Joseph Mallord William Turner was an influential English Romantic landscape and seascape painter known for his use of light, color, and atmospheric techniques. He was born in 1775 in London and showed an early interest in painting, entering the Royal Academy schools at age 14. Turner is renowned for capturing the transient effects of light and weather in his works depicting seascapes, ships, storms, and natural phenomena. His innovative style using loose brushwork and shimmering color to evoke light and atmosphere anticipated Impressionism. Turner bequeathed much of his work to the British nation upon his death in 1851.

1. ‘The painter
of light’
Joseph Mallord William
Turner

2. Joseph Mallord
William Turner
(23 April 1775 – 19
December 1851)
• An English Romantic landscape
and seascape painter,
watercolourist and printmaker.
• Is known to have laid the
foundation for Impressionism.
• Interest in brilliant colours.
• Convincing truth and profound
realism in depicting nature.
• Fascinating beauty and lyric
charm.

3. • William Turner was born in London in
a family of a barber and wig maker.
• Spent his childhood in Brentford, a small town to
west of London on the banks of the River Thames.
• At the age of 10 becomes interested in painting.

4. • William Turner entered the Royal Academy of Art schools in 1789, when he was14
years old.
• Was accepted into the academy a year later by the committee chaired by Sir Joshua
Reynolds, its president at the time.
• At first showed a keen interest in architecture.
• The first watercolour by Turner's was accepted for the Summer Exhibition of 1790
after only one year's study.
• His first oil painting was exhibited in 1796.

5. • His last exhibition at the Royal Academy was in 1850.
• Turner died in 1851 and was buried in St Paul's Cathedral next to Sir
Joshua Reynolds.
• He bequeathed much of his work to the nation. The great majority of
the paintings are now at Tate Britain.

6. The subject-matters of Turner's
paintings
• Vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the
subjects of shipwrecks, fires, natural catastrophes, and natural
phenomena.
• The painter drew inspiration in waves and storms, clouds and
vapuor, had a keen interest in depicting ruins and frowning
mountains.
• After 1802 begins to choose subjects from agricultural or
pastoral country.

7. Lifelong absorption with the sea
• Turner’s love of the sea was fundamental in his creative work.
• He executed profound and forceful representations of everchanging
marine scenes in which the value of his splendid visual memory and
manual dexterity are evident for he believed that a wave cannot be
drawn slowly and stolidly

8. The attitude to human beings
in Turner’s works
• Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his
affection for humanity on the one hand and its vulnerability and
vulgarity amid the awe-inspiring, savage grandeur of the natural world
on the other hand.
• In some of his paintings Turner is vindicated as a draughtsman of
people.
• All his characters are living individuals.

9. Peculiarities of style
• Turner’s mature work is characterized by a
chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric
washes of paint.
• The significance of light was to him the emanation of God's
spirit.
• Turner’s works of art are characterized by sloven brushwork.
• He refined the subject matters of his later paintings by
leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play
of light and colour.
• The artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure
the moods of Nature.“

10. • In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and
turned to an evocation of almost pure light by the 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.

11. Innovation
• Turner was considered a controversial
figure in his day s.
• Nowadays he is regarded as the artist who elevated
landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history
painting.
• In investigations of light and color Turner
anticipated the practice of the impressionists.