{"id":512126,"date":"2026-03-03T18:38:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T18:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/512126\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T18:38:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T18:38:14","slug":"turner-constable-review-have-a-big-screen-date-with-two-masters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/512126\/","title":{"rendered":"Turner & Constable review \u2014 have a big-screen date with two masters"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I were a purist, I would say, \u201cBut of course you must see the exhibition in the flesh. But of course you must press your nose to the canvas, stand inches from greatness, commune with the spirits of John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner.\u201d I am, however, a realist. There are all sorts of reasons why you might not make it to the Turner & Constable exhibition at Tate Britain: small children, bad backs, working hours, tickets all being sold out on the one damn day you\u2019re in town. As I am often reminded in the comments below reviews, not everyone lives in London.<\/p>\n

The Exhibition on Screen documentary Turner & Constable is not just the next best thing, it is a very good thing in its own right. The film-makers David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky have form. Their take on the smash-hit, shoulder-to-shoulder Vermeer blockbuster at the Rijksmuseum in 2022 became the highest-grossing art documentary in UK history. They have also made films about Van Gogh (National Gallery), John Singer Sargent (Tate Britain) and Edward Hopper (Whitney Museum, New York).<\/p>\n

\"Painting<\/p>\n

The White Horse by John Constable, 1819<\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more art reviews, guides and interviews<\/a><\/p>\n

In reviews of the Tate exhibition, critics \u2014 we like a fight \u2014 have pitted the two artists against one another: Turner and Constable \u2014 The Rivals. Which artist staggers out of the final room with a bloody nose and which with the laurel wreath? The triumph of the exhibition is the way it upends your expectations. I went in on Team Turner and came out a Constable convert. <\/p>\n

\"Lachlan<\/p>\n

The painter Lachlan Goudie explains how Constable and Turner worked<\/p>\n

DAVID BICKERSTAFF<\/p>\n

The film takes a less pugilistic approach. Our leading guides are the Tate curators Amy Concannon and Nicola Moorby. The wall-texts in the exhibition are top-drawer \u2014 engaging, insightful, without jargon \u2014 and the curators\u2019 gift for intelligent exposition is carried into the documentary. The tone is clever and conversational; never obscure, nor talking down. The otherwise excellent recent BBC Arena documentary LS Lowry: The Hidden Tapes was marred by a tendency among the talking heads to impose present preoccupations and psychology on a man who wouldn\u2019t have understood them if they had bitten him on the ankle. There\u2019s none of that here. Turner and Constable are presented completely as men of their time. There is also none of the hand-wringing and finger-wagging that bedevilled the Tate\u2019s last big 18th-century exhibition, Hogarth and Europe.<\/p>\n

\"Painting<\/p>\n

Turner\u2019s The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October 1834<\/p>\n

The painter Lachlan Goudie takes on the technical challenge of explaining how Constable and Turner sketched, set down the colours of the clouds and the sky and carted their oil paints around in pigs\u2019 bladders, pricking the skin with pins to release the paint. The pace is leisurely \u2014 more carthorse than storm at sea \u2014 and makes the BBC\u2019s Civilisations look all the more desperately ADHD BC. The camera is allowed to pan across each painting, taking in every brushstroke and even cracks in the canvas. I watched a preview on a laptop. It\u2019ll be better yet on the big screen and a plush cinema seat sure beats a lone backless gallery bench.
\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606
In cinemas from March 10<\/p>\n

Two-for-one cinema tickets at Everyman<\/p>\n

Times+ members can enjoy two-for-one cinema tickets at Everyman each Wednesday. Visit thetimes.com\/timesplus<\/a> to find out more.<\/p>\n

Which films have you enjoyed at the cinema recently? Let us know in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If I were a purist, I would say, \u201cBut of course you must see the exhibition in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-512126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}