Turner: The Extraordinary Life and Momentous Times of J. M. W. Turner

One of Britain's most admired, misunderstood and celebrated artists J. M. W. Turner is Britain's most famous landscape painter. Yet beyond his artistic achievements, little is known of the man himself and the events of his life- the tragic committal of his mother to a lunatic asylum, the personal sacrifices he made to effect his stratospheric rise, and the bizarre double life he chose to lead in the last years of his life. A near-mythical figure in his own lifetime, Franny Moyle tells the story of the man who was considered visionary at best and ludicrous at worst. A resolute adventurer, he found new ways of revealing Britain to the British, astounding his audience with his invention and intelligence. Set against the backdrop of the finest homes in Britain, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, this is an astonishing portrait of one of the most important figures in Western art and a vivid evocation of Britain and Europe in flux.

About the Author :
Franny Moyle studied Art History at St John's College, Cambridge. She enjoyed a career in arts programming at the BBC that culminated in her becoming the corporation's first Commissioner for Arts and Culture. She is now a freelance executive producer and writer and lives in east London. She is the author of Constance- The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde and Desperate Romantics- The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Review :
Moyle's superb biography rigorously tackles the myths surrounding Turner's life and presents a vivid portrait of a man whose ideas and behaviour were rooted in the 18th century - and whose work is too often taken out of context

An exemplary work... Moyle explores the whole of his long life, expertly charting the artist's development from his precocious conquering of the Royal Academy to his late, experimental paintings.
Moyle is especially good at delineating Turner's artistic methods and her enthralling account is filled with an impressive understanding of his unique talent.

A thorough, balanced and wonderfully fluent account. Franny Moyle [is] one of the best in the long line of [Turner's] biographers
One of Turner's many achievements was to paint Britain in all its moods ... and show his peers the real nature and variety of their own country. In her immaculate biography Moyle has done something similar with the man himself.

Elegant and thorough.
Moyle's superb evocation of these aspects of her subject allows us to see Turner less as the "misunderstood genius" who moved in a sphere untouched by the realities of the day, and "more as an arch manipulator and central player in the great game of art that evolved across the late 18th and 19th centuries, a man praised to the hilt by a great many of his contemporaries [who] acknowledged his significance in the creation of the idea of the independent artist".
It is to Moyle's credit that she is able to make this persuasive case while narrating Turner's life with verve, intelligence and insight, and while bringing to life the world in which he lived with care and subtlety. This is a biography that leaves you with a fresh impression of both Turner and his time. It frees its subjects from myth, and imbues them with the quality of wonder.

It is hard, on one level, to believe his sublime canvases ... come with a character attached at all. But Moyle tells the human story well in a book of rigorous scholarship and beauty.

She offers an earthy, warts-and-all depiction of the Romantic master JMW Turner that is shaped by the dogged realism of a low-born man who had an exceptional artistic vision.

This is well written and meticulously researched.

All we once had left of Turner were his paintings, now we have another vibrant biography to commemorate his art, and where it took us.

Franny Moyle tells a compelling story of a self-taught prodigy... A restless painter who always sought new forms of expression in watercolour and oils.

Moyle is an unpretentious art historian, and she has written an inviting and easily digested biography of the best of British painters