The Arts In Berwick -- Visual Arts -- Painting
Turner in Berwick

It took a maverick artist, J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), to show what was really possible with watercolour. He visited the north in 1797 on a commission from Lord Lascelles at Harewood House, filling notebooks full of sketches, some of which are deeply antiquarian in their detail. The sketches he worked up into finished watercolours.

One of the most successful views was of Norham Castle. But Turner aimed at something beyond Prout. His 1798 Norham picture was originally exhibited with lines celebrating the dawn by Borders poet James Thomson (1700-48), the mysteries of light came to obsess Turner in later years. In his 1845 picture, the castle is barely visible amid a powerful suffusion of sunlight. The Turner-Thomson vision of an enchanted castle at Norham, profoundly influenced later artists. Turner's view of Holy Island worked up from the sketchbooks in 1829, showed another aspect of his genius, a dramatic composition with the island folk beset by a wild and squally sea.

This was development of the picturesque which critics termed the 'sublime'. It was a key part of the theory of Romanticism, with the artist as Byronic hero responding to the drama of the scene.

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