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The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
One of JMW Turner's earliest paintings rediscovered after 150 years
An oil painting of a stormy Bristol landscape has been rediscovered as one of the earliest works of JMW Turner, created when the artist was 17 years old and lost to his canon for the past 150 years. Turner's signature on The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent's Rock, Bristol was discovered in the process of cleaning the painting after it was sold last year. At the time of the sale, the work was attributed to a 'follower of Julius Caesar Ibbetson', an 18th-century artist. Dreweatts, the auctioneers, had suggested the work would fetch £600-800, although the buyer is believed to have paid less. Now, in a year of exhibitions and events to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of the man widely considered to be Britain's greatest and most influential artist, the painting is to be sold again. This time it will be auctioned by Sotheby's with an estimated value of £200,000-300,000. 'We are as certain as it's possible to be that this painting is by Turner,' said Julian Gascoigne of Sotheby's. The painting had been examined by 'all the leading Turner scholars alive today who unanimously endorsed the attribution'. As well as the recently revealed signature, there were 'clear references to a painting of this subject' in obituaries of Turner and in early literature on the artist in the years after his death in 1851. But in the second half of the 19th century, 'a series of mistakes were made, which were repeated and compounded, with it described as a watercolour', said Gascoigne. It was omitted from the first complete resume of Turner's work published in 1901, and 'over the course of the 20th century, it was forgotten about as just another relatively minor early watercolour'. The person who bought the painting last year initially thought it may have been the work of Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, a French émigré painter living in London whose studio Turner frequently visited. De Loutherbourg's wife, suspicious that Turner was intent on appropriating her husband's painting technique, eventually threw him out. The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent's Rock, Bristol was the first oil painting exhibited by Turner, at the Royal Academy in 1793, the year after it was painted. Based on a drawing in his sketchbook and a watercolour, both held by Tate Britain, it depicts Hot Wells House in Bristol seen from the east bank of the River Avon, now the site of the Clifton suspension bridge, amid swirling storm clouds and tempestuous waters. Hot Wells was a hot spring and spa that was a popular attraction in Georgian England. The painting was first acquired by the Rev Robert Nixon, a customer at Turner's father's barbershop who befriended and encouraged the young artist. Nixon was among the first to urge Turner to paint with oils. 'It gives us a real insight into the ambition that Turner was clearly exhibiting at this early stage of his career, and shows a level of competency in oil painting, which is quite a technical medium,' said Gascoigne. 'It changes a lot of what we know, or thought we knew, about Turner's early work and our understanding of how his technique and style evolved.' Turner applied the oil paint thinly, almost like a watercolour. 'He's feeling his way through the medium, but bringing all the experience he already had as a watercolour painter to his application of oil. 'This technique of washy, translucent glazes of paint is something he comes back to later in his career, in the 1830s and 40s, and is one of the things that allowed him to completely revolutionise the art of painting – breaking down forms, seducing them in light, taking his painting technique towards the level of experimentation and abstraction that we think of today with his late, great masterpieces.' At the time of last year's sale, the painting was 'very dirty, it hadn't been touched for a long period of time, it had very old discoloured yellow varnish on it,' said Gascoigne. The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent's Rock, Bristol will go on public display for the first time in 167 years later this month at Sotheby's in London before being auctioned on 2 July.
Telegraph
07-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
‘I'm selling £300k mammoth fossil to restore my stately home'
A music entrepreneur is selling a 10ft-tall woolly mammoth fossil to help fund the restoration of his fire-damaged stately home. James Perkins, a former rave promoter, bought the burnt-out shell of Parnham House in Dorset for £2.5 million in 2020 and estimates that the restoration will cost 10 times that amount. Now, he is auctioning his eclectic collection of rare fossils, taxidermy animals, unusual artworks and furniture. The 448 lots, which are being sold with the Newbury-based auctioneers Dreweatts, are expected to fetch £1.66 million. They include entire prehistoric skeletons, including a woolly mammoth fossil found in Poland that is at least 11,700 years old and is in exceptional condition. It is valued at £300,000. Mr Perkins said: 'This sale ... marks an important milestone in Parnham's evolution ahead of some major structural repair, as the proceeds will help us restore the estate to its former glory and establish a unique destination for lovers of art, design and grand entertainment.' Parnham House is a Grade I-listed historic property dating back to the 1400s and one of Dorset's oldest stately homes. The property was ravaged by fire in 2017 and its owner, the Austrian banker Michael Treichl, was found dead in Lake Geneva two months later. At the time of his death, Treichl was on bail following his arrest for starting the fire and he is thought to have taken his own life. Mr Perkins, 57, who previously bought the 17th-century Aynhoe Park in Northamptonshire and turned it into a party and events venue, hopes to create something similar with Parnham Park. Among the collection being sold by Mr Perkins is a complete 180-million-year-old ichthyosaur skeleton, which is about 9ft long and expected to fetch £180,000. Another ichthyosaur fossil embedded in rock has an estimate of £80,000 and a fossil of a Cretaceous predatory fish that swam the seas 90 million years ago is expected to sell for £150,000. Among the art works of four prints by Damien Hirst with an estimate of £18,000 and tables created by Jacques Duval-Brasseur, including an £18,000 low table made from a petrified tree and gilt bronze. There is also art created by Mr Perkins, including an oil-on-canvas painting of a full moon valued at £8,000, and The Model, a skeleton of a giraffe in heels that has an estimate of £15,000. An ostrich-feather four-posted bed has an estimate of £12,000, while a large royal coat of arms is expected to fetch £10,000. The sale takes place on May 13.
