Access Resources for Austen & Turner: A Country House Encounter

Two Figures by JMW Turner, 1827, watercolour on paper

By the 1820s, George Wyndham, third Earl of Egremont, was a steady collector of Turner’s paintings.  A staunch supporter of contemporary British art, Lord Egremont became a patron and then gradually a friend of Turner’s, inviting the artist on numerous occasions to his country seat, Petworth House in Sussex.  Petworth House and gardens were a constant source of inspiration for Turner.  When he stayed in the summer of 1827, he produced over one hundred studies and sketches recording the social gatherings, interiors and surrounding landscape.  ‘Two Figures’, one of the sketches we’re displaying in this exhibition, belongs to that particularly active time.

A stay at Petworth House often promised to be a lively experience.  Considered a haven for artists and writers, this unconventional household would regularly be filled with creatives, members of Lord Egremont’s family, and friends from his wider social network.  In ‘Two Figures’ Turner picks out two people from this convivial environment to become the focus of his [careful] observations.

This watercolour sketch is on a sheet of woven paper that’s approximately 14 by 19 centimetres.  Its colour is a washed-out, mid-tone blue and it has rough edges as if hand torn.  Turner’s two figures are a man who is standing, and a woman who sits to the right, a few feet away from him.  The woman’s chair provides the only indication that the setting is a room.  No walls or windows are marked out, and no floor is visible.  The figures positioned slightly off-centre, surrounded only by the hue of the paper.  The limited colour palette and economic use of brushstrokes demonstrate Turner’s ability to evoke atmosphere even at a small scale.

The man is standing at a three-quarter angle, his legs apart and his feet turned slightly outwards.  He leans towards the woman, his head inclined in her direction.  His head, a roughly contoured circle, has a light, pinkish-orange skin tone.  There are no features on his face.  A thin black squiggle resembling a tick symbol indicates his temple and it arches over his forehead to suggest hair.  Black jagged brushstrokes give us a tailcoat, and a gap at the front implies a waistcoat underneath.  A little black curled line suggests a cravat.  The man’s elbows jut outwards, and we can imagine his hands resting in his pockets.  Dark grey shading shows us a pair of close-fitting trousers that reveal the lines of his calves.  White or very light colours are not painted in.  The man’s hair, his cravat and his waistcoat take on the colour of the paper.

The woman is seated with her back to us on a broad chair that has elegant, splayed legs.  She sits in an upright manner, her body positioned towards the edge of the seat, with her head tilting in the direction of the standing figure.  Delicate dabs of black depict hair, that’s been swept up high off her neck.  She has a long neck, and the warm coral colour of her skin is almost the same shade as the chair.  Her gown has a black, low-cut bodice and a sweeping skirt.  Soft grey brushstrokes suggest the presence of sheer fabric in a small shawl over her shoulders.  Tiny vertical brushstrokes at the end of her skirt create the effect of an elaborately embroidered hemline.

The identities of the people featured in this sketch have never been determined, and as part of our exhibition, we’re asking the question: what if these two figures were Jane Austen and JMW Turner?  There’s no evidence to suggest they ever met, but if they had, what might they have talked about?  Turner, who was said to enjoy a good joke, may have been highly amused by Austen’s razor-sharp wit and acerbic study of the people around them.  Whereas Austen, who adored long walks in the countryside, could have been captivated by Turner’s sincere and joyous appreciation of nature.

Their social backgrounds differed.  Austen belonged to the landed gentry, but her day-to-day existence was relatively modest and at times financially precarious.  Turner was a barber’s son.  Both, in their own ways, were outsiders within the environment of the country house.  And yet their vivid and compelling observations continue to shape our perceptions of the country house and of the wider society they inhabited.  As each new generation encounters these two figures, fresh conversations are sparked that enrich our understanding of their remarkable legacies and underline their impact on our culture to this day.

Harewood House from the South-East by JMW Turner, 1798, watercolour on paper.

In the Spring of 1797 Turner gained the patronage of Edward, Viscount Lascelles, the eldest son of the 1st Earl of Harewood. Lascelles was one of Turner’s first major patrons, and the association would last for ten years. Lascelles’ considerable art collection included many contemporary watercolour paintings, and he recognised the young Turner’s talent and innovation within the medium. Shortly after buying his first painting from Turner, Lascelles commissioned the artist to produce four views of his country seat, Harewood House.

