AN INTIMATE exhibition of paintings by an artist many consider to be England’s greatest is coming to Swindon’s Museum and Art Gallery for a two month stay.

JMW Turner is best known for his large paintings in oils, but the exhibition - entitled Turner: Watercolours from the West - shows off his formidable skills in a different medium.

Six of the eight pictures were painted in Bristol when he was a young man aged between 16 and 17 and studying at the Royal Academy. None have been on regular public display.

Alongside the Turners, Swindon Museum and Art Gallery will be displaying art from its own outstanding collection of 20th Century British modern art, including works by John Piper and Graham Sutherland. These artists could be regarded as the modern ‘heirs’ to Turner, as their work celebrates the beauty and diversity of the British landscape, including the rocky hillsides and waterfalls found in some of Turner’s pictures.

The arrival of the Turners is the result of a new partnership between Swindon Museum & Art Gallery and four other museums and art galleries in Bristol, Bath and Cheltenham. Swindon is the second stop on the four-venue tour which began at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, where the pictures are kept. When it finishes in Swindon on 13 December it moves to the Holburne Museum in Bath in January and then to The Wilson in Cheltenham in March.

Turner: Watercolours from the West will be at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery between 15 October and 13 December. More information is available at www.swindon.gov.uk/museumandartgallery