Recent Events

The Society will make a return visit to Petworth House for a tour guided by its Collections Manager, Andrew Loukes. After picnicking or lunching at Petworth, we shall also visit Fittleworth Mill from 2.30 p.m., where we shall be shown round by a member of the owner’s family and be served light refreshments.

Lecture by Nicola Moorby

2019 marks two hundred years since one of Turner’s most significant European expeditions, his first tour of Italy, an experience which both consolidated and expanded his landscape vision. Drawing upon recent cataloguing of the Italian sketchbooks, this talk will discuss his approach to Italy’s treasures and traditions and examine how he assimilated that material within his wider practice.

Talk by Nick Reese

Following last year’s highly successful talk on the West Country drawings, Nick Reese examines Turner’s drawings made in and around Petworth and Fittleworth, destinations which the Society is to visit in June.

Private view introduced by Anne Hodge

Anne Hodge, the Gallery’s Curator of Prints and Drawings, will provide us with private access to the annual display of the Vaughan Bequest and accompanying material, prior to the display being open to the public.

Including ‘Turner’s Titles’ – lecture by Nick Powell.

Does it matter what we call Turner’s paintings? Theories about painting titles have been developed, broadly speaking, only in relation to the modern period, starting in the second half of the nineteenth century; Turner is the one earlier artist who has received much attention from the theorists. This talk will look at the remarkable variety of methods employed to identify/explain Turner’s works from his lifetime to the present day: by the artist himself, printmakers, cataloguers, curators and registrars. It will consider just what counts as a title and will examine the purpose (or purposes) of Turner titles and their effect on the viewer.

Lecture by Franny Moyle. Franny Moyle writes: ‘Turner was born in London in 1775, a Georgian, and died in 1851, a Victorian. My book The Extraordinary Life and Momentous Times of J.M.W. Turner gave me one of the most compelling reasons to look again at Turner’s biography and to re-establish the achievements of the lesser recognised Georgian Turner alongside the more familiar and popular output of the Victorian man. As part of this I asked whether there was a consistent world view of Turner shared between these two versions. By the end of the research I felt sure there was.’

The Hickman Bacon Collection – some 400 works in total, in superb condition – is probably the most important collection of English watercolours in private hands. It reflects the personal taste of Sir Hickman Bacon, Bt, who put it together in a period of only about 20 years from 1895. As Eric Shanes wrote, ‘his taste was mainly for evanescent and impressionistic effects’ and thus ‘the collection is especially strong in the type of late, ethereal Turner watercolour that became widely popular only with the advent of abstract painting in the 1940s and 1950s.’ The Society is privileged to have been invited to a private viewing of a selection of gems from the collection.

The 39th Kurt Pantzer Memorial Lecture by Sam Smiles. Sam Smiles writes: ‘Turner is habitually understood as an artist who developed highly sophisticated images of places and their visual apprehension. A great deal of research has concentrated on the physical environments he depicted, real and imaginary, and their realisation in pictorial terms. While Turner’s representation of space has, therefore, become a key concern, his approach to time has received rather less attention. It is, however, something that he engaged with throughout his career on a number of different levels.’

Talk by Nick Reese. Between 1811 and 1814 Turner undertook three summer tours of the West Country during which he gathered material for his Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England series. As well as the drawings in his sketchbooks, the tours inspired Turner to make a number of watercolours and a series of marvellous oil sketches around Plymouth and the Tamar Valley. Nick Reese will talk about his personal selection in front of the works themselves.

Including ‘Sandycombe Lodge: Returning Turner To Twickenham’ – lecture by Catherine Parry-Wingfield.