Turner used the invitation as an opportunity to tour the North of England, setting off in the summer of 1797. Throughout the journey he created many drawings and watercolours, mostly of local landmarks and rural scenes. Harewood House was his last significant tour stop.

It’s likely he stayed for a few days, making pencil sketches of the House and the Grounds in order to create full-scale watercolour paintings back in his London studio. In our exhibition we’re displaying all four of the views of Harewood House that Turner painted. And in this audio description we’ll be focusing on one view in particular: Harewood House from the South-East, which Turner completed by March 1798.

The painting measures approximately 46cm by 65cm and is in landscape orientation. Turner uses this perspective to full advantage, choosing a position at the top of a hill near Lofthouse Gate, the main entryway into the Harewood estate when coming from the direction of Leeds at the time. It was at this point that eighteenth century visitors would have received their first impressions of the grounds. Here, Turner gives us a similar viewing experience, inviting us to take in the extensive approach to Harewood House and the sweep of the surrounding countryside.

In much of his landscape Turner emphasises movement. His depiction of the sky takes up almost the entire top half of the painting. Giant white clouds appear to roll eastwards, obscuring much of the serene blue colouring underneath. On the edge of the woodland in the foreground of the painting, a tree with a pale trunk leans heavily to the right, its pale olive leaves lifted by a strong breeze. A herd of deer gather around it. Most are seated but two are standing, signalling that the herd could be ready to set off again.

The hillside to the left of the painting slopes gently towards a lake. This open, cultivated grassland is dotted with grazing sheep. A lane cuts through, and halfway down, towards the middle distance, we find a wagon drawn by multiple horses has come to a temporary halt. The driver is interacting with three people who are on foot. They’re dressed in everyday, working attire and appear to be a man, a woman and a child.

On the other side of the wide, silvery-blue lake, a gradual rise of open grassland brings us to Harewood House. Despite being at a distance, Turner ensures that the house has a distinct presence within the landscape. The southern façade reflects the sun, its cream-coloured stone shining brightly. This allows us to pick out key features, such as the portico with its large pediment and imposing columns, and the tall arched windows in the east and west wings.

In the countryside beyond the grounds of Harewood, a deep meander of the River Wharfe is shown winding through a distant valley. Low, pale green hills stretch far into the horizon. Almscliffe Crag stands out as the highest feature of the land. It rises behind Harewood House, its rugged contours visible from several miles away.

Paintings that portrayed picturesque views of country estates acted as vehicles to display the economic power and social status of their owners. Presenting conspicuous property wealth within a landscape setting reinforced the idea that this form of ownership was part of the natural order of society. Such constructions masked the truly global nature of the English country estate: in reality, the Lascelles family owed their prosperity to income from the Caribbean, from the trade in enslaved people during the eighteenth century. Though the Harewood landscape appears timeless, its features were not yet thirty years old by the time it was painted by Turner.

Turner was developing rapidly as an artist at the time this picture was painted, and he soon moved away from conventional country house portraiture. In this early landscape we can already find signs of a shift in his artistic direction. The remote, static grandeur of Harewood House is eclipsed by the dynamism of the foreground and the sky. Here Turner openly explores his increasing fascination with nature and its elemental forces.

As part of our exhibition the artist Sam Metz has created a tactile way to explore this painting.

The tactile objects are split into foreground, middle ground and background to help you explore the different compositional layers of Turner’s picture. The concave forms echo the expanse of the vistas painted by the artist.

When working with these tactile tools consider how your hands might dance across the pieces and how this might respond to looking. We receive information through our bodies, how might this help us interpret the work?

Album of Sketches, Admiral Sir Francis Austen (and others), 1840s

Admiral Sir Francis Austen was Jane Austen’s fifth brother, and the sixth child of eight siblings.  Francis was educated in the family home up until the age of twelve when he left to enter the Royal Naval Academy in Portsmouth.  He was one of two Austen brothers to make his career in the navy, the other being the youngest of the Austen siblings, Charles.  Francis outlived all his brothers and sisters, dying in 1865 at the age of ninety-one.  He served in the Royal Navy for nearly eighty years, rising to the highest rank: Admiral of the Fleet.  By the 1840s, when this album of sketches was created, Francis was a vice admiral in command of the North America and West Indies Station.

