Varnishing Day

Sunset
gouache
c. 1840

Isle of Wight
oil
1827

Storm Clouds
watercolor
c. 1845

Venetian Festival
oil
c. 1845

Lake Lucerne
oil
c. 1844

River
oil
c. 1840-45

Land's End
watercolor
1834

Seascape
oil
c. 1828

Castle in Storm
watercolor
c. 1825-30

Seascape (unfinished)
oil
c. 1840

Folksstone Harbor
watercolor
c. 1845

Hulks on the Tamar
watercolor
1813

Norham Castle, Sunrise
oil
c. 1845

Sunrise
oil
c. 1840-45

Someone else will have to interfere and shut down my absorption in the gigantic Turner collection at the Tate, because I am not able to shut it down myself. By the terms of  Turner's will, his studio contents became the property of the nation when he died at age 76 in 1851. This bequest included more than 30,000 works of art.

Turner was already past 70 – with his reputation in relative decline – when fellow London painter William Parrott showed him below on Varnishing Day in 1846. The squat figure in stovepipe hat touches up one of his controversial skies just before the arrival of the fashionable invited crowd.

Turner on Varnishing Day
by William Parrott
oil
1846