Tate unites the masters

Tate Britain today revealed details of what is set to become the first blockbuster art show of next year.

The exhibition will bring together more than 100 works from three titans of 19th-century art - Turner, Whistler and Monet.

The exhibition will be the first to trace the artistic dialogue between the three painters, who between them revolutionised landscape painting and laid the ground for the advent of Impressionism.

A Tate spokesman said: "A pattern of themes and variations begun by Turner appears to have been developed in the artistic interchange between the younger artists Whistler and Monet."

The themes are closely linked to their time, such as the effects of industrial pollution.

All three artists revisited their subjects again and again to explore the aesthetic effects of different light and weather. To capture the intangible, they also used different techniques such as watercolour wash - leading to accusations at the time of lack of detail.

The exhibition will feature views of the Thames, the Seine and the city and lagoon of Venice. All were controversial when painted; all are now revered as masterpieces.

The show will be split into six rooms and will open with one dedicated to Turner. It will display works that, according to the Tate, "would have been available for Whistler and Monet to view in London, and from which they went on to develop their own distinctive effects".

The next room will be dedicated to early works by Whistler and Monet, and will portray the beginning of their transition from a realist to an impressionist approach. A special section will be dedicated to the Nocturnes, Whistler's night-time paintings of the capital.

The effect on the two younger artists' work by poet Mallarmé, who focused on the transient aspects of nature as metaphor, is the focus of another room, which will display Monet's series, Morning On The Seine, and Turner's Swiss watercolours.

London will star in another section of the show dedicated to the 1880s and 1890s when Whistler and Monet - who had now become friends and collaborators - returned from Europe.