The album, measuring approximately 22 by 30 centimetres and of landscape orientation, has half calf binding and a heavily scuffed, marble-patterned cover.  Inside [there] are 73 topographical watercolours and pen and ink drawings compiled by Francis and his daughter Cassandra who often accompanied him abroad.  In this exhibition we’re displaying one page from the album.  It contains coastal profile sketches drawn by Francis in 1846.

These sketches of pencil and watercolour are drawn on pieces of pale blue paper that have been cut by hand into wide strips.  There are four of them, positioned closely together, one on top of the other.  In each sketch there’s a panoramic view of mountainous coastlines in the Caribbean.  The first shows us St Lucia; the second the Souffriere mountains of St Vincent; the third, the islands of St Eustacious, St Kitts and Nevis; the fourth depicts Guadaloupe and Mariegallante.

The colour palette is mostly confined to cool tones of blue and grey.  The mountains of St Vincent, which are the largest and most rugged in appearance, have well-defined, deeply shaded contours.  Long white clouds float across this imposing grey landmass, drifting low enough to obscure some of the peaks.

With all these pictures we follow Francis’s gaze.  We can presume he’s on board a ship, looking out over expanses of calm sea on to colonised lands that appear eerily empty and benign.  From out here, colonised people are nowhere to be seen.  There are also no signs of vegetation or of settlements.  The only indication of life comes in the form of distant naval vessels.  Tiny flecks of white highlight the sails of a ship headed away from St Vincent.  And between St Kitts and Nevis, drawn in soft pencil, we can perceive another ship as it fades from view.

We do find plenty of examples of nautical data, written by Francis on to each image, in his precise hand.  The sketch of St Eustacious, St Kitts and Nevis offers us the most information.  In the bottom left-hand corner, we’re given the latitude-longitude coordinates “17, 28”, and there’s a date, “Feb 18, 1846” followed by the approximate distance out to sea, “40 miles”.  The names of the three islands are just above, at spaced intervals from left to right.  And directly underneath each island there’s a compass point.  Nevis, the smallest of the islands, has the longest list of bearings: “East by South, half a fraction South.”

Views drawn by mariners formed an important part of the operations of the Royal Navy in the nineteenth century.  Naval officers were trained in drawing skills with the aim of enlarging British geographical knowledge.  Such a feat of information gathering could be compared to Google maps today.  Back then, detailed depictions of coastlines, harbours and fortifications played a key role in British warfare tactics and in Empire building.  Part of Francis’s role as a commander was to protect British commercial and imperial interests.

It’s possible that these sketches, pasted into a family album, were intended only for personal use.  Despite long periods away from home, Francis kept in constant touch with family members in England providing detailed accounts of his travels and military campaigns.  Sketches such as these could have served as a useful memory aid.

But the cool-toned colouring, the rather sterile sparseness, and the emphasis on labelling and measuring in these images tell us more about English imperialist values than the places they’re meant to depict.  Whatever their original purpose, they provide an unwitting insight into the narrative of colonialism and how English ideas of what constituted “the picturesque” could be forcibly transposed on to foreign lands.

Handwritten manuscript of Sanditon by Jane Austen, 1817, ink on paper

On the 16th of December 1816, on her 41st birthday, Jane Austen wrote a letter to a nephew where she likened her own creative process to the art of miniature painting.  She pictured the material on which she realised her craft as “the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush…”  Barely month later, on January the 27th, 1817, she sat at her desk and began her last creative project, a story that would eventually become known as ‘Sanditon’.

Jane Austen uses “ivory”, a material symbolising luxurious consumption, to describe what was in fact a durable ivory-coloured paper probably made with recycled cotton and linen rags.  Her “fine brush” would very likely have been a goose-feather quill pen.

The Sanditon manuscript consists of 120 pages and is contained within three homemade booklets.  It’s entirely handwritten and is about 24,000 words in length.  Possibly, the booklets were folded and cut by Austen herself.  Towards the end of the twentieth century, they were bound in new covers made from a robust, pale cream paper.

Booklet 3, which we’re displaying in our exhibition, is approximately 16 by 10 centimetres.  It has eighty pages, and exactly half of these have been written on.  The novel was never finished: the last page of writing has only one completed line, and underneath it there’s a date, March the 18th, when Austen set the work aside, and she became too ill to return to it.  She died on the 18th of July, having endured serious bouts of poor health for at least a year beforehand.

