Charles Turner (1774–1857)

• Was an English engraver, painter and draughtsman. 
• Turner was born at Woodstock in Oxfordshire.
• His father, also named Charles, was an excise officer.
• He moved to London in about 1789, where he worked for John Boydell, a major print publisher, and enrolled in the Royal Academy Schools.
• He made his first mezzotint in 1795, working from a portrait of John Kirby, painted by his friend John James Masquerier.

• In 1798 he was employed by the publisher Edward Orme to produce the first plates for his "transparencies", a new type of varnished and coloured print designed to be illuminated from behind.

• In 1801 he issued, with great success, a print of Napoleon.

• While a student at the Royal Academy, he had become a friend of J.M.W. Turner (to whom he was not related), and in 1806 he made a mezzotint of his Shipwreck.

• Charles Turner was one of the executors of J. M. W. Turner's will.

• Although predominantly working in mezzotint, Turner also produced stipple engravings, aquatints, and etchings. 

• His work covers a wide range of genres, his main interest was portraiture; Whitman lists 637 portraits, out of a total of 921 prints.

• He was appointed "Mezzotinto Engraver in Ordinary to his Majesty" in 1812 and was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1828.

• He died at his home on, Warren Street, London, on 1 August 1857.

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