant something like nature appreciation but also nature terror.
0:29:11 > 0:29:13Turner himself was formed as an artist
0:29:13 > 0:29:16with this concept always playing on his mind.
0:29:16 > 0:29:18Nature is out of scale with you,
0:29:18 > 0:29:20it towers above you.
0:29:20 > 0:29:23It meant something like God, art,
0:29:23 > 0:29:24the past, the ultimate -
0:29:24 > 0:29:26the meaning of meanings.
0:29:26 > 0:29:30Today, it's often used to mean indifference to feeling,
0:29:30 > 0:29:34as in somebody is "sublimely unaware" of something
0:29:34 > 0:29:36or "sublimely above" something.
0:29:36 > 0:29:39In Turner's time, the Sublime implied
0:29:39 > 0:29:41the greatest intensity of feeling -
0:29:41 > 0:29:44a state of nature the sight of which
0:29:44 > 0:29:48immediately transports us to a higher level.
0:29:56 > 0:29:58When I see the Thames at its most epic,
0:29:58 > 0:30:00I see something that's beautiful
0:30:00 > 0:30:04and capable of a lot of different types of beauty,
0:30:04 > 0:30:06but also something symbolic.
0:30:06 > 0:30:09Simply because it's been there for so long.
0:30:09 > 0:30:11I look at this view of the Thames from Richmond Hill,
0:30:11 > 0:30:13looking out over towards Windsor,
0:30:13 > 0:30:16and I see something that's my present,
0:30:16 > 0:30:22but also an epic past experienced by millions of people.
0:30:22 > 0:30:25I think that potential of the magnificent Thames
0:30:25 > 0:30:28as something that could be inspiring
0:30:28 > 0:30:31is what Turner was interested in.
0:30:31 > 0:30:33Whether it really is inspiring
0:30:33 > 0:30:36or whether it's just a matter-of-fact everyday experience,
0:30:36 > 0:30:38well, that's the art of Turner.
0:30:38 > 0:30:41If he's going to raise it up to that great level or not.
0:30:41 > 0:30:45He painted this very scene a couple of times directly
0:30:45 > 0:30:47and countless times indirectly.
0:30:47 > 0:30:50Bits of that glinting river
0:30:50 > 0:30:53and those classical trees appear in many pictures by him.
0:30:53 > 0:30:56Expressing classical themes, historical themes
0:30:56 > 0:30:59or just the beauty of the everyday landscape.
0:30:59 > 0:31:01When he painted the picture
0:31:01 > 0:31:05England: Richmond Hill On The Prince Regent's Birthday,
0:31:05 > 0:31:08using this as a backdrop,
0:31:08 > 0:31:11the mood then was war and peace.
0:31:11 > 0:31:13England had just come to the end
0:31:13 > 0:31:15of a 20-year war with France.
0:31:15 > 0:31:17Everyone, including Turner,
0:31:17 > 0:31:20lived in daily anxiety of invasion by the French.
0:31:20 > 0:31:24And now, that anxiety was lifted and it was time,
0:31:24 > 0:31:28as the painting appears to express, for celebration.
0:31:28 > 0:31:32So, if I were to walk down those steps now into that image,
0:31:32 > 0:31:34I'd be walking into a scene
0:31:34 > 0:31:38capable of a multitude of different symbolic meanings.
0:31:53 > 0:31:56Here is Turner's painting
0:31:56 > 0:32:00England: Richmond Hill On The Prince Regent's Birthday.
0:32:00 > 0:32:03It's Turner's big public statement to the nation
0:32:03 > 0:32:06showing them really what they want to see.
0:32:06 > 0:32:10This mood of celebration following the darkness of the war years.
0:32:10 > 0:32:13The war with Napoleon. Now, finally over.
0:32:13 > 0:32:16I think Turner is really bringing out
0:32:16 > 0:32:20all his skills learnt as a teenager when he was a scene painter.
