The fighting Téméraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up’, wood engraving c. 1880 after JMW Turner.
Mr Turner – paintings and place - A celebration of the artist’s life and art
5
days
from
£2,790
1st September 2025
- Many special arrangements, including the Courtauld, Sir John Soane’s Museum, Petworth House and Tate Britain.
- Visit all key sites associated with Turner in London.
- Stay in one hotel in Westminster throughout.
Marking the 250th year of his birth, this tour celebrates Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), one of the greatest and most beloved of European landscape and marine painters. The tour offers privileged access to a variety of sites, great and small, associated with the artist in this landmark year. Seeking a closer understanding of the man in the context of his times, we explore his work, friendships and places of significance. This will be an immersion into Turner’s life as well as art: from his humble beginnings as the child of a Covent Garden wigmaker, to his last resting place, St Paul’s Cathedral, as the nation’s celebrated son.
Viewing in situ masterpieces such as The Fighting Temeraire (1839 National Gallery) – Turner’s ‘darling’ and voted the UK’s favourite painting in 2005 – we will also enter the late-Georgian era via the portals of the idiosyncratic house museum created by Turner’s close friend and fellow Royal Academician, Sir John Soane (1753–1837). This was in turn the inspiration for the artist’s own bequest to the British nation (38,000 individual finished and unfinished works of art, drawings and sketches, now housed at Tate Britain and the National Gallery) and Turner’s own home, a villa which overlooked a picturesque section of the River Thames at Richmond, now in the leafy suburb of Twickenham, which he designed and built as a retreat from his busy commercial studio and gallery in Marylebone.
We will also venture to Petworth House, East Sussex, the magnificent 17th-century stately home of Turner’s patron Lord Egremont, where the artist was a regular house guest for over 20 years, painting interiors and landscapes within the Capability Brown deer park. Evening lectures will explore how Turner’s life and legacy has inspired artists over the centuries and in a variety of media.
Itinerary
Leave the hotel in central London on foot at 1.30pm. Turner was born on 23rd April 1775 in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. We walk from here to the recently refurbished Courtauld Art Gallery, Somerset House, which occupies the original Royal Academy of Arts building. Turner was a student here during the presidency of Sir Joshua Reynolds and it is where, as an associate and then full academician, he exhibited his early masterpieces, including Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812). We will also view prints and drawings by special arrangement.
At the National Gallery, our focus is the newly redisplayed British Art room, with works by William Hogarth and John Constable, as well as Turner. From the 1830s this building housing the nation’s paintings was also the site of the Royal Academy: The Fighting Temeraire was first exhibited here in 1839. Then take the boat to Greenwich, as did Turner himself on many occasions, to the waterside Royal Museums Greenwich and Old Royal Naval College. Turner’s largest painting, The Battle of Trafalgar (1823–24) was displayed in the monumental ‘Painted Hall’ within the ORNC during his lifetime.
Spend the morning on a private visit to Turner’s House, the artist’s small villa in Twickenham, with a curator-led talk in the temporary loan exhibition, Turner’s Kingdom. Then by coach to Petworth House, West Sussex, home to 20 Turner oil paintings – the largest collection outside of the Tate.
Begin at Sir John Soane’s Museum, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the extraordinary home and collection of the architect of the Bank of England and Turner’s friend. Visit St Paul’s Cathedral, the national ‘pantheon’, where Turner was buried, as he had requested in his will, ‘among my Brothers in Art’ Sir Thomas Lawrence and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Nearby is the tomb of Horatio, Lord Nelson, victor of Trafalgar (1805).
On our final day we visit Tate Britain, where a majority of the Turner Bequest is displayed and stored. Following a guided tour, return to the hotel by coach. The tour finishes at the hotel at c. 3.30pm.
Practicalities
Two sharing: £2,790. Single occupancy: £3,470.
Travel by private coach; accommodation as described below; breakfasts, and 3 dinners with wine; all charges for museum admission and special arrangements; tips for restaurant staff and drivers; the services of the expert speaker and tour manager.
Royal Horseguards Hotel, London: a 5-star hotel just off Whitehall, made up of the National Liberal Club and its apartments. The style is that of an international hotel and bedrooms are comfortable with all mod cons. Single rooms throughout are double for sole use.
The tour involves a lot of walking and should not be attempted by anyone who has difficulty with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Average distance by coach per day: 24 miles.
Between 10 and 22 participants.
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Dates & prices
2025
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