THE ‘LIBER STUDIORUM’
The object of this chapter--The first ‘Liber’ drawings were made at
W. F. Wells’s cottage at Knockholt, Kent--‘Bridge and
Cows’--Development of the so-called ‘Flint Castle’--Mrs.
Wells--View of ‘Basle’--‘Little Devil’s Bridge’ and ‘London from
Greenwich’--‘Martello Towers, Bexhill,’ and ‘Kirkstall
Crypt’--Scene at Isleworth--The etching of the ‘Raglan Castle’ and
‘Source of the Arveron’ plates--Suggestion for the better
exhibition of the ‘Liber’ drawings.
The _Liber Studiorum_ is an important aspect of Turner’s genius--so
important that it seems to deserve a chapter to itself, even in so
summary an investigation as the present. Yet from the point of view of
its subject-matter, it is evident that the ‘Liber’ does not throw into
relief any side of Turner’s art not amply illustrated in his paintings.
What light the sequence of ‘Pastoral’ subjects throws upon the gradual
development of his conception of realistic art, has already been touched
upon in the previous chapter. But there remains one point of view from
which it seems to me the ‘Liber’ possesses a special interest for our
present study. In these designs we can study the formal elements of
Turner’s art freed from the disturbing influence of colour. Each plate
is primarily an arrangement in line and light and shade, and the
requirements of what I may call melodic invention are considered before
those of mere representation; that is to say, the emphasis is always on
the subjective and constructive side of art, as opposed to its power of
reproduction of the elements immediately given in ordinary perception.
Especially important from this point of view are those subjects,
generally amongst the earlier plates, in which considerable alterations
were made during the course of execution. An examination of a few of the
cases in which there are important differences between the first
preliminary drawing and the completed engraving is certainly well within
the limits of our present inquiry; and such comparisons are worth making
for their own sake, as they bring out very clearly certain
characteristics of all pictorial art, and especially of Turner’s, which
are not easily grasped when our observations are complicated by the
presence of colour.
The first drawings executed for the work were made in October 1806, when
Turner was on a visit to Mr. Wells, at Knockholt, in Kent. One of Mr.
Wells’s daughters has told us that it was mainly on her father’s advice
that Turner decided to undertake the work. But he required ‘much and
long continued spurring’ before he could be induced to make a beginning.
‘At last,’ we are told, ‘after he had been well goaded, one morning,
half in a pet he said, “Zounds, Gaffer, there will be no peace with you
till I begin--well, give me a sheet of paper there, rule the size for
me, tell me what I shall take.” The lady adds, ‘I sat by Turner laughing
and playing whilst he made the drawings,’ ‘and before he left us the
first five subjects which form the first number were completed and
arranged for publication greatly to my dear Father’s delight.’ (The
letter is given _in extenso_ in Mr. Rawlinson’s _Liber Studiorum_, 2nd
edition, pp. xii and xiii.)
One of the subjects executed at Knockholt was almost certainly the faded
sepia drawing which hangs at present in the National Gallery, under the
title of ‘Bridge and Cows’ (No. 504, N. G.); the engraving made from it
was published (without a title) as the first ‘Pastoral’ subject in the
first part of _Liber_.
This drawing is slightly faded, but the fading does not altogether
account for its feeble and commonplace look. The design itself is
feeble, the draughtsmanship petty, and the character of the figures and
trees weak and amiable. These objects are not actually ‘out of
drawing’--that is to say, incorrect from a physiological or botanical
point of view, but they are sadly lacking in intention. They have a
listless air, and seem to take very little interest either in themselves
or in each other. They seem, indeed, to be mildly wondering why they are
there at all. In a word, it is just the sort of drawing that an artist
would make when external circumstances induced him to sit down to ‘do
something,’ while no strongly-felt subject-matter within him was
urgently demanding expression.
