THE TOPOGRAPHICAL DRAUGHTSMAN--1793-1796
Welsh tour of 1793--‘St. Anselm’s Chapel’--Turner’s topographical
rivals--Midland tour of 1794--Topographical and antiquarian
draughtsmanship--Its main interest is not embodied in the work--The
marvellous _petit-maítre_--The ‘Cottage Interior’--Light and shade
as a means of expression--The sketch-books of 1795 and their
contents--‘High Force of Tees’ or ‘Fall of Melincourt’?
Among the five drawings by which Turner was represented in the
exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1794, one was a view of the Devil’s
Bridge, Cardiganshire. This was doubtless one of the first results of
the sketching tour in Wales made in 1793. We can readily believe that
Turner’s imagination was powerfully impressed by the wild and gloomy
scenery of the country and its romantic ruins, but his efforts to embody
his impressions were not at first very successful. For the moment his
powers as an architectural draughtsman were more in evidence than his
powers of expressing grand and gloomy ideas. The romantic turn of his
mind had to be more fully developed before it could command public
support, and for the time being this phase of his art seemed swamped in
the flood of topographical employment which the immediate success of his
less ambitious drawings in the 1794 exhibition brought him.
In a contemporary press notice, preserved among the Anderdon collection
of catalogues in the Print Room of the British Museum, Turner’s drawings
of ‘Christchurch Gate, Canterbury,’ and the ‘Porch of Great Malvern
Abbey, Worcestershire,’ are said to be ‘amongst the best in the present
exhibition. They are the productions,’ the writer continues, ‘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.’
The first of the drawings which called forth this praise is now in the
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Ruskin Bequest), the other is probably
the ‘Malvern’ now in the Manchester Whitworth Institute (No. 73). The
critic’s remark about the danger of ‘contemporary imitations,’ which I
take to mean the danger of Turner imitating the works of contemporary
artists, may probably account for his neglect to mention another drawing
exhibited at the same time, which strikes the present-day observer as a
more accomplished and remarkable effort than either the ‘Malvern’ or
‘Christchurch Gate.’ I allude to the drawing described in the R.A.
catalogue as ‘St. Anselm’s Chapel with part of Thomas à Becket’s
Crown--Canterbury Cathedral,’ which I take to be the drawing now in the
Manchester Whitworth Institute (No. 272). This is a work of infinite
patience and wary skill, a remarkable combination of far-sighted
knowledge of ultimate effects united with the utmost delicacy, firmness,
and patience of execution. These qualities do not seem to me so clearly
marked either in the Christchurch Gate or Malvern drawings, but very
likely to the contemporary observer, especially to one avid of
originality, the drawing of ‘St. Anselm’s Chapel’ may have appeared more
ordinary or conventional.[6]
The success of these drawings established Turner’s position as one of
the foremost architectural and topographical draughtsmen of the day. But
we must not make the mistake of supposing that Turner’s success was the
result of an absence of serious rivals. De Loutherbourg, Dayes, Hearne,
Wheatley, Sandby and Rooker were by no means unworthy rivals. Nor must
we jump to the conclusion that Turner, at the age of nineteen, had
outstripped such competitors in any but the purely topographical
branches of their profession. The best of the older men were artists of
wide sympathies and ambitions, who could not rest satisfied within the
narrow limits of purely topographical work. They looked upon such work
as a kind of necessary drudgery, useful from a pecuniary point of view,
but not calling for the whole-hearted exercise of all their talents and
enthusiasm. Dayes, to whom Girtin was apprenticed, and from whom Turner
had learnt a great deal, seems to have detested topographical work, in
spite of the skill and delicate charm with which he treated it. All his
enthusiasm was reserved for figure subjects in the grand manner, for
which there was no market. In this 1794 exhibition he had four
illustrations for Dr. Aitken’s _Environs of Manchester_, which have the
perfunctory look of work done against the grain, and a ‘View of Keswick
Lake,’ which may possibly have been the slight and charming drawing of
this subject now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, too small and
fragile a thing to attract much attention. The versatile and brilliant
De Loutherbourg did not exhibit this year; Hearne also was absent.
