J. M. W. Turner

The son of a barber, Turner entered the Royal Academy Schools at fourteen and became a full Academician at twenty-six. He travelled constantly and left tens of thousands of sketches and watercolours.

His late works dissolve ships, trains and storms into light and vapour; critics mocked them as “soapsuds and whitewash”, yet they anticipate Impressionism and abstraction. He bequeathed a vast body of work to the nation, now mostly at Tate Britain.