Turner's Modern World review – a master out of his element

Tate Britain, London
For all his greatness, JMW Turner was neither a political satirist nor a social chronicler, yet this show struggles to make him oneThere is a painting in this strangely contradictory exhibition of English labourers gathering turnips in a field near Slough. It is almost as banal as it sounds. A few cows, vague vegetables, the workers cursorily indicated in smeary oil paint: Turner appears comparatively indifferent to this scene of rural life, except as a pretext for his true