A little more knowledge.

Well, no wonder I had a hard time remembering Joseph Mallord William Turner's name. (Plus, apparently there is another semi-contemporary English watercolorist with the name William Turner.) But I should've at least remembered the William part, since we sell William Turner paper by Hahnehmuhl where I work.

In any case, this is my guy:

Self-portrait, c. 1799

I did make a trip to the library this morning to see what I could find, but only one of their giant art books had anything more than a page devoted to him. tsk tsk.
One of the books was from the National Gallery of Art, and featured this image -

Mortlake Terrace, 1827

It's not necessarily symbolic of the works by Turner that I like the most, but it does have a great feeling of light to it. (Which was kindof his thing.)

There was a little story in the book about how when the painting was first exhibited, a colleague of Turner's walked up to it and said something like "Hmm, it could use more of a focal point in the middle here" and then proceeded to take a piece of black paper, cut out a shape of a dog, and stuck it to the painting. Turner came by later, was apparently not upset, and in fact varnished over the paper and painted the dog into the image. The book calls it one of the more unusual artistic collaborations.
The National Gallery of Art website credits the whole idea to Turner, so there seems to be some internal debate on the matter. I think it's all very charming (tho I might not think that if someone stuck a paper dog to one of my photographs. Well, actually, that could be kindof awesome.)