J.M.W. Turner’s work has a wonderful quality of generosity about it. He was so prolific, varied and inventive in his painting that it can be enjoyed and studied in numerous ways and retains an extraordinary popularity. As 2025 is the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth in 1775, we can look forward to attractive initiatives that celebrate the artist’s achievement. Elements of next year’s programme have started to be advertised, so a round-up of what might be anticipated is in order. 

2025 will begin with an intriguing new variation on an old Turnerian tradition. Henry Vaughan (1809–99) was a dedicated collector of British art and he bequeathed fine groups of his Turner watercolours to the national galleries of Ireland and Scotland in Dublin and Edinburgh, stipulating that they should only ever be displayed in January ‘when the light is at its weakest’ for conservation reasons. His requirement has largely been respected and the resulting annual exhibitions in both cities might reasonably claim to be the longest running single artist shows in the world. What will be new next year is a loan swap: Edinburgh will get to see Dublin’s Vaughan Turners for the first time, and Dublin will enjoy Edinburgh’s watercolours. With a touch of perversity Vaughan steered his only study of Edinburgh by Turner to Dublin, so temporarily it will come home. Each capital will have the intriguing opportunity to determine whether they received the finer bequest. 

We have other good reasons to be thankful to Vaughan: as well as being a Turner enthusiast he was also passionate about the work of John Constable and in 1886 he donated the artist’s most famous painting, The hay wain (1821), to the National Gallery in London. Vaughan attempted to achieve this with his habitual discretion; however, the gift prompted cheers of approval in the House of Commons. The painting will be the focus of the gallery’s Discover Constable & The Hay Wain exhibition (17th October 2024–2nd February 2025), which will use works by William Blake, Thomas Gainsborough, John Crome and other artists to provide artistic and social context. Meanwhile, Tate Britian is organising an exhibition next year that presumably Vaughan would approve of in view of the breadth of his taste: called Turner and Constable (27th November 2025–12th April 2026), it sets the two titans of British Romantic landscape art side by side. It is fitting that this project continues into 2026, as Constable was born a year after Turner. In 1831 the Literary Gazette and Englishman’s Magazine characterised their paintings as a clash of ‘fire and water’ – visitors will be able to judge which element they prefer. 

Turner-focused celebrations in the spring of 2025 will be marked at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, by its Turner 250 exhibition. Yale’s holdings of works by the artist are unequalled in the United States and include renowned oil paintings, such as Dort or Dordrecht: The Dort packet-boat from Rotterdam (1818) and Staffa, Fingal’s Cave (1831–32), as well as fine works on paper. This will be the first time in thirty years that Yale has dedicated a show to him. As a prelude to the initiative, in September 2023 the Center for British Art hosted a symposium on the ‘state of the field’ for Turner scholarship, contributions to which can be seen online.[1] 

As well as engaging with such international projects, other opportunities can also be grasped in the United Kingdom. In the summer of 2025 the gallery that houses Turner’s Battle of Trafalgar, 21st October 1805 (1822–24) at the Royal Museums Greenwich, London, is due to reopen, following restoration of the building. This was the artist’s largest painting and only royal commission, an intriguing work that was painted for George IV and originally intended for the State Rooms at St James’s Palace. It immediately suffered very mixed critical reviews and the king presented it in 1829 to the Naval Gallery at Greenwich Hospital. 

After having visited Turner’s Trafalgar you might also consider joining the Turner Society, which was founded in 1975 on the artist’s 200th anniversary.[2] It offers an annual programme of lectures and events and publishes the Turner Society News. A journey to the painter’s house, Sandycombe Lodge, in Twickenham, could also be made.[3] Turner designed his suburban villa as a refuge from the hustle and bustle of the London art world: following a successful fundraising campaign, its restoration was completed in 2017 and it is now used for exhibitions and related programmes. Outside London, a trip to Harewood House, Yorkshire, might also be planned; clearly with an eye on attracting visitors with overlapping visual and literary tastes, it is offering an exhibition on Turner and Jane Austen (2nd May–26th October 2025). Austen, most conveniently for marketing purposes, was also born in 1775. 

Since 1987, the greatest concentration of Turner’s works, which come from his bequest to the nation of 1851, has been housed in the Clore Gallery at Tate Britain (formerly the Tate Gallery). In numerical terms there can be few other artistic gifts to match it in Britain, as the bequest consisted of just under three hundred oil paintings and (according to the most recent estimate) nearly 32,000 drawings and watercolours. The latter are the focus of an admirable and monumental online cataloguing project, which seeks to update A.J. Finberg’s inventory of the Turner bequest of 1909.[4] The catalogue grows gradually, with all works being illustrated and meticulously discussed. They are also conveniently arranged according to the key chronological phases of the artist’s career, with the contents of particular sketchbooks grouped together. As an armchair traveller, you can dip in and follow Turner’s tours to their farthest reaches, from the Scottish Highlands to Naples or from the rivers of northern France to Vienna. 

At the time of its opening, the Clore Gallery was reviewed in a qualified manner in this Magazine.[5] The passage of time has not softened the temptation to draw negative judgments about James Stirling’s unloved postmodern building, but the enduring appeal of its refulgent contents seems to outweigh such obstacles to enjoyment. 

For those who have not gone entirely digital in their financial transactions, Turner’s ubiquity is clear: the painter’s youthful self-portrait of c.1799 (Tate) has featured on £20 notes since 2020. He is the only artist to have been afforded this distinction. Perhaps there should be a campaign aligned with next year’s celebrations to encourage donations of Turnerian notes to support the study of British Romantic art for new generations of enthusiasts? 

[1] ‘J.M.W. Turner | State of the Field Symposium Yale Center for British Art’, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVJMInZIDL0 and www.youtube.com/ watch?v= Zd1LW9x-1X0, accessed 13th August 2024. 

[2] See www.turnersociety.com, accessed 8th August 2024. 

[3] See turnershouse.org, accessed 8th August 2024. 

[4] J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, available at www.tate.org.uk › search-the-catalogue-r1176978, accessed 8th August 2024. 

[5] Editorial: ‘The state of the Tate’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 129 (1987), p.219.