But when George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, welcomed the artist JMW Turner to Petworth House, his palatial 17th-century mansion in West Sussex, a long-standing relationship was sparked that would nourish the artistic vision of a painter commonly cited as Britain’s favourite.
Best known for his 1839 painting The Fighting Temeraire, emblazoned on our £20 note and denoting the tension between old and new, Turner’s vigorous swirls of sunlight, cloudy skies and stormy seas as the ship played its role in Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, demonstrated new possibilities for landscape painting.
His emotionally driven, highly original works, elevated the genre above its low ranking in the artistic hierarchies and paved the way for a new, more impressionistic aesthetic that reshaped art history.
This year is the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth in 1775, and Turner 250, a series of celebratory events at Petworth House, in the care of the National Trust since 1947, and home to Lord and Lady Egremont, who reside in the property’s south wing. In addition to the 19 works by Turner on permanent display around the house, the servants’ quarters will house a temporary exhibition Turner’s Vision at Petworth (until 16 November) offering a close-up, says Sue Rhodes, Petworth House’s Visitor Operations and Experience Manager, of ‘how Turner used the Petworth landscape to help him with his creative practice and his ideas’.
Turner’s Vision at Petworth features Turner’s illustrations, sketches and paintings, including 10 loans from Tate. One of the exhibition’s highlights is the oil painting Petworth House from the Lake: Dewy Morning (c.1810), which normally resides in the family’s private quarters, above the fireplace in the White Library, with restricted public access. Presented alongside the sketch for it, the work was Turner’s first commission for the Earl and is, says Sue, ‘a really important painting in the story of that relationship’.
Petworth is perhaps best known for its magnificent Carved Room featuring the intricate wood carvings of the celebrated Dutch sculptor Grinling Gibbons, and the exhibition makes space to tell the story behind the four gold-coloured landscape paintings created by Turner between 1827 and 1830 and fitted into the room’s elaborate panelling. Alongside two views of Petworth Park are paintings of Brighton Chain Pier and Chichester Canal, both constructions financially backed by the Earl, and a visible display of his philanthropy.
A shrewd businessman, Turner was unafraid of embellishing to present his patron’s property and projects in the best possible light. Visitors touring the grounds may notice discrepancies, for example, between Petworth Park and its depiction in oils. ‘It’s not that things have changed, he has actually moved hills and clumps of trees to create a better composition,’ reveals Sue. ‘Turner was creating these compositions to suit his artistic need, taking elements of the park that he liked and then putting them together.’ The painting of Chichester Canal tells a similar story. ‘You can stand on the Hunston bridge [today] and look at that view, but the cathedral is in a completely different place!’ points out Sue, amused by this bold reconstruction of reality, but acknowledging its merits. ‘Compositionally, it sits much better with the masts of the ships where Turner has put it,’ she says.
This re-imagining of the landscape to convey feeling rather than just capturing a physical reality was also a mark of Turner’s creativity. ‘He was very much about inspiration rather than imitation, and that’s what he used to teach when he got further in his career and he was teaching at the Royal Academy,’ Sue explains.
In fact, much of his time at Petworth was spent roaming the estate with his sketchbook, looking, she says, for ‘visual references that he was then able to look back on’− a herd of deer, perhaps, a group of trees, or a sunset. Turner was granted full access to the grounds and even provided with a carriage to explore the county further and stay, for example, at East Lodge, the Earl’s property (since demolished) in Kemptown, Brighton.
The Earl was not the only patron to indulge Turner’s love of the Sussex landscape. The painter’s canvases and sketches reveal visits to Rye, Rosehill (now Brightling) Park, Hastings, Heathfield and Bodiam Castle. Petworth, however, had a special place in his heart and, with accommodation provided at the house, afforded him the time to drink in the atmosphere of the landscape, which he then translated vividly into his paintings. The beautiful grounds, designed by the esteemed landscape architect and gardener Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’, provided a refuge to escape the bustle of London, relax, and above all, fish.
While the Earl turned a blind eye to Turner’s extended recreation time, another patron, Sir John Leicester of Tabley Hall, Cheshire, felt that the painter had somewhat overlooked the purpose of his visit. ‘Turner is going to leave without having done anything,’ he reportedly remarked. ‘Instead of painting, he does nothing but fish!’
Back at the house, Turner was often one of several painters enjoying the hospitality of the Earl, who was a huge supporter of contemporary British artists. Petworth was ‘quite unusual’, stresses Sue, functioning rather like ‘an informal art academy’. There was no National Gallery at this time and Petworth’s incredible art collection afforded artists the chance to see paintings by artists such as Titian, Claude Lorrain, Anthony van Dyck and Hieronymus Bosch up close. ‘The artists were allowed to take them off the wall, take them to their own personal rooms, to a studio space that was made available to them so that they could study them,’ she says. ‘So having that kind of access to an art collection of this importance would have been really inspirational.’
Petworth was a place where Turner could work in peace, but if he sought society, there was no shortage of interesting visitors milling around the house. ‘It was a kind of melting pot of people discussing the arts, the landscape,’ says Sue, and ‘a great place for him to come together with like-minded people and maybe others with different views as well’. Turner’s 100 plus watercolours of Petworth evidence the lively life of the house, offering glimpses of dinner parties, billiard games and music recitals, as well as, according to an 1827 sketch, ‘a bevy of beautiful women’, which no doubt lifted his spirits. Turner was reputedly an irascible, rather surly character, but Petworth brought out the best in him. As the painter Charles Robert Leslie remarked: ‘Turner is very pleasant here … and full of fun.’
House guests were bemused to discover people of lower social classes, such as Turner, nicknamed the Cockney rebel, enjoying extended stays at the property, but the Earl was untroubled by convention. ‘He withdrew from London life and decided that if ‘life’ wanted him, they would come to Petworth,’ shares Sue. He also had multiple mistresses, who would sometimes be in the house at the same time, and he sired a staggering 40 or more illegitimate children. It was perhaps this non-conformity that these two very different men recognised in each other. ‘The Earl was not following the fashion with his artistic tastes. He was his own man and he had his own mind, and I think both men were a little bit like that,’ suggests Sue. Though Turner preferred to paint in solitude, he made an exception for the Earl, unbolting the door to his studio when he detected his distinctive, unhurried gait, followed by the pitter-patter of his beloved spaniels.
Turner’s contributions to Petworth’s extraordinary art treasures, and the stories they tell of his time here, promise an uplifting visit – and it’s hoped that visitors will take away a homemade souvenir. In the spirit of the ‘academy’ that the Earl set up, they will be offered a complimentary art pack. For inspiration, visitors need only look around them as Turner did. As Petworth’s loyal visitor once said of his art: ‘There’s a sketch at every turn.’
Turner’s Vision at Petworth is at Petworth House and Park until 16 November 2025. Additional admission fees for this exhibition apply. £10 admission per adult, £5 per child, under 5s go free. Tickets are purchased at the reception on arrival.
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/petworth-house