Spall pinpoints Turner’s anti social attitude well, and also communicates his passion for painting seaside scenes and ships, as shown in the Margate coastal settings. Spall also is convincing in defying those who would condemn his art, advanced for its time, and his preference for leaving his work for posterity to his country, rather than accepting a bundle of money form a collector.

But it is through his relationships with women that we see Turner at is most human, and also at his most crass. Dorothy Atkinson plays his housekeeper, with whom Spall perfunctorily has sex, using her for his pleasure but not giving her any warmth or love in return. It is in later life that he takes up seriously with his landlady Sophie Booth, a widow, given a lovely performance by Marion Bailey. They form a strong attachment, and Spall makes clear that Turner cares for her, as she does for him.

There is a very droll scene in which critic John Ruskin praises the work of Turner, who is shown to seem ungrateful by criticizing Ruskin. Joshua McGuire plays Ruskin in an ultra effeminate manner that is quite funny.

The final scenes in Turner’s life, when he is fatally ill and fading, evoke pity, not only for him, but for Sophie, who will be pained at losing him, given what he has come to mean in her life.