Pyeongye
Painters · 19th century
Joseph Mallord William Turner
1775–1851
A London barber's son who entered the Royal Academy at fourteen and spent his life trying to catch the sea, the storm, and light itself with a brush.
Scenes from a life
The life of Joseph Mallord William Turner,
scene by scene
- 1789London
Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in 1775 in Covent Garden, London, the son of a barber and wigmaker. His father hung the boy's drawings in the shop window. In 1789, at fourteen, Turner entered the Royal Academy Schools. The very next year one of his watercolors hung in the Academy's exhibition.
- 1802The Alps
At twenty-six Turner became a full member of the Royal Academy. That same year a brief peace between Britain and France let him cross the Channel for the first time. He filled sketchbooks with Swiss Alpine valleys and waterfalls, and in the Louvre in Paris he copied the old masters into his notebooks.
- 1819Venice
In his forties, Turner went to Italy for the first time. In Venice and Rome he drew hundreds of sketches over a few months. A city floating on water, sky and lagoon melting into the same light: that changed his painting. From then on his pictures grew brighter, and solid shapes began to dissolve into light.
- 1832London
It was a varnishing day, when artists could touch up their pictures already hanging for the Academy exhibition. Next to Turner's gray seascape hung a bright, red-accented painting by John Constable. Turner dabbed a single spot of red onto his sea and walked out. Later he shaped it into a buoy. The painter Charles Robert Leslie, Constable's friend, wrote in his memoirs that this one spot made the reds in Constable's picture suddenly look weak.
- 1838London
Fishing Boats with Hucksters Bargaining for Fish went on show in London this year. A fishing boat crammed with people heels over on rolling waves, while dealers in a smaller boat pull close to buy the catch. A storm darkens the distance. Zoom in on the white flag flying at the top of the mast: Turner put his signature there.
Painted around this timeFishing Boats with Hucksters Bargaining for Fish - 1845London
At seventy Turner sent paintings of whaling to the exhibition. In Whalers it is hard at first to tell what is what. A ship with its sails up floats faintly in a yellow haze of mist and spray. At the lower left, a huge dark mass heaves up out of the water. In the middle, a small boat tinged with red tosses on the waves. The struggle between whale and men has turned into a whirl of light and paint.
Painted around this timeWhalers - 1851Chelsea, London
In his last years Turner lived quietly in a small house by the Thames in Chelsea with Sophia Booth. The neighbors knew him only as Mr. Booth. He died in that house in December 1851 and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. The huge store of paintings and sketches left in his studio went to the nation.
People around them
- William Turnerhis father, a retired barber who lived with his son for years and helped in the studio, preparing canvases.
- Walter Fawkesa Yorkshire landowner who bought many of Turner's works and often welcomed him as a guest.
- John Constablehis fellow English landscape painter and rival on the walls of the Academy.
- John Ruskinthe young critic who championed Turner's painting in Modern Painters in 1843.
- Sophia Boothhis companion in his last years in Chelsea.
Works
