Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (1775-1851) – IMS Photography

Dunstanburgh Castle

Ian Malpass-Scott — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 18:22:39 +0000

Watercolour on paper, Dunstanburgh Castle by Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA (London 1775 – Chelsea 1851). The castle is seen from the sea; in the foreground are rocks; and two fishing boats are close to the cliffs on which the castle stands

Provenance: Gift from Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan 3rd Bt

Marks & inscriptions: Back board: Tate Gallery, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG label. Turner in the north of England 1797 Tate Gallery ; 22nd Oct 96 – Feb 97 Harewood house; 15 Mar – 8 Jun 97 Cat no ;47 J.M.W.Turner Dunstanburgh Castle from the south ? 1800-2 Pencil and watercolour on paper 30.5 x 43.2 Wallington, The Trevelyan Collection ( The National Trust ) Back board: PALACE OF ART , North East Coast Exhibition , Newcastle- Upton- Tyne 1929 label. Back board: Tho Agnew& sons Manchester 14 Exchange Street Liverpool Exchange Art Gallery , Dale Street. LONDON Old bond, Street Galleries Piccadilly. Back board: A hand written label which reads – J.W.Turner, Dunstanburgh..RT Hon Sir Trevelyan. Back board bottom left corner.: A National Trust label which reads- The National Trust item conserved by ……. M.G Re-mounted / Re-framed by….P. Ariss. Date completed.. Jun 1986 Special Treatments……….. Bottom left side of frame.: A small white round label with 21 wrote on in green ink.

Text from National Trust website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Wallington Hall, Northumberland
Material: Watercolour on paper
Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (1775-1851)
Date: Unknown

Image Details
Date: 19 October 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Telephoto Camera 52mm ƒ/2.4
Focal Length: 52mm
Aperture: ƒ/2.4
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 640
Licensing: Image of a National Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Brinkburn Priory

Ian Malpass-Scott — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 18:22:39 +0000

Watercolour on paper, Brinkburn Priory by Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA (London 1775 – Chelsea 1851). The ruined priory is in the centre; in front, the river coquet with two anglers fishing from a rock in the middle.

Provenance: Gift from Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan 3rd Bt

Marks & inscriptions: Top middle: J W Turner Brinkburn Rt. Hon. Sir C.Trevelyan 1775-1851 Centre: THO.s AGNEW & SONS MANCHESTER 14 Exchange Street LIVERPOOL Exchange Art Gallery Dale St LONDON Old Bond Street Galleries Piccadilly Bottom Middle: This water-colour painting of Brinkburn Priory on the Coquet by JMW Turner, was bought by Sir Charles Trevelyan at the Palace of Art, in the North East Coast Exhibition in 1929. It has hung in the Parlour at Wallington since that time. July 1 1965. Centre bottom: PALACE OF ART North East Coast Exhibition Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1929 Bottom Right: The National Trust Item conserved by M. E. Remounted/Re-framed by P. Arris Date completed June ’85

Text from National Trust website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Wallington Hall, Northumberland
Material: Watercolour on paper
Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (1775-1851)
Date: Unknown

Image Details
Date: 19 October 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Telephoto Camera 52mm ƒ/2.4
Focal Length: 52mm
Aperture: ƒ/2.4
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 800
Licensing: Image of a National Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

View of the High Street, Oxford, 1809-10

Ian Malpass-Scott — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 19:29:00 +0000

This view was commissioned by James Wyatt, an Oxford frame maker and picture dealer, who intended to sell engravings of it in his shop at 115 High Street. The picture was completed in 1810, and its close emphasis on architectural detail is unique in Turner’s painted work_ It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1812, together with a companion, also commissioned by Wyatt, a View of Oxford from the Abingdon Road (private collection).

Provenance: Accepted by HM Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to the Ashmolean Museum, 2016, with additional funding from the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Art Fund (with a contribution from the Wolfson Foundation), the Friends and Patrons of the Ashmolean, Mr and Mrs Timothy Sanderson, Mr and Mrs Mark Houghton-Berry, and many private donors, 2016

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775- 1851)
Date: 1809-10

Image Details
Date: 27 March 2025
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/50s
ISO: 320
Licensing: Image of an Ashmolean Museum asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Kilgarren Castle, Pembrokeshire

Ian Malpass-Scott — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 16:29:00 +0000

Turner visited Kilgarren Castle on his tour of south Wales in 1798. He painted a number of views of the Castle, exhibiting ‘Kilgarren Castle on the Twyvey, Hazy Sunrise previous to a Sultry Day’ at the Royal Academy in 1799. Lord Armstrong bought a painting of Kilgarren Castle in 1878 from the collection of Munro of Novar, an important patron of Turner. Armstrong’s Kilgarren Castle was exhibited as a Turner at the Guildhall in London in 1899 alongside another version of the composition, which the artist John MacWhirter, after seeing the two paintings together, regarded as the original. When the major paintings in Lord Armstrong’s collection were put up for sale at Christie’s in 1910, Kilgarren Castle was among them. It did not reach its reserve, however, and was not sold, remaining to this day in the private collection of the Armstrong family. By a happy coincidence, the National Trust was bequeathed the present version – the very painting MacWhirter believed to be the original – by Lady Mildred Fitzgerald, in 1970. It was displayed at Wordsworth House in Cumbria before being transferred to Cragside.

Oil painting on canvas, Kilgarren Castle, by Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA, (London 1775 – Chelsea 1851), 1798-99.

