J. M. W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner (London, 23 April 1775London, 19 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic and regarded as one of the greatest and most influential British painters. He elevated the status of landscape painting and is considered a precursor of Impressionism.

Turner started his career as a watercolourist, achieved fame and financial success as an oil painter and was also an expert printmaker. His later paintings challenged classicisist artistic conventions and were rejected by critics but are considered today his most important works. Their expressionistic renditions of light and atmosphere inspired the early impressionists Monet and Pissarro when they saw them in London in 1870, 20 years after Turner's death.

A child prodigy, Turner was accepted as a student at the Royal Academy of Arts when he was only 14 years old and had a rapid ascent to recognition, fame and financial success. He exhibited his first work in the Academy's Annual Exhibition at 15 and when he was 18 he received a prize recognizing him as a master watercolourist. By his early twenties, he was selling his oil paintings at top market prices to wealthy art collectors and gaining high praises from the academic establishment. At 27, Turner was elected as a Royal Academician, the highest status in the institution, and becoming the youngest artist to achieve this distinction in the Academy's history. In spite of these accomplishments, he was sneered at during his whole career by a few influential critics due to his humble origins; his father was a barberand his mother came from a family of butchers. His unkept appearance and rough demeanor contributed to this perception.

Turner's artistic style evolved significantly during his lifetime. He started by imitating old masters; a conscious strategy to gain academic recognition. He was also keenly aware of what wealthy art collectors craved. In his thirties, after becoming a Royal Academician and achieving financial success, he started painting in an increasingly impressionistic style, using landscape sketches from his extensive travels throughout Europe as inspiration. He experimented with the representation of clouds, water and light, with some of his most striking paintings using a vortex as a central compositional element. The most extreme departures from established artistic traditions were not understood at the time and generated negative criticism.

Turner was attracted to printmaking and he mastered the different printmaking techniques. He especially liked creating mezzotints, and spent 12 years completing a collection of 71 prints using this technique, which he called the Liber Studiorum (Book of Studies). The collection was influential in elevating the status of landscape painting, which during the early 19th century was considered of lower artistic value than historical painting and portraits.

Turner died in London in 1851, aged 76. He was a prolific artist, producing about 550 oil paintings and over 2,000 watercolours during his lifetime. In an unpredecented gesture, he bequeathed to the nation over 300 oil paintings, a collection worth a fortune. Many of the oil paintings are displayed at London's Tate Britain museum.

Biography Childhood The house in Maiden Lane where Turner was born, 1850s (as depicted by Frances Elizabeth Wynne). Joseph Mallord William Turner was born on April 1775 in Maiden Lane, in the working-class district of Covent Garden in London, where he lived his first 24 years. The district was a busy commercial area where food, clothes, flowers and many other items could be bought – including night entertainment.

Turner's father, William Turner, had a barbershop in the first floor. By the time Turner was 10, he proudly displayed his young son's drawings in the window, which were sold for a few shillings, which helped Turner get his early start as an aspiring painter. His father boasted to the artist Thomas Stothard that: "My son, sir, is going to be a painter". He would later retire as a barber to help his son in his studio and paint gallery.

His mother, Mary Marshall, came from a family of butchers. She started to show symptoms of mental disorder and as they got worse, Turner's father was forced to place her in St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics. She was later moved to Bethlem Hospital, a mental asylum (commonly known as "bedlam"), where she died in 1804.

In 1785, when he was 10 years old, his father sent him to live with his maternal uncle's Joseph Mallord William Marshall in Brentford, then a small town on the banks of the River Thames, west of London, where he attended elementary school. The earliest known artistic exercise from this period is a series of simple colourings of engraved plates from Henry Boswell's Picturesque View of the Antiquities of England and Wales. A year later, he was sent to Margate on the north-east Kent coast. There, he produced a series of drawings of the town and surrounding area. In 1789, Turner again stayed with his uncle, who had retired to Sunningwell (then in Berkshire, now part of Oxfordshire). A whole sketchbook of work from this time survives, as well as a watercolour of Oxford. The use of pencil sketches and watercolours on location, as the foundation for later finished paintings, formed the basis of Turner's working style during his whole career.

Adult life He lived with his father and his death in 1829 had a profound effect on him and thereafter, he was subject to episodes of depression. Turner was never one to frequent social gatherings, but as he grew older, he became more reclusive.

The inspiration he found in the river Thames motivated him to occupy several country homes on or very near the river. For 7 years he rented houses in Isleworth and then in Hammersmith, modifying a boat into a floating studio. In 1811 he bought Sandycombe Lodge, a rural villa in the riverside town of Twickenham. Since Turner's explorations of rough, mountainous terrain across England and Europe had made him a resilient walker, he regularly made the 10 mile journey on foot between Sandycombe and his Harley Street house.

