He formally started his vocation at the Royal Academy of Arts at a young age

One of the most interesting facts about Joseph Mallord William Turner is he formally started his vocation at the Royal Academy of Arts at a young age. Turner entered the Royal Academy of Art schools in December 1789, when he was 14 years old. He received the "Great Silver Pallet" from the Royal Society of Arts in 1793 for his landscape sketching. Beginning in 1792, he spent his summers traveling the nation in search of topics, capturing sketches in his sketchbooks that would eventually be developed into polished watercolors. His early work is conventional in style and geographical in nature (concerning the exact representation of places), copying the greatest English painters of the time.

Turner started providing drawings for the Copper Plate Magazine and the Pocket Magazine in 1794 while working with engravers. Additionally, the recently-deceased landscape painter John Robert Cozens' incomplete sketches were copied or elaborated using him. Turner began displaying both watercolors and oil paintings at the Royal Academy in 1796 the title of which was Fishermen at Sea. His fame was established by the artwork, which received accolades from critics of the day. A modern reviewer praised the first, Fishermen at Sea (1796), a moonlit landscape, as the product "of an unusual intellect."

Turner was chosen as an associate of the academy in 1799 at the earliest allowable age of 24, and in 1802 he was made a full Royal Academician. Turner acquired a position as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy in 1807; he maintained this position for 30 years, from 1807 to 1837, but he delivered his final lectures on perspective in 1828. His initial presentations and compositions were made possible by the school, which maintained them on exhibit until his passing.

He formally started his vocation at the Royal Academy of Arts at a young age