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These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:17,600 --> 00:00:19,800 (LIGHTNING CRACKS) 2 00:00:26,160 --> 00:00:29,560 Joseph Mallord William Turner is regarded as one of 3 00:00:29,600 --> 00:00:33,640 the most original and influential British artists of all time. 4 00:00:33,680 --> 00:00:36,040 His work was transformative. 5 00:00:36,080 --> 00:00:40,240 It shocked the Victorians and paved the way for modern art. 6 00:00:41,360 --> 00:00:44,160 170 years after his death, 7 00:00:44,200 --> 00:00:46,880 Turner's influence is still apparent today. 8 00:00:49,400 --> 00:00:52,000 MAN: His art was absolutely transcendental 9 00:00:52,040 --> 00:00:53,520 and almost spiritual. 10 00:00:53,560 --> 00:00:57,720 NICK: He was the nation's greatest landscape artist. 11 00:00:57,760 --> 00:00:59,480 But there's more to him. 12 00:00:59,520 --> 00:01:01,200 There's another layer there. 13 00:01:01,240 --> 00:01:04,000 He is a cryptic artist. 14 00:01:04,040 --> 00:01:08,640 ERICA: We have now found hidden images that are electrifying. 15 00:01:12,560 --> 00:01:15,280 Despite having been viewed by millions of people, 16 00:01:15,320 --> 00:01:18,120 previously unnoticed, complex images 17 00:01:18,160 --> 00:01:19,960 painted with precision 18 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:23,160 that have been overlooked for 170 years 19 00:01:23,200 --> 00:01:25,840 have been found hidden within the paint strokes 20 00:01:25,880 --> 00:01:27,880 of Turner's greatest works. 21 00:01:27,920 --> 00:01:31,000 Throughout a number of the paintings, we found that, 22 00:01:31,040 --> 00:01:35,560 astonishingly, a bear appears time and time again. 23 00:01:35,600 --> 00:01:37,480 And we've come to the conclusion 24 00:01:37,520 --> 00:01:40,640 that Turner represents himself as a bear. 25 00:01:40,680 --> 00:01:43,560 There's this white flag of Turner's emblem, 26 00:01:43,600 --> 00:01:45,320 which is a bear's head 27 00:01:45,360 --> 00:01:48,120 with a high collar of the kind Turner wore. 28 00:01:48,160 --> 00:01:51,240 But there are other narratives within this painting 29 00:01:51,280 --> 00:01:55,520 that relate to Nelson trashing Napoleon's fleet. 30 00:01:56,280 --> 00:01:59,120 He painted the head of a goose, 31 00:01:59,160 --> 00:02:02,200 and we found this in more than one Turner work. 32 00:02:02,240 --> 00:02:05,800 He's saying steam is the golden goose of the future. 33 00:02:05,840 --> 00:02:08,240 It is going to produce great wealth. 34 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:18,440 Turner was a very tormented, brilliant man. 35 00:02:18,480 --> 00:02:22,240 It wouldn't surprise me at all that there are secret meanings, codes, emblems. 36 00:02:22,280 --> 00:02:24,200 I've seen some of my own. 37 00:02:24,240 --> 00:02:26,440 Turner, he was a genius. 38 00:02:26,480 --> 00:02:31,240 Nick is giving so many other layers of meaning. 39 00:02:33,240 --> 00:02:36,680 Oh! That is... Oh, my God. 40 00:02:36,720 --> 00:02:40,120 That is... What the...? Sorry, I don't want to swear. 41 00:02:40,160 --> 00:02:42,760 Can you see a face, a man's head, here? 42 00:02:44,280 --> 00:02:47,880 I'm going to say it looks more like a chicken, actually, Nick, but... 43 00:02:47,920 --> 00:02:50,280 That looks like genitalia to me. 44 00:02:50,320 --> 00:02:52,960 (BOTH LAUGH) 45 00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:56,400 Once you see it, you can't unsee it. 46 00:02:56,440 --> 00:02:58,560 It's this amazing kind of moment of... 47 00:02:59,840 --> 00:03:01,640 ..of decoding. 48 00:03:02,360 --> 00:03:04,360 These groundbreaking discoveries 49 00:03:04,400 --> 00:03:07,400 are the result of five years' extensive research 50 00:03:07,440 --> 00:03:11,120 and cast new light on Turner's most famous paintings. 51 00:03:11,160 --> 00:03:13,760 It began with the purchase of a painting. 52 00:03:13,800 --> 00:03:17,000 Within that painting, we found some hidden images. 53 00:03:17,040 --> 00:03:20,960 And because of that, we looked across to some works by Turner. 54 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:24,320 And there, looking out of the painting at me... 55 00:03:24,960 --> 00:03:26,560 ..was Turner. 56 00:03:26,600 --> 00:03:28,120 Unbelievable. 57 00:03:28,160 --> 00:03:33,080 This is significant because there is only one known self-portrait 58 00:03:33,120 --> 00:03:34,800 by Turner in oils, 59 00:03:34,840 --> 00:03:38,880 and we've found a lot more smaller ones. 60 00:03:38,920 --> 00:03:41,880 We're very certain that these are Turner himself. 61 00:03:41,920 --> 00:03:43,960 When I found one or two... 62 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:48,080 quite large and impressive images, I had to go and lie down. 63 00:03:48,120 --> 00:03:50,480 I hadn't experienced anything like that. 64 00:03:52,280 --> 00:03:57,040 ERICA: There is a history of artists hiding things in paintings. 65 00:03:57,080 --> 00:03:59,440 They've been doing it for centuries. 66 00:03:59,480 --> 00:04:02,440 There's Giotto, who hid a devil in clouds... 67 00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:07,240 ..Michelangelo, who outlined a brain in the Sistine Chapel... 68 00:04:09,360 --> 00:04:11,840 ..and Gainsborough even hid genitalia. 69 00:04:12,800 --> 00:04:16,720 And these are becoming increasingly researched now. 70 00:04:16,760 --> 00:04:21,160 But what we found in Turner, nobody has ever discovered before. 71 00:04:21,840 --> 00:04:24,160 NICK: But it isn't just about images. 72 00:04:24,200 --> 00:04:27,040 It's about really the life and times of Turner... 73 00:04:27,840 --> 00:04:30,080 ..expressed by him in paint. 74 00:04:31,920 --> 00:04:34,560 These hidden images reveal new narratives 75 00:04:34,600 --> 00:04:36,800 where none has previously existed 76 00:04:36,840 --> 00:04:39,480 and have the potential to rewrite the history 77 00:04:39,520 --> 00:04:41,320 of Britain's greatest painter. 78 00:04:41,360 --> 00:04:46,080 This will very definitely change the way that we engage with his work. 79 00:04:46,120 --> 00:04:49,040 And in at least four paintings, 80 00:04:49,080 --> 00:04:52,280 we have a complete reinterpretation of that painting. 81 00:04:52,320 --> 00:04:55,120 There are multiple instances 82 00:04:55,160 --> 00:04:59,160 of the same image appearing across paintings. 83 00:04:59,200 --> 00:05:02,920 It's hugely significant. We're in new territory here. 84 00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:22,640 Born in 1775, 85 00:05:22,680 --> 00:05:27,240 Turner is famed as Britain's painter of land, sea and light. 86 00:05:28,320 --> 00:05:31,240 But Dr Nicholas Wilkinson and his wife Erica 87 00:05:31,280 --> 00:05:33,920 think there is far more to Turner's work - 88 00:05:33,960 --> 00:05:36,280 if you look at it in a new way... 89 00:05:36,320 --> 00:05:37,920 closely. 90 00:05:37,960 --> 00:05:40,640 ERICA: Nick has a doctorate in physical chemistry, 91 00:05:40,680 --> 00:05:42,520 working on the molecular level, 92 00:05:42,560 --> 00:05:47,600 and this requires three-dimensional visualisation. 93 00:05:47,640 --> 00:05:51,960 And that is how this relates to his work on Turner. 94 00:05:52,800 --> 00:05:55,600 He sometimes has been obsessed. 95 00:05:55,640 --> 00:06:00,000 At home, there'll be computer screens with an image of Turner. 96 00:06:00,040 --> 00:06:02,880 There'll be an iPad with an image of Turner. 97 00:06:02,920 --> 00:06:06,800 Then he'll be sitting with his iPhone with an image of Turner. 98 00:06:06,840 --> 00:06:09,920 And he was always blowing them up, 99 00:06:09,960 --> 00:06:12,880 reducing them and rotating them. 100 00:06:12,920 --> 00:06:15,680 We've had to keep this secret for... 101 00:06:16,560 --> 00:06:18,320 ..five years, 102 00:06:18,360 --> 00:06:21,840 so it has been incredibly difficult. 103 00:06:22,720 --> 00:06:26,080 I worked in science for 15 years, 104 00:06:26,120 --> 00:06:28,960 but then we bought a painting. 105 00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:31,520 When I first looked at this marine painting, 106 00:06:31,560 --> 00:06:34,000 there was a face looking out at me, 107 00:06:34,040 --> 00:06:36,160 a hidden anamorphic image, 108 00:06:36,200 --> 00:06:38,880 and I was quite shocked by that. 109 00:06:38,920 --> 00:06:41,480 I found it to be quite disquieting 110 00:06:41,520 --> 00:06:44,240 cos we were dealing with such a famous artist. 111 00:06:45,680 --> 00:06:47,640 The Turner code 112 00:06:47,680 --> 00:06:49,760 started to emerge 113 00:06:49,800 --> 00:06:53,680 when I'd looked at 30 or 40 of his paintings 114 00:06:53,720 --> 00:06:57,800 and found new narratives and recurrence between those paintings. 115 00:06:57,840 --> 00:07:02,160 There were definite themes that started to occur 116 00:07:02,200 --> 00:07:04,600 that were not known in Turner scholarship. 117 00:07:05,320 --> 00:07:09,280 First of all, his titles are complicated and cryptic. 118 00:07:10,160 --> 00:07:15,080 They are a bit like the satirical print titles of the time, 119 00:07:15,120 --> 00:07:17,760 which are in two or more parts. 120 00:07:17,800 --> 00:07:19,840 And part of that title is cryptic 121 00:07:19,880 --> 00:07:23,680 and it tells you what to find in the painting. 122 00:07:23,720 --> 00:07:25,960 The second part of the code 123 00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:29,200 is anamorphic elements in the painting 124 00:07:29,240 --> 00:07:31,040 to tell the narratives. 125 00:07:32,560 --> 00:07:36,240 And those anamorphic elements are twofold. 126 00:07:36,280 --> 00:07:38,800 They are pareidolic. 127 00:07:38,840 --> 00:07:41,440 That means taking something inanimate 128 00:07:41,480 --> 00:07:44,560 and turning it into something animate. 129 00:07:45,760 --> 00:07:48,960 Or anthropomorphic, 130 00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:52,520 which means taking multiple elements 131 00:07:52,560 --> 00:07:56,920 and combining them into a single hidden image. 132 00:07:58,960 --> 00:08:01,080 I think you need a fresh eye 133 00:08:01,120 --> 00:08:05,720 to see Turner in the way that Nick has discovered him. 134 00:08:06,880 --> 00:08:09,200 I was a trained art historian 135 00:08:09,240 --> 00:08:11,400 and I didn't believe at first 136 00:08:11,440 --> 00:08:13,800 that Turner would do something like this. 137 00:08:13,840 --> 00:08:16,400 But then the more I read about his personality, 138 00:08:16,440 --> 00:08:19,720 I realised that would have been entirely in keeping 139 00:08:19,760 --> 00:08:22,240 with the kind of person that he was. 140 00:08:23,240 --> 00:08:25,800 It appears that he definitely wanted 141 00:08:25,840 --> 00:08:28,960 these hidden images to be found, 142 00:08:29,000 --> 00:08:32,400 but he camouflaged them so skilfully 143 00:08:32,440 --> 00:08:35,280 that they haven't been found for nearly 200 years. 144 00:08:36,080 --> 00:08:40,520 What we would very much like to do is to show these hidden images 145 00:08:40,560 --> 00:08:43,520 and all our theories to art experts. 146 00:08:43,560 --> 00:08:45,720 We'd like to get their reactions. 147 00:08:59,600 --> 00:09:03,720 In 1838, Turner painted The Fighting Temeraire, 148 00:09:03,760 --> 00:09:06,880 showing an old battleship being towed to be broken up. 149 00:09:07,840 --> 00:09:10,360 The ship had been part of Lord Nelson's fleet 150 00:09:10,400 --> 00:09:12,400 at the Battle Of Trafalgar. 151 00:09:12,440 --> 00:09:14,640 Turner never sold the painting, 152 00:09:14,680 --> 00:09:16,720 which he called "my darling". 153 00:09:18,360 --> 00:09:20,760 Turner had grown up... 154 00:09:20,800 --> 00:09:22,480 as a boy, 155 00:09:22,520 --> 00:09:26,000 looking at these great ships of the Napoleonic wars. 156 00:09:26,040 --> 00:09:28,920 You know, the heroic time of Nelson 157 00:09:28,960 --> 00:09:30,760 and, you know, Waterloo. 158 00:09:30,800 --> 00:09:35,480 In this picture, he's actually painting the end of it all. 159 00:09:35,520 --> 00:09:39,280 This tug is pulling, with steam power, 160 00:09:39,320 --> 00:09:41,680 the great sail ship of the past. 161 00:09:41,720 --> 00:09:43,760 And people who wrote about the picture 162 00:09:43,800 --> 00:09:45,960 commented on how this squat, 163 00:09:46,000 --> 00:09:50,480 ugly, black, dark, little horrible tug 164 00:09:50,520 --> 00:09:53,840 was pulling this graceful, beautiful 165 00:09:53,880 --> 00:09:57,000 emblem of Britain's glorious maritime past 166 00:09:57,040 --> 00:09:58,520 to destruction. 167 00:09:58,560 --> 00:10:00,880 Yet, at the same time, I think Turner's not 168 00:10:00,920 --> 00:10:02,600 entirely lamenting it 169 00:10:02,640 --> 00:10:07,800 because, for me, Turner's identifying himself with that tug. 170 00:10:07,840 --> 00:10:11,160 You know, Turner wore this black top hat. 171 00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:13,600 He was a diminutive man. 172 00:10:13,640 --> 00:10:17,120 So the tug, for me, IS Turner, and the tug represents 173 00:10:17,160 --> 00:10:20,880 modern vision as well as the modern age of steam. 174 00:10:20,920 --> 00:10:23,040 So it's complicated, it's a lament, 175 00:10:23,080 --> 00:10:25,440 but it's also Turner saying, 176 00:10:25,480 --> 00:10:28,040 "If I had to choose my own side, 177 00:10:28,080 --> 00:10:30,000 my side is the modern." 178 00:10:35,560 --> 00:10:38,160 Dr Wilkinson wants to see if he can convince 179 00:10:38,200 --> 00:10:40,680 one of Britain's leading art historians 180 00:10:40,720 --> 00:10:42,560 that there is even more to the work 181 00:10:42,600 --> 00:10:44,800 than initially meets the eye. 182 00:10:44,840 --> 00:10:48,080 There is a strange image on the left-hand side 183 00:10:48,120 --> 00:10:49,960 of The Fighting Temeraire... 184 00:10:50,880 --> 00:10:52,920 ..and if you look at it carefully, 185 00:10:52,960 --> 00:10:55,840 it appears as a screaming head... 186 00:10:55,880 --> 00:10:59,240 with a high collar...coat on 187 00:10:59,280 --> 00:11:02,560 and it's impaled from above by a wooden stake. 188 00:11:02,600 --> 00:11:05,560 And we propose that is Napoleon. 189 00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:08,440 That's great. So it's a bit like Francis Bacon's screaming Pope, 190 00:11:08,480 --> 00:11:10,800 except it's a screaming Napoleon. 191 00:11:14,520 --> 00:11:17,720 To be fair, I CAN see a shape like a cocked hat, 192 00:11:17,760 --> 00:11:20,880 and I can see where you would see a sort of... 193 00:11:20,920 --> 00:11:23,000 I suppose it's almost like Munch's Scream. 194 00:11:23,040 --> 00:11:25,360 What is it actually in the illusion of the painting? 195 00:11:25,400 --> 00:11:26,880 It is a gun port. 196 00:11:26,920 --> 00:11:28,440 There are three gun ports. 197 00:11:28,480 --> 00:11:31,280 Two are his eyes and the other is his screaming mouth. 198 00:11:31,320 --> 00:11:32,440 Right. 199 00:11:32,480 --> 00:11:35,680 He's created something from those elements. 200 00:11:35,720 --> 00:11:38,880 In your interpretation, I presume that would be a reference 201 00:11:38,920 --> 00:11:41,840 to The Fighting Temeraire's role in the Battle Of Trafalgar. 202 00:11:41,880 --> 00:11:45,320 This is the ship that speared Napoleon for once and for all. 203 00:11:45,360 --> 00:11:47,360 Absolutely. The British tactic 204 00:11:47,400 --> 00:11:50,160 was to fire into the hull of the French ships, 205 00:11:50,200 --> 00:11:53,640 cause massive splinters that disabled the crew. 206 00:11:54,680 --> 00:11:57,240 So, they actually speared by great pieces of wood? 207 00:11:57,280 --> 00:11:59,120 They were speared by big pieces of wood. 208 00:11:59,160 --> 00:12:00,320 Look at the top. 209 00:12:00,360 --> 00:12:05,280 Ships attached their prize to their side and then sold it to market. 210 00:12:05,320 --> 00:12:08,680 So, this is a metaphorical prize of Napoleon's head. 211 00:12:08,720 --> 00:12:11,320 I suppose, in a sense, it's Napoleon's head on a stick. 212 00:12:11,360 --> 00:12:14,800 Wellington had a statue of Napoleon placed in Apsley House. 213 00:12:14,840 --> 00:12:18,960 Wellington wanted Napoleon in his house because he was his prize. 214 00:12:19,600 --> 00:12:21,560 "I am the man who defeated Napoleon." 215 00:12:21,600 --> 00:12:24,480 It's the same thought. Whether you see it or not. 216 00:12:24,520 --> 00:12:26,280 And people can choose whether they agree 217 00:12:26,320 --> 00:12:28,920 with your anthropomorphic reading of these things, 218 00:12:28,960 --> 00:12:31,200 and whether their eyes are the same as your eyes. 219 00:12:31,240 --> 00:12:33,880 At least in the case of this interpretation, 220 00:12:33,920 --> 00:12:36,640 it's not as if it's overturning the meaning of the picture. 221 00:12:36,680 --> 00:12:39,520 Or it's not as if it's giving it some kind of mad twist. 222 00:12:39,560 --> 00:12:43,400 It's actually reinforcing what we know Turner probably thought. 223 00:12:43,440 --> 00:12:46,640 It's another layer within the painting. 