YOUTH.
1789 to 1796.
The only rebuff with which the young artist appears to have met was from
Tom Malton, the perspective draughtsman, who sent him back to his father
as a boy to whom it was impossible to teach geometrical perspective. As
Mr. Hamerton observes, “There is nothing in this which need surprise us
in the least. Scientific perspective is a pursuit which may amuse or
occupy a mathematician, but the stronger the artistic faculty in a
painter the less he is likely to take to it, for it exercises other
faculties than his. Besides this, he feels instinctively that he can do
very well without it.” No doubt he did feel this, and the feeling very
much lessened the disappointment at being “sent back,” and he did very
well without it, so well that he was appointed Professor of Perspective
to the Royal Academy without it, and not unfrequently exhibited pictures
on its walls, which showed how very much “without it” he was.
Otherwise he met with no rebuffs in his art. We have seen that he got
plenty of employment, and have expressed an opinion that that
employment--colouring engravings, and putting in backgrounds and
foregrounds and skies for architectural drawings--was no mean employment
for a youngster. He himself, when pitied in later years for this
supposed degradation and slavery, replied, “Well, and what could be
better practice!” and it was this and more. It not only taught him to
work neatly, to lay flat washes smoothly and accurately, but it taught
him to exercise his ingenuity and artistic taste. He probably succeeded
so well, because it gave him an opportunity of displaying his artistic
faculty. Every sketch that he had thus to beautify presented an artistic
problem, how best to light and decorate and make a picture of the bare
bones of an architectural design. It gave him a sense of power and
importance thus to be the converter of topography into art; it taught
him the value of light and shade, and the decorative capacities of trees
and sky. His success gave him self-reliance. It also, and this was
perhaps a more doubtful advantage, taught him to consider drawing as a
skill in beautifying. He got the habit of treating buildings as objects
less valuable as objects of art in themselves, than for the breaking of
sunbeams, and as straight lines to contrast with the endless curves of
nature; and also the habit of using trees as he wanted them, of bending
their boughs and moulding their contours in harmony with the
poem-picture of his imagination. To this early treatment of
architectural drawings may be traced his great power of composition, and
also much of his mannerism.
That he soon knew his power, and had his secrets of manipulation, may be
one reason for his early secretiveness about his art; for though there
is little in these early works of his to prefigure his coming greatness,
he, when a youth, attained a proficiency equal to that of the best
water-colour artists of his day, and, with his friend Girtin, soon
surpassed all except Cozens; and he could not have done this without a
sense of superiority and many private experiments; or, on the other
hand, he may, like many men, have required complete solitude to work at
all, though this was not the case in later life, as he often painted
almost the whole of his pictures on the Academy walls. At all events,
the degree of his secretiveness is extraordinary. “I knew him,” says an
old architect, “when a boy, and have often paid him a guinea for putting
backgrounds to my architectural drawings, calling upon him for this
purpose at his father’s shop in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. He never
would suffer me to see him draw, but concealed, as I understood, all
that he did in his bedroom.” When in this bedroom one morning, the door
suddenly opened, and Mr. Britton entered.[10] In an instant Turner
covered up his drawings and ran to bar the crafty intruder’s progress.
“I’ve come to see the drawings for the Earl.”[11] “You shan’t see ’em,”
was the reply. “Is that the answer I am to take back to his lordship?”
“Yes; and mind that next time you come through the shop, and not up the
back way.” When Mr. Newby Lowson accompanied him on a tour on the
continent he “did not show his companion a single sketch.” Similar
stories could be added to show how this habit continued through his
life.
The dates of these two early stories are not given by Mr. Thornbury, nor
the name of the “old architect,” but they show that he was early
employed by a nobleman, and that he got a guinea a piece for his
backgrounds, not only “good practice,” but good pay for a youth; he was,
in fact, better employed and better paid than any young artist whose
history we can remember. Nor does it seem to have been the fault of
Providence if he did not enjoy the crowning happiness of life, a friend
of suitable tastes, for Girtin was sent to him, a youth of his own age
endowed with similar gifts, and of a most sociable disposition; nor did
he want a capable mentor, for he had Dr. Monro, “his true master,” as
Mr. Ruskin calls him.
