J. M. W. Turner, Britain's greatest and most revolutionary artist, has died. While reviewing the contents of Turner's vast artistic legacy for Britain's National Gallery, John Ruskin, Turner's greatest supporter, discovers a considerable body of previously unknown erotic sketches. Both shocked and outraged, Ruskin abruptly burns the materials he finds offensive. But through betrayal and theft, some of the erotica has escaped the flames... William James Stillman, a young American artist and diplomat, pursues a dangerous quest across Britain, Europe, and the Eastern United States to save the remaining sketches. He is convinced that the surviving erotic studies are not only invaluable to British art history, but contain a secret clue to the master's celebrated body of public work. Unlocking this secret becomes an obsession that threatens to consume Stillman and blind him to his obligations to his friends, his family, and even to himself. Based on actual people and events, this thrilling work features not only Turner himself, but such luminary characters as Allegra Fullerton, the Rossetti brothers, other artists from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and Britain's greatest swordsman and adventurer, Sir Richard Burton.