The exhibition will run at the museum associated with the artist from the 23rd April until the 26th October.
© Leeds Museums and Galleries, UK / Bridgeman Images
Marking the 250th birthday of J.M.W. Turner, Turner’s House Museum has announced ‘Turner’s Kingdom’, an exhibition which will include for r the first time in almost forty years rarely seen bird studies painted by the artist.
Opening on the artist’s birthday, in his 250th anniversary year, the exhibition takes place at Sandycombe Lodge, the villa near the Thames that Turner designed and inhabited between 1813 and 1826 in Twickenham, a western suburb of London.
Featuring around fifteen loans from British public collections, Turner’s Kingdom: Beauty, Birds and Beasts brings together a menagerie of birds, fish and animals, from domestic pets to wildlife seen in the countryside.
Works include: watercolours from the ‘Farnley Book of Birds’, an album of natural history studies, painted for Turner’s patron, Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall in Yorkshire. On loan from Leeds Museums and Galleries, the selected examples include a barn owl, a goldfinch and a turkey, as well as two species that hold particular relevance to Turner’s House: a heron, still a common sight along the Thames to the west of London; and a peacock, a bird pictured within the gardens of Sandycombe Lodge by another artist, William Havell. They bear witness both to Turner’s powers of observation and to the closeness of his friendship with Fawkes.
Also on display will be Turner’s angling equipment, loaned by the Royal Academy of Arts. Exhibited for the first time in the house, the fishing rod is probably the very one Turner used to catch fish in the nearby Thames, transferring his catches to a purpose-built pond at the bottom of the garden.
Talking about the exhibition, Jennifer Francis, Director of Turner’s House Museum, comments: ‘This exhibition reveals a surprising and personal dimension to Turner’s artistry. These rarely seen works, displayed in the home he designed to live in with his father, bring us closer to his world and his remarkable eye for detail. It is a privilege to share these treasures in celebration of Turner’s 250th anniversary.’
To find out more about the museum visit: https://www.visitrichmond.co.uk/outdoor-activities/turners-house-p1581781