The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free is the first exhibition devoted to the extraordinary work J.M.W. Turner created between 1835 and his death in 1851. Bringing together spectacular works from the UK and abroad, this exhibition celebrates Turner’s astonishing creative flowering in these later years when he produced many of his finest pictures but was also controversial and unjustly misunderstood.
By taking a fresh look at Turner’s late works, the exhibition sheds new light on his life and art. Challenging the myths, assumptions and interpretations that have grown around his later work, it reveals a painter as distinguished by the broad scope of his knowledge and imagination as he was by his radical and exploratory techniques, processes and use of materials. As much as he brought renewed energy to the exploration of the social, technological and scientific developments of modern life, in such icons of the machine age as Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway 1844, he remained as deeply engaged with the religious, historical or mythological themes that linked him to the cultural traditions of his era.
Curated by Sam Smiles, Professor of Art History and Visual Culture, Exeter University, with David Blayney Brown, Manton Curator of British Art 1790–1850, Tate Britain and Amy Concannon, Assistant Curator 1790–1850, Tate Britain.
by #Tate Britain
