Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals

Published to accompany Tate Britain's landmark exhibition marking the 250th anniversaries of J. M. W. Turner and John Constable, this richly illustrated volume explores one of the defining rivalries in the history of British art.

Though contemporaries, the two artists offered radically different visions of landscape painting―approaches that transformed the genre and continue to shape how we see the natural world today. Drawing on the very best of their work, the book reveals the ways in which the painters offered two competing and highly original visions of landscape painting, both of which remain powerfully resonant today.

Each challenged the artistic norms of their time while also responding to the transformative social, political, economic, and environmental developments of the early 19th century. Defying convention, they proved that landscape painting could be a vehicle for profound reflections on life as they saw it, paving the way for landscape art to become a vital arena for artistic expression.

Despite all their differences, the ways in which these painters presented a radical challenge to artistic norms led them to be described by their contemporaries in similar ways. They were simultaneously celebrated as the two great "originals" of contemporary British art but also attacked as eccentric outsiders whose work was increasingly puzzling and illegible.

Turner and Constable: Two Visions of Landscape offers a chance to directly compare highlights from the full span of the two artists’ careers. This fresh and ambitious presentation of their work will inspire many to reconnect with these beloved artists anew and equally inspire those who are less familiar with their work to appreciate its vitality, soul, and enduring power.

Amy Concannon is Senior Curator of Historic British Art at Tate and a specialist in British art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As curator of Turner and Constable, the landmark Tate Britain exhibition marking the 250th anniversaries of the artists' births, she brings together new perspectives on two of the most influential figures in the history of landscape painting.