Picture on the left: J. M. W. Turner’s Self-portrait


1. Professional Training and Career

Turner's first job was as an assistant to an architect. At the age of fourteen he decided to become an artist, and began to study at the schools of the Royal Academy. His early work consisted of drawings and watercolours on paper; it was some years before he felt ready to start painting in oils. Please click here to read more.

2. Travels

Unlike fellow landscape painter John Constable, Turner travelled frequently and far afield in search of material. By the time he was in his early twenties, he had established a pattern of working and travelling that was to continue throughout most of his working life: touring, sketching and collecting information in the summer, and then returning home to work up finished pictures during the winter. Please click here to read more.

3. Patrons

Despite Turner's working class background, he seems to have attracted a series of wealthy, aristocratic patrons, several of whom treated him as a friend and welcomed him into their homes. In his early twenties, Turner had been taken up by a number of leading collectors. They supported him by commissioning work and allowing him to study their collections, housed at places like Stourhead in Wiltshire, the estate of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, a member of a powerful banking family, and the 'gothic' Fonthill Abbey, also in Wiltshire, built by the fabulously wealthy and eccentric collector, William Beckford. Please click here to read more.

4. Personal Life

Turner was born on the 23 April 1775, in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, in London, the son of a barber. From these working class beginnings he achieved great wealth, though in old age he lived in some squalor. He cultivated anonymity and tried his best to cloak his personal life in mystery; in his last years he tried to conceal his address, and lived under an assumed name. Please click here to read more.

5. Reputation

In comparison with his contemporary, the artist John Constable, success came relatively early to Turner, in the form of a group of wealthy patrons willing to buy and commission work, give him hospitality, and to fund his studies abroad. There were, however, hostile reviews of his work, particularly of his biggest public statements in oil paint. Sir George Beaumont attacked his luminous palette and his use of colour. By contrast, his work in watercolour remained universally admired throughout his career. Please click here to read more.