Austen & Turner at Harewood house

May 2 2025

Image of Austen & Turner at Harewood house

Picture: Harewood House

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

Harewood House in West Yorkshire have opened a new exhibition today imagining an encounter between Jane Austen and JMW Turner (imagine that).

According to their website:

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.

Notice to "Internet Explorer" Users

You are seeing this notice because you are using Internet Explorer 6.0 (or older version). IE6 is now a deprecated browser which this website no longer supports. To view the Art History News website, you can easily do so by downloading one of the following, freely available browsers:

Once you have upgraded your browser, you can return to this page using the new application, whereupon this notice will have been replaced by the full website and its content.