‘SIMPLE NATURE’--1808-1813
The works of this period an important yet generally neglected
aspect of Turner’s art--Turner’s classification of ‘Pastoral’ as
opposed to ‘Elegant Pastoral’--The Arcadian idyll of the
mid-eighteenth century--The first ‘Pastoral’ subjects in
‘Liber’--‘Windmill and Lock’--The capture of the Danish Fleet in
1807--Turner’s visit to Portsmouth--His return journey--‘Hedging
and Ditching’--An attempt to define the mood of pictures like ‘The
Frosty Morning,’ ‘Windsor,’ etc.--Distinction between mood and
character.
The phase of Turner’s work which we are now to consider seems to me one
to which the critics have hardly done justice. The supreme beauty of two
of the pictures of this group has certainly been recognised--I allude to
the ‘Trout Stream’ and Lady Wantage’s ‘Walton Bridges,’ but these works
have been treated mainly on their individual merits, instead of in their
connection with a clearly-marked and most significant aspect of the
artist’s genius. Chronologically, this period ranges from about the year
1808 to 1813, and it includes, in addition to the two works just
mentioned, the ‘Windsor,’ ‘Abingdon,’ ‘Kingston Bank,’ ‘Frosty Morning,’
‘Union of the Thames and Isis’ and ‘Sandbank with Gipsies,’ all in the
National Gallery, as well as Sir Frederick Cook’s ‘Windmill and Lock’
and Mr. Orrock’s ‘Walton Bridges.’ These works all strike me as
characterised by a certain mood or standpoint which possesses the
profoundest significance for modern art,--a mood, moreover, which has
not yet, to my knowledge, been satisfactorily analysed, and which Turner
could never afterwards recall in all its essential beauty, though he
frequently made the attempt.
I must confess that in spite of all my efforts I am quite unable to find
a term that will adequately characterise this phase of Turner’s art.
Turner’s own classification of such subjects as those mentioned above is
‘Pastoral,’ as distinguished from the ‘Elegant Pastoral.’ But this
description is inadequate, because it seems to refer simply to the
objects contained in the works, while it is exactly the mood or
emotional standpoint from which the subject-matter is treated that seems
to me all-important. The contemporary term for this kind of work, and
one which Turner sometimes used himself, was ‘Simple Nature,’ and this
description, though inadequate enough, is perhaps as good as any other
we might hit upon. It indicated, at least, an antagonism to any
artificial way of treating natural scenes, and suggested a certain
unsophisticated plainness and directness of approach, and these
qualities are certainly contained in the complex and subtle conception
we are in search of. It is, then, as a painter of ‘Simple Nature’ that
we have now to consider our subject.
In externals, this phase of Turner’s art is occupied with scenes of
ordinary rural life; it deals with the country as the home and
working-place of the peasantry. This gives us the distinction between
the ‘Pastoral’ and the ‘Elegant Pastoral’ subjects in the ‘Liber,’ the
elegant pastorals dealing with the country as the imaginative home and
background of the stock figures of conventionally imaginative art. The
elegant pastoral subjects are generally peopled with nymphs, classical
shepherds and shepherdesses, goddesses and peacocks, while the pastoral
subjects which are not elegant are peopled with real labouring men and
women and unideal-looking children.
But the external subject-matter of a work of art tells us very little by
itself. The important point is the universal which binds these objects
together or organises them into an individual conception. We must think
of our group of pictures as falling within the larger class of strictly
pastoral subjects, but characterised by a special method of treatment
and conception. One way of approaching this special conception will be
to mark off a few of the pastoral subjects in the ‘Liber’ which do not
fall within it. And this is all the easier because Turner’s first
pastoral subject in the ‘Liber’ is conventional and empty, and he only
gradually worked himself into a conception of the full possibilities of
the category. That is to say, he first took up this form of art in a
[Illustration: _PLATE XXV_
SKETCH FOR “HEDGING AND DITCHING”
PENCIL. ABOUT 1807]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXVI_
“HEDGING AND DITCHING”
WASH DRAWING IN SEPIA FOR “LIBER STUDIORUM.” ABOUT 1808]
casual and external way, and then gradually took possession of it and
mastered it.
