The Rising Squall, Hot Wells from St Vincent’s Rock, Bristol

Painted in 1792, when Turner was barely seventeen, this oil shows a stormy day on the River Avon, looking across towards Hotwells, a riverside district of Bristol. The viewpoint lies high on St Vincent's Rock, and the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which would be built further north several decades later, does not yet exist. The mood is gloomy: dark clouds fill much of the sky, and light falls only on selected patches of water and buildings, while a small boat and the houses along the shore stand out against the squall. The young Turner was then imitating the manner of Philip James de Loutherbourg, a French-born painter enjoying great success in London, and that debt shows in the dramatic handling of weather and in the seascape composition.

For many years the picture was considered lost, and it was even wrongly classed as a watercolour. It resurfaced at auction in 2024, when a buyer who suspected it might be by Loutherbourg bought it for £500. Cleaning revealed Turner's signature, which changed its attribution entirely.

Its significance lies in being regarded as the first known Turner oil to be exhibited, at the Royal Academy's 1793 show in Somerset House, London. Until then, his 1796 canvas Fishermen at Sea had been thought to be his earliest exhibited oil. The painting went under the hammer at Sotheby's in July 2025. Bristol Museum and Art Gallery tried to acquire it but failed; a British private collector finally paid £1.9 million, several times the expected price. In 2025 it featured in the Tate Britain exhibition Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals.

Painter

J. M. W. Turner

Date

1792

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

60 × 74 cm

Genre

marine art

Depicts

boat, house, Avon Gorge

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