Every January 1 since 1901, small crowds have gathered outside the national galleries in Dublin and Edinburgh. For just one month, precious watercolor paintings by the English Romantic artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) are on view, gifts to both institutions from one of Victorian Britain’s greatest art collectors, Henry Vaughan.
Born in 1809, Vaughan became rich in 1828, when his father, a hat manufacturer, died. He used the sizable inheritance to fill his grand London house with paintings by Rubens, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Constable. Turner, however, was his favorite artist.
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