JMW Turner (1775-1851) was the son of a barber and born in Convent Garden, London. His talent was precocious. He was admitted into the Royal Academy Schools in 1789 and first exhibited at the RA in 1790. 

Throughout his life he was much indebted to the Academy, which recognized his genius and supported him against many of the arbiters of taste. He became an Associate member of the RA in 1799 and Deputy President in 1845. 

In Ulysses Deriding Polyhemus  Homers Odyssey the heightening of color in this oil painting has reached a new extreme. This was undoubtedly a consequence of Turners reactions to both light and atmosphere in Italy and to the works of art he was looking at during his stay there in 1828-9 when he produced a sketch for Ulysses  as well as having a studio in Rome where he could experiment with the range of his palette.  The change was noticeable enough for one contemporary critic to write of the unnatural tawdriness of the picture and its coloring run mad. John Ruskin was to call it later the central picture in Turners career.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder or Bruegel (1525-1569) was a FlemishRenaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes. He is nicknamed Peasant Brueghel to distinguish him from other members of the Brueghel dynasty, but is also the one generally meant when the context does not make clear which Brueghel is being referred to. From 1559 he dropped the h from his name and started signing his paintings as Bruegel.Painted in a simpler style than the Italianate art that prevailed in his time. The most obvious influence on his art is the older Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch. 

In Winter landscape with a Bird Trap (1565) the bird trap, which is quite prominently set off from its snowy surroundings in the right foreground, surely had a prominent meaning for Brueghels contemporaries, even if that meaning escapes us now; and the huge crow in the upper right hand corner is far too obvious to be just a bird: it stands out as a monumental warning to the birds that busy themselves all near the trap. The peaceful environment, with smug houses and insouciant skaters is misleading: danger lurks everywhere and warnings must be heeded.