This drawing (it is in reverse of the engraving) was traced on to the
copper, and the etching was made from it by Turner himself. The etching
is practically an accurate copy of the drawing: the objects represented
are the same in each, and neither the actions nor positions of any of
the figures have been altered. Yet in the etching there is a perceptible
briskening-up of everything. It all hangs together better than in the
drawing. In some way the whole now seems to have come to life in the
artist’s imagination. In the drawing we can see him laboriously bringing
the parts together: in the etching he has infused the breath of life
into them.
The change is due entirely to the execution. The line which defines the
contours of the chief objects has lost its listlessness. It is now
instinct with intention. Everywhere it hurries along, building up the
design as a whole while defining the parts. The compulsion of the whole
makes itself felt in every detail. It is certainly difficult to put into
words the difference between the two versions, but I believe every one
who will take the trouble to compare them carefully will be sure to feel
it. In the two works there is an actual difference in the quality of the
artist’s stream of consciousness, and the difference makes itself felt
in the workmanship, though, in all probability, he himself was quite
unaware of the difference in his frame of mind, and regarded the etching
as simply a mechanical process of transference from one medium to
another. Yet from a psychological point of view, the impulsion of his
mind was in each case in a contrary direction. In the drawing the scene
as a whole was being laboriously invoked piecemeal, a collection of
objects was being formed into a sum total; in the etching the subject as
a whole is a real and living thing, guiding the artist’s hand and
moulding all the details into kinship with itself.
The whole now feels that certain of its parts require adjustment, _i.e._
demand to be brought into more intimate cohesion with the general
purpose. The contrast between the rigidity of the dead branches of the
willow on the right, and the springiness of the living branches nearer
the foreground, calls out for clearer and
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVI_
SCENE ON THE FRENCH COAST
SEPIA. ABOUT 1806]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVII_
SCENE ON THE FRENCH COAST
GENERALLY KNOWN AS “FLINT CASTLE: SMUGGLERS”
ETCHING, WASHED WITH SEPIA. ABOUT 1807]
more emphatic statement. The dance and sweep of the foliage, the bending
bridge, the falling bank, require steadying by a bolder assertion of the
straight horizontal line of the distant hills. The soft and rounded
undulations of the tree-tops, running right across the upper part of the
drawing, give a somewhat featureless though amiable character to it; in
the etching, greater prominence is given to the harsher lines of the
rigid white wall of the distant cottage and its sloping roof, as well as
to the supports and planks of the rustic bridge. In this way, without
altering the position of a single part of the design, or introducing any
new matter, the whole is transformed; instead of a mere collection of
parts, related to each other by a kind of chance or indifferent
contiguity, we have now a definite whole, fused through and through into
conceptual and emotional unity. The objects before our eyes have ceased
to be merely indifferent and external facts; they have now become
elements or members of a richly coloured whole of thought and feeling.
The careful and rather timid-looking drawing described as ‘Flint Castle’
(Plate XXXVI.), is certainly another of the designs made at the cheerful
Knockholt cottage. On the margin of this drawing the artist has
scribbled some verses, which I suppose one of the merry party had
discovered in a book or magazine,[19] and which they were all delighted
with. Probably the discoverer was Mrs. Wells, for the young ladies were
too young to care much for books, and the only scrap of information we
possess about their mother seems to suggest that she was something of a
bluestocking, and what is now sometimes called a ‘féministe.’ Among the
sketches in one of Turner’s pocket-books there is the following
jotting:--‘There is not a quality or endowment, faculty or ability which
is not in a superior degree possest by women.--_Vide_ Mrs. Wells,
Knockholt, Oct.’ The poem itself is not strictly germane to our present
study, but as there lingers about it a faint echo of those scenes of
‘fun and merriment’ which one of Turner’s young playmates recalled in
after years, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of transcribing it.
‘A Row of Poplars in disgrace
Because they would not stop their pace
Or grew unnecessarily tall,
Their Master came and topped them all.
