Exhibition: Turner and Bonington: Watercolours from the Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection invites visitors to embark on a journey – from the rugged Yorkshire Dales to the grandeur of Venice, pausing en route to enjoy the bucolic delights of crab fishing on Scarborough’s beach and to marvel at the gothic splendour of Rouen cathedral from the dockside.

This odyssey is undertaken through a one-room display of watercolour landscapes by J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828), the first time the works have been on display in 17 years.

The display brings together ten works by the two artists: with four views of Yorkshire by Turner and five scenes of Normandy and Venice by Bonington. Turner was, of course, a British artist, while Bonington was born in Britain but was brought up and received his artistic training in France and is considered Anglo-French.

In a manner that was remarkably prescient of our own experiences during the Covid lockdowns, Turner’s Yorkshire paintings were made during a time when travel to mainland Europe was prevented by the Napoleonic wars (1803-1815). In response to which, the British sought to discover the Romantic concept of the ‘sublime’ at home in the British Isles.

These pictures belong to a period of British art in which watercolour emerged as a more respected and exhibited medium – the Society for Painters of Watercolour had been founded in 1804.

In both sets of landscapes, visitors will be able to admire and compare Turner and Bonington’s shared objective of exploring the atmospheric effects of light.