224 00:12:46,680 --> 00:12:50,160 But will other Turner enthusiasts also concede 225 00:12:50,200 --> 00:12:52,760 that one of the world's most famous paintings 226 00:12:52,800 --> 00:12:57,640 might have a screaming, defeated Napoleon hiding in plain sight? 227 00:13:03,720 --> 00:13:06,440 On the side of the Temeraire... 228 00:13:06,480 --> 00:13:08,480 he's created... 229 00:13:08,520 --> 00:13:10,000 a head and shoulders. 230 00:13:10,040 --> 00:13:13,920 No... Surely he hasn't. Not on... 231 00:13:13,960 --> 00:13:17,320 Not on this famous, most-loved painting? 232 00:13:17,360 --> 00:13:19,280 First of all, can you see... 233 00:13:20,280 --> 00:13:24,320 ..that this is a screaming head, 234 00:13:24,360 --> 00:13:26,520 like Edvard Munch? Aaahh. 235 00:13:26,560 --> 00:13:28,480 Right... Years before Ed Munch. 236 00:13:28,520 --> 00:13:30,480 Where's the mouth? His mouth is here. 237 00:13:30,520 --> 00:13:32,240 The eye is here. Yeah. 238 00:13:32,280 --> 00:13:34,520 The admiral's hat is... 239 00:13:34,560 --> 00:13:37,800 The golden braid is on top of his head. 240 00:13:37,840 --> 00:13:39,320 He has... 241 00:13:39,360 --> 00:13:42,560 a big collar and shoulder here, 242 00:13:42,600 --> 00:13:45,040 and he's pinned to the side of the Temeraire. 243 00:13:45,080 --> 00:13:46,600 Gee! 244 00:13:47,440 --> 00:13:49,920 Wow. In fact... 245 00:13:49,960 --> 00:13:51,440 it is... 246 00:13:51,480 --> 00:13:54,280 we propose, Napoleon. Can you see it? 247 00:13:54,320 --> 00:13:56,160 Of course. (CHUCKLES) 248 00:13:56,200 --> 00:13:58,160 Wow. I think I need to have a drink 249 00:13:58,200 --> 00:14:00,880 cos that is just absolutely mad. 250 00:14:00,920 --> 00:14:03,080 If you look at the ยฃ20 note 251 00:14:03,120 --> 00:14:06,280 and you will see Napoleon's head screaming 252 00:14:06,320 --> 00:14:09,960 on the side of the Temeraire. I just can't believe that. 253 00:14:11,680 --> 00:14:14,360 I can't believe that's not been seen before... 254 00:14:14,400 --> 00:14:17,440 because it's there but visible and invisible. 255 00:14:17,480 --> 00:14:20,040 I like that expression. It is both. 256 00:14:20,080 --> 00:14:23,360 It is both. Yes. It's deliberately invisible. 257 00:14:23,400 --> 00:14:24,520 Yeah, but... 258 00:14:24,560 --> 00:14:26,800 But there is a challenge for the nation 259 00:14:26,840 --> 00:14:28,520 to go find his hidden images. 260 00:14:35,800 --> 00:14:39,760 On the left-hand side, beyond topographical form, 261 00:14:40,480 --> 00:14:43,840 created from... 262 00:14:43,880 --> 00:14:45,560 A sort of skull. ..the angle, 263 00:14:45,600 --> 00:14:47,320 there's a sort of skull. 264 00:14:47,360 --> 00:14:50,600 Yes. Yes. I can see a sort of skull. 265 00:14:50,640 --> 00:14:52,640 He's got a high collar coat on... 266 00:14:52,680 --> 00:14:54,160 Yeah. ..with a shoulder. 267 00:14:54,200 --> 00:14:57,000 I can... I can see what you're getting at. 268 00:14:57,040 --> 00:15:00,840 It even has a circular form on the hat here. 269 00:15:00,880 --> 00:15:03,600 I'm gonna suggest to you that that's a cockade... 270 00:15:04,480 --> 00:15:07,960 ..and that cockade is an emblem of the French Revolution. 271 00:15:08,000 --> 00:15:12,480 It's very interesting. Once you see the shapes, you CAN see them. But... 272 00:15:12,520 --> 00:15:14,240 Yeah. I mean, whether... 273 00:15:14,280 --> 00:15:16,600 whether that's what that is, I'm not sure, 274 00:15:16,640 --> 00:15:18,360 but I can see what you're saying. 275 00:15:18,400 --> 00:15:21,240 You may never wipe that from your mind.No. 276 00:15:29,200 --> 00:15:31,040 We suggest this is... 277 00:15:32,160 --> 00:15:36,000 ..Napoleon impaled to the side of the Temeraire. 278 00:15:36,720 --> 00:15:39,600 He was a prize of the Temeraire. Can you see it? 279 00:15:41,200 --> 00:15:43,080 Yeah... 280 00:15:43,120 --> 00:15:45,440 It could be a unicorn, you know. 281 00:15:45,480 --> 00:15:48,440 (LAUGHS) I think it's a unicorn. 282 00:15:48,480 --> 00:15:52,440 I'm not sure if it's... Napoleon impaled. 283 00:15:52,480 --> 00:15:54,720 I can imagine he'd, like... 284 00:15:54,760 --> 00:15:58,160 enjoy the secretness of it all and the fun of it all 285 00:15:58,200 --> 00:15:59,560 if he DID, you know, 286 00:15:59,600 --> 00:16:03,640 if he did imbue these paintings with hidden symbolism. 287 00:16:03,680 --> 00:16:06,320 Yeah.But do you think that was very much of the time, 288 00:16:06,360 --> 00:16:08,520 that's what people were doing generally? 289 00:16:08,560 --> 00:16:10,440 No. Just Turner. Just Turner. 290 00:16:10,480 --> 00:16:13,880 You look at others, there is nothing there.OK. 291 00:16:16,840 --> 00:16:19,760 What would you say about that image 292 00:16:19,800 --> 00:16:22,200 in our proposal that it's Napoleon? 293 00:16:22,240 --> 00:16:25,320 The first thing I would observe is that... 294 00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:28,200 the bow of the ship makes his hat. 295 00:16:28,240 --> 00:16:31,160 And what I'd always thought about this painting 296 00:16:31,200 --> 00:16:35,480 is that the perspective of the ship coming towards the viewer 297 00:16:35,520 --> 00:16:37,360 is a little odd. 298 00:16:37,400 --> 00:16:41,960 The fact that it is concealing an image of Napoleon 299 00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:44,360 would explain that... 300 00:16:44,400 --> 00:16:47,520 that Turner might have adapted the perspective 301 00:16:47,560 --> 00:16:50,200 in order to accommodate this hidden face. 302 00:16:55,160 --> 00:16:58,600 It appears to be a sort of three-dimensional... 303 00:16:59,600 --> 00:17:04,160 ..entity on the side of the boat, screaming in agony. 304 00:17:05,000 --> 00:17:06,840 Can you see that at all? 305 00:17:08,560 --> 00:17:10,960 No, I can't see that. I really can't. 306 00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:13,960 I mean, you know, I understand why Napoleon might be... 307 00:17:15,800 --> 00:17:17,040 ..associated. 308 00:17:17,080 --> 00:17:19,640 The story's kind of...there. 309 00:17:19,680 --> 00:17:22,800 It's imminent all the time in that painting. 310 00:17:22,840 --> 00:17:26,120 I don't see why you would then put more... 311 00:17:26,160 --> 00:17:28,080 more into it, more information. 312 00:17:28,120 --> 00:17:29,800 I don't think it needs it. 313 00:17:29,840 --> 00:17:33,240 I think it's a simple story well told. 314 00:17:40,600 --> 00:17:44,040 The Freudian theory was that you may try to repress something, 315 00:17:44,080 --> 00:17:45,920 but it will come out somewhere else 316 00:17:45,960 --> 00:17:47,960 because of strong, unconscious impulses. 317 00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:50,960 It will come out in art. It will come out in your dreams. 318 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:52,760 It may come out in the slip of a tongue 319 00:17:52,800 --> 00:17:54,480 in the middle of a conversation. 320 00:17:54,520 --> 00:17:58,680 So if Turner is hiding something and has got a secret code 321 00:17:58,720 --> 00:18:02,240 and trying to send an underhand message to the world, 322 00:18:02,280 --> 00:18:06,160 the deeper psychological question psychologists would ask 323 00:18:06,200 --> 00:18:08,120 is "What's his motivation?" 324 00:18:08,160 --> 00:18:12,080 So, one reason why people sometimes embed codes, 325 00:18:12,120 --> 00:18:16,200 or send signals in a hidden way, is a mischievousness, 326 00:18:16,240 --> 00:18:19,040 a playfulness, and a kind of showing off. 327 00:18:19,080 --> 00:18:23,560 And if Turner had a strong sense of superiority over other people, 328 00:18:23,600 --> 00:18:26,600 he may be showing off if he tries to hide codes. 329 00:18:26,640 --> 00:18:30,600 JMW Turner was indeed a well known show-off. 330 00:18:30,640 --> 00:18:34,520 Every year at the opening of the Royal Academy Exhibition, 331 00:18:34,560 --> 00:18:37,200 crowds watched him add finishing touches 332 00:18:37,240 --> 00:18:39,560 that transformed his paintings. 333 00:18:39,600 --> 00:18:44,400 Turner was famous for turning up and making changes that... 334 00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:48,280 ..would seem to put the artists around him, 335 00:18:48,320 --> 00:18:51,560 and their paintings, down, and make his picture pop up. 336 00:18:51,600 --> 00:18:53,560 So he's hugely, hugely competitive. 337 00:18:53,600 --> 00:18:56,560 I mean, Turner's personality is a very strange one 338 00:18:56,600 --> 00:19:00,680 because on the one hand, he was crude, he was rude, 339 00:19:00,720 --> 00:19:05,120 he was dishevelled, he was kind of a complete mess of a man. 340 00:19:05,160 --> 00:19:10,520 He was also an extremely intelligent and well-read man. 341 00:19:10,560 --> 00:19:13,680 He was aware of modern science and technology. 342 00:19:13,720 --> 00:19:15,200 He read philosophy. 343 00:19:15,240 --> 00:19:16,920 He composed his own poems. 344 00:19:16,960 --> 00:19:19,160 He understood a great deal about history, 345 00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:23,000 and he cared deeply about his own legacy. 346 00:19:23,040 --> 00:19:26,120 And he wanted his pictures to be shown together, 347 00:19:26,160 --> 00:19:28,160 exhibited together, 348 00:19:28,200 --> 00:19:30,640 as part of his own legacy, 349 00:19:30,680 --> 00:19:33,360 to be rooted in British history 350 00:19:33,400 --> 00:19:37,520 in the way that his paintings depicted British history. 351 00:19:39,400 --> 00:19:41,440 After extensive research, 352 00:19:41,480 --> 00:19:43,600 the Wilkinsons have concluded that, 353 00:19:43,640 --> 00:19:46,040 through a series of concealed images, 354 00:19:46,080 --> 00:19:49,000 Turner represented himself as a bear. 355 00:19:52,640 --> 00:19:55,800 If you look, he's resurrected all the masts on the Temeraire, 356 00:19:55,840 --> 00:19:57,600 but put no flags on them. 357 00:19:57,640 --> 00:20:01,120 But he's put this very prominent white flag 358 00:20:01,160 --> 00:20:03,120 on the mast of the tugboat. 359 00:20:06,280 --> 00:20:07,800 What do you see in the flag? 360 00:20:07,840 --> 00:20:11,320 The flag is his emblem, the bear's head. 361 00:20:11,360 --> 00:20:15,120 And that bear's head is looking down at the Temeraire. 362 00:20:17,200 --> 00:20:20,400 You would see ears in the top left corner of the flag 363 00:20:20,440 --> 00:20:23,400 and you'd see the bear's snout in the bottom left corner. 364 00:20:23,440 --> 00:20:24,840 Yeah. Yeah. 365 00:20:24,880 --> 00:20:28,080 I mean, I have to... To me, I can see an animal, 366 00:20:28,120 --> 00:20:30,480 but that's the thing about drapery in painting. 367 00:20:30,520 --> 00:20:32,160 Yeah. But I'm gonna, you know, 368 00:20:32,200 --> 00:20:36,160 if it sort of reinforces my idea that the tug was Turner, 369 00:20:36,200 --> 00:20:37,880 then, of course, I'm interested. 370 00:20:37,920 --> 00:20:39,840 Within the Temeraire, 371 00:20:39,880 --> 00:20:42,680 the only flag flying is on the tugboat. 372 00:20:42,720 --> 00:20:44,520 It's a white flag. 373 00:20:44,560 --> 00:20:48,040 But when you look at it... what he has done... 374 00:20:48,080 --> 00:20:50,520 It seems completely the head of a bear. 375 00:20:50,560 --> 00:20:53,560 It's the head of a bear. This one is incredible. 376 00:20:53,600 --> 00:20:55,440 Are you able to see that? 377 00:20:55,480 --> 00:20:57,840 The question is, are we looking at something 378 00:20:57,880 --> 00:20:59,760 that Turner intended us to look at, 379 00:20:59,800 --> 00:21:02,440 or is this something that is by chance 380 00:21:02,480 --> 00:21:05,240 which creates this shape? I'm not sure. 381 00:21:05,280 --> 00:21:07,880 Why is Turner sending these messages? 382 00:21:07,920 --> 00:21:09,240 What's going on? 383 00:21:09,280 --> 00:21:13,880 Cos a Freudian theory would be that he's repressed in some sense 384 00:21:13,920 --> 00:21:16,600 or society is repressing him 385 00:21:16,640 --> 00:21:18,720 and he has to get a way of getting a message out. 386 00:21:18,760 --> 00:21:21,240 To send a code, you're hiding it from someone 387 00:21:21,280 --> 00:21:23,880 and you want other people to see it. 388 00:21:23,920 --> 00:21:28,680 One of the issues for Turner had started early in his life 389 00:21:28,720 --> 00:21:32,400 when he was the president of Perspective at the Royal Academy. 390 00:21:32,440 --> 00:21:37,760 He presented lectures there and... he was derided for that, 391 00:21:37,800 --> 00:21:40,680 because his verbal style was not comprehensible. 392 00:21:40,720 --> 00:21:45,080 And people joked at his expense about that, unfortunately. 393 00:21:45,120 --> 00:21:48,680 I'd suggest he is recording in paint... 394 00:21:49,560 --> 00:21:53,320 ..the narrative of his life through a series of paintings. 395 00:21:53,360 --> 00:21:55,400 But why do it in a coded way? 396 00:21:56,760 --> 00:22:01,080 Maybe it's a sort of parlour game approach. 397 00:22:01,120 --> 00:22:05,280 The parlour game was something in the early Victorian period 398 00:22:05,320 --> 00:22:09,120 for people to find hidden images, 399 00:22:09,160 --> 00:22:12,040 to give them little clues as to what it might be... 400 00:22:12,800 --> 00:22:17,160 ..and to give them an additional level of looking at his work. 401 00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:20,200 That painting is beautiful enough as it is. 402 00:22:20,240 --> 00:22:23,600 He doesn't have to put a coded message in. 403 00:22:23,640 --> 00:22:25,640 Once he starts doing that, 404 00:22:25,680 --> 00:22:30,400 it begins to distract from the beauty of that painting. 405 00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:32,680 You don't need a coded message. 406 00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:35,800 If anything, the fact there's a coded message in there 407 00:22:35,840 --> 00:22:39,080 begins to detract or distract the viewer 408 00:22:39,120 --> 00:22:41,400 from the appreciation of that painting. 409 00:22:41,440 --> 00:22:45,880 That being so, if you don't know there's a coded message there, 410 00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:48,600 it is of no consequence. 411 00:22:48,640 --> 00:22:51,680 OK. That's a very, very interesting counterargument. 412 00:22:52,360 --> 00:22:55,320 When Nick first said, "Can you see a bear here?" 413 00:22:55,360 --> 00:22:59,080 I said, "Yeah, but so what? Yeah, it looks like a bear. 414 00:22:59,120 --> 00:23:02,720 But prove to me it's intended as a bear." 415 00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:09,920 And only by looking extensively across several paintings, 416 00:23:09,960 --> 00:23:12,280 has Nick been able to build up an argument 417 00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:17,120 that has convinced me... to quite a sufficient degree. 418 00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:24,280 ERICA: We found out that the bear is the Venetian painter Titian's 419 00:23:24,320 --> 00:23:28,280 personal device, which was illustrated 420 00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:31,360 in the most wonderful cartouche, 421 00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:33,600 a lovely she-bear. 422 00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:39,120 And between her front paws there is a lumpen block. 423 00:23:39,160 --> 00:23:42,560 She is about to lick this block into shape 424 00:23:42,600 --> 00:23:44,560 to reveal a bear cub. 425 00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:49,880 And the idea is that this has a direct parallel 426 00:23:49,920 --> 00:23:53,640 to the activity of artists. 427 00:23:53,680 --> 00:23:59,320 Titian was regarded as the great colourist... 428 00:23:59,920 --> 00:24:05,040 ..and Turner saw himself as Titian's heir. 429 00:24:05,080 --> 00:24:07,320 Therefore, there is a good reason 430 00:24:07,360 --> 00:24:10,960 for him choosing the bear as his personal emblem. 431 00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:15,960 Dr Wilkinson believes that 432 00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:18,520 Turner concealed other controversial images 433 00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:20,960 within The Fighting Temeraire. 434 00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:24,520 The yellow and orange shape at the end of the dirty plume 435 00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:27,720 is actually a goose's head looking down the plume. 436 00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:29,840 It is an eye and a breathing hole. 437 00:24:29,880 --> 00:24:32,000 That's how you can identify it. 438 00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:36,640 And he's portraying steam as the golden goose of the future age. 439 00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:41,440 I can't see the goose. OK. 440 00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:43,920 I don't see this. 441 00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:47,280 This is like one of those Magic Eye things that I just can't see. 442 00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:51,000 I'm afraid I'm not convinced by the goose in the smoke. 