Art | Exhibitions | The Sun rising through Vapour
24 October 2003 - 25 January 2004
Main Galleries
The Sun rising through Vapour:
Turner's Early Seascapes
This exhibition focuses on the Barber Institute's serene but little known early seascape, The Sun rising through Vapour, by JMW Turner (1775-1851). Often regarded as the greatest British artist, Turner was known in his own day primarily as a painter of the sea - a reputation based on the magnificent succession of marine pictures he executed as a young man up to about 1810. The exhibition explores works from this period in both oil and watercolour, setting them beside those of Turner's leading contemporaries and predecessors to provide the fullest context for The Sun rising through Vapour, which dates from about 1809. Major loans have been secured from public and private collections in Britain and abroad, including the National Gallery, Tate Britain, Southampton City Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA.