Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues, Clare Graham and Marc
D'Hooghe at Free Literature (Images generously made
available by the Internet Archive.)
TURNER'S
GOLDEN VISIONS
BY
C. LEWIS HIND
WITH FIFTY OF THE PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS
OF TURNER REPRODUCED IN COLOUR
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
67 LONG ACRE, W. C.
AND EDINBURGH
1907
'Turner has some golden visions, glorious and beautiful. They are only
visions, but still, they are art, and one could live and die with such
pictures.'--John Constable on the 1828 Royal Academy Exhibition.
NOTE
In writing on Turner one must necessarily make levies on the works of
other authors. I give hearty acknowledgment to Mr. A. J. Finberg's
_Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest_ (printed for His
Majesty's Stationery Office), which he himself has used with skill and
accomplishment in his _Turner's Sketches and Drawings_ (Methuen &
Co.). Among the other books consulted and quoted from are _Turner_, by
Sir Walter Armstrong (Agnew & Sons); _Turner_, by W. L. Wyllie,
A.R.A. (G. Bell & Sons); _The Turner Drawings_, by E. T. Cook
(Pall Mall Press); _The Engraved Work of Turner_, and _Turner's 'Liber
Studiorum'_, by W. G. Rawlinson; the delightful Extra Numbers of _The
Studio_ on Turner, and the excellent little book by the late Cosmo
Monkhouse. Ruskin, of course, is frequently referred to and quoted,
also the inaccurate but indispensable Thornbury, whose _Life of Turner_
all succeeding writers on Turner have borrowed from and upbraided.
C.L.H.
CONTENTS.
PART ONE
A MEMORY: TELLS OF A BOY WHO LOVED TURNER'S 'VIEW OF ORVIETO'
I. The Boy and golden Orvieto
II. The Boy wonders at Turner's Art Life
III. The Boy wonders at Turner the Dumb Poet
IV. The Boy, having become a Man, wonders at the _Inventory of the
Turner Bequest Drawings_
PART TWO (1775-1803)
FROM 'FOLLY BRIDGE' TO 'CALAIS PIER'
V. 1775. Birthplace and Parents
VI. 1790 (aged 15). He exhibits at the Royal Academy, and is described
as a light-hearted, merry creature
VII. 1795 (aged 20). The Drawings of 'the ingenius Mr. Turner' are
stated by a newspaper of the day to be 'tinctured with truth and
fidelity'
VIII. 1800 (aged 25). His first Oil Pictures, and Extracts from his
Sketch-Books
IX. 1802 (aged 27). He exhibits grandiloquent 'Jason' and a simple
'View on Clapham Common'
X. 1803 (aged 28). The Year of 'Calais Pier'
PART THREE (1804-1810)
FROM 'THE SHIPWRECK' TO AN EARLY GOLDEN VISION
XI. 1804 (aged 29). He studies an Eclipse and paints the Sunset
XII. 1805 (aged 30). He paints 'The Shipwreck' for Fame, and begins a
series of 'Delight Studies' for Love
XIII. 1806 (aged 31). The chaos of the 'Hesperides' and the peace of
'Abingdon'
XIV. 1807 (aged 32). He begins the _Liber Studiorum_, and exhibits 'The
Sun Rising through Vapour'
XV. 1808 (aged 33). He writes P.P. after his name and paints in a
Garden at Hammersmith
XVI. 1809 (aged 34). He exhibits the glowing 'River Scene with Cattle'
and refuses to sell 'Bligh Sand'
XVII. 1810 (aged 35). A Quiet Year and an early Golden Vision
PART FOUR (1811-1820)
FROM A JOURNEY TO DEVONSHIRE TO HIS RETURN FROM ITALY
XVIII. 1811 (aged 36). 'Apollo Killing the Python,' and a Picnic
XIX. 1812 (aged 37). He exhibits 'Hannibal Crossing the Alps,'
suggested by a Snowstorm he had seen at Farnley
XX. 1813 (aged 38). Hoar Frost at Sunrise that has Vanished from 'A
Frosty Morning'