Some neighbourly poplars stood hard by
Beheld their growth with jealous eye,
Now saw--exulting--cried
“How near is pride to earth allied.”
“Friends,” said the poplars in disgrace,
“You see the fault of making haste,
Ambition’s greatness caused our woe.
Ambition shun, mind how you grow,
For while you run you are bare below.”’
The drawing, like the poem, is not a remarkable one. As a design it
differs little from the average work of accomplished landscape
draughtsmen like Westall, Arnald, Daniell, etc. But from a comparative
point of view it is of singular interest, as the differences between
this preliminary drawing and the published engraving are greater than
those in any other _Liber_ subject. It starts as a rather jejune and
drawing-masterlike composition, and comes out finally as one of the most
vigorous and impressive marine designs in the whole series.
The etching was made by Turner himself. As the spacing and arrangement
of the etching differ considerably from those of the drawing, it is most
likely that an intermediate study was made. The changes, however, might
very well have been made on the tracing-paper used to transfer the
original design to the copper, and this would naturally have been
destroyed as soon as it had been used. When the design had been drawn on
the copper and bitten in, a few proofs were taken of the etching, and
over one of these Turner set to work again with washes of sepia to guide
Charles Turner, the engraver, who was to mezzotint the plate. This
second design is now in the National Gallery (No. 522) and has been
reproduced here as Plate XXXVII.
Of course we cannot hope to grasp the whole difference that has taken
place in this second version of the design. But here are two drawings
made by the same hand, within a short space of time of each other, of
the same size and the same subject, yet one is obviously a work of
genius, and the other is as tame and lifeless as its companion is vivid,
energetic, and full-blooded. The comparison is worth making, not,
indeed, that there is the slightest hope that any of us may learn from
it how to work such miracles, but because it will help to impress upon
us the importance of the form or ‘style’ of a work of art, as opposed to
the objects it represents,--the importance of ‘mere technique’; it will
also give us some insight into the real nature of artistic
expression,--will show us how far removed the whole process is from that
pious and passive reproduction of what is ‘given’ in sense-perception
which plays such a large and dangerous part in current practice. Let us
see therefore what we can discover.
In the first place it is evident that in the second version of the
subject the design has been what artists call ‘pulled together.’ The
foreground boat on the left (it is of course on the right in the plate)
has been made, if not actually bigger, yet more important as a mass, by
the addition of the sails of a second boat immediately behind it. The
apparent height of the boat has been increased by dropping the height of
the man standing in the cart in the water beside it, and by making the
horses, carts and men relatively smaller. The castle in the distance has
been shifted nearer to the boat, the height of the two masts of the boat
in the middle distance which abut on to the castle have been reduced, so
that the masts and sails of its neighbour on the right seem higher and
bigger. More has been made of the men, boats, etc., at the foot of the
low hills which appear on the right of the drawing, and the foreground
group of men and horses has been shoved nearer to the figure of the man
just entering the water, and, to make the connection firmer, the cask
and grappling irons on the ground have been carefully added.
But it is useless merely cataloguing these changes, if we cannot
discover the reasons for them. Is all this shuffling and rearrangement
for the sake of balance and visual harmony? No doubt to some extent it
is. But notice in the remodelled design the effect of that firm straight
line of the distant sea in the centre, and the way the distant castle
rises out of it. That is the nerve of the whole design. See how all the
other lines and shapes fret the eye with their sharp and jagged forms,
and yet lead it inevitably back to that one untroubled space. All this
artfully calculated playing with lights and shadows, this complicated
conspiracy of lines and forms, is assuredly something more than an
aimless trifling with appearances. In that untroubled stretch of water
we cannot but feel the steady, never-resting, inexorable march of the
real powers of nature. It brings the whole mighty background of human
life into the drawing; and this real spiritual presence sets the daily
toil and hardship of everyday life in a new light, solemnising it,
dwarfing it, yet not crushing it. It is as though we had heard the
rustle of the wings of eternity in the passing moment. To do this, to
produce this effect unerringly and with logical certainty upon every
normally constituted Englishman who looks carefully at the drawing,
cannot exactly be the chance result of a diligent shuffling and
reshuffling of mere shapes and shadows. There is something of divinity
in it. The shapes and shadows have meaning, and this timeless and
spaceless meaning is the life-blood that animates and transfigures these
bald signs and symbols. If art deals only with appearances, we must
remember that appearance is also a form of reality, and that form and
content can be so closely interwoven that the distinctions of our
meddling understanding may become idle and misleading.