Provenance: Exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1799 (305); probably in the collection of the painter William Delamotte (1775-1863); purchased in Oxford by Sir John Leicester, later Lord de Tabley (1762-1827), before 1808; his posthumous sale, Christie’s, 7 July 1827, lot 17, purchased by Butterworth; William Cave; Christie’s, 29 June 1854, lot 61, purchased by Wallis; anonymous sale, Foster’s, 3 February 1858, lot 106, bought in; Joseph Gillott’s sale, Christie’s, 27 April 1872, lot 305, purchased by H. L. Bischoffsheim (1829 – 1909); bequeathed by him to his daughter, Lady Fitzgerald, wife of Sir Maurice Fitzgerald; thence by descent; bequeathed to the National Trust by Lady Mildred Murray, Lady Fitzgerald (1878-1969) 1970; formerly displayed at Wordsworth House.

Text from the National Trust website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Cragside, Rothbury, Northumberland
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA (1775 – 1851)
Date: 1798-99

Image Details
Date: 20 June 2024
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of a National Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Warkworth Castle, Northumberland

Ian Malpass-Scott — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:43:00 +0000

As with the view of Dunstanburgh displayed nearby, Turner based this watercolour of Warkworth Castle on a sketch made during his 1797 tour. He exhibited his watercolours quite widely during his lifetime – more so than his paintings.

He sometimes exhibited lines of poetry next to his works in both mediums. He exhibited this watercolour with words from James Thomson’s The Seasons:

Behold slow setting o’er the lurid grove gains
The full possession of the sky; and on yon baleful cloud
A redd’ning gloom, a magazine of fate Ferment.

Provenance: Victoria and Albert Museum: Ellison Gift

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne & Wear
Material: Watercolour with some bodycolour and scraping out, on paper
Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
Date: 1799

Image Details
Date: 19 June 2024
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of a North East Museums asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Dunstanburgh Castle

Ian Malpass-Scott — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:43:00 +0000

Turner visited the north of England as a young man in 1797. This watercolour is based on a sketch made during this tour. His time in Northumberland included visits to Warkworth, Bamburgh and Lindisfarne as well as Dunstanburgh, just north of Craster. This dramatic view of Dunstanburgh Castle demonstrates the generally darker colour palette Turner used in his early career.

Provenance: purchased with aid from the Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, the Friends of the Laing Art Gallery, and Trustees of the John Wigham Richardson Bequest Fund, 1982

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne & Wear
Material: Pencil and watercolour on paper
Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
Date: 1798

Image Details
Date: 19 June 2024
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of a North East Museums asset. This image cannot be licensed.

A First Rate Taking in Stores

Ian Malpass-Scott — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:43:00 +0000

According to the family of Turner’s friend and patron, Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall, Turner made this watercolour at Farnley after being asked to draw a Royal Navy ‘ship of the line. The warship depicted is a ‘first rate’ ship with over 110 guns.

Temeraire, by contrast, was a ‘second rate’ ship with go-98, plus lighter guns. Turner’s watercolour emphasises the warship’s size and demonstrates the depth of his knowledge given that the drawing was an act of memory made at a moment’s notice.

Provenance: Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery (The Higgins Bedford)

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne & Wear
Material: Watercolour on paper
Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
Date: 1818

Upnor Castle, Kent

Ian Malpass-Scott — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:43:00 +0000

This luminous watercolour depicts Upnor Castle in Kent and, to the left of the castle, the Naval Dockyard at Chatham. In the scene, Turner included a warship of comparable size to the Temeraire, which had itself been built in this dockyard.

Like The Fighting Temeraire, the watercolour features a sunset (or it may here be a sunrise) of great beauty, warm light reflecting on glass-like still water. Although serene, Turner’s scene is also full of industriousness. Chimneys smoke in the background and the people wading in the shallows are engaged in fishing activity.

Provenance: The Whitworth, The University of Manchester: Lady and Sir Edward Tootal Broadhurst Bequest, 1924

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne & Wear
Material: Watercolour and bodycolour with scratching out on paper
Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
Date: 1831-2

First Sketch for ‘The Battle of Trafalgar’

Ian Malpass-Scott — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:43:00 +0000

In 1823, Turner received his only royal commission: a painting commemorating the Battle of Trafalgar. He made two oil sketches in preparation for his enormous finished canvas, which is now in the National Maritime Museum. This first sketch focuses on the ship’s positions, with Victory, British naval commander Horatio Nelson’s flagship, front and centre. Temeraire’s position is unclear here but can be glimpsed on the right of Turner’s finished compositions.

Provenance: Tate: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne & Wear
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
Date: about 1823

Hornby Castle, Lancashire, from Tatham Church

Ian Malpass-Scott — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:43:00 +0000

Print projects were an important source of income for Turner. Hornby Castle is an example of a watercolour he made to be engraved. It illustrated a History of Richmondshire within a proposed larger series of Yorkshire views. Here, Turner’s interpretation of the northern landscape focuses on rural life. A cow is being milked in the foreground, a family walk past a man on a donkey, and a cart passes a rural dwelling. The backdrop is made up of scenic hills. The castle itself is almost part of the background, though quite centrally placed within the overall composition.

Provenance: Victoria and Albert Museum: Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne & Wear
Material: Watercolour on paper
Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)
Date: 1818

Image Details
Date: 19 June 2024
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Telephoto Camera 52mm ƒ/2.4
Focal Length: 52mm
Aperture: ƒ/2.4
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 250
Licensing: Image of a North East Museums asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Detail