“Helvoetsluys; the City of Utrecht, 64, Going to Sea,” a painting by the celebrated Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) belonging to the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum Collection, will be on display at the Tate Gallery exhibition “Constable: A History of His Affections in England” held at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Tokyo from February 20.
Turner’s work was originally shown alongside “The Opening of Waterloo Bridge” by John Constable (1776-1837), renowned for his groundbreaking landscape paintings, at an exhibition organized by Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts in 1832. Turner and Constable were rivals in their genre and when the Royal Academy chose to exhibit their works next to each other, the artists were allowed to apply their final brushstrokes before the grand opening. At the last minute, Turner added a red buoy to his largely monochromatic “Going to Sea,” to which Constable later wrote, “He has been here and fired a gun.” This is the first time that the two pieces will be shown side by side in Japan.
The episode was recorded in Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, which was authored by fellow painter Charles Robert Leslie (1794-1859), a work that also belongs to the TFAM Collection and be on display at the exhibition. “Constable: A History of His Affections in England” will run until May 30. For further information, click on the link: https://mimt.jp/constable/
