J. M. W. Turner Biography

J.M.W. Turner was an English Romanticist landscape painter who is most renowned for the dramatic and atmospheric treatment of light in his works. Born in London, his father was a barber and due to his mother's unstable mental condition, the young Turner was sent to live with his uncle in rural England. It was during this period that he began his artistic career and after serving as an assistant to various architects at a young age, he was enrolled in the Royal Academy of Arts at the age of 14. He was a successful artist from an early age and established a pattern of work in which he used to travel during the summer, sketching and finding inspiration, and returned home to develop his paintings during the winter. He traveled extensively in Britain and also made trips to Switzerland, Paris and Italy, returning to Venice a number of times. Inspired by the works of art as well as the light and scenery, some of his most remarkable paintings include 'Fishermen at Sea' and 'Rain, Steam and Speed'. As a landscape painter, he brought luminosity and Romantic imagery to his subjects and by the end of his life, Turner's painting had become almost abstract. Known as the ‘Painter of Light’, Turner was perhaps the greatest landscape painter of the 19th century and his magnificent works consisting of watercolors, oil paintings and engravings are now regarded as a predecessor to Impressionism.