J. M. W. TURNER was the son of a Covent Garden barber and wig maker, but, for all his humble beginnings, he rapidly became familiar with some of England’s grandest country houses. His talent was such that assorted grandees treated him as a friend of similar social status, rather than merely a commissioned painter, and invited him to stay with them as an honoured guest—sometimes for months at a time—at an assortment of stately residences.
Chalfont House in Buckinghamshire, Hampton Court in Herefordshire, Towneley Hall in Lancashire, Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire, Radley Hall in Oxfordshire—Turner criss-crossed the country painting houses and castles that sit languorously or dramatically in the landscape. Sometimes, his depictions were workaday records of windows, pediments and columns. Yet, at others, the houses become the stuff of dreams, visions of ideal slices of England, where harmonious architecture takes its place in the embrace of Nature. He became a regular at Petworth House in West Sussex, seat of the Earl of Egremont; at Farnley Hall in North Yorkshire, the home of Walter Fawkes,
