Walking in Turner's footsteps at Petworth House

SussexWorld

The 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth is the perfect moment to explore his long and important association with Petworth House where he remains a key driver of visitors.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon. My name is Phil Fewick, Greek arts editor at Sussex Newspapers. Really lovely

00:06to speak to Emily Knight, property curator at Petworth House, about a fantastic sounding

00:11exhibition about Turner, about what else could it possibly be? And as you were saying so

00:16interestingly, there are very few places you can go and get the sense of standing in Turner's

00:22footsteps, standing where he stood. And that's what you gave at the Petworth House, isn't

00:27it? Yeah, exactly right. He came to Petworth many times in the early 19th century, and he

00:35was inspired by the landscape. He made many studies of it. And most significantly, with

00:40his commission to paint four landscapes for the carved room, when you stand in the room

00:45today, you can look out the window and see Capability Brown's design landscape and turn

00:50around and see Turner's interpretation of it. So it's a very immersive experience that you

00:55don't really get in quite the same way anywhere else.

00:58Obviously, there are a number of things that kept him coming back, not least a benevolent

01:02benefactor and the patron. But what did Petworth mean to him, do you think?

01:09I think at Petworth, he had a kind of freedom that was hard to come by elsewhere. At this time,

01:16the Sardile of Agriment was a passionate collector of contemporary British art. And he opened his

01:22doors to many contemporary artists. So we think about it a bit like a satellite academy

01:29of the British art world, where artists were coming together, they were studying a phenomenal

01:34collection of art, they could explore the landscape and take inspiration from it. So I think for

01:39Turner, it was, yeah, that ability to explore, ability to experiment. He made many, many sketches

01:47of the park. And you can see him experimenting with materials, exploring different ways of capturing

01:53effects of light on water. And so at Petworth, he could do all of that. He had all these amazing

01:59resources at his fingertips.

02:00It sounds brilliant. And the spur for the exhibition is the 250th anniversary of his birth,

02:07which is a great moment to reflect and reconsider, isn't it?

02:10Yeah, it's wonderful to take an anniversary like this as the opportunity to celebrate, you know, one of the

02:18nation's favourite artists. There's a ton of activity happening all over the country. But here, again, we just,

02:26we tell a very specific story to Petworth and how important it was to him as an artist.

02:31Absolutely. So by the end of the exhibition, what do you hope it will achieve?

02:35I hope that people will think about his work at Petworth beyond the oil paintings that hang in

02:44the house, wonderful as they are. He produced many works on paper, watercolour, drawings, prints,

02:51and we've got a range of different types of media in the exhibition. So I hope it deepens people's

02:56understanding of who he was as an artist and how he experimented with those different media while he

03:03was at Petworth. And it's a lovely link, isn't it? I wouldn't say that Petworth and Turner are

03:06synonymous, but absolutely associated, aren't they? Definitely. It's the, it's the, he's a really

03:13important artist to us. It's what brings a lot of visitors to Petworth. And the landscape continues

03:19to inspire people. Within the exhibition, we have another layer of interpretation where we've asked

03:24five contributors who know the landscape really well to write personal reflections about some of the

03:29views that are represented in the exhibition. And it just provides a really nice way of showing

03:36how sort of alive the landscape still is, how important it continues to be, and how looking

03:42at the work of Turner can be a good way to sort of think about our own experiences of the landscape

03:47today. Fantastic. Well, it sounds absolutely the perfect way to celebrate the 250th anniversary's

03:53birth. It's really lovely to speak to you. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.

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