Turner on a Rainy Day

It sure knows how to rain in Dublin. Not to be perturbed, I sallied forth with my umbrella and walked to the National Gallery. I wanted to see Turner’s watercolours.

The exhibition Turner as Inspiration traces the painter’s development as an artist, and has been curated thanks to a generous bequest by an English collector called Henry Vaughan (1809-1899). Vaughan divided his personal Turner collection between the National Galleries in London, Edinburgh and Scotland, on the condition that they be exhibited to the public free of charge annually, for the entire month of January. The first exhibition in Dublin took place in 1901, and this morning, one and a quarter centuries later, I had a look.

I know so little about painting. I’m a mesmerised observer, but I’m more confident writing about books. Today reminded me, though, of the parallels between visual art and writing. Both create lines with pencil, paint or pixels, on screen or on paper, to record something. As Joe Moran observed in First You Write a Sentence, ‘Lines are how humans live, learn and make up life as they go along. A line where a substance (such as ink) and a medium (such as paper) meet, lays down a trail of life’.

I first wrote poetry by responding to visual art: the paintings of the late Belfast artist Jonathan Aiken. Some time afterwards I learned about the literary tradition of ekphrasis in a brilliant seminar with Belfast poet Sinéad Morrissey, at the Seamus Heaney Summer School. Recently I explored some of Morrissey’s own ekphrastic poems with my students, alongside work in the ekphrastic tradition by Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Ciaran Carson. Ekphrastic writing is a rich and unique part of our cultural heritage.

At the 2025 John Hewitt Society Summer School in Armagh, Yorkshire poet Anne Caldwell encouraged us to write in response, not only to visual art, but to music, dance, and videography. Glenn Gould playing Bach; Colin Davidson painting Belfast; and Anne Caldwell making her collaborative film ‘Sphagnum’ in remote landscapes in Finland; each of these works of art generated new creative expressions, this time poetry. Anne’s workshops motivated me to get my own students writing. Some of their original ekphrastic poems in response to Akihiko Okamura’s The Memories of Others exhibition at the Ulster Museum were shared at a Teachers as Writers conference in Belfast this January. That is an exciting story that might require a post of its own!

Perhaps my rainy day visit to see Turner’s watercolours will inspire poetry also. Only time will tell. For now, in prose, here are ten things that I learned about art and life from Turner, on my National Gallery of Ireland visit:

1. In the early stages of his career, a series of mentors took an interest in Turner. They provided opportunities, space and resources for him to develop his skills in drawing and his love of colour. Talent develops with attention and investment.

2. Turner worked hard. He travelled; he observed carefully; he sketched in pencil along the way, and sometimes in paint. Afterwards, he returned to his studio, to paint some more. Great art requires sustained effort, and time.

3. Art is a conversation. Turner’s work has inspired and instructed others, including a variety of Irish artists whose work also features in the Turner as Inspiration exhibition. As a North Coast girl at heart, I was immediately drawn to A Shipwreck off the Causeway Coast, County Antrim, painted by James Howard Burgess in 1866.

4. In at least two of the paintings in the Turner as Inspiration exhibition, human beings are depicted as minuscule in comparison to the scale of the landscape. This contrast reminded me of Psalm 8: ‘What is man, that thou art mindful of him?’

5. In a similar vein, Turner’s influential paintings of the sea seem to highlight human fragility in face of nature’s fury.

6. Turner also reminds us that weather is transient. There are storms, and they can be fierce, but they pass.

7. When Turner saw beauty on his travels, he sought to capture it in ‘inventive recordings of place’.

8. Human life, albeit diminutive in scale, is integrated into Turner’s landscapes. And the paintings I saw seemed to lend dignity to human beings at work.

9. One of the most beautiful paintings, to my eyes, was ‘Sunset over Petworth Park, Sussex, c.1828’. The colours are warm and vivid; Sussex could be Italy or Spain. The bright paintings Turner created at Petworth were a source of inspiration for Niall Naessens’s box set prints, ‘Good Morning Mr Turner’. These also featured in the Turner as Inspiration exhibition. Naessen’s colours, like Turner’s, are captivating. His prints have candid titles like ‘Quite Early One Morning’. They seem whimsical, even, and they rather appeal to me.

10. Battling through the rain to visit the National Gallery of Ireland was worth it. You should make a visit yourself if you can – you might be inspired!