Light dazzlingly illuminates the works of British painter William Turner (1775 – 1851) like fireworks and sheet lightning. An artist who masterfully commands light, Turner is also called "the painter of light," and "the great pyrotechnist." An astonishingly prolific artist who created 20,000 paintings and drawings, Turner was a child prodigy whose first painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy when he was 15 and had his own studio at age 18. Venice, where Turner studied the transient effects of weather upon the sea and sky, inspired some of his most breathtaking, magically lit work. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner at watercolor and is considered to be one of the founders of British watercolor landscape painting.