It is only from some such point of view as this that we can hope to
grasp the full importance of what clever people call ‘mere technique.’
Let us turn now to the ‘Basle’ design. Although this engraving was
published in the first part of _Liber_, I am inclined to doubt whether
the preliminary drawing was made in the Wells’s cottage. This design is
based upon a sketch made at Basle in 1802, and it is hardly likely that
Turner would have had this sketch-book with him when he went to spend a
few days with his friends in Kent. Moreover, the first sepia drawing is
not with the others in the National Gallery. Mr. Rawlinson believes that
it passed into the hands of an American collector ‘many years ago’
(_Liber Studiorum_, p. 19). But we have Turner’s etching of the subject,
and if we compare this with the drawing made from nature, which
certainly formed the ground-work of the subject, we see clearly what a
great difference there really is between two processes which modern
uncritical thought persistently confounds--between the process of
‘drawing what you see’ and ‘copying nature faithfully,’ and the process
of artistic construction and invention.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVIII_
JUVENILE TRICKS
SEPIA. ABOUT 1808]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIX_
BERRY POMEROY CASTLE
GENERALLY KNOWN AS RAGLAN “CASTLE”
SEPIA. ABOUT 1813]
Generally, with the really creative artists the two processes go on
simultaneously or are fused into one, but here for once we find them
separated. The pencil drawing was made as a simple record of facts; the
etching was made some five or six years later, and it is curious to see
what liberties Turner felt it was necessary and justifiable to take with
his original record, before his notion of the requirements of a work of
art could be satisfied.
In the drawing from nature the width of the river seems to dwarf the
height of the buildings; in the engraving Turner seems to have felt that
the height of the buildings ought to form the keynote of the whole
design. First, therefore, the two towers of the Cathedral are carried
well up above the house by the bridge, the gable of this building being
reduced in size, so that it shall not compete in importance with the
Cathedral towers. In the drawing, the buildings recede gradually and
gently from the bridge, while in the etching, they are pushed into
square step-shaped masses, thus emphasising the idea of weight and
height. These impressions are further strengthened by deliberately
making the supports of the bridge smaller and more fragile than they
were in the drawing; in the engraving the straddling supports of the
slender wooden bridge give it an air of weakness which makes the
buildings at its side seem all the more firmly set by contrast.
These are only a few of the more obvious points of difference, but if
the comparison were pursued further, we should find that every sweep of
line and silhouette of the original material has been reconsidered and
recast before it was allowed to form part of the new construction. I
will not pretend that I regard the result obtained in this case as one
of the great achievements of the series, but our observations are
useful, I think, as showing the habitual thoroughness and earnestness
which Turner brought to all his work. His attitude towards the matter in
hand is always active and creative. His alterations are not always for
the better--indeed, it is open to argument whether some of the changes
made in this Basle subject were quite advantageous, but the fact remains
that whatever he took up he threw himself heart and soul into, that he
felt bound to recreate it from within, and that a mere cold and passive
reproduction of the given would have seemed to him a cowardly shrinking
from his artistic mission. He feels that he is responsible for the
effect the shapes and arrangement of his subject make upon the
spectator’s imagination, and that to attempt to apologise for a tame and
uninteresting subject by saying, ‘It was so,’--‘It is quite
true,’--would have seemed to him an unworthy evasion of his work.
