Turner: The Vaughan Bequest

1 – 31 January 2019
Print Gallery | Free admission

In the heart of winter, Turner's luminous watercolours light up the darkness in the National Gallery of Ireland. 

This exhibition features 31 watercolours and drawings by J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), bequeathed to the Gallery in 1900 by an English collector Henry Vaughan (1809–99). In his will, Vaughan divided his collection of Turner watercolours between the national galleries of London, Edinburgh and Dublin, stipulating that they be exhibited every year, free of charge, for the full month of January. To this day, the Gallery upholds the conditions of his bequest. 

The Vaughan Bequest at the National Gallery of Ireland is a representative collection of Turner’s work on paper. Highly finished works, engraved for various print series, hang alongside evocative sketches from his annual tours of Switzerland and Italy. This collection, tracing the artist’s development, reveals his experimental style and enthusiasm for landscape.

This year, the Vaughan Bequest is complemented by a selection of prints from Turner's Liber Studiorum series comprising landscape and seascape compositions recreated as prints.

Curator | Niamh MacNally, Curator of the Prints and Drawings Study Room

This exhibition is kindly sponsored by Sarasin & Partners

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