Encyclopedias: Spartacus Educational: Artists and Architects: J. M. W. Turner

Description: Abstract: Son of a barber and wigmaker, born in London in 1775, as a child he made money by colouring engravings for his father's customers. At the age of 14 he entered the Royal Academy and exhibited his first drawing, A View of the Archbishop's Palace in Lambeth in 1790. By 1800 Turner was acknowledged as one of Britain's leading topographical watercolourist. He died at his cottage in Chelsea in 1851. He left some three hundred paintings and nineteen thousand watercolours to the nation.