Published on the occasion of the exhibition Turner's modern world held at Tate Britain, London, 28 October 2020-7 March 2021, Kimbell Museum of Art, Fort Worth, 9 May-5 September 2021 and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 11 October 2021-17 January 2022.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / David Blayney Brown and Sam Smiles -- Signs of the time : early work / David Blayney Brown -- War and Peace -- Modern thought : Turner and his literary contemporaries / David Blayney Brown -- Home front / James Finch -- Causes and campaigns / Sam Smiles -- Steam and speed / Amy Concannon -- Modern painter / Sam Smiles.

Published to accompany a landmark exhibition of the art of J.M.W. Turner, this publication will highlight Turner's contemporary imagery, the most exceptional and distinctive aspect of his work throughout his career. Rather than making any claims for Turner's protomodernist credentials, it will explore what constituted modernity, and what it meant to be a modern artist, in his lifetime. 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 world. While historians have long recognised that the industrial and political revolutions of the late eighteenth century inaugurated farreaching change and modernisation, these were often ignored by artists as they did not fit into established categories of pictorial representation. This exhibition and its accompanying publication will show Turner updating the language of art and transforming his style and practice to produce revelatory, definitive interpretations of modern subjects.