James Mallord William Turner R.A

1775 - 1851

James Mallord Wiilliam Turner is the towering figure of British art. The son of William Turner, a Covent Garden barber and wig-maker, and his wife Mary, he maintained a Cockney accent for his 81 years, despite the affectations that an artist of his eventual fame would commonly assume. His sister died while he was young and when his mother was admitted to Bethlem Hospital in 1800, Turner was sent to stay with uncles at Brentford in 1785 and Sunningwell in 1789, then to Margate in 1786 where he also went to school. His father encouraged his obvious artistic abilities and in 1789 the fifteen-year-old entered the Royal Academy Schools, also working as an architectural draughtsman and scenery painter. By 1794, he and Thomas Girtin attended the evening ‘academy’ of Dr Thomas Monro, copying drawings by J R Cozens. Monro later looked after Mrs Turner in Bethlem. Turner started exhibiting in 1796, and on the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 started the continental tours which were to provide much of his subject matter over subsequent decades. Turner's father lived with the artist for 30 years, acting at his studio and gallery assistant, and the artist never married, although he did father children with his housekeeper and formed a relationship with a Margate landlady, Mrs Booth. Turner's visual memory was unparalleled, and his ability and skill to conjure epic, romantic landscapes and seascapes in oils, watercolour and print, make him one of the great figures of 19th century European art.