William Turner

Venerated as an unparallelled genius or dismissed as a madman by his contemporaries, William Turner is now recognised as one of the most important British artists of all time. No other 19th-century painter has had a greater influence on the evolution of art. Whether it was Impressionism, abstraction, or Futurism, Turner anticipated many of the developments that would spark furores decades after his death.

The son of a barber, William Turner (1775–1851) successfully pursued his dream of garnering respect and prosperity through art. He travelled and sketched prolifically, savvily catering to the art market while at the same time producing works that led the author and collector William Beckford to remark that Turner had begun to paint »as if his brains and imagination were mixed up on his palette with soapsuds and lather.«

To coincide with the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth, Boris von Brauchitsch retraces this eccentric painter's adventures through Europe, observes him in his competition with the greats of art history, comments upon his struggle to raise the status of landscape painting, and looks into some of the many mysteries that surround Turner’s legend.