All language subtitles for Decoding.Turner.2023

(LIGHTNING CRACKS)

Joseph Mallord William Turner
is regarded as one of

the most original and influential
British artists of all time.

His work was transformative.

It shocked the Victorians
and paved the way for modern art.

170 years after his death,

Turner's influence
is still apparent today.

MAN: His art was absolutely
transcendental

and almost spiritual.

NICK: He was the nation's
greatest landscape artist.

But there's more to him.

There's another layer there.

He is a cryptic artist.

ERICA: We have now found
hidden images that are electrifying.

Despite having been viewed
by millions of people,

previously unnoticed,
complex images

painted with precision

that have been overlooked
for 170 years

have been found hidden
within the paint strokes

of Turner's greatest works.

Throughout a number of
the paintings, we found that,

astonishingly, a bear appears
time and time again.

And we've come to the conclusion

that Turner represents himself
as a bear.

There's this white flag
of Turner's emblem,

which is a bear's head

with a high collar
of the kind Turner wore.

But there are other narratives
within this painting

that relate to Nelson
trashing Napoleon's fleet.

He painted the head of a goose,

and we found this
in more than one Turner work.

He's saying steam
is the golden goose of the future.

It is going to produce
great wealth.

Turner was a very tormented,
brilliant man.

It wouldn't surprise me at all
that there are secret meanings,
codes, emblems.

I've seen some of my own.

Turner, he was a genius.

Nick is giving
so many other layers of meaning.

Oh! That is... Oh, my God.

That is... What the...?
Sorry, I don't want to swear.

Can you see a face,
a man's head, here?

I'm going to say it looks more like
a chicken, actually, Nick, but...

That looks like genitalia to me.

(BOTH LAUGH)

Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

It's this amazing
kind of moment of...

..of decoding.

These groundbreaking discoveries

are the result
of five years' extensive research

and cast new light on Turner's
most famous paintings.

It began with the purchase
of a painting.

Within that painting,
we found some hidden images.

And because of that, we looked
across to some works by Turner.

And there, looking out
of the painting at me...

..was Turner.

Unbelievable.

This is significant because there
is only one known self-portrait

by Turner in oils,

and we've found
a lot more smaller ones.

We're very certain
that these are Turner himself.

When I found one or two...

quite large and impressive images,
I had to go and lie down.

I hadn't experienced
anything like that.

ERICA: There is a history of artists
hiding things in paintings.

They've been doing it for centuries.

There's Giotto,
who hid a devil in clouds...

..Michelangelo, who outlined
a brain in the Sistine Chapel...

..and Gainsborough
even hid genitalia.

And these are becoming
increasingly researched now.

But what we found in Turner,
nobody has ever discovered before.

NICK: But it isn't
just about images.

It's about really
the life and times of Turner...

..expressed by him in paint.

These hidden images
reveal new narratives

where none has previously existed

and have the potential
to rewrite the history

of Britain's greatest painter.

This will very definitely change the
way that we engage with his work.

And in at least four paintings,

we have a complete reinterpretation
of that painting.

There are multiple instances

of the same image
appearing across paintings.

It's hugely significant.
We're in new territory here.

Born in 1775,

Turner is famed as Britain's painter
of land, sea and light.

But Dr Nicholas Wilkinson
and his wife Erica

think there is far more
to Turner's work -

if you look at it in a new way...

closely.

ERICA: Nick has a doctorate
in physical chemistry,

working on the molecular level,

and this requires
three-dimensional visualisation.

And that is how this relates
to his work on Turner.

He sometimes has been obsessed.

At home, there'll be computer
screens with an image of Turner.

There'll be an iPad
with an image of Turner.

Then he'll be sitting with his
iPhone with an image of Turner.

And he was always blowing them up,

reducing them and rotating them.

We've had to keep this secret for...

..five years,

so it has been incredibly difficult.

I worked in science for 15 years,

but then we bought a painting.

When I first looked at
this marine painting,

there was a face looking out at me,

a hidden anamorphic image,

and I was quite shocked by that.

I found it to be quite disquieting

cos we were dealing with
such a famous artist.

The Turner code

started to emerge

when I'd looked at 30 or 40
of his paintings

and found new narratives and
recurrence between those paintings.

There were definite themes
that started to occur

that were not known
in Turner scholarship.

First of all, his titles
are complicated and cryptic.

They are a bit like the satirical
print titles of the time,

which are in two or more parts.

And part of that title is cryptic

and it tells you
what to find in the painting.

The second part of the code

is anamorphic elements
in the painting

to tell the narratives.

And those anamorphic elements
are twofold.

They are pareidolic.

That means
taking something inanimate

and turning it into
something animate.

Or anthropomorphic,

which means taking multiple elements

and combining them
into a single hidden image.

I think you need a fresh eye

to see Turner in the way
that Nick has discovered him.

I was a trained art historian

and I didn't believe at first

that Turner would do
something like this.

But then the more I read
about his personality,

I realised that would have been
entirely in keeping

with the kind of person that he was.

It appears
that he definitely wanted

these hidden images to be found,

but he camouflaged them so skilfully

that they haven't been found
for nearly 200 years.

What we would very much like to do
is to show these hidden images

and all our theories to art experts.

We'd like to get their reactions.

In 1838, Turner painted
The Fighting Temeraire,

showing an old battleship
being towed to be broken up.

The ship had been part
of Lord Nelson's fleet

at the Battle Of Trafalgar.

Turner never sold the painting,

which he called "my darling".

Turner had grown up...

as a boy,

looking at these great ships
of the Napoleonic wars.

You know, the heroic time of Nelson

and, you know, Waterloo.

In this picture, he's actually
painting the end of it all.

This tug is pulling,
with steam power,

the great sail ship of the past.

And people who wrote
about the picture

commented on how this squat,

ugly, black, dark,
little horrible tug

was pulling
this graceful, beautiful

emblem of Britain's
glorious maritime past

to destruction.

Yet, at the same time,
I think Turner's not

entirely lamenting it

because, for me, Turner's
identifying himself with that tug.

You know, Turner wore
this black top hat.

He was a diminutive man.

So the tug, for me, IS Turner,
and the tug represents

modern vision as well as
the modern age of steam.

So it's complicated, it's a lament,

but it's also Turner saying,

"If I had to choose my own side,

my side is the modern."

Dr Wilkinson wants to see
if he can convince

one of Britain's
leading art historians

that there is even more to the work

than initially meets the eye.

There is a strange image
on the left-hand side

of The Fighting Temeraire...

..and if you look at it carefully,

it appears as a screaming head...

with a high collar...coat on

and it's impaled from above
by a wooden stake.

And we propose that is Napoleon.

That's great. So it's a bit like
Francis Bacon's screaming Pope,

except it's a screaming Napoleon.

To be fair, I CAN see
a shape like a cocked hat,

and I can see where you would see
a sort of...

I suppose it's almost like
Munch's Scream.

What is it actually
in the illusion of the painting?

It is a gun port.

There are three gun ports.

Two are his eyes and the other
is his screaming mouth.

Right.

He's created something
from those elements.

In your interpretation,
I presume that would be a reference

to The Fighting Temeraire's role
in the Battle Of Trafalgar.

This is the ship that speared
Napoleon for once and for all.

Absolutely. The British tactic

was to fire into the hull
of the French ships,

cause massive splinters
that disabled the crew.

So, they actually speared
by great pieces of wood?

They were speared
by big pieces of wood.

Look at the top.

Ships attached their prize to their
side and then sold it to market.

So, this is a metaphorical prize
of Napoleon's head.

I suppose, in a sense,
it's Napoleon's head on a stick.

