Photos: Mr. Turner: Behind the Scenes
The director Mike Leigh takes us into J.M.W. Turner’s studio in his biopic of the great painter.

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“I’m lining up a shot in our version of the Royal Academy of Arts, which we created in a stately old decaying home near Sheffield, in Northern England. Shooting on location is just better.” Photograph by Simon Mein. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
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Timothy Spall as J.M.W. Turner. Photograph by Simon Mein. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
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Turner’s Slave Ship, 1840. Courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
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Spall and Dorothy Atkinson on set. Photograph by Simon Mein. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
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Leigh on set. Photograph by Simon Mein. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
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Turner’s Guardship off The Nore. ©National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.