How Turner became a master

LONDON, U.K. — Who are the most competitive people in the world? Olympic sprinters, with their years of training for 10 or 20 seconds of glory? Boxers like Ali? Golfers like Tiger?

Nope. The most competitive people in the world are visual artists. People who paint or sculpt know they have signed on for a life that is likely to see them die before their time in obscurity and poverty. Being the best is about all they have to console themselves with.

"Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery," by Rembrandt van Rijn in 1644 (Courtesy National Gallery, London)

Very few artists are as nakedly competitive as England's greatest painter of all time, Joseph Mallord William Turner, as an extraordinary exhibition at London's Tate Gallery demonstrates. Called "Turner and the Masters" it simply hangs Turner paintings next to works of the Old Masters against whom he felt the need to measure himself. They are not small names: Titian, Rembrandt and Poussin, among others, are all on display. Needless to say, the crowds are massive.

From the very first room with its early paintings of ships in storms in the style of the great Dutch painters of the Golden Age, a visitor is taken inside Turner's head. You can see what he borrowed and you can see the little touches where he tried to improve on the painter of the past. It doesn't always work.

One Rembrandt on display at the Tate is the New Testament story of "The Woman Taken in Adultery" and it is one of his greatest paintings. You can practically hear a heavenly chord thrumming in your head when looking at the divine light that bathes Christ and the woman. Hanging Turner's version of the scene next to it does the artist no favors. Turner's color is garish, the figures cartoonish, there is absolutely no religious feeling to the picture at all. Now, the visitor asks, did Turner realize Rembrandt was the winner? Did he acknowledge to himself that the Dutch artist was so much better than he was at this kind of painting?

"Pilate Washing his Hands," by JMW Turner, exh. RA 1830 (Tate)

David Solkin, dean of the prestigious Courtauld Institute of Art, isn't sure that is the right question to ask. Solkin devised the exhibition and he confesses to second thoughts about emphasizing the competitive aspect of "Turner and the Masters." "Every journalist thinks of it as literally a competition and wants to know the scorecard. Did Turner win? Is he in the top four of the Premier League?" Solkin offers no judgment.

A better word than competition, according to the art historian is "emulation." Turner possessed a desire for greatness and understood a basic rule, according to Solkin: "If you are going to be the best, you have to be able to paint like the very best."

More Dispatches:

• Latest