0:32:20 > 0:32:24It's more the artifice side of Turner's great expressive art
0:32:24 > 0:32:28than the reality side. Usually, there's a tension between the two.
0:32:28 > 0:32:30Here, he's pumping up the artifice.
0:32:32 > 0:32:34The meaning Turner wants to get over
0:32:34 > 0:32:39is the great and the good at play symbolising hope after war.
0:32:39 > 0:32:43The Sublime dimension is the huge scale of the landscape -
0:32:43 > 0:32:48hope and play go with royalty's awesomely limitless power.
0:32:48 > 0:32:51Turner gives all this a tangible feeling
0:32:51 > 0:32:53by the exaggerated high contrast
0:32:53 > 0:32:57of light and shade on the distant horizon.
0:32:57 > 0:33:01If you were only seeing the rather stiff party of the Royals
0:33:01 > 0:33:04all dressed up and civilisedly celebrating peace,
0:33:04 > 0:33:08it'd be a very different picture experience
0:33:08 > 0:33:10than it is with the light above.
0:33:10 > 0:33:12You've got the light radiating out
0:33:12 > 0:33:15and then seeming to be conveyed
0:33:15 > 0:33:17by Turner's scene-painting skills,
0:33:17 > 0:33:19on the surface of the Thames
0:33:19 > 0:33:21right up to the party.
0:33:21 > 0:33:26So a scenic view, which seems slightly artificial,
0:33:26 > 0:33:28is made believable by light.
0:33:28 > 0:33:31But also, through this element of contrast,
0:33:31 > 0:33:35it's made very vivid and rather beautiful.
0:33:44 > 0:33:48In reality, the public was not at all enchanted by royalty.
0:33:48 > 0:33:52They thought the Prince Regent, soon to be George IV,
0:33:52 > 0:33:55was fat and debauched and extravagant,
0:33:55 > 0:33:59but he was also their figurehead, the focus for their patriotism.
0:33:59 > 0:34:04Turner's idealisation of royalty was all about magically transforming
0:34:04 > 0:34:07the ordinary into the extraordinary
0:34:07 > 0:34:11and the predictable into the mysterious.
0:34:11 > 0:34:15Was Turner an artistic radical and a conservative royalist?
0:34:15 > 0:34:19Or just an artist businessman hoping to get the attention of royalty
0:34:19 > 0:34:21and maybe gain a royal client?
0:34:21 > 0:34:26We can only ask. In fact, nothing is known about Turner's politics.
0:34:26 > 0:34:29It is known that he failed to sell this painting to anyone,
0:34:29 > 0:34:32and it remained in his studio till he died.
0:34:50 > 0:34:54'There was one favourite Thames journey that took Turner
0:34:54 > 0:34:57'much further than the places we've seen so far,
0:34:57 > 0:34:59'right up to the Thames Estuary
0:34:59 > 0:35:03'and then along that to the Kent coast, ending up in Margate,
0:35:03 > 0:35:06'at the time a popular holiday spot for Londoners.
0:35:09 > 0:35:11'Turner had good memories of the place
0:35:11 > 0:35:15'because he'd been taken here on trips as a child.
0:35:15 > 0:35:17'After he became depressed
0:35:17 > 0:35:21'because of his father's death in 1829, when Turner was 54,
0:35:21 > 0:35:26'the place began to have a magnetic attraction for him.'
0:35:26 > 0:35:28Turner knew these streets very well,
0:35:28 > 0:35:31cos he came to Margate regularly for 20 years.
0:35:31 > 0:35:35The attraction was the sea, the place itself, the atmosphere,
0:35:35 > 0:35:38what it could do for his art. But there was also something else,
0:35:38 > 0:35:42and that was the attraction of Sophia Booth,
0:35:42 > 0:35:46the lady who ran the boarding house where Turner stayed,
0:35:46 > 0:35:51who he, in as far as he could love anyone, pretty much loved.
0:35:51 > 0:35:55They remained companions for the rest of Turner's life.
