JMW Turner painted his way to fame and fortune. Now he is on our banknotes too. As Tessa Parry-Wingfield discovers, the launch coincides with an exhibition
of original works at his former Twickenham home
Y
ou probably don’t, in general, pay much attention to what’s on your banknotes. For us locals, however, the new £20 polymer is different.
Set for launch this month, it celebrates one of the borough’s most famous past residents: the great Romantic painter JMW Turner. Here is his 1799 self-portrait, his signature and his acclaimed work of 1838, The Fighting Temeraire, voted the nation’s favourite painting in 2005.
It is a timely release. For here in Twickenham, Sandycombe Lodge – the rural retreat designed by the man himself as a bolthole from the London art world – is currently staging its first ever exhibition of original Turners.
I am no stranger to ‘Turner’s House’, now nestled in the residential streets of St Margaret’s. My mother, Catherine Parry-Wingfield, is the former Chair of Turner’s House Trust and was a driving force behind the property’s magnificent restoration, completed in 2017.
“The river landscape was a huge inspiration for Turner, providing the source for many major paintings,” she tells me during my sneak preview of the intimate exhibition, which contains just five key works.
Climbing the handsome staircase to the upper floor, I glance at the stained glass skylight before entering Turner’s father’s bedroom to see the exhibits, all on loan from Tate Britain. Turner’s ability to capture fleeting moments, such as the reflection of sky and riverbank on the surface of the water, is alive in all five works – riparian scenes between Isleworth and Windsor.
The Turner Bequest – left to the nation after the artist’s death in 1851 – includes around 37,000 drawings and watercolours, in addition to his finished oils. Yet these 1805 experimental works are special. Never intended for sale, they form part of a series painted on mahogany veneer panels – recycled from old furniture, perhaps, or offcuts from local industry – while Turner was out on the river.
“JMW Turner had an extraordinary, meteoric rise to fame and success,” explains Andy Loukes, Turner’s House Trustee and Collections Curator at Petworth House in West Sussex. “By 1805 he needed time and space, so he rented Syon Ferry House in Isleworth, adapted this little boat and spent a lot of time pottering up and down the Thames. The material he created that year represents some of his most immediate, spontaneous work.”
It was this experience that enticed Turner to acquire land in Twickenham and, in due course, construct Sandycombe Lodge to his own designs. Looking through the telescope from his former bedroom, I see the view that he himself would have enjoyed: a semi-rural landscape with glimpses of the river, filled with echoes of Thomson and Pope, the locally based poets who inspired him.
“Turner did many pencil sketches on the spot, but very rarely did he produce paintings in this way – especially not oil paintings,” reflects Andy. “He seems to have put together a floating studio and taken these pieces of mahogany onto the boat.”
Sandycombe Lodge was complete by 1813, serving as a home for Turner and his father, until the latter’s declining health prompted Turner to sell it in 1826.
After World War II, the property was bought by Professor Harold Livermore, who created what is now the Turner’s House Trust in the hope that the home would become ‘a monument to Turner in Twickenham’. The Trust acquired it upon his death in 2010. A decade on, it’s now as close as possible to the house of Turner’s day.
“Saving Sandycombe, making it a quiet and lovely place to visit, has been a wonderful undertaking, bringing back an important part of our local history,” says Catherine Parry-Wingfield.
“It reminds us that Turner – ‘the great magician’, as he was called – walked beside the river and up Richmond Hill, that he painted our local scenes, and that he chose to live for a season in the famous view we still enjoy today.”
More displays of the artist’s original works, it is hoped, will be held at the Lodge in years to come. In the meantime, the new Turner banknote will soon ensure that the image of the magician is ubiquitous.
n Turner and the Thames: Five Paintings
will run until Mar 29 at Sandycombe Lodge, 40 Sandycombe Road, Twickenham;
turnershouse.org/whats-on