23-04-2025
The wild side to JMW Turner — fish, fowl and his favourite moggies
I have just been to the birthday party of Joseph Mallord William Turner. He was born on April 23, 250 years ago, and an eagerly anticipated succession of anniversary celebrations kicked off with the opening of an exhibition in his former house. But why, as I step into the home of Britain's most popular landscape painter — not to mention the greatest painter of sunlight the world has known — do I find myself faced with a turkey cock?
Turner's Kingdom: Beauty, Birds and Beasts, a tiny display mounted in a minute bedroom of Sandycombe Lodge — the Thames-side villa in Twickenham that Turner designed himself and to which, between 1813 and 1826, he habitually retreated — offers fresh perspectives on a familiar old
