J. M. W. Turner died — 1851

On December 15, 1851, Joseph Mallord William Turner died in Chelsea, London. He was 76 years old. One of the most original painters Britain ever produced, Turner had spent more than five decades redefining what landscape painting could be, pushing oil and watercolor alike toward pure light and atmosphere.

Born in Covent Garden in 1775, Turner entered the Royal Academy Schools at fourteen and exhibited his first watercolor there a year later. Over the following decades he moved from precise topographical views to increasingly radical experiments with color, weather, and motion. Works like "Rain, Steam, and Speed" and "The Slave Ship" stunned contemporaries with their raw energy and dissolved forms. He was elected a full Royal Academician at 27, the youngest artist to receive that honor at the time.

His late canvases anticipated Impressionism by a generation, and his fearless commitment to painting what he saw rather than what convention expected remains a touchstone for artists working in every medium today.