Joseph Mallord William Turner, known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings. His artistic style developed over his lifetime, moving away from Romanticism—bypassing the following rising style of Realism—and, instead, with his later works being a significant precursor of and presaging the later Impressionist and Abstract Art movements that arose in the decades after his death. He left behind more than 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolours, and 30,000 works on paper. He was championed by the leading English art critic John Ruskin from 1840, and is today regarded as having elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. In 1969 art historian Kenneth Clark wrote of Turner: "He was a genius of the first order—far the greatest painter that England has ever produced..."
Paintings by J. M. W. Turner
The Fighting Temeraire (1839)
The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838 is an oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist Joseph Mallord William Turner, painted in 1838 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1839.
The painting depicts the 98-gun HMS Temeraire, one of the last second-rate ships of the line to have played a role in the Battle of Trafalgar, being towed up the Thames by a paddle-wheel steam tug in 1838, towards its final berth in Rotherhithe to be broken up for scrap.
Dido building Carthage (1815)
Dido building Carthage, or The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire is an oil on canvas painting by J. M. W. Turner. The painting is one of Turner's most important works, greatly influenced by the luminous classical landscapes of Claude Lorrain. Turner described it as his chef d'oeuvre. First exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1815, Turner kept the painting until he left it to the nation in the Turner Bequest. It has been held by the National Gallery in London since 1856.
The subject is a classical landscape taken from Virgil's Aeneid. The figure in blue and white on the left is Dido, directing the builders of the new city of Carthage. The figure in front of her, wearing armour and facing away from the viewer, may be her Trojan lover Aeneas. Some children are playing with a flimsy toy boat in the water, symbolising the growing but fragile naval power of Carthage, while the tomb of her dead husband Sychaeus, on the right side of the painting, on the other bank of the estuary, foreshadows the eventual doom of Carthage.
Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway (1843)
Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway is an oil painting by the 19th-century British painter J. M. W. Turner.
The painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844, though it may have been painted earlier. It is now in the collection of the National Gallery, London. The painting gives an impression of great speed in a static painting, an attribute that distinguished Turner from other artists. The work combines the power of nature and technology to create an emotional tension associated with the concept of the sublime.
The Slave Ship (1840)
The Slave Ship, originally titled Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon coming on, is a painting by the British artist J. M. W. Turner, first exhibited at The Royal Academy of Arts in 1840.
Measuring 35+3⁄4 in × 48+1⁄4 in (91 cm × 123 cm) in oil on canvas, it is now on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In this classic example of a Romantic maritime painting, Turner depicts a ship visible in the background, sailing through a tumultuous sea of churning water and leaving scattered human forms floating in its wake. Turner was possibly moved to paint The Slave Ship after reading about the slave ship Zong in The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade by Thomas Clarkson, the second edition of which was published in 1839. The initial exhibition of the painting in 1840 coincided with international abolitionist campaigns. As the piece changed hands in subsequent years, it was subject to a wide array of conflicting interpretations. While the work is generally admired for its spectacular atmospheric effects, there are conflicting opinions about the relationship between its style and its subject matter.
The Battle of Trafalgar (Turner) (1823)
The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805 is a painting of 1822 by the British artist J. M. W. Turner. It was commissioned by King George IV as a part of a series of works to decorate three state reception rooms in St James's Palace and link the Hanoverian dynasty with military success. This work was Turner's only royal commission, and was to stand as the pendant piece to Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg's Lord Howe's action, or the Glorious First of June.
This massive history painting measures 2,615 millimetres (8 ft 6+15⁄16 in) x 3,685 millimetres (12 ft 1+1⁄16 in) and is his largest work. It was given to Greenwich Hospital shortly after its original installation. The painting now hangs in the National Maritime Museum, also in Greenwich, London.
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812)
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps is an oil on canvas painting by J. M. W. Turner, first exhibited in 1812. Left to the nation in the Turner Bequest, it was acquired by the National Gallery in London in 1856, and is now held by the Tate Gallery.
