Turner, Constable and Cotman at Time & Tide, Great Yarmouth

Drawn To The Coast, Time and Tide’s latest exhibition explores the identity of Great Yarmouth and its surrounding landscape through the art work it has inspired. The show explores an area that continues to inspire artists to this day.

The exhibition features over 70 artworks and objects, including works on paper by Joseph Mallord William Turner, John Constable and John Sell Cotman, and charts depictions of Great Yarmouth over the last 200 years and explores the importance of the town and surrounding coastline in the development of British landscape painting

Highlights of the show include two loaned works by J.M.W Turner from Tate – a watercolour of Great Yarmouth, and, on display in the county for the first time, his Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex sketchbook.

The coastline around Great Yarmouth has been and continues to be a popular subject for artists; the big skies, windswept vistas and bustling boat-based industries offer a rich mine of colour, characters and composition for those with the skills to exploit them.

Yarmouth Jetty

John Crome

Yarmouth Windmills

John Sell Cotman

Yarmouth Jetty

Alfred Stannard, 1841

Seascape 1868

Alfred Stannard (1806-1889), oil on oak panel, 1868

Sea Piece (Hay Barge off Yarmouth)

Miles Edmund Cotman (1810-1858), oil on millboard, undated

Yarmouth Bridge

Josh Lambert

Sea Piece (Dutch shipping in stormy weather)

Miles Edmund Cotman, oil on oak panel, undated

Haybarge, Stormy Sky (Loaded Merchantman)

John Constable, 1803 - Private Lender

Baltic Ships in Yarmouth Roads - Commencement of Hurricane

William Joy (attrib), watercolour

A Fresh Breeze

Joseph Stannard (1797-1830), oil on mahogany panel, undated

Wherries at Anchor on Breydon Water

John Sell Cotman © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Some of Britain’s greatest landscape artists such as JMW Turner, John Constable and John Sell Cotman have all left us striking visual legacies of the inspiration they drew from the area. This show will explore a fascinating selection of their work displayed alongside works by other well-known names, particularly from the Norwich School of painters, such as Joseph Stannard and John Crome. The works on show include a diverse range of media from oil on canvas and watercolours to pencil sketches and etchings.

Together these works highlight Great Yarmouth’s importance as a unique and beautiful place which played a significant role in the development of British landscape painting. Through recording their impressions of the town and its surroundings, it has helped place this small coastal community within the national consciousness: Drawn to the Coast: Turner, Constable, Cotman celebrates these connections and offers visitors the opportunity to see the town through their eyes.

Drawn to the Coast at Time & Tide, Great Yarmouth

The striking selection of works, many drawn from Norfolk Museums Service’s own collection, have been enriched with important loans from Tate, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Colchester and Ipswich Museums Service, the East Anglian Traditional Art Centre, as well as private lenders.

The exhibition also features objects that complement scenes depicting daily life on the shoreline and in the town, so vividly portrayed within the artworks. Highlights include a bronze Manby mortar – a breakthrough invention for saving shipwrecked souls – and a wooden model of a wherry, the sailing boat so synonymous with Norfolk.

Johanna O'Donoghue, Curator at Time and Tide Museum said: ‘This exhibition has been a brilliant opportunity to draw together some of the finest works of art by nationally recognised artists including Turner, Constable and Cotman that show what a beautiful place Great Yarmouth was and continues to be.

'It has allowed us to use these major works of art as a starting point for our outreach and to show local people that these great artists regarded Yarmouth as truly something special. We are celebrating that visitors can see these works of art back in the town that they were created over two hundred years ago’.

Time and Tide Museum