Two BBC Arts Programmes about JMW Turner and LS Lowry

There is to be a 50th anniversary season of Arena classics on BBC Four this Autumn. As well as creating access to new documentaries about JMW Turner and LS Lowry (see below) they are also releasing a further 50 titles from the archive available on BBC iPlayer.

Two of the new documentaries are about much loved English Artists of note. 

Given the absolute annihilation of anything about art history on the BBC after the cuts, these documentaries are very welcome - but I have some reservations. I hope they're going to be good - but I think people have maybe taken the opportunity to be "creative"

Turner: The Secret Sketchbooks

This is the BBC press release about it. 

This groundbreaking documentary unlocks the hidden psychology of J.M.W. Turner through his 37,000 private sketches, drawings, and watercolours – an extraordinary archive that reveals the man behind the masterpieces. For the first time on television, these pages – Including erotic sketches previously thought to have been destroyed – are used as a window into Turner’s inner world, exposing his private thoughts, creative obsessions and emotional life. Rarely writing about himself, Turner left behind few clues to his personality. But in his sketchbooks, his restless imagination and vulnerabilities come vividly to life.

Helping unlock Turner’s life story is legendary actor Timothy Spall, who famously portrayed the artist in Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner. He is joined by Britain’s most renowned living artist Tracey Emin, artist and filmmaker Sir John Akomfrah, Rolling Stone’s Ronnie Wood, psychotherapist Orna Guralnik, naturalist Chris Packham, and an array of leading art historians. Together, they guide viewers through Turner’s life and art, revealing how his 37,000 sketches not only chart his creative evolution but also provide an unprecedented psychological portrait of a man both visionary and vulnerable.

What some of these people have to do with Turner is totally beyond me. It's got a whiff of "which names have most pull?" about it. I want to know which leading art historians are contributing to it, not what gimmick the company which made the documentary came up with.

Jury is out for me based on this "insight" into what's coming.

Lowry: The Lost Tapes

“Self Portrait” by Lowry, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Oil on board, 57.2 x 47.2cm
This was painted when the artist was 37.
 Lowry later recalled,
‘I had a great tussle with it, and when it was done said “Never again, thank you.” '
© The Lowry Collection, Salford

The film has been commissioned by the BBC  to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of L.S. Lowry in 2026.

This looks promising - but for some more nonsense in this press release as well.

How can you talk about "we'll hear from Lowry himself" (from unheard audio tapes) and "his real voice lip synced by one of our greatest actors"? It sounds nonsensical to me.

50 years after L.S. Lowry’s death, this landmark documentary will bring to light a newly discovered treasure trove of unheard audio tapes recorded with the artist during the final four years of his life.

From the comfort of his own living room and inner sanctuary, we’ll hear from Lowry himself, his real voice lip-synced by one of our greatest actors. Taking us from the beginning of his life to the very end, he will reveal the formative memories and experiences that shaped him as an artist, and as a person.

This immersive documentary will foreground the touching, charming exchange between the enigmatic Lowry and his often surprising interviewer, a young researcher called Angela. But Lowry’s personal narrative also tells a bigger story, of a seismically changing Greater Manchester, where he lived, worked and painted so prolifically.

No specific dates available but it's sounding like Novemberish....