En Plein Air

During the 18^th and 19^th centuries, a development towards a looser style that would capture minute sensations and visuals began to emerge, often realised en plein air, during travels around the British Isles or abroad. Turner was the chief pioneer of this gradual acceptance of watercolour painting, which many would come to regard as a quintessentially English art form.

Turner and his Contemporaries

As well as the essential, epic impressions by Turner from his tours throughout the Swiss Alps and Scotland, the exhibition also features works by his friend and collaborator Thomas Girtin, J. R. Cozens (whose art John Constable regarded as ‘all poetry’), John Sell Cotman, David Cox, and Peter de Wint, among others.

‘Nature Needs Cooking’

Such sketches were invariably meant as studies for more ambitious studio works, and often the colour was added later rather than on the spot. As John Varley, the author of ‘Treatise on the Principles of Landscape Drawing’ (1816-21) put it: ‘Nature needs cooking’. However, Turner would eventually allow some to be exhibited alongside finished works and oils for students.

Sensational Art

The choice of motifs still express the Romantic preoccupations with the idyllic and the sublime, yet the impressionistic qualities of these artworks often manage to capture the immediacy and feeling of the moment and thus, in an age when photography had begun to challenge art’s supremacy of the image, would go onto inspire successive generations of artists, especially the French Impressionists and the abstract painters of the 20^th century.

Exhibition Details

Impressions in Watercolour: Turner and his Contemporaries
Friday 23 May - Sunday 14 September 2025

Opening times:
Monday - Saturday: 10am-5pm (last admission 4.30pm)
Sunday (and Bank Holidays): 11am-5pm (last admission 4.30pm)
The Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street, Bath, BA2 4DB

Admission:
Your ticket includes entry to the collection and all exhibitions.
Adults: £12.50
18-25 Year Olds, Art Fund, NSU card holders: £7
Under 18s: Free

Learn more: www.holburne.org/