J. M. W. Turner was born on April 23, 1775, in London’s Covent Garden neighborhood,

When we look at Turner’s early work, we see an artist with an obviously trained eye for detail and a fondness for design, order, and classical composition.

by the time Turner died, “landscape painting had replaced aristocratic portraiture as the archetypal British art-form.”59

His notes were thought triggers more than fleshed-out ideas.

Though his later work became more disorganized, fragmented, and impressionistic, he won over many of his critics as they not only warmed to his new style but also began to admit that his work marked a shift in English painting.57 What he had initiated was undeniable, and it proved to be nothing less than the break between the classical age and

In Turner’s day, England favored the classical decorum that would come to mark the Victorian sensibilities—modesty, composure, moral sensitivity, and tasteful presentation.

Across the sea, the Hudson River School painters understood that their job was to show the sublime terrain of America to her new immigrants in order to evoke a response. And so they did, often with panoramas so large the viewer felt like they were actually standing in the paintings.

He was, at the time, “the greatest figure of the Romantic painting movement and his exploration of light, atmosphere, and color is recognized as having been an essential influence in the development of Impressionism later on.”

Many of these artists came to be known as the Hudson River School—“an identifying group title given to a number of mainly landscape painters working in the United States of America in the early and middle years of the nineteenth century.”6 The Hudson River School—which included Asher Brown Durand, Thomas Cole, Frederick Edwin Church, Thomas Moran,