Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/347

  Diary of Transactions, pp. 409, 451 (all these in Bannatyne Club); Guthry's Memoirs, 1748, pp. 272, 275, 277; Wodrow's Hist. of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, ed. 1829, passim; Granger's Biogr. Hist. iii. 397; Lingard's Hist. of England, ix. 69; Gardiner's Civil War, iv. 155, 182, Commonwealth, i. 420.]  TURNER, JOSEPH MALLORD (or MALLAD) WILLIAM (1775–1851), landscape-painter, born on 23 April 1775, was the son of William Turner, barber, of 26 Maiden Lane, London, in the parish of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, who married on 29 Aug. 1773 Mary Marshall. He was named after his mother's eldest brother. In the parish register his second christian name is written Mallad. His paternal grandfather and grandmother spent all their days at South Molton, Devonshire. His mother was a woman of ungovernable temper, and became insane towards the end of her days. She had a brother who was a fishmonger at Margate, and another who was a butcher at Brentford, and a sister who married a curate at Islington named Harpur, the grandfather of Henry Harpur, one of Turner's executors. She is said to have been related to the Marshalls of Shelford Manor in the county of Nottingham.

At a very early age Turner sketched a coat-of-arms from a set of castors belonging to one of his father's customers, a Mr. Tomkison, a jeweller in Southampton Street, Covent Garden, the father of a celebrated maker of pianofortes (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. v. 475), and he made a drawing of Margate church when nine years old, shortly before he went to his first school at Brentford, kept by John White. Here, besides ornamenting walls and copybooks with cocks, hens, &c., he coloured about 140 engravings in Boswell's ‘Antiquities of England and Wales’ with remarkable cleverness for John Lees, foreman of the distillery at Brentford, for about fourpence a plate, and it is probable that even before this time he made drawings (some, if not all of them, copies of engravings coloured) which were sold at his father's shop for one or more shillings a piece. (One of these, an interior of Westminster Abbey, is in Mr. Crowle's copy of Pennant's ‘London’ in the British Museum). His father's shop was frequented by many artists, including Thomas Stothard [q. v.]; and his father, who at first meant him to be a barber, soon determined that he was to be an artist. Though Turner said, ‘Dad never praised me for anything but saving a halfpenny,’ they were always attached to each other, and his father did his best to enable him to follow his bent. He was sent in 1786 to the Soho Academy, where a Mr. Palice was floral drawing master. About this time he appears to have been for a short while with Humphry Repton [q. v.], the landscape-gardener, at Romford (Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. i. 484). In 1788 he went to a school at Margate, kept by Mr. Coleman. Before 1789 he was placed with Thomas Malton [q. v.] to learn perspective, but proved a dull pupil, though he must have learnt a good deal from Malton, whom he called his real master. He also seems to have learnt much from Dayes (Girtin's master), some of whose etchings of costume he coloured [see ]. He was also employed in colouring prints for John Raphael Smith [q. v.] and washing in backgrounds for architects, including William Porden [q. v.], who offered to take him as an apprentice without fee. His father, however, preferred to send him to Thomas Hardwick [q. v.], and devoted the whole of a legacy to pay the premium. Hardwick advised Turner to be a landscape-painter, and at his suggestion Turner entered the Academy schools in 1789, where he drew ‘The Genius of the Vatican,’ &c., and was the companion and confederate in boyish mischief of Robert (afterwards Sir Robert) Ker Porter [q. v.] and Henry Aston Barker [q. v.] He was admitted to the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and copied some of his portraits, including one of Sir Joshua himself.

In 1790 he exhibited his first drawing at the Royal Academy, ‘A View of the Archbishop's Palace at Lambeth’ (lent by Mrs. Courtauld to the winter exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1887). In 1791 he sent two drawings, ‘King John's Palace, Eltham,’ and ‘Sweakley, near Uxbridge, the seat of the Rev. Mr. Clarke,’ and in 1792 ‘Malmesbury Abbey’ and ‘The Pantheon the Morning after the Fire,’ the first sign of originality in choice of subject. In 1792 he received a commission from John Walker, the engraver [q. v.], to make drawings for the ‘Copperplate Magazine,’ the first engraving from which, ‘Rochester,’ appeared in May 1794.

It was probably in 1792 that he made his first sketching tour of any length. He started from the house of his friend Narraway, a fellmonger of Bristol, on a pony lent by that gentleman. The exhibition of 1793 contained two views of Bristol by him, one of which, ‘Rising Squalls, Hot Wells,’ is said to have been in oil colours (, Dict.) The catalogue of this year records that he had set up a studio for himself in Hand Court, Maiden Lane. The drawings for Walker's ‘Copperplate Magazine’ and