Rooker had five of his delicately-accomplished but rather prosaic
drawings. Paul Sandby had two views of Rochester Castle, and ‘A View of
Vintners at Boxley, Kent, with Mr. Whatman’s Turkey Paper Mills,’ where
the excellent paper upon which almost all Turner’s drawings were made
was manufactured. Wheatley sent no landscapes this year, and Girtin,
Turner’s senior and rival, had a single exhibit, a ‘View of Ely
Minster,’ the first drawing he had had accepted by the Academy. The
result of this state of things was that Turner’s architectural and
topographical work was pitted against only the perfunctory or tired work
of his older rivals. For the moment all his indefatigable patience and
amazing energy and skill were concentrated on this one point of attack,
with immediately decisive results.
Turner had now achieved an honourable footing in his profession. Dr.
Monro bought his ‘Anselm’s Chapel’ and gave him commissions for many
other drawings. Booksellers found his name an attraction. With
publishers ready to buy his drawings, though at prices that would merely
excite the derision of a modern artist, and with patrons like Dr. Monro
ready to encourage his more ambitious efforts, his opportunities of
travel were greatly enlarged.
Turner spent the summer of 1794 making a tour of the midland counties of
England. Northampton, Birmingham, Lichfield, Shrewsbury, Wrexham,
Chester, Matlock, Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, Peterborough, Cambridge
and Waltham were among the places he visited. The views published in the
_Copper Plate Magazine_ during the next three years of Nottingham,
Bridgenorth, Matlock, Birmingham, Chester, Peterborough and Flint were
made from sketches taken on this journey, as were also those of King’s
College, Cambridge, Flint, and Northampton, published in the _Pocket
Magazine_ during 1795. But these were the least important results of the
tour. The work into which Turner threw all his enthusiasm and ambition
was sent to the exhibition of the Royal Academy of 1795, which contained
no less than eight of his important and highly-finished drawings. The
best known of these are the ‘Peterborough Cathedral; West Entrance,’
which was included in Messrs. Agnews’ 1908 annual exhibition of
water-colours--it had suffered somewhat from the light and had been
restored, but was still an impressive work; the ‘Welsh Bridge,
Shrewsbury,’ now No. 276 in the Manchester Whitworth Institute, a
carefully wrought and exquisitely accomplished drawing; and the
‘Cathedral Church at Lincoln’ (Plate V.) now in the Print Room. This
elaborately finished drawing, I am inclined to think, played an
important part in Turner’s development. It is almost the only drawing I
know from his hand which has a papery and unconvincing general effect,
which is monotonous and insensitive in its textures, and hard and
metallic in its details. For once in a way Turner seems to have deferred
to the ideals of elaboration of the ordinary connoisseur, who likes to
see every detail in every part of a work pushed to its highest point of
finish. For these reasons the drawing must have been very generally
admired when it was first exhibited, but Turner could not have been
satisfied at all with his own work, for he promptly abandoned the style.
This is the most ‘mappy’ of all Turner’s drawings, and we know that for
the rest of his life he had the greatest horror of this quality.
When we examine the pencil drawings made from nature on this tour we
find them all severely governed by the ends they were intended to serve.
The sketches for the publishers’ work
[Illustration: _PLATE V_
LINCOLN CATHEDRAL
WATER COLOUR EXHIBITED AT ROYAL ACADEMY, 1795
(_Print Room, British Museum_)]
[Illustration: _PLATE VI_
LINCOLN CATHEDRAL, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST
PENCIL. 1794]
are generally made in a small note-book (about 4½ × 6¾ inches in size).
They are invariably in pure outline, without the slightest suggestion of
light and shade--nothing but the scaffolding of the more important
shapes upon which the final designs were to be elaborated. On such a
small scale the ease and grace of Turner’s touch are not much in
evidence. The sketches are severely business-like, and done as quickly
and with as little effort as possible. There is more effort and feeling
in the casual studies with which the leaves of this sketch-book are
interspersed. The accompanying sketch (Plate VII.) of a pony standing
ready saddled gives a good idea of the mature wisdom of Turner’s style
of sketching at this period, its determination to grasp the larger
truths of form and structure, as well as the quickness, readiness, and
versatility of his powers of perception.
