Dawson Turner

Dawson Turner FRS (18 October 1775 – 21 June 1858) was an English banker, botanist and antiquary.

Turner was the son of James Turner, head of the Gurney and Turner's Yarmouth Bank and Elizabeth Cotman, the only daughter of the mayor of Yarmouth, John Cotman. He was educated at North Walsham Grammar School (now Paston College), Norfolk and at Barton Bendish as a pupil of the botanist Robert Forby. He then went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he left without a degree due to his father's terminal illness. In 1796, he joined his father's bank.

He became interested in botany and published a number of books. In December 1802, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1816, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

By 1820, his interest in botany had been replaced by an interest in antiquities. He and his children were taught drawing by renowned Norfolk artist John Sell Cotman who became a good friend. They travelled to Normandy together and collaborated on a book, Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, published in 1822, with Cotman providing the etchings.

Turner died in 1858 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.

In 1796, the year he joined his father's bank, Turner married Mary (1774–1850), the daughter of William Palgrave of Norfolk. She became a notable portrait artist under her married name Mary Dawson Turner and 78 of her drawings (as etchings) are in the possession of the National Portrait Gallery in London. The couple had 11 children:

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