Taking place throughout 2025, events across the UK will celebrate 250 years since the birth of the renowned painter J.M.W. Turner. Artlyst has picked a selection of exhibitions and displays for the Turner 250 celebrations, where you can explore and discover new paintings and stories about this ever-popular artist, whose genius and timeless ability to capture the sublime continue to shine.
JMW Turner was born on 23 April 1775 and is widely considered to be the greatest and most influential British artist of all time and perhaps the best-loved English Romantic artist. From humble beginnings, he travelled the length and breadth of the country to capture its dramatic scenery, redefining landscape painting in the process. He became known as ‘the painter of light’ because of his increasing interest in brilliant colours in his landscapes and seascapes.
Cataloguing Turner’s Bequest: Sketchbooks, Drawings, Watercolours
Clore Gallery Displays, Tate Britain
23 April 2025 – 28 June 2026
Tate Britain’s Clore Gallery opens a new room showcasing a selection of watercolours and sketches, drawn from the many thousands held in the Turner Bequest. It includes the earliest Turner in Tate’s collection, made when he was only 12 years old, as well as a dramatic image of a building on fire, long believed to be the Houses of Parliament but now newly revealed as the Tower of London. The display draws on the latest research from a new comprehensive catalogue of Turner’s works on paper, over 20 years in the making, which is freely available on Tate’s website from November.
Other Tate Britain projects include a new video installation about Turner’s travels across Europe and a collaboration with the BBC on a major new documentary about his art and life.
Turner’s Kingdom: Beauty, Birds and Beasts
Turner’s House, Twickenham
23 April – 26 October 2025
For the first time in almost forty years, rarely seen bird studies will form the star attraction of the first exhibition in a generation devoted to animals and birds painted by J.M.W. Turner.
Feathers, fins and fur are not subject matter usually associated with Britain’s greatest landscape painter, but Turner was enchanted by the colours and characters of creatures he encountered during his lifetime. Featuring around fifteen loans from British public collections, Turner’s Kingdom: Beauty, Birds and Beasts brings together a menagerie of birds, fish and animals, from domestic pets to wildlife seen in the countryside. Displayed within the intimate, domestic space of his house, they uncover a little-known, personal side to the notoriously secretive artist.
Turner: In Light and Shade
The Whitworth , Manchester
7 February – 2 November 2025
This exhibition explores his most remarkable but overlooked series of landscape prints, the Liber Studiorum. Translating as ‘Book of Studies’ and published in fourteen parts from 1807–19, Turner created the series at the height of his fame.
The exhibition will pair Turner’s evocative Liber prints with a series of Turner’s watercolours from the Whitworth’s collection, as well as loaned works from public and private collections. Visitors are invited to explore Turner’s artistic legacy and the significance of his prints.
Last presented at the Whitworth over 100 years ago and marking 250 years since his birth, this exhibition presents all seventy-one of Turner’s published prints. Offering a fresh perspective on Turner. Together they show how the artist’s use of colour and atmospheric effects in painting were reimagined in print using line, tone and negative space.
Turner 250: Breaking Waves
Turner Contemporary, Margate
8 April 2025 – 19 April 2026
Turner Contemporary presents JMW Turner’s masterwork Waves Breaking on a Lee Shore at Margate (Study for Rockets and Blue Lights) on loan from Tate. This atmospheric painting, created during Turner’s regular visits to Margate in the 1830s and 40s, captures the elemental force of a storm as seen from the safety of the shore. Turner Contemporary stands on the site of the boarding house where Turner stayed during these visits, and his radical vision defines the gallery’s ethos today. The display is accompanied by activities celebrating the painter’s lifelong connection to Margate and his love of the ocean.
Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter
2 May – 19 October 2025
Harewood House, Leeds
For the very first time, the work of these two legendary artistic figures will be brought together, co-curated by Harewood House Trust and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York.
In 1775, two icons of British culture were born into an era of huge social change. 250 years later, we celebrate Jane Austen and JMW Turner, uncovering their shared interest in the society and culture of the British country house and its landscape.
We imagine an encounter between these iconic figures, whose innovative works recorded the Regency era. Through Austen’s and Turner’s eyes, the show explores the world of the country house in their time and their impact on how we think about stately homes today.
Thrilling, evocative and rarely seen paintings and manuscripts will bring the Regency country house to life. The original manuscript of Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon joins early Turner watercolours and the very paintbox he used when he visited Harewood – all brought to northern England for the first time for this exhibition.
From Harewood’s own collection, see Turner’s famous paintings of the Harewood landscape and a first edition of Sense and Sensibility. Period costume, fashion plates, artistic tools and other objects illustrate the culture and colonial connections of this intruiging era in British society.
Also in the exhibition, contemporary art and creative writing bring a fresh perspective on how Turner’s and Austen’s work continue to shape our views of the country house today, in all of its complexities.
Turner’s Vision at Petworth
21 June – 16 November 2025
Petworth House, Sussex
Turner’s Vision at Petworth will feature 10 views of the Petworth landscape, including oil paintings and works on paper on loan from the Tate, that offer a unique insight into his methods and artistic inspiration. They tell the story of Turner’s connection with the landscape, and with George O’Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751-1837), who collected many of his works. This exhibition is a celebration of an extraordinary landscape seen through the eyes of a master painter.
Turner and Constable
Tate Britain
27 November 2025 – 12 April 2026
The year of celebrations will culminate in a major new exhibition opening at Tate Britain on 27 November, Turner and Constable, exploring the rivalry between these two great figures of British art history.
These two great artists vied for success through very different but equally bold approaches, transforming landscape painting in the process. This exhibition will be an unmissable chance to directly compare their spectacular works and see how their rivalry changed the course of British art.
Lead image: JMW Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1838, image courtesy of The National Gallery London