A major exhibition of Turner works from the Tate Collection will open at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow on 17 November 2008. In advance of the exhibition opening in Russia, its sole sponsor, Alisher Usmanov, will be in London to see the Turner Bequest at Tate Britain. This exhibition is the result of a partnership between Tate, the Pushkin Museum, Mr Alisher Usmanov and Art and Sport Foundation (Moscow), and the British Council.
J. M. W. Turner: Oils and Watercolours from Tate Britain will be the most comprehensive Turner exhibition to have been shown in Russia to date, and the first for a generation. The works on show in Moscow will come predominantly from the Turner Bequest to the Nation, and follows closely on the heels of a major retrospective J.M.W. Turner shown in the US at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Dallas Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2007-8.
JMW Turner (1775 - 1851) is considered to be one of the greatest painters Britain has ever produced. Tate has loaned 112 works including 40 oil paintings and 72 works on paper. Among the paintings in the show will be Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps1812, one of Turner’s greatest achievements, and The Tenth Plague of Egypt.The exhibition will also survey Turner’s mastery of watercolour from highly innovative and experimental sketches and studies to large-scale finished works.
The Turner Bequest is housed at Tate Britain and was left to the nation by the artist following his death in 1851. It is the largest and finest collection of his work and comprises hundreds of oils and thousands of watercolours and other works on paper, providing a profound insight into his creative evolution.
J. M. W. Turner: Oils and Watercolours from Tate Britain will be at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow from 17 November 2008 and run until 15 February 2009. The exhibition is curated by Tate Britain curator, Ian Warrell, with the Pushkin Museum curator, Anna Posnanskaya.
This is the second exhibition of British art held in Moscow to have been generously supported by the Art and Sport Foundation. The first was Whistler and Russia, organised by the British Council in 2006 with the support by Alisher Usmanov and shown in the State Tretyakov Museum, Moscow. Eight works from Tate Britain were included in that exhibition, which explored the close relationship between Whistler - who grew up in St Petersburg - and the Russian artists of his period. The success of that exhibition, and its great popularity with a Russian audience has led to this second exhibition of JMW Turner, and looks at one of the greatest masters of the Romantic period across the whole span of his career. Tate Britain is delighted that Alisher Usmanov and his Art and Sport Foundation has decided to fund the organisation of this exhibition in Russia in cooperation with the British Council.