自画像

Turner painted this at about 24, around 1799, the year he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. He was strikingly young for it, and the newspapers were already treating him as a major new talent. He shows himself full face, brightly lit against a plain dark ground, well dressed, meeting your eye with quiet confidence. He rarely painted himself again. For most of his life the public knew his storms and sunsets, not his face. Two centuries later the Bank of England put this portrait on the back of the 20 pound note, so the fresh-faced young Turner is now the version carried around in millions of pockets.