In 1801, at the age of 26, Joseph Mallord William Turner became the youngest member of the Royal Academy. His early paintings combined great historical subjects with inspired views of nature, but his later experiments with the effects of light quickly led him to an evolutionary dissolution of forms. In this richly illustrated book, Olivier Meslay invites us to follow the development of Turner's luminous art, a bridge between Romanticism and Impressionism and one of Britain's most remarkable contributions to art.