Madrid's Prado to stage Turner exhibition

Madrid's Prado Museum opens an exhibition next week of the works of English master JMW Turner, including several paintings that were not in the same show in London and Paris.

"Turner and the Masters", which explores the links between the 19th-century Joseph Mallord William Turner and his artistic forebears, will be open from June 22 until September 19.

The exhibition, the first major retrospective of the artist in Spain, arrives in Madrid after being shown at London's Tate Britain gallery and Paris' Grand Palais

About 40 works will be on display alongside the masterpieces of those European artists who inspired him or to whom he has been compared, such as Rembrandt, Rubens, Claude Lorraine, Veronese, Canaletto, Watteau and Constable.

Turner is "one of the greatest, if not the greatest British artist of all time," the curator of the exhibition, David Solkin, said Friday. He was a "precursor of impressionism and abstraction."

Among the works on show at the Prado and which were not in London or Paris are "The Wreck of a Transport Ship" and "Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps."