Turner's early efforts were nearly exclusively water-colour drawings. His first oil picture, a "View of the Thames at Milbank, by Moonlight," was exhibited in 1797, and is now in the National gallery. The style of his early youth was that of Girtin and Cozens, who both died while Turner was still young—Cozens in 1799, having been deranged the last five years of his life; Girtin in 1802. The dry manner of these masters, pioneers in their art, scarcely deserves the title of "water-colour painting." The best of their works are but flat, tinted, Indian-ink drawings; they display much spirited handling, but little colour, and less chiaroscuro. The imitation of these men must have kept Turner back, rather than otherwise. His true master was Wilson; many of Turner's earlier oil pictures are so like Wilson's, that it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish them. In this early time, architectural views seem to have been Turner's favourite subjects; as he advanced in age and in power, marine views supplanted the architectural. He appeared as a finished oil painter in 1799, when he exhibited his "Battle of the Nile." He was elected an associate of the Academy in this year, and a full academician in 1802. He now left Hand Court, in 1800, and moved to 64 Harley Street. He still painted somewhat in the style of Wilson, but Turner was always original; his early studies of Wilson soon led to an independent style, and the same happened with his emulation of Claude. It was long before the works of Claude had any influence on his own efforts, and even then his emulation of Claude was induced by the inordinate bias of others, and the then fashion of making Claude the standard of excellence by which all landscape-painters were to be measured. It was unnatural or impossible for Turner to be an imitator; and after developing a style somewhat analogous to that of Claude, he almost immediately afterwards forsook it for one quite peculiar to himself—less vigorous than his earlier style, but more poetic. This style was developed after his visit to Italy in 1819. Towards the close of life he gave way to a careless facility of style, which, however, was but a licentious version of that of his maturer taste. The "Fighting Témeraire," 1839, marks the line between the two. From the time of his election into the Academy, he appears to have made a large income from his drawings alone, or at least such a one as to render it a matter of indifference to him whether he sold his pictures or not. He not only refused to sell many of them, when they had been returned from the Academy exhibition unsold, but some he repurchased at higher prices than those he had received for them—as "The Sun Rising through Vapour," the "Blacksmith's Shop," and others. He made also an income from the sale of prints, especially of the celebrated series in brown ink known as the "Liber Studiorum," commenced in 1807, and continued for eleven years; the whole series consisting of seventy-one plates. Turner sold them in the set, in 1820, for fourteen guineas: a single good proof now, is worth as much money as the set was then. In 1807 Turner was elected professor of perspective in the Royal Academy, succeeding Edwards, author of the Anecdotes of Painters, in continuation of Walpole. In 1812 he built a house and gallery in Queen Anne Street, West, No. 47 (now 23), which he retained until his death, though he used it only as a depository for his pictures during the last few years of his life. He had at this time also a country-house at Twickenham, built upon a piece of ground which he bought in 1807; it was at first called Solus lodge, and afterwards Sandycombe lodge; he sold it in 1827. Turner visited Italy three times—in 1819, in 1829, and about 1840. He had visited France and Switzerland as early as 1801 or 1802. He resided at the close of his life in a small house at Chelsea, under the assumed name of Booth—it is the middle of three cottages, a little west of Batter sea bridge, near Cremorne pier; and here he died on the 19th of December, 1851, in his seventy-seventh year. His body was removed to his house in Queen Anne Street, and from there he was buried in St. Paul's cathedral, "among his brothers in art," where a statue has been placed to his memory, by P. MacDowell, R.A.; for the cost of which he made a provision of £1000 in his will. He was never married, and he was so exclusively devoted to his art, that he has the character of having been exceedingly eccentric in his habits, and of an unsocial disposition. Evelina and Georgiana Danby mentioned in his will, are his own daughters by Sarah, widow of John Danby, a musician, and the uncle of Hannah Danby, Turner's housekeeper, who had charge of his gallery in Queen Anne Street. The portraits of