Before the critical attack on Turner of 1842, Turner 's painting was well-received. During the early decades of the nineteenth century he was the hero of the radical press: the Examiner described Dido Building Carthage as a 'most masterly composition' (7 May 1815, p. 301), while the London Magazine portrayed Turner as the epitome of the romantic artist whose work challenged conventional aesthetic principles, (see London Magazine, July 1825). This was also the position taken by Arnold's Magazine of the Fine Arts (see Arnold's Magazine of the Fine Arts, Summer 1833).
During the mid-1830s critical opinion began to divide along political lines. The liberal Athenaeum, an enthusiastic defender of Turner early in the decade (see Athenaeum, May 1832, Athenaeum, 11 May 1833), expressed regrets that Turner's painting lacked the qualities of his earlier work (see Athenaeum, May 1838) becoming increasingly hostile (see Athenaeum, 14 May, 1842). In 1836, the locus of critical conflict was Turner's painting Juliet and Her Nurse. While the radical Spectator, an admirer of Turner's Burning of the Houses of Parliament (see Spectator, May 1835), described this as 'visionary and poetical' ( Finberg, The Life of J. M. W. Turner, p. 359), the Tory Blackwood's Magazine, on the other hand, ridiculed the work in its review of the Royal Academy exhibition (see Blackwood's Magazine, October 1836). Ruskin responded to this hostile review from the critic John Eagles (See Works, 3.635, Ruskin and Blackwood's Magazine and Ruskin and Eagles.) Turner continued to receive sympathetic reviews from the Spectator, as well as the nonconformist Eclectic Review, and Fraser's Magazine, although the latter became increasingly ambivalent about his painting during the early 1840s (see Eclectic Review, June 1838, The Spectator, 11 May 1839, Fraser's Magazine, June 1839, and Fraser's Magazine, June 1840).
By 1842 the situation had become complex. The reviews from the Literary Gazette, the Athenaeum, and Blackwood's Magazine, cited by Ruskin as the origin of Modern Painters I, were not wholly negative. Turner's powers as a painter were conceded by both the Athenaeum and the Literary Gazette (see Athenaeum, 14 May 1842 and Literary Gazette, 14 May 1842), while Blackwood's admitted to finding Turner 'improved' (see Blackwood's Magazine, July 1842). Turner's two Venetian landscapes were also admired by the conservative Illustrated London News which identified them as worthy of being bought, together with works by Augustus Callcott and Clarkson Stanfield, to hang in the National Gallery 'alongside the Claudes and the Cuyps, their true situation' Illustrated London News, 31 May 1842.