In 2025 we present an extraordinary exhibition celebrating the 250th anniversaries of the landscape painter JMW Turner (1775-1851) and novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817). For the very first time, the work of these two legendary artistic figures will be brought together, revealing the intersecting worlds of artist and author. 

Tracing compelling and speculative overlaps in their work, this exhibition will identify the British country house as an important site of patronage and inspiration, exploring its interior and exterior environments as places of both social and creative encounter. Through Turner’s and Austen’s eyes, the show will consider what it meant to experience the country house in the early nineteenth century, and examine the impact of their uniquely perceptive gazes on their artistic outputs and legacy.

The exhibition will be brought to life through the juxtaposition of both Turner’s and Austen’s artistic and literary work, and supported by a range of cultural material from the period including costume, artistic equipment and social ephemera. It will not only feature Harewood’s significant and rarely displayed collection of early Turner paintings, as well as the Lascelles family’s first-edition copy of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, but also a series of exciting loans from a range of public and private collections.

Furthermore, working with a number of contemporary artists, the show will prompt original creative responses to Turner’s and Austen’s work, offering timely interrogations of their enduring legacies.

Reading JMW Turner / Visualising Jane Austen is curated by Harewood House Trust in partnership with the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York.