Exhibition | Seeing the Light: Turner’s Discovery of Italy in 1819

Posted in exhibitions by Editor on October 10, 2023

Left: J. M. W. Turner, The Roman Campagna from Monte Testaccio, Sunset, 1819, gouache, graphite, and watercolour on paper, 25 × 40 cm
(London: Tate, accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856, D16131).

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Closing this month at Turner’s House:

Seeing the Light: Turner’s Discovery of Italy in 1819
Turner’s House, Twickenham, 7 July — 29 October 2023

In the summer of 1819, the landscape artist J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) set off on a journey to Italy that would have a profound impact on his life and work. Visitors to Turner’s House will be able to enjoy an exhibition of evocative watercolours capturing some of the painter’s first impressions of the place he was to later call the “land of all bliss,” and which provided inspiration for the rest of his career. Seeing the Light provides an exciting opportunity for the public to see some of Italy’s most well known and loved sites—Venice, Rome, Naples—through Turner’s eyes, in the unique setting of his then rural retreat in Twickenham. Visitors to this tightly-focussed exhibition will also be able to appreciate Turner’s evolving use of colour and light before and after 1819, thanks to generous loans from Tate, the Guildhall Art Gallery, and a private collection.