Turner never married but had 12-year relationship with his housekeeper, the widow Sarah Danby. He is generally believed to have been the father of her two older daughters, Evelina. In his seventies, Turner formed a relationship with the widow Sophia Caroline Booth. He stayed with her under the pseudonym "Mr Booth" or "Admiral Booth" in her house at 6 Davis's Place (now Cheyne Walk) in Chelsea, where he died in 1851 at the age of 76.

Turner is buried in St Paul's Cathedral, where he lies near the painter and first president of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Bequest In an unpredecented gesture, Turner bequeathed to the nation about 300 oil paintings, over 30,000 watercolours and drawings and 280 sketchbooks. The oil paintings were worth a fortune, considering that they had been regularly purchased for 250 to 400 guineas each (today's equivalent of £20,000 to £30,000).

He intended that a special gallery would be built to house the paintings.This did not happen because there was disagreement over the final site. Twenty-two years after his death, the British Parliament passed an act allowing his paintings to be lent to museums in London, beginning a process of dispersing of the pictures that Turner had wished to be kept together. Today, many of is oil paintings are displayed at London's Tate Britain and National Gallery museums. The sketchbooks and lesser works are kept in the archives of the National Gallery.

His will also included a large cash donation to the Royal Academy to support young artists with limited financial means, but it was contested by Thomas Price Turner and other of his cousins. In 1856, the courts allowed them to keep part of his fortune.thumb

Career Many early sketches by Turner were architectural studies or exercises in perspective. As a young man, he worked for several architects, including Thomas Hardwick, James Wyatt and Joseph Bonomi the Elder.Topography was a thriving industry by which a young artist could pay for his studies. By the end of 1789, he begun to study under the topographical draughtsman Thomas Malton, who specialised in London views. Turner learned from him the basic tricks of the trade, copying and colouring outline prints of British castles and abbeys. He would later call Malton "My real master".

The Academy Turner was recognized as a child prodigy and was accepted as a student in the Royal Academy Schools in 1789, at the age of 14.He was an accomplished student and made very rapid progress. Only a year after starting his studies, the watercolour A View of the Archbishop's Palace, Lambeth was accepted to the Academy's Annual Exhibition. In 1796, the Academy awarded the eighteen-year-old its Greater Silver Pallet award for landscape drawing.

Works exhibited early in his career in the annual Royal Academy Exhibition

At the age of 21, he exhibited his first oil painting, Fishermen at Sea, a dramatic moonlit seascape. The work was praised by contemporary critics and established Turner's reputation as both an oil painter and a painter of maritime scenes. In Wilton's appreciation, the painting is "a summary of all that had been said about the sea by the artists of the 18th century."

Dutch Boats in a Gale, presented the next year at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1801 "took the Academy by storm",It was hung in the best location of the whole exhibition: in the Great Room, centered, and opposite to the entrance. It so impressed the Academy and the art critics that the following year Turner was admitted as a Royal Academician. At only 27 years of age, he became the youngest artist in the institution's history to achieve the highest academic recognition in England.

Even though the war between England and France had considerably reduced the demand for large historical paintings, Turner was receiving substantial commissions for them from wealthy patrons. In 1799, Turner had received 150 guineas for The Fifth Plague of Egypt from the extremely rich William Beckford. In 1801, Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater paid him 250 guineas (equivalent to over £ today) for the marine painting Dutch Boats in a Gale.

In 1804 Turner opened his own gallery. His father left his barber shop business to assist him full time with the gallery and in his studio work. For over a decade "it was a regular feature of the London exhibition season" of new artworks.

Early Patrons An early patron, the art collector Thomas Monro, allowed young artists to study his collection. Turner copied works of the major topographical draughtsmen of his time, perfecting his drawing skills. However, some of John Robert Cozens's watercolours were more vibrant than the neat topographic renderings. Turner realized that the watercolour medium could convey not only accurate representations of buildings, but also moods.

While still in his early twenties, Turner was able to generate increasing income and recognition by imitating the styles of old masters. In October 1798, had 60 commssions from different customers. He confided to his friend Joseph Farington that "he had more commissions at present than he could execute and got more money than he expended." During his sketching excursions, he was always on the lookout for saleable subjects.

During his life, Turner made paintings in the style of painters that included Raphael, Canaletto, Claude Lorrain, Titian, Nicolas Poussin, Rembrandt, Rubens, Veronese, and Watteau, among others. In doing so, he was following the teachings of Joshua Reynolds, the first president of the Academy, who taught that painters should imitate the style of old masters. However, Turner's natural talent allowed him to go beyond pastiches and show he could make their style his own. They were also a sort of homage (and in some cases an indirect critique) of the old masters. According to Hamilton, "this playful chameleon tendency was extraordinarily disarming and had the effect of seducing the collector, catching him off guard."

