BIRMINGHAM, UK.- The Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham presents today “The Sun rising through Vapour: Turner’s Early Seascapes,” on view through 25 January 2004 at the Main Galleries.

“No other artist can match Turner as a painter of the sea in all its moods”—Paul Spencer-Longhurst

Some of the most beautiful, luminous and monumental works by arguably Britain’s greatest-ever artist are to be brought together for the first time in Birmingham next month when ‘The Sun rising through Vapour’: Turner’s early Seascapes opens at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham.

Almost 30 major paintings, drawings and prints by JMW Turner – as well as his contemporaries and successors – are to go on display in the first of a series of landmark exhibitions in the regions this autumn, focusing on the life and work of the great Romantic artist.

The exhibition centres on the Barber’s beautiful, tranquil, yet little-known 1809 oil painting The Sun Rising Through Vapour, comparing it to the larger, slightly earlier painting of the same name in the National Gallery, and examining the key role seascapes played in the first 15 years of Turner’s career from 1795 to 1810.

The show also puts Turner and his seascapes into the context of English marine painting of the time, probing links with his predecessors and influences, as well as contemporaries such as Richard Parkes Bonington, David Cox and Nicholas Pocock.

In addition to the National Gallery’s version of The Sun Rising Through Vapour, 25 major works by Turner and others have been loaned to the Barber Institute by public and private galleries, museums, institutions and collections around the UK and abroad, including Tate Britain, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, the British Museum and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA.

Turner’s seascapes are the starting place for the artist’s fascination with the elements of sea and sky, which continued to grow throughout his life, says exhibition organiser Paul Spencer-Longhurst, Barber Institute Senior Curator.

The artist even claimed to have lashed himself, Ulysses-like, to the mast of a ship during a storm in order to be able to grasp the full force of the experience.

But while Turner is often associated with the huge, turbulent seas and storms characteristic of the Romantic Sublime, his calmer, sunnier, more classical seascapes are less well-known.

“Turner’s reputation was to be founded upon marine painting,” says Dr Spencer-Longhurst. “And as his underlying theme, the sea was to become the barometer of Turner’s changes in style and the locus of his evolving Romantic spirit. More than any other subject, water allowed Turner’s imagination freedom to innovate and transcend mere naturalism. However, this exhibition also confirms Turner as the successor of such European masters of ineffable calm as Claude and Cuyp.”

Following Tate Britain’s Turner’s Venice, the Barber exhibition is the first of three major Turner shows opening this autumn in the regions, giving people living outside the capital a rare opportunity to see his work without having to travel to London.

“Despite his pre-eminence, Turner is a painter severely under-represented in public collections outside London,” says Dr Spencer-Longhurst. “It is our fervent hope that this exhibition will help right that injustice.”

‘The Sun rising through Vapour’: Turner’s early Seascapes will be accompanied by a full programme of public lectures, a study day, family activities, concerts, guided tours and art workshops as well as a full-colour catalogue.