A promising young artist
Turner was born on the 23rd of April 1775 in Covent Garden, London. He showed artistic talent from an incredibly early age: his father was a barber and wigmaker who would enthusiastically display his son’s drawings in his shop and brag about his ability.
It is perhaps unsurprising then that, at only fourteen years old, Turner entered the Royal Academy of Arts and began exhibiting his work there from the following year.
Turner and Malmesbury
When Turner was sixteen years old, he took a trip westward out of London, making a stop at Malmesbury. The Abbey, begun in the 12th century, was an inspiring place for the young artist. He returned twice more in his lifetime, and this initial trip in 1791 taught the young artist the value of sketching on the spot as a basis for work in the studio.
[Image caption: Print made by William Holl II, Portrait of J. M. W. Turner, c.1859-61, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1977.14.12650.]
For the rest of his life, he followed a routine of travelling in the summer, sketching, recording and gathering inspiration, before spending his winters in the studio working on larger scale canvases and commissions. These travels would take him across Britain and Europe.
Our watercolour at Bowood was painted on Turner’s trip to Malmesbury Abbey in 1794. Turner was an artist of the Romantic movement, which emphasised the power of the imagination, nature and emotions. This was very different to the dominant values of eighteenth-century art, which emphasised stoic restraint in looking back to the classical world of the ancients. In this watercolour, you can see Turner’s fascination with nature taking over the ruins of the Abbey, and the beauty created in its wake.
Though we might remember Turner as an artist who produced large oil paintings, his very first exhibited works were watercolours, and he loved using this medium as a way to quickly record light, shade and the world around him. This watercolour was purchased by Lord Lansdowne in 1974, a year before Bowood first opened to the public.
A celebrated artist
Turner went on to become a member of the Royal Academy in 1802 before joining their teaching ranks as Professor of Perspective in 1807. He became a celebrity and wealthy artist, courting both adoration and controversy for his work.
He died in 1851, leaving much of his work to the nation in an unprecedented bequest that was mostly split between the Tate Britain and a small number in the National Gallery, both in London, and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral close to the artists Sir Joshua Reynolds, P. R. A. (1723-1792), and Sir Thomas Lawrence, P. R. A. (1769-1830).
