Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851) was born in London, Great Britain and is probably one of England's greatest landscape artists. Certainly he is one of the most under appreciated and his reputation was not helped by his extremely solitary and highly private nature. The few people who got to know Turner well all report that he was a man capable of intense emotion -- a far cry from the cold, unfeeling man that certain biographers would make him out to be. In fact, it appears that he walled himself off from strangers at least partly because of his capacity for such depths of feeling.

In his time he was ridiculed and mocked. Audiences of those times wanted near-photographic realism in the treatment of material objects, not an exploration of the subtle interplay of light and atmosphere.

Times have changed. The Impressionists have taught us to appreciate the subtleties of the fleeting moment captured by the artist's brush. Now that we have photography to do the job of simply recording events and objects, we are able to more fully appreciate the role of the artist in interpreting those things and capturing the spirit of a subject, rather than merely the material facts. Yet Turner remains oddly ignored, as though history had left him behind. Only a few connoisseurs recognize his role in anticipating the great art movements of the twentieth century.

It has been frequently said that his use of light and atmosphere makes his landscapes appear to glow.