Last night I attended a Corporate Supporters' Private View of Turner and the Masters at Tate Britain. It was a highly subscribed event and unfortunately the air conditioning was not up to the job. If the room temperature was more comfortable, I would lingered for longer.
That said, the show is a demonstration of the breadth of subject matter Turner depicted and how he was directly influenced by his contemporaries and by earlier painters, such as Rembrandt and Canaletto.
Viewing such a large number of works made me realise that Turner was not a master of representing the human figure. Faces and bodies appear swiftly drawn - unfinished even - against the backdrop of a carefully rendered background. My favourite works are the ones where the sense of light and weather is palpable, from a cool moonlight evening to a stormy day where boats appear through fog and mist, tossed by an angry sea.
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