Turner are very rare; there is a characteristic sketch of him, stirring a cup of coffee, by Count D'Orsay. Leslie the painter says in his own Life, that "Turner was short and stout, had a sturdy sailor-like walk, and might be taken for the captain of a river steamboat, at a first glance." This great painter's property was sworn under £140,000. He bequeathed nearly everything to his country—his pictures to the National gallery, and his funded property towards the establishment of an institution for the benefit of decayed artists. The will was disputed, and settled by compromise in 1856; the pictures and drawings were awarded to the nation; £20,000 to the Royal Academy for the benefit of art; and the rest of the property to the next of kin. About one hundred finished pictures by Turner, besides some thousands of drawings, are now exhibited in the National gallery at Trafalgar Square. The pictures comprehend, independent of his imitations of Claude, three styles—his early vigorous manner, which was completely developed by 1799, and endured, with little change, until 1819; he then adopted his own original brilliant style, of which "Caligula's Bridge," "The Bay of Baiæ," and "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," are the greatest examples; "Ulysses deriding Polyphemus," 1829, may be said to mark the boundary between the second and the third style, which gradually declined into a mere extravagant display of contrasts of light, colour, and shade, in 1840, with scarcely a definite form in any of his compositions—though many of his pictures, even of this period of decline, are works of great genius. His last noble work, however, may be considered the "Fighting Témeraire, tugged to her berth to be broken up," 1839. It is now in the National gallery.—(See the Turner Gallery, a series of sixty engravings from the principal works of J. M. W. Turner. With a Memoir and illustrative text by Ralph Nicholson Wornum, &c., folio, London, 1861.)—R. N. W.
TURNER, Samuel, a traveller and diplomatist, born about 1759 in the county of Gloucester. Having entered the service of the East India Company, he obtained the confidence of Warren Hastings, the governor-general. In 1783 he was sent on a congratulatory mission to the new Dalai Lama. His journey was through a mountainous country, and surrounded by dangers. In the following year he returned to Bengal. During the war with Tippoo Sultan in 1792, Turner distinguished himself at the battle of Seringapatam, and was subsequently sent as ambassador to the sultan of Mysore. Soon afterwards he returned to England, having amassed a large fortune. He was a fellow of the Royal Society, and a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. To the Transactions of the Asiatic Society he contributed an account of his interview with the Teshoo Lama; a narrative of Poorengeer's (a native priest) journey to Thibet in 1785; and an account of the Yak of Tartary. He died on the 2nd of January, 1802, of apoplexy.—W. J. P.
TURNER, Sharon, the historian of the Anglo-Saxons, was born in London in 1768. After receiving a private education at a school in Pentonville, he was articled to an attorney, who, dying before the term of the indentures had expired, left a business connection of which Turner promptly availed himself by commencing practice on his own account. By the honourable labour of many years in his profession he succeeded in obtaining a modest fortune. Early in life his active mind had sought nutriment in things beside the law. From the perusal of the death-song of Regnar Lodbrog, as he says in the preface, he was induced to collect materials for the composition of a history of the Anglo-Saxons. The scrupulous painstaking spirit he manifested in seeking out original sources of information, and in verifying the facts he desired to narrate, did much to inaugurate a new era in the historical literature of England. The work, which was published in four volumes, 8vo, in the years 1799 to 1805, also gave a great impulse to the study of Anglo-Saxon literature. Mr. J. M. Kemble, the most competent of critics, says Mr. Sharon Turner's history is "learned and laborious, yet in all that relates to the language and the poetry of our forefathers it is often deficient, often mistaken." The advance in the study of Anglo-Saxon, from the early days of Mr. Turner to the time when Mr. Kemble wrote (1837), was great enough to deprive the above remarks of their sting. It is no disgrace to make mistakes in the infancy of a science. Mr. Turner's literary success induced him to continue his historical labours in the middle ages, and in 1814 he published the "History of England from the Norman Conquest to 1509;" in 1826, the "History of Henry VIII.;" and in 1829, the Reigns of Edward VI., Mary,
