Disappointment has long been one of the many reactions expressed by visitors to Stonehenge over the last century or so. The monument itself was ‘too small’ to fulfil great expectations; the nearby road traffic was intrusive; the visitor facilities were banal and encroached on the site itself (the Canadian heroine of Margaret Atwood’s novel Lady Oracle (1976), for example, is ‘shocked’ by its fenced-off presentation). Running alongside this deteriorating experience, advances in knowledge, brought about mostly by new technology, have firmly established Stonehenge as one element in a constellation of monuments spread across this part of Salisbury Plain. Just two miles away, for example, ground-penetrating radar has discovered horizontally laid stones, more than fifty, which were later incorporated into the circular enclosure known as Durrington Walls. This is one of several recent finds, based on earlier observations, including henge-like Neolithic and Bronze Age stone monuments, as well as burial mounds and traces of domestic life that have led to a more bustling picture of the area. In 2008 more conventional fieldwork was carried out, especially on the avenue north of Stonehenge and the excavation of one of the Aubrey Holes for evidence of cremations. But for decades, Stonehenge was known to the general public as a momentarily startling, pop-up presence, instantly recognisable, seen against the sky from the main A303 road running across Salisbury Plain. While such a view is still attainable, a good deal else has changed for the visitor who goes close to the site.
Having the ability to soar to new heights of creativity in old age is perhaps a key qualification for greatness as an artist. J.M.W. Turner finds a strong place in any list of painters that could be drawn up to whom this applies, as his work became more personal, expressive and experimental late in his career. As such, it was a cause of incomprehension to contemporaries such as Ruskin, although later it became justly celebrated. The reasons for its mature evolution are complex to tease out and include an intensification of earlier pre-occupations and perhaps the sense that as the time left to paint shrank, the desire to achieve more quickened; this was especially acute for Turner as he had an incredibly powerful work ethic. A new sense of liberation also emerged which meant that he was increasingly able to paint for himself rather than the market, as his career had proved so lucrative. Nonetheless, the artist continued to employ strategies that had served him well, travelling across the Continent and gathering material in his sketchbooks until 1845, while also exhibiting at the Royal Academy until 1850. Late Turner: Painting Set Free, seen by this reviewer at Tate Britain, London (to 25th January; then at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, from 24th February to 24th May 2015, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, from 20th June to 20th September 2015) explores these themes among others and, perhaps most importantly, sets out to measure Turner’s achievement on its own terms, rather than viewing it as prophetic of later developments in abstraction or modernism – which has been one of the recurring and distracting motifs in Turner studies since the 1960s.