Monday 3rd August - Turner Exhibition

We went to Cafe Rouge for breakfast where we got a two for one deal because we went for dinner last night and they gave us a voucher to use. Good coffee and lovely breaky.

We were going to go on an organised walk but because we have been here for three days and have walked most of the streets decided to do our own walk and purchased a £1 guide with all of the famous buildings in it. That's for this afternoon now as we headed for the museum which is down opposite the Cathedral.

We paid our entry fee this time and went into the gallery area where they had an exhibition of a young J M W Turner at the time that he was forging his reputation at the Royal London Academy. He was only 20 when he first visited Salisbury in 1795. During that summer he also visited the Isle of Wight. Turner produced a small group of studies at that time but few have survived and most of his works of the Wessex area were done in 1802.

We watched a film of the area with the Turner paintings woven into the story. The film lasted about 30 minutes and was very good. We wandered through the gallery and there weren't that many people there so we got to stop at the paintings that we most admired and even went back to revisit some.

Even after Turner completed his watercolours of Salisbury and Fonthill he occasionally passed through the area on his summer tours. Although he found Stonehenge most potent he also did paintings of the Dorset Coastline, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. We loved it.