Andrew Wilton is a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1965 he mounted an exhibition of the work of Georges van Houten at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He was Assistant Keeper during the 1960s at the Walker Art Gallery, before becoming Assistant Keeper in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum in 1967. He was founding Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Yale Center for British Art 1976 -1980, returning to the British Museum in 1981. He was Curator of the Turner Collection in the Clore Gallery from its opening in 1987 until 1989, when he became Keeper of the British Collection at the Tate Gallery, retiring in 2002. The organiser of many exhibitions, he has written extensively on aspects of Romantic landscape, especially on J.M.W. Turner and on watercolour. His books include ‘Turner and Switzerland’ with John Russell (1976), ‘British Watercolours 1750 to 1850’ (1977), ‘J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Art’ (1979), ‘Turner in His Time’ (1987, new edition 2006), ‘American Sublime’ (with Tim Barringer), 2002, ‘Five Centuries of British Painting’ (Thames and Hudson 2002), ‘Turner as Draughtsman’ (Ashgate 2005), and a novel, ‘The Painter’s Boy’ (2019).