J. M. W. Turner

In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, a thirty-year-old Claude Monet fled to London to escape the conflict. There, he encountered the works of two British painters who would profoundly shape his artistic development. One of them was J. M. W. Turner. If Rembrandt was a prodigy of success, then Turner can only be described in one word: a genius. At the age of fourteen, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Arts—an extraordinary achievement at the time. By fifteen, his works were already being exhibited, and at twenty-seven, he became one of the youngest full members in the Academy's history.