J. M. W. Turner — Profile, Rankings & Fame Trend

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

He painted light itself dissolving form — storms, fires, steam — until the subject almost vanished into color and atmosphere. Turner's late canvases baffled his contemporaries but planted the seed for Impressionism and abstraction decades before either existed.

Biography

About

Born in 1775 to a modest Covent Garden family, Turner was a child prodigy who enrolled at the Royal Academy at 14 and exhibited at 15. He built a career on commissions and his own gallery, travelled Europe filling sketchbooks, and became a professor of perspective — all while keeping his lower-class accent and avoiding the trappings of success. Intensely private and contrary, he fathered two daughters with a widow but never married. After his father's death in 1829 his outlook darkened, his gallery fell into neglect, and the paintings grew stranger and more turbulent. By 1841 he rowed into the…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from J. M. W. Turner

J. M. W. Turner

said1842

If I could find anything blacker than black, I'd use it.

— Quote of Turner, c. 1842-43; as cited by Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1879) The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R. A. p. 296

J. M. W. Turner

said1840

Painting can never show her nose in company with architecture without being snubbed.

— Quote c. 1840; as cited by by Vol. 1, (1860), p. 208; as quoted in The Life of J. M. W. Turner - Founded on Letters and Papers Furnished by

J. M. W. Turner

said1840

He John Ruskin knows a great deal more about my pictures than I do; he puts things into my head, and points out meanings in them that I never intended.

— Quote of Turner, c. 1840's; as cited by George Walter Thornbury, in The life of J.M.W. Turner, Volume II; Hurst and Blackett Publishers,

J. M. W. Turner

saidFeb 1830

Dear Jones.. [I] give you some account of.. ..the last sad ceremonies paid yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourne from whence no traveller returns.

— Quote from Turner's letter, London Feb. 1830, to his friend George Jones in Rome; as cited in 'The life of J.M.W. Turner', Volume II,

J. M. W. Turner

said1830

I have appointed you [ his friend, the sculptor Francis Chantry ] one of my executors. Will you promise to see me rolled up in it [in Turner's painting 'Carthage'?

— Quote from Turner's remark, c. 1830's to his friend Chantry; as cited in 'The life of J.M.W. Turner', Volume II, George Walter Thornbury;

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