Turner was only fourteen years old when he was admitted to the
Royal Academy Schools. He started his career by painting watercolors
and producing mezzotints under the strong influence of John Robert
Cozens's work. Then, in 1796, he launched into oil painting,
working in the neoclassical manner of Richard Wilson and Nicholas
Poussin, with results that found wide acclaim. One of the most prolific painters of his time, Turner travelled extensively in England, Scotland and Ireland, and also on the Continent (France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy).
The year 1802 saw his first visit to Paris, where he studied the
Old Masters in the Louvre, above all Dutch seascapes and Claude
Lorrain's compositions, which lastingly influenced him. Turner's
first private showing, at his own house, followed in 1804. During
this period, thanks to an increasing concentration on the atmospheric
effects of light, his original style began to evolve, a process that
culminated during trips to Italy in 1811 and 1829.
In his atmospheric depictions of shipwrecks and natural disasters,
perhaps inspired by such works as The Battle of Trafalgar by Philippe
Jacques de Loutherbourg, who lived in Turner's neighborhood, reality
and fantasy merge, and color is used to metaphorically evoke the power
of natural phenomena. By abandoning form or merely adumbrating it,
Turner lent color autonomy and endowed it with a puissance of its own.
This achievement was to prove especially influential on
twentieth century art.