William Turner
1775-1851
English oil and watercolour painter. He mainly painted landscapes, history paintings and seascapes.
Already at a young age, William Turner achieved the highest technical perfection and was appointed to the Royal Academy as one of Britain's most important artists; nine years later he was one of its members.
Experiments with new techniques and an intensive study of Goethe's theory of colour, together with extensive travels, sparked an important change in Turner's style. He courageously abandoned the established rules of pictorial tradition and Object Realism and devoted himself intensively to the effects of light and movement.
Turner earned much criticism for his completely new type of painting. But his precise observation of nature and the flowing light in the paintings of the great Romantic paved the way for the Impressionists and the development of modern painting.
The majority of his works are exhibited in the Tate Gallery in London.
