Nicola Moorby
Review of the Lecture
The afternoon lecture was a comparison of Turner and Constable. Both painted landscapes, and were near contemporaries, but while Turner started life quite poor, Constable came from a wealthier business family. His family life was very happy, so he concentrated on painting Suffolk where he was happy. His career developed more slowly than Turner's, but they clearly learnt a lot from each other in techniques and even in subjects. Even though Mike Leigh's film on Turner makes out that Constable and Turner were great rivals, this was only in passing. Their home lives were also very different. Constable had a notably happy home life, with seven children' though he was widowed after the birth of the sixth child. Turner never married, but had at least two female partners and two illegitimate children whom he basically ignored. Nicola Moorby presented this large amount of information clearly, and bot lectures greatly amplified what could be learnt from the pictures themselves.
- Professor Robert Gurney
This is the story of the alleged epic rivalry between the two giants of British art, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable.
As unlike in background and temperament as their paintings were in style, these two creative geniuses transformed the art of landscape during the 19th Century. This lecture sets them head-to-head and examines their “signature” paints and how their differing approaches fared in the competitive arena of The Royal Academy. We also examine how they overcame the technical challenge of sketching from nature, before witnessing the final showdown of their respective “showstoppers”. But who will ultimately be crowned star painter? As well as giving an overview of Turner and Constable, the subject provides an enjoyable overview of the British art world during the 19th Century.
Nicola Moorby is Curator of British Art, 1790-1850 at Tate. She is an art historian specialising in British art of the 19th Century She studied at the University of York and Birkbeck College, London. She has curated a number of exhibitions including, most recently, Constable: The Dark Side at The Arc, Winchester in 2023 and Turner's Kingdom: Beauty, Birds and Beasts for Turner's House in 2025. She has published widely, including as co-editor and author of How to Paint Like Turner (Tate Publishing, 2010) and as a major contributor to the online catalogues of the Turner Bequest and the Camden Town Group. She is an experienced lecturer and regularly teaches short courses at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has appeared as an expert on television and radio including ‘Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr’ (2020 and 2021) and ‘Art on the BBC’ (2022). She is the author of Turner and Constable: Art, Life, Landscape, published by Yale University Press in 2025.