Two Turner oil paintings are to return to the UK for the first time in over 100 years, as part of a new National Gallery focus exhibition. The paintings will be on display at the Gallery in the Turner on Tour exhibition this winter.

Lent for the first time by The Frick Collection in New York, ‘Harbour of Dieppe: Changement de Domicile’ and ‘Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet-Boat: Evening’ have not been seen in the UK since 1911.

Painted in the mid-1820s, they were exhibited in New York in 1914 at the Knoedler Gallery, and subsequently acquired the same year by the American industrialist Henry Clay Frick. They have remained in the United States ever since.

Christine Riding, Jacob Rothschild Head of the Curatorial Department, said: “I am absolutely delighted that these wonderful paintings by Turner, one of the best loved artists in Britain, are going to be returning to the UK for the first time in more than 100 years and will be seen in Trafalgar Square, where they are sure to be hugely popular.

“The National Gallery was the home of the Turner Bequest so this is the perfect location for people to enjoy getting reacquainted with such masterpieces in person.”

National Gallery Director, Dr Gabriele Finaldi, added: “Turner’s glorious river and harbour scenes from the Frick Collection are, through a special set of circumstances, coming to London for an unprecedented showing at the National Gallery. I am enormously grateful to our friends at the Frick for sharing their masterpieces with us.”

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