XXI. 1814 (aged 39). He paints more Classical Pictures, turns Author,
and is happy at Sandycombe
XXII. 1815 (aged 40). 'A wonderful year,' and a Turnerian Love-Letter
XXIII. 1816 (aged 41). Skies! Skies! Skies!
XXIV. 1817 (aged 42). He sells fifty Water-Colours to Mr. Fawkes of
Farnley Hall
XXV. 1818 (aged 43). 'The Abbotsford Turners' and an auction price of a
Turner Water-Colour
XXVI. 1819 (aged 44). Turner's First Visit to Italy, and an Exhibition
in Grosvenor Place
XXVII. 1820 (aged 45). Return from Italy. He begins to sight his
Mystical Visions
PART FIVE (1821-1829)
FROM 'THE BAY OF BAIÆ' TO 'ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS'
XXVIII. 1822 (aged 47). He throws off another 'Norham Castle,' and
prepares to startle the world with 'The Bay of Baiæ'
XXIX. 1823 (aged 48). 'The Bay of Baiæ': A Critic is critical and a
Painter is enthusiastic
XXX. 1824 (aged 49). A Glance at some of _The Rivers of England_ and
_Harhours of England_ Water-Colours
XXXI. 1825 (aged 50). A somewhat barren year, commented on in a bitter
lament by Ruskin
XXXII. 1826 (aged 51). Another unimportant year, in which he leaves
Twickenham
XXXIII. 1827 (aged 52). He paints the Sea in the open, and some
Thames-side Pictures
XXXIV. 1828 (aged 53). The Year when Constable described Turner's
Visions as 'Golden, Glorious, and Beautiful'
XXXV. 1829 (aged 54). The Year of 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus'
PART SIX (1830-1834)
FROM THE 'INTERIOR AT PETWORTH' TO THE PERIOD OF THE 'UNFINISHED' OILS
XXXVI. 1830 (aged 55). He paints the 'Interior at Petworth,' and mourns
the death of his Father, and of Sir Thomas Lawrence
XXXVII. 1831 (aged 56). He turns his 'magic limelight' on 'Caligula's
Palace and Bridge,' visits Sir Walter Scott, and makes his Will
XXXVIII. 1832 (aged 57). He paints 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,' and is
jocular on Varnishing Day
XXXIX. 1833 (aged 58). He paints his first 'Venice' picture, and
repurchases some of his own Drawings at Auction
XL. 1834 (aged 59). Some old Stories and some Ageless Colour Studies
PART SEVEN (1835-1845)
FROM A CONSIDERATION OF THE 'UNFINISHED' OILS TO 'RAIN, STEAM, AND
SPEED,' AND THE LAST SKETCH-BOOKS
XLI. 1835 (aged 60). Some remarks on the 'Unfinished' Oils and
_Blackwood's_ attack on his 'Venice' picture of this year
XLII. 1836 (aged 61). The Reception of 'Juliet and Her Nurse' proclaims
that Turner is beginning to lose Favour with the Public
XLIII. 1837 (aged 62). 'Troubles begin to gather about him. Nothing
will go right'
XLIV. 1838 (aged 63). A 'Nonsense Picture' of 1838 which in 1878
fetched £5460 at auction
XLV. 1839 (aged 64). 'The Fighting Téméraire' and a Sea-Piece on a
Visiting-Card
XLVI. 1840 (aged 65). A contrast between the terrific 'Slave Ship' and
the mild 'New Moon'
XLVII. 1841 (aged 66). How Turner 'did it.' He 'grasped the handle and
plunged the whole drawing into a pail of water'
XLVIII. 1842 (aged 67). 'The Snowstorm and some 'Faultless'
Water-Colours
XLIX. 1843 (aged 68). Visions of Venice, and the First Volume of
_Modern Painters_
L. 1844 (aged 69). He exhibits 'Rain, Steam, and Speed,' and twice
tries to cross the Alps on foot
LI. 1845 (aged 70). Pictures of Whalers, and an Entry on the last page
of his last Sketch-Book
PART EIGHT (1846-1851)
THE YEARS OF DECLINE AND THE END
LII. 1846 (aged 71). The Beginning of Turner's Decline, and a 'Grey,
dim Drawing'
LIII. 1847, 1848, 1849 (aged 72 to 74). He disappears from his old
Haunts, and is interested in Optics and Photography
LIV. 1850 (aged 75). His last four pictures painted in hiding at Chelsea
LV. 1851 (aged 76). The Mystery of the Last Years of his Life revealed
to his Friends, and his Death
PART NINE
AFTER TURNER'S DEATH TO THE OPENING OF THE TURNER GALLERY IN 1910
LVI. Vicissitudes of the Turner Bequest
LVII. 1906. Exhibition of the 'Unfinished' Turners at the Tate Gallery
LVIII. 1908. Fifty-two more 'Unexhibited' Turners shown at the National
Gallery
LIX. 1910. The New 'Turner Gallery' at Millbank
LX. Turner at the National Gallery--and Claude: A Last Look
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. 'NORHAM CASTLE, SUNRISE' (about 1835)--frontispiece
2. 'VIEW OF ORVIETO' (1830). NATIONAL GALLERY
3. 'LUCERNE AND THE RIGHI: EARLY DAWN' (about 1842).
Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.
4. 'YACHT RACING IN THE SOLENT'--No. 2 (1827). TATE GALLERY
5. 'BARNARD CASTLE' (about 1827). Water-Colour. W. G.
RAWLINSON, Esq.
6. 'DERWENTWATER WITH THE FALLS OF LADORE' (about 1797).
Water-Colour. TATE GALLERY
7. 'STUDY FOR A PICTURE OF NORHAM CASTLE' (about 1799).
Water-Colour. TATE GALLERY
8. 'STONEHENGE: SUNSET' (about 1804) Water-Colour. W. G.
RAWLINSON, Esq.
9. 'THE SUN RISING THROUGH VAPOUR (1807). NATIONAL GALLERY
10. 'THE DEATH OF NELSON' (1808). TATE GALLERY
11. 'RIVER SCENE WITH CATTLE' (1809). TATE GALLERY
12. 'A MOUNTAIN STREAM' (about 1810). TATE GALLERY
13. 'SCARBOROUGH' (1811). Water-Colour. TATE GALLERY
14. 'SKETCH OF COCHEM ON THE MOSELLE' (about 1831).
Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.
15. 'CHURCH OF SS. GIOVANNI E PAOLO' (1819). Water-Colour.
TATE GALLERY
16. 'THE BAY OF _BAIÆ'_(1823). TATE GALLERY XVI
17. 'VIEW ON THE MOSELLE' (about 1834). Water-Colour. W. G.
RAWLINSON, Esq.
18. 'YACHT RACING IN THE SOLENT'--No. 1 (1827). TATE GALLERY
19. 'SHIPPING AT COWES'--No. 1 (1827). TATE GALLERY
20. 'BETWEEN DECKS' (1827). TATE GALLERY
21. 'SKETCH OF AN ITALIAN TOWN' (about 1828). Water Colour.
VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM
22. 'ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS' (1829). TATE GALLERY
23. 'THE EVENING STAR' (1829 or after) TATE GALLERY
24. 'INTERIOR AT PETWORTH' (1830)
25. 'THE OLD CHAIN PIER, BRIGHTON' (1830). TATE GALLERY
26. 'ROCKY BAY WITH CLASSIC FIGURES' (1829 or after). TATE GALLERY
27. 'SUNRISE, WITH A BOAT BETWEEN HEADLANDS' (about 1835).
TATE GALLERY
28. 'HASTINGS'(about 1835). TATE GALLERY
29. 'THE SALUTE' (1838). Water-Colour. TATE GALLERY
30. 'ANCIENT ROME, AGRIPPINA LANDING WITH THE ASHES OF GERMANICUS'
(1839). NATIONAL GALLERY
31. 'THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, ROME' (1840). TATE GALLERY
32. 'LAKE OF LUCERNE, FROM FLUELEN' (1840 or after). Water Colour.
TATE GALLERY
33. 'THE SNOWSTORM' (1842). TATE GALLERY
34. 'PEACE. BURIAL AT SEA OF THE BODY OF SIR DAVID WILKIE' (1842).
