Landscape artist George Turner was born in 1843, in Cromford, England, but then moved to Derby with his family. He showed an early talent for art, encouraged by his father Thomas Turner, who was an art enthusiast himself. Turner was largely self-taught and went on to become a professional painter by the age of twenty.
In 1865, he married Eliza Lakin, raising four children at her family farm ‘The Walnuts’ in Barrow upon Trent. After Eliza’s death in 1900, he moved to Kirk Ireton and later married fellow artist Kate Stevens Smith. They set up home at Cliffe Ash Cottage in Idridgehay where he died in 1910. Two of his children went on to become artists, including his son William Lakin Turner, a landscape oil painter of repute.
Turner painted bucolic scenes, mainly of his native Derbyshire, depicting the English countryside before the coming of mechanisation, and urban expansion. He left behind an important legacy and hundreds of paintings.
His work is held in a number of public collections including Derby Museum & Art Gallery, National Library of Wales, and Southampton City Art Gallery.
