Room 2: From Landscape to Art
The exhibits in this room show various aspects of Turner’s technical
procedures as he responded to the landscape and developed possible compositions.
While today we may be
tempted to admire the spontaneity of the sketch and even prefer it to the
finished picture, this was not Turner's intention. Sketching was a means of
engaging with the visible world and also of manipulating its effects when
working up finished compositions, but it was the finished compositions that
mattered. Turner rarely painted direct from nature and the oil sketches shown
here are a significant exception to the rule. The watercolour sketches are
very different insofar as they were made in the studio, not in the open air.
They are part of a group of similar studies customarily referred to as 'colour
beginnings,' following an inscription on one of them in Turner's hand, in
which he organised the broad effects of tone and colour underlying his compositions.