How incapable Turner was of copying even one of his own drawings
accurately is clearly shown by the etching of the ‘Little Devil’s
Bridge’ (R. 19). When we compare this with the original drawing (No.
476, N. G.) we find that almost every form in the design has been
recast, not always to its individual advantage from the point of view of
realisation, but with an invariable gain in the direction of greater
general cohesion. Note, for example, how the straight tree trunk nearest
the bridge in the drawing gets bent slightly to the left, just to make
you feel the toughness and obstinacy of the tree itself. The fir-trees
on the left, too, are more realistic in the drawing, but they are more
forcible and dramatic in the engraving.
As we have been able to reproduce Turner’s original pencil study from
nature for the ‘London from Greenwich’ plate, the reader will be able to
make his own comparison with the published design. The preliminary sepia
drawing for the engraving (No. 493, N. G.) forms an intermediate step
between the two, a stage, as it were, in the process by which Turner’s
mind took complete possession of the subject. In the sepia drawing, the
artist has not yet fully realised the exact rôle the main building has
to play in the whole arrangement. When we turn to the engraving we find
that the whole character of the mass formed by the hospital has been
changed. In the drawing it forms a straggling mass, somewhat like a
chance medley of wharves and warehouses, in the engraving this mass has
been patted together into a solid and definite structure. The distant
parts of the building have been raised, and they now tell as a rigid
horizontal line. The gain to the hospital in dignity and in
individuality is extraordinary, and its stiff straight lines are exactly
what was wanted to throw emphasis on the subtlety and delicacy of the
slow sweep of the distant river.
The drawing for the ‘Martello Towers, Bexhill,’ plate is a very tame
affair, and the finished plate is only saved from comparative
[Illustration: _PLATE XL_
THE ALCOVE, ISLEWORTH
GENERALLY KNOWN AS “TWICKENHAM--POPE’S VILLA,” ETC.
SEPIA. ABOUT 1816]
[Illustration: _PLATE XLI_
SHEEP-WASHING, WINDSOR
SEPIA. ABOUT 1818]
failure by its fine sky. Yet it is worth comparing the two to trace out
the subtle differences which spring up under Turner’s hand in the
etching. All the objects are forced into shapes that act more powerfully
on the imagination, everywhere the tendency of the line is towards
emphasis and distinctness.
In the ‘Kirkstall Crypt’ (R. 39), the design is also recast in the
etching. The group of cows is altered, the foreground pillar is made
thinner, the space between the two columns in the centre is widened out,
and the aperture in the wall above the cows on the left is made light,
instead of dark. These changes are all for the better. A careful study
of these seemingly trivial alterations is valuable as an instance of the
subtleties of design upon which all really fine art depends.
As these remarks indicate, I am in agreement with the general opinion
that the engravings represent Turner’s intentions more fully than his
preliminary drawings. But though this is generally the case, there are
exceptions, and the most notable is, I think, that of the plate
sometimes known as ‘Twickenham--Pope’s Villa,’ and sometimes as
‘Garrick’s Temple and Hampton Court,’ but which really represents a
scene at Isleworth. In this case the drawing (Plate XL.) is much finer
than the plate, although Turner etched the subject himself. But somehow
the spacing of the whole is much less felicitous in the engraving than
in the drawing. The rendering of the trees, too, is more conventional,
but this is a characteristic of nearly all the plates, and is due to the
difficulties of the medium, it being impossible to get the same subtlety
of tone and delicacy of form in etching and mezzotint that can be got
with a pen and wash on paper.
