The Forest of Bere

In the autumn of 1807 the Royal Navy sailed home from Copenhagen with the Danish fleet in tow. Britain had bombarded the city for three nights to stop those ships falling to Napoleon, and the prizes were brought into Portsmouth. Turner went down to look at them and painted the harbour. On that journey he also stopped in the Forest of Bere in Hampshire and painted this, a pool with trees behind it, a haze of sunset, a man at the water's edge stripping osiers, the willow rods used for baskets. He showed it in 1808 in his own gallery on Queen Anne Street in London rather than sending it to the Royal Academy, and Lord Egremont bought it there for Petworth House in Sussex. In 1984 the government took the painting in place of death duties and left it hanging exactly where it was.