443 00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:52,880 OK. 444 00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:57,160 Now I'm going to show you the head of a goose. 445 00:24:57,200 --> 00:24:59,880 It could be a face of many animals. 446 00:24:59,920 --> 00:25:01,400 Yeah. Actually. 447 00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:03,680 But I'm thinking that could also be... 448 00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:08,000 For me, I can't stop seeing... 449 00:25:08,040 --> 00:25:09,280 Sorry. 450 00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:11,560 But...a pig. 451 00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:13,400 (CHUCKLES GOOFILY) 452 00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:18,040 TIM: I can see something that could be interpreted like that. 453 00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:20,240 Hmm. But I'm going to say... 454 00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:25,720 ..I think it would change the whole nature of the painting to do that. 455 00:25:25,760 --> 00:25:27,560 Yeah. Because he's a... 456 00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:29,600 He's also an observational painter. 457 00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:33,200 He's painting real things. 458 00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:38,280 And why would he want to jeopardise that, 459 00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:43,160 you know, powerful impression of reality. 460 00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:45,960 I'm so curious about this gigantic goose 461 00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:48,240 kind of dominating everything. 462 00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:51,520 I wonder what that tells us about Turner himself 463 00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:53,440 and why he chose these images. 464 00:25:54,120 --> 00:25:57,840 ERICA: We could see geese heads time and time again, 465 00:25:57,880 --> 00:26:02,120 so we came to the conclusion this was a reference 466 00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:05,360 to steam that was regarded 467 00:26:05,400 --> 00:26:09,480 as the golden goose of the nation's wealth. 468 00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:13,280 A number of history's most famous paintings 469 00:26:13,320 --> 00:26:15,920 contain extraordinary secrets 470 00:26:15,960 --> 00:26:19,680 that are still being uncovered centuries after their completion. 471 00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:23,120 I think it's wonderful, this new kind of hobby 472 00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:24,960 that seems to be sweeping the world, 473 00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:27,840 which is people finding secret symbols in paintings. 474 00:26:27,880 --> 00:26:30,600 One of the great British painters of the 18th century 475 00:26:30,640 --> 00:26:32,200 was Thomas Gainsborough, 476 00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:34,160 and one of his most famous paintings - 477 00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:36,800 it's one of the most popular paintings in Britain - 478 00:26:36,840 --> 00:26:40,040 is Mr And Mrs Andrews, which is in the National Gallery. 479 00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:42,280 People have loved this painting for centuries, 480 00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:46,360 but they hadn't really noticed that at the very centre of the painting, 481 00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:47,920 on Mrs Andrews' lap, 482 00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:50,920 Gainsborough had actually drawn a squiggle of a penis, 483 00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:52,840 perhaps to get back at the couple. 484 00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:54,560 We know that he didn't finish the painting 485 00:26:54,600 --> 00:26:57,120 because the relationship with the patrons broke down, 486 00:26:57,160 --> 00:26:59,160 and so perhaps he was getting revenge 487 00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:01,080 on Mr or Mrs Andrews by doing that. 488 00:27:01,120 --> 00:27:04,120 (LAUGHS) There's a far more prominent male member 489 00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:07,520 in Gainsborough's portrait of Countess Howe in Kenwood. 490 00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:09,680 And if you read Gainsborough's letters, 491 00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:11,760 why should anyone be surprised about this? 492 00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:13,920 He's constantly writing, in his letters - 493 00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:18,560 and indeed I think in his diary - about how aroused he becomes. 494 00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:20,960 Why should we be surprised? 495 00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:30,160 One of the earliest instances of Turner using hidden imagery 496 00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:35,680 is in his 1829 painting Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus... 497 00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:37,600 and the clue is in the title. 498 00:27:37,640 --> 00:27:40,440 It describes the classical hero Ulysses, 499 00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:44,000 taunting a giant Cyclops called Polyphemus, 500 00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:46,080 from which he has escaped. 501 00:27:46,120 --> 00:27:48,840 And though we can see Ulysses on his ship, 502 00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:51,600 Polyphemus is harder to spot 503 00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:54,720 because he is made out of clouds. 504 00:27:56,160 --> 00:28:01,040 In this painting, there are some known hidden images. 505 00:28:01,080 --> 00:28:04,880 There's the title, which is Polyphemus up in the clouds. 506 00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:06,400 Have you seen that before? 507 00:28:06,440 --> 00:28:10,440 Yes. Polyphemus is relatively easy to see. 508 00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:14,280 I think there are the horses in the sun, 509 00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:16,640 which are also fairly easy to see. 510 00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:18,760 But you'd miss them if you stayed at... 511 00:28:18,800 --> 00:28:22,040 if you stayed at a distance of six to eight feet from the painting, 512 00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:25,280 which is - for a picture like this - classically the correct distance. 513 00:28:25,320 --> 00:28:27,880 So it's... Perhaps it's one of Turner's ways 514 00:28:27,920 --> 00:28:31,400 of making you walk into his sun, having those horses there. 515 00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:33,760 So there are other images as well. 516 00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:36,760 The flag halfway up the flagpole there. 517 00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:40,600 Are you aware that there is a Trojan horse on wheels 518 00:28:40,640 --> 00:28:42,520 sitting in the flag... 519 00:28:42,560 --> 00:28:47,840 and then, behind, there are buildings that are on fire? 520 00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:50,320 But, yes, I do see what you mean. 521 00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:51,960 Yeah. And I'm absolutely 522 00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:55,080 prepared to accept the possibility that that might be there 523 00:28:55,120 --> 00:28:58,000 because, you know, something like a flag for Turner 524 00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:01,320 is an opportunity for these little graphic finesses. 525 00:29:01,360 --> 00:29:04,400 Turner had this compulsive need to put graffiti everywhere. 526 00:29:04,440 --> 00:29:06,480 So that all over his paintings, 527 00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:08,600 you find these sort of secret messages and things 528 00:29:08,640 --> 00:29:10,680 that are scurrying almost half out of sight. 529 00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:13,280 So, you know, absolutely, I'm happy to see a Trojan horse. 530 00:29:13,320 --> 00:29:15,080 I CAN see a Trojan horse on wheels now. 531 00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:16,960 Great. Lovely. 532 00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,240 Finally, at the very top of the mast there 533 00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:23,640 is a bear's head with a bridle on it. 534 00:29:23,680 --> 00:29:28,720 His ear is attached to the mast, and he's looking out right, 535 00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:31,320 looking forward in the direction of the ship. 536 00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:33,440 Written on that... 537 00:29:34,040 --> 00:29:36,640 ..it's the word U-L-Y, "Uly". 538 00:29:37,800 --> 00:29:39,760 Maybe you can see it. Uly. 539 00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:42,480 So he's painted Ulysses... 540 00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:46,000 ..as a bear on the mast head. 541 00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:49,640 I would suggest to you that he saw himself 542 00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:52,120 as a journeying Ulysses. 543 00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:54,040 Why would Ulysses be in the shape of a bear? 544 00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:56,600 Is that because the bear is Turner's own emblem 545 00:29:56,640 --> 00:29:58,600 that he borrows from Titian? 546 00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:02,160 In your personal mythology of Turner, how does that work? 547 00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:06,760 Correct. The bear's head is Turner's self emblem. 548 00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:09,240 It appears in many paintings. 549 00:30:09,280 --> 00:30:12,560 I'm not sure about the bear's head, but essentially, 550 00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:15,280 I don't disagree with your idea 551 00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:19,120 of Turner identifying himself with Ulysses... 552 00:30:19,800 --> 00:30:23,720 ..the endless, restless traveller 553 00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:26,440 who finds it so hard to settle 554 00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:29,440 and whose life is knocked awry 555 00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:32,320 but his destiny leads him always onwards. 556 00:30:32,360 --> 00:30:36,360 Actually, Turner is part of the ship, heading onwards. 557 00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:37,800 If you look at the sail form. 558 00:30:37,840 --> 00:30:40,880 It's got a big hooked nose on the right-hand side. 559 00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:44,000 And then there's an eye there in the sail form - 560 00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:46,040 and he uses sails as images - 561 00:30:46,080 --> 00:30:49,280 is Turner's head surging forward. 562 00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:51,280 Well, I must say, if you're gonna... 563 00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:53,560 The thing is, for this kind of transformation 564 00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:56,360 of something abstract into an actual image, 565 00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:59,560 you do have a very good precedent in Leonardo da Vinci, 566 00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:02,720 who says, you know, "Look at the stains on a wall. 567 00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:05,880 Look at the clouds in the sky. Look at the drapery. 568 00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:11,000 And if you see a shape in it, make it the basis for a painting." 569 00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:15,920 So this idea of seeing shapes in clouds or in sail cloth 570 00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:18,680 or in, you know, a bit of sea... 571 00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:22,440 ..Leonardo da Vinci said that's what artists do. 572 00:31:30,760 --> 00:31:34,880 The Wilkinsons' research has taken them across the UK. 573 00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:38,840 But there is one place overseas that was special to Turner. 574 00:31:39,760 --> 00:31:41,240 Venice. 575 00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:53,760 He arrived here. He was doing the Grand Tour. 576 00:31:53,800 --> 00:31:57,000 He was always travelling. He was a person very curious. 577 00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:03,040 Turner, like so many British people, was just obsessed with Italy. 578 00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:04,800 It was the "golden ticket" for him. 579 00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:07,320 He drew thousands of sketches when he was in Italy. 580 00:32:07,360 --> 00:32:09,960 He made hundreds of paintings inspired by Italy. 581 00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:12,480 And I think Italy - and Venice in particular - 582 00:32:12,520 --> 00:32:14,600 fundamentally transformed his art. 583 00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:16,480 I think that was what propelled him 584 00:32:16,520 --> 00:32:20,360 into this journey towards an art of light and colour. 585 00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:25,200 Then he started to understand the light 586 00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:29,800 and the way of painting of Titian and Tintoretto. 587 00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:34,520 Dr Wilkinson is visiting some of the sites Turner would have seen... 588 00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:38,720 ..viewing frescoes by Venetian Renaissance artists 589 00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:42,280 Titian and Tintoretto, that Turner sketched. 590 00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:46,800 And even the street Tintoretto lived in... 591 00:32:47,760 --> 00:32:50,040 ..defined by its turbaned statues. 592 00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:54,840 And the Palazzo del Cammello, or Camel House, where he lived. 593 00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:58,680 It's no surprise that Venice is the setting 594 00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:01,760 for one of Turner's most cryptic paintings. 595 00:33:06,920 --> 00:33:09,280 Exhibited in 1833, 596 00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:11,880 it shows Venice as the city of canals, 597 00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:14,400 with its famous Bridge Of Sighs, 598 00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:16,840 Ducal Palace and Custom House. 599 00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:21,040 It also features an artist. 600 00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:23,120 The traditional interpretation 601 00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:28,000 is that this is the 17th-century Venetian painter Antonio Canal, 602 00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:32,360 known by his nickname "Canaletto", which means "son of Canal". 603 00:33:36,120 --> 00:33:40,120 But Turner's cryptic title is not "Canaletto", 604 00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:41,960 but "Canaletti". 605 00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:46,080 FRANNY: Titles are really important in Turner's work. 606 00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:50,160 When he entitles one of his paintings "Canaletti" 607 00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:52,400 rather than "Canaletto", 608 00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:55,760 I think Nick is right to think 609 00:33:55,800 --> 00:33:57,760 this may be an invitation 610 00:33:57,800 --> 00:34:01,160 to consider the work as something of a riddle. 611 00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:04,160 I think there is a clue in that title 612 00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,720 by using an Italian plural. 