Online Talks - JMW Turner’s Sandycombe Years

About

Turner’s House Trust will be hosting a series of Turner themed Zoom talks each Tuesday in April 2021.

Talks will take place at 7pm and will last 30 minutes followed by a Q&A. Tickets grant access to all 4 talks. Joining information will be sent on the morning of the event.

Ticket price £15.

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April 6th - Turner’s House of Art: Turner at Petworth, by Andrew Loukes

From 1827, the year after he sold Sandycombe Lodge, Turner visited Petworth House in West Sussex on an annual basis for the next ten years. There remain twenty paintings by Turner at Petworth, which is the largest collection of his oils outside Tate Britain. This talk explores the artist’s relationship with one of his favourite places, described by Turner’s contemporary John Constable as “that house of art”.

Andrew Loukes has worked with public art collections for 30 years. He was the House and Collections Manager at Petworth House (the most important art collection in the care of the National Trust) for 11 years and previously was a curator at Manchester Art Gallery and Tate Britain. He has curated exhibitions on Blake, Constable and seven on Turner, including the recent exhibition ‘Turner and the Thames: Five Paintings’ at Turner’s House in 2020. Andrew is also a former trustee of the Turner’s House Trust. He is now Consultant Curator of the Egremont Collection at Petworth.

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April 13th - From the Sublime to the Ridiculous - Turner’s sense of scale, by Franny Moyle

Moyle looks at Turner’s interest in scale, his ‘all seeing eye’, and how this relates to his world view. Taking a number of paintings executed during the ‘Sandycombe Years’ she will invite those joining the talk to look again at Turner’s work, to consider how he uses scale to express sublime beauty, what there is to discover in looking closely at the detail of his work, and how this may relate to his own spiritual beliefs.

Franny Moyle is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster whose biography of Turner, The Extraordinary Life and Momentous Times of JMW Turner was published in 2016 to critical acclaim. She is a trustee of Turner’s House.

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April 20th - Turner and the ‘Matchless Vale of Thames’ , by Catherine Parry-Wingfield

For the great landscape painter J.M.W. Turner, the river Thames provided him with a huge source of inspiration, from his childhood in the early 1780s to the end of his life in 1851. He was particularly enthralled by the Arcadian stretch of the river as it winds past Richmond and Twickenham, where he chose to build his retreat, Sandycombe Lodge. This talk takes its title from the 18th century Richmond poet, James Thomson, whose work was still much admired many decades after his death, and whose verses were in Turner’s mind as he walked and sketched his way along Richmond Hill to capture the moods of the river and the famous view.

Catherine Parry-Wingfield is an art historian with a long career in teaching and lecturing, specialising in the visual arts of 18th and early 19th century Britain and Europe. She was a trustee of Turner’s House Trust from its inception in 2005, and chair from 2013 to 2019, during which time she was actively engaged as a member of the conservation project team, particularly with the presentation of the interior. She has written two booklets, J.M.W. Turner, R.A. - the artist and his house at Twickenham and J.M.W. Turner and the ‘Matchless Vale of Thames’ (available from Turner’s House) and an article for The London Gardener, 2012, The Grounds of Sandycombe Lodge, J.M.W. Turner’s Country Retreat at Twickenham.

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April 27th - Understanding the Fine Print: Turner's Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England , by Nicola Moorby

For almost his entire residency of Sandycombe Lodge, Turner would have been working on the print publication, Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England, his first major independent series of topographical views. This talk discussed the background and circumstances of the project, particularly focusing on the techniques and skill of Turner and his printmakers, as well as revealing the highs and lows of their professional collaborations.

Nicola Moorby is an independent art historian specialising in British art of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Formerly at Tate Britain, where she managed the Prints and Drawings Rooms, she was a significant contributor to Tate's updated online catalogue of the Turner Bequest and has worked as a curator on several exhibitions. She has contributed to numerous publications on Turner, including as co-editor and author of How to Paint Like Turner (Tate Publishing 2010). She has appeared as an expert on television and radio, including most recently, Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr.