J. M. W. Turner Art Prints

He was born in 1775 in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, where his father ran a barbershop and showed the boy's drawings in the window. The Royal Academy Schools took him at 14, and at 27 he became a full Academician, one of the youngest ever, though his working-class roots and undisguised cockney accent caused friction with the Academy's aristocrats.

Early success came from imitating anyone's manner, from Rembrandt to Claude, well enough to command top prices. The Fifth Plague of Egypt, sold in 1799 for 150 guineas, reads more as a landscape than a Bible scene; despite its title it shows hail and fire, the seventh plague. Calais Pier came from a real crossing in 1802, when he nearly drowned getting ashore. He also made about 70 prints for his Liber Studiorum, a book of landscape types; the Jason plate of 1807 is etching and mezzotint.

The Thames, where he lived, fished and went boating, is his most repeated subject after the sea. In The Fighting Temeraire a paddle-wheel steam tug tows a Trafalgar warship up the river to be broken for scrap, and in Rain, Steam and Speed a train hurtles over a bridge, barely more than a blur. Venice drew him back too, and Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute shows an imagined view rather than a real one. Alongside the drama he kept painting gentler, pastoral scenes, among them The Golden Bough (1834), taken from Virgil's Aeneid.

Critics mocked the late work as painted with "cream, or chocolate, yolk of egg, or currant jelly". One honest note for anyone looking closely: he chose pigments that looked good fresh, such as carmine, and many of his colours have faded since. He died in Chelsea in 1851 and left the nation about 100 finished oils, 200 unfinished canvases and over 19,000 sketches and watercolours.