TATE GALLERY
35. 'SAN BENEDETTO, LOOKING TOWARDS FUSINA' (1843). NATIONAL GALLERY
36. 'THE SEELISBERG, MOONLIGHT' (about 1843). Water-Colour.
W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.
37. 'RAIN, STEAM, AND SPEED' (1844). TATE GALLERY
38. 'SUNRISE, WITH A SEA MONSTER' (about 1845). TATE GALLERY
39. 'TELL'S CHAPEL, FLUELEN' (1845). Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.
40. 'QUEEN MAB'S GROTTO' (1846). NATIONAL GALLERY
41. 'LAKE WITH DISTANT HEADLAND AND PALACES' (1840 or after).
Water-Colour. TATE GALLERY
42. 'LAKE OF BRIENZ' (about 1843). Water-Colour. VICTORIA AND ALBERT
MUSEUM
43. 'IN THE VALE D'AOSTA, A PASSING SHOWER' (about 1839). Water-Colour.
W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.
44. 'SPIETZ ON THE LAKE OF THUN, LOOKING TOWARDS THE BERNESE-OBERLAND'
(1842). Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.
45. 'BRIDGE AND TOWER' (about 1835). TATE GALLERY
46. 'SUNRISE, A CASTLE ON A BAY' (1829 or after). TATE GALLERY
47. 'THE BURNING OF THE SHIPS' (1840 or after). TATE GALLERY
48. 'VENETIAN FISHING-BOAT'(1839). Water-Colour. TATE GALLERY
49. 'A SHIP AGROUND' (1830). TATE GALLERY
50. 'THE "SUN OF VENICE" GOING TO SEA' (1843). NATIONAL GALLERY
PART ONE
A MEMORY: TELLS OF A BOY WHO LOVED TURNER'S 'VIEW OF ORVIETO'
CHAPTER I
THE BOY AND GOLDEN ORVIETO
There was a boy who grew up in the seventies of last century when
the name of Turner aroused no particular interest or emotion: he was
a classic, and he was treated with the incurious veneration that is
given to classics. Turner was among the gods, and if a descent to
the ground-floor of the National Gallery, where a selection of his
water-colours was shown, did startle the wayfarer into amazement at the
lyrical loveliness of those visions, compared with the sombre and heavy
magnificence of most of the oil pictures, well, they were by Turner,
and Turner being a classic, was not a subject for debate. He was with
the masters--fit and few--a classic.
I think no one dreamed of the extraordinary revival of interest in
Turner and increasing admiration for his genius that was to mark the
twentieth century, when the 'unfinished oils' were exhibited, and later
when the Turner Gallery at Millbank was opened.
The boy who grew up in the seventies, and to whom, in the first
idealism of youth, Turner seemed almost superhuman, has closely
followed the public manifestations of interest in the flame and fame of
Turner; and now that he is about to write a book on the man of whom M.
de la Sizeranne wrote:--'All the torches which have shed a flood of new
light on Art, that of Delacroix in 1825, those of the Impressionists
in 1870, have in turn been lit at his flame,'--he likes to return
in memory to those days in the seventies when Turner first became
wonderful, something not quite to be explained, in his life.
The boy was taken periodically, for education and pleasure, to
the National Gallery, and as he was led through the various rooms
astonishment passed into bewilderment. The mixed art of the world
was far too complex for the boy's unfolded mind. The clash of
personalities, the astonishing divergencies of the various schools
of painting confused and distracted him, and only when he entered
the Turner room (now dismantled), and was told, what he had already
dimly divined, that the pictures crowded on those four walls were all
by one man, did he find rest for his soul. He did not appreciate all
the Turners, but he grasped their coherency, and realised what he was
told, that they expressed the growth of one mind groping from darkness
to light. Yet it seemed strange to the boy that he who painted the
dark and material 'Calais Pier' should also have painted the gorgeous
fairy tale called 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus'; that the calm and
contemplative 'Crossing the Brook' should have proceeded from the same
brain and hand that willed that wonder of wonders 'Rain, Steam and
Speed,' or the fading loveliness of the picture that was then called
the 'Approach to Venice.' The boy was not old enough to understand the
interest and importance of studying a painter's work chronologically,
which would have made it plain to him why a man could paint the 'Calais
Pier' at twenty-eight, 'Rain, Steam and Speed,' at sixty-nine, and the
sunlight dreams between whiles, in moments of rapturous vision. These
problems did not trouble the boy. He was too young to analyse his
impressions, and they were all forgotten when he was shown the small
picture called 'View of Orvieto.' That remained to him all through
boyhood, and through manhood also, essential Turner, essential Italy, a
dream Italy, but more real than the reality.
