Article by Chiara Ventura

Starting August 9th, Tate Britain is hosting a free exhibition on Romantics painters. A bit more than a temporary show, the Clore Gallery’s nine rooms, previously dedicated to JMW Turner only, are being taken over by his contemporaries until December 2012.

The works are both newly acquired and being drawn from Tate’s collection, and they include powerful illustrations hand drawn and coloured by William Blake, beautiful paintings inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and by the world of fairies realised by Henri Fuseli, and beautiful English countryside renditions by John Constable. The paintings are extremely beautiful and transport the visitor in a wonderful world of fairies, elves and passionate poets. The exhibition doesn’t aim to be a complete one, as it would be impossible given to the amount of works produced in the 1800 by these prolific artists, but more to initiate the public to this group of extremely interesting painters (and sometimes writers too) who aimed to express themselves and their feelings and to experiment new techniques and designs. An highlight of the exhibition are the upstairs room still entirely dedicated to Turner, where adults and children alike can learn about the fascinating art of engraving and about colours and light.