Pinnable

Until 12 April 2026, Tate Britain in London presents the first major exhibition to explore the intertwined lives & legacies of Britain’s most revered landscape artists: J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837). Radically different painters & personalities, each challenged artistic conventions of the time, developing ways of picturing the world that still resonate today. Staged across the 250th anniversary years of their births, this exhibition traces the development of their careers in parallel, revealing the ways they were celebrated, criticized and pitted against each other, and how this pushed them to new & original artistic visions. The exhibition features over 170 works, from Turner’s momentous The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, not seen in Britain for over a century, to The White Horse, one of Constable’s greatest artistic achievements, last exhibited in London two decades ago.

William Turner was a commercially minded, fast-rising young star who first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1790 aged just 15. By contrast, John Constable demonstrated a fierce commitment to perfecting artistic techniques, not exhibiting at the Royal Academy until 1802. Having both emerged amid an explosion in popularity of landscape art, the two were united however in their desire to change it for the better. By the 1830s, both Turner and Constable became recognized for taking landscape painting in bold new directions. The stark differences between their work spurred art critics to pit them against each other and to cast them as rivals. Now placed side by side at Tate Britain, their most distinctive & impressive paintings demonstrate how, despite their differences, Turner and Constable elevated landscape to a genre of prime importance.

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