The first three plates in the ‘Liber’ are classified as ‘Pastoral,’
‘Elegant Pastoral,’ and ‘Marine.’ When we compare the marine subject
(the so-called ‘Flint Castle,’ which we now know to have been a scene on
the French coast[14]) with the two pastoral subjects, we cannot but be
struck with the disparity between the two classes of subjects. The
marine subject is vigorous and veracious, the pastoral subjects unreal
and conventionally poetical. This point of view is in keeping with the
conception of the elegant pastoral, but ‘The Bridge and Cows’ (R.
2)--the pastoral subject--is as gentle and pretty as a picture in an
idyll of Gessner or Thomson. This, indeed, represents Turner’s point of
departure as a painter of rural subjects--the standpoint of the
sentimental, affected, and unconvincing Arcadian idyll of the middle of
the eighteenth century.
The ‘Straw-yard,’ the second pastoral subject in the ‘Liber,’ strikes me
as a cross between a Gainsborough and a Teniers. Gainsborough’s
influence is noticeable in the landscape, while the ungainly horses, the
awkward men and clumsy farm implements are in the spirit of Dutch
realism. These hints of the plainness and toughness of the marine
subjects suggest what Turner will do when he feels equally at home in
rural subjects, but at present we have merely two incompatible points of
view in arbitrary juxtaposition. ‘Pembury Mill,’ the third pastoral, is
rather more homogeneous in intention. It is a scene of cheerful industry
and plenty, the noise of the millstone mingling with the cooing of
pigeons, and lush leaves growing beside the water-wheel. It is a pretty
subject, while no conscious attempts have been made to prettify or blink
the actual facts of the case. The ‘Farm-Yard with the Cock’ (R. 17)
still belongs to the eighteenth-century idyll. It is a pleasing
combination of Gainsborough and Morland, or perhaps an echo of Wheatley.
In the ‘Juvenile Tricks’ (R. 22)[15] Turner’s bent towards homely
realism is clearly marked, but we do not get definitively away from the
eighteenth century till we come to the ‘Windmill and Lock’ (R. 27).[16]
Here we are in an entirely different world from that of Arcadian poetry.
We have now put away childish things, and are face to face with the big
real world in which man earns his bread with the sweat of his brow; in
which men and women labour and sin, sorrow and repent. It is indeed the
real world, the world of common perception and common experience, yet
transfigured with the solemn glow of the truest and profoundest poetry.
The engraving of the ‘Windmill and Lock’ was published in June, 1811,
but the picture and drawing were made some time before this date. In the
part of the ‘Liber’ published immediately before the one which contained
this plate, there was a plate of ‘Hind Head Hill’ (R. 25), which bears
the date of 1st January, 1811. This subject was sketched in November
1807. It is therefore probable that the two drawings were made soon
afterwards, let us say in 1808.
The period of the inception of ‘Hind Head Hill,’ then, marks the
commencement of the era of Turner’s deeper and more solemn conception of
the poetry of rural life. This subject itself, though classified in the
‘Liber’ as ‘mountainous,’ belongs to all intents and purposes to the
phase of art which we are now studying. The bare hills dotted with
sheep, with the murderer’s corpse creaking upon the distant gibbet, are
quite in harmony with the mood of Wordsworth’s _Lyrical Ballads_. In the
same sketch-book are also the first ideas of no less than three other
‘Liber’ subjects, all conceived in the same mood of spiritual
exaltation, and all sketched during the same journey from Portsmouth to
London.
The events connected with this journey were of a nature calculated to
throw Turner’s mind out of its ordinary habits and thoughts, to carry
him ‘out of himself,’ and to prepare him for seeing the familiar scenes
of everyday life in a fresh light. These events have therefore a special
interest for us in this connection.
