Turner’s prints were a major achievement of the C19th  - combining art, craft, technology and commerce. This evolving website hosts an illustrated catalogue raisonnée of his prints.

This site is a replacement catalogue raisonnée for the printed catalogues published over 100 years ago. These used text to describe visual features and compare the images. Digital technology now provides the tools to make direct visual comparisons using high resolution images. Here, we provide a revised and extended data resource for the study of Turner’s art, his philosophy, the processes he used and developed, and the rapidly evolving technological and commercial environment of the C19th. The images displayed on the site are drawn from a large number of contributors, including the University of Manchester, the British Museum, the Yale Collection of British Art, as well as many dealers and private collectors.

As a young artist, William Turner (1775-1851) had worked his apprenticeship creating prints for the burgeoning topographic publications of the 1790s. The rapidly rising artist graduated to acceptance by Oxford University, providing prints to front its Almanack with significant college buildings. In 1802, he was elected a Royal Academician having wowed his fellow artists with his oils of seascapes, while continuing his campaign of raising the status of landscape painting.

Turner's working life spanned continuing overlapping revolutions - industrial, social, artistic, technological, commercial - which are reflected in his subjects, his methods and his life. He realised early on that demand for excellent art was not limited to those who could afford traditional expensive oil paintings and watercolours. Publishers and authors soon realised that including some Turner prints in a publication increased sales considerably, not to mention Turner's income.

Around 820 prints from his work were created in his lifetime and more appeared later, going through many editions and changes of state.  Overviews of this wealth of output were created in early C20th catalogues which this site aims to update and augment with images of his art.