me a pioneer in the study of light, colour and atmosphere. He anticipated the French Impressionists in breaking down conventional formulas of representation, but unlike them, he believed that his works must always express significant historical, mythological, literary or narrative themes. A line of development can be traced from his early historical landscapes that form settings for important human subjects, such as the plagues of Egypt or the story of Dido and Aeneas, to his later studies of sea and sky. Even without figures, these late works are expressions of important subjects: the relationship of man with its environment, with the power of nature in the terror of the storm, or with the beneficence of the sun. During the second decade of the 1800s, Turner's painting became increasingly luminous and atmospheric in quality. Even in paintings of actual places, as "St. Mawes at the Pilchard Season" (1812; Tate Gallery) and the two pictures of Oxford painted between 1809 and 1812 (exhibited in 1812), the hard facts of topography are diffused behind pearly films of colour; other pictures, such as "Frosty Morning" (1813; Tate Gallery), are based entirely on effects of light. Among the most ethereal landscapes of this period are "Lake of Geneva" (1810; Los Angeles County Museum), "Crossing the Brook" (1815; Tate Gallery), and "England; Richmond Hill, on the Prince Regent's Birthday" (1819; Tate Gallery), one of his largest and most ambitious pictures. Turner was much in demand as a painter of castles and countryseats for their owners. Two examples of such paintings are "Somer Hill, Tunbridge" and "Linlithgow Palace" (1810; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool). He also continued to excel in marine painting, one of the most ambitious works being "Wreck of a Transport Ship" (1810; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon). With "Dido and Aeneas, Leaving Carthage on the Morning of the Chase" (1814; Tate Gallery), Turner began a series...
