An exhibition of JMW Turner’s works at Petworth House celebrates the time he spent there, as the frequent guest of George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont.
‘“Carrots don’t swim.” “They do.” “They don’t.” “They do.”’
I’m quoting from the first biography of JMW Turner, published in 1862, 11 years after the artist’s death, written by Walter Thornbury. The 3rd Earl of Egremont and Turner are sitting at a dining table in Petworth House, where the painter was a regular guest (he first visited as early as 1809, and spent several weeks there at a time, for ten years in a row, between 1827 and 1837). Egremont, Thornbury surmises, is questioning a floating carrot in one of Turner’s paintings.
‘Lord Egremont rings the bell and calls for a bucket of water and some carrots. The water is brought, the carrots are thrown in. The obstinate painter is right, they do swim, after all.’
Egremont was an immensely rich aristocrat, whose family had lived at Petworth House since the 1150s. Turner was the son of a Covent Garden barber, whose mother had died in a lunatic asylum. In normal circumstances, they would not have mixed in the same circles. But Turner was by then one of the most successful British artists of his generation, and a Professor (of Perspective) at the Royal Academy. And Egremont, a philanthropist of the first order, was a generous 70 patron of the arts, passionate about promoting British art, which he avidly collected to decorate his country home.
By then the Earl had turned his back on London society, selling up Egremont House on Piccadilly, and his collection of European art, and moving full time to Petworth House. There he kept scores of servants, up to 15 mistresses, and his 40 illegitimate children. The great and the good were invited to frequent lavish parties, and several artists at a time were regularly invited to take up temporary residence, encouraged to sketch and paint in the picturesque grounds of the estate, designed by Capability Brown, and furnished with a large communal studio. When they weren’t working, they were allowed to play billiards, and fish and go boating on the lake in the park. Guests included John Constable, George Romney, Edwin Landseer and Frances Leggat Chantrey.
The artists were also encouraged to take works of art off the walls (or their plinths) in order to study them at their leisure, which was a rare privilege, at a time when the National Gallery was in its infancy (in 1824 its collection amounted to 38 works; Egremont’s collection ran into four figures). Turner was a particularly avid student of art, eager to incorporate the methods of the Great Masters into his own work, and regularly availed himself of the opportunity, which on one occasion led to a rare disagreement with the Earl. Invited to enter a competition in which contemporary artists were commissioned to interpret works by the masters, Turner chose a work by Claude Lorraine from the Petworth House collection, without letting Egremont know. The work he produced was a virtual copy. The Earl was greatly annoyed when he learnt this, and shunned him for a whole year.
Their friendship was strong enough to survive this tiff, and Turner was, it’s quite clear, Egremont’s favourite living artist, given special privileges, and invited year after year. Turner, it has been well documented, hated anybody watching him paint, and was given his own private studio on the first floor of Petworth House, its window specially modified to allow for a better view of the grounds. Egremont, as part of the deal, was given permission to witness the artist at work, and was allowed through Turner’s locked door to inspect his progress, on delivering a coded knock.
One year the sculptor Francis Leggat Chantrey was staying at Petworth at the same time as Turner. Amused by the painter’s secrecy, he decided to play a trick on him. He later related the story to Walter Thornbury, who included it in his biography. ‘[Chantrey] paces down the corridor imitating Lord Egremont’s peculiar step, and his cough. Two sharp raps – and Turner lets him in!’ The painter’s response is not recorded; by all accounts Chantrey’s ruse became a running joke among Petworth House regulars, and at the Royal Academy, too.
Once you have seen Mike Leigh’s 2014 film Mr Turner, it is difficult to unsee Timothy Spall’s portrayal of the artist, as a shambling loner who eschews the use of language when a grunt or a snuffle will suffice. It has been well recorded that Turner was a scruffy dresser, and tended to be taciturn with strangers, but he was by no means a friendless man, and was an eloquent speaker when he wanted to be (as his students at the Royal Academy would testify). His great friend, the history painter George Jones, another regular guest at Petworth, described him as ‘Stumpy, slovenly, lame, often not very clean in dress, awkward and conciliatory in manner, suspicious of feigned friends, greedy relations, selfish legacy hunters and concealed enemies’. He then added: ‘but by his real friends he was beloved and ever cheerful, social, delighting in fun, and a most welcome companion.’ Turner and Jones spent long afternoons fishing together in Egremont’s lake, well stocked with carp, perch and pike. As Chantrey remembered ‘Turner would rise early and get all his work done before the other guests were well about; then he could idle the rest of the afternoon as he chose, to the astonishment of those who did not know his secret.’
The Irish sculptor John Edward Carew recalled a conversation with Turner while fishing at the lake ‘to the ceaseless cry of noisy rooks’. “Turner, they tell me you are enormously rich.” “Am I?” “Yes, everybody says so.” “Ah! I would give it all up to be twenty years of age again.”
Turner enjoyed his free time at Petworth House, then, but he was rarely seen without a sketchbook close to hand, and he took advantage of his freedom to roam the house and estate. Indeed, much of what we know about life at Petworth House in the time of the third Earl, we know from Turner’s gouache sketches of the Carved Room, the Square Dining Room, the North Gallery, the White Library, his elegantly furnished bedroom, and the Billiard Room. These delicate paintings, some full of detail, others almost expressionist in style, are now in the Tate collection.
In 1827, Egremont commissioned Turner to produce four double-square format oil paintings to be hung in the Carved Room, where he entertained special guests at a grand table, overlooked by Grinling Gibbons’ intricate wood carvings and a selection of paintings dominated by Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII. Visit Petworth House, and you can still see them in their peculiarly low-on-the-wall setting, chosen so they would be at eye level to those guests who were seated with their backs to the windows overlooking the park. Two of the paintings, completed in 1829, portray projects financed by Egremont, the Chain Pier in Brighton, and the Portsmouth and Arundel Canal. The other two are of Petworth Park itself, one depicting deer grazing near the walls of the house, with the spire of Tillington Church visible in the background, the other featuring a cricket match taking place in the grounds (the liberal-minded Egremont allowed the Petworth villagers to use his land for such entertainment).
Turner was a great enhancer of nature, using his considerable skill with colour and light to upgrade the scenes in front of him, attempting to sway the viewer’s emotions so as to touch the sublime. He called such landscapes ‘Elevated Pastoral’. The sunset skies in his Carved Room paintings of Petworth Park 72 are stunning. It is debatable which place settings at the dining room were more prized, those facing the wall, or the window.
In total there are 20 works by Turner permanently on display at Petworth House, and these will be augmented by the loan of a number of oils and watercolours from the Tate collection in an exhibition at the National Trust Property, Turner’s Vision at Petworth, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the artist’s birth. These will include a series of full-sized oil sketches that Turner produced in preparation for his Carved Room commission. Part of the deal with Egremont was for him to provide several versions of each scene, so the Earl could choose which he preferred. Some of the sketches that were rejected are of a rather experimental nature, with looser brushstrokes depicting swathes of colour and light, reflecting the artist’s shift towards a more abstract, proto-Impressionist style. Alas they were too avant-garde to suit Egremont’s more conventional taste. It’s one of art’s great ‘what if…’ moments.
As for the carrots? They’re difficult to spot, but I’m told by Michael Cole at Petworth House that there are some random vegetables bobbing in the brine in the forefront of the Chain Pier painting. Though, he adds, none of them are carrots. Perhaps Egremont was right, after all.
Words by Alex Leith
Turner’s Vision at Petworth runs from June 21 to November 16.