The drawings for the more ambitious subjects are generally made on
larger and separate pieces of paper about 8 × 10½ inches in size. On
this scale the delicate play of the artist’s wrist becomes appreciable.
The dominant impression left by a glance through these drawings is one
of excessive orderliness and methodical neatness. There is no hurry, no
scamped or perfunctory work, still less are there any signs of
dilatoriness or even slowness. The artist’s respect for relevant fact is
equalled by his appreciation of the value of time. His calm objective
outlook, his steady, unwavering grasp of general principles enable him
at every point to economise his labours, to store up the record of the
greatest possible amount of material facts (i.e. of facts material to
his purpose) with the utmost celerity, clearness, and the least possible
expenditure of manual effort. This is particularly noticeable in the
treatment of the towers in the Lincoln Cathedral drawing (Plate VI.),
where every advantage has been taken of the repetition of forms. A
possible, though not a very satisfactory, way of doing justice to the
predominance of conceptual over purely visual elements in this work,
would be to say that the artist has here drawn with his head rather than
his eye, that he puts down not so much what he sees as what he
understands.
I am tempted to linger for a moment over the placid and self-contained
air of this phase of Turner’s work, because we shall so soon get into
an altogether different atmosphere, and because we shall understand
Turner’s after work all the better the more clearly we grasp the
character of the work we are now examining. The self-contained air to
which I allude is connected in my mind with the character and
limitations of topographical work. Now the essential character of
topographical and purely antiquarian work is that it does not aim
primarily at expressing the imaginative or emotional effects of the
objects it represents. It takes these imaginative or emotional interests
for granted, relying indeed on them for the ultimate justification of
its work; but the work, as topographical and antiquarian, aims directly
only at an adequate representation of the particular scenes or buildings
with which it is concerned. There is, as it were, a tacit division of
labour; the artist being called upon to record accurately and vividly a
certain scene or building, merely as a scene or building, while the
spectator is expected to supply the requisite mental associations and
emotional colouring. The artist draws a castle, we will say, as a mere
object of sight, while the spectator is supposed to remember that the
castle was built by such and such a king, and that certain moving events
took place in it or near it. This division of labour simplifies the work
of the topographical artist, reducing his business to a clear-cut affair
of definite visual facts. Hence the Oriental stolidity of Turner’s
topographical work, its Oriental patience, neatness, and precision. In a
drawing like the ‘Lincoln Cathedral’ Turner is as wholly immersed in the
succession of particular material facts as a Japanese or Chinese artist.
As with the Japanese and Chinese artists the material facts are not
there entirely for their own sakes; in Turner’s case they imply an
antiquarian interest, as the Eastern artists’ work implies an added
religious or poetical significance. But the point to which I desire to
draw attention is, that this added significance is not embodied in the
work itself. It is something extraneous and fortuitous, and the work
itself falls apart into something dependent. It is in fact an accessory,
a work of mere illustration, not an independent work of art.
We shall have to return to this subject in our next chapter, when we
find Turner wrenching himself free from the trammels of topography and
antiquarianism to soar into the regions of
[Illustration: _PLATE VII_
PONY AND WHEELBARROW
PENCIL. 1794]
artistic freedom. In the meantime we will turn our attention to the
topographical drawings which Turner sent to the exhibition of 1796.
Of the eleven drawings by which Turner was represented at the Royal
Academy this year, nine were apparently of a topographical character. I
have only been able to examine two of these recently--the ‘Transept and
Choir of Ely Minster,’ in the late Mr. R. F. Holt’s collection, and the
‘Llandaff Cathedral,’ in the National Gallery (Exhibited Drawings No.
795). If we may judge from the rather cold impression these two drawings
make upon us, it is probable that they owe their existence rather to the
artist’s professional diligence than to any overmastering impulse
towards artistic expression. But the work, if not particularly
enthusiastic, is distinguished by its thoroughness and workman-like
spirit. Every mechanical difficulty is fairly faced and mastered with
imperturbable coolness, patience, and dexterity. So palpably is the
artist’s attention fixed upon the executive side of his art, especially
in the ‘Llandaff Cathedral,’ that a contemporary prophet might well have
been excused if he had seen in it only the promise of the making of a
marvellous _petit-maître_, and had declared that its author could not be
possessed of a spark of native genius.
