The Painter

The fashionables? They just want to know if a painting''s hot. Whether it will gain.

Queen Victoria said of Turner, ''He is quite mad.'' A cockney who spoke his mind, he did not fit into the norm of the artist. Society saw him as a misfit, shocking, controversial. He was a visionary, the father of modern painting. The play examines his relationship to three women in his life.

English painting is dead. It''s dealers making fortunes out of sentimental dross. Cherubs. Dogs.

The Painter by Rebecca Lenkiewicz premiered at the Arcola Theatre, London, in January 2011 in the production which marked the opening of its new premises on Ashwin Street.