Joseph Mallord William Turner was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He is renowned for his oil paintings and is considered a master of British watercolor landscape painting. His style was characterized by atmospheric washes of paint and an innovative use of color and light. In his later works, objects were barely recognizable as he focused on conveying light, atmosphere, and mood.

2. Joseph Mallord William Turner

3. Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775–19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.

5. Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles."

7. In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway , where the objects are barely recognizable.

9. As he grew older, Turner became more eccentric. He had few close friends except for his father, who lived with him for 30 years, eventually working as his studio assistant.

11. He died in the house of his mistress Sophia Caroline Booth in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea on 19 December 1851. He is said to have uttered the last words "The sun is God" before expiring. At his request he was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, where he lies next to Sir Joshua Reynolds. His last exhibition at the Royal Academy was in 1850.

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

15. John Constable

16. John Constable (11 June, 1776 – 31 March, 1837) was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale , the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"— which he invested with an intensity of affection. "I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, " painting is but another word for feeling "

18. His most famous paintings include Dedham Vale of 1802 and The Hay Wain of 1821. Although his paintings are now among the most popular and valuable in British art, he was never financially successful and did not become a member of the establishment until he was elected to the Royal Academy at the age of 52. He sold more paintings in France than in his native England.

20. Constable once wrote in a letter to Leslie, " My limited and abstracted art is to be found under every hedge, and in every lane, and therefore nobody thinks it worth picking up ". He could never have imagined how influential his honest techniques would turn out to be. Constable's art inspired not only contemporaries like Géricault and Delacroix , but the Barbizon School, and the French impressionists of the late nineteenth century.

22. William Hogarth

23. William Hogarth (10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects". Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as " Hogarthian ."

25. In 1743–1745 Hogarth painted the six pictures of Marriage à-la-mode (National Gallery, London), a pointed skewering of upper class 18th century society. This moralistic warning shows the miserable tragedy of an ill-considered marriage for money. This is regarded by many as his finest project, certainly the best piece of his serially-planned story cycles.

27. In the twelve prints of Industry and Idleness (1747) Hogarth shows the progression in the lives of two apprentices, one of whom is dedicated and hard working, the other idle which leads to crime and his execution. This shows the work ethic of Protestant England, where those who work hard get rewarded, such as the industrious apprentice who becomes Sheriff (plate 8), Alderman (plate 10), and finally the Lord Mayor of London in the last plate in the series.

29. Sir Joshua Reynolds

30. Sir Joshua Reynolds (16 July 1723 – 23 February 1792) was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealisation of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy. King George III appreciated his merits and knighted him in 1769.

32. Professionally, Reynolds' career never peaked. He was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society of Arts, helped found the Society of Artists, and, with Gainsborough, established the Royal Academy of Arts as a spin-off organisation. In 1768 he was made the RA's first President, a position he held until his death.

34. Sir James Thornhill

35. Sir James Thornhill (25 July 1675 or 1676 – 4 May 1734) was an English painter of historical subjects, in the Italian baroque tradition.

37. Thornhill decorated palace interiors with large-scale compositions. The figures of these wall paintings are commonly shown in idealized and rhetorical postures. In 1715 Thornhill was given the commission to decorate the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital

39. Thornhill in 1720 tried his hand at architecture, he along with Giacomo Leoni designed Moor Park, for which he also painted the entrance hall ceiling and other rooms.