In May 1807 the Prince Regent of Portugal warned the Prince of Wales
that Napoleon was on the point of invading England with the Portuguese
and Danish fleets, and that the Emperor of Russia had bound himself by
secret articles in the Treaty of Tilsit to support him in this measure.
The ministry were informed of the plot, and Canning lost no time in
dealing with the situation. An envoy was sent to the Crown Prince of
Denmark at Kiel, with the demand that the Danish navy should be
delivered over to England, to be taken care of in British ports, and
restored at the end of the war. The demand was, of course, indignantly
refused. But the situation was so serious that the ministry felt
compelled to order the seizing of the Danish fleet, if it was not lent
quietly. Denmark held the keys of the Baltic. Napoleon’s troops were
ready to overrun it at a moment’s notice, and seize the fleet and all
the naval stores, all that he wanted, in fact, for his attack on
England. In securing the Danish fleet, the English then were simply
taking it from Napoleon, and were merely acting for the purpose of
self-preservation. By the 1st of September the French had occupied
Stralsund. Copenhagen was immediately bombarded, and on the 8th the
British entered the city, and the navy and arsenal were surrendered.
How this blow affected Napoleon is shown from a passage in Fouché’s
_Memoirs_, published in 1824. ‘About that time it was,’ says Fouché,
‘that we learned the success of the attack upon Copenhagen by the
English, which was the first derangement of the secret stipulations of
Tilsit, by virtue of which the Danish fleet was to be placed at the
disposal of France. Since the death of Paul I., I never saw Napoleon
give himself up to such violent transports of passion. That which
astounded him most in that vigorous enterprise was the promptitude with
which the English ministry took their resolution.’ (Quoted in Miss
Martineau’s _History of England_, 1800-1815, p. 283). At the time the
mind of the public was profoundly stirred by this event. But the victors
had almost brought the Danish ships within sight of England before the
news of the frustration of Napoleon’s plans was made public. Turner must
have been as excited as any one, for he set off immediately to
Portsmouth, to see the victors sail into the harbour with their prizes
and to celebrate the occasion in his own way.
When Turner left London his sketch-books as a rule bear witness of the
fact. In the ‘Spithead’ sketch-book there is no record of the journey
down from London. The first thirty pages are taken up with sketches of
the movements of vessels in Portsmouth harbour, on one of them being a
sketch of a boat’s crew recovering an anchor. In the following May,
Turner included in his one-man show at his studio in Queen Anne Street
West, an unfinished picture ‘of the Danish ships which were seized at
Copenhagen, entering Portsmouth Harbour’ (_Review of Publications of
Art_, No. 2, June 1, 1808, p. 167). In the foreground a ‘packet with
soldiers on board’ is mentioned, and ‘two boats toward the left hand
corner of the picture, one of which is heaving or letting go an anchor.’
The whole description, and these details in particular, prove beyond a
doubt that this was the picture which, when finished, was exhibited in
the following year (1809), at the Royal Academy, under the title of
‘Spithead: Boat’s Crew recovering an Anchor,’ and which hangs now in the
National Gallery under this name. The change of title was most probably
due to prudential considerations, as, after the first revulsion of
popular feeling, the ministry had to endure considerable obloquy on
account of this action, Napoleon’s intention of invading the country as
well as the existence of the secret articles of the Treaty of Tilsit
being stoutly denied, and the government being pledged not to reveal the
source of the information on which they had acted.
Our immediate interest in this event is with the effect produced on
Turner’s mind by the scenes which he had witnessed in and around
Portsmouth. The sight of the united English and Danish fleets was one
calculated to stir Turner’s imagination profoundly. The artist’s
sensitive nature must also have been deeply affected by contact with the
excited and jubilant populace, and with the sailors and fighting men
upon whose individual exertions the safety of the country depended.
Such moments of national excitement tend inevitably to dwarf the petty
and merely particular interests and prejudices of the individual. The
substantive interests of the community, the universal forces that move
men and hold them together, then present themselves in all their stark
reality and overwhelming importance to every heart and mind. In such a
mood, with a mind humbled and humanised, Turner set out to return to
London.