Perhaps if we could see either of the two other drawings which, to judge
from their titles, were neither topographical nor antiquarian in
subject, we might find evidence which would induce us to modify this
dominant impression of intellectual coldness and unruffled placidity. In
particular, the title ‘Fishermen at Sea’ seems to suggest possibilities
of romantic expressiveness, especially when we know that the subject was
treated by the same hand that was to give us in a few years’ time the
‘Calais Pier,’ Lord Iveagh’s ‘Fishermen on a Lee-Shore,’ and the
‘Shipwreck.’ But this drawing has not been traced, and the second
drawing, the ‘Internal (or interior) of a Cottage,’ has apparently
shared the same fate.
There is, however, a slight possibility that the latter subject may be
correctly identified with the small drawing in the National Gallery,
exhibited under the title of ‘Cottage Interior’ (406 N.G.). This drawing
has been, somewhat rashly, supposed to represent the underground
kitchen beneath the barber’s shop in Maiden Lane. There are absolutely
no grounds for such an assumption, and a moderately careful examination
of the drawing shows that it does not represent an underground kitchen
or room of any kind. It is clearly a room on the ground-floor, but the
lower part of the window has been curtained off, with the object of
getting a picturesque arrangement of light and shade, and this fact may
have lent some plausibility to the suggestion that the light was falling
through a grating above. If I am right in identifying this drawing with
the 1796 exhibit the study was made at Ely, as the catalogue informs us.
But whether this drawing was exhibited at the Academy or not, it clearly
belongs from internal evidence to the latter part of 1795 or the
beginning of 1796. It therefore offers us an interesting connecting link
in the development of Turner’s art, showing the line of study which
turned the youthful topographer into the romantic artist.
Yet there is little of the romantic spirit on the face of this drawing.
A poor interior bathed in gloom, with a narrow stream of light falling
on an old woman sitting beside a copper and surrounded by an array of
pots and pans. But it is significant, because it bears witness to the
direction of Turner’s mind to the study of light and shade as a separate
vehicle of expression. In the topographical drawings proper, light and
shade is not used for its emotional effect, but simply as a means of
representation, that is to say, to bring out the shapes and details. In
the ‘Interior’ we see Turner beginning to isolate the system of light
and shade, to study and grasp its possibilities as a separate factor of
artistic expressiveness.
But if we turn to the sketch-books containing the record of Turner’s
summer wanderings in 1795, we find no lack of evidence of the
essentially artistic cast of his mind, and of his wide sympathies with
nature. His journeys this year were mainly confined to portions of the
coast-line, to the Isle of Wight, and the south coast of Wales from
Chepstow to Pembroke Bay. It was not by any means the first time he had
seen the sea, but he was then able to study it more closely than before,
and under its wilder aspects and conditions.
The outward appearance of the two principal sketch-books used this year
bears clear indication of bright professional prospects. These handsome
calf-bound volumes, each with four brass clasps, put forward solid
claims to respect--claims which a young artist standing alone without a
backing of influential patrons would shrink from advancing. Opening the
book devoted to the Isle of Wight subjects, we find the first page
headed in ink with the words ‘Order’d Drawings,’ and underneath a record
of subjects and sizes of drawings to be made for Sir Richard Colt Hoare
and Mr. Charles Landseer, the engraver. In the South Wales book we find
the record of further commissions from these two patrons, and others
from Viscount Maiden, Dr. Mathews, Mr. Laurie, Mr. Lambert, Mr. Mitchell
and Mr. Kershaw. These indications suggest that the drawings in these
volumes were not made entirely for the artist’s own use and enjoyment.
They are certainly for use, as their neat and careful array of details
proves, but they were also destined to bear the scrutiny of possible
patrons, and excite, if possible, a desire in their breasts to see them
carried out in a more elaborate medium. This may account for a certain
smugness or primness in much of the work itself, for its faint
suggestion of youthful conceit and a priggish air of conscious
rectitude.
The sketching tour opens at Winchester, and we can follow the artist to
Salisbury and Southampton. We then find him suddenly at Newport, in the
Isle of Wight. The remainder of the book is devoted to this island. At
Newport Turner was chiefly interested in Carisbrook Castle. We can then
trace his footsteps southward to Ventnor and along the South-West coast
to the Needles; thence back to Newport, with a visit to Brading, where
he made a delightful drawing, partly finished in water-colour, of
Bembridge Mill.
