Turner and The Masters

Status: 2009
Location: Tate Britain

Client: Tate Gallery
Value: Confidential

 

This unforgettable show placed masterpieces by Canaletto, Rubens, Rembrandt and Titian next to some of JWM Turner’s most dramatic paintings. It portrayed a lesser-known side of the British Romantic painter: his obsession to prove he was just as good, if not better, than the old masters who he so admired.

This is the first exhibition ever to explore the full range of Turner’s challenges to the past, and his fierce rivalry with his contemporaries. Many works are reunited for the first time in hundreds of years and others which had never before been seen together in this light.

Working closely in collaboration with curators Martin Myrone and David Solkin, Stanton Williams created a sequence of display spaces that provided a clear framework to hang pairs and groups of works for comparison. The existing galleries were transformed and people were drawn through the exhibition by the changing scale and sequencing of the display areas, the juxtaposion of the works, and the provision of glimpses between spaces.

 

Credits
Photography: Peter Cook