But in his water-colours, after his first years or training and experiment, he was simply and always himself--he was Turner. Paul Sandby, John Cozens, Malton, Hearne, De Loutherbourg, and others of the older water-colour painters, all had their influence on him, but in no case did it last long. The two men who affected him most were Cozens and Girtin, his friend and fellow student, of whom more will be said hereafter. But by 1800, or at the latest 1802, Turner had passed all his contemporaries, and stood alone, the acknowledged head of the English school of water-colour painting, which in the-first half of the nineteenth century was to reach its zenith. Before attempting to trace the course of his art from its simple beginnings to its glorious close, a few brief words may be desirable as to his early life and surroundings. Born, it is usually supposed (but by no means known with certainty), in 1775, of humble parents--his father was a barber in Maiden Lane, Strand--at a quite early age he developed unusual powers of drawing. The barber proudly exposed his boy’s works in his shop window, and occasionally sold them for a shilling or two apiece; he also showed them to his customers, amongst whom was Thomas Stothard, R.A., who praised them and advised him to make an artist of his son. It is impossible accurately to trace his life before 1789, when he was presumably fourteen, but it is clear that he had only some brief intervals of schooling, first at a suburban and then at a sea-side academy--both probably of the cheapest and poorest middle-class type--in fact he never had any education worthy the name. He received lessons in drawing, however, from various teachers, including Malton and probably Paul Sandby, R.A. At about twelve or thirteen years of age, he was placed in the workshop of the great mezzotint engraver, John Raphael Smith, who, like many of his craft, was also a print dealer. Here Turner, along with his future companion Girtin, was chiefly occupied in colouring prints for sale, but he also learnt a great deal about engraving which was to stand him in good stead in after life. After possibly another interval of schooling, he passed, somewhere about his fourteenth year, into the office of Mr. Hardwick, a distinguished architect, who employed him in drawing and tinting “elevations,” adding landscape backgrounds to plans, etc. It was here, no doubt, that he laid the foundation of the fine architectural draughtsmanship which is noticeable in his earliest exhibited works and throughout his life. Long before he had mastered trees and foliage he could render accurately the lines and structure of a great building, as well as its intricacies of detail, as, for example, in the _West Front of Peterborough Cathedral_, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy a year or two later. Water, also, seems to have presented comparatively little difficulty to him from the first; owing possibly to