The National Galleries of Scotland hold the only complete set of Turner’s finished vignette illustrations that remain together in the same collection; these form his twenty watercolours for The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, published by Edward Moxon in 1837.
This exhibition will be the first time these illustrations have been shown as a full set for over twenty years. They will be accompanied by portrait drawings of Turner and Campbell, as well as the bound volumes of The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell and Samuel Rogers’ Italy.
The exhibition will explore how Turner developed and expanded the possibilities of vignette illustration, from his imaginative and sensitive response to literary texts, to his interactions with the engravers responsible for translating his watercolours into the printed form.
The works on show will demonstrate the full range of Turner’s subject matter, including pastoral scenes, marine views, mountains, architecture and cityscapes, battles, storms and the struggle between man and nature.