Mike Leigh’s film ‘Mr. Turner’ explores the last quarter century of British artist J.M.W Turner’s life.
In reconstructing each of Turner’s environments Thin Man Films aimed to be as authentic as possible and so, for the Royal Academy Varnishing Day scene, this involved reproducing works that would have been there using a catalogue from the exhibition of 1832.
Click on the image for exclusive behind the scenes footage of how the art department brought Turner’s paintings to life
Mr. Turner and the Royal Academy Exhibition
Archives and museums provided high resolution digital images of the pictures which their art department printed onto canvases at their actual size which they then framed, applying varnish to make them resonate.
This was an ambitious project as it involved replicating between 200-350 paintings for one scene.
Watch exclusive behind the scenes footage of how the art department brought replicas of Turner’s paintings and those by his contemporaries to life.
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| Helvoetsluys (1832) by J.M/W Turner (1775-1851) © Tokyo Fuji Art Museum / Bridgeman Images |
A scene from the film |
One of the famous anecdotes about Turner presented on film is the incident at the 1832 Royal Academy Exhibition in which Turner’s varnishing day antics led to a clash with John Constable, whose painting was hung next to Turner’s ‘Helvoetsluys; – the City of Utrecht’. Turner’s last minute addition of a red ‘blob’ of paint onto his seascape – which he then fashioned into a buoy – was deemed to show up Constable’s work as overblown and over-painted.
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Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner is in cinemas nationwide from 31 October 2014