Telegraph
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The only gay couple in a Northamptonshire village who shocked, then lit up, polite society
I knew the house long before they turned up. The handsome old rectory in the Northamptonshire village of Aston-Le-Walls was home to a fellow teenager and she would invite me round to dinner parties. We would glug cheap wine and then use an empty bottle for that game where you spin it twice, and the two individuals that its top points to must snog, to the uproarious glee of the others. A little scandalous, maybe. But not half as outrageous as the couple who then bought the house. It's almost 30 years to the day, and I can recall the ripples, the minor quake, that shook the polite society of Northamptonshire back in the 1990s. Johnnie Lloyd Morgan and Philip Astley-Jones were a gay couple. Not just the only gays in the village, but seemingly the only 'out and proud' same-sex male couple in the county. The baroneted Bufton-Tuftons shifted awkwardly behind their estate desks while their lady wives waited to see which of their friends would be the first to crack, first out of the blocks with a dinner invitation. And as Johnnie now recalls, they came to Northamptonshire with a triple whammy of faux pas: 'We were gay, we were Londoners and we were weekenders.' Then, guess what? News got around that jeweller Johnnie and antique dealer Philip were not just fabulous company but their presence could right the configurations at dinner parties, otherwise flawed by that societal pestilence of widowhood. Recently bereaved women saw their way to cathartic merriment safe in the knowledge that the presence of Philip and Johnnie would enable that vital boy/girl/boy/girl dining table mapping. They were an instant hit. And then came what we all desired: an invitation to a dinner party at their house, seated around a convivially large round table. And what a house it became. Philip's collecting saw the place – every corner, side table, and wall – adorned with his purchases. From Kenyan hippo skulls to 17th-century portraits, his growing hoard was as esoteric as it was occasionally mad. As Johnnie says: 'He had wonderful taste but also an impulse that saw him buying things like a clown's shoe or a plaster model of a foot.' All of which is now in particular focus because Philip died in 2021 and on April 9, much of his collection will go under the hammer at auctioneers Dreweatts. It's both profoundly sad and cathartic for Johnnie, who adds: 'We discussed a sale before he died, and he said he would be happy that his things would find new homes. I see it as breaking up a theatre set but knowing there will be another play that will use it next month.' And, he says, 'I'm quite looking forward to being able to find space on a table to put down a glass.' While a preview of the sale – and there are some 300 lots – will remind us friends of Philip's impeccable eye, it also jogs my memory of how, having grown to love this wonderful couple, we were scandalised a notch further. In 2014, the couple invited another to join them at Aston-Le-Walls. 'There's a new addition and he's drop-dead fabulous,' Philip once told me, adding: 'We're going to need a bigger bed.' Thus Northants got its first gay throuple, and we loved them even more for it. Which just goes to show that the world is a better place when its conventions, its social mores and its attitudes are thrown in the air and the fuddy-duddies get to see how much gayer life is when you throw a few gays into the mix. The actor Sir Ian McKellen told The Times this week that young gay actors in Hollywood should come out. 'I have never met anybody who came out who regretted it,' he said. 'Being in the closet is silly – there's no need for it. Don't listen to your advisers, listen to your heart. Listen to your gay friends who know better. Come out. Get into the sunshine.' And, as Philip and friends demonstrated, people are actually far more relaxed about such things than one might think. Although, personally, I draw the line at clown's shoes.
