Mark Carney: Light is therefore colour
Central bank: boe | Type: speech | Date: 2019-10-10

## Light is therefore Colour: Remarks at the launch of the new £20 banknoteSpeech given byMark Carney, Governor of the Bank of EnglandTurner Contemporary Gallery, Margate 10 October 2019I would like to thank Clare Macallan for her assistance in preparing these remarks and Lizzie Levett and Lisa Young for providing background information.1It is a pleasure to be back at Turner Contemporary in Margate to unveil the new £20 banknote featuring JMW Turner.

## Banknote characterTurner was a frequent visitor to Margate, drawn by 'the skies over Thanet', which he held to be 'the loveliest in all Europe'.

The East Kent coast inspired more than 100 of his works and this gallery stands on the site of Mrs Booth's seafront guesthouse, where Turner stayed whenever he visited.Turner's contribution to art extends well beyond this stretch of shoreline.

He was precocious - exhibiting at the Royal Academy at 15, and becoming an Academician at 24 - as well as prolific, producing more than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours, and 30,000 sketches and drawings.Turner

is

rightly

celebrated

for

his

unique

ability

to

capture

light

and

highly

varied

atmospheric

effects through use of vibrant colour and flowing

brushwork; he

often

went to extremes in

pursuit of the

visceral artistic experience.

His paintings blaze with the heat of the sun, shimmer in moonshine, and rumble under the weight of gathering storm clouds.These works transformed the field of landscape art.

Before Turner, landscapes were generally viewed as subjects unworthy in their own right;

their role was merely to provide backdrop to the real action.

Turner elevated the genre by showing how paint could not only convey the appearance of a place but also capture something of its spirit.Turner also used art to hold a mirror to the technological and social transformations happening around him.

Masterpieces such as Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway captured

the

advent

of

the steam age.

The Slave Ship reflected on the moral preoccupations of his times.The artistic developments that Turner pioneered resonated well beyond his lifetime, providing inspiration to the

Impressionists

and

leading

Mark

Rothko

to

joke

'This

man

Turner,

he

learnt

a

lot

from

me'.

A contemporary reviewer may have put it best when he placed Turner among 'the masters whose day is not so much of to-day, as of 'all times''. 1Indeed, Turner's legacy endures today through his influence on art for over two centuries, to the prize that bears his name to celebrate British contemporary art, to this magnificent gallery, the Turner Contemporary.Soon Turner's

work

will

feature

on

another

2

billion

works

of

art

-

the

new

£20

notes

from

the

Bank

of England.1 The Champion , Newspaper Article, published 7 May 1815.2

## Banknote designThe new £20 note celebrates Turner, his art and his legacy in all their radiant, colourful glory.The

design

features

Turner's

self-portrait,

from

1799,

alongside

one

of

his

most

eminent

paintings, The Fighting Temeraire . 2

This painting is a tribute to the HMS Temeraire - which battled with distinction during Nelson's victory at Trafalgar in 1805 - and an elegy to the decline of sail, showing the great warship being pulled

by

a

steam

tug

to

her

last

berth

to

be

broken

up

for

scrap.

The

novelist

William

Makepeace Thackeray called it 'as grand a painting as ever figured on the walls of any academy, or came from the easel of any painter'. 3

The public clearly agrees, voting it Britain's greatest painting in a BBC poll in 2005. 4The

Fighting

Temeraire exemplifies

Turner's

innovative

use

of

light,

shade,

colour

and

tone.

These contributions to the visual arts are captured in the quote - 'Light is therefore colour' - which is from an 1818 lecture by Turner.Turner rarely signed his paintings, so the signature on the banknote was taken from his will.

That is fitting because, in a codicil to that testament, he bequeathed his paintings to the nation, and in doing so made a significant contribution to British society.

Few Turners are locked away in private collections or spread to the four winds.

The vast majority are free for the British public to see across some of our greatest galleries.The note references several of these galleries.

A small purple foil on the reverse side of the note echoes the spiral staircase at Tate Britain, which holds most of the Turner Bequest in the Clore Gallery.

The main foil of the note contains an image of Turner Contemporary in blue.

And the shape of the window around the foil is based on the Trafalgar Fountains, which are an iconic feature in the square outside The National Gallery where The Fighting Temeraire hangs.The

purpose

of

design

features

like

these

is

not

simply

to

make

the

banknotes

beautiful

but

also

to strengthen their security.The new £20 will be our most secure note yet, featuring several innovative elements.

For example, rather than having a single foil element - the Turner Contemporary in blue - there is an additional foil in a second colour:

the Margate Lighthouse in gold.

And there is a second transparent element in the bottom corner of the note, inspired by the windows of Tintern Abbey, which was a popular tourist spot in Turner's times and which he memorialised in another of his great watercolours in 1794.These security features are made possible by printing the new £20 on polymer, rather than paper.

Polymer banknotes also remain in good condition for longer, meaning the new £20 will be safer, cleaner and stronger.2 The self-portrait is currently on display in Tate Britain, and The Fighting Temeraire can been seen in The National Gallery.3 P. Ackroyd, Turner (Vintage, 2006) page 136.4

See: varied colour of our banknotes also plays an important role in making the nation's money as inclusive as possible.

Features like the differing colour palettes, differing sizes and raised print enable those who are visually impaired to recognise different notes.

As with the new polymer £10, the new £20 will also include a tactile feature - a series of raised dots in the upper left-hand corner - to improve accessibility further.

## ConclusionBanknotes are meagre pieces of paper - or more accurately polymer - of no intrinsic value that serve vital economic functions.

They facilitate trade.

They store value.

They act as a unit of account.

As the man whom Turner will replace on the £20 Adam Smith observed, banknotes may be mere barren tokens but they are the 'universal instrument of commerce'. 5And

money

serves

as

a

collective

memory

for

a

country

and

its

people;

it

has

cultural

value

as

well

as economic.As the new Turner £20 testifies, money can be a work of art in everyone's pocket.

Far from being 'barren', 6 our banknotes celebrate UK's heritage, salute its culture and testify to the great achievements of its most notable citizens.That tradition continues with the new £20.

JMW Turner will circulate alongside Winston Churchill on the £5, and Jane Austen on the £10.

In 2021, Alan Turing will soon replace Boulton and Watt on the £50.

These individuals have advanced British thought, demonstrated exceptional leadership, and more generally helped to shape this diverse society and forge our common values.I'm delighted to be joined today to celebrate Turner's continuing influence by one of our most eminent artists, someone whom Turner has influenced and one of Margate's own.

As precocious and prolific as Turner, a fellow Royal Academician, the master of confessional art and fittingly, past winner of the Turner Prize, please welcome Tracey Emin.5

Book I, Chapter 4 'On the Origin and Use of Money' of Smith, A (1776), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations .6

A moniker used by Kocherlakota.

See Kocherlakota, N (1998), 'Money is Memory', Journal of Economic Theory, 81 (2).4