Tim Marlow on Turner

'Turner is a wonderfully contradictory figure: the passionate academic painter and the reluctant experimentalist, a man obsessed with preserving his paintings for posterity who still used a major canvas as a catflap in his studio. I find it very moving, almost tragic, that he felt himself to be a failure, unable fully to realise his remarkable vision but perhaps that is the key to his genius.

What I love most about him is his boundless, almost demonic energy which fuelled everything he did from those extensive journeys around Britain and Europe to the huge body of work that he created whose impact still seems fresh and full of vitality.'