0:35:55 > 0:35:59He had a sort of particular relationship to her,
0:35:59 > 0:36:02which didn't involve him living with her all the time
0:36:02 > 0:36:07but visiting her now and then between trips abroad, painting trips,
0:36:07 > 0:36:12where he would sort of hove in at the berth that Mrs Booth offered.
0:36:12 > 0:36:16All the reports we have of her are rather snobbish perhaps.
0:36:16 > 0:36:18They say that she was common.
0:36:18 > 0:36:21She wasn't really at the level of Turner.
0:36:21 > 0:36:23She was too much of an ordinary person.
0:36:23 > 0:36:27But what the relationship tells us about Turner
0:36:27 > 0:36:30is the two sides of his personality.
0:36:30 > 0:36:34This fantastic poetic visionary, Romantic artist
0:36:34 > 0:36:38who, as a person, was rather normal,
0:36:38 > 0:36:40a short, little gnomic-looking guy,
0:36:40 > 0:36:43rather earthy and, in some ways,
0:36:43 > 0:36:45perhaps a bit ridiculous.
0:36:45 > 0:36:49But he was certainly the man who, as far as he could, loved Mrs Booth.
0:36:58 > 0:37:01'No picture exists of Mrs Booth,
0:37:01 > 0:37:04'but she makes a striking impression in Turner's story anyway.
0:37:04 > 0:37:09'From the Sublime to the ridiculous, the sweetly ridiculous story
0:37:09 > 0:37:13'of a romance between a genius of art and an illiterate woman.
0:37:13 > 0:37:15'She called him "Old Un."
0:37:15 > 0:37:18'She was, in fact, 25 years younger than him.
0:37:18 > 0:37:20'And he called her "Dear."
0:37:24 > 0:37:27'Whatever his true feelings were for her,
0:37:27 > 0:37:31'Turner had no doubt about the role of emotion in his art
0:37:31 > 0:37:34'and its link to colour.'
0:37:39 > 0:37:41For years, Turner had been interested
0:37:41 > 0:37:46in new scientific experiments in colour perception.
0:37:46 > 0:37:49First, the great discoverer of the Law of Gravity, Sir Isaac Newton,
0:37:49 > 0:37:53saw colour and light arranged in a certain way.
0:37:53 > 0:37:56Then, the philosopher Goethe challenged Newton
0:37:56 > 0:37:58and saw them arranged in a different way,
0:37:58 > 0:38:04and claimed a direct connection between colours and human emotions.
0:38:07 > 0:38:10Turner's belief, following Goethe's example,
0:38:10 > 0:38:12in a link between colours and feelings,
0:38:12 > 0:38:16influenced both his own colour diagrams,
0:38:16 > 0:38:21and also heralded the arrival in his landscapes of a new visual mood -
0:38:21 > 0:38:25from a sort of gentle, meditative, visual poetry
0:38:25 > 0:38:26in Isleworth and Twickenham
0:38:26 > 0:38:30to soaring abstract tremendousness at Margate.
0:38:32 > 0:38:35You can see this happening in a show of Turner's work
0:38:35 > 0:38:38at the public gallery at Margate named after him,
0:38:38 > 0:38:39Turner Contemporary.
0:38:47 > 0:38:51Margate, this little seaside town at the end of the Thames Estuary,
0:38:51 > 0:38:56becomes the taking off point for a cosmic vision.
0:38:56 > 0:38:58Everything real in the picture -
0:38:58 > 0:39:03the town itself, the sails of a yacht approaching the coast,
0:39:03 > 0:39:06everything real becomes dissolved
0:39:06 > 0:39:09in favour of a whirling ball of colour.
0:39:09 > 0:39:14Turner only had about five years left to live when he painted this.
0:39:14 > 0:39:17His picture Yacht Approaching The Coast
0:39:17 > 0:39:23shows him at his most in touch with himself, his most indulgent,
0:39:23 > 0:39:27his most in touch with his idea of cosmic meaning.