It was at Raphael Smith’s that he formed an intimacy with Girtin, says
Mr. Alaric Watts.[12] “His son, Mr. Calvert Girtin, described his father
and young Turner as associated in a friendly rivalry, under the
hospitable roof and superintendence of that lover of art, Dr. Monro
(then residing in the Adelphi). Nor was Turner forgetful of the Doctor’s
kindness, for on referring to that period of his career, in a
conversation with Mr. David Roberts, he said, ‘There,’ pointing to
Harrow, ‘Girtin and I have often walked to Bushey and back, to make
drawings for good Dr. Monro, at half-a-crown apiece and a supper.’”
If a saying quoted by T. Miller in his “Memoirs of Turner and Girtin”
may be trusted,[13] Turner may have met Gainsborough and other eminent
painters of the day at Dr. Monro’s. Speaking of Dr. Monro’s
conversaziones, “Old Pine, of ‘Wine and Walnuts’ celebrity, used to say,
‘What a glorious coterie there was, when Wilson, Marlow, Gainsborough,
Paul, and Tom Sandby, Rooker, Hearne, and Cozins (_sic_) used to meet,
and you, old Jack,’ turning to Varley, ‘were a boy in a pinafore, with
Turner, Girtin, and Edridge as bigwigs, on whom you used to look as
something beyond the usual amount of clay.’” As Gainsborough died in
1788, when Turner was thirteen years old, and Turner was only two years
the senior of John Varley, this shows how early he began to have a
reputation.
The acquaintance between Turner and Girtin is one of the most
interesting facts in Turner’s Life. Being more than two years Turner’s
senior (Girtin was born on February 18th, 1773) and having at least
equal talent as a boy, it is probable that he was “ahead” of Turner at
first, and that Turner learnt much from him. We may therefore accept as
true his reputed sayings, “Had Tom Girtin lived, I should have
starved;”[14] and (of one of Girtin’s “yellow” drawings), “I never in my
whole life could make a drawing like that, I would at any time have
given one of my little fingers to have made such a one.”[14] With regard
to their mutual studies and their respective talents we have information
in the studies and drawings themselves, but with regard to their human
relationship we have very little. Turner always spoke of him as “Poor
Tom,” and proposed to, and possibly did, put up a tablet to his memory;
but there are no letters or anecdotes to show that what we all mean by
“friendship” ever existed between them.
We are equally ignorant as to the amount of intimacy between him and Dr.
Monro, for though the latter did not die till 1833, there is nothing to
show that they ever met after Turner’s student days were over.
It may, however, be fairly assumed that we should have known more about
his intimacy with his Achates and his Mæcenas if it had been great and
continuous. The absence of documents or rumours on the subject are all
in favour of his having kept himself to himself, of his absorption in
his art from an early date, neglecting the social advantages that were
open to him, neglecting intellectual intercourse with his artistic
peers, neglecting everything except the pursuit of his art, and the road
to wealth and fame. This self-absorption, this concentration of all his
time and power to this one but triple object, the trinity of his desire,
may have arisen from a natural cause, the strength of impelling genius
over which he had no control; it may have arisen from secretiveness,
suspicion, selfishness, and ambition, which he could have controlled but
would not; but whatever its cause, there is no doubt that it existed,
and that with every external facility for becoming a social and
cultivated being, he took the solitary path which led him to greatness
(not perhaps greater than he might have otherwise attained), but a
greatness accompanied with mental isolation and ignorance of all but
what he could gather from unaided observation, and an uncultivated
intellect.
The education of Turner may be summed up as follows: he learnt reading
from his father, writing and probably little else at his schools at
Brentford and Margate, perspective (imperfectly) from T. Malton,
architecture (imperfectly and classical only) from Mr. Hardwick,
water-colour drawing from Dr. Monro, and perhaps some hints as to
painting in oils from Sir Joshua Reynolds, in whose house he studied for
a while. The rest of his power he cultivated himself, being much helped
by the early companionship of Girtin. Nearly all, if not all, this
education except that mentioned in the last paragraph was over in 1789,
when Sir Joshua laid down his brush, conscious of failing sight, and
young Turner became a student of the Royal Academy.