613 00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:15,160 NICK: His title is cryptic. "Canaletti Painting" 614 00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:17,680 suggests to me "sons" 615 00:34:17,720 --> 00:34:20,080 and it suggests to me "sons of Canal". 616 00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:24,000 To me, "sons of Canal" means "the sons of Venice", 617 00:34:24,040 --> 00:34:25,800 because Venice is canal. 618 00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:27,880 And what you find in this painting - 619 00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:31,520 I am going to propose to you, and I welcome your thoughts - 620 00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:36,880 that he has taken this painting and painted in the sons of Venice. 621 00:34:36,920 --> 00:34:38,680 Wow. All right? 622 00:34:38,720 --> 00:34:42,560 So we have great famous Venetian people in here. 623 00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:47,080 I think there's a son of Venice represented here in general 624 00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:51,640 by the sublime painting of the buildings. 625 00:34:51,680 --> 00:34:54,000 If you look at the painting as a whole, 626 00:34:54,040 --> 00:35:00,040 the top two thirds is of a Canaletto-style painting. 627 00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:01,800 It rivals Canaletto. Yeah. 628 00:35:01,840 --> 00:35:03,400 And he's, in a way, 629 00:35:03,440 --> 00:35:06,000 competed with Canaletto by presenting this, 630 00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:09,360 but has paid homage to him as a son of Venice 631 00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:13,040 in the nature of the painting of the buildings in the background. 632 00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:16,560 I would put this proposal to you 633 00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:19,960 that the artist painting at the easel, 634 00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:21,960 it isn't Canaletto painting. 635 00:35:22,560 --> 00:35:25,280 This is actually Titian painting. 636 00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:29,480 He's wearing a Titian-red coat. Yes. 637 00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:34,080 You look and it is known that this painting is amazingly framed. 638 00:35:34,120 --> 00:35:37,080 Yeah. Right? With a guild frame. 639 00:35:37,120 --> 00:35:41,280 And the actual painting image that looks out at you 640 00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:43,000 is a bear. Two eyes. 641 00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:45,920 Two eyes and a muzzle is a bear. 642 00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:50,120 Now, the bear was Titian's emblem. 643 00:35:51,720 --> 00:35:54,720 Beneath Titian, reflected in the water, 644 00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:56,400 is a caricature image, 645 00:35:56,440 --> 00:35:58,680 self-image of Turner. 646 00:35:58,720 --> 00:36:03,120 Turner is looking at the painting of the bear. 647 00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:05,840 Oh, with a big nose. With a big nose. 648 00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:09,040 And the head. Here is the eye. Yeah. 649 00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:13,000 This is opening a completely... another point of view 650 00:36:13,040 --> 00:36:16,320 of look into the Turner paintings. Yes. 651 00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:18,400 There are things that I never thought. 652 00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:22,040 No, there are clever, hidden things, 653 00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:24,680 but they have symbolic meaning to Turner, 654 00:36:24,720 --> 00:36:27,000 and he wants to convey them 655 00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:29,960 to the readership, the audience, as well. 656 00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:32,400 Through different anamorphic images, 657 00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:34,840 he creates interest in the painting. 658 00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:37,760 But he never gave it away in his lifetime. 659 00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:40,120 He never said it? No, he didn't let people 660 00:36:40,160 --> 00:36:41,680 see him painting. 661 00:36:41,720 --> 00:36:44,080 Probably because he was doing some of this. 662 00:36:44,120 --> 00:36:46,200 This is quite powerful. 663 00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:50,800 When you look at all these cloths here, 664 00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:54,400 piled up on the boats in the middle of the painting, 665 00:36:54,440 --> 00:36:56,840 there are three heads there. 666 00:36:58,760 --> 00:37:00,800 And in the middle of them... 667 00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:02,720 is an animal's head. 668 00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:05,240 The dark head is a camel's head. 669 00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:09,360 And then we have three Moorish heads. 670 00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:12,680 Right? Ahh. 671 00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:15,600 So there is a meaning of the three Moors 672 00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:18,040 that are near the house of Tintoretto? 673 00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:21,520 Yeah. That is a locational representation of Tintoretto, 674 00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:23,160 cos that's where he worked. 675 00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:28,160 Let me show you this unusual front of a boat here. 676 00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:30,040 You see that shape 677 00:37:30,080 --> 00:37:33,640 and you ask yourself, "What is he doing there?" 678 00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:35,760 My proposal to you 679 00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:41,160 is that that is a representation of Vivaldi. 680 00:37:41,200 --> 00:37:45,400 And here we have a red cello with a neck, 681 00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:47,760 and he even has tuning plugs on it. 682 00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:49,760 Can you see? Completely. 683 00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:53,760 Yeah? So my proposal to you... You agree with that? 684 00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:56,520 You've never seen that before. No, I never know this. 685 00:37:56,560 --> 00:38:01,160 So, Canaletti in the sense of the sons of Venice. 686 00:38:01,200 --> 00:38:02,880 Yes. So it's not only one? 687 00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:04,480 No, there are multiple. 688 00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:08,640 The painting features Venice's prison, 689 00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:10,400 known as "The Leads", 690 00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:14,840 from which the famous Venetian lothario Casanova once escaped. 691 00:38:15,920 --> 00:38:17,840 And Dr Wilkinson thinks Turner 692 00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:20,080 may have referred to this event, too. 693 00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:24,520 But now we go on to another one, another type. 694 00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:27,040 And this is Casanova. 695 00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:32,920 And here, Casanova escaping from The Leads. 696 00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:35,400 He climbed down from the prison. 697 00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:36,680 Yes. Yeah? 698 00:38:36,720 --> 00:38:41,920 And he was met by a gondola that whisked him away. 699 00:38:41,960 --> 00:38:45,880 Here is Casanova sitting, smiling in the gondola 700 00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:47,440 with his feet up. 701 00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:48,960 Oh, fantastic. 702 00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:55,720 I think the other invitation to consider the painting as a riddle 703 00:38:55,760 --> 00:38:59,000 is something that academics have always picked up on 704 00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:01,480 and never really cracked, which is... 705 00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:06,320 ..you can see an artist to the left of the canvas, 706 00:39:06,360 --> 00:39:09,600 painting at an easel, but he's painting... 707 00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:11,960 a painting that's already framed, 708 00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:14,200 which of course, no artist ever does. 709 00:39:14,240 --> 00:39:16,880 They may paint a bare canvas unframed. 710 00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:19,440 And so I think this instantly is asking us 711 00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,040 to look at the whole painting 712 00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:24,120 as a riddle about painters. 713 00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:33,560 If Turner has called a painting after Canaletto, 714 00:39:33,600 --> 00:39:35,560 why would he NOT depict Canaletto? 715 00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:37,840 Why would the main figure be Titian? 716 00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:39,640 Scientists have taught us to be sceptical. 717 00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:42,200 To the right is a caricature image... 718 00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:45,080 ..in profile, of a man's head. 719 00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:47,480 That looks like genitalia to me. 720 00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:49,080 (BOTH LAUGH) 721 00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:52,000 That's not a credible man. (LAUGHS) 722 00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:54,040 With a humongous nose. 723 00:39:55,960 --> 00:39:57,960 Sorry, I'm not mocking you, but... 724 00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:00,960 He could be a cartoon man. He could be a cartoon man. 725 00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:03,320 But why would Turner paint a cartoon man? 726 00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:06,040 Mm. I don't know. 727 00:40:06,080 --> 00:40:09,200 This was the golden age of English caricature. 728 00:40:09,240 --> 00:40:12,640 Mm. I just think he would be a bit more virtuoso about it 729 00:40:12,680 --> 00:40:14,880 if he was going to do that. 730 00:40:14,920 --> 00:40:18,080 You know, that doesn't feel like a credible head. 731 00:40:18,120 --> 00:40:20,760 But that's ME. Everybody's subjective, I think, 732 00:40:20,800 --> 00:40:23,040 and you will see something different than I do. 733 00:40:23,080 --> 00:40:25,120 Nick's thesis 734 00:40:25,160 --> 00:40:29,080 is that some of Turner's references to popular culture, 735 00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:32,200 to pantomime, to caricature, 736 00:40:32,240 --> 00:40:36,120 things that are a kind of litter, references do occur 737 00:40:36,160 --> 00:40:38,640 and he just had that tendency 738 00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:42,640 to try and put a bit of everything in a work. 739 00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:44,760 You don't often spot the litter. 740 00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:48,240 Often you have to look quite hard for it, but it'll be there. 741 00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:52,760 Early on, Turner is doing a lot of work with printmakers, 742 00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:57,120 both in terms of the reproduction of his own work 743 00:40:57,160 --> 00:41:00,560 and in terms...in his earlier youth, 744 00:41:00,600 --> 00:41:03,480 of learning from people who are in the print trade. 745 00:41:03,520 --> 00:41:05,320 Seems to me entirely natural 746 00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:10,040 that Turner would know his print trade inside out 747 00:41:10,080 --> 00:41:13,960 and that an awareness of caricature would be a part of that. 748 00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:16,400 One of the most exciting innovations, I think, 749 00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:20,760 that the satirists pioneered was their use of quite surreal imagery. 750 00:41:20,800 --> 00:41:24,000 They loved hiding images within other images. 751 00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:27,160 Or they loved hiding characters within particular shapes. 752 00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:29,200 That's what's fun about these images - 753 00:41:29,240 --> 00:41:32,320 at one glance you think you've worked it out already, 754 00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:34,320 and then you look a little bit closer 755 00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:38,120 and there's this peculiar, bizarre image that you're looking at. 756 00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:40,800 I think it's exciting that we're looking at Turner 757 00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:43,280 in light of these caricatures. 758 00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,040 As you move into the 1830s, 1840s, 759 00:41:49,080 --> 00:41:51,440 to the final couple of decades of his life, 760 00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:53,680 he develops what we call his late style. 761 00:41:54,440 --> 00:41:55,920 And in that late style, 762 00:41:55,960 --> 00:41:58,760 the paintings become more and more indistinct. 763 00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:00,960 The figures and the forms begin to dissolve 764 00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:02,720 and everything becomes dominated 765 00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:07,240 by this...diaphanous sheets of colour and light. 766 00:42:08,240 --> 00:42:11,000 His work evolves constantly 767 00:42:11,040 --> 00:42:14,200 and it just becomes richer and richer. 768 00:42:15,240 --> 00:42:19,040 He becomes very interested in a concept called the sublime, 769 00:42:19,080 --> 00:42:20,920 which is the opposite of beauty. 770 00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:24,480 It's when you see something that terrifies you and you quite enjoy that. 771 00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:26,320 This is a sort of way for him 772 00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:29,840 to start pushing away from visual accuracy 773 00:42:29,880 --> 00:42:32,520 into something new and something different. 774 00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:36,160 CORNELIA: Turner was way ahead of his time, 775 00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:39,040 and his late work was very impressionistic. 776 00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:42,520 Monet and all the Impressionists looked to him 777 00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:44,880 and had been in London and looked at the work. 778 00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:46,640 And so I think he was a catalyst 779 00:42:46,680 --> 00:42:49,680 for that whole era of French Impressionism. 780 00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:53,240 Claude Monet, who came in 1872 to London, 781 00:42:53,280 --> 00:42:56,760 he saw Turner's work and he was forever altered. 782 00:42:56,800 --> 00:42:59,320 And very early in the history of Impressionism, 783 00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:02,120 he and all the other Impressionist artists wrote a letter - 784 00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:04,920 a public open letter - thanking Monsieur Turner 785 00:43:04,960 --> 00:43:07,240 for having paved the way for Impressionism, 786 00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:10,480 and pointing them in the direction of painting light. 787 00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:14,920 Monet spent the rest of his life pretending he'd never written that letter 788 00:43:14,960 --> 00:43:19,120 and pretending that he wasn't absolutely in thrall to Turner. 789 00:43:19,160 --> 00:43:21,000 In his later works in particular, 790 00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:23,280 Turner described his art as indistinct. 