Willows beside a Stream

1802–1803

Paris and the Swiss Alps in a year of peace

In the only year without war in Europe between 1793 and 1814 (the Peace of Amiens, 1802–1803) a consortium of noblemen sponsored a visit to Paris, where he saw old master paintings in the Louvre, and then he toured the Swiss Alps; his Alpine sketches later let him represent “the sublime” in paintings such as “Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps” (1812).

1804

Opens his own gallery

Distrustful of dealers, he opened his own gallery so that he could sell directly and group the pictures he wanted seen together, something he could not control at the Royal Academy exhibitions; his father left his barbershop to help in the gallery and studio. For over a decade the gallery was a regular feature of the London exhibition season.

1804

His mother dies in Bethlem Hospital

His mother, Mary Marshall, whose symptoms of mental disorder grew worse, had to be placed by his father in St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics; she was later moved to Bethlem Hospital, commonly known as “bedlam”, where she died in 1804.

summer 1805

Summer 1805: along the Thames

In the summer of 1805 he systematically sketched places along much of the Thames, from Oxford to the Thames Estuary; these intense months of observation so inspired him that for the next five or six years he presented many river-themed paintings in each of his annual gallery shows, based on his sketchbooks.

1806–1819

Work on the “Liber Studiorum”

For nearly twelve years he worked on about 70 mezzotints — the “Book of Studies”, inspired by Claude’s Liber Veritatis and meant as a manifesto of British landscape art; commercially it failed because of poor handling of sales and distribution, but it did elevate the prestige of landscape painting.

1807–1811

A floating studio at Hammersmith

Inspired by the Thames, he rented houses on or very near the river: in Isleworth (1804–1806) and in Hammersmith (1807–1811), where he converted a boat into a floating studio; fishing and boating were two of his favourite activities.