Turner from the Tate: The Making of A Master

JMW Turner was the subject of a major new exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Known as the painter of light, his famous evanescent, shimmering oils and watercolours have placed him at the forefront of English painting and exerted a considerable influence on the Impressionist movement.

In 1984 the Tate Gallery in London inaugurated an annual visual art prize in his name. This prize attracts mainstream publicity every year, mainly for its controversial winners and the infamous artworks that they submit.

At first, it appears that Turner, a respectable master revered for landscapes and pictures of boats, is an unlikely artist to be honoured with an award for controversial, groundbreaking, contemporary art. Tracey Emin, for example, won with My Bed, a filthy unmade bed littered with a condom and cigarette butts, while Damien Hirst won with The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a shark-in-formaldehyde piece.

This exhibition (subtitled ‘The Making of a Master’) shows that Turner himself was, like Emin and Hearst, a pioneering, visionary artist whose ground-breaking artworks generated fierce debate and attracted venomous criticism, proving that this tribute prize is aptly named.