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.