791 00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:25,280 "Indistinctness is what I do." 792 00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:27,760 Sort of this wonderful mix of colour and swirl. 793 00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:31,480 And then when you get up close, you can see these little details. 794 00:43:31,520 --> 00:43:33,480 So I think he's being playful there 795 00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:36,640 by suggesting that somehow he is ALWAYS indistinct. 796 00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:40,520 I think anyone who's actually studied Turner's paintings up close 797 00:43:40,560 --> 00:43:44,200 and looked at them, can start to see those little details ping out. 798 00:43:44,240 --> 00:43:47,360 So I think he's both indistinct AND distinct at the same time. 799 00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:51,480 What I think there is... is another way of looking at Turner, 800 00:43:51,520 --> 00:43:56,040 and I think within the context of a single painting, 801 00:43:56,080 --> 00:44:00,720 he uses discreet, sometimes camouflaged, imagery 802 00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:03,760 to enhance the meaning of that single painting. 803 00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:07,200 And it does seem to occur in the later part of Turner's career, 804 00:44:07,240 --> 00:44:09,160 where he's more confident, perhaps, 805 00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:11,520 where he cares less about what people think, 806 00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:15,960 where perhaps he has become more prepared to be playful. 807 00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:24,000 As Turner developed his indistinct style, 808 00:44:24,040 --> 00:44:27,120 he also turned to new, modern topics, 809 00:44:27,160 --> 00:44:29,000 which created a stir. 810 00:44:30,120 --> 00:44:33,720 His contemporaries thought he was a bit strange and he was. 811 00:44:33,760 --> 00:44:37,720 Why would you paint a steam train rushing towards the audience 812 00:44:37,760 --> 00:44:40,600 as if to run them down? This is an amazing thing to paint. 813 00:44:40,640 --> 00:44:43,440 This is something of our time. No-one else is painting it. 814 00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:47,120 Because the Industrial Revolution was such a shocking thing, 815 00:44:47,160 --> 00:44:49,760 nobody painted it. It's like, "don't mention the war". 816 00:44:49,800 --> 00:44:52,480 But Turner DID paint it. He painted smog. 817 00:44:52,520 --> 00:44:54,120 No-one else did that. 818 00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:57,600 And the public does respond, as you can imagine. 819 00:44:57,640 --> 00:44:59,840 They go, "Wow!" 820 00:44:59,880 --> 00:45:03,040 I mean, it's like lobbing a bomb into a gentlemen's club... 821 00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:05,440 ..a Turner painting. 822 00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:08,400 I mean, it's this astonishing explosion of light. 823 00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:12,680 If you had to boil down to, as it were, 824 00:45:12,720 --> 00:45:15,680 one sentence, the meaning of rain, steam and speed, 825 00:45:15,720 --> 00:45:18,280 it's saying "this is the modern world". 826 00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:22,400 Here it is, a steam train rushing towards you 827 00:45:22,440 --> 00:45:26,480 across a viaduct, that's blurred by speed. 828 00:45:26,520 --> 00:45:28,400 And all around it, 829 00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:32,680 are these little images and emblems. 830 00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:36,200 There's this little boat. 831 00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:41,880 A road bridge...but no coaches. 832 00:45:43,320 --> 00:45:48,120 There's a hare scampering out of the way. Nature - forget it. 833 00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:52,000 A farmer with his plough and two horses. 834 00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:54,080 But they're like ghosts cos, of course, 835 00:45:54,120 --> 00:45:56,040 ploughs drawn by horses 836 00:45:56,080 --> 00:45:59,000 are soon going to be a thing of the past. 837 00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:01,480 And again, that train... 838 00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:04,440 ..roaring towards the future, 839 00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:07,560 roaring into some kind of visionary... 840 00:46:09,360 --> 00:46:11,760 ..maelstrom of imagining. 841 00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:15,200 To me, that's Turner. 842 00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:18,200 You know, that's little Turner. 843 00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:21,280 That's what the image is to me. 844 00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:24,440 But Dr Wilkinson thinks this painting 845 00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:26,720 is not just celebrating steam power, 846 00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:29,720 but specifically the man who developed it... 847 00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:33,760 ..the engineering genius Isambard Kingdom Brunel. 848 00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:36,560 He had built the new rail infrastructure, 849 00:46:36,600 --> 00:46:38,200 designed railway bridges 850 00:46:38,240 --> 00:46:41,200 and a revolutionary kind of steamship, 851 00:46:41,240 --> 00:46:43,120 the SS Great Britain. 852 00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:47,200 He's painted on the front here - and you can see at the bottom, 853 00:46:47,240 --> 00:46:49,480 below the train, there's a curve there. 854 00:46:49,520 --> 00:46:53,760 And it's actually a red wine bottle that's on the front of the train. 855 00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:56,520 Do you mean the whole front of the train IS a red wine bottle? 856 00:46:56,560 --> 00:46:57,680 Yes. Yeah. 857 00:46:57,720 --> 00:46:59,640 And there is a reason for that. 858 00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:03,280 On the 19th of July, 1843, 859 00:47:03,320 --> 00:47:05,440 Brunel conducted the train, 860 00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:08,400 with Prince Albert on board, to Bristol. 861 00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:11,720 The purpose of the visit was to float out 862 00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:15,400 the greatest marine technology innovation of the day - 863 00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:17,600 the SS Great Britain. 864 00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:20,240 So why is the wine bottle significant? 865 00:47:20,280 --> 00:47:23,880 So, a red wine bottle was used to launch a ship... 866 00:47:24,560 --> 00:47:26,800 ..in those days. It wasn't champagne. 867 00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:30,440 The real issue in this painting, though, 868 00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:34,600 is that he has put the SS Great Britain ship in 869 00:47:34,640 --> 00:47:37,160 and it is beneath some waving people. 870 00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:38,880 If you look on the river, 871 00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:43,320 you will see a ghost ship with its prow to the left. 872 00:47:43,360 --> 00:47:45,680 There are six ghostly masts 873 00:47:45,720 --> 00:47:48,720 and the people who wave and draw you into it 874 00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:52,040 we're actually those people at the floating out ceremony. 875 00:47:52,080 --> 00:47:55,720 So, in your interpretation, this is a sort of ghost indication 876 00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:58,240 of the future destination of the train, 877 00:47:58,280 --> 00:48:00,160 which is to the launch of a ship? 878 00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:03,040 Correct. And it's sort of there, floating. 879 00:48:03,080 --> 00:48:05,760 Cos I'd always thought that those figures dancing 880 00:48:05,800 --> 00:48:08,440 somehow might represent the muses or... 881 00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:12,240 It's almost as if Turner's saying, all of that mythology of the past, 882 00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:14,760 that's really fading and fading and fading away 883 00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:16,640 cos the new mythological beast, 884 00:48:16,680 --> 00:48:20,360 the great sort of minotaur of now, is the steam train. 885 00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:23,080 So it's a bit of a different interpretation. 886 00:48:23,120 --> 00:48:25,880 The steam train has been trumped by the SS Great Britain. 887 00:48:25,920 --> 00:48:27,680 Well, I mean, I think... 888 00:48:27,720 --> 00:48:30,440 You know, I personally think the train's enough. 889 00:48:31,280 --> 00:48:35,120 But...you know, I mean, you know, it's interesting. 890 00:48:35,160 --> 00:48:38,200 It's the sort of theory that can't be denied 891 00:48:38,240 --> 00:48:41,280 because what you're seeing, or claiming to see, 892 00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:44,640 is, you know, a persuasive intellectual pattern. 893 00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:48,240 Whether it's REALLY there, we'd have to get Turner 894 00:48:48,280 --> 00:48:51,320 out from the grave and say, "Is he right?" 895 00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:55,040 And whether he'd tell us the truth anyway, how do we know? 896 00:48:55,080 --> 00:48:58,520 I do feel the idea that the painting is a homage to Brunel... 897 00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:01,320 ..I find that entirely persuasive. 898 00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:04,720 Whether it's a red wine bottle, whether there is a ghost ship, 899 00:49:04,760 --> 00:49:06,840 I'm not...you know, I can't say I'm sure. 900 00:49:06,880 --> 00:49:08,720 I can't say. "Yes, I agree. I see it. 901 00:49:08,760 --> 00:49:10,600 I can understand the meaning." 902 00:49:10,640 --> 00:49:13,040 But you've clearly done your research. 903 00:49:19,520 --> 00:49:21,520 (TRAIN WHISTLE TOOTS) 904 00:49:24,200 --> 00:49:26,680 Of course, Turner was travelling around Britain 905 00:49:26,720 --> 00:49:29,920 and his journeys were absolutely transformed 906 00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:32,920 by the arrival of the trains and the railways, 907 00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:36,120 and that enabled him to travel to different parts of the country 908 00:49:36,160 --> 00:49:38,960 in ways that he hadn't done before. 909 00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:41,760 Turner was born in the late 18th century, 910 00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:45,640 when the only modes of transport would have been horse and horseback. 911 00:49:45,680 --> 00:49:49,280 The Firefly so brilliantly depicted in Turner's painting 912 00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:51,600 would have been absolutely revolutionary. 913 00:49:51,640 --> 00:49:54,280 The iron horse had replaced the horse, 914 00:49:54,320 --> 00:49:56,800 and the Iron horse was the Firefly locomotive, 915 00:49:56,840 --> 00:50:00,040 capable of reaching these extraordinary speeds 916 00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:02,960 and in fact, shrinking the entire country 917 00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:06,440 to what he would have grown up with as a child and as a young man. 918 00:50:07,920 --> 00:50:09,920 (STEAM ENGINE HISSES) 919 00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:13,000 (WHISTLE TOOTS) 920 00:50:15,760 --> 00:50:17,760 (STEAM HISSES) 921 00:50:18,960 --> 00:50:22,480 Well, Rob, thanks for joining us here on the platform 922 00:50:22,520 --> 00:50:25,600 in front of a fantastic steam engine. 923 00:50:25,640 --> 00:50:27,680 It IS beautiful. Historic steam engine. 924 00:50:27,720 --> 00:50:29,440 No matter how many times I see it, 925 00:50:29,480 --> 00:50:32,560 it always makes me smile when I come past this Firefly loco. 926 00:50:32,600 --> 00:50:36,320 Magnificent. Yeah. I wanted to just run past you 927 00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:40,880 some images that we've found in a painting by Turner 928 00:50:40,920 --> 00:50:43,240 called Rain Steam And Speed. Lovely. 929 00:50:43,280 --> 00:50:47,520 There are some strange images around the front of the train here. 930 00:50:48,680 --> 00:50:52,080 Bright-coloured... People think it's a fire box, 931 00:50:52,120 --> 00:50:54,880 but you can see the fire box is HERE. 932 00:50:54,920 --> 00:50:57,040 That should be the front of the boiler. 933 00:50:57,080 --> 00:51:00,600 Yeah. And something strange hanging off the side of the train here. 934 00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:03,040 This looks like the head of a man. 935 00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:04,560 It's a nose and so on. 936 00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:08,520 And he's looking down at the bridge as if to inspect. 937 00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:12,000 So what's the thinking here? That this could be Brunel himself 938 00:51:12,040 --> 00:51:14,440 coming across, inspecting his handiwork, 939 00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:17,080 inspecting his... his controversial design, 940 00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:19,280 but knowing that he was right? 941 00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:21,400 Yeah. Yeah. 942 00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:23,320 I mean...I love that. 943 00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:25,800 And it is exactly... From what I know about Brunel, 944 00:51:25,840 --> 00:51:28,480 it's the kind of thing that he would probably love to do - 945 00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:31,000 go out inspecting the beauty of his work. 946 00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:35,080 Another image associated with the front of the train. 947 00:51:35,120 --> 00:51:38,040 There are some lines coming down here 948 00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:39,720 and then you follow them up 949 00:51:39,760 --> 00:51:43,920 and it comes to the neck of a bottle and the top of a bottle. 950 00:51:43,960 --> 00:51:46,320 It looks almost like a wine bottle. 951 00:51:46,360 --> 00:51:48,040 OK. Can you see? 952 00:51:48,080 --> 00:51:49,600 Yeah, I can see that now, 953 00:51:49,640 --> 00:51:51,760 with the chimney being the neck of the bottle. 954 00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:54,240 Yeah. On the opening. The chimney of the loco. 955 00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:55,760 Yeah. Right. OK. 956 00:51:55,800 --> 00:51:57,520 What are we suggesting here? 957 00:51:57,560 --> 00:51:59,800 Brunel wasn't an alcoholic as far as I know. 958 00:51:59,840 --> 00:52:05,000 No. We're suggesting that this might be a wine bottle 959 00:52:05,040 --> 00:52:08,280 travelling on... in the direction of Bristol. 960 00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:11,840 Let's try another one. 961 00:52:11,880 --> 00:52:14,240 If you look down the side of the train, 962 00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:18,880 it's arranged rather as if it's a banqueting table. 963 00:52:18,920 --> 00:52:20,680 Can you see that at all? 964 00:52:20,720 --> 00:52:22,720 Looking along that perspective? Yeah. 965 00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:24,960 With dinner plates as wheels along here? 966 00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:26,440 Yeah, yeah. OK. 967 00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:28,720 Yeah? I can see that. Yeah. 968 00:52:28,760 --> 00:52:31,440 A man with sideburns and a bald pate 969 00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:34,840 looking down as if Brunel is having a banquet... 970 00:52:34,880 --> 00:52:37,920 Mm. ..which he did many times. 971 00:52:37,960 --> 00:52:40,840 He used it as his influencing method. 972 00:52:40,880 --> 00:52:42,280 Yeah, I can see... 973 00:52:42,320 --> 00:52:45,000 That's the clearest one you've shown me so far, I think. 974 00:52:45,040 --> 00:52:46,840 I can see that very, very clearly. 975 00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:49,840 Can I say about that as well... Yeah. Please. 