_J. M. W. Turner, R.A._ (British: 1775-1851).
From the technical point of view this is not one of Turner's best
pictures. It was exhibited in 1815, and belongs therefore to his first
period, when he had still not completely exorcised "the brown demon."
The picture, says Ruskin, "is quite unworthy of Turner as a colourist,"
"his eye for colour unaccountably fails him,"[147] and "the foreground
is heavy and evidently paint, if we compare it with genuine passages of
Claude's sunshine" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii.
§ 45, sec. ii. ch. i. § 13, ch. ii. § 18).
But there is a noble idea in the picture. Dido, Queen of Carthage,
surrounded by her people, and with plans and papers about her, is
superintending the building of the city which was to become the great
maritime power of the ancient world. "The principal object in the
foreground (on the left) is a group of children sailing toy boats.
The exquisite choice of this incident, as expressive of the ruling
passion which was to be the source of future greatness, in preference
to the tumult of busy stone-masons or arming soldiers, is quite as
appreciable when it is told as when it is seen,--it has nothing to do
with the technicalities of painting; a scratch of the pen would have
conveyed the idea and spoken to the intellect as much as the elaborate
realisations of colour. Such a thought as this is something far above
all art; it is epic poetry of the highest order" (_Modern Painters_,
vol. i. pt. i. sec. i. ch. vii. § 2).