Announcing contemporary commissions for 2025

Contemporary Commissions

Lela Harris is a painter based in the Lake District, most known for her portraits uncovering the stories of those often overlooked and marginalised by history, her portraits are an exploration of identity and belonging. Harris is responding to Jane Austen’s final unfinished novel, Sanditon.

When the exhibition opens, Harris will show a selection of her exploratory collages for the commission, looking at how Austen’s characters might have explored Harewood House. Using found 19th-century photography, new and vintage postcards from Harewood, Harris will share her artistic and research process. The final painting will be unveiled in the Spanish Library at Harewood in the summer.

Lela Harris said: “I love country houses and sometimes like to imagine that I’m a time-travelling artist, exploring, researching and being immersed in their collections and archives. I’m enjoying peeping behind the curtains of Harewood, exploring the often overlooked histories of the people who shaped the house and its objects. It’s a unique opportunity to examine the house’s historical links to colonialism and how these connections shape our experience of Harewood today.

I’m an admirer of Turner’s landscapes and I have been surprised and delighted by his figurative watercolours, shown in this new exhibition, they provide a fascinating insight into how he makes sense of the people he’s met and their surroundings. I am also a huge Austen fan, having read all the novels in my teenage years, so I’m excited to learn more about her as a person, writer and activist by delving deeper into her unfinished novel ‘Sanditon’. It’s a real privilege for me to get to know these groundbreaking artists through this exhibition and commission at Harewood House.”

Rommi Smith is a multi-award-winning poet, playwright, theatre-maker, librettist, broadcaster and academic. Smith will be spending time at Harewood House as Writer in Residence researching and responding to the works of Austen and Turner. Smith will be experimenting with poetic form and composition tailored to the aesthetics and thematics of the exhibition. She will co-curate a creative, generative and collaborative workshop space where audiences can engage and respond to the exhibition through writing and performance.

For the exhibition, Smith is working with Thin Ice Press at the University of York, to create prints of her work, written during the residency and host a cumulative performance of original work produced in collaboration with composer Christella Litras.

Rommi Smith said: “Leeds is my home. I have lived and worked in Leeds for over thirty years. I am thrilled to be Writer in Residence for Harewood House, specifically for the Austen and Turner exhibition. The exhibition begins with a provocation: ‘What if…’ and invites us to consider the ‘conversation’ between Jane Austen and JMW Turner, as creatives living within each other’s temporality. As much as the exhibition is one of exhibits, it is one of voices. As a poet and theatre-maker, I am fascinated by voices and what they have to say. And as an archival researcher, I am interested by ghosts – the voices of the past and how they speak to us in the present tense.

History matters and deep, honest conversations about history matter. During my residency I’ll be looking at Austen’s novels ‘Mansfield Park’ and ‘Sanditon’ – which features Miss Lambe, a wealthy heiress from the Caribbean. Austen’s exploration of English etiquette and what it reveals is a source of fascination. I meet JMW Turner’s work via his apocalyptic painting ‘The Slave Ship’ and M. NourbeSe Philip’s ‘Zong!’, a stunning poetry cycle, in part, inspired by this painting. I love working as a creative interlocutor of archives, they are alive with voices and stories, and I am looking forward to listening to those voices and discovering those stories and writing in response to them at Harewood.”

Among loans from Tate is Turner’s North of England sketchbook, which he used to record views of the Harewood estate. Turner developed his interest in landscape at Harewood and also began to push the technical boundaries of watercolour as a medium. Turner’s hand-made travelling watercolour paint set is loaned from the Royal Academy of Arts, in addition to the artist’s lesser-known paintings depicting country house interiors and its people. Showing alongside are Harewood’s important collection of early country house landscapes by Turner, painted following his invitation to the estate by the Lascelles family in 1797.

Austen’s life and literary works are represented by rarely shown handwritten manuscripts and published works. On loan from the British Library and Jane Austen’s House Museum are letters written by Austen to her sister, Cassandra. Further works belonging to family members include an Austen family music manuscript, and a naval sketchbook and journal belonging to two of her elder brothers, Admiral Sir Francis Austen and Rear Admiral Charles Austen.

Austen’s creative process is revealed by the handwritten manuscript of her final novel, Sanditon. Remaining unfinished at her death in 1817, Sanditon is on loan from King’s College Cambridge and will be shown alongside first editions of earlier works from different collections, including Pride & Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park. The loans to Austen and Turner are supported by Arts Council England and the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund. Created by the Garfield Weston Foundation and Art Fund, the Weston Loan Programme is the first ever UK-wide funding scheme to enable regional museums to borrow works of art and artefacts from national collections.

Austen and Turner’s world is brought to life through Regency period costume and ephemera, selected from Harewood’s collection and on loan from museums throughout the UK. This includes clothing and shoes that would have been essential for exploring the country house landscape in the period and the type of gadgets, such as Claude glasses and pocket telescopes, that became popular amid a growing domestic tourist market in search of the picturesque.

The exhibition also explores Austen’s and Turner’s relationship to the country house within its global context. Rare depictions of the Lascelles family’s Caribbean plantations will be loaned from Royal Museums Greenwich and the British Library. Austen herself was aware of the Lascelles family and their connections to transatlantic slavery, having used their name for a peripheral character in Mansfield Park, a novel rooted in themes of Empire.

Rebecca Burton, Curator and Archivist, Harewood House Trust said: “We’re bringing together an extraordinary series of loaned works by both Austen and Turner, some of which have never been displayed before in the North of England. Presented alongside Harewood’s impressive collection of Turner paintings, these artworks, objects and manuscripts will not only bring Austen and Turner’s world to life but also help us to tell new and surprising narratives around these beloved cultural figures.

It is incredible to have visual artist, Lela Harris, and the renowned writer and performer, Rommi Smith, whose new commissions will continue Austen’s and Turner’s tradition of creative innovation, working with us at Harewood. Both artist and writer have a history of working with historic house collections to engage with their complex histories and bring hidden narratives to the fore. We are excited to see how their encounter with Austen’s and Turner’s work creates fresh perspectives on their enduring creative legacies.”

Professor Chloe Wigston Smith, Director of the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, said: “The country house is an ideal setting in which to explore this fascinating and fraught period of history, literature and art. There are no better guides than Austen and Turner to understand the cultural and creative history of the country house, what it meant in their time, and what it can mean in ours. The Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies is thrilled to be co-curating this exhibition, which is an extraordinary opportunity for visitors to take in the full experience of the Regency world through the visual, textual and material. Austen and Turner brought a fresh and modern perspective to the country house and this exhibition explores that legacy in rich and exciting ways.”

Harewood will present a Regency season throughout the year to accompany the exhibition, including Pride and Prejudice outdoor theatre, an extravagant Regency Ball, a candlelit concert and themed afternoon teas. Turner-inspired artist-led painting workshops will be held in the ‘Capability’ Brown landscape, including sessions pitched for GCSE art students, as well as ‘Tiny Turner’ woodland activities for toddlers and Sensory and Sensibility baby classes.