Bristol City Council<\/a>, said: \u201cWe know this is a hugely ambitious fundraising campaign with a ridiculously small window to raise the money, but Bristol is internationally renowned for its art and culture, and we just can\u2019t miss the opportunity to try and go for it.<\/p>\n\u201cIt would be an absolute travesty if Bristol\u2019s lost Turner is sold to a private or overseas buyer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The council is believed to be the only public bidder attempting to secure the piece, which has an estimate of \u00a3200,000 to \u00a3300,000.<\/p>\n
Turner painted The Rising Squall during a visit to Bristol in 1792, when he became fascinated by the dramatic scenery of the Avon Gorge.<\/p>\n
It is based on an on-the-spot drawing found in Turner\u2019s Bristol and Malmesbury sketchbook, which he used on a tour of the West Country in 1791, and a watercolour the following year.<\/p>\n
The piece was bought by the Rev Robert Nixon, an early supporter of Turner who the artist used to stay with.<\/p>\n
Early biographies of Turner record that the artist painted his first oil piece in Rev Nixon\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
Rev Nixon\u2019s son, the Rev Dr Francis Russell Nixon, Lord Bishop of Tasmania, inherited the painting before it was acquired by the publisher Joseph Hogarth in the early 1860s.<\/p>\n
It went up for auction at Christie\u2019s in London in 1864 before going to a private collection in Northamptonshire until it was anonymously sold in April 2024.<\/p>\n
During that auction, at Dreweatts in Newbury, the piece was wrongly attributed to \u201cfollower of Julius Caesar Ibbetson\u201d, an 18th-century artist.<\/p>\n
Restoration work then took place – revealing the signature \u201cW Turner\u201d on the lower left of the canvas.<\/p>\n
Until that point, it had been believed that Turner\u2019s earliest exhibited oil painting was a piece known as Fisherman at Sea – which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1796.<\/p>\n
Bristol Museum and Art Gallery aims to exhibit the piece in as early as August this year, before it travels to Tate Britain for its major exhibition Turner and Constable in November.<\/p>\n
A council spokeswoman said: \u201cNo council funding will be used to buy the painting.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead, the museum is turning to the people of Bristol and supporters of art and heritage across the country to help raise the funds needed to ensure the painting remains in public ownership, rather than entering a private collection.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Crowdfunder page can be found at https:\/\/www.crowdfunder.co.uk\/p\/bringturnerhome<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bristol Museum and Art Gallery is keen to acquire the work Gabriel Shepard Assistant Head of Print 14:44,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,3893,748,18959,393,4884,1232,4729,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-210574","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-bristol-city-council","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-clifton","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-money","15":"tag-museums","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114738793286300450","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750425016_671_0_The-Rising-Squall.jpg\")
(Image: Bristol City Council)<\/p>\n