J. M. W. Turner skewered his arch rival John Constable 177 years ago with a wickedly simple act of artistic sabotage involving the last-minute addition of a dollop of red paint.

Now history has repeated itself in the battle for the annual contemporary art crown that bears the great painter’s name.

The 2009 Turner Prize exhibition opens at Tate Britain, in London, today and each of the four nominated artists has a gallery to themselves in which to show their work.

The displays have taken shape over the past three weeks but the latest addition, by far, was a delicate painting made after all the other artists had left the building the night before the show opened to the critics.

Sofia Karamani, the curator working with Richard Wright, arrived at the gallery at 9pm on Sunday to discover a delicate abstract mural by the artist in rust-red paint.

Its position above a doorway at the opposite end of the room to Wright’s large wall painting — an intricate compostion in gold leaf that he spent three weeks slaving over — just happens to divert the viewer’s gaze away from Lucy Skaer’s work next door.

The addition has the same effect as Turner’s ploy in 1832, when he and Constable were due to show paintings side by side at the Royal Academy.

By adding a red buoy to his muted sea painting Helvoetsluys just before the exhibition opened, Turner made Constable’s The Opening of Waterloo Bridge (Whitehall Stairs, June 18th, 1817) look gaudy and unsubtle in comparison. Constable, who had been in another gallery when the touching-up occurred, returned to the scene and pronounced: “Turner has been here and fired a gun.”

The incident is revisited downstairs at Tate Britain in the exhibition Turner and the Masters, where the two paintings are hung together for the first time since 1832. Wright has seen the show but denied he was reprising Turner’s tactic.

Unlike some previous Turner nominees, Wright, 49, describes himself as a painter and is steeped in appreciation for the artists of the past. “Talking to him for five minutes is like taking a crash course in art history,” Ms Karamani said.

The contenders for the 25th Turner Prize have been working on their exhibitions since the shortlist was announced five months ago. Skaer, 34, took two weeks to install her work, which includes a sperm whale’s skull and 26 skittle-like objects modelled from compressed coal dust after Brancusi’s Bird in Space sculptures.

The other nominees are Enrico David and Roger Hiorns. David comes closest to the familiar Turner Prize shock tactics with an installation that nods at children’s toys, gay sex, Kenneth Williams and the erotic possibilities of builders’ behinds. Hiorns has atomised a passenger jet engine into a troubling but beautiful heap of dust in various shades of grey.

Stephen Deuchar, director of Tate Britain and chairman of the Turner Prize jury, said that he had been instantly reminded of Turner and Constable when he saw what Wright had done. But, he added, the addition also served an artistic purpose: “I think he needed a foil for this very beautiful piece so that as you turn round it gives you an unexpected postscript.”

The shortlisted four

Enrico David (born 1966, Italy) Contemporary surrealist known for original and confrontational paintings and sculptures, such as his papier-mâché eggmen, right

Roger Hiorns (1974, Britain) Takes uncomplicated approach to art, creating sculpture and installation pieces that explore chemical processes to spectacular effect

Lucy Skaer (1975, Britain) Hovering in the space between recognition and ambiguity, Skaer creates drawings and sculptures rooted in reality but subject to an elaborate transformation

Richard Wright (1960, Britain) Wright focuses on exquisite paintings using graphic imagery and intimate patterns from varied sources

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