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  • A Bigger Splash
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Tate Britain Exhibition

Turner's Early Oil Paintings, 1796-1815

21 July – 3 October 1931

Free for Members

Small fishing boats pitch in the glassy trough of a moonlit swell, a lantern glowing on the nearest deck, as the full moon breaks through dark clouds above chalk rocks on the horizon

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Fishermen at Sea exhibited 1796. Tate.

Small fishing boats pitch in the glassy trough of a moonlit swell, a lantern glowing on the nearest deck, as the full moon breaks through dark clouds above chalk rocks on the horizon

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Fishermen at Sea (exhibited 1796)
Tate

This exhibition showed the development of Turner’s oil painting from 1796 to 1815.

It was possible to trace year by year the course of Turner’s development in the early period of his practice of oil painting from the Fishermen at Sea of 1796 to the Crossing the Brook of 1815, when Turner, having passed through a restricted scale of colour expression, emerged as the superb colourist that he essentially was.

J.B. Manson

Tate Britain

Millbank
London SW1P 4RG
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Dates

21 July – 3 October 1931

Pricing

Free

Find out more

A young man with tousled powdered hair gazes directly out from a dark brown background, wearing a dark coat, pale waistcoat and a full knotted white cravat.

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner

1775–1851
Small fishing boats pitch in the glassy trough of a moonlit swell, a lantern glowing on the nearest deck, as the full moon breaks through dark clouds above chalk rocks on the horizon

Artwork

Fishermen at Sea

Joseph Mallord William Turner
exhibited 1796
On display at Tate Britain Part of JMW Turner
Broad sunlit valley framed by tall trees, a river winding beneath a distant many-arched bridge into hazy blue hills; in the foreground two women and a black dog pause at a shallow stream

Artwork

Crossing the Brook

Joseph Mallord William Turner
exhibited 1815
On display at Tate Britain Part of JMW Turner
Artwork
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