Jake Wood-Evans and 250 years of JMW Turner

In 2025, the art world commemorates a major milestone – the 250th anniversary of the birth of J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), who is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential British artists of all time.

The activities surrounding the Turner250 programme this year offer a global spotlight on Turner’s revolutionary approach to capturing light, atmosphere, and the sublime power of nature – all traits for which he was famously dubbed “the painter of light.”

Turner’s profound fascination with light and colour broke new ground in British painting. In making the transitory effects of sky, mist, sea spray visible on canvas his works suggested untrammelled natural energies, and the colours of his luminous skies radiate from the canvas. In short, his work transformed landscape painting and influenced generations of artists to follow.

Contemporary British painter Jake Wood-Evans carries forward this fascination with light in his own distinctive style. Much like Turner, Wood-Evans seeks to explore the intangible – those fleeting qualities of luminosity and half-glimpsed forms that hover between representation and abstraction. In his Nocturne series, for example, Wood-Evans uses a bright yellow base layer to imbue each canvas with a radiant glow that persists despite the darker pigments layered on top. This approach resonates with Turner’s technical explorations with paint, emphasising the interplay between presence and absence and capturing the atmospheric rather than the literal.

Wood-Evans explains, ​​“The main link that runs through my painting is the study of light, and what it does to objects and people. But more so than in previous exhibitions, with this body of work I’m following an abstract element that defines my interest in light and movement and atmosphere – these paintings use light and colour to begin to tell a different story about movement. What’s really been the breakthrough, I think, is moving away from a traditional colour palette, which opens up so many more possibilities about how these paintings feel.”

Just as Turner’s late works were hailed for their near-abstract treatment of light and colour, Wood-Evans continues that tradition by reducing literal subject matter in favour of mood and experience. His art is part of an unbroken conversation stretching from 18th- and 19th-century British masters through to today’s contemporary scene, showing how the transformative power of light on canvas remains every bit as compelling now as it was in Turner’s time.

A further major influence on Nocturne is the American painter James McNeil Whistler, who in turn acknowledged the profound influence of Turner on his own work. Whistler’s famous “Nocturnes” reimagined scenes of nighttime London or moonlit shores, emphasising harmony of colour over detailed representation. By toning down narrative elements, he created compositions that hover between reality and abstraction – a direction Turner had begun to explore in his later years.

Whistler’s break with strict realism and focus on arrangement of colour, shape, and atmosphere paved the way for more modernist approaches in painting, but was also met with fierce contemporary criticism. His groundbreaking piece, Nocturne in Black and Gold (1875) famously led Whistler into a legal dispute with renowned art critic John Ruskin, who dismissed Whistler’s subtle composition as mere “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” Undeterred, Whistler defended his artistic vision, thereby shaping a new perspective on the role and value of modern art. In Nocturne, Wood-Evans draws on this legacy, shedding overt figurative detail to highlight subtle shifts in colour and delicate luminosity, evoking feelings of reverence and mystery reminiscent of Whistler’s best-known scenes.

Today, 250 years after the birth of JMW Turner, we still feel the repercussions of his legacy. Following the precedent set by Turner’s late paintings and Whistler’s pared-down compositions, Wood-Evans moves between loosely recognisable imagery of suggestive figures and floral motifs towards near-abstraction. His canvases encourage viewers to immerse themselves in mood and nuance rather than explicit storytelling. Jake Wood-Evans situates his own practice within this broader artistic lineage, providing personal responses to the same questions that drove Turner: “How can paint evoke the intangible? How can light be both subject and medium?” Artists like Jake Wood-Evans help ensure that “painting light” continues to illuminate new paths in art, centuries after this revolutionary idea first took shape on canvas.