Tate world hunt finds 500 Turners

A global search by the Tate Gallery in London has unearthed 500 lost works by J.M.W. Turner.

Some have never been seen in public; others have not been displayed since the death of possibly Britain's most important painter.

The priceless haul, considered one of the most significant discoveries in the British art world for decades, came about as a result of unprecedented co-operation between private collectors, small galleries and the Tate.

"It has taken a year to find the missing 500. The Tate has had to start from scratch. They didn't have a clue where they were," said a gallery spokeswoman.

The rediscovered works form part of a larger collection of more than 2000 scattered pictures located during the Turner Worldwide project.

The discoveries will bring into the public domain together for the first time some 200 oil paintings, around 1800 watercolours and 200 pencil drawings, many of which were stored forgotten or hanging mislabelled in small galleries around the world.

The search began with a website appeal urging private owners, curators and dealers to come forward and help to find the hundreds of missing works. The plea brought an unprecedented response.

Turner watercolours have sold at auction for as much as £2 million ($5.75 million) in recent times while the artist's oil paintings are even more valuable, fetching between £5 million ($14.4 million) and £10 million ($28.8 million) for the finest works.

Tate experts have photographed all the new discoveries and placed them on the internet, creating the largest and most important online gallery of any artist.

Sandy Nairne, director of the National Gallery, said the tracing of the missing works was "extremely significant".

He said: "It's great private owners have been so responsive, particularly when people are so worried about privacy. They see the larger issue of why Turner matters so much and why he is so important."



The project is still attempting to locate 400 pictures the artist is known to have produced.

Details are to be posted again on the Tate website in the hope that owners may yet come forward.

So far Turners have been traced in museums from Hyderabad in India to Australia. Other works were stored at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin and at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh but were not allowed to be moved at the insistence of the person bequesting them, for fear they might be damaged.





The Turner online gallery, which was set up with the help of BT and the National Lottery new opportunities fund, also includes high-resolution, thumbnail images of the 30,000 works left to the Tate by the Turner Bequest and is now the definitive catalogue of the artist's work.


- INDEPENDENT