W. G. (William George) Rawlinson

Born in Taunton, Somerset, in 1840, William George Rawlinson built his working life in business, joining the London silk firm James Pearsall & Co. in 1865 and later becoming a partner. Alongside that career, he developed a deep interest in the art of J. M. W. Turner.

That interest grew into serious scholarship after Rawlinson encountered Turner’s Liber Studiorum through an exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1872. He went on to assemble major collections of Turner material and published Turner’s “Liber Studiorum”: a Description and a Catalogue in 1878, followed later by the two-volume The Engraved Work of J. M. W. Turner (1908–1913), a reference work long treated as an authority on the subject.

Rawlinson retired from business in 1908 and continued working on Turner studies while his collections were gradually sold to important collectors and institutions. He died in Chelsea, London, in 1928, and is remembered chiefly for preserving, cataloguing, and explaining Turner’s engraved legacy with unusual care and dedication.