Turner Watercolours

Turner: Watercolours from the West

Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery

Thanks to the Art Fund, the Bristol City Art Gallery is presently exhibiting eight of J M W Turner’s first watercolours, which he painted as a young artist when visiting Bristol for sketching. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was a British Romantic, landscape painter and water-colourist famous for his elevation of the landscape painting genre to the level of history painting. He is commonly described as the ‘painter of light’ in reference to his watercolours and oil paintings, which you will see when you visit. He was also widely regarded as the Romantic preface to Impressionism, which is evident in his watercolours 'en plein air', which beautifully capture the light of the Avon Gorge with light, airy brushstrokes. From his journals we know he loved to explore and this is evident from the views we're given from his eyes as he emerges from forests, climbs in caves or gives us a view of the whole river basking in sunlight. 

The watercolours on display were exquisite, they captured the romantic landscape of Bristol, which we all too often overlook as bustling students. Turner draws on the power of nature by dwarfing his delicate figures beneath towering rock faces as they scale their surfaces or work on the river banks in brightly coloured 19^th century costume. His colour palettes are predominantly muted with earthy tones for the rocks, greens for the organic shapes and gentle blues for the sea and swollen clouds. The scenes featured boats pulling into the old docks, majestic riverside buildings, which could still stand today and sweeping landscapes - all equally beautiful and delicately rendered. 

He demonstrates his technical skill by framing the landscapes with lush branches weighed down by leaves (as below) or the crescendo of light within tunnels of rocks. And, what was so astounding was the level of detail he achieved with tiny brush hairs in those watercolours, which were barely as big as our palms. With incredibly fine brushes he correctly rendered the dimension of buildings, trees and figures with impressive use of perspective. The curation of the exhibition was lovely, the works were displayed against a dimly lit, cobalt blue background and evenly spaced throughout an intimate room on the first floor. I would highly recommend popping in to see these for a revision break, it only takes about twenty minutes to stroll round and is a truly enchanting way to see Bristol as it was.