Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 – 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic painter renowned as “the painter of light” for his revolutionary use of color, light, and atmosphere in landscape and seascape painting. Born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London, to a barber-wigmaker father and a mother who later suffered mental illness, Turner was a child prodigy who began drawing at an early age. His father sold his first watercolors in the shop window, encouraging his artistic path. Turner entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1789 at just 14, studying drawing from antique casts, life drawing, and the old masters. He exhibited his first watercolor at the Summer Exhibition in 1790 and his first oil painting, Fishermen at Sea (1796), in 1796. He also worked as an architectural draughtsman and theatre scenery painter, which honed his dramatic lighting and compositional skills
By his early twenties, Turner was selling works to wealthy collectors and gaining acclaim from the academic establishment. At 27, he became a Royal Academician, the youngest ever to do so. He exhibited nearly every year at the Royal Academy and developed a clientele for topographical views, seascapes, and historical landscapes. Turner died in London in 1851 at age 76, leaving behind a legacy as one of the greatest and most influential British painters, whose mastery of light and atmosphere continues to inspire artists worldwide