976 00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:52,120 Because of the style of the rest of the painting, 977 00:52:52,160 --> 00:52:54,480 and the locomotive and the carriages behind, 978 00:52:54,520 --> 00:52:56,240 there's not that much detail, 979 00:52:56,280 --> 00:52:58,480 but it does strike me 980 00:52:58,520 --> 00:53:01,120 that those wheels - or dinner plates, perhaps - 981 00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:05,000 are quite well defined, which you wouldn't expect in the style of the painting. 982 00:53:05,040 --> 00:53:08,400 So there's something slightly at odds there, I'd say. 983 00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:11,600 It's quite extraordinary because that painting's so well known. 984 00:53:11,640 --> 00:53:14,440 It's, you know, one of Turner's masterpieces. 985 00:53:14,480 --> 00:53:17,360 And to think that thousands - or millions - of people 986 00:53:17,400 --> 00:53:20,200 have looked at that painting and not seen that hidden imagery 987 00:53:20,240 --> 00:53:23,880 is quite extraordinary, especially as it's an homage to Brunel, 988 00:53:23,920 --> 00:53:26,040 that Brunel himself is hidden in that painting. 989 00:53:26,080 --> 00:53:30,280 Isambard Kingdom Brunel was probably one of the most influential 990 00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:35,840 and revolutionary engineers that Britain's ever had. 991 00:53:35,880 --> 00:53:39,640 To think that he himself is hidden in that painting is extraordinary. 992 00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:43,400 He's there in the foreground, conducting that train, 993 00:53:43,440 --> 00:53:45,280 you know, going towards Bristol, 994 00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:48,400 where the SS Great Britain is being launched, you know, 995 00:53:48,440 --> 00:53:50,840 the greatest ship of all time at that time. 996 00:54:10,880 --> 00:54:14,320 It's these dancing people on the banks of the Thames. 997 00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:17,160 Beneath them on the river... 998 00:54:18,000 --> 00:54:20,160 ..there is... 999 00:54:20,200 --> 00:54:24,720 floating, a big boat with six masts. 1000 00:54:25,880 --> 00:54:29,840 It could be. My eyesight is not as good as yours. 1001 00:54:29,880 --> 00:54:31,800 So it could be the SS Great Britain. 1002 00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:36,080 Could he be painting here, the floating out day? 1003 00:54:37,240 --> 00:54:39,520 Is certainly... It's certainly possible. 1004 00:54:39,560 --> 00:54:43,000 Whether or not... One thing we don't know is whether Turner was there. 1005 00:54:43,040 --> 00:54:45,520 It was widely reported in the papers of the time, 1006 00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:47,680 so he would have known about that. 1007 00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:59,240 And the people waving on the banks of the River Thames here... 1008 00:54:59,280 --> 00:55:01,560 if you look directly beneath them, 1009 00:55:01,600 --> 00:55:05,560 you will see what I term a "ghost ship". 1010 00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:07,720 And it's got six masts. 1011 00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:09,960 Can you see it at all? 1012 00:55:10,000 --> 00:55:12,240 I mean... 1013 00:55:12,280 --> 00:55:13,520 yes. 1014 00:55:13,560 --> 00:55:16,800 It's interesting. For me, the challenge is that 1015 00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:19,040 I think of Turner as such a... 1016 00:55:19,080 --> 00:55:22,600 He was a kind of pre-impressionistic painter and a romantic painter. 1017 00:55:22,640 --> 00:55:24,960 And so I think of his work as so gestural 1018 00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:28,520 and so much about a kind of immediacy in his mark-making, 1019 00:55:28,560 --> 00:55:31,920 that, you know, the idea that there's this 1020 00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:34,120 other image in there is a challenge. 1021 00:55:34,160 --> 00:55:38,320 But then when I look at the figures and the way that they're reproduced, 1022 00:55:38,360 --> 00:55:40,200 I mean, I can see a form there 1023 00:55:40,240 --> 00:55:44,040 and, to me, it looks a little bit more like a fish. 1024 00:55:44,080 --> 00:55:47,080 These dancing people on the bank 1025 00:55:47,120 --> 00:55:51,120 and beneath them is a ghost ship with six masts. 1026 00:55:51,160 --> 00:55:53,040 It looks like it is, for me... 1027 00:55:53,080 --> 00:55:55,680 It looks like it is a representation 1028 00:55:55,720 --> 00:56:00,000 of some ships that are, you know, on the river... 1029 00:56:00,040 --> 00:56:01,960 and there's figures above them. 1030 00:56:02,000 --> 00:56:06,040 But I don't... I don't see that as a HIDDEN thing. 1031 00:56:06,080 --> 00:56:08,120 I think it's quite visible. 1032 00:56:08,160 --> 00:56:10,760 Wow. Really? OK. Yeah. 1033 00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:14,240 The idea of having different time frames in one painting, 1034 00:56:14,280 --> 00:56:16,760 I find interesting. 1035 00:56:16,800 --> 00:56:19,920 The boat's there but it's in plain sight. 1036 00:56:19,960 --> 00:56:21,920 You know, he added those kind of details. 1037 00:56:21,960 --> 00:56:23,760 That's what was a bit of his trademark, 1038 00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:28,160 really, to come in and whack a few people into a painting. 1039 00:56:29,160 --> 00:56:32,720 This is, of course, what Turner always said was his speciality, 1040 00:56:32,760 --> 00:56:35,480 being indistinct, making people look, 1041 00:56:35,520 --> 00:56:39,720 inviting people to ask whether stuff is there or perhaps it's not. 1042 00:56:39,760 --> 00:56:41,960 Again, I think this is part of a game 1043 00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:43,720 where nothing is entirely clear 1044 00:56:43,760 --> 00:56:45,680 because of the complexity of the world. 1045 00:56:45,720 --> 00:56:51,200 A group that was long considered to perhaps be...dancing nymphs, 1046 00:56:51,240 --> 00:56:52,720 Nick has now proposed 1047 00:56:52,760 --> 00:56:58,120 that those are actually people waving off the SS Great Britain. 1048 00:56:58,160 --> 00:57:00,840 And, yes, actually, if you look carefully, 1049 00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:03,880 indistinct, there is a ship 1050 00:57:03,920 --> 00:57:07,880 perhaps a little bit like the SS Great Britain. 1051 00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:11,080 And I think the key to all this is "indistinct". 1052 00:57:11,120 --> 00:57:14,240 These aren't images that Turner wants to... 1053 00:57:14,280 --> 00:57:17,800 be projecting forcefully from the paintings. 1054 00:57:17,840 --> 00:57:20,640 They're things that sort of come through the mist... 1055 00:57:20,680 --> 00:57:25,080 the longer you look at them and contemplate them. 1056 00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:29,240 I think it's really important 1057 00:57:29,280 --> 00:57:32,080 we look closely at pictures 1058 00:57:32,120 --> 00:57:34,920 and especially with great artists like Turner, 1059 00:57:34,960 --> 00:57:37,720 we will always find new things if we look. 1060 00:57:43,280 --> 00:57:47,000 Over the last ten years or so, a number of studies have examined 1061 00:57:47,040 --> 00:57:49,080 how long most members of the public 1062 00:57:49,120 --> 00:57:51,960 spend looking at individual paintings in galleries. 1063 00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:53,960 The results are pretty extraordinary. 1064 00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:56,720 What they found is that the average person spends 1065 00:57:56,760 --> 00:58:00,760 25 seconds looking at a given painting. 1066 00:58:00,800 --> 00:58:03,240 Now, that really isn't a lot. If you compare it... 1067 00:58:03,280 --> 00:58:06,200 We dedicate three minutes of our time to a pop song, 1068 00:58:06,240 --> 00:58:09,120 40 minutes to a symphony, two hours to a film, 1069 00:58:09,160 --> 00:58:12,960 two or three weeks to a novel, but only 25 seconds to a painting. 1070 00:58:13,000 --> 00:58:16,280 And that means that we're really not looking at great works of art 1071 00:58:16,320 --> 00:58:17,960 for long enough to absorb them, 1072 00:58:18,000 --> 00:58:20,400 and certainly not looking at them long enough 1073 00:58:20,440 --> 00:58:22,560 to discover new things about them. 1074 00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:25,080 I think if you DO look at paintings more closely 1075 00:58:25,120 --> 00:58:28,880 and you take your time, you can discover extraordinary things. 1076 00:58:28,920 --> 00:58:30,880 There were no galleries in the past. 1077 00:58:30,920 --> 00:58:32,600 If you wanted to see a painting, 1078 00:58:32,640 --> 00:58:34,640 you would have to go to someone's house 1079 00:58:34,680 --> 00:58:37,360 and you would go and inspect the paintings 1080 00:58:37,400 --> 00:58:39,640 and you would spend time doing that. 1081 00:58:39,680 --> 00:58:42,960 You wouldn't look at them for 60 seconds and walk on, 1082 00:58:43,000 --> 00:58:44,520 which is what we do now. 1083 00:58:44,560 --> 00:58:48,800 I also think people aren't confident looking at paintings. 1084 00:58:48,840 --> 00:58:52,240 When we go into a gallery, we're very often looking for guidance. 1085 00:58:52,280 --> 00:58:55,560 And I think it takes a lot of courage 1086 00:58:55,600 --> 00:58:58,560 to actually say what YOU see, 1087 00:58:58,600 --> 00:59:01,680 regardless of what you're being TOLD to see. 1088 00:59:01,720 --> 00:59:04,240 I think it's also important that a broader range 1089 00:59:04,280 --> 00:59:06,800 of perspectives is brought to the history of art. 1090 00:59:06,840 --> 00:59:10,520 It shouldn't just be established art historians and curators looking at works of art, 1091 00:59:10,560 --> 00:59:13,400 but sometimes people from a very different background 1092 00:59:13,440 --> 00:59:17,160 can see things and notice things that other people haven't noticed. 1093 00:59:17,200 --> 00:59:20,600 So I think that what Nick Wilkinson has found is fascinating. 1094 00:59:20,640 --> 00:59:23,360 I think he's clearly looked very deeply 1095 00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:25,560 and very carefully at these paintings. 1096 00:59:25,600 --> 00:59:29,240 And it may well be that some of the things he's discovered are... 1097 00:59:29,280 --> 00:59:31,400 were intended by Turner, 1098 00:59:31,440 --> 00:59:34,520 but it's also possible that none of them were intended by Turner 1099 00:59:34,560 --> 00:59:37,160 and those things have been placed there by Nick 1100 00:59:37,200 --> 00:59:40,560 in his own determination to find those symbols. 1101 00:59:40,600 --> 00:59:44,160 What's brilliant about Nick is he's just come from left of field 1102 00:59:44,200 --> 00:59:48,160 and anyone who comes from left of field, there's a shock 1103 00:59:48,200 --> 00:59:51,760 and you think, "Really? Can this possibly be true? 1104 00:59:51,800 --> 00:59:54,360 Could we have missed all this for sure?" 1105 00:59:54,400 --> 00:59:57,080 I think he is controversial... 1106 00:59:58,200 --> 01:00:00,800 ..and a lot of people won't want to see that. 1107 01:00:00,840 --> 01:00:04,120 Whether you agree or not, it's up to you. 1108 01:00:04,160 --> 01:00:06,800 But at least we can have a nice debate about it. 1109 01:00:11,960 --> 01:00:16,000 In 1822, Turner painted The Battle Of Trafalgar 1110 01:00:16,040 --> 01:00:18,960 celebrating Admiral Lord Nelson's triumph 1111 01:00:19,000 --> 01:00:21,800 over Napoleon's warships in 1805. 1112 01:00:22,800 --> 01:00:25,640 The painting shows Nelson's ship the Victory 1113 01:00:25,680 --> 01:00:30,200 sending out a signal flag saying "every man will do his duty". 1114 01:00:31,480 --> 01:00:35,240 But it also contains symbols relating to Nelson himself, 1115 01:00:35,280 --> 01:00:37,200 who died in the battle. 1116 01:00:37,240 --> 01:00:40,200 One of the paintings that Nick has really focused on 1117 01:00:40,240 --> 01:00:43,440 that I DO find really intriguing, 1118 01:00:43,480 --> 01:00:46,360 is Turner's painting of The Battle Of Trafalgar, 1119 01:00:46,400 --> 01:00:47,840 cos that has always been 1120 01:00:47,880 --> 01:00:50,800 just a weird painting in Turner's repertoire. 1121 01:00:50,840 --> 01:00:53,000 It's an odd painting, full stop. 1122 01:00:54,120 --> 01:00:56,680 The Battle Of Trafalgar is a very strange painting. 1123 01:00:56,720 --> 01:00:59,240 It's not really a very Turnerian picture 1124 01:00:59,280 --> 01:01:02,720 because although it's magnificent and highly accomplished, 1125 01:01:02,760 --> 01:01:05,800 and full of extraordinary detail, it's quite static. 1126 01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:08,440 And of course, like so many of Turner's pictures, 1127 01:01:08,480 --> 01:01:10,840 it is filled with symbols - 1128 01:01:10,880 --> 01:01:12,960 a flag spelling out the word "duty" 1129 01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:15,920 and Nelson's motto hidden beneath the water. 1130 01:01:24,200 --> 01:01:27,000 It's a strange, bizarre painting, 1131 01:01:27,040 --> 01:01:32,560 and I've never really understood why it was static, 1132 01:01:32,600 --> 01:01:35,040 why the sails were so Baroque. 1133 01:01:35,080 --> 01:01:36,560 All sorts of things. 1134 01:01:37,400 --> 01:01:40,760 And in a way, Nick's findings have really helped. 1135 01:01:42,600 --> 01:01:45,640 This is Turner's only royal commission. 1136 01:01:45,680 --> 01:01:48,160 Commissioned by George IV. 1137 01:01:48,200 --> 01:01:51,480 And it's got a low perspective 1138 01:01:51,520 --> 01:01:55,640 with Victory centre stage, looming large. 1139 01:01:55,680 --> 01:01:59,960 In the foreground, you've got a scene of the chaos of battle 1140 01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:03,080 and death - drowning sailors. 1141 01:02:03,120 --> 01:02:06,360 It's already loaded with imagery. 1142 01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:11,680 Does the falling mast indicate the death of Nelson? 1143 01:02:12,960 --> 01:02:15,640 His signal flag is still flying there. 1144 01:02:15,680 --> 01:02:18,280 "England expects every man to do its duty." 1145 01:02:18,320 --> 01:02:21,240 So he's really hammering home the patriotic. 1146 01:02:28,400 --> 01:02:31,200 The Wilkinsons think that there are many more images 1147 01:02:31,240 --> 01:02:33,640 than have been spotted so far... 1148 01:02:33,680 --> 01:02:38,680 and also ones that tell a bigger story about Nelson himself. 1149 01:02:38,720 --> 01:02:41,040 I want to go through some hidden images 1150 01:02:41,080 --> 01:02:43,480 and just get your reaction to that, really. 1151 01:02:43,520 --> 01:02:46,160 There is a dark falling sail. 1152 01:02:47,240 --> 01:02:51,640 That sail has the form of a death mask. 1153 01:02:51,680 --> 01:02:54,800 Could well represent the death mask of Nelson. 1154 01:02:55,560 --> 01:03:00,360 There's a rather strange triangular bicorne hat. 1155 01:03:01,640 --> 01:03:06,840 And then, finally, there is a skull wearing a coronet 1156 01:03:06,880 --> 01:03:10,160 of the kind that you find in the Order Of The Bath. 1157 01:03:10,880 --> 01:03:14,000 It's a sort of cone-shaped coronet. 1158 01:03:14,040 --> 01:03:19,440 What we suggest is that these are all tokens of Nelson's death. 1159 01:03:19,480 --> 01:03:23,040 I think if the falling foremast is often thought 1160 01:03:23,080 --> 01:03:26,560 to represent Nelson himself falling to the deck, 1161 01:03:26,600 --> 01:03:28,840 then there's a degree of sense 1162 01:03:28,880 --> 01:03:34,040 that those elements would be further down from the mast. 1163 01:03:34,080 --> 01:03:36,560 I can certainly see the bicorne hat. 1164 01:03:36,600 --> 01:03:38,160 I hadn't noticed that at all. 1165 01:03:38,200 --> 01:03:39,960 Certainly there's a connection 1166 01:03:40,000 --> 01:03:43,000 between the traditional interpretation of the painting 1167 01:03:43,040 --> 01:03:45,400 and what appear to be some hidden forms. 1168 01:03:47,000 --> 01:03:48,720 Nelson was a celebrity, 1169 01:03:48,760 --> 01:03:50,800 his love life in the public eye. 1170 01:03:50,840 --> 01:03:54,040 Famously, he had a mistress, Emma Hamilton, 1171 01:03:54,080 --> 01:03:56,200 while still married. 1172 01:03:56,240 --> 01:03:58,520 If you look at the correspondence... 1173 01:03:59,440 --> 01:04:01,880 ..between Nelson and Emma Hamilton, 1174 01:04:02,720 --> 01:04:05,240 they referred to his wife, 1175 01:04:05,280 --> 01:04:08,880 Frances Nisbet, as a..."Tom Tit". 1176 01:04:09,680 --> 01:04:11,480 Right. Right? 1177 01:04:11,520 --> 01:04:14,200 If you look at the prow of the Victory... 1178 01:04:15,320 --> 01:04:19,160 ..and the way that sail's... 1179 01:04:19,200 --> 01:04:21,840 very neatly curved round... 