As we turn over the leaves of the ‘Spithead’ sketch-book we can see
clearly that the sights of the common round of rural life which greeted
the artist after he had left Portsmouth behind, had gained a new
interest and significance for him, by contrast with the stirring scenes
he had just witnessed. He is no sooner clear
[Illustration: _PLATE XXVII_
MILL ON THE GRAND JUNCTION CANAL, NEAR HANWELL
PENCIL. ABOUT 1809
“WINDMILL AND LOCK”
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN “LIBER STUDIORUM,” 1 JUNE, 1811]
of the town than the groups of trees and the peaceful stretch of fields
make their tranquillising influence felt. Several pages of sketches
remind me forcibly of the scenery of ‘The Frosty Morning.’ Then we find
groups of farm hands resting from their labour, some carts and horses,
ploughing scenes, a study of horses and pigs, and then the hurried
scribble reproduced in Plate XXV., the germ from which the beautiful
‘Hedging and Ditching’ design in the ‘Liber’ was developed. Then come
several Hind Head sketches, and before the hill is out of sight, comes
the original sketch of another ‘Liber’ subject, the solemn and tender
‘Water Mill’ (R. 37). After this we stop to watch the blacksmith at
work, and peep into some cottages, barns, etc. To eke out his hasty
hieroglyphs Turner frequently adds a few explanatory words. On the
margin of one sketch we read ‘Woman frying. Boy looking. Children at
Tub, a girl beating the barrel, etc.’; and on another ‘W.’ (short for
woman) ‘cutting Turnips. Interior of a Barn. Cows eating at the
Entrance, etc.’ And before we get quite to the end of the book come four
sketches of St. Catherine’s Hill, near Guildford, one of which went to
the making of another ‘Liber’ subject (R. 33).
The two sketches here reproduced, of the ‘Windmill and Lock’ and
‘Hedging and Ditching’ subjects (Plates XXVII. and XXV.), illustrate
admirably Turner’s attitude towards nature at this period. Such sketches
are nothing more nor less than memoranda for the artist’s own use. Taken
by themselves they are all but meaningless. Even to the artist himself
their significance, as memoranda of real scenes, must have been of the
slightest. The focus or real nucleus of their meaning is rather the
subjective feelings which the scenes and their whole context evoked in
the artist, than the particular objects or scenes themselves. This
sentiment, the total emotional impression, is, of course, not expressed
in the sketches themselves, though now that the completed designs have
told us what this is we can hardly help reading some of it into the
sketches. But to the artist himself these sketches were useful as
preliminary statements, as tentative objectifications of his meaning.
The work of ‘carrying out’ these sketches (or ‘working them out’) was
simply the process of the further specification of this meaning. And to
describe this work as an attempt to realise or reproduce the actual
scenes in nature which Turner had sketched, is only in a very limited
sense correct. The point of interest is the complex of subjective
feeling aroused on a particular occasion by a chance conjunction of
objects and circumstances, and in the final design the artist’s aim is
to find a particular conjunction of pictorial signs which shall
permanently objectify this emotional complex. Hence the actual objects
and the particular form of their conjunction in the real scene lose all
the importance which they possess as real objects, and become degraded,
or at least subordinated, to a purpose which falls entirely outside
their own existence. They are now nothing but pawns or counters in the
artist’s game of pictorial expression, and as such the artist has
absolute power over them, altering them, and annihilating them, as best
suits his purpose. The artist is also entirely within his rights when he
introduces fresh elements from other and different scenes to enforce and
make clear his meaning. That Turner used these privileges to the utmost
in the case of both these subjects is evident when we compare the
sketches with the finished designs. These points seem to me worth
insisting upon, because the real nature of artistic idealisation is so
little understood and so generally misrepresented, and the opportunities
of studying it genetically are of rare occurrence.
But the very fact that during the period of which we are now treating,
the stress in Turner’s work is nearly always upon the subjective
sentiment, and that the objective scenes and objects are relegated to a
position of subordination detracts very largely from the immediate
interest in the sketches from nature which Turner made during this time.