Wellington had a statue of Napoleon
placed in Apsley House.

Wellington wanted Napoleon in
his house because he was his prize.

"I am the man
who defeated Napoleon."

It's the same thought.
Whether you see it or not.

And people can choose
whether they agree

with your anthropomorphic reading
of these things,

and whether their eyes
are the same as your eyes.

At least in the case
of this interpretation,

it's not as if it's overturning
the meaning of the picture.

Or it's not as if it's giving it
some kind of mad twist.

It's actually reinforcing what
we know Turner probably thought.

It's another layer
within the painting.

But will other Turner enthusiasts
also concede

that one of the world's
most famous paintings

might have a screaming, defeated
Napoleon hiding in plain sight?

On the side of the Temeraire...

he's created...

a head and shoulders.

No... Surely he hasn't. Not on...

Not on this famous,
most-loved painting?

First of all, can you see...

..that this is a screaming head,

like Edvard Munch? Aaahh.

Right...
Years before Ed Munch.

Where's the mouth?
His mouth is here.

The eye is here.
Yeah.

The admiral's hat is...

The golden braid
is on top of his head.

He has...

a big collar and shoulder here,

and he's pinned to the side
of the Temeraire.

Gee!

Wow.
In fact...

it is...

we propose, Napoleon.
Can you see it?

Of course.
(CHUCKLES)

Wow. I think I need to have a drink

cos that is just absolutely mad.

If you look at the £20 note

and you will see
Napoleon's head screaming

on the side of the Temeraire.
I just can't believe that.

I can't believe
that's not been seen before...

because it's there
but visible and invisible.

I like that expression.
It is both.

It is both. Yes.
It's deliberately invisible.

Yeah, but...

But there is a challenge
for the nation

to go find his hidden images.

On the left-hand side,
beyond topographical form,

created from...

A sort of skull.
..the angle,

there's a sort of skull.

Yes. Yes.
I can see a sort of skull.

He's got a high collar coat on...

Yeah.
..with a shoulder.

I can...
I can see what you're getting at.

It even has a circular form
on the hat here.

I'm gonna suggest to you
that that's a cockade...

..and that cockade is an emblem
of the French Revolution.

It's very interesting.
Once you see the shapes,
you CAN see them. But...

Yeah.
I mean, whether...

whether that's what that is,
I'm not sure,

but I can see what you're saying.

You may never wipe that
from your mind.No.

We suggest this is...

..Napoleon impaled to the side
of the Temeraire.

He was a prize of the Temeraire.
Can you see it?

Yeah...

It could be a unicorn, you know.

(LAUGHS) I think it's a unicorn.

I'm not sure if it's...
Napoleon impaled.

I can imagine he'd, like...

enjoy the secretness of it all
and the fun of it all

if he DID, you know,

if he did imbue these paintings
with hidden symbolism.

Yeah.But do you think
that was very much of the time,

that's what people were doing
generally?

No. Just Turner.
Just Turner.

You look at others,
there is nothing there.OK.

What would you say about that image

in our proposal that it's Napoleon?

The first thing
I would observe is that...

the bow of the ship
makes his hat.

And what I'd always thought
about this painting

is that the perspective of the ship
coming towards the viewer

is a little odd.

The fact that it is concealing
an image of Napoleon

would explain that...

that Turner might have
adapted the perspective

in order to accommodate
this hidden face.

It appears to be a sort of
three-dimensional...

..entity on the side of the boat,
screaming in agony.

Can you see that at all?

No, I can't see that.
I really can't.

I mean, you know, I understand
why Napoleon might be...

..associated.

The story's kind of...there.

It's imminent all the time
in that painting.

I don't see why you would
then put more...

more into it, more information.

I don't think it needs it.

I think it's a simple story
well told.

The Freudian theory was that you
may try to repress something,

but it will come out somewhere else

because of strong,
unconscious impulses.

It will come out in art.
It will come out in your dreams.

It may come out
in the slip of a tongue

in the middle of a conversation.

So if Turner is hiding something
and has got a secret code

and trying to send
an underhand message to the world,

the deeper psychological question
psychologists would ask

is "What's his motivation?"

So, one reason why people
sometimes embed codes,

or send signals in a hidden way,
is a mischievousness,

a playfulness,
and a kind of showing off.

And if Turner had a strong sense
of superiority over other people,

he may be showing off
if he tries to hide codes.

JMW Turner was indeed
a well known show-off.

Every year at the opening
of the Royal Academy Exhibition,

crowds watched him
add finishing touches

that transformed his paintings.

Turner was famous for turning up
and making changes that...

..would seem to put
the artists around him,

and their paintings, down,
and make his picture pop up.

So he's hugely, hugely competitive.

I mean, Turner's personality
is a very strange one

because on the one hand,
he was crude, he was rude,

he was dishevelled, he was kind of
a complete mess of a man.

He was also an extremely intelligent
and well-read man.

He was aware of modern science
and technology.

He read philosophy.

He composed his own poems.

He understood a great deal
about history,

and he cared deeply
about his own legacy.

And he wanted his pictures
to be shown together,

exhibited together,

as part of his own legacy,

to be rooted in British history

in the way that his paintings
depicted British history.

After extensive research,

the Wilkinsons have concluded that,

through a series
of concealed images,

Turner represented himself
as a bear.

If you look, he's resurrected
all the masts on the Temeraire,

but put no flags on them.

But he's put this very prominent
white flag

on the mast of the tugboat.

What do you see in the flag?

The flag is his emblem,
the bear's head.

And that bear's head
is looking down at the Temeraire.

You would see ears in the top
left corner of the flag

and you'd see the bear's snout
in the bottom left corner.

Yeah.
Yeah.

I mean, I have to...
To me, I can see an animal,

but that's the thing
about drapery in painting.

Yeah.
But I'm gonna, you know,

if it sort of reinforces my idea
that the tug was Turner,

then, of course, I'm interested.

Within the Temeraire,

the only flag flying
is on the tugboat.

It's a white flag.

But when you look at it...
what he has done...

It seems completely
the head of a bear.

It's the head of a bear.
This one is incredible.

Are you able to see that?

The question is,
are we looking at something

that Turner intended us
to look at,

or is this something that is
by chance

which creates this shape?
I'm not sure.

Why is Turner
sending these messages?

What's going on?

Cos a Freudian theory would be
that he's repressed in some sense

or society is repressing him

and he has to get a way
of getting a message out.

To send a code,
you're hiding it from someone

and you want other people to see it.

One of the issues for Turner
had started early in his life

when he was the president of
Perspective at the Royal Academy.

He presented lectures there and...
he was derided for that,

because his verbal style
was not comprehensible.

And people joked at his expense
about that, unfortunately.

I'd suggest he is
recording in paint...

..the narrative of his life
through a series of paintings.

But why do it in a coded way?

Maybe it's a sort of
parlour game approach.

The parlour game was something
in the early Victorian period

for people to find hidden images,

to give them little clues
as to what it might be...

..and to give them an additional
level of looking at his work.

That painting
is beautiful enough as it is.

He doesn't have to put
a coded message in.

Once he starts doing that,

it begins to distract
from the beauty of that painting.

You don't need a coded message.

If anything, the fact
there's a coded message in there

begins to detract
or distract the viewer

from the appreciation
of that painting.

That being so, if you don't know
there's a coded message there,

it is of no consequence.

OK. That's a very,
very interesting counterargument.

When Nick first said,
"Can you see a bear here?"

I said, "Yeah, but so what?
Yeah, it looks like a bear.

But prove to me
it's intended as a bear."

