Joseph Mallord William Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (1775 – 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who took landscape painting to an level that rivaled the history painting that was popular in his time. His later works were so abstract and expressive that they could have been painted in the mid to late 20th century after the rise in popularity of abstract art. Although well known for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work could be regarded as a Romantic anticipation of Impressionism. His oil painting technique was very interesting, and the paint surface was very varied, using a variety of techniques such as scumbling, wet-in-wet and glazing.