Turner watercolours
dal 31/12/2004 al 31/1/2005
Segnalato da
31/12/2004
Turner watercolours
National Gallery Complex - The Mound, Edinburgh
The Vaughan Bequest. The thirty-eight works from the Vaughan Bequest have been exhibited at the Gallery during January for over one hundred years.
The Vaughan Bequest
The New Year begins at the National Gallery of Scotland with its annual display of magnificent watercolours by J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), bequeathed in 1900 by the London art collector Henry Vaughan. The thirty-eight works from the Vaughan Bequest have been exhibited at the Gallery during January for over one hundred years. This year the exhibition will be complemented by the display of a new long-term loan to the National Gallery of Scotland from a private collection: a fine, highly finished watercolour by Turner which shows a dramatic depiction of the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire.
Between 1824 and 1836 Turner worked on one of his most ambitious series of watercolours. Called ‘Picturesque View of England and Wales’, they were intended to be published as engravings. He eventually created 100 works for the scheme. The watercolour of Rievaulx Abbey which forms part of it was painted in about 1825 and engraved in 1827. Two other works in the Vaughan Bequest, depictions of Snowdon and Durham, are also connected with the ‘Picturesque Views’ series, and so it is particularly appropriate that they should now be joined by this important new loan.
The Vaughan Bequest includes works from many periods of Turner’s long career, from his early topographical wash drawings of the 1790s, to the colourful and atmospheric watercolour sketches of Continental Europe, executed in the 1830s and 1840s. Turner’s prolific activities as an illustrator are represented by a number of images, including scenes painted for Robert Cadell’s collected editions of the Poetical and Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott.
Vaughan stipulated that the watercolours must not be subjected to permanent display, since continual exposure to light would result in their fading. In his will he ruled that the collection could only be shown in January, when daylight is at its weakest and least destructive levels. As a result, the annual January exhibition has become a tradition at the National Gallery, despite the fact that modern technology now enables the light levels to be monitored and controlled at all times.
Monday to Sunday 10am – 5pm, Thursday 10am –7pm
The Gallery is open on 1 January, 12 noon – 5pm; and from 2 January 10am – 5pm as normal
Admission free
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Anita Miller
Press and Information Officer
National Galleries of Scotland
THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF SCOTLAND, The Mound, Edinburgh