Turner Inspired - In the Light of Claude at the National Gallery

Turner Inspired - In the Light of Claude at the National Gallery

13 March, 2012
by: Tom Jeffreys

Problematic in several respects, the strength of the works on show means Turner Inspired is still worth seeing, says Tom Jeffreys.

We live in the age of the blockbuster exhibition. With ticket prices now routinely around the £15 mark, the success of a show is measured by the length of the queue to get in, and the pressure is on the big galleries to make a splash. In this regard, nothing has come close to matching the hype that surrounded the recent Leonardo da Vinci exhibition, with tickets reselling online for as much as £400. But now, what's replacing it in the National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing? An exhibition that takes as its starting point four paintings that have actually been on view in London since 1968.

This causes two key problems for Turner Inspired – In the Light of Claude. Firstly, it means that the exhibition's central thesis – that England's great Romantic painter Turner was heavily inspired by the French Baroque Claude, particularly with regards to composition and an appreciation of light – is a rather obvious one. Turner himself drew attention to it through the stipulations of his will and subsequently countless thousands of visitors have been able to see it for themselves. This is why an entire room is devoted to where the works have been hung since Turner's death, a moderately interesting footnote, but no more. Its inclusion serves as evidence that this is yet another exhibition suffering from the all-too-common affliction of not having much to say but plenty of space in which to say it.

The second problem is an economic one. With London currently playing host to two other headline-grabbing blockbusters – David Hockney at the Royal Academy and Lucian Freud just round the corner at the National Portrait Gallery – it's difficult to see why punters would fork out a significant sum of money to see this show. Especially as two of Turner's most popular and dramatic works – The Fighting Temeraire and Rain, Steam and Speed – are still free to view two floors up in Room 34. As if in acknowledgement of this, tickets to Turner Inspired are noticeably cheaper than those for Hockney or Freud, and up to 20% cheaper than face value for Leonardo. It's perhaps a sign that the bean-counters fear the worst for this one. Thank goodness then for oil-spilling BP, 'dividend-washers' Credit Suisse, anti-art litigators Louis Vuitton, and all the other wonderful corporate sponsors who continue to donate money to the National Gallery.

All of which is a shame, as the exhibition contains some wonderful moments: the glorious pink glow of Claude's evening view of Tivoli; the eerily washed-out grey tones of his Enchanted Castle; and the sunlight skipping across gently undulating waves in his Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba. Claude here is admired for his compositions, his delicate architectural constructions, his ability to draw the eye lingeringly inwards towards a sun-hazed horizon. It's wonderful stuff, but does become a little repetitive.

And so it's Turner who really shines, particularly in the later works when his vigorous style  contrasts increasingly dramatically with Claude's crisp precision. This energy and daring dynamism is most in evidence in a series of unfinished painting, such as Tivoli: Tobias and the Angel, with its strong, dense brushwork, boldly smearing towards abstraction, and Landscape with Water – whose pared down purity only emphasises the opaque, near-blinding whiteness at the centre.

By some distance however the exhibition's highlight is the astounding Keelmen Heaving in Coals By Moonlight, on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington. It's simply a dazzling piece, combining drama with delicacy of composition, beauty with force. Under a shimmering blue night, the heat and heft of manual labour are lit by flaring fires and an ice-white moon. Smoking chimneys, papery moth-wing sails and threads of careful rigging frame a lightly dancing ocean littered with maritime detritus. Simultaneously serene and marked by a kind of ethereal violence, this is a work that's both of its age and stretches out towards timelessness. It alone is almost enough to warrant forking out £13.20 to visit this exhibition. Almost.

Turner Inspried – In the Light of Claude is at the National Gallery from 14th March to 5th June 2012.

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Image credit: JMW Turner, Keelmen Heaving Coals by Night, 1835

Tom Jeffreys