The actual exhibition is still on at the Tate Britain until mid-April, and of course no one would be so heretical as to suggest not seeing these amazing artworks in the flesh. But if you don’t live in London and/or don’t fancy shuffling round with the thronged masses, then this excellent film treatment is a rewarding experience – if only for the glowing closeups, interesting and erudite commentary from the exhibition curators and complete lack of elbows in ribs or backs of other people’s heads.
The film-makers behind the Exhibition on Screen strand, of which this forms part, are past masters at creating elegant and watchable counterparts to the gallery-going experience, and this titan of a show which matches the two early 19th-century masters of British art is no exception. The show pitches itself as outlining the (mostly) friendly contest between the two painters who were born 14 months apart (Turner, slightly older, in 1775, and Constable in 1776), and both show and film rather brilliantly walk us through their common ground and where they diverge.
The film’s main weapons are – as is often the case – access to the curatorial team behind the exhibition; in this case a seriously impressive double act of Amy Concannon (senior curator of historic British art) and Nicola Moorby (curator British art 1790-1850), both of whom elucidate the whys and wherefores with admirable clarity. Apart from the artistic issues at play, it’s interesting to hear how the Napoleonic wars closed off Europe – and specifically the 18th-century Grand Tour – meaning that British painters turned inward and local for inspiration, a tendency no doubt helping to spur the Romantic movement more generally.
Concannon and Moorby are ably backed up by the energetic Lachlan Goudie; I am normally a bit agnostic about using contemporary artists to discuss the big names, as it almost always makes them look like featherweights in comparison, but Goudie’s enthusiastic appraisal of the sort of technology available to both painters, and its consequent influence on their working habits, is a key plank to understanding them. As a film, perhaps, this doesn’t pull up any trees that haven’t been pulled up before, with its smooth deployment of tried and trusted techniques, but it does make the English countryside look lovely and, by effectively channelling a mighty exhibition, has created a properly enjoyable viewing experience.
• Turner & Constable is in UK cinemas from 10 March.