0:39:27 > 0:39:30This central focus of pure white
0:39:30 > 0:39:34surrounded by yellow, red, green, blue
0:39:34 > 0:39:37and these areas of coloured white -
0:39:37 > 0:39:41green-white, yellow-white, orange-white,
0:39:41 > 0:39:45and that strange scratchy red that emanates from below the yacht
0:39:45 > 0:39:52and is seen again here, mottled over with pasty pearlescent white.
0:39:52 > 0:39:56Science tells us that colour is light.
0:39:56 > 0:39:59Turner tells us the sun,
0:39:59 > 0:40:02which is the ultimate source of all light,
0:40:02 > 0:40:07is God, which is a pretty freaky idea.
0:40:39 > 0:40:43Turner didn't literally see those spectrum colours
0:40:43 > 0:40:47straining to get through the misty whites of the spray at Margate.
0:40:47 > 0:40:49He saw the reality of nature on the coast
0:40:49 > 0:40:53and he selected from what he saw, as he always did.
0:40:53 > 0:40:55But the rest he invented -
0:40:55 > 0:40:59he was imposing a vision of colour that came from science,
0:40:59 > 0:41:04making a natural scene into a new kind of almost abstract art.
0:41:07 > 0:41:11The big skies of the Kent coast, which Turner revered.
0:41:11 > 0:41:14He said there was no sky on Earth more beautiful
0:41:14 > 0:41:15than the one over Thanet,
0:41:15 > 0:41:19and the flat landscape offered him lots of opportunity
0:41:19 > 0:41:21to capture a natural light effect
0:41:21 > 0:41:23we naturally associate with heightened feeling -
0:41:23 > 0:41:25a sunset.
0:41:30 > 0:41:34What do we mean when we call a sunset Turneresque?
0:41:34 > 0:41:38Something like, the "spiritual," spiritual meaning,
0:41:38 > 0:41:40but what do we mean by that?
0:41:43 > 0:41:46I think we think of sunsets as spiritual,
0:41:46 > 0:41:48because we think of light
0:41:48 > 0:41:50as affecting emotion very, very directly.
0:41:50 > 0:41:54There's probably very little in nature
0:41:54 > 0:41:58that has quite as direct an effect on emotions as changing light.
0:41:58 > 0:42:01And a sunset is a very dramatic light.
0:42:01 > 0:42:06The whole atmosphere is filled with very, very intense colour
0:42:06 > 0:42:08that changes quite fast.
0:42:08 > 0:42:13But when an artist is...
0:42:13 > 0:42:16expressing something like those feelings
0:42:16 > 0:42:19through an image of the sunset,
0:42:19 > 0:42:21it's not just the literal fact of a sunset,
0:42:21 > 0:42:24or the cliche of a sunset,
0:42:24 > 0:42:27it's all the powers
0:42:27 > 0:42:31that a painting - this created, constructed thing - has.
0:42:31 > 0:42:33What is embodied in that painting
0:42:33 > 0:42:37is very hard to put into words, actually,
0:42:37 > 0:42:41and nothing like as easy or as glib as saying, "Marvellous sunset."
0:42:44 > 0:42:46A sunset in reality
0:42:46 > 0:42:49and a sentimental idea of the beauty of sunsets,
0:42:49 > 0:42:53are both different to Turner's actual renditions of sunsets,
0:42:53 > 0:42:55which are only partly observed nature.
0:42:55 > 0:43:00They're also interpretation and selection but they are also feeling.
0:43:00 > 0:43:03He moves the paint around to get an effect he has felt
0:43:03 > 0:43:05as much as he's actually seen.
0:43:09 > 0:43:12Turner went back and forth between Margate and London
0:43:12 > 0:43:14all through the 1830s.
0:43:14 > 0:43:17Memories of the national triumph
0:43:17 > 0:43:20of the Battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo were fading in that decade
0:43:20 > 0:43:24and public life was dominated by political squabbles,
0:43:24 > 0:43:28by hatred for the weakness and dishonesty of the government,
0:43:28 > 0:43:30and news of radicals and modernists
0:43:30 > 0:43:33agitating for progressive legislation.
