Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), often referred to as J.M.W. Turner, was a Romantic landscape painter and one of the most successful artists of his time in England. Turner painted landscapes in England and Venice and portrayed a variety of weather conditions and seasons. He often painted violent seas in the midst of storms. Turner is best known for his dramatically lit oil paintings, but he pursued watercolor painting with equal enthusiasm.
John Constable (1776-1837), an exact contemporary of Turner, was also a landscape artist. He did not enjoy Turner’s success, however, and his career only began to earn attention in the 1820s. In 1829 Constable became a full Academician at the Royal Academy of Art. Constable’s oil paintings are known for their dramatic portrayal of the sky and its clouds; often, the sky takes up more of the composition than the landscape itself in his paintings.
Lucien Freud (b. 1922), Sigmund Freud’s grandson, moved to England when he was nine years old. Freud has dedicated himself to figurative painting, and he is best known for his jarring nudes and portraits. His realism emphasizes the flaws, imperfections, and often ugliness of the human body, which he renders with thick layers of oil paint. Freud often sets up his models against large masses of white sheets, which he renders in equal detail.
David Hockney was born in 1937 in Bradford, England, but has spent much of his life in the United States after graduating from the Royal College in London in the late 1950s. In New York in the early 1960s he met the artist Andy Warhol and other artists in his circle. He moved to California in the 1960s and decided to stay there; he enjoyed the sunny lifestyle of Los Angeles. David Hockney has produced widely varied works of art over the course of his career, but, for the most part, he has remained interested in color and representational imagery. He continues to exhibit his work in New York galleries regularly.
Damien Hirst was born in 1965 and became known as one of the Young British Artists promoted by Charles Saatchi. The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought Hirst’s famous shark suspended in formaldehyde for twelve million dollars, causing some controversy and uproar. Hirst’s work continues to sell for large prices while causing offense and outrage. Damien Hirst graduated from Goldsmiths at the University of London in 1989, and won the Turner Prize in 1995.