Yet 'Orvieto' painted in Rome in 1829, and exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1830, when the artist was fifty-five, is not one of his
great works. And it is not a view of Orvieto, that is, a correct view.
Turner was an interpreter of the soul of what he saw, not a reporter of
topographical, historical or architectural accuracy. The golden valley
bathed in sunlight, the city on the hill swooning in golden mist, and
the magical fading away of the uplands into infinity, that is what the
boy cared about. All that is pure Turner, the idealist, the visionary,
the lover of light and colour and distances and the enchantments of
nature. Turner too, but dual-natured Turner, is the inept foreground, a
mere contrivance to throw the middle distance back; things pressed into
his service that happened to come to hand, the litter of properties,
the 'drawing-master tree,' the uncouth figures, the unsubstantial
fountain.
Years later the boy visited Orvieto and found the city far less
beautiful than Turner's dream. But by that time he had learnt that the
true artist is not a copyist of nature, that he states his vision,
the effect not the fact. This 'View of Orvieto' remained enshrined
in his heart. To him as a boy it was Italy, and Italy never really
meant anything else to his young intelligence, just Turner's vision of
Orvieto, a golden town on a golden hill under a summer sky; a place
where the sun always shines and where there are little white roads
leading he cared not whither, because they all led to somewhere in
Italy. This is the joy of the artist, a joy that often he never hears
of. This is his joy--to touch a young heart to ecstasy, ay! even by a
second-rate picture, and to keep in that young heart a vision that the
world and time can never destroy, and that a visit to the place cannot
dispel. To that boy Turner's 'Orvieto' meant Italy: since he has become
a man he has wandered through Italy again and again from end to end,
but even now if he wishes to recall Italy, to be kindled by the thought
of that word meaning so much to Englishmen, he still turns to Turner's
picture. For him it cannot fade: it cannot change.
CHAPTER II
THE BOY WONDERS AT TURNER'S ART LIFE
From 'Orvieto' as a starting-point, the boy, who is now a man,
proceeded in time to explore the art life of Turner, dwelling oftenest
on his golden visions, in which this persistent man, eloquent nowhere
but in his art, truly found himself. They were the goals of his
pilgrimage, but few appreciated them. Among the few was honest,
plain-spoken John Constable, who said of Turner's contributions to the
Royal Academy of 1828, which were so unlike his own practical art:
'Turner has some golden visions, glorious and beautiful. They are only
visions, but still, they are art, and one could live and die with such
pictures.' Yet in that year the tale of Turner's golden visions had
hardly begun to be told. He was to go on simplifying and simplifying,
until modelling became subordinated to colour, and the forms and shapes
of things became lost in the effulgence of light.
Was there ever such a life of industrious and progressive work? It
began when he was a mere boy, in the dark court off Maiden Lane near
the Strand; the long, laborious, loving effort ended only with the end,
that furtive, fugitive end when, tired of man and his ways, the old,
self-sufficient painter disappeared from his haunts and his friends,
and under the assumed name of Mr. Booth, the sun his master, the river
his companion, met death in a little balconied house overlooking the
Thames at Chelsea.
Work, work, work--absorbing, concentrated work--that was his life. This
'short, stout man with a red face and covetous eyes,' was hardly what
the world calls a fine character, although there are on record many
instances of his generosity and kindness, he was as secretive about his
work as about his life. The door of his studio, whether in Queen Anne
Street or on the hills was, metaphorically, always locked.
