Recent Events

Lecture by Dr Joyce Townsend. In his early life Turner worked in watercolour before he used oil, employing a whole repertoire of techniques to create lights in his compositions. This experience greatly influenced his methods when painting in oil. All his life he exploited newly invented pigments and innovative ways of marketing his works and his output was prodigious. This talk illustrates the considerable range of painting materials he used and how he used them, from his early watercolours to his well-known habit in later life of finishing his oils on the walls of the Royal Academy just before the annual exhibition.

The AGM will take place via Zoom on Saturday 4 December at 2.30 p.m. Log-in details will be sent to members nearer the time.

Including ‘Turner and Peter-boats’, a short talk by our Chairman, Pieter van der Merwe

Turner Society members are invited to visit recently restored Pitzhanger Manor, Sir John Soane’s country house at Ealing. At 2.45 p.m., outside the entrance to the house, Catherine Parry-Wingfield will give a short talk on Soane and Turner, who was a frequent visitor there. The two men were great friends, and Sandycombe Lodge in Twickenham, which Turner designed himself, has many Soanian features.

The 41st Kurt Pantzer Memorial Lecture by Professor Stephen Bann. This lecture will examine diverse series from the Southern Coast (1816–24) to the Rivers of France in the mid-1830s, and will argue that Turner’s engagement in the production of such serial publications also helped to provide him with a specific sense of mission which was ultimately fulfilled in some of his major artistic achievements.

The Annual General Meeting of the Turner Society will take the form of an online meeting.

The visit to the ‘Turner’s Modern World’ exhibition will be replaced by an online talk by the curators together with a question and answer session, arranged specially for the Society on the date of the cancelled visit.

Talk by Cecilia Powell. Although Turner is rightly acclaimed for his originality, we should not forget that his work was grounded in his admiration for the art of the past, where a major role was often played by mythology.

A reception to mark the issue in February of the new £20 note featuring Turner. Senior officers of the Bank will talk about the process of selection and design leading to the new banknote and Pieter van der Merwe, Chairman of the Turner Society and a maritime historian, will discuss The Fighting Temeraire which is depicted on the note.

Our former Chairman Andrew Wilton will speak about the genesis of his recently published Turnerian novel The Painter’s Boy: An Historical Caprice.

Talk by Colin Harrison

To celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of John Ruskin on 8 February 1819, Colin Harrison, Senior Curator of European Art in the Department of Western Art, will introduce a selection of the Turner watercolours presented by Ruskin to his old university, together with other watercolours which formed part of the Teaching Collection in the Ruskin School of Drawing.