0:43:33 > 0:43:36Riots regularly broke out over the price of bread.
0:43:39 > 0:43:42'Turner, now old and eccentric,
0:43:42 > 0:43:45'neither left wing nor right wing,
0:43:45 > 0:43:47'was the solitary king of light,
0:43:47 > 0:43:50'all its moods, its expressive powers,
0:43:50 > 0:43:53'and the society he lived in was giving him'
0:43:53 > 0:43:55increasingly rich material for his gifts.
0:43:55 > 0:43:58The modern world offered him new opportunities
0:43:58 > 0:44:02for a synthesis of the real and the symbolic.
0:44:02 > 0:44:06One day, the very heart of government gave him a great subject
0:44:06 > 0:44:09and the kind of light he chose to express it
0:44:09 > 0:44:12was all-consuming radiance.
0:44:12 > 0:44:14You're looking at something violent and horrific
0:44:14 > 0:44:16but also awesomely spectacular
0:44:16 > 0:44:18so you can't tear your eyes away.
0:44:18 > 0:44:21The burning down of the Houses of Parliament.
0:44:21 > 0:44:23This is an event that actually happened
0:44:23 > 0:44:26on the night of October 16th 1834.
0:44:26 > 0:44:29For some unknown reason, both houses,
0:44:29 > 0:44:32the House Of Lords and the House Of Commons, caught fire.
0:44:32 > 0:44:37Within a few hours, each was reduced to a pile of smoking rubble.
0:44:37 > 0:44:40Turner actually witnessed that event.
0:44:40 > 0:44:43These are his watercolour evocations
0:44:43 > 0:44:47of a sort of series of glimpses of what it was like.
0:44:47 > 0:44:50He rushed down there to the shore
0:44:50 > 0:44:52with students from the Royal Academy.
0:44:52 > 0:44:55They hired a boat. Rowed out into the middle of the Thames
0:44:55 > 0:44:59and Turner made a lot of pencil sketches
0:44:59 > 0:45:02of what he was seeing as well as mental notes.
0:45:02 > 0:45:06And, within a few days, he'd worked up these watercolours.
0:45:06 > 0:45:08The first one is actually the most abstract.
0:45:08 > 0:45:11But in that one, you know exactly what's happening.
0:45:11 > 0:45:13You can feel those flames,
0:45:13 > 0:45:16you can see the night sky over the Thames at Westminster
0:45:16 > 0:45:20filled with a radiating fiery glow.
0:45:20 > 0:45:25Why is it that Turner felt that he had to rush down there?
0:45:25 > 0:45:28After all, there are a lot of artists in London at the time
0:45:28 > 0:45:31but it's only Turner who does this series of watercolours
0:45:31 > 0:45:33and two spectacular oil paintings.
0:45:33 > 0:45:37All of which are amazing milestones in the history of art.
0:45:37 > 0:45:43I think the reason is that Turner is the artist of natural light effects.
0:45:43 > 0:45:46He has a furious hunger to document
0:45:46 > 0:45:50what the natural world is like and how it is revealed by light.
0:45:50 > 0:45:52But he is also the artist
0:45:52 > 0:45:56whose mind is constantly whirling with big ideas.
0:45:56 > 0:46:00So in this apocalyptic end-of-the-world scene,
0:46:00 > 0:46:03there's also the national mood.
0:46:03 > 0:46:05The nation's dissatisfaction
0:46:05 > 0:46:07with a corrupt government
0:46:07 > 0:46:10and all these pressures in recent decades
0:46:10 > 0:46:12on the government to reform.
0:46:12 > 0:46:14And now they see it spectacularly,
0:46:14 > 0:46:16literally caving in
0:46:16 > 0:46:19and burnt to the ground.
