Timothy Spall turns into Turner to deliver authentic portrait of the artist

AS METHOD acting goes, it was an awesome challenge.

Actor turns painter for the part

AS METHOD acting goes, it was an awesome challenge. British actor Timothy Spall prepared for his role in a biopic about JMW Turner by learning to paint.

Mr Turner, a film directed by Mike Leigh about the great British artist whose works include The Fighting Temeraire and Rain, Steam and Speed, will receive its premiere at the Cannes film festival this week.

“When Mike Leigh asked me about three years ago to play this role, I just felt I had to fully immerse myself,” says Spall, whose previous parts include Peter Pettigrew in the Harry ­Potter films and Winston Churchill in The King’s Speech.

“I’m part self-taught, but also took lessons from a professional artist, Tim Wright, who is mainly a portrait painter.”

Spall’s dedication has been well rewarded. As a gift, Wright created a portrait of Spall that has been selected for this year’s BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Spall, who also took advice from Susanne du Toit, the winner of the 2013 BP award and his son Rafe’s mother-in-law, joked: “I’m not a bad artist myself now. I did my own version of one of ­Turner’s steamships. I’d reckon I’m now as good as Turner was when he was, say, nine. And he was pretty bloody good at nine.”

While Turner was admitted to the Royal Academy’s art school at the age of 14, Spall has had to wait until 57 for his debut exhibition. Eight drawings and etchings will go on show next month at the Maison Bertaux gallery in London’s Soho.

“They are all themed around angels and each one has a little poem attached,” he says. “But these are not your usual angels — some are rather debauched and Hogarthian.”

Spall also prepared for the role by reading several biographies of Turner. “Nine, I reckon,” he says.

The biopic examines the last 25 years of Turner, who died in 1851, aged 76. He spent much of that period living in Margate, Kent, and later Chelsea, in west London, with Sophia Booth, a widow played by Marion Bailey, who has starred in previous Leigh films including All or Nothing and Vera Drake. The largely illiterate Booth nursed the artist in his final illness at her house in Chelsea.

Spall said the relationship was one of affection, rather than love. “Turner was not the marrying kind. He liked women for comfort and sex.”

Turner, who is widely thought to have fathered two daughters with his lover Sarah Danby, was a character of extremes, mixing with aristocrats as well as with prostitutes. With the exception of his ­father, who became his studio assistant, Turner usually preferred the company of women.

He became a good friend to the Scottish scientist Mary ­Somerville, played in the film by Lesley Manville.

His father’s death in 1829 sent the artist into a depression that he tackled by throwing himself into his work, producing thousands of paintings, drawings and etchings.

James Hamilton, whose bio­graphy of the artist was read by Spall, says: “The art establishment of the time was also full of admiration for Turner, but they didn’t really understand him or his paintings.’’

THE SUNDAY TIMES