Important support for his work came from Walter Ramsden Fawkes of Farnley Hall, near Otley in Yorkshire, who became a close friend of the artist. Turner first visited Otley in 1797, aged 22, when commissioned to paint watercolours of the area. He was so attracted to Otley and the surrounding area that he returned to it throughout his career. The stormy backdrop of Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps is reputed to have been inspired by a storm over The Chevin in Otley, while he was staying at Farnley Hall.

Turner was a frequent guest of George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, at Petworth House in West Sussex, and painted scenes that Egremont funded, taken from the grounds of the house and of the Sussex countryside, including a view of the Chichester Canal.

Critics Charles Turner, 1840, Portrait of J. M. W. Turner, making his sketch for the celebrated picture of 'Mercury & Argus' (exhibited in 1836)In spite of the critical and academic acclaim achieved by his earlier, more classical works, Turner soon started innovating in the representation of light, fog and landscape, in paintings that today, are considered his most notable and influential ones, like Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812). But they were a radical departure from long established artistic traditions and were not understood at the time, thus generating very negative criticism. In 1840, John Eagles called the displayed paintings "absurd extravagances [that] disgrace the Exhibition". Some even speculated that he was losing his eyesight. Paintings from his final years could even be classified as late impressionism or even modern art.

In addition, during his whole life, Turner's working-class origins and appearance generated resentments and insidious comments from the more patrician members of the Academy, in particular from Sir George Beaumont, an influential member in the Royal Academy, who described his paintings as "blots". He described the sea in Dutch Boats in a Gale "like pease soup".Beaumont even reached the level of insult, at one point publicly calling Turner a "little reptile" due to his physical appearance.

In spite of the criticism and personal attacks by senior members of the Royal Academy, Turner always held it in the highest regard. The unprecedented value of the large number of oil paintings he bequeathed to the Academy reinforces the esteem which Turner had for the institution.

Italy and the Grand Tour Turner first travelled to continental Europe during the Peace of Amiens in 1802. He started in France where he studied in the Louvre in Paris, and visited Switzerland in the same year before undertaking many visits to Italy. His Italian travels, often associated with the tradition of the Grand Tour, became central to the development of his mature style. In 1819, Turner made his first extended journey through Italy, travelling through Turin, Milan, Como, Venice, Rome, Naples and other cities while producing numerous sketches and watercolours. Venice in particular became one of his most important subjects, inspiring works such as Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute Venice, the Bridge of Sighs The Sun of Venice Going to Sea (1843).

Printmaking Turner's major venture into printmaking was the Liber Studiorum or "Book of Studies", a set of 70 prints that he worked on from 1806 to 1819. The Liber Studiorum was an expression of his intentions for landscape art. Turner's plates were categorised into genres: marine, mountainous, pastoral, historical, architectural, and elevated or epic pastoral. The artistic value of these prints today is widely recognized, but as a commercial endeavor, they were a failure, due to his haphazard handling of the sales and distribution process. However, they were very successful in elevating the prestige of landscape painting, which at the time was considered below historical and portrait painting in artistic value.

Art

Early Influences In his formative years, Turner was influenced by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740-1812), Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) and Richard Wilson (1714 -1782).His most lasting pictorial influence was the french painter Claude Lorrain (c. 1600-1682).

But it was the teachings of Sir Joshua Reynolds that provided the aesthetic principles which Turner followed throughout his career. When he was a young painter, Turner emulated past masters, as Reynolds suggested. But Reynols also taught that painting should be akin to poetry, aiming to convey the whole of human experience; the "human landscape" as Shanes aptly calls it. In following Reynold's teachings, many Turner's paintings were explicitly associated to poems; in some cases even composed by him, like in Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps. In this painting he also included historical references and moral teachings, which he did in other works. In The Field of Waterloo (1818) he shows the grim consequences of war and in The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire (1817), how greed and moral decay lead to national ruin.

The Human Landscape Turner's landscapes and seascapes are more than just pictorial representations of nature. They usually tell a story by including human figures who are experiencing nature; in his most famous paintings, at its most violent moments, such and in his striking paintings of ships in storms, like The Shipwreck (1805). But whereas in the The Shipwreck the drama alludes to desperation and fear, in Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon coming on (1840), which depictas a real event, Turner makes a scathing comment on the greed and evilness of the slave trade.