The painting depicts the struggle of Hannibal's soldiers to cross the Maritime Alps in 218 BC, opposed by the forces of nature and local tribes. A curving black storm cloud dominates the sky, poised to descend on the soldiers in the valley below, with an orange-yellow sun attempting to break through the clouds. A white avalanche cascades down the mountain to the right.
Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth (1842)
Snow Storm, or Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth, (full title: Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water, and going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night the "Ariel" left Harwich) is a painting by English artist Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) from 1842.
Though panned by many contemporary critics, critic John Ruskin commented in 1843 that it was "one of the very grandest statements of sea-motion, mist and light, that has ever been put on canvas".
Sunrise with Sea Monsters (1845)
Sunrise with Sea Monsters is an unfinished oil painting by English artist J. M. W. Turner.
Turner created this painting in the coastal town of Margate, in about 1845, near the end of his career. The painting, which measures 91.4 by 121.9 centimetres (36.0 in × 48.0 in), depicts a hazy yellow sunrise over a turbulent grey sea. Lurking in the lower left corner are pink and red swirls usually identified as the eponymous sea monsters. The painting first went on display in 1906.
Dolbadarn Castle (Turner) (1800)
Dolbadarn Castle is an oil painting by J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) depicting Dolbadarn Castle, created in 1798–1799. It is part of a body of work completed by Turner during a tour of the region, which included Dolbadarn, Llanberis and other parts of Snowdonia. Many supporting studies can be found in a sketch book now held by Tate Britain (Record: TB XLVI). When Turner returned to his London studio he developed these sketches into a number of more accomplished paintings of North Wales, including this one, which is now kept at the National Library of Wales.
This painting is particularly notable as it is one of two that Turner submitted as Diploma works to the Royal Academy in 1800.
Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus (1829)
Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus is an 1829 oil painting by Joseph Mallord William Turner. It depicts a scene from Homer's Odyssey, showing Odysseus (Ulysses) standing on his ship deriding Polyphemus, one of the cyclopes he encounters and has recently blinded, who is disguised behind one of the mountains on the left side. Additional details include the Trojan Horse, a scene from Virgil's Aeneid, on one of the flags and the horses of Apollo rising above the horizon. This painting is thought to be quickly done as a replacement for previous paintings submitted to the academy that had been delayed. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1829 at Somerset House and acquired by the National Gallery in 1856.
Fishermen at Sea (1796)
Fishermen at Sea, sometimes known as the Cholmeley Sea Piece, is an early oil painting by English artist J. M. W. Turner. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1796 and has been owned by the Tate Gallery since 1972. It was long considered the first oil painting by Turner to be exhibited at the Royal Academy. In 2024 the earlier The Rising Squall, Hot Wells was rediscovered and is an oil painting rather than a watercolour as previously believed. It was praised by contemporary critics and burnished Turner's reputation, both as an oil painter and as a painter of maritime scenes.
The work measures 36 by 48.125 inches (91.44 cm × 122.24 cm) and is in oils. Fisherman at Sea depicts a moonlit view of fishermen on rough seas near the Isle of Wight, and is a work of marine art. It presents the fragility of human life, represented by the small boat with its flickering lamp, and the sublime power of nature, represented by the dark clouded sky, the wide sea, and the threatening rocks in the background. The cold light of the Moon at night contrasts with the warmer glow of the fishermen's lantern. The chalk formations on the left of the work were traditionally thought to be the Needles on the western tip of the island; however, this has been contested, with some scholars suggesting that the chalk cliffs are instead the ones at the nearby Freshwater Bay.
The Golden Bough (painting) (1834)
The Golden Bough is a painting from 1834 by the English painter J. M. W. Turner. It depicts the episode of the golden bough from the Aeneid by Virgil. It is in the collection of the Tate galleries.
The English painter J. M. W. Turner painted several scenes based on Virgil's Aeneid, including Lake Avernus: Aeneas and the Cumaean Sibyl of 1814–1815. This painting relates to the myth of the Cumaean Sibyl, a prophetic priestess of Apollo who lived at Cumae. He painted the Sibyl again in 1823's The Bay of Baiae. to which his The Golden Bough was described by John Ruskin as a sequel.