1775-1851
Joseph Mallord William Turner was one of the most celebrated
landscape painters of the 19th century. He trained with
Thomas Malton, a draughtsman who produced very popular prints of
London, Bath and other popular cities around the country. Malton is
well represented in the Gallery’s collection, and Turner described
him as his ‘real master’.
Turner started exhibiting pictures at the Royal Academy in
London in 1790 when he was just 15. He visited Bath for the first
time a year later, and made several more visits. The Gallery has
one work by Turner, an early watercolour painted before 1793, which
shows Bath Abbey. Turner was fascinated by the romantic and
picturesque character of old buildings, and would have seen the
Abbey as an ideal subject.
The watercolour shows the influence of Malton in the cool
colours used, and the dramatic low viewpoint, as well as influence
from his friend Thomas Girtin, another celebrated watercolourist.
This work shows Turner becoming more confident in his work. From
the 1790s onwards he developed great technical skills and processes
which he used to create the highly atmospheric work for which he is
so well known.
The painting also shows the house in which Gainsborough lived in
his early years in Bath, just thirty years before Turner arrived.
It is the one to the right of the Abbey.
J.M.W. Turner, The West Front of Bath
Abbey, c.1793