0:46:19 > 0:46:21At 9:30 that evening,
0:46:21 > 0:46:23when the roof of one of the buildings collapses,
0:46:23 > 0:46:26the whole crowd erupts with cheers.
0:46:26 > 0:46:30It's a weird soaring moment of national anarchy.
0:46:30 > 0:46:33Who knows if Turner himself was cheering
0:46:33 > 0:46:35or if he was too busy scribbling with his pencil?
0:46:35 > 0:46:39But, certainly, the light effect of radiance
0:46:39 > 0:46:42has a mood corollary
0:46:42 > 0:46:45of exultant national anarchy.
0:47:16 > 0:47:19Now you're looking at one of the final oil paintings,
0:47:19 > 0:47:22produced a year after the fire actually happened.
0:47:22 > 0:47:25He did most of it in front of a crowd of people.
0:47:27 > 0:47:30The tradition of big public exhibitions
0:47:30 > 0:47:34was that artists might put delicate final touches on their paintings
0:47:34 > 0:47:36in the gallery before a show opened.
0:47:36 > 0:47:39This was called varnishing day.
0:47:40 > 0:47:44Turner brought in the large canvas to the gallery
0:47:44 > 0:47:47with only a few blurry outlines on it
0:47:47 > 0:47:49and, in a six-hour public performance,
0:47:49 > 0:47:51he painted the whole scene,
0:47:51 > 0:47:55hardly stepping back to get a good look.
0:47:55 > 0:48:01They're seeing horror, triumph, fascination - all mixed up.
0:48:01 > 0:48:03Turner just does the work,
0:48:03 > 0:48:06picks up his stuff and leaves the building.
0:48:12 > 0:48:17The Thames gave Turner his great source of meaning.
0:48:17 > 0:48:20Consumerism, anxiety, doubt,
0:48:20 > 0:48:24fear of nothing really meaning anything at all.
0:48:24 > 0:48:26These themes of all our lives today
0:48:26 > 0:48:29first strongly emerged in Turner's time.
0:48:29 > 0:48:33It really was an age of transformation.
0:48:33 > 0:48:36There was a gradual disappearance of nature
0:48:36 > 0:48:39and a move from the country to the town,
0:48:39 > 0:48:42from working the land to working in industry.
0:48:42 > 0:48:45Turner's depictions of the Thames
0:48:45 > 0:48:51brought together the spirituality and the commerce of the age.
0:48:51 > 0:48:54He could see, in the beautiful light of its surfaces,
0:48:54 > 0:48:58values that were thought to go back to an ancient time.
0:48:58 > 0:49:00But also new developments
0:49:00 > 0:49:03that were absolutely strange to people who lived at the time.
0:49:03 > 0:49:07He could depict the low and the high,
0:49:07 > 0:49:10the turnips in their muddy fields
0:49:10 > 0:49:13and Windsor Castle up in the ethereal mists.
0:49:21 > 0:49:25This tumult of change in his nation's life
0:49:25 > 0:49:28ran alongside the multitude of layered meanings
0:49:28 > 0:49:31that always characterises Turner's pictures.
0:49:31 > 0:49:34And so, what has since become his most popular work,
0:49:34 > 0:49:37created when he was nearing the end of his life,
0:49:37 > 0:49:42can be read both as personal and a sort of national elegy.
0:49:43 > 0:49:47It was inspired initially by an article he read in the papers.
0:49:47 > 0:49:52The Temeraire, a battleship at the centre of England's successful fight
0:49:52 > 0:49:54against the French at Trafalgar,
0:49:54 > 0:49:57was moored on the Thames and was about to be destroyed.
0:49:58 > 0:50:00Then, he happened to see the ship
0:50:00 > 0:50:03when he was coming back on the steam packet
0:50:03 > 0:50:05from one of his Margate trips.
0:50:05 > 0:50:08Later, Turner often referred
0:50:08 > 0:50:13to the painting he created from these experiences as "my darling."
0:50:17 > 0:50:19'His title for the painting was
0:50:19 > 0:50:24'The Fighting Temeraire, Tugged To Her Last Berth To Be Broken Up.'