Often overshadowed by his more dramatic paintings, the pastoral and picturesque side of Turner is as notable and contributed greatly to his acclaim (as well as to his financial success), for example his Scene in Derbyshire (1827) and The Golden Bough (1834). The majority of his pastoral were painted in watercolour, frequently en plein air – a practice of painting that had been in use in Britain since the 17th century,

Style Turner's early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stay true to the traditions of English landscape and were inspired by his travels throughout Britain, particularly to Wales. These were mainly focused on architectural work, which made use of his superior drawing skills.

In 1793, he showed the oil titled The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, which foreshadowed his later dramatic landscapes. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. In his obituary of Turner, the British writer Peter Cunningham, wrote that it was: "recognised by the wiser few as a noble attempt at lifting landscape art out of the tame insipidities ... [and] evinced for the first time that mastery of effect for which he is now justly celebrated".

His rapid academic recognition and financial success allowed him the freedom to innovate early in his career. His paintings started to show a darker chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. As his style evolved, Turner's used oils ever more transparently and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of this is Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway (1844), where the objects are barely recognisable as his objective was to convey a perception of speed.

Turner's imagination was sparked by natural phenomena, such as sunlight, storms, rain, and fog. The 19th century English art critic John Ruskin described him as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature". During his whole career, Turner was particularly fascinated by the violent power of the sea; from Fishermen at Sea – the first oil he exhibited at the Royal Academy in his early twenties – to The Slave Ship (1840) and Seascape: Folkestone, painted 1850, the year before his death.

In this later years, Turner produced increasingly abstract paintings, which were incomprehensible at the time. They were seen as "aberrations and the product of a genius turned wayward, or even a little mad."

But not to all. In 1816, the essayist William Hazlitt (1778-1830) insighfully described Turner's ability to represent a landscape "without form and void", as "outlines to catch the eye in passing."

Even so, widespread appreciation of his later, more abstract works is relatively recent. Kenneth Clark, director of the National Gallery from 1934 to 1945, reports that in the late 1940s, he found "rolls of these [abstract Turner paintings] stacked in the cellars of the National Gallery where they were thought to be old tarpaulins, and glimpsing a watercolour sheet patching a broken window."

Turner's use of color and his experiments with the depiction of light exerted a powerful influence on the early impressionists Monet and Pissarro, who saw his paintings during a visit to London in 1870, 20 years after Turner's death.

Turner and the Thames

The shores of the river Thames were his first destination for sketching trips and his first subject for an oil painting. With the exception of the sea, the Thames is the most repeated subject in his work. Born only a few yards from the river, he always lived next to his shores or very close to it, including houses in Isleworth, Hammersmith, and finally in Twickenham

During the summer of 1805 Turner systematically sketched places along much of the river, from Oxford to the Thames Estuary. These intense months of observation and sketching so inspired him that for the next five or six years he presented many river-themed paintings in his each of his annual gallery shows.

Working largely outside, Turner sketchs are bold and fresh, seeking novel ways to describe what he was seeing. The experimental watercolours and even some oil paintings he made en plein air could not have originated within the confines of a studio.

Materials Turner experimented with a wide variety of pigments. He used formulations like carmine, despite knowing that they were not long-lasting, and against the advice of contemporary experts to use more durable pigments. As a result, many of his colours have now faded. Ruskin complained at how quickly his work decayed; Turner was indifferent to posterity and chose materials that looked good when freshly applied. By 1930, there was concern that both his oils and his watercolours were fading.

Gallery

Legacy

The Royal Academy of Arts, St Paul's Cathedral, and the Victoria & Albert Museum all hold statues of Turner. The City of Westminster unveiled a memorial plaque at the site of his birthplace at 21 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, on 2 June 1999.

The Turner Prize was created in 1984. It is presented every year to a British visual artist, and includes a cash award of £40,000. In keeping with Turner's resolve to challenge established artistic traditions, it is awarded to artists that aspire to change the norms, so it usually generates considerable controversy and media coverage.

A major exhibition, "Turner's Britain", with material (including The Fighting Temeraire) on loan from around the globe, was held at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery from 7 November 2003 to 8 February 2004.

In 2005, Turner's The Fighting Temeraire was voted Britain's "greatest painting" in a public poll organised by the BBC.

In February of 2020, the Bank of England included a portrait of Turner, with a backdrop of The Fighting Temeraire, on the £20 note.

In popular culture Leo McKern played Turner in The Sun Is God, a 1974 Thames Television production directed by Michael Darlow. The programme aired on 17 December 1974, during the Turner Bicentenary Exhibition in London.

British filmmaker Mike Leigh wrote and directed Mr. Turner, a biopic of Turner's later years, released in 2014. The film stars Timothy Spall as Turner, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey and Paul Jesson, and premiered in competition for the at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, with Spall taking the award for Best Actor.