[Illustration: NANTES.
_From “Rivers of France.”_]
These were his principal living instructors, but he learnt more from the
dead--from Claude and Vandevelde, from Titian and Canaletto, from Cuyp
and Wilson. He learnt most of all from nature, but in the beginning of
his career his studies from art are more apparent in his works. There is
scarcely one of his predecessors or contemporaries of any character in
water-colour painting that he did not copy, whose style and method he
did not study, and in part adopt. We have within the last few years only
been able to study at ease the works of the early water-colour painters
of England, and the result of the interesting collections now at South
Kensington and the British Museum, bequests of Mr. and Mrs. Ellison, Mr.
Towshend, Mr. William Smith, and Mr. Henderson, has been on the one hand
to increase our opinion of their merit, and on the other to show how far
Turner outstripped them. We can now see how true and delicate were the
lightly-washed monochrome water scenes of Hearne; how robust the studies
of Sandby; that Daniell and Dayes could not only draw architecture well,
but could warm their buildings with sun, and surround them with space
and air; that Cozens could conceive a landscape-poem, and execute it in
delicate harmonies of green and silver; that Girtin could invest the
simplest study with the feeling of the pathos of ruin and solemnity of
evening; the first of water-colour painters to feel and paint the soft
penetrative influence of sunlight, subduing all things with its golden
charm. In looking at one of his drawings now at South Kensington, a
_View of the Wharfe_, and comparing it with the works around, one cannot
help being struck with this difference, that it is complete as far as
it goes, the realization of one thought, the perfect rendering of an
impression, harmonious to a touch. Broad and almost rough as it is, it
is yet finished in the true sense as no English work of the kind ever
was before. There are more elaborate drawings around, plenty of struggle
after effects of brighter colour, much cleverness, much skill, but
nowhere a picture so completely at peace with itself. In looking at it
we can realize what Turner meant when he said that he could never make
drawings like Girtin. Equal harmony of tone, far greater and more
splendid harmonies of colour, miracles of delicate drawing, triumphs
over the most difficult effects, dreams of ineffable loveliness, very
many things unattempted by Girtin he could achieve, but never this
simple sweet gravity, never this perfection of spiritual peace.
But in spite of this, the great fact in comparing Turner with the other
water-colour painters of his own time--and we are speaking now of his
early works--is this, that whereas each of the best of the others is
remarkable for one or two special beauties of style or effect, he is
remarkable for all. He could reach near, if not quite, to the golden
simplicity of Girtin, to the silver sweetness of Cozens; he could draw
trees with the delicate dexterity of Edridge, and equal the beautiful
distances of Glover; he could use the poor body-colours of the day, or
the simple wash of sepia, with equal cleverness. He was not only
technically the equal, if not master of them all, but he comprehended
them, almost without exception.
Such mastery was not attained without extraordinary diligence in the
study of pictures. At Dr. Monro’s he could study all the best modern
men, including Gainsborough, Morland, Wilson, and De Loutherbourg, and
he could also study Salvator Rosa, Rembrandt, Claude, and Vandevelde.
One day looking over some prints with Mr. Trimmer,[15] he took up a
Vandevelde and said, “That made me a painter.” And Dayes (Girtin’s
master) wrote in 1804:--“The way he acquired his professional powers was
by borrowing where he could a drawing or a picture to copy from, or _by
making a sketch of any one in the Exhibition[16] early in the morning,
and finishing it at home_.” The character of his early works is
sufficient of itself to prove the extent of his study of pictures, and
we are inclined to think that most of his early practice was from works
of art, and not from nature. The spirit of rivalry commenced in him very
early; it was the only test of his powers, and he seems to have pitted
himself in the beginning of his career against all his contemporaries,
from Mr. Henderson to Girtin, and many of the old masters, and never to
have entirely relinquished the habit. When we think of the number of
years he spent in doing little but topographical drawings, a castle
here, a town there, an abbey there, with appropriate figures in the
foreground, using only sober browns and blues for colours, his progress
seems to have been very slow; but when we see most of the artists of his
time doing exactly the same, and that the old landscape painters whom he
principally studied were almost as limited in the colours they employed,
especially in their drawings, we do not see how he could well have
progressed more quickly; and when we further consider the enormous
distance which he travelled--from the very bottom to the very height of
his art--that he should have accomplished it all in one short life
appears miraculous. The milestones of his journey are not shown plainly
in his early work, that is all.
