Joseph Mallord William Turner

April 23, 1775 - December 19, 1851

Self Portrait (1799) 

Born on April 23, 1775

At his parents home

21 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden

London England

It has been turned into a PUB called 'The Porterhouse'

When you go visit LOOK for this sign on the wall and enjoy a meal with your family. 

His father, William Turner,was a barber and wigmaker

Josephs mother, Mary Marshall, suffered from emotional instability after her daughter Helen died in 1786, she was admitted into an asylum and died in 1804. (Joseph was 8 years old)

His father taught him how to read but other than art he received little formal schooling. Really encouraged Joseph to pursue his passion for art, hung his paintings in his barbershop window to sale.

Turner drew this Castle when he was 10 years old

Joseph painted this when he was 14 years old

He exhibited his first drawing, A View of the Archbishop's Palace in Lambeth in 1790 (he was 15 years old)

By the time he was 16 he was providing illustrations for

The Pocket Magazine 

and

Copperplate Magazine

Two popular art magazines from the 1790’s

When Turner was 17 he went on his first ‘Sketching Tour’

most of his pictures during this time were of cathedrals, abbeys, bridges and towns.

He became very interested in the sea. Fishermen at Sea 1796

1789 – Enrolled, specializing in watercolors (14 yrs old)

1799 – Elected as an Associate (24 yrs old)

1802 – Given full Membership (27 yrs old)

1807 – Elected as Professor of Perspective (32 yrs old)

1845 – Acting President, elected Pres. was sick (70 yrs old)

Till the western sky the downward sun
Looks out effulgent-the rapid radiance instantaneous strikes


Th’ illumined mountain- in a yellow mist


Bestriding earth-the grand ethereal bow
Shoots up immense, and every hue unfolds

This is a Portrait done by artist

 Charles Martin of JMW Turner.

It shows him old, stumpy and short in a battered stovepipe hat and a coat. But he was called ‘the great Lion of the Day’

A Feud at The Royal Academy, Summer Show of 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner VS. John Constable

Caligula’s Palace and Bridge, Turner 1831

Floor to ceiling the walls of the Academy are covered with paintings. Each artist showing off their works to the public & potential buyers. Turner can no longer find this print…Its prominent location had been replaced ….

John Constable

‘Salisbury Cathedral’ 1831

John Constable was a good-looking heir of a merchant whom had privately declared that Turner was ‘uncouth’

(strange, out of the ordinary).

No doubt, Constable used his position on the Hanging Committee to perform the switcheroo. Claiming he was hanging The Academy’s paintings to their best advantage. Turner ‘opened upon him like a ferret’.  

… the next year, at the 1832 show at The Academy

Constable showed his painting ‘Waterloo Bridge’ which he had been working on for 10 years. It was his bad luck that it was hung in the same room and next to JMW Turners much smaller, grey painting of a seascape.

… the next year, at the 1832 show at The Academy

Helvoetsluys, 1832

During the ‘varnishing period’ where artists can touch up paintings while hanging on the walls of the Academy. Constable was working on his painting, but each decoration, flag and addition of color he added seemed to become more distracting to the other. Turner walks up and put a dab of red paint right in the middle of the seascape and walked away. Constable turned to a friend and exclaims ‘he has been here, and he has shot a gun’.    A day and a half later, Turner returned to the painting and turned it into a buoy. Everyone commented on how the red in the water made the cool grey painting more vivid – and sometimes less is more! 

December 1851, Turner has been sick, he lived alone and had no close friends. After months of searching, Mrs Booth, his housekeeper, finds him in a lodging home in Chiswick, London. He was 76 years old.

His last words were:

‘It is through these eyes, closed forever at the bottom of the tomb, that generations as yet unborn will see nature.’

He is known as

The Painter of Light

And is thought of as the founder of

English watercolor.

St. Paul’s Cathedral, London

The paintings are exhibited side by side at the Tate Museum in Britain

The Painting: 

Rockets & Blue Lights, 1855  (29.92 w x 22.36 h)

Currently at Yale Center for British Art, Hartford, CT