And only by looking extensively
across several paintings,

has Nick been able
to build up an argument

that has convinced me...
to quite a sufficient degree.

ERICA: We found out that the bear
is the Venetian painter Titian's

personal device,
which was illustrated

in the most wonderful cartouche,

a lovely she-bear.

And between her front paws
there is a lumpen block.

She is about to lick this block
into shape

to reveal a bear cub.

And the idea is that this
has a direct parallel

to the activity of artists.

Titian was regarded
as the great colourist...

..and Turner saw himself
as Titian's heir.

Therefore, there is a good reason

for him choosing the bear
as his personal emblem.

Dr Wilkinson believes that

Turner concealed
other controversial images

within The Fighting Temeraire.

The yellow and orange shape
at the end of the dirty plume

is actually a goose's head
looking down the plume.

It is an eye and a breathing hole.

That's how you can identify it.

And he's portraying steam as
the golden goose of the future age.

I can't see the goose.
OK.

I don't see this.

This is like one of those Magic Eye
things that I just can't see.

I'm afraid I'm not convinced
by the goose in the smoke.

OK.

Now I'm going to show you
the head of a goose.

It could be a face of many animals.

Yeah.
Actually.

But I'm thinking that
could also be...

For me, I can't stop seeing...

Sorry.

But...a pig.

(CHUCKLES GOOFILY)

TIM: I can see something that
could be interpreted like that.

Hmm.
But I'm going to say...

..I think it would change the whole
nature of the painting to do that.

Yeah.
Because he's a...

He's also an observational painter.

He's painting real things.

And why would he want
to jeopardise that,

you know,
powerful impression of reality.

I'm so curious
about this gigantic goose

kind of dominating everything.

I wonder what that tells us
about Turner himself

and why he chose these images.

ERICA: We could see geese heads
time and time again,

so we came to the conclusion
this was a reference

to steam that was regarded

as the golden goose
of the nation's wealth.

A number of history's
most famous paintings

contain extraordinary secrets

that are still being uncovered
centuries after their completion.

I think it's wonderful,
this new kind of hobby

that seems to be sweeping the world,

which is people finding
secret symbols in paintings.

One of the great British painters
of the 18th century

was Thomas Gainsborough,

and one of his
most famous paintings -

it's one of the most popular
paintings in Britain -

is Mr And Mrs Andrews,
which is in the National Gallery.

People have loved this painting
for centuries,

but they hadn't really noticed that
at the very centre of the painting,

on Mrs Andrews' lap,

Gainsborough had actually drawn
a squiggle of a penis,

perhaps to get back at the couple.

We know that he
didn't finish the painting

because the relationship
with the patrons broke down,

and so perhaps
he was getting revenge

on Mr or Mrs Andrews by doing that.

(LAUGHS) There's a far more
prominent male member

in Gainsborough's portrait
of Countess Howe in Kenwood.

And if you read
Gainsborough's letters,

why should anyone
be surprised about this?

He's constantly writing,
in his letters -

and indeed I think in his diary -
about how aroused he becomes.

Why should we be surprised?

One of the earliest instances
of Turner using hidden imagery

is in his 1829 painting
Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus...

and the clue is in the title.

It describes
the classical hero Ulysses,

taunting a giant Cyclops
called Polyphemus,

from which he has escaped.

And though we can see Ulysses
on his ship,

Polyphemus is harder to spot

because he is made out of clouds.

In this painting,
there are some known hidden images.

There's the title, which is
Polyphemus up in the clouds.

Have you seen that before?

Yes. Polyphemus is
relatively easy to see.

I think there are
the horses in the sun,

which are also fairly easy to see.

But you'd miss them
if you stayed at...

if you stayed at a distance of six
to eight feet from the painting,

which is - for a picture like this -
classically the correct distance.

So it's...
Perhaps it's one of Turner's ways

of making you walk into his sun,
having those horses there.

So there are other images as well.

The flag
halfway up the flagpole there.

Are you aware that there is
a Trojan horse on wheels

sitting in the flag...

and then, behind, there are
buildings that are on fire?

But, yes, I do see what you mean.

Yeah.
And I'm absolutely

prepared to accept the possibility
that that might be there

because, you know,
something like a flag for Turner

is an opportunity
for these little graphic finesses.

Turner had this compulsive need
to put graffiti everywhere.

So that all over his paintings,

you find these sort of
secret messages and things

that are scurrying
almost half out of sight.

So, you know, absolutely,
I'm happy to see a Trojan horse.

I CAN see a Trojan horse
on wheels now.

Great. Lovely.

Finally, at the very top
of the mast there

is a bear's head
with a bridle on it.

His ear is attached to the mast,
and he's looking out right,

looking forward
in the direction of the ship.

Written on that...

..it's the word U-L-Y, "Uly".

Maybe you can see it. Uly.

So he's painted Ulysses...

..as a bear on the mast head.

I would suggest to you
that he saw himself

as a journeying Ulysses.

Why would Ulysses be
in the shape of a bear?

Is that because the bear
is Turner's own emblem

that he borrows from Titian?

In your personal mythology
of Turner, how does that work?

Correct. The bear's head
is Turner's self emblem.

It appears in many paintings.

I'm not sure about the bear's head,
but essentially,

I don't disagree with your idea

of Turner identifying himself
with Ulysses...

..the endless, restless traveller

who finds it so hard to settle

and whose life
is knocked awry

but his destiny
leads him always onwards.

Actually, Turner is part
of the ship, heading onwards.

If you look at the sail form.

It's got a big hooked nose
on the right-hand side.

And then there's an eye there
in the sail form -

and he uses sails as images -

is Turner's head surging forward.

Well, I must say,
if you're gonna...

The thing is,
for this kind of transformation

of something abstract
into an actual image,

you do have a very good precedent
in Leonardo da Vinci,

who says, you know,
"Look at the stains on a wall.

Look at the clouds in the sky.
Look at the drapery.

And if you see a shape in it,
make it the basis for a painting."

So this idea of seeing shapes
in clouds or in sail cloth

or in, you know, a bit of sea...

..Leonardo da Vinci said
that's what artists do.

The Wilkinsons' research
has taken them across the UK.

But there is one place overseas
that was special to Turner.

Venice.

He arrived here.
He was doing the Grand Tour.

He was always travelling.
He was a person very curious.

Turner, like so many British people,
was just obsessed with Italy.

It was the "golden ticket" for him.

He drew thousands of sketches
when he was in Italy.

He made hundreds of paintings
inspired by Italy.

And I think Italy -
and Venice in particular -

fundamentally transformed his art.

I think that
was what propelled him

into this journey towards
an art of light and colour.

Then he started
to understand the light

and the way of painting
of Titian and Tintoretto.

Dr Wilkinson is visiting some of
the sites Turner would have seen...

..viewing frescoes
by Venetian Renaissance artists

Titian and Tintoretto,
that Turner sketched.

And even the street
Tintoretto lived in...

..defined by its turbaned statues.

And the Palazzo del Cammello,
or Camel House, where he lived.

It's no surprise
that Venice is the setting

for one of Turner's
most cryptic paintings.

Exhibited in 1833,

it shows Venice
as the city of canals,

with its famous Bridge Of Sighs,

Ducal Palace and Custom House.

It also features an artist.

The traditional interpretation

is that this is the 17th-century
Venetian painter Antonio Canal,

known by his nickname "Canaletto",
which means "son of Canal".

But Turner's cryptic title
is not "Canaletto",

but "Canaletti".

FRANNY: Titles are really important
in Turner's work.

When he entitles
one of his paintings "Canaletti"

rather than "Canaletto",

I think Nick is right to think

this may be an invitation

to consider the work
as something of a riddle.

