Painting: 'Venice' in Ebony Frame

Details

The son of a barber, J. M. W. Turner was born on April 23, 1775, in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London. After an illness he was sent to school at Brentford, where his uncle was a butcher. From this period dates Turner’s lifelong attachment to the Thames and its scenery. His father is said to have sold Turner’s boyhood drawings and copies of engravings at 1 to 3 shillings at his shop, and this may have influenced his decision to have the boy educated as a painter. There was uncertainty about his early drawings by masters, other than the topographical watercolor painter Thomas Malton. In 1789 Turner was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools, where he attended life classes and worked fairly regularly with the antique from 1790 to 1793.

In 1791 Turner went to Bristol to sketch medieval buildings as far afield as Bath and Malmesbury Abbey, and especially the romantic Avon gorges. The English watercolor school was then rapidly reaching its golden age, and from 1794 to 1797 he worked in the great collection of Dr. Monro, who opened his home to young artists and paid Turner and Thomas Girtin to make copies in the evening, partly with the object of encouraging them. Girtin drew the outlines and Turner washed in the effects.

During this period Turner developed an astonishing command of technique, emulating the effects obtained by Claude Lorrain, Thomas Gainsborough, and the leaders of the modern English watercolor school. Turner quickly became the most brilliant topographical artist of his day, combining minutely observed realism with an incomparable richness of tints and glow of light.