That there was much conscious restraint on his part in the use of
colours, that he of wise purpose devoted himself to perfection of his
technical power before he endeavoured to show his strength to the world,
we see no reason to believe. He could not well have done otherwise, and
for such an original mind one marvels to observe how throughout his
career he was led in the chains of circumstance. The poet-painter, the
dumb-poet, as he has well been called, shows little eccentricity of
genius in his youth. There was the strong inclination to draw, but no
strong inclination to draw anything in particular, or anything very
beautiful. On the contrary, he drew the most uninteresting and prosaic
of things, copied bad topographical prints and ugly buildings. When it
was proposed to make him an architect he did not rebel; when it was
afterwards proposed to make him a portrait-painter he did not murmur. It
was Mr. Hardwick, not himself, that insisted on his going to the Royal
Academy. His first essay in oils was due to another’s instigation.
Whatever work came to him, he did; that which he could do best, that
which he had special genius for, the painting of pure landscape, he
scarcely attempted at all for years. Almost every artist of that day
went about England drawing abbeys, seats, and castles for topographical
works. What others did, he did. What others did not do, he did not do.
No doubt it was the only profitable employment he could get, and he very
properly took it, and worked hard at it; he was borne along the stream
of circumstance as everybody else is, but he, unlike most men of strong
genius, seems never to have attempted to stem its tide, or get out of
its way. His genius was a growth to which every event and accident of
his life added its contribution of nourishment. Though stirred with
unusual power, he was probably almost as unconscious as to what it
tended as a seed in the ground; he had a dim perception of a light
towards which he was growing; he was conscious that he put forth leaves,
and that he should some day flower, but when, and with what special
bloom he was destined to surprise the world, we doubt if he had any
prophetic glimpse. His development was extraordinary, and could only
have been produced by special careful training, but this training was
mainly due to circumstances over which he had no control. Nature came to
his assistance in a thousand different ways, and in nothing more than
giving him a quiet temperament, like that of Coleridge’s child, “that
always finds, and never seeks.” He was not fastidious, except with
regard to his own work, and about that, more as to the arrangement and
finish of it than the subject. He had an excellent constitution, early
inured to rough it, and his comforts were very simple and easily
obtained. He was not particular, even about his materials and tools; any
scrap of paper would do for a sketch on an emergency. He was always able
to work, and to work swiftly and well. No fidgeting about for hours and
days because he was not in the mood; no sacrifice of sketch after sketch
because they did not please him; none of that nervous restlessness which
so often attends imaginative workers; and his work was imaginative from
the first--if not in conception, in execution. Solitude seems to have
been the only necessary condition for the free exercise of his powers,
which were as happily employed in “making a picture” of one thing as of
another, and when he wanted something to put in it to get it “right,”
he never had much trouble in finding it. He said, “If when out sketching
you felt a loss, you have only to turn round, or walk a few paces
further, and you had what you wanted before you.” His physical powers
were also great, and his mind was active in receiving impressions. Mr.
Lovell Reeve, as quoted by Mr. Alaric Watts, says:--“His religious study
of nature was such that he would walk through portions of England,
twenty to twenty-five miles a day, with his little modicum of baggage at
the end of a stick, sketching rapidly on his way all striking pieces of
composition, and marking effects with a power that daguerreotyped them
in his mind. There were few moving phenomena in clouds and shadows that
he did not fix indelibly in his memory, though he might not call them
into requisition for years afterwards.” He was not tied to any
particular method, or bound to any particular habit; when he found that
his way of sketching was too minute and slow to enable him to make his
drawings pay their expenses, he changed his style to a broader, swifter
one. So, without going quite to the length of Mr. Hamerton, who appears
to think that everything in Turner’s youth (including ugliness and bandy
legs) happened for the best in the best of possible worlds, we may
safely affirm that he could scarcely have been gifted with a temperament
better suited for steady progress, or one which was more calculated to
make him happy, for it enabled him to exercise his body and mind at the
same time, to earn his living and to lay up stores of pictorial beauty
in his memory, to do whatever task was set him, and yet get artistic
pleasure out of even the most commonplace study by embellishing it with
his imagination.