I think there is a clue
in that title

by using an Italian plural.

NICK: His title is cryptic.
"Canaletti Painting"

suggests to me "sons"

and it suggests to me
"sons of Canal".

To me, "sons of Canal"
means "the sons of Venice",

because Venice is canal.

And what you find
in this painting -

I am going to propose to you,
and I welcome your thoughts -

that he has taken this painting
and painted in the sons of Venice.

Wow.
All right?

So we have great famous
Venetian people in here.

I think there's a son of Venice
represented here in general

by the sublime painting
of the buildings.

If you look at the painting
as a whole,

the top two thirds
is of a Canaletto-style painting.

It rivals Canaletto.
Yeah.

And he's, in a way,

competed with Canaletto
by presenting this,

but has paid homage to him
as a son of Venice

in the nature of the painting of
the buildings in the background.

I would put this proposal to you

that the artist
painting at the easel,

it isn't Canaletto painting.

This is actually Titian painting.

He's wearing a Titian-red coat.
Yes.

You look and it is known that
this painting is amazingly framed.

Yeah.
Right? With a guild frame.

And the actual painting image
that looks out at you

is a bear.
Two eyes.

Two eyes and a muzzle is a bear.

Now, the bear was Titian's emblem.

Beneath Titian,
reflected in the water,

is a caricature image,

self-image of Turner.

Turner is looking
at the painting of the bear.

Oh, with a big nose.
With a big nose.

And the head. Here is the eye.
Yeah.

This is opening a completely...
another point of view

of look into the Turner paintings.
Yes.

There are things
that I never thought.

No, there are clever, hidden things,

but they have
symbolic meaning to Turner,

and he wants to convey them

to the readership,
the audience, as well.

Through different anamorphic images,

he creates interest in the painting.

But he never gave it away
in his lifetime.

He never said it?
No, he didn't let people

see him painting.

Probably because he was
doing some of this.

This is quite powerful.

When you look
at all these cloths here,

piled up on the boats
in the middle of the painting,

there are three heads there.

And in the middle of them...

is an animal's head.

The dark head is a camel's head.

And then we have
three Moorish heads.

Right?
Ahh.

So there is a meaning
of the three Moors

that are near the house
of Tintoretto?

Yeah. That is a locational
representation of Tintoretto,

cos that's where he worked.

Let me show you
this unusual front of a boat here.

You see that shape

and you ask yourself,
"What is he doing there?"

My proposal to you

is that that is a representation
of Vivaldi.

And here we have
a red cello with a neck,

and he even has tuning plugs on it.

Can you see?
Completely.

Yeah? So my proposal to you...
You agree with that?

You've never seen that before.
No, I never know this.

So, Canaletti in the sense
of the sons of Venice.

Yes.
So it's not only one?

No, there are multiple.

The painting features
Venice's prison,

known as "The Leads",

from which the famous Venetian
lothario Casanova once escaped.

And Dr Wilkinson thinks Turner

may have referred
to this event, too.

But now we go on to another one,
another type.

And this is Casanova.

And here, Casanova
escaping from The Leads.

He climbed down from the prison.

Yes.
Yeah?

And he was met by a gondola
that whisked him away.

Here is Casanova
sitting, smiling in the gondola

with his feet up.

Oh, fantastic.

I think the other invitation to
consider the painting as a riddle

is something that academics
have always picked up on

and never really cracked,
which is...

..you can see an artist
to the left of the canvas,

painting at an easel,
but he's painting...

a painting that's already framed,

which of course,
no artist ever does.

They may paint
a bare canvas unframed.

And so I think this
instantly is asking us

to look at the whole painting

as a riddle about painters.

If Turner has called a painting
after Canaletto,

why would he NOT depict Canaletto?

Why would the main figure
be Titian?

Scientists have taught us
to be sceptical.

To the right
is a caricature image...

..in profile, of a man's head.

That looks like genitalia to me.

(BOTH LAUGH)

That's not a credible man.
(LAUGHS)

With a humongous nose.

Sorry, I'm not mocking you, but...

He could be a cartoon man.
He could be a cartoon man.

But why would Turner
paint a cartoon man?

Mm.
I don't know.

This was the golden age
of English caricature.

Mm. I just think he would be
a bit more virtuoso about it

if he was going to do that.

You know, that doesn't
feel like a credible head.

But that's ME.
Everybody's subjective, I think,

and you will see
something different than I do.

Nick's thesis

is that some of Turner's
references to popular culture,

to pantomime, to caricature,

things that are a kind of litter,
references do occur

and he just had that tendency

to try and put a bit of everything
in a work.

You don't often spot the litter.

Often you have to look quite hard
for it, but it'll be there.

Early on, Turner is doing
a lot of work with printmakers,

both in terms of
the reproduction of his own work

and in terms...in his earlier youth,

of learning from people
who are in the print trade.

Seems to me entirely natural

that Turner would know
his print trade inside out

and that an awareness of caricature
would be a part of that.

One of the most exciting
innovations, I think,

that the satirists pioneered was
their use of quite surreal imagery.

They loved hiding images
within other images.

Or they loved hiding characters
within particular shapes.

That's what's fun
about these images -

at one glance you think
you've worked it out already,

and then you look
a little bit closer

and there's this peculiar, bizarre
image that you're looking at.

I think it's exciting
that we're looking at Turner

in light of these caricatures.

As you move into the 1830s, 1840s,

to the final couple of decades
of his life,

he develops what we call
his late style.

And in that late style,

the paintings become
more and more indistinct.

The figures and the forms
begin to dissolve

and everything becomes dominated

by this...diaphanous
sheets of colour and light.

His work evolves constantly

and it just becomes
richer and richer.

He becomes very interested
in a concept called the sublime,

which is the opposite of beauty.

It's when you see something
that terrifies you
and you quite enjoy that.

This is a sort of way for him

to start pushing away
from visual accuracy

into something new
and something different.

CORNELIA: Turner was
way ahead of his time,

and his late work
was very impressionistic.

Monet and all the Impressionists
looked to him

and had been in London
and looked at the work.

And so I think he was a catalyst

for that whole era
of French Impressionism.

Claude Monet,
who came in 1872 to London,

he saw Turner's work
and he was forever altered.

And very early in the history
of Impressionism,

he and all the other Impressionist
artists wrote a letter -

a public open letter -
thanking Monsieur Turner

for having paved the way
for Impressionism,

and pointing them
in the direction of painting light.

Monet spent the rest of his life
pretending he'd never
written that letter

and pretending that he wasn't
absolutely in thrall to Turner.

In his later works in particular,

Turner described his art
as indistinct.

"Indistinctness is what I do."

Sort of this wonderful mix
of colour and swirl.

And then when you get up close,
you can see these little details.

So I think he's being playful there

by suggesting that somehow
he is ALWAYS indistinct.

I think anyone who's actually
studied Turner's paintings up close

and looked at them, can start to see
those little details ping out.

So I think he's both indistinct
AND distinct at the same time.

What I think there is...
is another way of looking at Turner,

and I think within the context
of a single painting,

he uses discreet,
sometimes camouflaged, imagery

to enhance the meaning
of that single painting.

And it does seem to occur in
the later part of Turner's career,

where he's more confident, perhaps,

where he cares less
about what people think,

where perhaps he has become
more prepared to be playful.

As Turner developed
his indistinct style,

he also turned
to new, modern topics,

which created a stir.

His contemporaries thought
he was a bit strange and he was.

Why would you paint a steam train
rushing towards the audience

as if to run them down?
This is an amazing thing to paint.

