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Joseph Turner Biography And Visits

Royal Academy of Arts

When Turner was born on the 23rd of April 1775 the main form of transport was the stagecoach. When Turner died at the end of 1851 the Great Exhibition had taken place, and the building of the railways was well advanced. Turner's life spanned the huge change of the Industrial Revolution, and in many ways his work reflects on the changes of his time.

As far as the details of Turner's life are concerned not very much is known. He was a reclusive man who wrote little. But in outline we know that Turner was born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden where his father worked as a barber. Joseph's childhood is marked by the support of his father for his artistic activities, and the sad mental instability of his mother, who never recovered from the death of Joseph's younger sister Helen. Joseph was sent away from the stress of home in Covent Garden to school in Margate. Back in Covent Garden Joseph's father was proudly displaying his son's early work in the window of his shop. By late 1789 a place at the Royal Academy Schools had been secured. This art school, the oldest in Britain, still exists at Burlington House, the home of the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly. The first Turner watercolour was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1790, which marked the beginning of a consistently successful professional career.

 

Petworth Park

In 1798 Turner bought a house in Harley Street, and began a ten year relationship with Sarah Danby. Characteristically he kept Sarah at a distance. Although Sarah was to have two children with Turner, he never lived with her. In 1802, using money earned from painting, a gallery was created at the Harley Street house. You get little feeling of this house as a home, however. The same is true of a house bought in 1810 at 47 Queens Street West. Turner was a restless, rootless man. He toured widely in Britain throughout the 1790s, painting in the Lake District, Scotland and Wales. When the political situation in Europe allowed it, there were also long tours on the continent, in 1803, 1817, and for most of the period 1826 - 1833. One place that Turner might have called home was the grand house at Petworth, in West Sussex, seat of the third Lord Egremont. Here the great artistic patron gave Turner his own painting room, where the lord's favourite artist worked regularly and for long periods from 1827. In the new industrial age Turner was fascinated by Petworth Park. This Capability Brown landscape had been constructed to look natural. Turner would then create his artistic impression of an already artfully constructed landscape. In a sense the paint, canvas and general artificiality of a painting reflected the reality of the park, just as much as the beautifully created impressions of rolling hills and open skies. Reality and artifice came together in what are often considered Turner's finest landscapes. Some of these paintings can still be seen at Petworth today.

 

Turner's Old Star

There was more touring, taking Turner in 1834 to France and Germany. It was during this tour that he met a pub landlady from Margate, twenty years his junior, called Sophia Caroline Booth. Another strangely distant relationship began, which for some reason had to be kept secret. Inspite of the unorthodox nature of the arrangement Turner was to remain with Sophia for the rest of his life. Echoes of their relationship can be seen in Wapping in London's Docklands, where Turner bought a pub for Sophia, called the Old Star, and set her up in it. This pub survives as Turner's Old Star. See our page on London Docklands for more information. Perhaps the relationship with Sophia illustrates a basic tension in Turner's life and times between seeking new horizons and looking for stability. Turner had his steady relationship but could never seem to admit to it. Steadiness always had to be disguised. Meanwhile art in general was becoming ever more diversified, leaving behind the constrictions of its former religious function, breaking up into an increasing variety of styles. And yet this was also a time when great artistic institutions were coming into being. The Louvre had opened to the public in the wake of the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. As Britain finally came round to the idea of following the Louvre's example, Turner in 1824 was appointed to the committee to decide where best to locate the new home for British art, the National Gallery.

 

The Fighting Temeraire

Turner became increasingly reclusive towards the end of his life, as the few vital people around him began to pass away. His father who gave such enthusiastic support to his son in the early years, and had become his studio assistant, died in 1829. In 1837 Lord Egremont of Petworth died. In 1839, with all these endings and losses hanging in the background, Turner completed one of his greatest and most famous works, the elegiacThe Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up. In this picture the old battleship Temeraire which had fought at Trafalgar is towed by a small steam tug to its last resting place. William Thackery said of the picture in Frazer's Magazine: "The old Temeraire is dragged to her last home by a little, spiteful, diabolical steamer. A mighty red sun amidst a host of flaring clouds, sinks to rest on one side of the picture, and illumines a river that seems interminable, and a countless navy that fades away into such wonderful distance as never was painted before." (Quoted Turner by Luke Herrmann P47) Masts in the picture follow a rising curve from the far distance up to a great peak with the Temeraire, before dropping down to the stubby black funnel of the steamer, and ending at the dark lump of the mooring post, where presumably the Temeraire will end her journey. The world does not simply move on in a rising curve. Even though the steam tug is the future, there is also a sense in which the future is a regression. This picture depicts neither an end nor a beginning. Instead there is a sense of a circle of life in an age when life, apparently, would never be the same again. It is both a dark and hopeful painting.

Turner lived on, though now working with declining vigour. He continued his eccentric "secret" relationship with Sophia, living with her under the assumed name of Admiral Booth in their house in Cheyne walk, Chelsea. It was here that he died In December 1851. Turner is buried in St Paul's Cathedral.

In 1856, Turner's estate was settled by a decree in which all works found in his studio were given to the nation as the "Turner Bequest." The 300 oil paintings and 30,000 sketches which makes up the Bequest are now housed at the Tate Britain. The National Gallery has a group of about nine paintings to show Turner in the context of the history of art as a whole.