0:50:24 > 0:50:29The picture is about the magnitude and sorrow of loss.
0:50:30 > 0:50:32And the role he's giving
0:50:32 > 0:50:35to light here is light as metaphor.
0:50:36 > 0:50:38He foregrounds the tug, which should be small,
0:50:38 > 0:50:41so that it seems bigger
0:50:41 > 0:50:44than the main body of the old doomed sailing ship.
0:50:46 > 0:50:47The Fighting Temeraire.
0:50:47 > 0:50:49How different the mood would be
0:50:49 > 0:50:53if it weren't for the accent of that black buoy.
0:50:53 > 0:50:57But how exactly Turner gets the balance between the two blacks,
0:50:57 > 0:50:59the buoy and the tug,
0:50:59 > 0:51:03with that precise sense of space in between?
0:51:03 > 0:51:06The massive heavy treatment of the sunset
0:51:06 > 0:51:08and then the glow beneath
0:51:08 > 0:51:12where it's hard to say where light grades into dark,
0:51:12 > 0:51:14so subtle is the grade.
0:51:14 > 0:51:19How he gets all that is the essence of the success of the picture.
0:51:19 > 0:51:24Water becomes a metaphor for feeling, for yearning,
0:51:24 > 0:51:30the sense of loss. The depth of emotion that his subject is about.
0:51:30 > 0:51:35A metaphor is a literary thing that comes from the mind
0:51:35 > 0:51:39but the painting is made powerful by what's actually in it.
0:51:39 > 0:51:44The precise shapes of those sails with the light shining on them.
0:51:44 > 0:51:48That shape is repeated in that sliver of light by the buoy.
0:51:48 > 0:51:53The massive liveliness of the sunset taking up so much of the picture
0:51:53 > 0:51:55and then the quiet placidity
0:51:55 > 0:51:58of the blue shimmering cityscape on the horizon.
0:51:58 > 0:52:01It's through the doing and redoing
0:52:01 > 0:52:05of all those calling and answering elements of the painting
0:52:05 > 0:52:09that Turner makes light and water
0:52:09 > 0:52:12into such a tremendous metaphor.
0:52:37 > 0:52:41'Intensity of feeling for Turner can take many forms
0:52:41 > 0:52:44'and can be realised with all sorts of subject matter.
0:52:44 > 0:52:46'It can be the national mood,
0:52:46 > 0:52:51'life becoming faster, harder, more emotionally distanced,
0:52:51 > 0:52:54'the beginning of the kinds of lives we all lead now.
0:52:59 > 0:53:02When Turner takes ordinary life as his subject
0:53:02 > 0:53:06and makes a sort of epic statement about it
0:53:06 > 0:53:09so ordinary life is reflected back to people
0:53:09 > 0:53:14with the force and intensity of a clap of thunder, how does he do it?
0:53:14 > 0:53:16The answer is technique.
0:53:16 > 0:53:18He has an idea.
0:53:18 > 0:53:20Then through his manipulation of materials,
0:53:20 > 0:53:23through trial and error in the studio,
0:53:23 > 0:53:26he finds the form that will lift a mere idea
0:53:26 > 0:53:30on to the level of a vision.
0:53:32 > 0:53:38Rain, Steam And Speed - The Great Western Railway. 1844.
0:53:38 > 0:53:41You're looking at the new railway bridge
0:53:41 > 0:53:44that was built over the River Thames at Maidenhead
0:53:44 > 0:53:47only a few years before Turner painted this.
0:53:47 > 0:53:49Everyone's interested in it.
0:53:49 > 0:53:51It's a new force in daily life.
0:53:51 > 0:53:54You've got timeless nature,
0:53:54 > 0:53:56atmosphere, rain, mist
0:53:56 > 0:53:57and then this new thing -
0:53:57 > 0:54:00noise, speed, metal,
0:54:00 > 0:54:02the arrival of the steam train.
