His portrait adorns the United Kingdom's 20 pound bill. The country's most important prize for modern art also bears the name of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851).

The artist was firstly renowned for works spanning glowing sunsets, dark cloud towers and foaming spray. Turner mastered the interplay of light, color and atmosphere like no other.

He found much artistic inspiration during forays through nature, but also while traveling.

During his life, Turner traveled beyond the UK to the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, and Germany, where he was fascinated by the mighty Rhine river.

The landscapes he painted there also awakened the Briton's desire to travel and made the Rhineland a popular travel destination. Today, Turner is regarded as one of the fathers of Rhine Romanticism.

However, he was particularly inspired by Venice, visiting the lagoon city in northern Italy in 1819, 1833 and 1840.

Turner's artistic style developed in line with his shifting view of the city. His landscape paintings became increasingly blurred, mystical and flooded with light. He used light to create atmosphere like few others.

"Light is color" said Turner as early as 1818. It is said that Turner made studio visitors wait in the dark before visiting his exhibition so that they would be more aware of the impact of light in his works.

Who was William Turner?

Born in London on April 23, 1775, Turner grew up during the Industrial Revolution, which was associated with major economic and social upheaval.

He produced his first landscape sketches at the age of twelve. His father, a barber and wigmaker by trade, recognized his talent and exhibited his son's paintings for sale in his store. This was another reason why Turner's artistic career quickly took off.

At the age of just 14, Turner entered the Royal Academy of Art  in London as a student, where he initially mainly painted watercolors. He would later teach there as a professor of perspective.

A different kind of history painting

Turner's paintings did not simply depict nature, He also portrayed contemporary events and, unusually for the Romantic era, painted technological achievements such as locomotives and steamships battling the forces of nature.

Historical and mythical events also found a place in his paintings — albeit in unusual stagings.

Turner's later works became increasingly unconventional and met with a great incomprehension.

In 1842, the Royal Academy exhibited the painting "Snow Storm — Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth," one of his most famous works showing a steamship battling against the elements.

Some critics described it as "soapsuds and whitewash." Painter and art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) said it was "one of the very grandest statements of sea-motion, mist, and light that has ever been put on canvas."

It was precisely this almost abstract style, for which Turner was criticized at the time but that inspired later Impressionists such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissaro.

Today, 250 years since his birth, Turner is considered the father of Impressionism, an unconventional pioneer of modernism and even a forerunner of abstract art. 

This article was originally written in German.