In 1789 he became a student of the Royal Academy, and in the year after
he exhibited a _View of the Archbishop’s Palace at Lambeth_. In 1791, 2,
and 3 he exhibited several topographical drawings, but down to this time
he seems to have made no sketching tours of any length. He drew in the
neighbourhood of London, and his journeys to stay with friends at
Margate and Bristol will account for his drawings of Malmesbury,
Canterbury, and Bristol. But about 1792 he received a commission from
Mr. J. Walker, the engraver (who also afterwards employed Girtin), to
make drawings for his “Copper-plate Magazine.” This was the beginning of
the long series of engravings from his works, and it may have been one
of the reasons which decided him to set up a studio for himself, which
he did in Hand Court, Maiden Lane, close to his father, where he
remained till he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1800,
when he removed to 64, Harley Street. A year or so after his employment
by Walker he got similar commissions from Mr. Harrison for his “Pocket
Magazine.” These commissions sent him on his travels over England
referred to by Mr. Lovell Reeve. The copper-plates of the sketches for
Walker, including some after Girtin, were found about sixty years
afterwards by Mr. T. Miller, who republished them in 1854, in a volume
called “Turner and Girtin’s Picturesque Views, sixty years since.” These
drawings mark his first tour to Wales, on which he set forth on a pony
lent by Mr. Narraway. The first public results of this tour were the
drawing of _Chepstow_ in “Walker’s Magazine” for November, 1794, and
three drawings in the Royal Academy for that year. By the next year’s
engravings and pictures we trace him to “Nottingham,” “Bridgnorth,”
“Matlock,” “Birmingham,” “Cambridge,” “Lincoln,” “Wrexham,”
“Peterborough,” and “Shrewsbury,” and by those of 1796 and 1797 to
“Chester,” “Neath,” “Tunbridge,” “Bath,” “Staines,” “Wallingford,”
“Windsor,” “Ely,” “Flint,” “Hampton Court, Herefordshire,” “Salisbury,”
“Wolverhampton,” “Llandilo,” “The Isle of Wight,” “Llandaff,” “Waltham,”
and “Ewenny (Glamorgan),” not including drawings of places he had been
to before.
His furthest point north was Lincoln, his farthest west (in England)
Bristol. The only parts in which he reached the coast were in Wales and
the Isle of Wight. Lancashire and the Lakes, Yorkshire and its
waterfalls, were yet to come, and nearly all coast scenery, except that
of Kent.
The drawings for the Magazines were not remarkable for any poetry or
originality of treatment perceptible in the engravings, the cathedrals
being generally taken from an unpicturesque point of view, more with the
object of showing their length and size than their beauty, to which he
appears to have been somewhat insensible always; they show a great love
of bridges and anglers--there is scarcely one without a bridge, and some
have two; a desire to tell as much about the place as possible by the
introduction of figures; they show his habit of taking his scenes from a
distance, generally from very high ground, and his delight in putting as
much in a small space as possible, and his power of drawing masses of
houses, as in the _Birmingham_ and the _Chester_.
The result of these tours may be said to have been the perfection of his
technical skill, the partial displacement of traditional notions of
composition, and the storing of his memory with infinite effects of
nature. It was as good and thorough discipline in the study of nature,
as his former life had been in the study of art, and though his visit to
Yorkshire in the next year (1797) seemed necessary to bring thoroughly
to the surface all the knowledge and power he had acquired, it was not
without present fruit. Rather of necessity than choice, we may observe,
he confined his powers mainly to the drawing of views of places supposed
to be of interest to the subscribers of the Magazines, but his
individual inclinations in the choice of subject, and his tendency to
purer landscape and sea-view, showed themselves now and then. First in
his drawing of _The Pantheon, the Morning after the Fire_, exhibited in
1792; next in 1793, in his _View on the River Avon, near St. Vincent’s
Rocks, Bristol_, and the _Rising Squall, Hot Wells_,[17] from the same
place; then in 1794, _Second Fall of the River Monach, Devil’s Bridge_;
in 1795, _View near the Devil’s Bridge, Cardiganshire, with the River
Ryddol_; in 1796, _Fishermen at Sea_; and in 1797, _Fishermen coming
Ashore at Sunset, previous to a Gale_, and _Moonlight: a study in
Milbank_,[18] now in the National Gallery.
