Tate Shows JMW Turner's Blue ~ Red ~ and Dark Rigi Together

Monday, 22 January 2007 21:46

LONDON, ENGLAND - Tate will bring together for the first time ever three of Turner’s very greatest watercolour paintings, The Blue Rigi, The Dark Rigi and The Red Rigi, as part of a campaign to raise £4.95 million to save The Blue Rigi from going abroad.  A temporary export bar has been placed on The Blue Rigi until 20 March 2007 by the Culture Minister, David Lammy.  The exhibition at Tate Britain will be open from 22 January to 25 March 2007.

Turner’s ground-breaking use of watercolour, which spanned his career, culminated in the early 1840s with a series of transcendent views of Swiss lakes and mountains.  Chief among these are the three views of Mount Rigi as seen from Lake Lucerne.  Each shows the mountain at a different time of day and is characterized by a defining colour or tone (Dark, Blue or Red).

These highly-prized finished watercolours are widely regarded as Turner’s finest works, as well as being arguably among the very finest watercolours ever painted.  The Red Rigi has been in the National Gallery of Melbourne since 1947, but the other two Rigi views (The Blue Rigi and The Dark Rigi) have until this year been in private hands, constituting the best of Turner’s late Swiss subjects still outside museum collections.  The Blue Rigi is in exceptional condition and would be one of the only finished, full-scale late watercolours to enter the Tate Collection.

In an unprecedented move, Tate will pledge £2 million of its own funds towards the Blue Rigi campaign. Applications for funding will be submitted to the National Heritage Memorial Fund and The Art Fund.

Stephen Deuchar, Director, Tate Britain said: “Tate holds the world’s greatest Turner collection and the acquisition of The Blue Rigi would have a significant impact on our ability to reveal the full brilliance of his mature work.  Opportunities to acquire truly fine, finished examples from the late groups of Turner’s Swiss watercolours are nowadays exceptionally rare: this is a chance we dare not miss.  The exhibition will unite these extraordinary finished watercolours with Tate’s collection of Turner’s preparatory material for the Rigi series, including a sequence of stunning watercolour studies and sketchbooks that highlight the many hours of observation and contemplation that lie behind the finished works, and reveal the artist’s complete creative process.” 

The Blue Rigi was Turner's first attempt at recording the moment before dawn when the sun just perceptibly begins to chase away the cool darkness of night.  Using subtly modulated washes of blue, Turner recreates the stillness and wonder of this instant, anticipating by many years the unified tonal approach to image-making of the Aesthetic Movement.

JMW Turner (1775 – 1851) is considered to be one of the greatest painters Britain has ever produced.  The Turner Bequest, left to the nation by the artist following his death in 1851, is the largest and finest collection of his work and comprises hundreds of oils and thousands of watercolours and other works on paper, providing a profound insight into his creative evolution.  The exhibition will be curated by Ian Warrell, Curator at Tate Britain.

A Statement By David Barrie, Director, The Art Fund

The Art Fund is appealing to the public for money to help Tate Britain acquire Turner’s The Blue Rigi.  The watercolour was sold in the summer to a private collector abroad for a record £5.8 million, but its export has been delayed by the government to allow a gallery in this country time to raise the money to buy it.

Tate needs to find a total of £4.9 million (taking account of tax remission), and has allocated a record £2 million of its own funds towards the price.  On 22 January, The Art Fund added £500,000 – one of our largest ever grants – and announced we would run a public appeal with Tate to raise money.

We have until 20 March to raise the remaining £2.4 million. We hope to raise at least £300,000 from the public via this website and by phone and postal donations.  If this target is achieved, we believe Tate will be within striking distance of closing the deal.

JMW Turner (1775-1851) is perhaps the greatest painter this country has ever produced, and The Blue Rigi is one of the finest watercolours from an extraordinary period of creativity towards the end of the artist’s life.  Despite holding the Turner bequest, the national collection at Tate contains none of the finished Swiss watercolours from this period, of which the three Rigis are outstanding examples.

The price is undeniably high – in fact, it’s a record for an acquisition by Tate.  But there is little chance of Tate ever acquiring another finished Turner watercolour of this stature.  Most are already in museums abroad or private collections.  The Red Rigi has been in the National Gallery of Art in Melbourne, Australia, since 1947.  The Dark Rigi appeared to be within grasp last summer, but the weakness of the export deferral system allowed the owner to withdraw from the sale on the very day The Blue Rigi sold at auction for such a high sum.

For over a hundred years The Art Fund has campaigned to put great works of art into our public collections.  Every time, the challenge has been steep, and the price has seemed high. £45,000 to buy Velázquez’s ‘Rokeby Venus’ was widely regarded as outrageous in 1906 – but how many would doubt that this was a great investment?

Turner’s Blue Rigi is another truly remarkable work.  It is not a piece of art you will walk past without noticing.  It is a work which represents the very highest achievement in watercolour by an artist who made the medium his own.  As Turner’s great champion, John Ruskin, put it: ‘(These works) will be recognized, in a few more years, as the noblest landscapes ever yet conceived by human intellect.’  It should be in Britain’s national collection for future generations to enjoy, and you can help us put it there.

Visit Tate Britain at : www.tate.org.uk/britain/