William Turner (1789-1862), Oxford from Hinksey Hill (detail)

ABOUT THE ARTIST

(This text is printed on the back of the greeting card)

William Turner, who was usually known as ‘Turner of Oxford’ to distinguish him from his more celebrated contemporary, was born at Blackbourton (near Bampton) in Oxfordshire in 1789. His parents died when he was young and he was brought up by an uncle who lived first at Burford and later at the manor house at Shipton-on-Cherwell. Noting the boy’s talent for art, the uncle dispatched him at the age of fifteen to London where he was apprenticed to John Varley, one of the leading water-colour artists of his day. As a very young man Turner was outstandingly successful and while still in his teens was elected a full member of the Old Water-Colour Society. At the age of twenty-one he returned to Oxford and moved with his wife to 16 St John Street where he continued both to paint and to teach. Although his talent did not decline his reputation did and it was only partly rescued by John Ruskin. In the 1851 edition of Modern Painters Ruskin noted: ‘It is not without indignation that I see the drawings of this patient and unassuming master deliberately insulted every year by the Old Water-Colour Society, and placed in consistent degradation at the top of the room, while the commonest affectations and trickeries of vulgar draughtsmnanship are constantly hung on the line.’ Ruskin himself commended ‘the quiet and simple earnestness, and the tender feeling, of the … drawings of William Turner of Oxford’.