Joseph Mallord William Turner, Self-Portrait c.1799. Tate.
9 rooms in JMW Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was the star of his generation of artists. His bold paintings challenged convention and still inspire artists today
Famous for golden landscapes and stormy seas, Turner also painted the effects of war, empire and industrialisation. His work often asks us to think about the risks of human ambition.
Turner was born in Covent Garden, in the heart of London. His father, a barber, paid for art lessons and displayed his son’s drawings in his shop window. Turner became a student at the Royal Academy at 14 years old. By the age of 19, he was known as a brilliant young talent. Art critics praised his watercolours for their innovative compositions and dramatic atmospheric effects.
His early oil paintings played to popular taste, painting nature at its most spectacular. He used storytelling to breathe new life into the genre of landscape art.
Turner was ambitious, competitive, and entrepreneurial. He collaborated with publishers on prints after his work, securing his status as a household name. He also cared deeply about his legacy. When he died, he bequeathed a large number of his paintings to the nation, and after his death in 1851 the contents of his studio and gallery – over 30,000 items, known as the Turner Bequest – were acquired for the national collection. These galleries stem from the artist’s wish that his works be displayed together.
From Claude Monet to Mark Rothko and David Hockney to Tracey Emin many artists have been inspired by Turner, each generation finding something new in his work.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Self-Portrait c.1799
This confident-looking young man has just been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. The portrait therefore marks an important moment in Turner’s life. At 24 years old, he was one of the youngest artists to achieve this status, reflecting his reputation as a painter with original ideas and impressive technical skill. It meant he could exhibit works at the Academy’s exhibitions without fear of rejection by its committee. Turner’s face might be familiar to you – in March 2020 the Bank of England issued a new design for the £20 note that features this self-portrait.
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, Aeneas and the Sibyl, Lake Avernus c.1798
This is probably Turner’s first attempt at an oil painting of a mythological subject. The story is from the Aeneid, written by the Roman poet Virgil. The Trojan military leader Aeneas wants to visit the Underworld to speak to the ghost of his father. He meets the Cumaean Sibyl (a priestess at Cumae, near Naples, Italy). She agrees to guide him through the kingdom of the dead. The setting is Lake Avernus, an Italian volcanic crater which was believed to be the entrance to the Underworld.
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Tenth Plague of Egypt exhibited 1802
This painting illustrates a passage from the Bible. It describes one of the plagues inflicted on the Egyptians by God as punishment for enslaving the Jewish people: the killing of all the first-born sons of the Egyptians. The dark clouds in the sky emphasise the power of forces beyond human’s control. Turner exhibited the picture just a couple of months after becoming a full member of the Royal Academy. Depictions of stories from the Bible and ancient Greek and Roman myth was seen by the Academy as the most important form of art. This was known as the ‘Grand Style’
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, London from Greenwich Park exhibited 1809
London was the largest, busiest city in the world at the time Turner painted this picture. He exhibited it with lines from a poem he had written himself, describing a hectic, oppressive city – a ‘world of care’ beneath a ‘murky veil’ of cloud, relieved only by the ‘gleams of hope’ offered by its architecture. Greenwich Hospital – a home for retired sailors of the Royal Navy – is at the centre of the painting. The sunlit River Thames leads our eye to the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, towering above the distant city.
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, Ploughing Up Turnips, near Slough (‘Windsor’) exhibited 1809
This painting shows Windsor Castle and Eton College rising above the Thames Valley. The historic castle and school contrast with the farming activities happening in their shadow. The winter harvesting of turnips had become essential to modern, large-scale, capitalistic farming. Turner combines an Arcadian landscape (an imagined, ancient, simple and natural setting), with the difficult reality of agricultural labour. Details such as the nursing mother, men attending a broken plough and woman bent double to grub up the turnip roots suggest Turner’s sympathy with the labourers.
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps exhibited 1812
Turner defied convention by hanging this work at eye level when it was first shown. Large paintings were usually hung high, but Turner wanted us to feel sucked into the chaos of the swirling snowstorm. It was likely intended as a comment on the Napoleonic Wars between Britain and France. French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is compared to ancient Carthage’s leader, Hannibal, who led his army across the Alps into Italy in 218 BCE. Turner shows Hannibal riding an elephant, overwhelmed by a blizzard and his troops under attack. The theme of nature keeping human ambition in check became a favourite of Turner’s.
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Deluge ?exhibited 1805
This monumental painting depicts the Biblical flood. The raging sea and violent storm are typical of the Sublime. This category of landscape painting was intended to inspire a combination of awe, wonder and terror. In the bottom right-hand corner, a Black man in shackles rescues a white woman from drowning. Painted at a time when the cause for Britain to abolish its enslavement of people of African descent was gaining ground, this detail is significant. Decades later in 1828, (with enslavement still an issue in Britain and across the world), Turner dedicated a print of this work to Lord Carysfort, a pro-abolition MP.
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, Dido and Aeneas exhibited 1814
The size of this painting reflects Turner’s status in 1814. He was now well established and could focus on creating grand public statements that showed landscape to be a genre with limitless creative and intellectual potential. Its golden tones and trees that frame a far-reaching view are references to 17th-century French painter Claude Lorrain, known as ‘Claude’. His work would be a lifelong influence on Turner. The story is from Roman poet Virgil’s Aeneid. Turner has imagined the city of Carthage on the North African coast. At bottom right (in blue and pale red) are the lovers Dido (Queen of Carthage) and Aeneas.
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, Crossing the Brook exhibited 1815
This is the Tamar valley in Devon, South West England. Mining works can be spotted above the bridge. With its warm light and long-distance view framed by trees, it evokes paintings by 17th-century French painter Claude Lorrain, whose work was popular among art collectors at this time. The painting was exhibited in the year of the battle of Waterloo, so viewers would have been alert to the patriotic subtext of a painting that celebrated the beauty and productivity of the British landscape.
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, Fishermen at Sea exhibited 1796
This was Turner’s first exhibited oil painting. Its dramatic interplay of light and dark got him noticed. A hard-to-please art critic wrote that it was ‘one of the greatest proofs of an original mind’. It shows the Needles, treacherous rocks off the Isle of Wight. Turner’s desire to show off his skills in depicting lamplight and moonlight were likely inspired by Dutch Old Master Rembrandt. Turner was also seeking to associate himself with a British tradition – elder artists like Joseph Wright and Philip-Jacques de Loutherbourg had fuelled the fashion for nocturnal scenes.
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Art in this room
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Self-Portrait
c.1799
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Aeneas and the Sibyl, Lake Avernus
c.1798
Joseph Mallord William Turner
The Tenth Plague of Egypt
exhibited 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner
London from Greenwich Park
exhibited 1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Ploughing Up Turnips, near Slough (‘Windsor’)
exhibited 1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps
exhibited 1812
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