Already a subscriber? Log in
Turner is the acknowledged master of depicting nature’s drama, and even in his lifetime Ruskin considered him unique in the truth to nature he was able to achieve. But his more extreme experiments were beyond Ruskin’s comprehension, as indeed the later works of Whistler were to prove so famously to be. Room 2 introduces Whistler’s early Thames-side pictures, when he skulked down in Wapping and Rotherhithe and painted the shipping and etched the foreshore. These essays in realism include paintings of Old Battersea Bridge and Reach, which now look remarkably old-fashioned, however boldly painted. We will have to wait for Room 3 for Whistler’s apotheosis; in Room 2 Monet, with his Pool of London and Seine paintings, comes off best. ‘Sunset on the Seine, Winter Effect’ is a fine strong painting, but ‘Floating Ice’, all luscious pinks and blues, with its foretaste of the waterlily pictures, is beautifully evocative.
The exhibition’s elegant design really comes into its own in Room 3. Whistler’s Nocturnes are hung against a warm chocolate-coloured wall: three pale blue/green paintings grouped together (the better-known ones from the Tate), and two subfusc but exquisite grey-brown ones on the opposite wall. ‘The Falling Rocket’ (1875), which provoked Whistler’s libel action against Ruskin, is accorded a wall of its own. There is a bench in the centre of the room to sit on: I recommend you pause to consider such quietly subversive splendour. The spare hang enables Whistler’s magic, his distilled visual poetry, to permeate the gallery. The court case bankrupted Whistler, and he was forced to leave his Chelsea home. But he did not desert the Thames (though he did pay a fruitful visit to Venice), and this exhibition remains a telling tribute to that majestic river, which nurtured the young Turner and provided a principal source of inspiration for Whistler and Monet.
If it’s possible to speak of an exhibition’s phrasing — its structure and pauses, its emphases and omissions — then this is a highpoint in Turner Whistler Monet. The next great flourish comes in Room 5, the centrepiece of which is Turner’s awe-inspiring ‘Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October 1834’, borrowed from Philadelphia. This is a masterpiece that needs prolonged, or renewed, contemplation, since we are not likely to see it often in a lifetime. The whole room has been built around it, as is witnessed by the fact that the rest of the pictures are ex-catalogue, and thus not originally intended for the show, but assembled from the Tate’s collection to set it off. Rooms 6 and 7 are something of an anti-climax after this, though there are many notable things to see, including an incredibly free nearly abstract oil by Claude Monet (1840–1926) of Charing Cross Bridge, and a memorable sunlight in fog painting of Waterloo Bridge. The last rooms begin to be strangely reminiscent of the Tate’s Turner and Venice exhibition of 2003–4, and end rather depressingly with two of Monet’s Palazzo paintings, and his surprisingly vulgar depiction of ‘San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk’. Despite several Monet variations on the theme of the Houses of Parliament, he is the artist least well served by this selection. I suspect that, for many, Whistler will be the revelation of the show.
This exhibition is now at its third and final museum location, having garnered much praise at previous venues in Toronto and Paris. It is accompanied by another weighty and sumptuous catalogue which will feature for a month or so on coffee tables up and down the country and then be consigned to the bookshelf, largely unread. Like so many exhibitions nowadays, it is theory-driven, in this case reliant upon ‘a pattern of themes and variations begun by Turner [which] appears to have been developed in the artistic interchange between the younger artists Whistler and Monet’. Mark that ‘appears to have been’. Curators should beware of forging such links between generations too tightly. More knowledge and research can add to our enjoyment of works of art, but doesn’t necessarily do so. Reassessment is sometimes but not always appropriate, and there are limits beyond which it is advisable not to stray. ‘Whistler,’ we are told, ‘is ripe for repositioning.’ How he would have loved that. So, enough of ‘avant-garde gambits’, this is not a collocation for art historians, it’s a visual entertainment for a paying public. They want to see great art, and, luckily, with this show they get it.
Also in Arts Reviews
Also by Andrew Lambirth
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in