Turner's remark 'Had Tom Girtin lived, I should have starved' is as good a posthumous puff as any artist ever gave another. It's printed on the back of Tate Britain's Girtin catalogue.* There it reads as a challenge. It puts you on your mettle as you walk past the many pictures whose original effect must be reconstructed from sheets that time has rendered curiously rusty or unnaturally blue.

LRB 22 August 2002 | PDF Download