On Tour with Turner

Press Release, December 2005

1-31 January 2006
National Gallery of Ireland (Print Gallery)
Admission free.

The National Gallery's collection of Turner watercolours and drawings will be on show once again in the Print Gallery throughout the month of January. This year, the exhibition aims to highlight the artist's enthusiasm for travel, the destinations that inspired him both at home and abroad, and includes contemporary eye-witness accounts of his annual tours.

Travel played an essential part in the life of British born artist, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), supplying vital material for his topographical work and igniting the imaginative processes behind his historical and poetical paintings. The majority of Turner's paintings and watercolours depict places he had actually observed. He undertook more than fifty-six tours in his lifetime and amassed an extensive collection of over 300 sketchbooks, which comprise some 10,000 sketches and studies.
The dynamic changes that occurred during Turner's lifetime, in the realm of transport and patterns of travel, which the artist harnessed to his advantage, are seen in many of his works.

The exhibition includes the Vaughan Bequest of Turner watercolours along with a selection of prints from the Liber Studiorum series as well as his Annual Tour of the Seine (1834/5) and The Loire (1833). An accompanying illustrated brochure entitled, 'On Tour with Turner' by Niamh MacNally, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings, is available from the Gallery Shop (price €2). A series of talks on the artist's travels will take place each Sunday and Tuesday throughout January. Admission is free.

Further Information: Valerie Keogh
Press & Communications Office
National Gallery of Ireland
Tel. (01) 661 5133
Email press@ngi.ie

January Lecture Series