The rain patters on the grass as I walk down to “Capability” Brown’s serpentine boating lake. Pochard and tufted ducks sleep on the black water, which is fringed with masses of green weed.
A white common gull lands on the tall statue of a hound – Carew’s copy of the Dog of Alcibiades, made in remembrance of the third Earl of Egremont’s favourite dog. The wide, plain grey facade of Petworth House sits like a rocky outcrop, as if it has been here for millennia, not 320 years.
In 1810, JMW Turner painted a formal view of the house, seen from almost exactly this spot, for his patron, the third earl. I look up at the fast-moving dark clouds – there’s little chance this morning of the sort of light the artist captured in his more impressionistic paintings of the grounds. But even in this damp dullness, the tall trees by the lake glow red, yellow and bronze. I walk on, up the landscaped hill.
Dark fallow deer roam the slopes, munching on the grass. The annual ritual of rutting appears to be mostly over, with the females congregating around two or three large males. I watch a white stag lower its head and move towards a dark male. The two young stags, not yet able to dominate the others, practise by gently locking antlers. They half-heartedly push against each other, and then withdraw.
At the top of the hill, the yellow leaves of the sweet chestnut trees rustle in the wind and rain. Every so often, a single leaf gently spirals downwards. Large flocks of chaffinches, goldfinches and blue tits hop about on the ground beneath the trees.
There is a brambling among the chaffinches – the first one of the winter. It has a mottled, charcoal-black cap and cheeks, with a more orangey breast than the chaffinches.
The bramblings arrive for the winter from northern Europe and Siberia and join the roaming finch flocks, looking for food. A crow flies over, and the small birds rise into the air with a whirr of wings, and fly away across the valley, chirruping.
• Mr Turner – An Exhibition is at Petworth from 10 January to 11 March 2015
