The Friends of Turner’s House
TURNER
IN TWICKENHAM
Turner’s House
and garden in
Twickenham in the early 19th century
Engraving by Havell from a print by
Cooke. A facsimile is
available from the Friends' on-line shop.
A Short History of Turner in Twickenham
The English artist Joseph Mallord Willam Turner (1775-1851) was born in 1775 in the Covent Garden district of London where his father was a barber and wig maker. Even as a boy he showed an exceptional talent for drawing and painting.
In 1785, when his only sister Mary was taken seriously ill, his mother's mental health started to deteriorate, and he was sent to live for several months with his uncle, a butcher in Brentford, a coaching town on the River Thames south west of London. While he was there, Turner's talent was encouraged by his uncle and he spent a lot of time by the Thames painting and sketching. For the rest of his life the Thames would be a major theme in his work. His uncle's house in Brentford Market Place still exists and is now marked by a commemorative plaque.
Supported by his father, by the age of 13 Turner was sketching at home and exhibiting his work in his father's shop window for sale. At the age of 14 he decided to become an artist, and began to study at the schools of the Royal Academy. At 15 one of his paintings was exhibited at the Royal Academy. By the age of 20 he had established his own studio and his work was in demand.
Turner's sister died in 1786 and his mother never recovered, eventually dying in a mental institution in 1804. The tragedy drew Turner and his father closer together and they shared a home for many years until his father's death in 1829. Turner did not marry but had two children by Sarah Danby in 1801 and 1811.
In 1802, when he was only 27, Turner became a Member of the Royal Academy and around this time he started travelling overseas. In 1804,he rented Sion Ferry House on the Thames at Isleworth, a village just upriver from Brentford from where he took regular boat trips up the river as far as Oxford. Again these trips informed and inspired his work.
In 1807 Turner purchased a plot of land at Twickenham, then a fashionable riverside town close to Brentford and Isleworth, on the Middlesex bank of the Thames. Here he built a country villa, Solus Lodge, in Sandycoombe Road, near the river, to his own design, with advice from his friend, Sir John Soane, the leading architect of the day,for himself and his father.
Solus Lodge, as it was then called, is a rare example of a house designed and built by a great artist for his own use. Examples of sketches and ideas for the house can be found in Turner's notebooks. The external appearance of the house has been altered by the addition of second floors to the original side wings but the interior layout remains and gives a remarkable insight into the character of its owner, being modest and unostentatious.
Turner created a water garden in the grounds and kept a small boat moored nearby. Local tradition has it that he captured some of the fiery sunsets characteristic of his work while working on the upstairs balcony at the front of the house. Turner however was often away travelling and his father complained of the damp. Turner eventually sold the house in 1826 and based himself in central London.
The surrounding area, which was still rural and given over to market gardens in Turner’s time, was extensively developed for housing in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Turner’s original garden has long since gone. Miraculously Turner’s house has survived to the present day, surrounded by suburban villas. It is now called Sandycombe Lodge.
In the 1940s the house was purchased by Professor Harold Livermore and his late wife Ann. Professor Livermore, now in his 90s, still lives there today and intends to leave the house to the nation on his death together with a collection of material about the artist. A charitable trust has been established to carry forward this aim.
In 2004 a small group of local residents founded the Friends of Turner’s House to support Professor Livermore in his aims,to promote knowledge of Turner in Twickenham and to establish an archive of material relating to the house and garden. A booklet on the history of the house, now called Sandycombe Lodge, is available from the Friends's shop here.
(Last updated September 2007)