The workmanship throughout is admirably deft, graceful and accomplished.
It is not, however, till the artist gets to the open sea round the
Needles that his imagination seems stirred at all. In the centre of the
drawing on page 39 stands the blunt face of the chalk cliffs; on the
left, the incoming waves play round a few broken stumps of rock. Between
the cliffs and the spectator there is a small bay in which some
fishermen’s boats ride on the rising tide. The waves play prettily with
the boats, but these are carefully tethered fore and aft, thus showing
that their owners have learnt to mistrust the gracefully advancing
waters. In the distance the cold dark volume of sea seems to justify
these suspicions. Gradually a sense of the sternness of the eternal
conflict between the sea and the dry land impresses itself on our minds.
The whole coast seems in the clutch of a ruthless and never-resting foe.
In some scenes the high cliffs seem to stand proudly and defiantly in
the water; here they are in full retreat, the havoc of the foreground
proving that the soft chalk is crumbling at the touch of its pitiless
enemy.
And now we can see the usefulness of the discipline and training of
topographical draughtsmanship. Confronted with a scene like this, which
powerfully stirs his emotions, the artist is not forced to remain dumb;
he has an organ of expression ready to his hand. The supple pencil-point
hurries its suggestive outlines over the paper. There is yet time to add
some record of the more delicate passages of modelling, and to suggest
something of the colour of the water and cliffs. The artist’s brush is
as docile as his pencil. There is no experimental blotting and
splashing; every touch is expressive, and the pressure of haste only
adds greater certainty to the swift touches. The artist has to stop
before he has tinted half his paper, but he has torn out the heart of
his subject.
Leaving the Isle of Wight, Turner made his way to South Wales, passing
through Wells. The scenery of South Wales is of a wilder description
than that of the Isle of Wight, and it must have touched his imagination
profoundly. But thanks to his ready science, his hand never falters; all
the ruined castles and abbeys, the water-mills and water-falls, the
details of the rocky coast-line, the white-crested waves and tangled
forests, are bundled with celerity into neat little outlines and stored
ready for future use. Among the subjects are the castles of Kidwelly,
Carew, Laugharne, Llanstephen and Goodrich, and they are drawn as they
had never before been drawn or will be again. One of the views of Carew
Castle will serve the artist thirty years later when he comes to treat
this subject for his ‘England and Wales’ series. But to me the most
significant drawing in
[Illustration: _PLATE VIII_
MELINCOURT FALL, VALE OF NEATH
PENCIL, PART IX WATER COLOUR, 1793]
the book is the waterfall on page 8. The whole subject is drawn in with
the pencil as usual, and then just the most important part is finished
in water-colour. This piece of water-colour work is an admirable example
of Turner’s sensitiveness to impressions, his quickness and readiness,
and the adaptability of his methods. The rocks and the crystalline
facets of the water at the top of the fall are painted in with sharp
staccato touches, while the skilful dragging of the dry brush suggests
the dissolving of the water into spray with extraordinary vivacity.
This drawing forms our eighth illustration, though no reproduction can
do justice to it. Mr. Ruskin admired the work warmly, and it formed part
of the selection he made for the Oxford Loan Collection. He named the
drawing the ‘High Force of Tees,’ but I believe this description to be
incorrect. In the sketch-book the leaf on which the drawing is made
follows immediately a drawing of the water-mill at Aberdulâs, and a note
made on the fly-leaf of the book, written by Turner for his own guidance
on the tour, mentions that the ‘Rocks and Water-fall’ near Aberdulâs
were ‘well worth attention.’ The nearest waterfall to Aberdulâs is the
cascade formed by the river Clydach, known as the Fall of Melincourt. I
have therefore ventured to substitute this title for Mr. Ruskin’s ‘High
Force of Tees.’
An artist so sensitive to the subtlety and mystery of natural scenery,
as these sketch-books show Turner to have been, and one so unusually
gifted to express these qualities, could not long be confined within the
prosaic limits of topographical and antiquarian work.