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Article: Atmospheric watercolors by Turner. (19th-century British artist Joseph Mallord William Turner)
- Article from:
- USA TODAY
- Article date:
- March 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Society for the Advancement of Education. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Joseph Mallord William Turner is regarded by many as the greatest British artist of the 19th century and one of Western painting's monumental figures. He was born in 1775, the son of a London barber who encouraged his pursuit of painting from an early age. Possibly because of his mother's illness (she was hospitalized for insanity), Turner's outlook on life could be pessimistic. Indeed, he produced an epic poem entitled "Fallacies of Hope." He formed few deep friendships, and never was a family man.
Turner's paramount loyalty was to his art and to the Royal Academy of Arts, that vehicle of artistic endeavor in late-18th- and 19th-century Britain, where he ...