An artist and a gallery in a British seaside resort
THE GREAT BRITISH artist Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851) was accurately described by the writer John Ruskin as “… the father of Modern art …” in 1843. Turner first visited Margate when he was aged 11. After about 1820, he often stayed in the town because he thought the skies over the area were the most beautiful he had seen in Europe. Between 1827 and 1847, he stayed in the town in a guesthouse owned by Mr and Mrs Booth. When Mr Booth died in 1833, Turner became a close companion of the widowed Sophia Booth, who died in 1878. He also adopted the name ‘Booth’.
The house owned by Sophia Booth, where Turner resided, is no more. Where the guesthouse once stood is now occupied by the Turner Contemporary Gallery (‘TCG’). The gallery was designed by David Chipperfield (born 1953), and opened in April 2011. Just as Turner’s paintings were considered avant-garde and even provocative when they first appeared, the TCG is a highly adventurous contrast to the rest of the old town that neighbours it. Some buildings look better inside than outside. The TCG is a good example of this. The gallery spaces are spacious and well-lit both by natural and artificial light. They were a perfect place to view the highly colourful creations of the Brazilian born artist Beatriz Milhazes (born 1960), which are on show at the TCG until the 10th of September 2023.
I believe that the presence of the TCG has elevated Margate’s status from being a simple, unexceptional seaside resort to a place that attracts a much wider range of visitors than it did in the past. As happened in London’s Islington in the 1960s, a rather mundane place has become somewhere that people now feel they ‘must visit’. Although the usual British seaside attractions can still be found in Margate, the town is now also catering for the ‘up market’ clientele. And that cannot be a bad thing because when I lived in Kent (1982-1992), apart from Whitstable (and maybe Broadstairs), most of the seaside places in north and east Kent were in decline and rather melancholy.
The opening of the TCG has done for Margate what the art Triennale has done for another previously dreary Kent town – Folkestone. Even if Turner might have been shocked to see what now stands where he spent many happy hours with Sophia Booth, I feel sure that he would have been happy to know that it has revitalised a town which he loved.
