Turner and Venice

Streaming video - 2014

Venice is the subject that dominates the later, glorious paintings and watercolours of J.M.W. Turner. Its shimmering light, its ethereal beauty and its faded magnificence inspired some of Turner's best-loved, most magical and most mysterious images. Turner was forty-four when he first became one of the many distinguished nineteenth-century visitors to Venice. During this 1819 trip and two further stays in 1833 and 1840, he created a host of brilliant sketches that he later developed into dazzling reflections on light and colour, history and literature, tradition and modernity. Filmed in Italy and London, and produced alongside Tate's major 2003-04 exhibition on the subject, Turner and Venice explores all aspects of the rich relati...onship between the painter and the city. Among the interviewees are the exhibition's curator Ian Warrell, historian David Laven, poet Andrew Motion, and artist Cornelia Parker. more