A Newcastle art gallery has been selected to display a loaned masterpiece to celebrate the 200th birthday of the National Gallery.

The Laing Art Gallery, part of the Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums is one of twelve partner venue locations taking part in the National Treasures exhibition series, consisting of twelve displays of loaned paintings.

Exhibits up and down the county, including at the Laing Art Gallery, will be opening on May 10 2024, the 200th birthday of the National Gallery.

Next spring, The Fighting Temeraire (1839), painted by one of Britain's greatest and most prolific painters, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), will be on loan to the Laing Art Gallery.

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One of the artist’s best-known works, The Fighting Temeraire will be on display to visitors for nearly four months between 10 May and 7 September 2024.

It was voted as the nation’s favourite painting in a 2005 poll run by BBC Radio 4, and features on the polymer £20 banknote, which went into circulation in 2020.

The painting will feature in a wider exhibition centred around art, industry and nostalgia linking to the rise of steam power and industry in Britain of particular relevance to the North East with shipbuilding still very much part of the identity of the region.

The Fighting Temeraire is Turner's tribute to the ship HMS Temeraire, which played a distinguished role in Lord Nelson’s victory at The Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

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The painting shows the final journey of the ship as it is towed along the river Thames by a modern paddle-wheel steam tug in 1838, towards its final berth in Rotherhithe to be broken up for scrap.

While Turner may not have based his steamboat on a specific vessel, the painting is pertinent to the North East and its industrial heritage as the two steam tug boats that pulled the Temeraire in reality – the Samson and the London – were manufactured on Tyneside.

Chief Curator of Art Galleries at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, Julie Milne, said: "We are thrilled to have this opportunity to join in the National Gallery’s 200th-anniversary celebrations and showcase one of Turner's greatest masterpieces at the Laing Art Gallery.

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It is indeed a ‘National Treasure’ - The Fighting Temeraire in Newcastle provides us with the opportunity to connect with people’s shared histories and lived experience, to celebrate our cultural heritage and reflect on what is important to us individually and collectively.”

National Treasures is a key strand of the National Gallery’s programme celebrating the Gallery’s Bicentenary. Each partner venue will receive a masterpiece from the Gallery’s collection and will curate around it, involving interpretation, community engagement and events, or exhibitions.

For the duration of the displays, 35 million people - more than half the UK population - will be within an hour’s journey of a National Gallery masterpiece.