'Painting and Poetry, flowing from the same fount... improve, heighten and reflect each other's beauties like mirrors'.

These were J. M. W. Turner's words in 1812, when he delivered one of his famously erratic lectures at the Royal Academy. He began his training in painting at the Academy at the age of 14. Now 32, Turner was an Academician and Professor of Perspective.

The interplay of the 'sister arts' has a long history; ancient Greek writer Simonides of Ceos stated 'poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry'. Turner, though lacking the formal education of his day, was deeply drawn to the work of the classical poets.

Turner, the son of a Covent Garden barber, was determined to learn the classics in order to engage with history painting – a genre concerned with subjects taken from classical Greek and Latin texts, the Bible and major writers of the past – which was considered at the highest level of the artistic hierarchy and also commanded the highest price. Fortunately, the ancient texts were available to Turner in translation, and his library included English versions of Homer and Virgil.

Turner stayed close to Alexander Pope's translation of Homer's Odyssey in his dramatic Ulysses deriding Polyphemus of 1829.

Ulysses deriding Polyphemus - Homer's Odyssey

Ulysses and his companions have been shipwrecked as they return victorious from the long wars against Troy, and have taken refuge in a cave, the lair of the giant Polyphemus, who proves the worst of hosts by dining on some of the crew. Crafty Ulysses blinds Polyphemus with a brand from the fire, and his companions escape by clinging to the bellies of the giant's sheep and regain their vessel, along with a useful supply of future meals.

The wounded giant collapses above the cave and the tiny red-cloaked figure of Ulysses hurls defiance at the 'ungracious host' styling himself 'the instrument of Jove', as their ship sails into 'rosy morning', Turner's fiery sunrise turning the sea to liquid gold.

Ulysses deriding Polyphemus - Homer's Odyssey (detail)

The poetry of painting sunlight reflected on water informs another great history painting on a subject that held Turner's interest for many years: the doomed love affair of Dido, Queen of Carthage, and Aeneas, the defeated Trojan prince.

Virgil's Aeneid, translated by Dryden, was Turner's handbook for his Dido and Aeneas of 1815. The artwork renders in paint 'the sun his rising light displays, and gilds the world below with purple rays' as the lovers meet to join the royal hunt.

Many of Turner's contemporaries recognised that the view here was not, of course, ancient Carthage, but a carefully reimagined play on the famous view of the Thames from Richmond Hill. During the years he spent near Twickenham, the Thames landscape inspired many beautiful paintings. But as he walked beside the river, up to Richmond Hill with its wide view over the Thames, the words of the poets of earlier times rang in his head.

One of Turner's poetic heroes was James Thomson, a Scot who had lived much of his life in Richmond and whose major work The Seasons was still much read and admired many decades later. Turner's Thomson's Aeolian Harp of 1809 takes its title from the poet's Ode on Aeolus's Harp. Here, that famous view takes on a mystical Arcadian quality.

The god of the winds, Aeolus, would invisibly pluck the harp strings: in Thomson's words, 'ethereal race, inhabitants of air'. The painting is a homage to the long-dead poet; the tomb placed by a coffered arch is symbolic – Thomson's burial place is at the church of St Mary Magdalene in Richmond.

The pastoral nature of the scene is enhanced by the presence of a shepherd; this is another reference to an eighteenth-century poet, Alexander Pope. In his poem Alexis, a shepherd leads his flock along 'the silver Thames where dancing sunbeams on the water played'.

Turner was immersed in the work of these two eighteenth-century poets and challenged himself to become their equal. When he displayed Thomson's Aeolian Harp in his gallery, he added his own lines to it, finishing with a reference to 'Thomson's hallowed shrine'. Turner was sometimes seen as truculent and uncommunicative – perhaps his poetry, kept privately in his Verse Book, allowed him to express his feelings.

As a regular explorer of the Twickenham and Richmond riverside, Turner would have been shocked when, in 1809, he saw the sad fate of Alexander Pope's villa on Cross Deep in Twickenham. The villa had been acquired by Baroness Howe, who found its riverbank situation a great nuisance, as the culture tourists of the day took boats past and peered through the windows. Earning herself the nickname 'Queen of the Goths', she pulled down the villa and built another further back on the grounds.

Turner's painting, rendered in print by the engraver John Pye, appears idyllic: a summer evening, the sun still lighting the sky. But look across the river, past the shepherds, the eel-catchers and the group in enigmatic debate. Pope's Villa is roofless and scaffolding encloses its walls.

Turner, at this point, sought to emulate the great poets of the past with his own verses. In the foreground of Pope's Villa is a fallen willow – perhaps one Pope himself had planted – symbolising destruction by the 'rude hammer'. Turner seized the chance to rescue a tiny reminder of the poet's genius:

'Now to destruction doomed thy peaceful grot
Pope's willow bending to the earth forgot
Save one weak scion by my fostering care
nursed into life'.

Turner's little cutting was planted on his plot of land at nearby Sandycombe where it thrived.

Perhaps in England: Richmond Hill on the Prince Regent's Birthday – a huge painting which mirrors the great breadth of the view, exhibited in 1819 – Turner's encompasses his great love for the 'sister arts'.

At last, the long wars with Napoleon's France were over and England no longer feared invasion. Fashionable and famous guests await the arrival of the Prince Regent to celebrate his real birthday in the summer, in the grounds of one of the grand mansions on Richmond Hill. The Prince's official birthday was 23rd April, St George's Day, Shakespeare's birthday – and the day that Turner also claimed as his.

Peace and plenty abound, the wheatfields glow, and down on Petersham meadow, a game of cricket is in play. Turner exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition with lines from James Thomson's Summer, written a century before:

'Say, shall we wind
along the streams? or walk the smiling mead?
Or court the forest glades? or wander wild
Among the waving harvests? or ascend,
While radiant Summer opens all its pride
Thy hill, delightful Shene?'

Catherine Parry-Wingfield, art historian

The year 2025 is the 250th anniversary of Turner's birth in Covent Garden, London. To celebrate this, Turner's House near Twickenham, designed by the artist for his own use, will host the exhibition 'Turner's Kingdom: Beauty, Birds and Beasts', opening on his birthday, 23rd April, and on display until 26th October 2025.