A World of Care: Turner and the Environment

This summer, Turner’s House, asserts J.M.W. Turner was the first major British artist to engage with man’s effect on the natural world. The exhibition reveals how Turner grappled with the effects of the industrial revolution on the landscape, and captured environmental and social developments that would go on to change Britain and the world‘s climates forever.

Chris Packham, Environmental activist, Wildlife TV Presenter and Conservationist, and supporter of Turner’s House who will be opening the exhibition says:

“Turner painted the turning point in our planet’s modern history. His ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’ sees a smoking locomotive at the vanguard of the industrial revolution, howling out of the fug. His sunsets are vivid, his skies torrid – he captures the cusp of change – by the time his palette dried for good, we had plunged into the Anthropocene. We can thus look at his work and see the machinery of danger in its infancy – nostalgic, fascinating and frightening . . . but oh so beautiful!”

A World of Care presents a selection of J.M.W. Turner’s paintings, drawings and prints in relation to a series of environmental issues. It shows how 200 years ago Turner bore witness to the beginnings of societal and industrial developments that would lead to today’s ecological concerns. The exhibition, featuring the rarely seen oil painting Sunset, c.1830-35, the original drawing of London from Greenwich 1808-09 and Fire at the Grand Storehouse of the Tower of London, 1841, demonstrates Turner’s keen attention to society’s impact on the natural world and the huge effect environmental change had on his subject matter.

Turner, – arguably Britain’s most celebrated landscape painter – was the first British artist of the Anthropocene: the current geological age in which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Highly attuned to changes in the landscape and atmosphere, Turner captured them in his groundbreaking paintings, drawings and engravings. Through his art, he documented plumes of smoke, burning furnaces, urban sprawl, deforested landscapes, overfishing and extreme weather.

Dr Thomas Ardill, exhibition curator, said: “Without knowing it, Turner was recording the early stages of climate and ecological breakdown as he travelled across Britain and Europe. Until recently, we may have seen these pieces as spectacular and beautiful representations of unspoiled landscapes. But there are many signs that human activity was already irrevocably damaging the environment, from urban sprawl to setting suns glowing red through atmospheric pollution. By looking at his work afresh through the context of climate change, we can reconnect with Turner on a very human level, understanding that what was important to him is important to us today.”

Turner’s contemporaries, the poet William Wordsworth and the writer John Ruskin, despaired at the environmental changes they witnessed. While other 19^th century landscape painters turned away from the newly industrialised world Turner determined to incorporate modern realities into his art, seeing both disruption and beauty in them. The changes he witnessed fired his imagination and drove him to capture new artistic subjects, such as the 24-hour carbon-economy in Shields on the River Tyne, and the record-breaking momentum of the steam engine in Rain, Steam and Speed.

A World of Care radically reframes Turner’s work. Staged in the artist’s own home, the exhibition connects the past to the present and expands our understanding of Turner’s subject matter, worldview and vision. It encourages visitors to look at Turner’s paintings in a new way, provoked by ecological concern.

Turner’s House is an ideal venue for this exhibition. Turner’s engagement with the environment is framed in relation to his life at Sandycombe Lodge, the rural retreat he designed for himself in Twickenham, upriver from the filthier stretches of the Thames and upwind of London’s smoky air.

A World of Care: Turner and the Environment, Saturday 6th July – Sunday 27th October 2024, Wednesday to Sunday 10am to 4pm, for more information visit turnershouse.org