An acclaimed painting by renowned artist JMW Turner is now on display at the National in Edinburgh.
Norham Castle, Sunrise is one of the artist’s most celebrated late works and a highlight of the Turner Bequest at Tate.
Its arrival offers visitors a unique opportunity to see this iconic painting, which is on display in Scotland for the first time and free to visit until 4 October.
Norham Castle, Sunrise is one of Turner’s most hauntingly beautiful and intriguing paintings.
With its loose, watercolour-like brushwork and glowing colours, it shows Turner’s work at its most experimental, pushing his exploration of sunlight on landscape to extremes.
Unknown in the artist’s lifetime, Norham Castle, Sunrise was one of over 300 oil paintings left in his studio at the time of his death.
It is often regarded as emblematic of the expressive, free style of painting now most associated with Turner.
‘We are so excited to have Norham Castle, Sunrise on display in Scotland for the first time and free for everyone to see,’ Charlotte Topsfield, Senior Curator European & Scottish Art, said.
‘One of Turner’s best loved paintings, it is an astonishing exploration of light, landscape and the power of memory.
‘We are very grateful to Tate for this special loan, allowing us to share this wonderful picture with our visitors.’
The most famous British artist of the 19th century, Turner was born in London in 1775.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Norham Castle, Sunrise, about 1845, Tate. Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In a career spanning 50 years, he developed new ways of painting. Experimenting with an array of techniques and colour, Turner created works which continue to captivate and excite audiences today.
Norham Castle is situated on the River Tweed, six miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed and at a point where the river forms the border between England and Scotland.
Set on a high mound on the English side and commanding a vital crossing point, the 12th-century castle was one of the most important Border strongholds and was besieged at least nine times.
It remained a site of military significance until the union of the English and Scottish crowns in 1603 and is integral to Borders history and legend, inspiring Sir Walter Scott’s influential long-form poem Marmion (1808).
Turner felt enormous affection for Norham Castle. He first visited in 1797, aged 22, returning in 1801 as part of his first extended tour of Scotland, and again in 1831, when he was staying with Scott at Abbotsford, near Melrose in the Borders.
Captivated by the vision of the great tower silhouetted against the sky, he sketched the castle from different viewpoints and studied the site under different light conditions, constantly finding something new. Norham was a rich source of inspiration for him, generating showpiece watercolours and landscape prints.
Such was the importance of Norham to Turner’s career that on his final visit in 1831, he is said to have bowed and doffed his hat to the mighty ruins.
Norham Castle, Sunrise comes from a group of light-filled oil paintings from the 1840s, in which Turner revisited favourite subjects from earlier in his career, basing his compositions on his Liber Studiorum prints – a series of 71 engravings intended to demonstrate the power and importance of landscape art.
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