This question of the comparative conventionality of the foliage in the
engravings induces me to say a few words about one of the loveliest
renderings of woodland scenery in the whole series--the so-called
‘Raglan Castle’ (R. 58).[20] This is one of the plates that Turner
mezzotinted himself, yet because the etched lines are not so free and
supple as those of the preliminary drawing (No. 865, N.G.), it has been
assumed that Turner left the etching to be done by one of his engravers,
probably Dawe. This assumption is one that I cannot accept. The
lettering on the plate, ‘Drawn and Engraved by J. M. W. Turner, etc.,’
points to the conclusion that Turner was responsible both for the
etching and the mezzotinting. And when we compare the etching with the
drawing, a number of slight but successful differences emerge, which no
engraver would either have attempted to make or could have made if he
had desired to do so.
‘The Source of the Arveron’ (R. 60), another of the plates ‘drawn and
engraved’ by Turner, has also had its etching condemned and attributed
to Dawe. If the plate is really so fine as all the critics of this kind
insist, it is curious that the etching can be so poor as they say and
yet not affect the excellence of the whole. This is inconsistent with
the proper appreciation of the important role the etched lines play in
all these mezzotints. That Turner regarded the etching as far more
important than the scraping is shown by the simple fact that he
undertook (nominally at least) to do it all himself, but he had no
hesitation in handing the scraping over to the engravers.
These general considerations are further strengthened when we compare
the finished plate (I am speaking only of the etching in the published
states, and not of the rare ‘first state’ of the etching in the late Mr.
J. E. Taylor’s collection) with the preliminary study made for it, now
in the National Gallery (No. 879). The size and proportions of the plate
differ from those of the drawing, so the etching could not have been
traced from it, while the etching nowhere follows the drawing with the
accuracy one would expect if it were merely an engraver’s copy. There is
no authority in this drawing for the shapes given to the crests of the
distant mountains in the centre, nor for the shapes of the upper
portions of the nearer mountains on the left. The lower parts of the
design are also modified from the forms in the drawing in exactly the
way Turner habitually recast all the drawings he etched. It is also hard
to suppose that Dawe or anybody but Turner could have recast the vague
shapes of the disappearing ridge of the glacier on the left in the
masterly way this has been done in the etching, or that anybody but
Turner could have invented, on the strength of the loose indications in
the drawing, the masterly lines that give definition to the stretch of
valley against which the ice of the glacier is relieved. The shapes of
the
[Illustration: _PLATE XLII_
VIEW OF A RIVER, FROM A TERRACE
SOMETIMES CALLED “MACON”
SEPIA. ABOUT 1818]
[Illustration: _PLATE XLIII_
CROWHURST, SUSSEX
SEPIA. ABOUT 1818]
first two upright pines near the centre have also been recast by the
mind and hand of the master, not copied by another hand from the
indications given in the drawing. Alterations have also been introduced
in the character of the stems and their branches which a professional
engraver would not dare to make in an ostensible copy; the same remark
applies also to the tops of the pines on the right. For these reasons, I
think, those critics are mistaken who deny that the workmanship of the
whole plate is Turner’s. And the mistake has arisen to a large extent, I
feel inclined to add, through attaching too much importance to _a
priori_ notions of technical mastery. As the late Mr. Arthur Strong very
justly said, we are inclined to start with an idea that masters are
always masterly and classical, and we often end by finding that they
have left nothing behind them quite worthy of our preconceived ideas of
what they ought to have done.
These are a few of the points suggested by a comparison of the
preliminary designs for the _Liber_ plates with the finished engravings.
But to get any good out of it every student must take the trouble to
make these comparisons for himself. Should my remarks succeed in
inducing even a few adventurous spirits to make such an experiment, I
shall feel satisfied that I have done something towards spreading an
intelligent interest in the marvellous process of artistic creation.
Perhaps, too, some day in the future, the authorities of the National
Gallery may see their way towards the display of these drawings so that
such a process of intelligent study may be performed without the
inconvenience which the present arrangement entails. It is probably not
necessary to have the whole series of drawings on exhibition at the same
time, but if those that are exhibited could be accompanied by the
finished engravings, and, where possible, by one or two proofs of the
unfinished states, I believe the gain to the public would be
considerable.