This is something of our time.
No-one else is painting it.

Because the Industrial Revolution
was such a shocking thing,

nobody painted it.
It's like, "don't mention the war".

But Turner DID paint it.
He painted smog.

No-one else did that.

And the public does respond,
as you can imagine.

They go, "Wow!"

I mean, it's like lobbing a bomb
into a gentlemen's club...

..a Turner painting.

I mean, it's this astonishing
explosion of light.

If you had to boil down to,
as it were,

one sentence, the meaning
of rain, steam and speed,

it's saying
"this is the modern world".

Here it is, a steam train
rushing towards you

across a viaduct,
that's blurred by speed.

And all around it,

are these little images and emblems.

There's this little boat.

A road bridge...but no coaches.

There's a hare scampering
out of the way. Nature - forget it.

A farmer with his plough
and two horses.

But they're like ghosts
cos, of course,

ploughs drawn by horses

are soon going to be
a thing of the past.

And again, that train...

..roaring towards the future,

roaring into
some kind of visionary...

..maelstrom of imagining.

To me, that's Turner.

You know, that's little Turner.

That's what the image is to me.

But Dr Wilkinson thinks
this painting

is not just celebrating steam power,

but specifically
the man who developed it...

..the engineering genius
Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

He had built
the new rail infrastructure,

designed railway bridges

and a revolutionary
kind of steamship,

the SS Great Britain.

He's painted on the front here -
and you can see at the bottom,

below the train,
there's a curve there.

And it's actually a red wine bottle
that's on the front of the train.

Do you mean the whole front
of the train IS a red wine bottle?

Yes.
Yeah.

And there is a reason for that.

On the 19th of July, 1843,

Brunel conducted the train,

with Prince Albert on board,
to Bristol.

The purpose of the visit
was to float out

the greatest marine technology
innovation of the day -

the SS Great Britain.

So why is the wine bottle
significant?

So, a red wine bottle
was used to launch a ship...

..in those days.
It wasn't champagne.

The real issue
in this painting, though,

is that he has put
the SS Great Britain ship in

and it is beneath
some waving people.

If you look on the river,

you will see a ghost ship
with its prow to the left.

There are six ghostly masts

and the people who wave
and draw you into it

we're actually those people
at the floating out ceremony.

So, in your interpretation,
this is a sort of ghost indication

of the future destination
of the train,

which is to the launch of a ship?

Correct.
And it's sort of there, floating.

Cos I'd always thought
that those figures dancing

somehow might represent
the muses or...

It's almost as if Turner's saying,
all of that mythology of the past,

that's really fading
and fading and fading away

cos the new mythological beast,

the great sort of minotaur of now,
is the steam train.

So it's a bit of
a different interpretation.

The steam train has been trumped
by the SS Great Britain.

Well, I mean, I think...

You know, I personally think
the train's enough.

But...you know, I mean,
you know, it's interesting.

It's the sort of theory
that can't be denied

because what you're seeing,
or claiming to see,

is, you know, a persuasive
intellectual pattern.

Whether it's REALLY there,
we'd have to get Turner

out from the grave
and say, "Is he right?"

And whether he'd tell us
the truth anyway, how do we know?

I do feel the idea that the painting
is a homage to Brunel...

..I find that entirely persuasive.

Whether it's a red wine bottle,
whether there is a ghost ship,

I'm not...you know,
I can't say I'm sure.

I can't say. "Yes, I agree.
I see it.

I can understand the meaning."

But you've clearly
done your research.

(TRAIN WHISTLE TOOTS)

Of course, Turner was
travelling around Britain

and his journeys
were absolutely transformed

by the arrival of the trains
and the railways,

and that enabled him to travel
to different parts of the country

in ways that he hadn't done before.

Turner was born
in the late 18th century,

when the only modes of transport
would have been horse and horseback.

The Firefly so brilliantly depicted
in Turner's painting

would have been
absolutely revolutionary.

The iron horse
had replaced the horse,

and the Iron horse
was the Firefly locomotive,

capable of reaching
these extraordinary speeds

and in fact,
shrinking the entire country

to what he would have grown up with
as a child and as a young man.

(STEAM ENGINE HISSES)

(WHISTLE TOOTS)

(STEAM HISSES)

Well, Rob, thanks for joining us
here on the platform

in front of
a fantastic steam engine.

It IS beautiful.
Historic steam engine.

No matter how many times I see it,

it always makes me smile when
I come past this Firefly loco.

Magnificent. Yeah.
I wanted to just run past you

some images that we've found
in a painting by Turner

called Rain Steam And Speed.
Lovely.

There are some strange images
around the front of the train here.

Bright-coloured...
People think it's a fire box,

but you can see
the fire box is HERE.

That should be
the front of the boiler.

Yeah. And something strange hanging
off the side of the train here.

This looks like the head of a man.

It's a nose and so on.

And he's looking down at the bridge
as if to inspect.

So what's the thinking here?
That this could be Brunel himself

coming across,
inspecting his handiwork,

inspecting his...
his controversial design,

but knowing that he was right?

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean...I love that.

And it is exactly...
From what I know about Brunel,

it's the kind of thing
that he would probably love to do -

go out inspecting
the beauty of his work.

Another image associated
with the front of the train.

There are some lines
coming down here

and then you follow them up

and it comes to the neck of a bottle
and the top of a bottle.

It looks almost like a wine bottle.

OK.
Can you see?

Yeah, I can see that now,

with the chimney being
the neck of the bottle.

Yeah. On the opening.
The chimney of the loco.

Yeah. Right.
OK.

What are we suggesting here?

Brunel wasn't an alcoholic
as far as I know.

No. We're suggesting
that this might be a wine bottle

travelling on...
in the direction of Bristol.

Let's try another one.

If you look down
the side of the train,

it's arranged rather as if
it's a banqueting table.

Can you see that at all?

Looking along that perspective?
Yeah.

With dinner plates as wheels
along here?

Yeah, yeah.
OK.

Yeah?
I can see that. Yeah.

A man with sideburns and a bald pate

looking down as if Brunel
is having a banquet...

Mm.
..which he did many times.

He used it
as his influencing method.

Yeah, I can see...

That's the clearest one
you've shown me so far, I think.

I can see that very, very clearly.

Can I say about that as well...
Yeah. Please.

Because of the style
of the rest of the painting,

and the locomotive
and the carriages behind,

there's not that much detail,

but it does strike me

that those wheels -
or dinner plates, perhaps -

are quite well defined,
which you wouldn't expect
in the style of the painting.

So there's something
slightly at odds there, I'd say.

It's quite extraordinary because
that painting's so well known.

It's, you know,
one of Turner's masterpieces.

And to think that thousands -
or millions - of people

have looked at that painting
and not seen that hidden imagery

is quite extraordinary, especially
as it's an homage to Brunel,

that Brunel himself
is hidden in that painting.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was probably
one of the most influential

and revolutionary engineers
that Britain's ever had.

To think that he himself is hidden
in that painting is extraordinary.

He's there in the foreground,
conducting that train,

you know, going towards Bristol,

where the SS Great Britain
is being launched, you know,

the greatest ship of all time
at that time.

It's these dancing people
on the banks of the Thames.

Beneath them on the river...

..there is...

floating, a big boat with six masts.

It could be.
My eyesight is not as good as yours.

So it could be the SS Great Britain.

Could he be painting here,
the floating out day?

Is certainly...
It's certainly possible.

Whether or not... One thing we don't
know is whether Turner was there.

It was widely reported
in the papers of the time,

so he would have known about that.

And the people waving on the banks
of the River Thames here...

if you look directly beneath them,

you will see
what I term a "ghost ship".