Taken by themselves these sketches are in the highest degree vague and
incomplete. They are valuable to us mainly for the purposes of
comparison with the completed designs, and as illustrations of Turner’s
methods of work. And for these purposes I think the two examples we have
just studied are sufficient. I have not, therefore, deemed it advisable
to illustrate this chapter with any other sketches of the same class.
The three further illustrations I have chosen are of a different
character. When Turner was called upon to treat subjects of a definite
topographical character he was necessarily
[Illustration: _PLATE XXVIII_
WHALLEY BRIDGE AND VILLAGE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1808]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXIX_
WHALLEY BRIDGE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1808]
restricted in the liberties he could take. In such cases his field of
selection was confined within the possible points of view from which his
subject could be regarded. In the two drawings of Whalley Bridge here
reproduced (Plates XXVIII. and XXIX.) we see him searching for that
aspect of the place which shall fit in or harmonise with the mood which
was predominant in his own mind at this time. It is only from the point
of view of such a subjective emotional attitude that the first drawing
(Plate XXVIII.) could have been rejected in favour of the second (Plate
XXIX.). As a representation of the actual place, the first drawing is
much more adequate than the second. But it is evidently just this
topographical and objective adequacy which constituted the defect of
this fine drawing from Turner’s point of view. In the other drawing
there is far less to occupy the attention. Here the interest is
concentrated on a few simple forms. The mind is, therefore, thrown back
on itself, and forced as it were to call up its own resources to amplify
and fill out the painter’s forms. And this is the mood of poetic
contemplation or meditation expressed in the beautiful picture of this
subject which Turner exhibited in 1811, and which is now in Lady
Wantage’s collection.
The third drawing to which I referred is the study for the picture of
‘London from Greenwich Park,’ now in the National Gallery. There is no
trace of the emotional setting of the finished picture in the sketch
(Plate XXX.). It is merely a record of the facts. But the artist has
already grasped in his own mind the significance of these facts with
such clearness that the bare facts even in this memorandum have become
eloquent.
The full scope of Turner’s work at this period, then, can only be
gathered from his completed works. And as I have said, I do not think
this aspect of Turner’s genius has so far had full justice done to it. I
will therefore make an attempt to indicate in a few words what I regard
as the distinctive qualities of this group of works; and to simplify my
task I will centre my remarks round two pictures, both in the National
Gallery, and therefore easily accessible to every one, viz., ‘A Frosty
Morning’ and the ‘Windsor,’ which seem to me to typify the qualities and
merits of the whole group.
After what has gone before I do not think I need say much to combat the
opinion that these pictures are simply reproductions of actual scenes.
Their relation to the actual sights of nature is exactly the same as
that between the two ‘Liber’ designs we have just examined and the
sketches upon which they were based. In the designs, and in these
pictures, there is indeed a wealth of subtle and penetrating observation
of natural forms, habits, and colours, but this material is never there
simply for its own sake. These colours and forms of natural beauty are
the elements of which the artist’s language is compounded, the pictorial
equivalent of the names of natural objects in the verse of a great poet.
To fix one’s attention on these factors in the whole complex structure
of such works as ‘A Frosty Morning’ and ‘Windsor,’ and to say that these
fragments of meaning are all that they contain, seems to me as
inexcusable as it would be to isolate the nouns in a poem, and to insist
that we must ignore that play of thought and feeling around this common
basis in which the real value of even the simplest poem consists. We
can, of course, always stop short in our understanding of any statement,
and the temptation is very great to stop short at some superficial
characteristic in such a highly complex individuality as a work of
modern art. In the case of the two pictures with which we are now
concerned, these characteristics happen to be not only superficial and
obvious, but they happen also to be easily nameable, whereas the
complete ideational and emotional structure of the whole work is very
far from being easily named or described. Yet it is just this particular
and special emotional and ideational whole which constitutes the very
being of the work of art, and which alone gives it value. It is because
modern art criticism has seized with such avidity upon the primitive
sense-factor in pictorial language, and has insisted with so much energy
that the art cannot or ought not to attempt any kind of ideational
articulation, that it has failed to do justice to this phase of Turner’s
art.
