Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature, and
without assistance or combination, water is the most wonderful. If we
think of it as the course of all the changefulness and beauty which we
have seen in clouds; then as the instrument by which the earth we have
contemplated was modeled into symmetry, and its crags chiseled into
grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has
made with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if
we had not seen; then as it exists in the foam of the torrent--in the
iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the
deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad
lake and glancing river; finally, in that which is to all human minds
the best emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power, the wild, various,
fantastic, tameless unity of the sea; what shall we compare to this
mighty, this universal element, for glory and for beauty? or how shall
we follow its eternal changefulness of feeling: It is like trying to
paint a soul.
[Footnote 41: From "Modern Painters," Vol. II, Section V.]
To suggest the ordinary appearance of calm water--to lay on canvas as
much evidence of surface and reflection as may make us understand that
water is meant--is, perhaps, the easiest task of art; and even
ordinary running or falling water may be sufficiently rendered, by
observing careful curves of projection with a dark ground, and
breaking a little white over it, as we see done with judgment and
truth by Ruysdael. But to paint the actual play of hue on the
reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury of water when it
begins to show itself--to give the flashing and rocket-like velocity
of a noble cataract, or the precision and grace of the sea wave, so
exquisitely modeled, tho so mockingly transient--so mountainous in its
form, yet so cold-like in its motion--with its variety and delicacy of
color, when every ripple and wreath has some peculiar passage of
reflection upon itself alone, and the radiating and scintillating
sunbeams are mixt with the dim hues of transparent depth and dark rock
below;--to do this perfectly is beyond the power of man; to do it even
partially, has been granted to but one or two, even of those few who
have dared to attempt it....
Now, the fact is, that there is hardly a roadside pond or pool which
has not as much landscape _in_ it as above it. It is not the brown,
muddy, dull thing we suppose it to be; it has a heart like ourselves,
and in the bottom of that there are the boughs of the tall trees, and
the blades of the shaking grass, and all manner of hues, of variable,
pleasant light out of the sky; nay, the ugly gutter, that stagnates
over the drain bars, in the heart of the foul city, is not altogether
base; down in that, if you will look deep enough, you may see the
dark, serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing of pure clouds. It
is at your own will that you see in that despised stream, either the
refuse of the street, or the image of the sky--so it is with almost
all other things that we unkindly despise....
Stand for half an hour beside the fall of Schaffhausen, on the north
side where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of water first
bends, unbroken, in pure, polished velocity, over the arching rocks at
the brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome of crystal twenty
feet thick--so swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam
globe from above darts over it like a falling star; and how the trees
are lighted above it under all their leaves, at the instant that it
breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that foam burn with green
fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and how, ever and anon,
startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out
of the fall, like a rocket, bursting in the wind and driven away in
dust, filling the air with light; and how, through the curdling
wreaths of the restless, crashing abyss below, the blue of the water,
paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through white
rain-cloud; while the shuddering iris stoops in tremulous stillness
over all, fading and flushing alternately through the choking spray
and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among the thick golden
leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild water; their
dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by
some stronger gush from the cataract and bowed again upon the mossy
rocks as its roar dies away; the dew gushing from their thick branches
through drooping clusters of emerald herbage, and sparkling in white
threads along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding the lichens which
chase and checker them with purple and silver....
When water, not in very great body, runs in a rocky bed much
interrupted by hollows, so that it can rest every now and then in a
pool as it goes along, it does not acquire a continuous velocity of
motion. It pauses after every leap, and curdles about, and rests a
little, and then goes on again; and if in this comparatively tranquil
and rational state of mind it meets with any obstacle, as a rock or
stone, it parts on each side of it with a little bubbling foam, and
goes round; if it comes to a step in its bed, it leaps it lightly, and
then after a little splashing at the bottom, stops again to take
breath. But if its bed be on a continuous slope, not much interrupted
by hollows, so that it can not rest, or if its own mass be so
increased by flood that its usual resting-places are not sufficient
for it, but that it is perpetually pushed out of them by the following
current, before it has had time to tranquilize itself, it of course
gains velocity with every yard that it runs; the impetus got at one
leap is carried to the credit of the next, until the whole stream
becomes one mass of unchecked, accelerating motion. Now when water in
this state comes to an obstacle, it does not part at it but clears it,
like a race-horse; and when it comes to a hollow, it does not fill it
up and run out leisurely at the other side, but it rushes down into it
and comes up again on the other side, as a ship into the hollow of the
sea. Hence, the whole appearance of the bed of the stream is changed,
and all the lines of the water altered in their nature. The quiet
stream is a succession of leaps and pools; the leaps are light and
springy, and parabolic, and make a great deal of splashing when they
tumble into the pool; then we have a space of quiet curdling water,
and another similar leap below.