And it's got six masts.

Can you see it at all?

I mean...

yes.

It's interesting.
For me, the challenge is that

I think of Turner as such a...

He was a kind of pre-impressionistic
painter and a romantic painter.

And so I think of his work
as so gestural

and so much about a kind of
immediacy in his mark-making,

that, you know,
the idea that there's this

other image in there is a challenge.

But then when I look at the figures
and the way that they're reproduced,

I mean, I can see a form there

and, to me, it looks
a little bit more like a fish.

These dancing people on the bank

and beneath them
is a ghost ship with six masts.

It looks like it is, for me...

It looks like it is a representation

of some ships that are,
you know, on the river...

and there's figures above them.

But I don't...
I don't see that as a HIDDEN thing.

I think it's quite visible.

Wow. Really? OK.
Yeah.

The idea of having different
time frames in one painting,

I find interesting.

The boat's there
but it's in plain sight.

You know, he added
those kind of details.

That's what was
a bit of his trademark,

really, to come in and whack
a few people into a painting.

This is, of course, what Turner
always said was his speciality,

being indistinct,
making people look,

inviting people to ask whether stuff
is there or perhaps it's not.

Again, I think this is
part of a game

where nothing is entirely clear

because of the complexity
of the world.

A group that was long considered
to perhaps be...dancing nymphs,

Nick has now proposed

that those are actually people
waving off the SS Great Britain.

And, yes, actually,
if you look carefully,

indistinct, there is a ship

perhaps a little bit like
the SS Great Britain.

And I think the key to all this
is "indistinct".

These aren't images
that Turner wants to...

be projecting forcefully
from the paintings.

They're things that sort of
come through the mist...

the longer you look at them
and contemplate them.

I think it's really important

we look closely at pictures

and especially
with great artists like Turner,

we will always find
new things if we look.

Over the last ten years or so,
a number of studies have examined

how long most members of the public

spend looking at
individual paintings in galleries.

The results
are pretty extraordinary.

What they found is
that the average person spends

25 seconds
looking at a given painting.

Now, that really isn't a lot.
If you compare it...

We dedicate three minutes
of our time to a pop song,

40 minutes to a symphony,
two hours to a film,

two or three weeks to a novel,
but only 25 seconds to a painting.

And that means that we're really not
looking at great works of art

for long enough to absorb them,

and certainly not
looking at them long enough

to discover new things about them.

I think if you DO look at paintings
more closely

and you take your time, you can
discover extraordinary things.

There were no galleries in the past.

If you wanted to see a painting,

you would have to go
to someone's house

and you would go
and inspect the paintings

and you would spend time doing that.

You wouldn't look at them
for 60 seconds and walk on,

which is what we do now.

I also think people aren't confident
looking at paintings.

When we go into a gallery, we're
very often looking for guidance.

And I think it takes
a lot of courage

to actually say what YOU see,

regardless of
what you're being TOLD to see.

I think it's also important
that a broader range

of perspectives is brought
to the history of art.

It shouldn't just be established
art historians and curators
looking at works of art,

but sometimes people from
a very different background

can see things and notice things
that other people haven't noticed.

So I think that what Nick Wilkinson
has found is fascinating.

I think he's clearly
looked very deeply

and very carefully
at these paintings.

And it may well be that some of
the things he's discovered are...

were intended by Turner,

but it's also possible that none
of them were intended by Turner

and those things
have been placed there by Nick

in his own determination
to find those symbols.

What's brilliant about Nick
is he's just come from left of field

and anyone who comes from
left of field, there's a shock

and you think, "Really?
Can this possibly be true?

Could we have missed all this
for sure?"

I think he is controversial...

..and a lot of people
won't want to see that.

Whether you agree or not,
it's up to you.

But at least we can have
a nice debate about it.

In 1822, Turner painted
The Battle Of Trafalgar

celebrating
Admiral Lord Nelson's triumph

over Napoleon's warships in 1805.

The painting shows
Nelson's ship the Victory

sending out a signal flag saying
"every man will do his duty".

But it also contains symbols
relating to Nelson himself,

who died in the battle.

One of the paintings that Nick
has really focused on

that I DO find really intriguing,

is Turner's painting
of The Battle Of Trafalgar,

cos that has always been

just a weird painting
in Turner's repertoire.

It's an odd painting, full stop.

The Battle Of Trafalgar
is a very strange painting.

It's not really
a very Turnerian picture

because although it's magnificent
and highly accomplished,

and full of extraordinary detail,
it's quite static.

And of course,
like so many of Turner's pictures,

it is filled with symbols -

a flag spelling out the word "duty"

and Nelson's motto
hidden beneath the water.

It's a strange, bizarre painting,

and I've never really understood
why it was static,

why the sails were so Baroque.

All sorts of things.

And in a way,
Nick's findings have really helped.

This is Turner's
only royal commission.

Commissioned by George IV.

And it's got a low perspective

with Victory centre stage,
looming large.

In the foreground, you've got
a scene of the chaos of battle

and death - drowning sailors.

It's already loaded with imagery.

Does the falling mast
indicate the death of Nelson?

His signal flag
is still flying there.

"England expects every man
to do its duty."

So he's really hammering home
the patriotic.

The Wilkinsons think
that there are many more images

than have been spotted so far...

and also ones that tell
a bigger story about Nelson himself.

I want to go through
some hidden images

and just get your reaction
to that, really.

There is a dark falling sail.

That sail has the form
of a death mask.

Could well represent
the death mask of Nelson.

There's a rather strange
triangular bicorne hat.

And then, finally,
there is a skull wearing a coronet

of the kind that you find
in the Order Of The Bath.

It's a sort of cone-shaped coronet.

What we suggest is that these
are all tokens of Nelson's death.

I think if the falling foremast
is often thought

to represent Nelson himself
falling to the deck,

then there's a degree of sense

that those elements would be
further down from the mast.

I can certainly see the bicorne hat.

I hadn't noticed that at all.

Certainly there's a connection

between the traditional
interpretation of the painting

and what appear to be
some hidden forms.

Nelson was a celebrity,

his love life in the public eye.

Famously, he had a mistress,
Emma Hamilton,

while still married.

If you look at the correspondence...

..between Nelson and Emma Hamilton,

they referred to his wife,

Frances Nisbet, as a..."Tom Tit".

Right.
Right?

If you look at the prow
of the Victory...

..and the way that sail's...

very neatly curved round...

Oh, yes.
There's an eye and there's a beak.

Yep.

A bird, a tom tit.

They called her a tom tit
because she had rheumatism.

She moved around erratically.

That's why they did it.
It was rather harsh and unkind.

How do you feel about that?

Well, it's a lot to take in.

In what's a familiar...

familiar painting,

why insert
these additional meanings?

If you look - and it's best
to see it from a distance -

you see the sea form
forms the bosom of a lady.

And then there is a face

looking out at you

with a particularly prominent eye...

..and her chin here.

And she's got a white sheet
behind her.

This, we suggest, is Emma Hamilton.

Ah.
OK?

HMS Victory,

which is behind us here now.
It is.

Pristine condition.

But I'm gonna draw you
to the foreground here.

Floating in the sea here,

supine in the sea,
looking upwards...

in death,

we propose, is the head of Nelson.

Oh, yes, I've got it now.
Yes. It's there, isn't it?

I can see his nose quite clearly
and grey features.

Very appropriate for somebody
who's dead, I suppose.

Isn't that incredible?
Yeah.

That your relative, Turner,

has painted the dead Nelson

supporting the British nation
after his death at the battle?

Yes, it's remarkable.

