Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) stands at the head of English
landscape painters. It has been said that though others may have equaled
or surpassed him in some respects, “none has yet appeared with such
versatility of talent.” Turner owed nothing to the beauty or poetic
surroundings of his birthplace, which was the house of his father, a
barber in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. But as Lord Byron is said to have
conjured up his loveliest scenes of Greece whilst walking in Albemarle
Street, so the associations of Maiden Lane did not prevent Turner from
delineating storm-swept landscapes, and innumerable splendors of nature.
The barber was justly proud of his child, who very early displayed his
genius, and the first drawings of Turner are said to have been exhibited
in his father’s shaving room. In time the boy was coloring prints and
washing in the backgrounds of architects’ drawings. Dr. Monro, the art
patron, extended a helping hand to the young genius of Maiden Lane.
“Girtin and I,” says Turner, “often walked to Bushey and back, to make
drawings for good Dr. Munro at half a crown a piece, and the money for
our supper when we got home.” He did not, of course, start from London.
In 1789 Turner became a student in the Academy, and exhibited a picture
in the next year at Somerset House, “View of the Archbishop’s Palace
at Lambeth.” He was then only fifteen. From that time he worked with
unceasing energy at his profession. Indeed, the pursuit of art was the
one ruling principle of his life. He frequently went on excursions,
the first being to Ramsgate and Margate, and was storing his memory
with effects of storm, mist, and tempest, which he reproduced. In 1799,
when made A.R.A., Turner had already exhibited works which ranged over
twenty-six counties of England and Wales. In 1802 he was made full
Academician, and presented, as his diploma picture, “Dolbadarn Castle,
North Wales.” In this year he visited the Continent, and saw France
and Switzerland. Five years later Turner was appointed Professor of
Perspective to the Royal Academy. We are told his lectures were delivered
in so strange a style, that they were scarcely instructive. Of his
water-color paintings and of the “Liber Studiorum” it is impossible to
speak too highly; he created the modern school of water-color painting,
and his works in oil have influenced the art of the nineteenth century.
He visited Italy for the first time in 1819; again ten years later, and
for the last time in 1840. His eccentricity, both in manner and in art,
increased with age. Though wealthy, and possessing a good house in Queen
Anne Street, he died in an obscure lodging by the Thames, at Chelsea, a
few days before Christmas, 1851.
Turner bequeathed his property to found a charity for male decayed
artists, but the alleged obscurity of his will defeated this object. It
was decided that his pictures and drawings should be presented to the
National Gallery, that one thousand pounds should be spent on a monument
to the painter in St. Paul’s, twenty thousand pounds should be given to
the Royal Academy, and the remainder to the next of kin and heir at law.
The National Gallery contains more than one hundred of his pictures,
beside a large number of water-color drawings and sketches.