Exhibition at Petworth, west Sussex 7 January – 12 March 2017
The house and upper pond at Petworth House and Park, West Sussex. Credit National Trust Images, Andrew Butler.
Some of Britain’s greatest watercolors will come to the National Trust’s Petworth in West Sussex for an exhibition that explores JMW Turner’s leading role in shaping this uniquely British art form.
The exhibition will display watercolors by Turner himself alongside stunning works by artists who inspired him including Edward Dayes and Thomas Hearne, contemporaries John Constable, John Sell Cotman, Thomas Girtin and many others.
Petworth contains one of the National Trust’s finest art collections, including permanent works by Turner, and its art exhibition has become a major annual event for visitors.
Watercolors in the exhibition can be seen in contrast to the grand oil paintings and sculpture from the same period within Petworth, home to Turner’s patron, George Wyndham, third Earl of Egremont.
Andrew Loukes, Exhibitions Manager, said: “Turner is the most celebrated figure associated with Petworth and also one of the most important artists in terms of British watercolor. We have a remarkable collection of oil paintings and sculpture, but very few watercolors, because the third Earl of Egremont didn’t collect them. So it’s fascinating to bring them together here and to tell the missing chapter in the story of both Turner and British art generally.”
A First Rate Taking in Stores.
A highlight of the exhibition is Turner’s, A First Rate Taking in Stores, 1818. This dramatic scene of a vast ship on the high seas is the only painting to have been documented by an observer while Turner was making it. ‘He began by pouring wet paint onto the paper until it was saturated, he tore, he scratched, he scrabbled at it in a kind of frenzy and the whole thing was chaos – but gradually and as if by magic the lovely ship, with all its exquisite minutia came into being’.
Watercolor, in Turner’s time, was considered a very British medium and its promotion was a matter of patriotism, paralleling Petworth’s support of British art in other media. The Sun reported that an 1819 exhibition featuring watercolors by Turner and others was ‘the work of British Artists, and it therefore constitutes a delightful repast for Patriotism as well as Taste.’
The age of watercolor was also a period of high romanticism in literature with Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron and their contemporaries feasting on landscape and the sublime.
The Great Falls of the Reichenbach
The Reichenbach Falls is an unmissable painting and one of Turner’s largest watercolors. At over a metre tall it is a spectacular painting and a technical tour de force. Turner had by this point in his career broken free of traditional methods. Working on a large scale allowed him to depict the soaring perspectives he had seen on his tour of Switzerland in 1802. It was also the location that author Arthur Conan Doyle chose for Sherlock Holmes to stage his own death.
Frances Towne’s The Colosseum from the Caelian Hills, is from the earlier end of the period –1799. On his European travels his delicate early style transformed into larger, more luminous works of an ancient civilization in ruins.
In contrast, John Constable’s Coal Brigs on Brighton Beach (c1824) is a monochrome drawing, with watercolor bringing faint color and life to the sky.
The exhibition also showcases previously unseen works from the private collection at Petworth. These include an album of hand-colored etchings, tinted with watercolor, by the political satirist James Gillray.
Alongside this will be displays in the house by two contemporary artists who have made a study of Turner. Charlie Cobb created the oil paintings seen in Mike Leigh’s film Mr Turner and will show some of these and other examples of his work in the Old Library, the room once used by Turner and others as a studio which is not normally open to the public.
Mike Chaplin is a leading contemporary watercolorist who collaborated with Tate Britain on the celebrated book How to Paint Like Turner and for many years was the expert judge on Channel 4’s Watercolor Challenge. Several of Chaplin’s watercolor copies after Turner and examples of his own work will also be on show in an upstairs room overlooking one of Turner’s favorite views.
Thirty-six of the exhibits in the show are on loan from the Cecil Higgins Collection, Bedford, which is one of the great collections of British watercolors. There are two additional works from London’s Martin Gregory Gallery, a leading dealer in British watercolors and a sponsor of the exhibition.
Some works from the Martyn Gregory Gallery, Charlie Cobb and Mike Chaplin will be for sale.
Turner and the Age of British Watercolor, at Petworth from 7 January to 12 March. Entry is by pre-booked, timed tickets only, which are on sale from from www.nationaltrust.org.uk/petworth or 0844 249 1895
