Portrait believed to be JMW Turner - 16/08/2010

A drawing by Cornelius Varley is a portrait of JMW Turner as a 40-year-old, a Masters student has found.

Kelly Freeman, a Masters student at Dundee University, has ended two centuries of uncertainty by confirming that the drawing probably depicts the romantic artist.

She created a 2D image of the Varley piece and super-imposed it onto a 3D laser scan of the artist's death mask, made when he was 76-years-old.

Furthermore, Ms Freeman believes there are enough similarities between the two images including the eye sockets and the gap between the upper nose and lip to be the same man.

She told the Guardian: "The Varley drawing is so beautiful, showing a man full of strength and character, but with a vulnerability about him, Turner at the height of his powers as his contemporaries truly saw him."

If this portrait really depicts JMW Turner, it will be the only one of its kind as the artist refused to sit for drawings. The only images of him that the National Portrait Gallery has are his death mask and a self-portrait.

Varley was an English water-colour painter who also invented the graphic telescope – the tool used to create this image of Turner.

Posted by Juliet Miller