THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF J.M.W. TURNER, REISSUED TO MARK THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH 'A pleasure to read' A.S. BYATT 'With splendid clarity and shrewd humour, James Hamilton evokes the visceral world of a great artist and a fascinating character' MIKE LEIGH, Academy Award-winning director of Mr. Turner J.M.W. Turner became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1799, aged just twenty-four. As influential collectors competed to buy his paintings, he travelled widely - in an era defined by industrial change and social turbulence, he observed both landscape and people, gathering material for a series of works that would come to express the collective identity of Britain. Blending vibrant biography and art history, James Hamilton paints a remarkable portrait of an eccentric and enigmatic figure. He examines the fascinating conflicts of Turner's life and legacy, revealing him to be a giant of the nineteenth century and a beacon for the twenty-first. A pleasure to read.― Sunday Express Hamilton's life gives us a real person ... comprehensibly human and belonging clearly in the England of his time.― Scotsman Hamilton writes ... with gusto, bringing Turner to vivid three-dimensional life.― The Times Turner was a phenomenon, a one-man artistic revolution whose energy can be felt through the pages of this inspiring biography.― Daily Telegraph Hamilton's readable, unshowy life ... excellent.― Mail on Sunday An excellent biography - revealing on the life, perceptive on the art.― Independent on Sunday Admirably clear― Desmond Shawe-Taylor , Observer A richly detailed biography . . . Hamilton maintains a steady course between academic respectability and an allowance for the drama and poignancy so clearly central to an accurate portrait of the subject― Los Angeles Times Very satisfying . . . detailed, judicious and confidently grounded in the period― Washington Post Lively― New Yorker Well researched and fluidly written― New York Review of Books A pleasure to read.― Sunday Express Hamilton's life gives us a real person ... comprehensibly human and belonging clearly in the England of his time.― Scotsman Hamilton writes ... with gusto, bringing Turner to vivid three-dimensional life.― The Times Turner was a phenomenon, a one-man artistic revolution whose energy can be felt through the pages of this inspiring biography.― Daily Telegraph Hamilton's readable, unshowy life ... excellent.― Mail on Sunday An excellent biography - revealing on the life, perceptive on the art.― Independent on Sunday With splendid clarity and shrewd humour, James Hamilton evokes the visceral world of a great artist and a fascinating character.― Mike Leigh James Hamilton, one of today's leading Turner scholars, is a writer, curator and painter. This pioneering biography of Turner, first published in 1997, was followed by Faraday: The Life (2002), London Lights: The Minds that Moved the City that Shook the World (2007), A Strange Business: Making Art and Money in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2014), and biographies of Thomas Gainsborough (2017) and John Constable (2022). He has organised a number of important exhibitions including Turner and the Scientists (1998), Turner's Britain (2003) and Turner and Italy (2008-09). During his career as an art gallery curator and director (1972-2013) he worked in Portsmouth, Wakefield, Sheffield, Leeds and the University of Birmingham. Exhibitions of his paintings were held at the Osborne Studio Gallery, London, in 2022 and 2024. James Hamilton is a Vice-President of the Turner Society.