Epic confrontation between the ultimate British artists

'Turner & Constable' is a must-see exhibition juxtaposing the giants' competing, yet closely related internal worlds in an unexpected, thrilling manner

- Mark Hudson

“Fire and water... The one all heat, the other all humidity - who will deny that they each exhibit, each in his own way, some of the highest qualities of art?” So wrote a contemporary in 1831 of the two then giants of British art, JMW Turner and John Constable, with the clear implication that he was struggling to decide which was the greater.

I know how he felt, having been asked to comment on that very subject in 2018, when Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows and Turner’s Caligula’s Palace and Bridge - the paintings that almost brought them to blows at the Royal Academy in 1831 - were touring Britain. I fudged the issue, on the feeble grounds that since each of these giants was so “brilliant in his own area”, it was impossible, and unnecessary, to favour one over the other.

I’ve kicked myself ever since for not forcing the question on which of them - the mercurial and patently radical Turner or Constable, who reveals his passion more slowly - has had the greatest impact, not just on painting, but our very perception of reality.

There'll be no such compromises with this epic confrontation, celebrating the 250th anniversary of their birth - Turner’s in April this year, Constable’s next June. While it isn’t, of course, billed as a showdown, there are constant references to their personal and posthumous rivalries, with paintings placed in juxtapositions that seem designed to force comparative judgements. Entire rooms are set up to showcase the brilliance of one artist, then the other, with a scrupulously fair division of the exhibition space.