0:54:02 > 0:54:05Turner shows his black train
0:54:05 > 0:54:09coming out of a white shimmery surface.
0:54:09 > 0:54:11When things are shimmering,
0:54:11 > 0:54:15it's uncertain where they are, even what they are.
0:54:15 > 0:54:18Turner takes that uncertainty and makes it into a positive,
0:54:18 > 0:54:23into a mythic image of a big change in existence.
0:54:23 > 0:54:27It's a titanic piece of work, quintessential Turner
0:54:27 > 0:54:31where he's telling people about existence, which they love.
0:54:31 > 0:54:36And he's doing it through the magical means of depiction of light.
0:54:36 > 0:54:41But you're also looking at something else - Turner's materials.
0:54:41 > 0:54:44It's hard to see this image and not be amazed by them.
0:54:44 > 0:54:47All that scraped matter,
0:54:47 > 0:54:51the thin blue lines, like ink,
0:54:51 > 0:54:55and the big build up of browny-white pasty matter.
0:54:55 > 0:55:00And then that tawny brown stuff that he's made the bridge out of,
0:55:00 > 0:55:02which, close up, looks like something
0:55:02 > 0:55:04a builder might be doing repairs with.
0:55:04 > 0:55:08It's a train in a world of blob.
0:55:13 > 0:55:16Something that was expected to be happening
0:55:16 > 0:55:19with abysses and chasms up mighty mountains,
0:55:19 > 0:55:23which is what the theory of the Sublime in art was about,
0:55:23 > 0:55:26was now happening with a train -
0:55:26 > 0:55:30a sensation of horror and beauty all at once.
0:56:13 > 0:56:15Turner wasn't an articulate philosopher
0:56:15 > 0:56:20or an articulate analyser or an articulate social commentator.
0:56:20 > 0:56:24But he was a profoundly talented artist.
0:56:26 > 0:56:29And if he didn't communicate well verbally, it doesn't matter,
0:56:29 > 0:56:32because he was a prophet with his paintings.
0:56:35 > 0:56:39The Thames gave Turner subjects to express
0:56:39 > 0:56:41what it was like to be alive.
0:56:43 > 0:56:46Radical disorder is the message
0:56:46 > 0:56:49of the radiant unreal spectrum reds and yellows
0:56:49 > 0:56:52of the Houses of Parliament going up in flames.
0:56:54 > 0:56:58In the moody waters of the Fighting Temeraire,
0:56:58 > 0:57:01there's the loss of heroic and virtuous aims.
0:57:01 > 0:57:04The Napoleonic era comes to an end,
0:57:04 > 0:57:07this thing that has ruled everybody's life for so long
0:57:07 > 0:57:11and money or commerce looks set to take over
0:57:11 > 0:57:15from the noble battles and fearsome enemy that once united people.
0:57:20 > 0:57:24With Rain, Steam And Speed, we see modernity.
0:57:24 > 0:57:28The message of a shimmering sky over the Thames at Maidenhead
0:57:28 > 0:57:30is radical change.
0:57:34 > 0:57:37Turner painted more than he saw.
0:57:37 > 0:57:42His paintings communicated fears and exultations of the time,
0:57:42 > 0:57:45the thoughts that people had and wondered about.
0:57:45 > 0:57:47And he found, in the natural world,
0:57:47 > 0:57:50in the light effects on the surface of the Thames,
0:57:50 > 0:57:53the opportunities for expressing those thoughts.
0:57:56 > 0:57:59We can analyse Turner's processes
0:57:59 > 0:58:02and learn about his ideas and influences.
0:58:02 > 0:58:04But the feeling of his paintings in the first place
0:58:04 > 0:58:07and, ultimately, the only sensation that matters,
0:58:07 > 0:58:09is of being overwhelmed.
0:58:11 > 0:58:16Like light itself, Turner believed it gave life to everything -
0:58:16 > 0:58:19the feeling of awe.
0:58:51 > 0:58:54Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd