EA Festival: A book talk about Turner & Constable with Nicola Moorby
November 22, 2025 @ 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
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On Saturday 22 November, Gainsborough’s House and EA Festival present art historian Nicola Moorby in conversation about her new book Turner and Constable: Art, Life, Landscape (Yale University Press, 2025).
As Britain marks the 250th anniversaries of J.M.W. Turner (2025) and John Constable (2026), Moorby revisits the entwined lives and public encounters of these two masters of landscape.
As different in temperament and background as they were in style and career, the two men have historically been portrayed as rivals. According to a famous incident at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1832, Turner added a striking red spot (later shaped into a buoy) to his seascape Helvoetsluys, which hung next to Constable’s The Opening of Waterloo Bridge. This bold adjustment has traditionally been interpreted as an attention seeking act, designed to upstage Constable who reputedly declared, “He has been here, and fired a gun”. Yet was this a rivalry tinged with respect? Moorby re-examines this and other interactions, and explores how, despite their differences, these two men pushed the boundaries and reshaped the role of landscape art in Britain.
Tickets £20
Book your tickets through the EA Festival website.
About Nicola
Nicola Moorby is an art historian and curator specialising in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British art. Author of Turner and Constable, she is Curator of Historic British Art, 1790–1850 at Tate, teaches on the Short Courses programme at the Courtauld Institute of Art and lectures widely.
About Turner & Constable: Art, Life, Landscape
Born just fourteen months apart, one in London and the other in rural Suffolk, J. M. W. Turner and John Constable went on to change the face of British art.
The two men have routinely been seen as polar opposites, not least by their peers. Differing in temperament, background, beliefs, and vision, they created images as dissimilar as their personalities.
Yet in many ways they were fellow travellers. As children of the late eighteenth century, both faced the same challenges and opportunities. Above all, they shared common cause as champions of a distinctively British art. Through their work, they fought for the recognition and appreciation of landscape painting—and in doing so ensured their reputations were forever intertwined and interlinked.
Nicola Moorby offers us a fresh perspective on two extraordinary artists, uncovering the layers of fiction that have embellished and disguised their greatest achievements. For Turner & Constable is not just a tale of two artists; it is also the story of the triumph of landscape painting.