Turner originally intended to bequeath a collection of a hundred finished oil paintings as a commemorative Turner Gallery. He hoped it would be attached to the National Gallery. To this end, he had kept a number of his pictures in the gallery at his own house in the West End of London. These were not just unsold works, but included some of his most notable exhibits at the Royal Academy and elsewhere.

You can explore a virtual reconstruction of Turner’s Gallery on the screen nearby. This room is hung with a selection of these pictures to give a flavour of the collection. It reflects Turner’s remarkable range of subject matter from history and myth to contemporary events, and the evolution of his style from grandiose tributes to the Old Masters to the dazzling colouring and unrestrained imagination seen in his later work.

At the heart of Turner’s achievement was a new appreciation of landscape, whether achieved through his tragic vision of human frailty before the forces of nature or, more engagingly, through his unrivalled depictions of light and atmosphere.

This display has been devised by curator David Blayney Brown

British Art Displays 1500 – 2009