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.

“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.
Timothy Spall as J.M.W. Turner. Photograph by Simon Mein. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Turner’s Slave Ship, 1840. Courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Spall and Dorothy Atkinson on set. Photograph by Simon Mein. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Leigh on set. Photograph by Simon Mein. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Turner’s Guardship off The Nore. ©National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.