That his genius was perceptible even in these early days is evident from
the notice taken in a contemporary review of his drawings in 1794, when
he was nineteen.
“388. _Christchurch Gate, Canterbury._ W. Turner. This deserving
picture, with Nos. 333 and 336, are amongst the best in the present
exhibition. They are the productions of a very young artist, and
give strong indications of first-rate ability; the character of
Gothic architecture is most happily preserved, and its profusion of
minute parts massed with judgment and tinctured with truth and
fidelity. This young artist should beware of contemporary
imitations. His present effort evinces an eye for nature, which
should scorn to look to any other source.”
Again in 1796, the “Companion to the Exhibition,” with regard to his
first sea-piece contains this paradoxical sentence, attempting to
express his peculiar power of giving a distinct impression of
ill-defined objects, which was apparently evident even in this early
work.
“Colouring natural, figures masterly, not too distinct--obscure
perception of the objects distinctly seen--through the obscurity of
the night--partially illumined.”
Again in 1797, we have this testimony as to the extraordinary (for that
time) character of his work, from an entry in the diary of Thomas
Greene, of Ipswich, about the _Fishermen_ of 1797.
“June 2, 1797. Visited the Royal Academy Exhibition. Particularly
struck with a sea-view by Turner; fishing vessels coming in, with a
heavy swell, in apprehension of tempest gathering in the distance,
and casting, as it advances, a night of shade, while a parting glow
is spread with fine effect upon the shore. The whole composition
bold in design and masterly in execution. I am entirely
unacquainted with the artist; but if he proceeds as he has begun,
he cannot fail to become the first in his department.”
Here, then, before Turner’s visit to Yorkshire, we have evidence that
not only was the superiority of his work apparent, but that one or two
of the special qualities which were to mark it in the future were
already perceived, and publicly praised.
After looking carefully at all the ascertainable facts of Turner’s
youth, we can only come to the conclusion that it was not the fault of
nature or mankind that he grew into a solitary and disappointed man.
Secretiveness on his own part and want of trust in his fellow-creatures
seem to have been bred in him, and to have resisted all the many proofs
which the friends of his youth, and we may say of his life, afforded,
that there were kind and unselfish persons in the world whom he could
trust, and who would trust him. There is no proof that he ever had
confidential relations with any human being, not even Girtin. That he
should have willingly cut himself adrift from human fellowship we are
loath to believe, in spite of the many facts which seem to support it.
It seems more natural, and on the whole (sad as even this is) more
pleasant, to believe that he met with a severe blow to his confidence;
that, though naturally suspicious, the many kindnesses he received were
not without a gracious effect, but that his budding trust was killed by
a sudden unexpected frost. For these reasons we are inclined to believe
in the story of his early love; although it, as told by Mr. Thornbury,
is not without inconsistencies.
Turner is said to have plighted vows with the sister of his school
friend at Margate; he left on a tour, giving her his portrait, the
letters between them were intercepted, and after waiting two years she
accepted another. When he reappeared she was on the eve of her marriage,
and thinking her honour involved, refused to return to her old love.
Such in short is the story which we wish to believe, and as it came to
Mr. Thornbury from one who heard it from relatives of the lady, to whom
she told it, there is probably some truth in it. It is, however, almost
impossible to believe that Turner, whose tours never extended to two
years, and whose power of locomotion was extraordinary, should allow
that time to elapse without going to see one whom he really loved. If
he did not get any letters he would have been desperate; if he did get
letters they would have shown him that she had not received his, which
would have made him, if possible, more desperate still. As the name of
the lady is not given, it is next to impossible to find out the truth.
Our faith, however, as a balance of probability, still remains that
Turner was jilted, and that the effect of it was to confirm for ever his
want of confidence in his fellow-creatures.
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