J M W Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner was an English painter often called the greatest of all British artists. Born in London in 1775, the son of a barber, he showed talent so early that he was exhibiting at the Royal Academy as a teenager. Over a long career he pushed landscape and seascape painting toward something wild and almost abstract, dissolving ships, storms, and sunsets into swirling light and color.

He was obsessed with the power of nature and the effects of weather, and he is said to have had himself lashed to a ship's mast to experience a storm firsthand. His late works, all glowing haze and loose paint, baffled some viewers and now look like a forerunner of modern art. Turner left much of his work to the British nation, and his influence on later painters, including the Impressionists, was profound.