JMW Turner and BG Windus:
Painter and Patron

During the lifetime of JMW Turner, the Windus collection was one of the largest and most distinguished of its kind and recognised as the best place in London to see Turner's work .
It is at Mr. Windus’s on Tottenham-green that Turner is on his throne. There he may be studied, understood, and admired – not in half-a-dozen or twenty instances, but in scores upon scores of choice examples.
The Gentleman’s Magazine, February 1852
Picture
A Storm (Shipwreck) British Museum
According to Ruskin, BG Windus’s home was
‘… a cheerful little villa, with low rooms on the ground floor opening pleasantly into each other, like a sort of grouped conservatory, between his front and back gardens: their walls beset, but not crowded, with Turner drawings of the England series; while in his portfolio-stands, coming there straight from the publishers of the books they illustrated, were the entire series of the illustrations to Scott, to Byron, to the South Coast, and to Finden’s Bible’.
Turner himself sent visitors to the gallery –
“…may I trouble you to give me permission to a Lady to see your Drawings who hesitating fearing a trespass without your concurrence therein”

Entry on the Collection in the Time Out of 1851:

Objects of interest to the Painter and Connoisseur 
Murray’s Handbook for Modern London, or London as it is.  John Murray, 1851
Private Collections - Mr B G Windus's Turner Drawings
From Turner to the Pre-Raphaelites
Monday 15 January, is the 228th anniversary of the birthday of BG Windus, whose birthday dinner JMW Turner regularly attended at Tottenham Green.  Turner died in 1851 shortly after the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed 170 years ago this year.  BG Windus became an early patron of the movement owning some of their most famous paintings - Ophelia by JE Millais, The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt and Last of England by Ford Madox Brown. More here
Two paintings in the current Reflections exhibition at
the National Gallery were in the Windus collection:
Mariana, shown below, by JE Millais and
Lucrezia Borgia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Some links to help you find out more about
BG Windus and his family, friends and
neighbours in Tottenham.
The source of the money which enabled BG Windus to collect the paintings of one of the foremost painters in England.

Friends and neighbours including the philanthropist and author, Priscilla Wakefield; Luke Howard, the Namer of Clouds and the builder of the Martello towers, William Hobson.

Find out more about Tottenham, those who lived here and those who visited this rural home of Dissenters

The links which John Constable, the romantic painter and Turner's rival, had with Tottenham