I'm assuming he intended to do that

and it's not an optical illusion,
basically.

Dr Wilkinson thinks
the figure of Nelson in the sea

may refer to Nelson's funeral,

where his coffin was placed
in a model of the Victory.

I don't see that there.

It's not convincing to me at all.

I understand the imagery
in the painting,

but then I don't
buy that particularly,

because I think it's too disruptive

of the coherence
of the original image.

So I don't see why he would then,
you know, over-egg it a bit.

You told me there were death masks
and yes, I can see them.

In the context of what this painting
was trying to achieve

by somehow
embodying the life of Nelson,

I'm prepared to buy it.

There is already,
in the sort of academic field,

some sort of understanding
that there are hidden messages.

But, yeah, it was only
when I looked through YOUR eyes

I saw this very strange composition
at the bottom.

You know, you do see
a face lying in state,

and I had never considered that.

It's here.
His hair is sort of floating off.

Is this his mouth?
That's his mouth. Yeah.

I think it's a bit of caricature.
I don't know if that's a face.

But don't you think
you could take any painting

and zoom in on it and find faces?

I mean,
I used to do this as a child.

We had very...
I lived in a 400-year-old cottage

and it had very bumpy walls
and was very badly painted.

I remember I used to have to count
50 faces before I fell asleep.

The tendency to perceive
images or objects

where they don't exist
is known as pareidolia.

Pareidolia is a strange name,

but it actually describes
something we all do every day.

It describes the way
we see images in things.

So every time you look up
to the clouds

and you see a face in the clouds,
or you see a face in your coffee,

that is a pareidolia.

Probably the best known example of
pareidolia is the Man in the Moon.

We look at the moon
and we think that we see,

in the distant craters,
a human face.

My viewing experience of something
will be informed by what I know.

Your viewing experience of something
will be informed by what YOU know.

Many people think that
the famous cave paintings

that you find
in the Upper Paleolithic

are also themselves pareidolia,

and that the artists
that made those images

weren't simply putting images
onto the cave walls

but were seeing images

in the shapes and the shadows
of the cave walls.

Renaissance artists
exploited pareidolic effects.

Correggio shows a nymph
embraced by a cloudy Jupiter.

Mantegna's sky
features heavenly faces.

Accidental things can occur
in the making of works of art,

which artists then embrace.

It could be that it began
as an accident,

and it was then something
that he tweaked

in order to make it appear
more intentional.

I think it's highly likely that
that was part of his process

of producing these hidden images,

and we know that that is an
established form for producing art,

which dates back to...

The earliest account we have
is in 11th-century China.

In Turner's day,
he and other landscape painters

were taught using
an inkblot technique...

which encouraged them to find
imaginary scenes in wet paint.

OK, so in terms of watercolour...

..and what you might call
the inkblot technique,

Turner would have used...

Obviously, he was
a great master of watercolour.

In his later years,
when he was very free

and loose with his application -
especially with watercolour...

it would...he would flood it on
with a brush like this.

So it's often thought

that he might simply
start something like this

and then develop a watercolour

from the suggestive properties
of the blotch.

And, of course,
this was something that...

uh...

is mentioned...

Leonardo da Vinci mentions this
as a way of generating imagery

and as a way of understanding
the natural world.

So he would advise his pupils to...
to look at...

..stains on walls...

as a way of emulating

the kind of

shapes and forms
that that happened in nature.

So we might sort of suddenly
think, "OK, well, there's a bit of,

perhaps, a horizon line...
developing here."

And this is entirely speculative
what I'm doing.

I'm just following my nose a bit

and reacting
to what I see in front of me.

What these blots and blotches
might suggest.

What Turner is such a master at

is being responsive to his medium...

..and working
within the limits of it,

but pushing the limits as well.

He did everything in spades
that they pretend

the artists on the Turner Prize
shortlist are doing every year.

But that kind of idea
of an artist as someone

pushing the boundaries, somebody
making you see the world afresh,

it didn't exist
in Victorian England.

In Victorian England, the job of
the artist was to paint myself,

my wife, my horse, my dog,
my country estate.

Maybe paint a bit of mythology.

The idea that you'd paint
the meaning of the universe -

because that's Turner's subject,

he is actually taking on
the meaning of the universe.

He's pushing towards the point
that Einstein reaches

considerably later - namely the idea
that somehow, in light,

in the perception of light,

the secrets of the universe
lie encoded.

Artists have long tried to give
multiple dimensions to their work.

17th-century painters
made landscapes

that transformed into people.

And perhaps some of Turner's
landscapes conceal people, too.

Does his painting of
St Catherine's Hill in Guildford

hide a head and shoulders
of the saint?

If you track through
the history of art,

what you find is that this idea
of hidden images

is a fundamental part
of the history of art.

Whether it's these distorted skulls
in the backgrounds
of Renaissance vanitas paintings,

whether it's the double images of
Salvador Dali and the surrealists,

the idea of disguising

and putting images
secretly into other images

is a fundamental technique
in the history of art.

It's a very fascinating territory.

The whole beauty of them
is they're hidden.

Probably one of
the best-known examples

in a British public collection

is in Holbein's Painting
The Ambassadors,

which is in the National Gallery
in London.

This is a full-length,
full-sized portrait

of two French ambassadors
to the Court of Henry VIII.

The Ambassadors is famous
for its hidden symbolism.

And it's famous above all
for this anamorphic skull,

this...stretched skull,

that when you look
at the painting straight on,

you just think, "What's that mark
at the bottom of the canvas?"

But when you actually
go round to the side

and you look at the painting down,

or when you go to the other side
and look at it up,

that whole "smear", if you like,

condenses into
a perfect painting of a skull.

So that's a classic example

of an artist hiding symbols
in plain sight.

The idea of hiding imagery
in paintings

was very well established.

But as a young man,
Turner lived in Maiden Lane.

The area was full of theatres
and print shops

and places where he would have seen
satirical images,

often had concealed
anthropomorphic images within them.

So all of this is in Turner's
kind of visual vocabulary

from a very early stage.

I think it's entirely plausible
that he would have continued

to deploy those techniques
throughout his career.

And the other thing,
I think, that anybody knows

from having discovered
a hidden or anthropomorphic image

is that when we DO
notice these things,

they have a very profound

and memorable effect
on our consciousness.

I can see why he would have used
this technique

to make a political statement.

And Turner DID make
political statements.

In his painting entitled Slave Ship,

Slavers Throwing Overboard The Dead
And Dying - Typhon Coming On...

..he shows the practice
of offloading human cargo

as a storm approaches.

You look at it
and you go into the painting.

It doesn't come out to you.
You have to go into it to find it.

And that's what I love about it
as a work of art.

Now, the story it tells
is quite dreadful.

These were people methodically
thrown overboard over three days.

142 lives. Men, women and children
were thrown into the sea.

Apparently, one of them
actually made it back...

such was his will to live.

The painting immortalised
the 1781 Zong Massacre.

The ship was sailing to Jamaica.

Beneath the deck,
over 400 suffocating human beings

were being held captive
in horrific conditions.

These ships were not designed
to carry so many people

who would have been having less than
a coffin space to circulate in.

Some figures go up to 470,

and maybe we won't ever
really fully know,

simply because the records
are incomplete.

There was a so-called slave ship.

They set out en route to Jamaica,

but due to miscalculations,

they passed Jamaica

and they began to run out
of food, water.

The ship captain -
somebody called Luke Collingwood -

orders the crew
to throw overboard...

the surplus Africans.

Just even talking about it
is really difficult.