To call these pictures, then, imitations or reproductions of natural
scenes is not altogether inaccurate. They are this, but at the same time
they are so much more. The forms and colours of nature are there, but
they are superseded and sublimated in exactly the way that the
particular events described in Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal are
superseded and sublimated in the poems
[Illustration: _PLATE XXX_
LONDON, FROM GREENWICH PARK
PENCIL. ABOUT 1809]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXI_
PETWORTH HOUSE, FROM THE LAKE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1809]
which her brother founded upon these events. ‘The array of act and
circumstance, and visible form’ becomes exactly what the poet’s or
artist’s ‘passion makes them.’[17] In other words, the matter of sense
intuition is taken up into the world of intelligence. This matter, which
in the first place was something immediate or given, now loses its
natural and positive attributes, loses its authority as fact, but gains
a wider scope and ampler authority by being taken up into the world of
mind and used as a sign. And here again an opportunity presents itself
for shallow and wrongheaded criticism. Those who are under the dominion
of the theory that art should only represent sensuous facts in their
immediacy resent the transformation which the data of sense must undergo
before they can take their place in the organised world of meaning. To
them, therefore, such pictures as these are defective; the colouring is
not sufficiently natural, not bright enough, nor are the contrasts
sufficiently strong. These pictures are not painted in ‘the key of
nature.’ In a word, they are old-fashioned, because the artist has done
something more in them than the theories of impressionism can
consecrate.
We have then to avoid two mistaken ways of regarding these works. We
must not look upon them (1) as attempts to reproduce the actual
brilliancy and colour of natural lighting, nor must we treat them (2) as
prosaic and literal imitations of actuality devoid of all the higher
poetry of art. That these works are open to--nay, have almost invariably
fallen victims to--these two opposite forms of depreciation, is a
striking proof of the success with which they have avoided those fatal
extremes in which so much of the art of the present lies engulfed.
But it is not enough simply to avoid the dangers which modern theorising
throws in the way of the interpreter. A really concrete and fruitful
criticism will not stop short till it has made the attempt to grasp,
however imperfectly, by thought the full and special significance of
each work. And again, when we have made it clear to ourselves that
‘the array
Of act and circumstance, and visible form,
Is mainly to the pleasure of the mind
What passion makes them,’--
when we have agreed that Turner has used the sights of nature as a means
to express the emotions or the mood which they aroused in him,--when all
this is granted we are still merely at the threshold of the works
themselves. A mood, an emotion, a state of feeling, these are all vague
and general terms. There is nothing necessarily admirable or beautiful
in a mood or a state of feeling, Feeling and emotion may be pleasant or
unpleasant, harmonious or jarring, depressing or invigorating. And if
the main value and beauty of these pictures resides in the particular
and definite mood or state of feeling which they induce, this mood must
have distinguishable contents, and it is the business of art criticism
to do what it can to define these contents.
In Wordsworth’s ‘Lines, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey,’ he
contrasts his present state of feeling towards nature with that of his
youthful days. In the days of his thoughtless youth, he says, the forms
and colours of the landscape had haunted him like a passion. He had
loved them for themselves. But now, he says, Nature is no longer ‘all in
all’ to him. It has now gained a remoter charm supplied by thought, an
interest ‘unborrowed from the eye.’ He now hears
‘the still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.’
Before the sights of nature he now feels the presence of elevated
thoughts, a sense of something ‘more deeply interfused,’ a sense of
something discernible only with the inner eye; a sense of the Divine
that animates both nature and humanity, both what the eye sees and what
the heart and mind create,--the spirit ‘whose dwelling is the light of
setting suns,’ the spirit
‘that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.’