1180 01:04:21,880 --> 01:04:25,040 Oh, yes. There's an eye and there's a beak. 1181 01:04:25,080 --> 01:04:26,400 Yep. 1182 01:04:26,440 --> 01:04:28,280 A bird, a tom tit. 1183 01:04:28,320 --> 01:04:31,640 They called her a tom tit because she had rheumatism. 1184 01:04:31,680 --> 01:04:33,880 She moved around erratically. 1185 01:04:33,920 --> 01:04:37,320 That's why they did it. It was rather harsh and unkind. 1186 01:04:37,360 --> 01:04:39,440 How do you feel about that? 1187 01:04:39,480 --> 01:04:41,480 Well, it's a lot to take in. 1188 01:04:42,280 --> 01:04:44,720 In what's a familiar... 1189 01:04:44,760 --> 01:04:46,400 familiar painting, 1190 01:04:46,440 --> 01:04:51,000 why insert these additional meanings? 1191 01:04:51,040 --> 01:04:54,640 If you look - and it's best to see it from a distance - 1192 01:04:55,360 --> 01:05:01,320 you see the sea form forms the bosom of a lady. 1193 01:05:01,360 --> 01:05:04,440 And then there is a face 1194 01:05:04,480 --> 01:05:06,360 looking out at you 1195 01:05:06,400 --> 01:05:09,440 with a particularly prominent eye... 1196 01:05:10,960 --> 01:05:13,080 ..and her chin here. 1197 01:05:13,120 --> 01:05:16,240 And she's got a white sheet behind her. 1198 01:05:17,320 --> 01:05:20,880 This, we suggest, is Emma Hamilton. 1199 01:05:20,920 --> 01:05:22,920 Ah. OK? 1200 01:05:34,720 --> 01:05:37,000 HMS Victory, 1201 01:05:37,040 --> 01:05:39,360 which is behind us here now. It is. 1202 01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:41,480 Pristine condition. 1203 01:05:44,640 --> 01:05:47,600 But I'm gonna draw you to the foreground here. 1204 01:05:49,040 --> 01:05:51,320 Floating in the sea here, 1205 01:05:52,040 --> 01:05:55,520 supine in the sea, looking upwards... 1206 01:05:55,560 --> 01:05:57,600 in death, 1207 01:05:57,640 --> 01:06:00,600 we propose, is the head of Nelson. 1208 01:06:00,640 --> 01:06:03,680 Oh, yes, I've got it now. Yes. It's there, isn't it? 1209 01:06:03,720 --> 01:06:06,760 I can see his nose quite clearly and grey features. 1210 01:06:06,800 --> 01:06:09,520 Very appropriate for somebody who's dead, I suppose. 1211 01:06:09,560 --> 01:06:11,560 Isn't that incredible? Yeah. 1212 01:06:11,600 --> 01:06:14,320 That your relative, Turner, 1213 01:06:14,360 --> 01:06:16,880 has painted the dead Nelson 1214 01:06:16,920 --> 01:06:21,800 supporting the British nation after his death at the battle? 1215 01:06:21,840 --> 01:06:23,840 Yes, it's remarkable. 1216 01:06:23,880 --> 01:06:26,400 I'm assuming he intended to do that 1217 01:06:26,440 --> 01:06:29,440 and it's not an optical illusion, basically. 1218 01:06:30,760 --> 01:06:33,840 Dr Wilkinson thinks the figure of Nelson in the sea 1219 01:06:33,880 --> 01:06:36,080 may refer to Nelson's funeral, 1220 01:06:36,120 --> 01:06:39,080 where his coffin was placed in a model of the Victory. 1221 01:06:40,960 --> 01:06:43,000 I don't see that there. 1222 01:06:43,040 --> 01:06:45,880 It's not convincing to me at all. 1223 01:06:45,920 --> 01:06:49,400 I understand the imagery in the painting, 1224 01:06:49,440 --> 01:06:51,640 but then I don't buy that particularly, 1225 01:06:51,680 --> 01:06:54,520 because I think it's too disruptive 1226 01:06:54,560 --> 01:06:57,280 of the coherence of the original image. 1227 01:06:57,320 --> 01:07:03,240 So I don't see why he would then, you know, over-egg it a bit. 1228 01:07:04,280 --> 01:07:09,040 You told me there were death masks and yes, I can see them. 1229 01:07:09,080 --> 01:07:12,680 In the context of what this painting was trying to achieve 1230 01:07:12,720 --> 01:07:15,920 by somehow embodying the life of Nelson, 1231 01:07:15,960 --> 01:07:18,800 I'm prepared to buy it. 1232 01:07:18,840 --> 01:07:21,400 There is already, in the sort of academic field, 1233 01:07:21,440 --> 01:07:25,640 some sort of understanding that there are hidden messages. 1234 01:07:25,680 --> 01:07:28,680 But, yeah, it was only when I looked through YOUR eyes 1235 01:07:28,720 --> 01:07:33,200 I saw this very strange composition at the bottom. 1236 01:07:34,000 --> 01:07:37,400 You know, you do see a face lying in state, 1237 01:07:37,440 --> 01:07:39,960 and I had never considered that. 1238 01:07:42,200 --> 01:07:46,800 It's here. His hair is sort of floating off. 1239 01:07:46,840 --> 01:07:49,200 Is this his mouth? That's his mouth. Yeah. 1240 01:07:49,240 --> 01:07:52,880 I think it's a bit of caricature. I don't know if that's a face. 1241 01:07:52,920 --> 01:07:55,520 But don't you think you could take any painting 1242 01:07:55,560 --> 01:07:57,400 and zoom in on it and find faces? 1243 01:07:57,440 --> 01:07:59,320 I mean, I used to do this as a child. 1244 01:07:59,360 --> 01:08:01,680 We had very... I lived in a 400-year-old cottage 1245 01:08:01,720 --> 01:08:04,760 and it had very bumpy walls and was very badly painted. 1246 01:08:04,800 --> 01:08:09,200 I remember I used to have to count 50 faces before I fell asleep. 1247 01:08:11,840 --> 01:08:14,720 The tendency to perceive images or objects 1248 01:08:14,760 --> 01:08:18,360 where they don't exist is known as pareidolia. 1249 01:08:20,880 --> 01:08:22,440 Pareidolia is a strange name, 1250 01:08:22,480 --> 01:08:25,240 but it actually describes something we all do every day. 1251 01:08:25,280 --> 01:08:28,800 It describes the way we see images in things. 1252 01:08:28,840 --> 01:08:30,720 So every time you look up to the clouds 1253 01:08:30,760 --> 01:08:33,840 and you see a face in the clouds, or you see a face in your coffee, 1254 01:08:33,880 --> 01:08:35,440 that is a pareidolia. 1255 01:08:35,480 --> 01:08:38,880 Probably the best known example of pareidolia is the Man in the Moon. 1256 01:08:38,920 --> 01:08:42,200 We look at the moon and we think that we see, 1257 01:08:42,240 --> 01:08:46,000 in the distant craters, a human face. 1258 01:08:46,040 --> 01:08:51,280 My viewing experience of something will be informed by what I know. 1259 01:08:51,320 --> 01:08:54,920 Your viewing experience of something will be informed by what YOU know. 1260 01:08:54,960 --> 01:08:57,400 Many people think that the famous cave paintings 1261 01:08:57,440 --> 01:08:59,240 that you find in the Upper Paleolithic 1262 01:08:59,280 --> 01:09:01,520 are also themselves pareidolia, 1263 01:09:01,560 --> 01:09:03,720 and that the artists that made those images 1264 01:09:03,760 --> 01:09:06,040 weren't simply putting images onto the cave walls 1265 01:09:06,080 --> 01:09:07,880 but were seeing images 1266 01:09:07,920 --> 01:09:10,240 in the shapes and the shadows of the cave walls. 1267 01:09:10,920 --> 01:09:14,360 Renaissance artists exploited pareidolic effects. 1268 01:09:14,400 --> 01:09:18,200 Correggio shows a nymph embraced by a cloudy Jupiter. 1269 01:09:20,040 --> 01:09:23,400 Mantegna's sky features heavenly faces. 1270 01:09:24,480 --> 01:09:27,840 Accidental things can occur in the making of works of art, 1271 01:09:27,880 --> 01:09:29,680 which artists then embrace. 1272 01:09:29,720 --> 01:09:31,880 It could be that it began as an accident, 1273 01:09:31,920 --> 01:09:34,000 and it was then something that he tweaked 1274 01:09:34,040 --> 01:09:37,120 in order to make it appear more intentional. 1275 01:09:37,160 --> 01:09:42,360 I think it's highly likely that that was part of his process 1276 01:09:42,400 --> 01:09:44,400 of producing these hidden images, 1277 01:09:44,440 --> 01:09:48,480 and we know that that is an established form for producing art, 1278 01:09:48,520 --> 01:09:50,520 which dates back to... 1279 01:09:50,560 --> 01:09:53,800 The earliest account we have is in 11th-century China. 1280 01:09:56,920 --> 01:10:00,000 In Turner's day, he and other landscape painters 1281 01:10:00,040 --> 01:10:02,960 were taught using an inkblot technique... 1282 01:10:03,000 --> 01:10:07,240 which encouraged them to find imaginary scenes in wet paint. 1283 01:10:08,040 --> 01:10:10,840 OK, so in terms of watercolour... 1284 01:10:11,560 --> 01:10:15,280 ..and what you might call the inkblot technique, 1285 01:10:15,320 --> 01:10:16,880 Turner would have used... 1286 01:10:16,920 --> 01:10:19,600 Obviously, he was a great master of watercolour. 1287 01:10:19,640 --> 01:10:22,400 In his later years, when he was very free 1288 01:10:22,440 --> 01:10:26,800 and loose with his application - especially with watercolour... 1289 01:10:28,640 --> 01:10:32,640 it would...he would flood it on with a brush like this. 1290 01:10:32,680 --> 01:10:34,600 So it's often thought 1291 01:10:34,640 --> 01:10:37,360 that he might simply start something like this 1292 01:10:37,400 --> 01:10:40,000 and then develop a watercolour 1293 01:10:40,040 --> 01:10:44,840 from the suggestive properties of the blotch. 1294 01:10:46,080 --> 01:10:48,840 And, of course, this was something that... 1295 01:10:48,880 --> 01:10:50,600 uh... 1296 01:10:50,640 --> 01:10:53,120 is mentioned... 1297 01:10:53,160 --> 01:10:58,320 Leonardo da Vinci mentions this as a way of generating imagery 1298 01:10:58,360 --> 01:11:01,920 and as a way of understanding the natural world. 1299 01:11:01,960 --> 01:11:07,840 So he would advise his pupils to... to look at... 1300 01:11:09,680 --> 01:11:12,120 ..stains on walls... 1301 01:11:12,160 --> 01:11:14,920 as a way of emulating 1302 01:11:14,960 --> 01:11:16,440 the kind of 1303 01:11:16,480 --> 01:11:19,920 shapes and forms that that happened in nature. 1304 01:11:23,960 --> 01:11:28,120 So we might sort of suddenly think, "OK, well, there's a bit of, 1305 01:11:28,160 --> 01:11:31,840 perhaps, a horizon line... developing here." 1306 01:11:32,800 --> 01:11:35,440 And this is entirely speculative what I'm doing. 1307 01:11:35,480 --> 01:11:38,160 I'm just following my nose a bit 1308 01:11:38,200 --> 01:11:41,680 and reacting to what I see in front of me. 1309 01:11:42,560 --> 01:11:49,000 What these blots and blotches might suggest. 1310 01:11:49,040 --> 01:11:51,920 What Turner is such a master at 1311 01:11:51,960 --> 01:11:54,880 is being responsive to his medium... 1312 01:11:55,760 --> 01:11:59,400 ..and working within the limits of it, 1313 01:11:59,440 --> 01:12:01,320 but pushing the limits as well. 1314 01:12:08,240 --> 01:12:11,120 He did everything in spades that they pretend 1315 01:12:11,160 --> 01:12:14,480 the artists on the Turner Prize shortlist are doing every year. 1316 01:12:14,520 --> 01:12:16,760 But that kind of idea of an artist as someone 1317 01:12:16,800 --> 01:12:19,840 pushing the boundaries, somebody making you see the world afresh, 1318 01:12:19,880 --> 01:12:22,560 it didn't exist in Victorian England. 1319 01:12:22,600 --> 01:12:25,720 In Victorian England, the job of the artist was to paint myself, 1320 01:12:25,760 --> 01:12:28,720 my wife, my horse, my dog, my country estate. 1321 01:12:28,760 --> 01:12:31,080 Maybe paint a bit of mythology. 1322 01:12:31,120 --> 01:12:34,040 The idea that you'd paint the meaning of the universe - 1323 01:12:34,080 --> 01:12:35,960 because that's Turner's subject, 1324 01:12:36,000 --> 01:12:39,520 he is actually taking on the meaning of the universe. 1325 01:12:39,560 --> 01:12:42,240 He's pushing towards the point that Einstein reaches 1326 01:12:42,280 --> 01:12:47,000 considerably later - namely the idea that somehow, in light, 1327 01:12:47,040 --> 01:12:48,800 in the perception of light, 1328 01:12:48,840 --> 01:12:51,920 the secrets of the universe lie encoded. 1329 01:12:55,280 --> 01:12:59,720 Artists have long tried to give multiple dimensions to their work. 1330 01:13:00,960 --> 01:13:04,000 17th-century painters made landscapes 1331 01:13:04,040 --> 01:13:06,200 that transformed into people. 1332 01:13:10,000 --> 01:13:14,200 And perhaps some of Turner's landscapes conceal people, too. 1333 01:13:14,240 --> 01:13:17,560 Does his painting of St Catherine's Hill in Guildford 1334 01:13:17,600 --> 01:13:20,160 hide a head and shoulders of the saint? 1335 01:13:20,200 --> 01:13:22,240 If you track through the history of art, 1336 01:13:22,280 --> 01:13:25,760 what you find is that this idea of hidden images 1337 01:13:25,800 --> 01:13:27,880 is a fundamental part of the history of art. 1338 01:13:27,920 --> 01:13:32,400 Whether it's these distorted skulls in the backgrounds of Renaissance vanitas paintings, 1339 01:13:32,440 --> 01:13:36,280 whether it's the double images of Salvador Dali and the surrealists, 1340 01:13:36,320 --> 01:13:37,920 the idea of disguising 1341 01:13:37,960 --> 01:13:41,120 and putting images secretly into other images 1342 01:13:41,160 --> 01:13:43,800 is a fundamental technique in the history of art. 1343 01:13:43,840 --> 01:13:46,200 It's a very fascinating territory. 1344 01:13:46,240 --> 01:13:49,280 The whole beauty of them is they're hidden. 1345 01:13:50,280 --> 01:13:53,400 Probably one of the best-known examples 1346 01:13:53,440 --> 01:13:55,800 in a British public collection 1347 01:13:55,840 --> 01:13:58,280 is in Holbein's Painting The Ambassadors, 1348 01:13:58,320 --> 01:14:00,440 which is in the National Gallery in London. 1349 01:14:00,480 --> 01:14:03,680 This is a full-length, full-sized portrait 1350 01:14:03,720 --> 01:14:07,440 of two French ambassadors to the Court of Henry VIII. 1351 01:14:07,480 --> 01:14:10,800 The Ambassadors is famous for its hidden symbolism. 1352 01:14:10,840 --> 01:14:13,800 And it's famous above all for this anamorphic skull, 1353 01:14:13,840 --> 01:14:15,680 this...stretched skull, 1354 01:14:15,720 --> 01:14:18,000 that when you look at the painting straight on, 1355 01:14:18,040 --> 01:14:21,080 you just think, "What's that mark at the bottom of the canvas?" 1356 01:14:21,120 --> 01:14:22,920 But when you actually go round to the side 1357 01:14:22,960 --> 01:14:24,640 and you look at the painting down, 1358 01:14:24,680 --> 01:14:26,880 or when you go to the other side and look at it up, 1359 01:14:26,920 --> 01:14:28,760 that whole "smear", if you like, 1360 01:14:28,800 --> 01:14:31,320 condenses into a perfect painting of a skull. 1361 01:14:33,240 --> 01:14:34,880 So that's a classic example 1362 01:14:34,920 --> 01:14:38,200 of an artist hiding symbols in plain sight. 1363 01:14:41,400 --> 01:14:45,280 The idea of hiding imagery in paintings 1364 01:14:45,320 --> 01:14:47,600 was very well established. 1365 01:14:47,640 --> 01:14:51,520 But as a young man, Turner lived in Maiden Lane. 1366 01:14:51,560 --> 01:14:54,760 The area was full of theatres and print shops 1367 01:14:54,800 --> 01:14:58,600 and places where he would have seen satirical images, 1368 01:14:58,640 --> 01:15:02,280 often had concealed anthropomorphic images within them. 1369 01:15:02,320 --> 01:15:06,360 So all of this is in Turner's kind of visual vocabulary 1370 01:15:06,400 --> 01:15:08,680 from a very early stage. 1371 01:15:08,720 --> 01:15:12,240 I think it's entirely plausible that he would have continued 1372 01:15:12,280 --> 01:15:15,720 to deploy those techniques throughout his career. 1373 01:15:15,760 --> 01:15:18,440 And the other thing, I think, that anybody knows 1374 01:15:18,480 --> 01:15:21,920 from having discovered a hidden or anthropomorphic image 1375 01:15:21,960 --> 01:15:24,360 is that when we DO notice these things, 1376 01:15:24,400 --> 01:15:26,000 they have a very profound 1377 01:15:26,040 --> 01:15:28,480 and memorable effect on our consciousness. 1378 01:15:28,520 --> 01:15:31,600 I can see why he would have used this technique 1379 01:15:31,640 --> 01:15:33,760 to make a political statement. 1380 01:15:39,840 --> 01:15:42,600 And Turner DID make political statements. 1381 01:15:43,440 --> 01:15:45,680 In his painting entitled Slave Ship, 1382 01:15:45,720 --> 01:15:49,880 Slavers Throwing Overboard The Dead And Dying - Typhon Coming On... 1383 01:15:51,000 --> 01:15:53,800 ..he shows the practice of offloading human cargo 1384 01:15:53,840 --> 01:15:55,560 as a storm approaches. 1385 01:15:56,640 --> 01:15:59,120 You look at it and you go into the painting. 1386 01:15:59,160 --> 01:16:02,000 It doesn't come out to you. You have to go into it to find it. 1387 01:16:02,040 --> 01:16:04,480 And that's what I love about it as a work of art. 1388 01:16:04,520 --> 01:16:07,160 Now, the story it tells is quite dreadful. 1389 01:16:07,200 --> 01:16:10,800 These were people methodically thrown overboard over three days. 1390 01:16:11,400 --> 01:16:15,560 142 lives. Men, women and children were thrown into the sea. 1391 01:16:15,600 --> 01:16:18,320 Apparently, one of them actually made it back... 1392 01:16:18,360 --> 01:16:19,840 such was his will to live. 1393 01:16:24,960 --> 01:16:28,840 The painting immortalised the 1781 Zong Massacre. 1394 01:16:29,960 --> 01:16:32,080 The ship was sailing to Jamaica. 1395 01:16:32,760 --> 01:16:36,840 Beneath the deck, over 400 suffocating human beings 1396 01:16:36,880 --> 01:16:40,360 were being held captive in horrific conditions. 1397 01:16:47,040 --> 01:16:50,400 These ships were not designed to carry so many people 1398 01:16:50,440 --> 01:16:55,360 who would have been having less than a coffin space to circulate in. 1399 01:16:56,080 --> 01:16:58,480 Some figures go up to 470, 1400 01:16:58,520 --> 01:17:01,560 and maybe we won't ever really fully know, 1401 01:17:01,600 --> 01:17:04,200 simply because the records are incomplete. 