Art Of The Day Weekly
#369 - from 18 December 2014 to 7 January 2015
Mr. Turner, a rugged personality
An incredible face that growls, belches and complains. He grimaces and laughs loudly. He is an egoist, insensitive to the destiny of his two daughters, but is very attached to his old father. He is a passionate man, who spends long seasons at Margate, on the sea coast, and has himself tied to the mast of a ship to feel the tempest in his own flesh. He was a sceptic who was always interested by novelties – in particular by steam energy. The portrait Mike Leigh draws of Turner in his movie is impressionist, like an approach by small touches, but it leaves us with a taste of something incomplete. While the man's character is well defined, resting on the performance and the physical appearance of his fetish actor, Timothy Spall, we would have liked to know more about his technique. Aside a few famous scenes at the Royal Academy (the rivalry with Constable, the Homeric finishing of a painting with strng brush strokes and spitting, the great renovatof of English painting of the XIXth century remaisn a real mystery.
• Mr. Turner by Mike Leigh, with Timothy Spall, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson.