".... it is no use taking such a little figure as mine........... it will do my drawings an injury; people will say such a little fellow as this can never draw" - JMW Turner

The Story

Daguerreotype of JMW Turner

Figure 1. A contentious daguerreotype of JMW Turner, by JJE Mayall, in pencil. Not dated or signed.

The Face of Turner

A determined recluse, Turner was the subject of twenty-two portraits, two of which were self-portraits. The features of his nose and chin appear quite unique in profile; long, slender, down-turned nose, with an upward curved chin. The self portraits show little resemblance to the other portraits of him. Turner's death mask is on display at the Tate Britain, on loan from The National Portrait Gallery (Pers con: Dr Shelby Whittingham). It is the only authentic representation of Turner's appearance at the end of his life.

The Question of the Daguerreotype

A daguerreotype reported to be of Turner (Figure 1), is the only other real image of Turner along with his death mask. The daguerreotype was the earliest type of photograph, named after one of its inventors, French artist and chemist Louis J.M. Daguerre in 1839. The process required hours of successful exposure to produce a viable image. It was the first commercially available photographic process, and was also the first to permanently record and fix an image.

Between 1847 and 1849, Turner regularly visited the portraiture artist John Jabez Edwin Mayall (1813- 1901). Mayall's ability to capture the light effects in a scene fascinated Turner, and the pair spent many a conversation exchanging ideas about the capture of light and shadow. It is believed that Mayall took several daguerreotype portraits of Turner, though only one is considered as being Turner even though it is not signed or dated.

There is evidence that some of Mayall's daguerreotypes may have been doctored to create different light effects:

"some I rubbed out where we tried the effect of a sharp, narrow cross light, in which some parts of the face were left in strong shadow." - Mayall (1813-1901) - Source

The validity of this image has recently been called into question; the image is neither signed nor dated, and has only the word of the Turner family as validation. A portrait by Cornelius Varley using a Graphic Telescope is another image of Turner that has been called into question, but in this case to a much greater extent.