1402 01:17:07,720 --> 01:17:09,840 There was a so-called slave ship. 1403 01:17:09,880 --> 01:17:13,240 They set out en route to Jamaica, 1404 01:17:13,280 --> 01:17:16,640 but due to miscalculations, 1405 01:17:16,680 --> 01:17:18,880 they passed Jamaica 1406 01:17:18,920 --> 01:17:23,680 and they began to run out of food, water. 1407 01:17:23,720 --> 01:17:26,520 The ship captain - somebody called Luke Collingwood - 1408 01:17:27,400 --> 01:17:30,960 orders the crew to throw overboard... 1409 01:17:31,000 --> 01:17:33,240 the surplus Africans. 1410 01:17:36,720 --> 01:17:40,520 Just even talking about it is really difficult. 1411 01:17:44,760 --> 01:17:48,920 For many of those who were trying to stop slavery, 1412 01:17:48,960 --> 01:17:52,680 including abolitionists - and African abolitionists - 1413 01:17:52,720 --> 01:17:58,600 the way in which they were able to impact social consciousness 1414 01:17:58,640 --> 01:18:02,720 and to change and transform hearts and minds 1415 01:18:02,760 --> 01:18:05,560 was through works of art 1416 01:18:05,600 --> 01:18:09,240 that we don't often see as having a political value. 1417 01:18:09,280 --> 01:18:12,920 But they would have had such a political impact. 1418 01:18:16,560 --> 01:18:19,840 But here's the thing. I think that this painting is being seen 1419 01:18:19,880 --> 01:18:22,800 as Turner having a bit of guilt. 1420 01:18:22,840 --> 01:18:27,480 He'd invested in a share in a sugar plantation in Jamaica. 1421 01:18:28,520 --> 01:18:33,520 So he was part of the transatlantic slave trade movement, 1422 01:18:33,560 --> 01:18:37,200 but at the same time was able to kind of see the horror 1423 01:18:37,240 --> 01:18:40,920 and the barbaric nature of this practice. 1424 01:18:40,960 --> 01:18:43,720 So, in a way, it's like his painting speaks 1425 01:18:43,760 --> 01:18:46,320 to his kind of personal guilt, 1426 01:18:46,360 --> 01:18:51,000 but also speaks to the activism, or the activist, in him as well. 1427 01:18:51,040 --> 01:18:53,880 With this painting, Turner was compelling people 1428 01:18:53,920 --> 01:18:56,880 to campaign with the abolitionists. 1429 01:18:59,400 --> 01:19:03,960 Dr Wilkinson has identified new images concealed in the work 1430 01:19:04,000 --> 01:19:08,360 that speak further to Turner's abhorrence of slavery 1431 01:19:08,400 --> 01:19:10,880 and his own sense of personal guilt. 1432 01:19:12,280 --> 01:19:18,120 The first image that you find in here is a large, quite diffuse one. 1433 01:19:18,160 --> 01:19:20,480 What you see on the left side, 1434 01:19:20,520 --> 01:19:24,880 the storm coming in to overtake the slave traders, 1435 01:19:24,920 --> 01:19:27,800 is an image of Zeus himself... 1436 01:19:28,480 --> 01:19:31,680 ..using his trademark thunderbolt. 1437 01:19:32,720 --> 01:19:34,640 Can you see that image? 1438 01:19:35,440 --> 01:19:37,280 I can. 1439 01:19:37,320 --> 01:19:44,120 What this painting conveys is how Turner is totally going against 1440 01:19:44,160 --> 01:19:47,920 what becomes rationalisations for enslavement. 1441 01:19:48,800 --> 01:19:50,880 That it was legal, 1442 01:19:50,920 --> 01:19:52,920 that somehow it was acceptable. 1443 01:19:53,600 --> 01:19:56,840 And clearly, for Turner to be painting this, 1444 01:19:57,440 --> 01:20:00,120 he's really trying to convey that underbelly... 1445 01:20:00,840 --> 01:20:02,560 ..that is not spoken 1446 01:20:02,600 --> 01:20:07,840 and really flying in the face of all of the rationalisations 1447 01:20:07,880 --> 01:20:10,960 and the justifications that continue to this day. 1448 01:20:11,000 --> 01:20:15,800 And it brings, I think, a whole new sort of level... 1449 01:20:15,840 --> 01:20:19,440 in terms of analysing what's in this painting 1450 01:20:19,480 --> 01:20:23,360 and what messages he was conveying for the times, 1451 01:20:23,400 --> 01:20:25,440 but also timeless messages. 1452 01:20:27,520 --> 01:20:29,920 It looks like we've got a god here 1453 01:20:29,960 --> 01:20:32,840 throwing in thunderbolts at the slave traders. 1454 01:20:33,600 --> 01:20:35,920 What do you think about that? 1455 01:20:35,960 --> 01:20:38,080 You can see there IS something there. 1456 01:20:38,120 --> 01:20:41,040 There's something...big, 1457 01:20:41,080 --> 01:20:44,920 powerful, dramatic, rising out of the sea. 1458 01:20:44,960 --> 01:20:47,160 But they're only there because you told me. 1459 01:20:47,200 --> 01:20:49,880 I know there's something there and I can guess... 1460 01:20:49,920 --> 01:20:51,800 I can see where you're coming from. 1461 01:20:51,840 --> 01:20:55,080 Turner has put some powerful image there, 1462 01:20:55,120 --> 01:20:57,040 some monumental image. 1463 01:20:57,080 --> 01:20:59,640 Whether it's Zeus, I don't fully resolve it. 1464 01:20:59,680 --> 01:21:02,960 But I can see...essentially intense, 1465 01:21:03,000 --> 01:21:07,280 the intent of something overbearing about to descend on the ship. 1466 01:21:08,560 --> 01:21:10,560 But could the figure in the clouds 1467 01:21:10,600 --> 01:21:13,440 also refer to a famous poem about guilt? 1468 01:21:14,360 --> 01:21:17,400 Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime Of The Ancient Mariner. 1469 01:21:18,320 --> 01:21:21,400 It relates how, when a sailor shot an albatross, 1470 01:21:21,440 --> 01:21:23,080 his ship was becalmed... 1471 01:21:23,760 --> 01:21:27,200 ..idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean... 1472 01:21:27,240 --> 01:21:29,240 under a hot and copper sky. 1473 01:21:30,960 --> 01:21:32,720 The crew died of thirst. 1474 01:21:32,760 --> 01:21:35,280 Their souls sucked up into a creature in the sky 1475 01:21:35,320 --> 01:21:37,120 called Life In Death. 1476 01:21:37,960 --> 01:21:42,840 Nick's observations about Turner's use of pareidolia imagery, 1477 01:21:42,880 --> 01:21:47,120 imagery concealed in clouds, or mountains, or sails, 1478 01:21:47,160 --> 01:21:52,080 made me think about The Slave Ship again and look at the clouds. 1479 01:21:52,120 --> 01:21:54,320 And for the first time, 1480 01:21:54,360 --> 01:21:59,240 I could see a figure in the clouds, hovering above the ship. 1481 01:21:59,280 --> 01:22:03,800 And that was consistent with two things that the painting references. 1482 01:22:04,640 --> 01:22:09,000 It's consistent, in my view, that there might be a reference 1483 01:22:09,040 --> 01:22:10,760 to the Ancient Mariner. 1484 01:22:10,800 --> 01:22:12,880 And when I went back 1485 01:22:12,920 --> 01:22:16,560 and read that poem through Nick's lens, 1486 01:22:16,600 --> 01:22:20,240 I indeed could see a lot of imagery in that painting 1487 01:22:20,280 --> 01:22:23,040 that seemed to relate to the poem as well. 1488 01:22:23,080 --> 01:22:24,520 And with good cause, 1489 01:22:24,560 --> 01:22:27,040 because that poem does speak 1490 01:22:27,080 --> 01:22:31,080 to the death of people on board a ship, 1491 01:22:31,120 --> 01:22:33,360 to their souls, rising... 1492 01:22:33,400 --> 01:22:37,560 this figure Life In Death who sucked up souls towards her. 1493 01:22:37,600 --> 01:22:41,040 But the title also talks about Typhon... 1494 01:22:41,920 --> 01:22:45,480 ..who is a mythological monster 1495 01:22:45,520 --> 01:22:48,000 who has a great battle with Zeus. 1496 01:22:49,120 --> 01:22:52,200 He loved those great sort of mythological battles 1497 01:22:52,240 --> 01:22:53,720 between good and evil. 1498 01:22:57,520 --> 01:23:01,560 By 1846, Turner meets Sophia Booth, 1499 01:23:01,600 --> 01:23:03,840 and they take a little cottage in Chelsea. 1500 01:23:03,880 --> 01:23:07,280 This becomes a place that's really Turner's private world, 1501 01:23:07,320 --> 01:23:11,280 and he's known locally as Admiral Booth or Mr Booth, 1502 01:23:11,320 --> 01:23:16,880 so he's adopted HER surname to really hide from the world 1503 01:23:16,920 --> 01:23:19,360 and just be the man he wants to be 1504 01:23:19,400 --> 01:23:21,800 when he's not being The Great Turner. 1505 01:23:24,560 --> 01:23:27,720 Towards the end of his life, when his health started to decline, 1506 01:23:27,760 --> 01:23:30,040 he found this house on the river in Chelsea. 1507 01:23:30,080 --> 01:23:33,240 What he liked about it was it had this secluded terrace 1508 01:23:33,280 --> 01:23:36,960 where he could paint the sky but not be seen by the public. 1509 01:23:37,000 --> 01:23:39,800 By this stage, Turner was an absolute wreck of a man. 1510 01:23:39,840 --> 01:23:42,200 He stank. He was dishevelled. 1511 01:23:42,240 --> 01:23:43,680 He was anonymous. 1512 01:23:43,720 --> 01:23:45,480 People didn't really know who he was. 1513 01:23:45,520 --> 01:23:47,600 His neighbours didn't really know him. 1514 01:23:47,640 --> 01:23:50,000 They thought he was a sea captain or something. 1515 01:23:53,640 --> 01:23:56,280 He took her name because he didn't want to be known 1516 01:23:56,320 --> 01:23:57,880 as Turner, the great painter. 1517 01:23:57,920 --> 01:23:59,560 So he called himself "Puggy" 1518 01:23:59,600 --> 01:24:01,800 cos he's only four foot nothing, as we all know. 1519 01:24:01,840 --> 01:24:04,160 So when he did sit with the guys 1520 01:24:04,200 --> 01:24:07,800 or the dockers or the sailors, he would say, "I'm Puggy." 1521 01:24:07,840 --> 01:24:09,640 He was a very secretive man. 1522 01:24:09,680 --> 01:24:13,000 Turner and Sophia Booth stayed together for the rest of his life. 1523 01:24:13,040 --> 01:24:15,520 It's a relationship that lasts nearly 20 years, 1524 01:24:15,560 --> 01:24:20,560 and he actually dies at their cottage in Chelsea in 1851. 1525 01:24:25,800 --> 01:24:27,800 One of the things I love about Turner 1526 01:24:27,840 --> 01:24:30,440 is actually he donated all of his paintings, 1527 01:24:30,480 --> 01:24:32,840 all of his works, to this nation. 1528 01:24:34,080 --> 01:24:36,840 It's unusual for Turner to have left all his work to the nation, 1529 01:24:36,880 --> 01:24:39,840 but it was a very clever thing for him to have done. 1530 01:24:39,880 --> 01:24:43,480 Part of the reasons why he has endured, really. 1531 01:24:43,520 --> 01:24:47,360 It still remains, I think, the biggest single artist bequest 1532 01:24:47,400 --> 01:24:49,520 to a British institution. 1533 01:24:51,520 --> 01:24:53,720 His legacy is absolutely extraordinary. 1534 01:24:53,760 --> 01:24:58,640 I think he remains the greatest British painter of all time 1535 01:24:58,680 --> 01:25:01,000 and his name is still remembered. 1536 01:25:01,040 --> 01:25:03,480 Think of the Turner Prize, which is still going. 1537 01:25:05,720 --> 01:25:08,880 The Turner Prize began in 1984 1538 01:25:08,920 --> 01:25:12,920 to celebrate the most compelling contemporary visual art. 1539 01:25:12,960 --> 01:25:15,440 It's become associated with a kind of radicalism, 1540 01:25:15,480 --> 01:25:18,520 and Turner himself was associated with a kind of radicalism. 1541 01:25:18,560 --> 01:25:22,560 It's deliberately named after Turner because many people 1542 01:25:22,600 --> 01:25:26,240 consider him to be the first modern British painter. 1543 01:25:28,200 --> 01:25:30,880 Turner invented the idea of the artist 1544 01:25:30,920 --> 01:25:32,440 as someone who challenges, 1545 01:25:32,480 --> 01:25:35,360 you know, if you wanted to be really radical as an artist now, 1546 01:25:35,400 --> 01:25:38,680 you'd be utterly conventional because no-one else is doing that. 1547 01:25:42,240 --> 01:25:44,200 Is there a Turner code? 1548 01:25:44,240 --> 01:25:48,320 Nick is suggesting that some images skip across paintings. 1549 01:25:48,360 --> 01:25:51,560 Bears...geese. 1550 01:25:51,600 --> 01:25:53,520 Is that a code? 1551 01:25:53,560 --> 01:25:58,040 Maybe. If it's a code, it's a slightly indistinct code 1552 01:25:58,080 --> 01:26:02,760 in a way that only Turner could provide an indistinct code. 1553 01:26:02,800 --> 01:26:05,200 I think he's keeping us guessing. 1554 01:26:05,920 --> 01:26:09,200 ERICA: The Turner code signifies an enhanced way 1555 01:26:09,240 --> 01:26:13,160 of looking at and analysing Turner's paintings. 1556 01:26:13,200 --> 01:26:16,640 NICK: First of all, the fairly high intensity recurrence 1557 01:26:16,680 --> 01:26:19,720 of personal emblems - the bear's head 1558 01:26:19,760 --> 01:26:24,520 and a floating head with a large nose, almost caricature like. 1559 01:26:24,560 --> 01:26:27,680 And we find this recurring across paintings. 1560 01:26:31,000 --> 01:26:33,520 Do you think that there could be a Turner code? 1561 01:26:35,000 --> 01:26:36,800 It could be. 1562 01:26:36,840 --> 01:26:40,040 It could be... because he was a genius. 1563 01:26:40,840 --> 01:26:43,200 I'm not denying that there are other narratives 1564 01:26:43,240 --> 01:26:46,400 going on in some of these paintings. You can see that. 1565 01:26:46,440 --> 01:26:48,920 Where you have these images appearing 1566 01:26:48,960 --> 01:26:51,720 and they're enigmatic and fugitive. 1567 01:26:51,760 --> 01:26:53,960 You know, he painted these things for a reason 1568 01:26:54,000 --> 01:26:57,000 and I can see that you are hunting after those reasons. 1569 01:26:57,040 --> 01:27:02,000 Once you realise he's got this ability to paint miniatures, 1570 01:27:02,040 --> 01:27:03,920 you will find about 200 of them. 1571 01:27:03,960 --> 01:27:07,360 The curators have been looking at these pictures 1572 01:27:07,400 --> 01:27:11,280 for a couple of hundred years and haven't actually spotted it. 1573 01:27:11,320 --> 01:27:14,160 Neither have the public. But it's an addition. 1574 01:27:14,200 --> 01:27:18,280 Is not a criticism that people haven't seen it before. 1575 01:27:18,320 --> 01:27:21,120 They haven't had the machinery to see it before. 1576 01:27:21,160 --> 01:27:25,040 It's hard to be sure that Turner would have intended people 1577 01:27:25,080 --> 01:27:28,480 to have seen them, because I think some of them are so vague. 1578 01:27:28,520 --> 01:27:31,120 It's also not impossible that he would have left 1579 01:27:31,160 --> 01:27:33,200 a trail of clues in his work. 1580 01:27:33,240 --> 01:27:36,040 I think, as we begin to look again at these works 1581 01:27:36,080 --> 01:27:39,320 with Nick's images in mind, I'm sure we'll come up with 1582 01:27:39,360 --> 01:27:42,200 some slightly different interpretations. 1583 01:27:42,240 --> 01:27:44,920 Or perhaps there will be a degree of incredulity. 1584 01:27:44,960 --> 01:27:48,120 I don't know. We'll need to see how the things pan out. 1585 01:27:48,160 --> 01:27:52,120 I think, if people are being encouraged to look again, 1586 01:27:52,160 --> 01:27:54,320 look more closely at Turner... 1587 01:27:54,960 --> 01:27:57,880 ..see things that perhaps they haven't been seen before, 1588 01:27:57,920 --> 01:28:00,080 then clearly there will be an interest 1589 01:28:00,120 --> 01:28:02,880 to come and view this great work. 1590 01:28:02,920 --> 01:28:06,160 Some of them I can see, and some of them I can't see. 1591 01:28:06,200 --> 01:28:09,200 I find the idea that Turner would include... 1592 01:28:09,960 --> 01:28:13,040 ..little secret images and symbols... 1593 01:28:13,080 --> 01:28:15,520 in a certain hidden graphic language... 1594 01:28:15,560 --> 01:28:17,880 I don't find that totally surprising at all 1595 01:28:17,920 --> 01:28:20,560 because I think he was a man with secret meanings. 1596 01:28:20,600 --> 01:28:22,680 I think that the way that you're looking 1597 01:28:22,720 --> 01:28:24,600 and thinking about Turner's work, 1598 01:28:24,640 --> 01:28:26,800 whether those images are in there or not, 1599 01:28:26,840 --> 01:28:29,720 is the way that I think we should look at art. 1600 01:28:29,760 --> 01:28:32,400 And I think it's the way artists want us to look at art, 1601 01:28:32,440 --> 01:28:34,440 because I think it's about, you know, 1602 01:28:34,480 --> 01:28:37,120 trying to find the clues and trying to find 1603 01:28:37,160 --> 01:28:39,600 what's in the painting, what's in the image. 1604 01:28:39,640 --> 01:28:42,320 And, of course, you can bring scholarship and knowledge 1605 01:28:42,360 --> 01:28:44,400 and all of these other disciplines to it, 1606 01:28:44,440 --> 01:28:46,640 but you should always return to the painting. 1607 01:28:46,680 --> 01:28:49,040 And if these things are starting to come out, 1608 01:28:49,080 --> 01:28:51,880 I also don't think it's a leap of the imagination 1609 01:28:51,920 --> 01:28:53,520 to imagine that Turner would be 1610 01:28:53,560 --> 01:28:55,640 playing with all these different codes. 1611 01:28:55,680 --> 01:28:57,280 Well, I've made the leap, 1612 01:28:57,320 --> 01:29:00,600 and it's taken 200 years to get there on a lot of this, 1613 01:29:00,640 --> 01:29:02,760 so we'll see how it's received. 1614 01:29:08,040 --> 01:29:10,680 AccessibleCustomerService@sky.uk 132787

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