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Biography
Turner was born on the 23 April 1775, in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, in London, the son of a barber. From these working class beginnings he achieved great wealth, though in old age he lived in some squalor. He cultivated anonymity and tried his best to cloak his personal life in mystery. His first job was as an assistant to an architect. At the age of fourteen he decided to become an artist, and began to study at the schools of the Royal Academy. His early work consisted of drawings and watercolors on paper; it was some years before he felt ready to start painting in oils. He exhibited his first oil painting at the Royal Academy, Fishermen at Sea, in 1796, when he was twenty-one. Success came relatively early, and in 1803, at the age of twenty-seven, he began work on the spacious gallery in his house in Harley Street, which not only advertised his achievements but provided a more sympathetic setting for some pictures than the crowded walls of the Great Exhibition Room at the Royal Academy. Nevertheless, he continued to exhibit at the RA and, unlike a number of other British artists, he remained involved with the Academy throughout his career.
Turner first saw the sea in his early teens, when he was sent to Margate to stay with relatives of his mother. In his later years he again became a regular visitor to Margate, staying in a house overlooking the beach. His landlady, Mrs Booth, became his mistress, and bore him two children. Turner's health began to fail in 1845, when he was seventy, although he lived until the age of seventy-six, and died and his home in Chelsea.
Unlike fellow landscape painter John Constable, Turner traveled frequently and far a field in search of material. By the time he was in his early twenties, he had established a pattern of working and traveling that was to continue throughout most of his working life: touring, sketching and collecting information in the summer, and then returning home to work up finished pictures during the winter. (continued on the bottom)
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His earliest tours were within Britain; during the 1790s he visited the north of England, as well as Wales and Scotland. These gave him an appetite for mountains, waterfalls and the grander forms of nature, though it was not until he was twenty-seven that his was able to make his first trip outside Britain. This journey, one of the great turning points in his career, was made possible by a brief lull in the war between Britain and France. Turner went to Switzerland and Savoy to experience the grandeur of the Alps, and on the way back he visited Paris, to study works of art in the Louvre. Turner's interest in figures had already shown itself in a number of sometimes rather playful genre and historical scenes in the earlier 1820s and continued in the late 1820s and earlier 1830s, partly under the influence of Rembrandt.
The second vitally important travel experience came for Turner when he made his first trip to Italy. Turner was finally able to see not only the historical monuments and works of art with which Rome was filled, but also the light and scenery of the landscape which had so inspired his hero, the seventeenth-century landscape painter, Claude Lorrain. Turner worked furiously, filling twenty-three sketchbooks with drawings and notes. Venice became a recurring theme of his late work, in oils and watercolours, many of which were made during a stay in 1840.
Despite Turner's working class background, he seems to have attracted a series of wealthy, aristocratic patrons, several of whom treated him as a friend and welcomed him into their homes. In his early twenties, Turner had been taken up by a number of leading collectors. They supported him by commissioning work and allowing him to study their collections, housed at places like Stourhead in Wiltshire, the estate of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, a member of a powerful banking family, and the 'gothic' Fonthill Abbey, also in Wiltshire, built by the fabulously wealthy and eccentric collector, William Beckford.
In comparison with his contemporary, the artist John Constable, success came relatively early to Turner, in the form of a group of wealthy patrons willing to buy and commission work, give him hospitality, and to fund his studies abroad. There were, however, hostile reviews of his work, particularly of his biggest public statements in oil paint. Sir George Beaumont attacked his luminous palette and his use of color. By contrast, his work in watercolor remained universally admired throughout his career.
Nevertheless, he was still, in his later years, the most celebrated painter in England and also had a notable reputation abroad. It was not until he was seventy, in 1845, that declining health finally put a stop to his travels.
Joseph Mallord William Turner in Museums (Click on Museum to view image)
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Numerous works online, although nyou have to scroll through the search results to find them
Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, UK
Virtual tour of Ruskin's collection of 25 Turner paintings
Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, UK
60 works online
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
3 works online by Turner
Louvre Museum, Paris
View of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, ca.1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner in the Louvre Museum Database, Paris (only available in French)
Joseph Mallord William Turner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
The Ferry Beach and Inn at Saltash, Cornwall, 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
The Grand Canal, Venice, ca.1835 (Zoom)
Joseph Mallord William Turner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
The Lake of Zug, 1843
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Watercolor collection online
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Paintings collection online
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
38 works online
Joseph Mallord William Turner at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
10 works by Joseph Mallord William Turner
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Joseph Mallord William Turner at the National Gallery, London, UK
Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany
Tate Gallery, London, UK
The Wallace Collection, London, UK
Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, Scotland
Allen Art Museum at Oberlin College, Ohio
View of Venice, 1841
Art Fund for UK Museums
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
2 watercolors online
Art Institute of Chicago
Fishing Boats with Hucksters Bargaining for Fish
Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, UK
The Sun Rising through Vapour
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, New Brunswick
The Fountain of Indolence, 1834
Bolton Art Gallery, UK
Terni Date, 1839
Bowes Museum, County Durham, UK
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio
Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire, England, ca.1834
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Turner: The Late Seascapes
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Steamboats of Shoal Water, 1840
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October, 1834
Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK
28 works by or related to the artist
Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand
Dunstanborough Castle, Northumberland
Falmouth Art Gallery, England
3 views of Falmouth online
Frick Collection, New York City
5 works online
Harvard University Art Museums Database, Massachusetts
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana
Oberhofen, Lake Thun
A View of the Archbishop's Palace, Lambeth
Venice: The Rialto
Joconde Database of French Museum Collections (in French)
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
Glaucus and Scylla
Leeds City Art Gallery, UK
Part of the Ghaut at Hurdwar
Gamecock
Joseph Mallord William Turner in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Database
Manchester City Art Gallery, UK
Now for the Painter - Passengers Going on Board, 1827
Manchester City Art Gallery, UK
Thomson's Aeolian Harp, 1809
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon
Quillebeuf, Mouth of the Seine
National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, UK
National Museums and Galleries of Wales
National Museums Liverpool, UK
Overview page with 7 works online
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City
Lucerne from the Lake
Royal Academy of Arts Online Catalogue
56 works online
Saint Louis Art Museum Provenance Research Database, Missouri
Burning of the Houses of Parliament (October 6, 1834)
The British Museum, London, UK
4 works on paper
The Huntington Library, California
The Grand Canal, Venice, ca.1837
Victoria and Albert Museum Catalogue, London, UK
10 works online
Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, England
The West Front of Bath Abbey, ca.1793
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
The Chapter House, Salisbury Cathedral, Hampshire
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
Moonlight on Lake Lucerne with the Righi in the Distance, Switzerland
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut
Steamboat in a Storm, watercolor, ca.1841
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut
Staffa, Fingal's Cave, 1831-32