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'Excellent as are Mr Turner's lectures, in other respects there is an embarrassment in his manner approaching almost to unintelligibility, and a vulgarity of pronunciation astonishing in an artist of his rank and respectability.' New Monthly Magazine, 1816 Turner's 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 watercolours on paper; it was some years before he felt ready to start painting in oils.

Fishermen at Sea, exhibited 1796 © Tate, London 2002

Turner 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. He become an Associate Member in 1799, aged twenty-four, and a full Member in 1802, as well as being elected Professor of Perspective in 1811, and appointed acting President in 1845.

In his later life he began sending to the Academy exhibitions unfinished canvases which one contemporary described as being 'without form and void, like chaos before the creation'. He would then complete them in the exhibition room on Varnishing Days, virtuoso performances which soon became legendary.