BETWEEN May and November 1876, more than nine million visitors attended the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia. This was North America’s first ever World Trade Fair and was staged in some 450 acres of Fairmount Park. It was an exhibition celebrating 100 years of the Declaration of Independence and was opened by President Ulysses S. Grant. Adopted on 4 July 1776, the Declaration of Independence had been signed on 2 August.

The 1876 event attracted some 30,000 exhibitors from 37 countries. It included displays of the latest technology, besides presenting a more traditional show of paintings from both France and England, the beaux-pères, as it were, of the American Revolution. This was staged as something of a run-off between both nations’ artists and underscored the European heritage of the new country.

J. M. W. Turner was born in April 1775, and John Constable a little more than a year later in June 1776. François-Marius Granet was born between both, in December 1775; so the Philadelphia exhibition might also be seen to mark the centenary of their births.

The present exhibition at the Tate now celebrates the 250th anniversary of these leading English painters of the late-18th and early-19th centuries. It brings together nearly 200 works by both artists and is, therefore, much smaller than the 1976 Constable retrospective, which showed more than 330 works. Less is not always more, but this exhibition presents several theatrical coups in a hang that is largely chronological.

As we enter, we see portraits of both men in their early twenties which were painted at the end of the 18th century. Turner’s is a self-portrait oozing confidence in his artistry (Tate), while the suave portrait of Constable is by the latter’s housemate Ramsay Richard Reinagle (NPG), painted as soon as he moved to London in 1799.

© The Frick Collection, New York. Photo Joseph Coscia, JrJohn Constable, The White Horse (1819)

Between them, to establish their rivalry and very distinct styles, are Dolbadarn Castle, North Wales by Turner (1800) and Constable’s much later diploma work, also loaned from the Royal Academy, A Boat Passing a Lock.

Turner’s view of the ruinous fortification beetling over the foot of Llanberis Pass could almost be the setting of a mythical or classical landscape in the style of Poussin, Claude, or Richard Wilson, whereas Constable’s realism shows a hardened farmhand working the lock, desperate to get home before the coming storm as rain already begins to fall over Dedham Vale.

We can sense at once which artist was the city-dweller exploring the country and who was the countryman. But, as Nicola Moorby (Books, 31 October 2025) makes clear in her short catalogue essay, Turner’s travel was for work and business, whereas Constable’s more local journeys were occasioned by the practical need of keeping a large family and maintaining friendships.

Later on, the two Carthaginian pendants, Dido Building Carthage (1815) and Decline of the Carthaginian Empire (exhibited two years later), are brought together, from Trafalgar Square and Millbank. One is pure myth; the second is a history painting. Both owed much, in Turner’s mind, to the end of Napoleon Bonaparte’s empire. As both were part of the Turner Bequest of 1856, they should invite a grown-up conversation about the need to honour that bequest so that this pairing is not temporary and a permanent home is afforded all Turner’s works.

For the first time since they left his studio, we can see side by side the oil sketch (50 x 75cm) that Constable painted on the side of the Thames from Whitehall stairs of Waterloo Bridge in 1819/20 (Daniel Katz) and the resulting painting (1820) that he worked up as a history painting to record the opening of the bridge (17 June 1817). He had confidence to exhibit only that in 1832. The finished painting lacks definition in the composition, as the bridge, necessarily, is too far back in the distance; but the splashes of colour make clear the jubilation of the occasion, in contrast to the wet summer reported that year.

For his part, Turner wasted little time in showing his public The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October 1834. This is art as reportage and was painted from the Surrey side of the river in 1835. This version has been sent over from the Cleveland Museum of Art. In the same year, Turner painted Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight (Washington, DC) for a Manchester cotton-spinner. The same blazing fires illuminate the night scene, but with less disastrous consequences.

Cleveland Museum of Art. Bequest of John L. Severance 1942.647 J. M. W. Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October 1834 (1835)

To be able to see four of John Constable’s so-called “six-footers” side by side is to be drawn into a world that spans not just his beloved Essex and Suffolk, but the dimension of both time (1819-25) and landscape (river scenes): The White Horse (Frick Collection, New York), the earliest, exhibited in 1819; Stratford Mill (National Gallery); View on the Stour near Dedham (The Huntingdon Library, San Marino, California); and the last, owned by the Royal Academy in London, The Leaping Horse of 1825.

After the Napoleonic Wars, Europe was at peace, and Constable won a gold medal in 1824 at the Paris Salon exhibition with the Huntingdon View on the Stour. Unpardonably, the catalogue editor has reproduced this and The Leaping Horse over a page spread, making it almost impossible to see the feat.

The youthful rider encourages a Suffolk Punch to leap the cattle fence. The equestrian vitality draws the immediate attention of onlookers from the wherry, who are lowering a sail by the riverbank, contrasting an everyday event with a surprise that sets the scene in a specific time.

Turner made effective use of the opportunities to travel across Europe and his journeys, charted in his sketches and notebooks as in large-scale paintings with views of Switzerland and of Venice, while Constable stayed at home, not even going to France to collect his gold medal from King Charles X.

Private lenders have been generous. We have the rare opportunity to see Constable’s Flatford Mill from the Lock (1812) and his oil sketch of a view towards Stratford St Mary alongside Turner’s first work, which was sold at auction this summer, The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent’s Rock, Bristol. It was painted when the artist had just turned 15. Here also is the golden glow of a late Turner Landscape with Walton Bridges, a hazy scene with Fragonard-like figures half glimpsed on the high ground in front of us.

For once, the Tate catalogue and the notices on the wall are devoid of cant, and we are not constantly reminded of Turner’s attempt to buy a slave farm in the West Indies, and of where the privileged of the artists’ patrons made their money. Rather, in an understated way, the exhibition marks what is the very best in English art.

Here, the painting of clouds or of the crowds pressing at the Waterloo Bridge opening, of the topographical scenes in Wales and the North Country, and of the coming of the steam engine are instantly recognisable and unashamedly English.

“Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals” is at Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1, until 12 April. Phone 020 7887 8888. tate.org.uk