To mark the 250th anniversary of the mighty artists’ births, Tate Britain in London is mounting Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals. This is the first major exhibition to examine the interwoven lives and work of this country’s finest landscape artists.
Two of our most celebrated painters were also two of our most celebrated rivals. Described as “fire and water,” JMW Turner and John Constable were born within a year of each other and spent their entire careers locked in fierce competition.
For example, in the run-up to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in 1832, when Turner noticed that his muted seascape Helvoetsluys had been placed beside Constable’s more overtly dramatic, vermillion-hued The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, he feared being upstaged. So he surreptitiously added a single dab of red to his own painting. When Constable realised what his long-standing rival had done behind his back, he announced: “He has been here and fired a gun.”
Left: J.M.W. Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October 1834, 1835. Cleveland Museum of Art.
Right: John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, c. 1829. Image courtesy of Tate.
This unprecedented exhibition is showing over 170 paintings and works on paper. These range from Turner’s epic 1835 picture, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, not displayed in Britain for over a century, to The White Horse (1819), one of Constable’s most memorable artistic accomplishments, last seen in London two decades ago.
Although they were diametrically opposed as painters and personalities, the pair nonetheless shared the ambition of shattering artistic conventions. In the process, Turner and Constable invented a new way of viewing the world which still reverberates today.
The show follows the evolution of their careers in parallel, demonstrating how they were feted, attacked and set against each other. It will also track how this drove them to new artistic heights.
Between them, Turner and Constable were responsible for some of the most audacious and compelling pictures in the history of British art. With their conflicting visions, they transformed landscape painting. Along the way, their visionary qualities propelled the genre to a higher plane.
In the end, both Turner and Constable were, of course, revered for their inspirational, pioneering work. Reviewing Caligula’s Palace and Bridge by Turner and Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, which both feature in this exhibition, The Literary Gazette declared in May 1831: “Who will deny that they both exhibit, each in its own way, some of the highest qualities of Art? None but the envious and ignorant.”
Who’s the greatest, then? It’s a tie.
Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals
Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
27 November 2025 – 12 April 2026
More information and tickets, HERE.
Author: James Rampton
Lead image: J.M.W. Turner, Caligula’s Palace and Bridge, exh. 1831. Image courtesy of Tate.
Other exhibitions in London you shouldn’t miss include Charles March’s Shorelines in Motion, Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World and Reveries by Marco Sanges.
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