Programme uses artist’s sketches, drawings and watercolours to build unprecedented psychological portrait
Programme uses artist’s sketches, drawings and watercolours to build unprecedented psychological portrait
He is widely regarded as England’s greatest painter, but despite his extraordinary output, elements of JMW Turner’s personality have remained a mystery.
Now, a groundbreaking BBC documentary delves into Turner’s 37,000 sketches, drawings and watercolours to build an unprecedented psychological portrait, one that raises the possibility that Turner’s singular vision was shaped by childhood trauma and neurodivergence.
Among the figures helping to unlock the artist’s life story in Turner: the Secret Sketchbooks, are the actor Timothy Spall, who portrayed him in Mike Leigh’s film Mr Turner, the artists Tracey Emin and John Akomfrah, the Rolling Stones musician Ronnie Wood, the psychotherapist Orna Guralnik and the naturalist Chris Packham.
Packham said: “As with all of the people we suspect of having had neurodivergent traits, from Alan Turing to Isaac Newton, it’s impossible to provide retrospective diagnoses, so we can only offer conjecture about that. But if Turner did have significant neurodiverse traits, I imagine they would have had quite a profound impact on his art and thinking.”
Packham, an ambassador for the National Autistic Society, pointed to Turner’s “exceptional” keenness for detail and his “hyperfocus”, a state of intense, prolonged concentration on a particular task or topic, commonly seen in conditions such as ADHD and autism.
“I see affinities there in terms of my own autistic thinking and approach to various things,” Packham said. “Turner was clearly a man who, today, we would say had focused interest. I’m still happy to call it obsession. He repeatedly returned to various locations he landscaped for a number of reasons – one being that he was probably never satisfied with what he’d achieved there.
