The next year he exhibited a drawing of Lambeth Palace;
and in 1799 was made an associate, and in 1802 a member, of the Royal
Academy. His career was probably more successful than that of any
other artist of modern times. Of his life the more that is said in
charity the better; for as the sun rises oftentimes from a fog bank,
so the luminous dreams of color by which we know Turner emanated from
an apparently sour, prosaic cockney. A bachelor implicated in low
intrigues, dying under the assumed name of "Puggy Booth" in a dreary
lodging in Chelsea, after a long career of miserly observance and
rapacious bickering--of his life naught became him like the leaving.
He died December 19, 1851. His will directed that his pictures--three
hundred and sixty paintings and nearly two thousand drawings--should
become the property of the nation, the only condition attached being
that two of the pictures should be placed between two paintings by
Claude Lorraine in the National Gallery. Twenty thousand pounds were
left to the Royal Academy for the benefit of superannuated artists;
and one thousand pounds were appropriated for a monument in St.
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