This book is billed as providing a ‘fresh’ look at its subject. It needs to, since the pairing of Turner and Constable is a hoary one, dating from their own lifetimes and repeatedly – even tediously – proposed since. To her great credit, Nicola Moorby manages never to be tedious. She orchestrates this well-worn theme with thoughtfulness, tying her analysis to close observation of the works. That sounds an obvious thing to do, but it is all too rare these days, and here the virtues of the approach are clear. 

The lives, and markedly different work, of the two artists meant that they were bound to become the stuff of that old examination warhorse, ‘compare and contrast’. Turner and Constable were born in 1775 and 1776 respectively; they were both devoted to landscape, starting out at a time when portraiture and history painting were still considered superior. Together, they completed the revolution in the status of landscape painting initiated by Richard Wilson, who was a hero to them both. 

If the similarities are invitingly obvious, the contrasts are perhaps less so. From his early days, Turner was a favourite son of the Royal Academy. He was precocious, a genius of perspective and an inveterate traveller through Europe and the British Isles. Constable was refused election to the Royal