Despite her illness Austen worked regularly on her manuscript.  Her penmanship is firm and assured, the writing flowing from the nib of the quill, neat and straight on unlined paper.  The two pages on display show how Austen’s handwriting generally slants to the right, and how some of the stalks on her lowercase ‘D’s make a jaunty arc to the left.  ‘I’s, ‘L’s and ‘F’s, carry large, decorative loops.  ‘T’s are often crossed with a long, dashing stroke.  She writes to the edges of the pages leaving no margin in order save paper – at the time a precious resource.  Occasionally a word or a phrase is crossed out.  Sometimes words are added, in smaller writing, crammed in between the main lines of text.

Austen used iron gall ink.  Time has faded the colour of the writing to a sepia brown.  Originally, the writing would have been a deep shade of blue-black.

Sanditon marks a departure from Austen’s earlier novels with a shift in focus, away from the perceived stability and order of country estates to a curious throng of characters residing in a purpose-built seaside resort.  In Sanditon Austen also expresses a keenness to record the impact of Empire, specifically the new monied classes that were a product of Caribbean wealth.  It is in this novel that Austen introduces her first and only character of known African descent, a Caribbean heiress called Miss Lambe.  As readers we are given tantalising details about her social standing and character, but the manuscript ends before Miss Lambe has the chance to appear.

The first complete transcription of Sanditon wasn’t published until 1925.  Ever since then there’s been speculation among fans about how the story might have developed and ended, and attempts have been made to continue the story and to reimagine it.

Elsewhere in this room you will find a tactile resource created by the artist Sam Metz to help you to experience the manuscript – a plaster cast based on a section of Jane Austen’s handwriting.

Interior of a Great House: The Drawing Room, East Cowes Castle by JMW Turner, circa 1830, oil on canvas 

Turner remained a highly sought after artist in his mid-career years.  By then, he’d amassed a substantial fortune, which allowed him to take artistic risks and experiment more freely.  Increasingly, from around the 1830s, Turner produced paintings that moved closer to abstraction, a radical concept at the time.  Form and detail were stripped away in favour of an intense focus on the elemental effects of light, water, rocks, air, mist, and steam. 

Here Turner’s depiction of a drawing room, a space in which guests were received and entertained, provides an important example of his changing artistic priorities.  But his deliberately vague rendering of objects has proved problematic in terms of identifying the specific subject matter of the work and was mistakenly identified as Petworth House in Sussex for many years.  Art historians now generally agree that the setting is East Cowes Castle on the Isle of Wight, the home of Turner’s friend, the celebrated architect John Nash.  

The painting measures approximately 90cm by 122cm and is in landscape orientation.  Turner’s view places us in what is approximately the middle of the drawing room.  As viewers we’re looking directly across to the back wall in what appears to be a generously sized, rectangular-shaped space.  

The walls and the ceiling are a pale, sandy pink colour and are heavily shaded with translucent greyish blue tones.  The shading helps to delineate the corners of the walls.  The coving is hazy and has soft, fading edges.  Its warm golden colouring provides a visual separation between the walls and the ceiling. 

A wide archway sits in the middle of the back wall and dominates the background of the composition.  The archway reveals no distinguishable features into the next room.  Instead, we’re met with an intense white light that spills freely in.  There are bright yellow swirls and shimmering white beams, and inside this resplendent glow, white specks appear to float in mid-air, as if some of the light might be passing through a crystal chandelier. 

The areas on either side of the archway are comparably muted.  There’s an alcove on the right which appears to be empty, while an alcove, or possibly reflection, on the left contains the suggestion of a white figure with its head leaning to one side – possibly a statuette or even a reflected portrait. 

Along the left wall the rounded back and arm of an elegant wooden chair are discernible.  The chair is positioned by a fireplace with a stone mantlepiece where we find some other heavily blurred objects: a white crucifix-shaped object, possibly several candelabra and a giant, gilded mirror frame with an ornate crest.   

An enormous bay window takes up much of the right-hand side wall.  Very little of the window glazing can be seen, which is lost in the golden sunshine that’s pouring in. A transparent green, almost vase-like object sits on the windowsill, and the sun rays drift through it creating a fragmented beam of emerald-green light that spreads over the bottom edge of what appears to be a maroon-coloured curtain.   

The foreground is the part of the painting that contains the most mystery.  The flurry of objects that occupy this area have been much debated by observers over the years.  Near the window a thick, reddish-brown streak has been daubed on to the seat of a large, cherry-red sofa-like piece of furniture.   

