Turner’s Self-Portrait c.1799 from Tate’s world-famous Turner collection will be the new face to feature on the Bank of England’s £20 banknote. The announcement was made at Turner Contemporary in Margate today, one of the 34 regional galleries which are part of the Plus Tate partnership.
Turner was chosen to feature on the note following the Bank of England’s decision that the next £20 would celebrate the visual arts. The artist was selected after a public nomination period and deliberation by the Banknote Character Advisory Committee.
Tate Britain is the home of Turner and its collection includes more than 300 oil paintings by the celebrated British artist. Self-Portrait is currently on display in Tate Britain’s Clore Gallery, alongside Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing The Alps (exhibited 1812) and Dido and Aeneas (exhibited 1814), and depicts a youthful JMW Turner.
This summer, the painting will be reunited with works that have been on tour in Tate Britain’s 2014 exhibition The EY Exhibition: Late Turner – Painting Set Free. The Northern American tour was seen by nearly half a million visitors. Late Turner was seen by 267,704 visitors in London alone, the highest attendance for a monographic show at Tate Britain, and the second highest at Tate Britain ever.
The Clore Gallery will be refreshed and rehung to display the returning works alongside the self-portrait, including three newly-themed galleries and a new display of Turner’s works on paper. His work is also represented in the chronological walk-through of British art in the main Tate Britain building.
Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain, said:
“As the home of Turner, we at Tate Britain are extremely pleased that the artist is the new face of the £20 banknote. We hope that will encourage visitors to see his self-portrait and other outstanding paintings in person in our Clore Gallery. Turner’s popularity is unrivalled - he was voted the nation’s favourite artist last year - and now everyone can celebrate Turner’s great contribution to art on a daily basis.”
The self-portrait appears to date from around 1799 when Turner was about twenty-four years old. It was possibly intended to mark an important moment in his career, his election as an Associate of the Royal Academy. Despite his relative youth, Turner had already been greeted as an extraordinary new talent. He had been described in the newspapers as an artist who ‘seems thoroughly to understand the mode of adjusting and applying his various materials’ and ‘their effect in oil or on paper is equally sublime’.
For press information contact Tate Press Office on +44 (0)20 7887 8730 or pressoffice@Tate.org.uk.
Or Emma Sinclair at the Bank of England Press Office: +44 (0)20 7601 4411 or press@bankofengland.co.uk.
A high-resolution image of Turner’s Self-Portrait c. 1799 can be downloaded at tate.org.uk/press. Please contact the Bank of England Press Office for an image of the note.
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