A Brief Introduction to Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) is one of the best known artists of the British Romantic movement. Known for his expressive landscapes – at times tranquil and soothing and at others wild and turbulent – and for his persistent fascination with light, Turner’s art reflected the colossal power of nature and the changing environments that he witnessed throughout the late 1700’s and beyond.

250 years after his birth, his work – which has undergone many decades of study and exploration – continues to reveal the intricacies of the much-loved artist. Recognized for his skill even while he was alive, Turner had an ability to articulate his chosen subjects to wonderous effect. Though he was inspired by the work of the great masters, he was unafraid to deviate from the traditional path and experiment with his technique.

In this brief introduction to the artist, we invite you to explore Turner’s life and understand the context in which his work was created.

From Covent Garden to the Royal Academy 

The painter whose work would go on to grace the walls of prominent museums and galleries had somewhat humble beginnings. Born above his father’s barber shop in London’s Covent Garden, Turner grew up just a short walk from the banks of the River Thames, then a busy artery of trade and naval might. Graham Reynolds, in Turner (World of Art), suggests that ‘it is incontestable, none the less, that these surroundings, and especially the river, haunted Turner all his life. London was still the ‘Great Smoke’, and his childhood acquaintance with rigged ships seen through the mist and fog is one key to the constant exploration of vaporous effects in his art.’

Turner’s childhood was not without difficulties. His younger sister died at the age of seven, and his mother was prone to fits of madness, later dying in an asylum. His father – a barber and wigmaker – was his earliest supporter and they would remain close for the remainder of his life.

Turner’s artistic gifts were evident from a young age, and his father would hang his drawings in his shop and sell them to customers. By the time he was fourteen years old, Turner was accepted into the Royal Academy Schools. His career had begun.

The Wonder of Watercolour 

Turner’s earliest works – watercolours and pencil sketches – reflect a deep connection to place. He maintained a sketchbook in his youth, in which he often drew buildings and landscapes from his trips into the English countryside. Whether visiting an uncle just outside Oxford or on a tour of the West Country visiting family friends, Turner would chart the buildings and vistas around him. He would then make a finished watercolour inspired by these drawings – a process he would maintain as he began taking on commissions.

During Turner’s time studying at the Royal Academy, his work was often included in exhibitions. The more he travelled around the country, the more his choice of subjects tended towards wilder, more dramatically romantic scenery and gothic architecture. Work like Borrowdale, with Longthwaite Bridge and Castle Crag, c.1799–1802 or Conway Castle, North Wales, 1798, show both his fascination with architecture and his explorations of the effects of light.

It would have been entirely feasible for Turner to subsist on these commissions, popular as they were, but he had greater ambitions. In 1796, he exhibited his first oil painting, Fishermen at Sea at the Royal Academy.  His decision to try his hand at oil painting was an important one: oil was regarded as superior to watercolour, and Turner showed that his artistic abilities translated just as well in this new medium.

Turner never entirely moved away from watercolours and continued to produce them even in the later years of his career. In fact, he was often reproached for bringing his watercolour technique into his oil paintings.

History on the Canvas 

Turner’s transition into oil paint brought on a new phase of his career: the historical painting. Numerous among his body of work are paintings inspired by literature and history, that maintain his signature style of rich and evocative light while depicting more imaginative scenes. From the Battle of Trafalgar to Homer’s Odyssey, Turner was deeply curious about depicting large-scale, dramatic and impactful scenes.

On his earliest foray into historical painting, Turner envisioned and painted The Fifth Plague of Egypt (1800). As Graham Reynolds explains in Turner (World Of Art), ‘the fiery sky which lights the Egyptian horizon with a livid light is of a wild romanticism which fully reflects the destructive passion in the disaster. It is said that he took these laden clouds from a storm he had witnessed in the Snowdon area; and certainly it has the appearance of a sky observed and not imagined.’

Turner would continue to depict historical events throughout his career including such works as Dido building Carthage (1815), Ulysses deriding Polyphemus (1829) and The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835). He had a particular interest in the Battle of Trafalgar and over a thirty-year period, painted three major works on the subject. The second of this trio of works, The Battle of Trafalgar (1823–24), was commissioned by King George IV and remains the largest piece Turner ever completed. It hung for many years at St. James’s Palace and remains on display at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

The Sea in All Its Moods 

Given Britain’s pre-eminence as a naval power at the time he was painting, ‘it should not be surprising that Turner’s range of subjects included the sea in all its moods, ships as transport and bringers of victory against the French, and industrial subjects,’ as Joyce H. Townsend explains in How Turner Painted. The sea fascinated Turner and even a small sample of his work reveals numerous seascapes.

In both oil painting and watercolour, Turner’s skilled brush work brought to life not only the Battles of Trafalgar and the Nile, but rugged coastlines and the people who lived there. Turner spent plenty of time by the water, particularly the south coast of England in places like Margate, and on the banks of the Thames and Medway. The Junction of the Thames and the Medway, 1807 is only one of many such paintings that depict the Thames. What is fascinating, though, is that while his style of painting shifted, his subject matter did not. Later paintings had a less distinct, more blurred and ethereal quality, as if seen through a fog.

Over the course of his five-decade career, Turner ‘produced images of the sea that far exceeded such established conventions and rules, and in the process defined an entirely new maritime aesthetic. That the sea should have been a site of such endless pictorial possibilities for Turner is, in a sense, intrinsic to the subject itself, given its supreme changeability and elusiveness,’ as Christine Riding says in Turner and the Sea.

A Bequest to the Nation 

When Turner died on 19 December 1851, he left behind a tremendous body of work. Much of it was left to the nation in what is commonly referred to as The Turner Bequest, and included both complete and unfinished paintings, as well as tens of thousands of pencil sketches and watercolours.

After his death, Turner’s body remained in his gallery, surrounded by the art he bequeathed to the nation, until his funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral on 30 December. The Bequest allowed more of his work to be seen publicly, in exhibitions organized by art critic and writer John Ruskin, an executor of Turner’s will.

Turner’s work has, as Graham Reynolds states in Turner (World of Art), has ‘been investigated, exposed and selectively called upon as evidence in the shifting assessment of the painter’s long-term significance for the history of art.’