It is in this mood, it seems to me, that Turner contemplates the scenes
and incidents of rural life which he represents in these pictures, and
it is this mood which these pictures embody. The ‘Frosty Morning’ is
therefore very much more than a representation of a country road, with a
little hedging and ditching going on
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXII_
PETWORTH HOUSE, FROM THE PARK
PENCIL. ABOUT 1809]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIII_
COCKERMOUTH CASTLE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1809]
on one side, an ordinary stage-coach in the distance, and a little
sparkling hoar-frost on the ground. The ‘Windsor’ is also much more than
a representation of some drovers with their cattle in one of the meadows
near Windsor Castle on a summer (or spring) morning. Not only are these
bare facts represented, but the mood in which we must contemplate them
is also stated. We have not read these pictures aright, we have not
really brought them into contact with our own life, until we contemplate
the bare external facts in the light of the mood which the artist has
prescribed for them. It is, I know, commonly taken for granted that
pictorial art is impotent to achieve this kind of determination; that
the artist is at the mercy of any chance mood which the spectator may
bring to his work; that the artist can only represent objects and
spatial relations, and that he can lay no constraint on the spectator to
think and feel about these objects in any particular way. And no doubt a
large proportion of modern art productions actually do no more than
this, and attempt no more. But these are merely the failures of modern
art. All the great works of modern art--such as those of Rembrandt and
Jean François Millet--not only represent objects and scenes, but lay
down the related thoughts and feelings which they are to inspire. Yet it
is of course always possible for the spectator to stop short at the bare
recognition of the pictorial signs, in the same way that it is possible
for the reader of a poem to recognise the meaning of a few prominent
words and ignore the context in which they occur.[18] But the point
which I cannot hesitate to press home--because I see clearly that the
whole question of the value and place of art in modern civilisation
depends upon it--is this, that the work of art is nothing less than its
full significance. It is only in so far as we master or appropriate this
wealth of inner significance that the work of art can be said to exist
for us; we must not only read the words of a poem, but we must
understand them, and in the same way we must not merely look at such
pictures as these of Turner, but we must translate the artist’s signs
into their appropriate ideas and feelings.
It is only when we succeed in getting clear of that shallow materialism
which clings to the letter, while it ignores the power behind it, that
the full scope of pictorial art can dawn upon us. But when we once
realise that the mood expressed in such pictures as the ‘Frosty Morning’
and ‘Windsor’ is an essential part--nay, is the very essence of the
works themselves, we shall begin to understand how nearly related great
art is to religion; how insensibly the one passes into the other. In
such pictures as these--and I do not hesitate to rank them among the
truest and highest that Christianity has yet produced--in pictures like
these the ordinary scenes of rural life and labour are impressed with
the quietness and beauty of the best part of the artist’s own nature,
and fed with the lofty thoughts that only poets dare utter in words.
Such pictures are indeed in the old monkish sense an act of worship. The
mood they call up and sustain is a blessed mood in which the mystery and
the weight of this unintelligible world are lightened. Such pictures as
these are literally an imitation or reminiscence of the great moments of
life, and possess life and food for future years.
* * * * *
I will conclude this chapter by answering some objections that I believe
are likely to be made to the interpretation I have offered of this group
of Turner’s works. These objections would be based on arguments drawn
from the commonly received idea of Turner’s personal character. The mood
expressed in this group of pictures is, it might be urged, the habitual
mood or way of feeling of the perfectly good man; it is only in the
perfectly good and religious life that we find this reconciliation of
inner Freedom and external Necessity, and Turner, we have reason to
suppose, was not a perfectly good and religious man. This objection I
admit has force, but I think it is fully met by pointing to the
distinction between a mood, a passing state of feeling, and a permanent
habit of mind or settled character. It may not have been Turner’s
happiness to mature this mood of reconciliation into the master light of
his whole life, yet the mood itself is one that few, if any, human
hearts are entirely unfamiliar with. It is a mood that sits about us all
in our earlier days. The feelings of love and reverence may well be one
of the primary facts of human nature.
