A 71-year-old film-maker considering a 76-year-old painter. They were given talks at the Royal Academy and the Tate, where they went backstage and were granted free access to the Turner archive. The cast read and researched as much as possible (Leigh singles out James Hamilton’s biography and Peter Ackroyd’s introduction to Turner as starting points). Poor Salieri, and he could not understand why God had punished him by making him a contemporary of Mozart. Timothy Spall as JMW Turner in a still from 'Mr. George Jones RA, The Battle of Hyderabad, 24th March 1843, He became increasingly eccentric. What a wonderful opportunity to show the workings of the mind of a genius. Ruskin was raised by over-protective parents. Jones was a good friend of Turner’s and one of the executors of his will. In his lectures Soane praised ‘the beauties and almost magical effects in the architectural drawings of a Clerisseau, a Gandy or a Turner’. He had a great capacity for emotion, for warmth and compassion, but at the same time was so driven by his project. Their alliance is as heartwarming as the marriage between Jim Broadbent’s Tom and Ruth Sheen’s Gerri in Leigh’s Another Year (2010). Constable was elected an Associate of the RA in 1819, but despite his achievements as a landscape painter he was not elected a full Royal Academician until 1829. In the film, which portrays Salieri as intensely jealous of Mozart’s abilities, Salieri provides a  voice-over commentary on Mozart’s music and the events at court. But with the Turner film, wasn’t he in danger of being hobbled by art history? She’s done it perfectly (and one suspects, lovingly), everything is in place but all this goes unacknowledged by Turner The scene is typical of much of the film which is mainly a series of  brilliant vignettes ,mostly unconnected. It’s an Impressionistic – if not Modern – gesture, but one he quickly backtracks from by altering the blot into the shape of a buoy… At this stage, Turner’s painting has not got the red for in the foreground. I once met her and she told me she used jokingly to refer to Leigh’s narrative interventions as “acts of God”. John Constable RA, “He was an enigmatic character – conflicted. Handlung. Change ). But the boldest dramatic licence is in proposing that Turner’s relationship with Hannah Danby, his housekeeper (played by Dorothy Atkinson) was sexual. Timothy Spall, who ‘had an amateur notion of doodling’ had to study painting to prepare for his role in Mr Turner. Mr Turner is the outstanding result, a film that introduces the painter as a portly fellow with a top hat and a curmudgeonly expression in repose. Turner and Soane were both elected Royal Academicians in 1802 and by the end of the decade both were Academy Professors (Soane of Architecture and Turner of Perspective). We watch Turner clawing at her, helping himself to her, as though a woman were necessary yet insignificant as a slice of bread. Peter Bradshaw on Mr Turner – Timothy Spall dazzles as JMW Turner, Mike Leigh on Mr Turner: ‘He was an enigmatic character – conflicted. He claimed he did, but people doubted it.” From Leigh’s point of view it was too dramatic to leave out: “We’re making a movie... ” And while Turner’s relationship with his father is known to have been close, there is no evidence that it was as demonstrative (lively kisses on the cheeks) as in the film. It’s a pity that director Mike Leigh did not find a way to use Ruskin in a similar way in Mr Turner. Photograph: Karen Robinson for the Observer. The two shared lodgings on a visit to Rome in 1828 and Eastlake defended his friend’s more experimental work against the criticism it received in the press. He became a Royal Academician in 1841 and his ‘Diploma’ work depicts the Great Temple at Baalbec in the Lebanon. The neo-Classical architect Sir John Soane was born in Oxfordshire, the son of a bricklayer. Look, we know Ruskin looked after Turner’s estate and is said – although it is now disputed by some academics – to have gone in and burnt erotic drawings he saw as pornography. I did all those things in order to do what I do.” It sounds intensive – was Camberwell useful? The two shared a great interest in fishing as well as in art and architecture and were friends for over 40 years. Mr Turner is, after all, not Leigh’s first departure from fiction. In the film, there is a killingly funny vignette in which Joshua McGuire’s Ruskin, who cannot pronounce his Rs, purrs with self-satisfaction at his own ideas – the critic who got the cream. But we never see his notebooks or his sketches. Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 – 19 December 1851) Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 – 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style can be said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. “Some people are lucky enough to have someone to look after them,” Leigh broods. George Jones studied at the RA Schools and exhibited at the annual exhibition from 1803 onwards. What Leigh is famous for is creating films that evolve through research, conversation and improvisation ranging from Beverly, the grotesque suburban diva (played by Alison Steadman, Leigh’s first wife), in Abigail’s Party to back-street abortionist Vera Drake (played by Imelda Staunton) or to Hortense in Secrets & Lies, a young adopted black woman (played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste) who goes in search of her birth mother. Eastlake was also a talented landscape painter and became good friends with Turner. When should this exhibition be published? But the film tells the human story splendidly, and makes a companion piece to Tate Britain’s breathtaking exhibition, Late Turner: Painting Set Free. But would Leigh have got on with Turner? Jim, Who ran away from his Nurse and was eaten by a Lion. Discover how the makers of ‘Mr. Everyone knows Turner went to the Royal Academy in 1832, on varnishing day [a sociable day just before the opening of a show to the public, which was a sort of unofficial private view, when artists gave their work a final lick and a promise, a coat of extra varnish at the very least], and put this red blob on a grey painting next to Constable’s, then turned it into a buoy and Constable said, ‘He has fired a gun’ and walked out. It is a third woman, Mrs Booth, who is at the heart of the film. To do that I went to Rada, acted for a short while in films, went to Camberwell on the foundation course, then to the theatre design course at the Central and to the London Film School at the same time. Photo: RA/Prudence Cuming Associates Limited. Turner’ recreated scenes at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in this fascinating behind-the-scenes featurette. Born in Suffolk, the son of a prosperous mill owner, he joined the Royal Academy Schools ten years after Turner in 1799. For those who know little about Turner’s life, it’s a jolt to accept that the creator of paintings of genius was a faulty bloke with an intermittently uncivil tongue, a tendency to grunt and a contradictory attitude towards women. Our latest exhibition, Gauguin and the Impressionists: Masterpieces of the Ordrupgaard Collection, has humble roots in the home of Wilhelm and Henny Hansen. There are numerous scenes in the film that are beautifully shot and which are designed to be indicative of the types of landscapes and seascapes that Turner painted. And did he, as a dying man, say: “The sun is God”? And that meshed with thoughts I had on the go about the possibility of what actors could do, and film-making and making theatre in an organic way.”. “I had postcards of Picasso, the impressionists and even – dare I admit it – Salvador Dalí (I got over that). And yes, Turner spat at his own canvases to enhance them: “He blew mysterious brown powder at them too.” Snuff? You can see a clip of this scene, as recreated in the film, in the video featurette above. It is difficult not to sympathise with him over his  broken relationship with his mistress Sarah Danby. Oh well. She was Turner’s Margate landlady, a widow who became his dearly beloved, and with whom he went to live, in secret, in Chelsea. Because of this, the film lacks a prospective, particularly a contemporary prospective, on Turner’s work. He grew up in Manchester, and even by the age of 14 he was into art. This is clearly the forerunner of Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway, painted in 1844. Perhaps Turner would have looked at us rather pityingly for asking for more explanations and the paintings provide. We are in a room with Georgian windows that face on to the street. Timothy Spall plays JMW Turner in Mr Turner. The tender regard between Turner and Mrs Booth in the film is what has been missing from his other relationships with women. Perhaps it was a bridge too far. A Boat Passing a Lock, Photo: RA/Paul Highnam. It’s a fussy painting, not one of Constable’s best. And that includes what you can do in post-production. “We did a massive amount of improvisation informed by what we had read and what we knew had to be dramatised,” Leigh says, and adds that the actors were all painters themselves: “We went out of our way to say, ‘OK, where are the actors who can paint?’ There are quite a lot of them around. Oil on canvas. Here are some of our favourite moments! The rivalry between Constable and Turner came to a head a few years later at the Academy Varnishing Day in 1832. Marion Bailey as Mrs Booth and Spall as Turner in Mike Leigh’s new film. George Jones RA (1786 – 1869) Turner is played by Timothy Spall, who has already received the Cannes best actor award for a tremendous and disconcerting performance. His beginnings can be outlined at speed: he was born in 1943 into a Jewish immigrant family (Leigh was originally Lieberman), the son of a GP. 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