Next to the sofa there might be a small footstool turned on its side.  And a few feet away we find a bright orange mound and a red mound, possibly representing pieces of cloth draped over two low articles of furniture. 

Is there a human figure lounging on the floor below the sofa?  There’s the suggestion of a face with pale skin, and the dark supine length of a body.  The irregular brown and white flecks in front of and just beyond the recumbent figure could represent small dogs scampering about. 

Turner uses the opulence of an English country house to showcase his interest in the power and beauty of light.  He presents a dream-like space, one where material forms fade or appear obscure.  In doing so, he emphasises the importance of emotional and sensory perception.   

This striking departure from realism puzzled and alienated many contemporary critics, but over time Turner’s mid and late career paintings began to be met with acceptance and appreciation.  They are now largely understood to have had an influence on the Impressionist movement that came to prominence in France in the 1870s and to have anticipated the abstract art styles of the twentieth century. 

Two Women with a Letter by JMW Turner, circa 1830, oil on canvas.

By the time Turner painted Two Women with a Letter, paintings that depicted women with letters – usually in the act of receiving, writing or reading them – were popular and familiar.  As were works depicting scenes in country houses.  But in Turner’s domestic drama, set in a grand room in an unidentified location, he subverts our expectations of these well-worn themes and provides us with one of the most unusual and striking compositions of his career.

The painting measures approximately 122cm by 92cm, and is in portrait orientation. Turner’s two young women fill about half of the canvas space.  Their bodies face each other, their heads and torsos dominating the centre foreground.  They wear gleaming ivory-coloured dresses that are almost as pale as their complexions.

Turner’s enigmatic protagonist stands tall and with her back to us.  Her figure occupies the immediate foreground, the canvas cutting her body abruptly at the hips.  Behind her back she holds a white rectangular envelope.  The second figure, that of her companion, rises from beyond her left shoulder.  She’s leaning forward, a hand reaching out as she tries to take the protagonist’s letter from her.

The character of the painting is semi-abstract.  People and objects are defined using soft and sometimes hazy lines.  The blurring at the edges of the two women leads us to question the boundaries between them, and whether a boundary is being overstepped.  Throughout the canvas we also find areas of raised, thickly applied paint, cross-hatching, and visible brush marks.  Such textural effects evoke a strong sense of touch and intimacy.

The receiver of the letter has long, dark brown hair that’s been swept up high off her neck.  An ornamental comb with long teeth and a cluster of pale pink flowers are visible in her extravagant updo.  We get a glimpse of her ear underneath the loose strands of curls that frame her unseen face.  She has a long neck, and her sloping shoulders are engulfed in large, puffy sleeves.  She holds her letter just below a wide, dark green sash that cinches her waist.

Her companion has dark, reddish blonde hair that falls in heavy corkscrew curls at the sides of her face.  A wide span of forehead is visible beneath a short, asymmetric fringe.  Her large blue eyes stare directly at us with a bold, confronting gaze.  She has a long prominent nose, flushed cheeks, and her rose-pink lips are slightly parted.  She wears a high-collared blouse called a chemisette, which tucks into the neckline of her full-sleeved dress.

The appearance of this second woman adds to the painting’s many visual mysteries.  The right side of her face appears brightly lit, yet her right eye is heavily shaded: what should be the white of the eye is painted entirely brown.  Her parted lips could suggest a sly knowing or bitter frustration.  A copper-coloured object hovers beneath her fingers.  Is it a jewellery case?  Has she confiscated it?  Jewellery cases were a familiar symbol of female sexuality at that time.

Behind the two women, and across the middle section of the canvas, a tall, rectangular structure suggests the imposing back of an ornate chair or screen.  It’s crimson in colour and has a line of rivets along its left edge.  Bizarrely, a row of white, evenly spaced spheres floats across the top edge.  The spheres are decorative but don’t appear to be fixed to the chair in any obvious way, lending them a surreal quality.

A lavish doorway with a gold-leaf, keystone arch dominates the background of the painting.  To the right of the arch, three bronze, bird-like shapes form a vertical line against the dark green wall.

The room’s vague physical details enhance the central mystery of the painting.  We can assume from the protagonist’s secretive behaviour that she’s hiding a letter full of intrigue.  From a charming but inappropriate suitor, perhaps? But we cannot read this woman’s facial expression, and we can never know the letter’s contents.  As onlookers Turner has thrust us into the middle of this scene yet, somehow, we must remain on the outside.