William Turner
1789–1862 · British landscape watercolour painter
William Turner of Oxford (Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, 1789 – Oxford, 1862) was a British painter known chiefly for landscape watercolours. He is often called Turner of Oxford to distinguish him from his contemporary J. M. W. Turner. Most of his pictures show the countryside around Oxford, and one of his best-known works is a view of the city from Hinksey Hill.
His father died when he was two, and his mother raised him. In 1803 he moved in with an uncle of the same name in Burford, and a year later the two settled at the manor house in Shipton-on-Cherwell. Drawn to art, he trained in London under John Varley. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1807 and, in 1808, became a full member of the Royal Watercolour Society, showing with it every year for the rest of his life.
After a spell in Woodstock, he settled in Oxford and its surroundings, where he lived until his death. His legacy endures at the Ashmolean Museum, which staged a retrospective of his work in 1898 and still displays some of his paintings, and in collections such as the Tate and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.