J. M. W. Turner

Turner often referred to his paintings as his “children”. Famous all his life, the painter refused to sell his favourite pictures, such as The Fighting Temeraire. Early in his career he began buying back most of his previously sold works. Aware of his genius, he regarded his own works as an important part of the British national heritage and fought to keep them together. In 1984 a prestigious prize was named after the artist. The founders of the award, the members of the Tate Gallery’s Patrons of New Art, chose Turner’s name because he was one of the greatest British painters and had always wanted to establish a prize for young artists.

From the page of The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up

J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) was England's greatest Romantic painter. His landscapes and seascapes, dissolving into light, colour and atmosphere, anticipated Impressionism and abstract art.

From the page of The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying)

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), a British painter, was the great master of Romantic landscape. His canvases of storms, seas and skies anticipate modern painting in their freedom.

From the page of Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth

J. M. W. Turner took to painting very young; in 1789 he enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools and exhibited his first watercolour there, A View of the Archbishop’s Palace, Lambeth, at only fifteen. During the 1790s he worked for a certain Dr Thomas Monro, colouring copies of J. R. Cozens’ topographical works, which gave him an excellent grounding in the later use of watercolour. Although Turner remained faithful to watercolour all his life, in 1796 he made his first oil painting, Moonlight: A Study at Millbank.

From the page of Landscape with a Rainbow