Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), the outstanding British landscape painter, was arguably the greatest British artist of all time and possibly also the most prolific. He deserves a thorough twenty-first century biography, and Franny Moyle has provided an excellent one.

The most interesting aspect of the book is her account of Turner’s rise to pre-eminence in his own lifetime, followed by vicissitudes when he came under bitter attack from critics who neither liked nor understood his later, most innovative work. In his last great years, even John Ruskin, who had always been his champion against all detractors, could not follow where he was going. Ruskin saw Turner’s completed pictures as unfinished and spoke of Turner’s mental decline. If anyone was in mental decline, it was Ruskin, who was now well into his trajectory from being the master art critic, who excited Marcel Proust to translate him into French, to being the buffoon who ignorantly attacked Whistler.

Turner was a born artist.

Turner was a born artist, and as a young painter he was totally committed to his work and to learning from others. He made a great deal of money, first from his aristocratic patrons such as Lord Egremont and later as England’s most popular artist, but he was as frugal as an Aberdonian. Many successful artists spend their fees on luxuries even faster than they can earn, but Turner was a saver, an accumulator of capital who put his money into Consols,