London (The Guardian).- “The sun is God.” These are said to be the last words Joseph Mallord William Turner spoke from his London deathbed as the light streamed through his window. Not quite true: what the artist actually said, to his doctor, was “Go downstairs and get yourself a glass of sherry.” The more famous phrase was an invention of Turner’s friend, John Ruskin, the critic who made the artist a kind of demigod, championing his every brushstroke. Turner Contemporary, a brand-new public art gallery that opened on the seafront at Margate on April 16th 2011, glories in sunlight. It rises from the site of the lodging house where the artist enjoyed the ample favours of its landlady, Sophia Booth. It was from this north Kent beach, where the North Sea wrestles with the Thames Estuary, that Turner immortalised in oils and watercolours the sunlight and seascapes that would make him Britain’s greatest painter.