Turner''s career spanned revolution and the Napoleonic War, Empire, the explosion of finance capitalism, the transition from sail to steam and from manpower to mechanisation, political reform and scientific and cultural advances that transformed society and shaped the modern worldWhile historians have long recognised that the industrial and political revolutions of the late eighteenth century inaugurated far reaching change and modernisation, these were often ignored by artists as they did not fit into established categories of pictorial representation.

This extraordinary new publication shows Turner updating the language of art and transforming his style and practice to produce revelatory, definitive interpretations of modern subjectsThis is J.M.W. Turner as he has never been seen before.