‘He has been here and fired a gun’: J.M.W. Turner, his fellow-painters and the critics

About the talk

‘He has been here and fired a gun’: J.M.W. Turner, his fellow-painters and the critics 

J.M.W. Turner was a prodigy, successful commercially and elected a Royal Academician at a young age. Inevitably this early rise to fame and fortune, and in later years his increasingly unorthodox methods of painting, caused rivalry from other artists, and cruel satire, both verbal and visual, from his critics.

Catherine Parry-Wingfield is an art historian with a long career in teaching and lecturing, specialising in the visual arts of 18th and early 19th century Britain and Europe. She was a trustee of Turner’s House Trust from its inception in 2005, and chair from 2013 to 2019, during which time she was actively engaged as a member of the conservation project team, particularly with the presentation of the interior. She has written two booklets, ‘J.M.W. Turner, R.A. – the artist and his house at Twickenham’ and ‘J.M.W. Turner and the ‘Matchless Vale of Thames’’ (available from Turner’s House), and an article for The London Gardener, 2012, ‘The Grounds of Sandycombe Lodge, J.M.W. Turner’s Country Retreat at Twickenham’.