Interior of a Gothic Church

Around 1797 Turner was 22 and known almost entirely for watercolours. He had shown his first oil painting at the Royal Academy only the year before, a moonlit sea off the Isle of Wight, and small panels like this one are where he learned to handle the heavier medium. Britain was at war with Revolutionary France, the Continent was closed to travellers, and Turner would not cross the Channel until a brief peace in 1802. So he and his colleagues toured their own country's abbeys and parish churches, and old Gothic buildings were steady work for a young draughtsman. The church here has never been identified, though it was probably in or near London. What he painted is a working Anglican interior of his own day, with a tall pulpit, high box pews, and the royal coat of arms set up above the far arches, as English parish churches customarily displayed it. The panel stayed in his studio and came to the nation with the rest of the Turner Bequest in 1856.