Joseph William Mallord Turner was known for his atmospheric paintings of light. From his humble beginnings as the son of a Covent Garden barber to his extraordinary final years as a pretend Admiral of the Navy, we shall take a walk through his unceasing creative life, look at his influences, consider the many artists he influenced, and realise how he revolutionised watercolour and oil painting with his later expressive and almost abstract style.

We shall look at what made a man with no manners, and yet, who gained many commissions from aristocats, a man who became the first Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, and yet, who mumbled so much that his students couldn’t understand him, become arguably the most exquisite, treasured romantic landscape and marine painter that the nation has ever known.