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Paperback – 145 x 115 mm – 256 pages

Seventy illustrations in colour

ISBN 9781843682868

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) is without contest England’s greatest painter – as his contemporaries were quick to admit, even when they could not understand his increasingly abstract art. Yet despite achieving fame young, and never afterwards being out of the public eye, the man himself was so intensely private as to be almost unknown. Both brusque and kindly, tight-fisted and generous, taciturn and witty company, he remained a fascinating enigma and source of many legends.

Soon after Turner’s death the pioneering journalist, critic and novelist Walter Thornbury began collecting anecdotes and reminiscences from friends and colleagues. The biography Thornbury wrote is the source of most of what we know about Turner and his career. It is unfailingly energetic and entertaining – but also notoriously ill-organized, and prolix. In this edition, the Turner scholar Ian Warrell has for the first time collected all the most illuminating passages of Thornbury’s book and arranged them into a coherent narrative of the painter’s life.

Unparalleled in scope, and unfailingly vivid and thought-provoking, this is the first stop on any exploration of Turner’s life and career.

Nearly 100 pages of colour illustrations cover the whole range of Turner’s extraordinary output.

Walter Thornbury (1828–1876), journalist, historian, novelist, critic, poet and travel writer, is best remembered for his biography of Turner, and Old and New London. Hugely prolific and controversial, he died of overwork at the age of only 47.

Ian Warrell is an independent curator specialising in British art of the nineteenth century. He has written extensively on Turner and has curated exhibitions worldwide on many aspects of his art. His latest publication with Pallas Athene is Impressions in Watercolour: Turner and His Contemporaries.