For many of those who were
trying to stop slavery,

including abolitionists -
and African abolitionists -

the way in which they were able
to impact social consciousness

and to change and transform
hearts and minds

was through works of art

that we don't often see
as having a political value.

But they would have had
such a political impact.

But here's the thing. I think
that this painting is being seen

as Turner having a bit of guilt.

He'd invested in a share
in a sugar plantation in Jamaica.

So he was part of the transatlantic
slave trade movement,

but at the same time was able
to kind of see the horror

and the barbaric nature
of this practice.

So, in a way,
it's like his painting speaks

to his kind of personal guilt,

but also speaks to the activism,
or the activist, in him as well.

With this painting,
Turner was compelling people

to campaign with the abolitionists.

Dr Wilkinson has identified
new images concealed in the work

that speak further
to Turner's abhorrence of slavery

and his own sense of personal guilt.

The first image that you find in
here is a large, quite diffuse one.

What you see on the left side,

the storm coming in
to overtake the slave traders,

is an image of Zeus himself...

..using his trademark thunderbolt.

Can you see that image?

I can.

What this painting conveys is how
Turner is totally going against

what becomes
rationalisations for enslavement.

That it was legal,

that somehow it was acceptable.

And clearly,
for Turner to be painting this,

he's really trying to convey
that underbelly...

..that is not spoken

and really flying in the face
of all of the rationalisations

and the justifications
that continue to this day.

And it brings, I think,
a whole new sort of level...

in terms of analysing
what's in this painting

and what messages
he was conveying for the times,

but also timeless messages.

It looks like we've got a god here

throwing in thunderbolts
at the slave traders.

What do you think about that?

You can see
there IS something there.

There's something...big,

powerful, dramatic,
rising out of the sea.

But they're only there
because you told me.

I know there's something there
and I can guess...

I can see where you're coming from.

Turner has put
some powerful image there,

some monumental image.

Whether it's Zeus,
I don't fully resolve it.

But I can see...essentially intense,

the intent of something overbearing
about to descend on the ship.

But could the figure in the clouds

also refer to a famous poem
about guilt?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
Rime Of The Ancient Mariner.

It relates how,
when a sailor shot an albatross,

his ship was becalmed...

..idle as a painted ship
upon a painted ocean...

under a hot and copper sky.

The crew died of thirst.

Their souls sucked up
into a creature in the sky

called Life In Death.

Nick's observations about
Turner's use of pareidolia imagery,

imagery concealed in clouds,
or mountains, or sails,

made me think about The Slave Ship
again and look at the clouds.

And for the first time,

I could see a figure in the clouds,
hovering above the ship.

And that was consistent with two
things that the painting references.

It's consistent, in my view,
that there might be a reference

to the Ancient Mariner.

And when I went back

and read that poem
through Nick's lens,

I indeed could see a lot of imagery
in that painting

that seemed to relate
to the poem as well.

And with good cause,

because that poem does speak

to the death of people
on board a ship,

to their souls, rising...

this figure Life In Death
who sucked up souls towards her.

But the title also talks
about Typhon...

..who is a mythological monster

who has a great battle with Zeus.

He loved those great
sort of mythological battles

between good and evil.

By 1846, Turner meets Sophia Booth,

and they take
a little cottage in Chelsea.

This becomes a place that's really
Turner's private world,

and he's known locally
as Admiral Booth or Mr Booth,

so he's adopted HER surname
to really hide from the world

and just be the man he wants to be

when he's not being
The Great Turner.

Towards the end of his life,
when his health started to decline,

he found this house
on the river in Chelsea.

What he liked about it
was it had this secluded terrace

where he could paint the sky
but not be seen by the public.

By this stage, Turner was
an absolute wreck of a man.

He stank. He was dishevelled.

He was anonymous.

People didn't really know
who he was.

His neighbours didn't
really know him.

They thought he was
a sea captain or something.

He took her name
because he didn't want to be known

as Turner, the great painter.

So he called himself "Puggy"

cos he's only four foot nothing,
as we all know.

So when he did sit with the guys

or the dockers or the sailors,
he would say, "I'm Puggy."

He was a very secretive man.

Turner and Sophia Booth stayed
together for the rest of his life.

It's a relationship that lasts
nearly 20 years,

and he actually dies
at their cottage in Chelsea in 1851.

One of the things
I love about Turner

is actually he donated
all of his paintings,

all of his works, to this nation.

It's unusual for Turner to have left
all his work to the nation,

but it was a very clever thing
for him to have done.

Part of the reasons
why he has endured, really.

It still remains, I think,
the biggest single artist bequest

to a British institution.

His legacy
is absolutely extraordinary.

I think he remains the greatest
British painter of all time

and his name is still remembered.

Think of the Turner Prize,
which is still going.

The Turner Prize began in 1984

to celebrate the most compelling
contemporary visual art.

It's become associated
with a kind of radicalism,

and Turner himself was associated
with a kind of radicalism.

It's deliberately named after Turner
because many people

consider him to be
the first modern British painter.

Turner invented the idea
of the artist

as someone who challenges,

you know, if you wanted to be
really radical as an artist now,

you'd be utterly conventional
because no-one else is doing that.

Is there a Turner code?

Nick is suggesting that some images
skip across paintings.

Bears...geese.

Is that a code?

Maybe. If it's a code,
it's a slightly indistinct code

in a way that only Turner
could provide an indistinct code.

I think he's keeping us guessing.

ERICA: The Turner code signifies
an enhanced way

of looking at and analysing
Turner's paintings.

NICK: First of all,
the fairly high intensity recurrence

of personal emblems -
the bear's head

and a floating head with a large
nose, almost caricature like.

And we find this recurring
across paintings.

Do you think that there could be
a Turner code?

It could be.

It could be...
because he was a genius.

I'm not denying that there are
other narratives

going on in some of these paintings.
You can see that.

Where you have
these images appearing

and they're enigmatic and fugitive.

You know, he painted these things
for a reason

and I can see that you are
hunting after those reasons.

Once you realise he's got
this ability to paint miniatures,

you will find about 200 of them.

The curators have been looking
at these pictures

for a couple of hundred years
and haven't actually spotted it.

Neither have the public.
But it's an addition.

Is not a criticism
that people haven't seen it before.

They haven't had the machinery
to see it before.

It's hard to be sure that Turner
would have intended people

to have seen them, because
I think some of them are so vague.

It's also not impossible
that he would have left

a trail of clues in his work.

I think, as we begin
to look again at these works

with Nick's images in mind,
I'm sure we'll come up with

some slightly different
interpretations.

Or perhaps there will be
a degree of incredulity.

I don't know. We'll need to see
how the things pan out.

I think, if people are
being encouraged to look again,

look more closely at Turner...

..see things that perhaps
they haven't been seen before,

then clearly
there will be an interest

to come and view this great work.

Some of them I can see,
and some of them I can't see.

I find the idea
that Turner would include...

..little secret images
and symbols...

in a certain hidden
graphic language...

I don't find that
totally surprising at all

because I think he was
a man with secret meanings.

I think that the way
that you're looking

and thinking about Turner's work,

whether those images
are in there or not,

is the way that I think
we should look at art.

And I think it's the way
artists want us to look at art,

because I think it's about,
you know,

trying to find the clues
and trying to find

what's in the painting,
what's in the image.

And, of course, you can bring
scholarship and knowledge

and all of these
other disciplines to it,

but you should always
return to the painting.

And if these things
are starting to come out,

I also don't think
it's a leap of the imagination

to imagine that Turner would be

playing with all these
different codes.

Well, I've made the leap,

and it's taken 200 years
to get there on a lot of this,

so we'll see how it's received.

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