The Clore Gallery, a new wing of London’s Tate Gallery, is devoted to the enormous body of work that J. M. W. Turner left to the British nation. It’s designed in a subdued postmodern style, a style that wouldn’t have raised eyebrows fifty years ago and will probably look equally appropriate in the year 2039. Here Turner is shown complete, the later, mystically vaporized Turners that were esteemed in the 1960s together with the earlier, more conventionally picturesque Turners that returned to favor in the historically-minded 1970s. In special galleries, watercolors and drawings that can’t be exposed to light for long periods of time appear in rotating exhibitions. While I was in London in January, the temporary show focused on Turner’s “Second Decade: 1800-1810” and included much work done during his visits to the Continent. All in all, the Clore Gallery is a sophisticated solution to the long-felt need for a permanent home for the Turner bequest. The Turner wing is also, so far as I can see, an international anomaly. What other nation has thought to devote an entire wing of a national museum to a single artist-hero?

Viewed at the Tate Gallery in proud isolation, Turner could provide new fuel for those who are inclined to see English art in terms of a series of free-standing, essentially disconnected accomplishments. Hogarth, Stubbs, and Constable may not have separate wings at the Tate; but they, too, impress one as existing outside any historical continuum, neither defining themselves in