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Artist JMW Turner may have had his paintings influenced by scientific theories, according to new research gathered from the study of one painting in particular.

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It has been suggested that the Romantic painter, JMW Turner, was influenced by scientific theories he overheard while in the Royal Academy. Turner stayed in the rooms adjacent to where scientists of the Royal Society held a meeting, and speaking at the event was Sir William Herschel, discussing his new theories about the sun.

Sir William was the first person to discover that the sun had an uneven surface. This discovery was revolutionary, as little was known about the sun before it.

Turner biographer, James Hamilton, says he believes thin walls would have allowed Turner to overhear Sir William's lecture.

In The Festival of the Opening of the Vintage at Macon, it seems Turner painted the sun in the way Sir William had described in his theories.

'In a sense you can't really see it, you can't focus on it, but if you look very, very closely there is a tiny little disc which is in three distinct parts. They are painted in different ways; there's a dab and a wipe and sort of flick of the brush. He is making it into something, he is giving it a surface and coming so close to Herschel's lecture and his naming of parts, one has to see them as connected events.'

'He was fascinated by science and scientists and what they were achieving,' Hamilton added.

The discovery is detailed in Hamilton's book Turner and the Elements, published ahead of the upcoming exhibition of the same name, opening at Turner Contemporary in Margate, Kent in January 2012.

Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library

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