Amazon.com description: Product Description: From humble beginnings as the son of a London barber, J.M.W Turner (1775-1851) came to dominate British landscape painting in the first half of the 19th century. Turner achieved professional success and the admiration of his peers at a young age, and gained the place in the canon of European painting that he always desired. He measured himself against the Old Masters such as Claude Lorrain, yet his work, particularly the chromatic brilliance and unconventional compositions of his late paintings, has often been viewed from the perspective of its effect on later artists such as the Impressionists and the Abstract Expressionists.