Last updated 12:04, Thursday, 17 July 2008

A RARE collection of watercolours from a British master painter are on show in Grasmere.

They now make up the Paths to Fame: Turner Watercolours from The Courtauld exhibition at the Wordsworth Museum and Art Gallery where they will remain until October 12.

The feature exhibition contains works completed when Turner was just 16-years-old. His more accomplished pieces of his later years are also on show.

Visitors will also be able to see the progress of individual works from sketch books to colour studies and then to finished watercolours and the final print.

David Wilson, the Robert Woof director of the Wordsworth Trust, said the opportunity to see the work in a landscape setting Turner had such affinity with was remarkable.

“Turner shows an extraordinarily inventive approach to capturing landscapes in watercolour.”

Turner visited the Lake District in 1797 and produced a number of watercolours and paintings of the lakes landscapes.

One of his Lake District watercolours, Ullswater Cumberland, owned by the Wordsworth Trust, will be on show at the exhibition.