It may be that Turner, if we examine the whole of his life,
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIV_
LANDSCAPE NEAR PLYMOUTH
PENCIL. ABOUT 1812]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXV_
DESIGN FOR SANDYCOMBE LODGE AND GROUNDS
PEN AND INK. ABOUT 1811
PLAN OF GARDEN: SANDYCOMBE LODGE
PEN AND INK. ABOUT 1812]
cannot be regarded as a perfectly good and religious man, yet at this
particular period of his life his works prove beyond all shadow of doubt
that he was capable of feeling towards nature and man in the way that is
habitual with the perfectly good man. As an artist these works of his
show that at this time he was able to raise himself in the point of
feeling to the level of a good and complete man. But this is a very
different thing from the demand that the artist shall himself be at that
time and for the remainder of his life the kind of man whose momentary
state of feeling he represents. The actual behaviour of the artist as an
individual has only an indirect bearing on the question of the moral
worth of his work. What is important is, that the content of the moral
idea shall be present in the state of feeling expressed in his work. He
may not have laid firm hold of the good will; he may not have made it a
permanent part of his own life. All that is necessary for his immediate
purpose is that he shall have grasped it in idea,--a much easier task,
and one that constant reading of the poets is quite sufficient to
accomplish.
That Turner was always a great lover and reader of poetry is already
well known. After he broke away from strictly topographical work, he
seldom exhibited a picture without the accompaniment of some poetical
quotation. To judge from these quotations Thomson’s _Seasons_ was a
favourite book with him, and we also find Milton, Ossian, Akenside, Dr.
Langhorne, and Mallet laid under contribution. But the clearest evidence
of the place poetry occupied in his mind at this time is afforded by his
sketch-books, which contain on the whole even more poetry than drawings.
On almost every sheet we find transcriptions or reminiscences of verses
that had caught his fancy, or attempts of his own to express himself in
metre. These attempts, it must be confessed, are seldom far from
failure, for the artist’s command of words was not instinctive, like his
power over pictorial signs. Yet the quantity of these attempts and the
patient persistence with which he ground out indifferent verse, prove
that the art of poetry was one that held at least as high a place in his
affections as his own art.
As Turner’s verses were on the whole so unsuccessful, I will only offer
the reader one example, and that a short one. It was written in one of
his sketch-books about the year 1809. He had gone to Purley on the
Thames, near Pangbourne, to indulge himself with a few days’
fishing--his sole form of recreation. But the rain had kept him in all
day, and to while away the time he betook himself to poetry. He begins
by apostrophising the fair leaves of his sketch-book which ‘Delusion’
tempts him to violate with his pen. The rain seems to have continued,
for on the next page he begins again:--
‘Alas, another day is gone
As useless as it was begun.
The crimson’d streak of early morn
Checks the sweet lark that o’er the corn
Fluttered her wings at twilight grey;
Expectant eyed the moving ray,
Twitter’d her song in saddening mood
To {calm} her clamorous callow brood
{hush}
In hope of less inclement skies.
The hapless fisher----
No fly can tempt the finny brood
When the wash’d bank gives up its mud.
Beneath some tree he takes his stand
---- in doubtful shelter
* * * * *
Anxious to fancy every streak a ray.
Not so the cotter’s children at the door,
Rich in content, tho’ Nature made them poor,
Standing on threshold emulous to catch
The pendant drop from off the dripping latch.
The daring boy--thus Briton’s early race
{To feel the heaviest drop upon his face}
{Foremost, must feel the drops upon his face,}
Or heedless of the storm or his abode
Launches his paper boat across the road--
Where the deep gullies which his father’s cart
Made in their progress to the mart
Full to the brim, deluged by the rain,
They prove to him a channel to the main.
Guiding his vessel down the stream
Even the pangs of hunger vanish like a dream.’
As poetry these lines have little to recommend them, but they give us a
glimpse of the man himself, and they prove that he had something of the
poet’s comprehensive sympathies; that he was ‘a man pleased with his own
passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the
spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar
volitions and passions in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually
impelled to create them where he does not find them.’