Turner: The Late Seascapes
Until May 23; The Burrell Collection

When the Turner Prize was first announced, its name was controversial. Many were indignant that the great English artist’s reputation should be tainted by the outrageous spectacle of contemporary art, conveniently forgetting that Turner was just as provocative in his day.

If your only fix of Turner is Edinburgh’s annual watercolour display, you could be forgiven for forgetting the more radical aspects of the 19th century master’s work. No longer, however, as Scotland sees its first major Turner show for decades, comprising over 40 oils and watercolours from around the globe.

The effect of these epic works is unfortunately in competition with the children’s activity area on one side and the clattering teaspoons of the café on the other. The space is small for such a popular exhibition, and you are unlikely to be granted a quiet moment to yourself with the paintings. Looking on the bright side, the atmosphere is far from intimidating and you can bring the kids along without fear of reproach.

The sea, ‘a power supreme’, became Turner’s obsession during the last 25 years of his life, forming a third of his total output. At first the boats and harbours dominated, paying homage to the great Dutch marine paintings of the past, but gradually these recognisable forms melted into the boiling seas and skies until there was nothing left but light and water.

The Tate’s Seascape with Distant Coast is one such canvas. Taken on its own, it is an abstract mix of textured browns and greys from edge to edge. But by the time you get to this painting, you’ve come to know Turner’s vision, and you can identify a slip of land between sea and sky, and the hint of a pink, ghostly boat in the thrashing grey waves. If you look long enough at the brown surface, every colour in the world starts to seep out.

The colours are far less reticent in Undine Giving the Ring to Massaniello, Fisherman of Naples. Although Turner combines two popular stories in this oil painting, one a fable and one a historical act of heroism, the real subject is colour. The writhing nymphs are almost incidental to the bold geometrical composition of a blinding white circle on a perfect square, divided into four colour sections.

That central white globe of light, like a passageway to God, features clearly in many of Turner’s compositions. In The Evening of the Deluge, Noah’s ark sits inside such a sphere, its contours delineated by the stream of birds flocking to safety before the flood.

This show does much to assert Turner’s credentials as a modernist as well as a Romantic, loading his canvasses with spiritual presence as well as with formal experiments in colour, and teetering on the brink of pure abstraction.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 14.03.04