In what year did J.M.W. Turner die?

J.M.W. Turner died in 1851, closing the life of one of Britain’s most influential Romantic painters.

Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in London in 1775 and entered the Royal Academy Schools as a teenager. He became famous for atmospheric landscapes, glowing color, turbulent seas, and scenes in which light and weather sometimes seem more important than solid objects. His later paintings helped point toward Impressionism and abstraction.

Turner died on 19 December 1851 at his Chelsea residence, where he had lived privately with Sophia Caroline Booth. He was 76. Unlike many artists whose reputations faded after death, Turner’s standing grew substantially during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A common mix-up is confusing Turner with William Turner, another British artist, which is one reason the initials J.M.W. are normally used. Turner was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, near the painter Joshua Reynolds.