But the stream when it has gained an impetus takes the shape of its
bed, never stops, is equally deep and equally swift everywhere, goes
down into every hollow, not with a leap, but with a swing, not
foaming, nor splashing, but in the bending line of a strong sea-wave,
and comes up again on the other side, over rock and ridge, with the
ease of a bounding leopard; if it meet a rock three or four feet above
the level of its bed, it will neither part nor foam, nor express any
concern about the matter, but clear it in a smooth dome of water,
without apparent exertion, coming down again as smoothly on the other
side; the whole surface of the surge being drawn into parallel lines
by its extreme velocity, but foamless, except in places where the form
of the bed opposes itself at some direct angle to such a line of fall,
and causes a breaker; so that the whole river has the appearance of a
deep and raging sea, with this only difference that the torrent-waves
always break backward, and sea-waves forward....
Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the sea of a
powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four days
and nights, and to those who have not I believe it must be
unimaginable, not from the mere force or size of surge, but from the
complete annihilation of the limit between sea and air. The water from
its prolonged agitation is beaten not into mere creaming foam but
into masses of accumulated yeast which hang in ropes and wreaths from
wave to wave, and where one curls over to break, form a festoon like a
drapery from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in
dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses,
which make the air white and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a
foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in their
very bodies, underneath, making them white all through, as the water
is under a great cataract; and their masses, being thus half water and
half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise, and
carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles like actual
water. Add to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its
moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by it as
described above, and covers its surface not merely with the smoke of
finely divided water, but with boiling mist; imagine also the low
rain-clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have often
seen them; whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to
wave; and finally conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch
of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in
precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all
this chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no
distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon,
nor any landmark or natural evidence of position is left; that the
heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, and that you see no
farther than you could see through a cataract....
But, I think, the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and, if
so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of the Slave
Ship,[42] the chief Academy picture of the Exhibition in 1840. It is a
sunset on the Atlantic, after prolonged storm; but the storm is
partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain-clouds are moving in
scarlet lines to lose themselves in the hollow of the night. The whole
surface of sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges of
enormous swell, not high, nor local, but a low, broad heaving of the
whole ocean, like the lifting of its bosom by deep drawn breath after
the torture of the storm. Between these two ridges the fire of the
sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but
glorious light, the intense and lurid splendor which burns like gold,
and bathes like blood. Along this fiery path and valley, the tossing
waves by which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided, lift
themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint
and ghastly shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They do not
rise everywhere, but three or four together in wild groups, fitfully
and furiously, as the under strength of the swell compels or permits
them; leaving between them treacherous spaces of level and whirling
water, now lighted with green and lamp-like fire, now flashing back
the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully dyed from above with the
indistinguishable images of the burning clouds, which fall upon them
in flakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to the reckless waves the
added motion of their own fiery flying. Purple and blue, the lurid
shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist of the night,
which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of death upon
the guilty ship as it labors amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin
masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with condemnation
in that fearful hue which signs the sky with horror, and mixes its
flaming flood with the sunlight,--and cast far along the desolate
heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the multitudinous sea.
[Footnote 42: Turner's "Slave Ship" was long in Ruskin's possession,
if not actually his property. It afterward came to America, and in New
York was placed on public exhibition some thirty years ago. It is now
in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.]
I believe, if I were reduced to rest Turner's immortality upon any
single work, I should choose this. Its daring conception--ideal in the
highest sense of the word--is based on the purest truth, and wrought out
with the concentrated knowledge of a life; its color is absolutely
perfect, not one false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so
modulated that every square inch of canvas is a perfect composition; its
drawing as accurate as fearless; the ship buoyant, bending, and full of
motion; its tones as true as they are wonderful; and the whole picture
dedicated to the most sublime of subjects and impressions--(completing
thus the perfect system of all truth, which we have shown to be formed
by Turner's works)--the power, majesty, and deathfulness of the open,
deep, illimitable sea.