Art: Prodigal Landscapist

According to a lady who met him in Bristol during one of his sketching trips through England, Joseph Mallord William Turner was not the sort of visitor a hostess would want to have more than once. He was "uninteresting" in manner and "slovenly" in appearance. "He is not at table polite; he would be helped, sit and lounge about, caring little for anyone but himself, or about any subject except his drawing." Turner's dedication may have been hard on those around him, but it produced some of the most delicate and influential works of art ever to come out of Britain....

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