When the boy, who loved the view of 'Orvieto' more than any picture
he had ever seen, began to study Turner's art life he amused and
confused himself by dividing it, as all his biographers have done, into
periods. These he simplified into two broad divisions, first when this
ever-ambitious painter pitted himself against his predecessors and
contemporaries, and later when, entirely disregarding the works of man,
he faced Nature, and challenged nothing less than the source of all
light and colour--the sun.
Turner's art life shows no sudden rush of genius. Step by step he
climbed, and had he died in 1802, at the age of twenty-seven, when
Girtin, his friend and fellow-student, died, we should have had the
record of a youth of great promise, but whose performances were no
more wonderful, if as wonderful, as Girtin's. From the period of
Training he passed to the period of Rivalry. Of the many painters he
strove to outsoar there was none so worthy his challenge as Claude
Lorrain, and to this day, in accordance with a condition of Turner's
will, two of his pictures hang in the National Gallery side by side
with two of Claude's, challenging the Lorrainer from beyond the grave.
The challenger has his desire, but Claude is not conquered. The great
Englishman does not dethrone the great Frenchman on his own ground.
Claude is unrivalled in the balance of his classical pictures, and
in their cool and temperate colour. The real Turner, the Turner who
challenged the sun, had not yet found himself. In his periods of Power
and Splendour, between the ages, say, of forty-five and sixty-five,
dominated by such masterpieces as the 'Ulysses' and the 'Fighting
Téméraire,' Turner disregarded all other painters. And while he was
producing epics this prodigal artist was also throwing off lyrics--the
impulsive water-colours, and those 'unfinished oils,' destined, when
reclaimed and shown in 1906, to raise the art of Turner to the empyrean
of landscape art. They were works of pleasure, easy evocations of his
genius, done quickly and gladly, thrown aside, never exhibited.
Of all the periods of his art life there is none to be compared with
the period contained in the few glorious years when he was past sixty
and drawing near to his seventieth year, the period when light in
all its manifestations obsessed him, when he produced the 'Norham
Castle, Sunrise,' the 'Hastings' with the red sail, the later 'Venice'
pictures, and the later water-colours, so delicate, so flushed with
sunshine that the world of sight seems to be swimming in iridescent
vapour. Finally, there is the period of decline, but what a decline,
that could evoke such a magnificent madness as 'Queen Mab's Grotto,'
and such tumbling splendours as the four classical pictures he
exhibited the year before he died!
The boy who loved 'Orvieto' despaired of ever being able to write
adequately about Turner, so enormous, so diversified, was his
achievement. Sometimes he thought he would like to consider nothing but
the 'Orvieto,' the 'Rain, Steam and Speed,' the 'Sunrise' pictures and
the 'Evening Star'; and among the water-colours a certain dream of blue
loveliness called 'Lucerne' and the red 'Righi,' and perhaps the six
small pictures, phantom ships and fairy skies, that he bequeathed to
Mrs. Booth, and perhaps the four impressions in one frame, sensations
they might be called, of Petworth at evening, mere sunset visions, but
such visions.
What was the nature of the man who controlled these wonders? The boy
read Thornbury's very interesting and very unreliable _Life_, he read
Monkhouse and others, and as he read there rose before him a picture of
the dual Turner, the great artist and the crafty tradesman. A little
sadly he set himself to understand something of Turner the Man.
CHAPTER III
THE BOY WONDERS AT TURNER THE DUMB POET
In thinking over Turner the Man, whom Thornbury called the Dumb Poet,
again 'Orvieto' rose before the boy. The twin parts of that picture,
the earthly foreground and the heavenly distances, continued to
symbolise the dual parts of Turner's nature, as indeed the natures of
all of us.
The first book that the boy read about Turner was perhaps the wisest
and the most sympathetic of all his biographies, that by the late
Cosmo Monkhouse. On page 3 he found two quotations; one astonished,
the other shocked him. They neither astonish nor shock him now because
he is much older, and he knows that if one passage is exaggerated so
is the other. He knows that Turner was neither saint nor sinner, but a
queer-tempered man, with bursts of humour and geniality, and a thirst
for knowledge; a man of genius with a dwarfed nature, uneducated, who
in art moved easily among great things, and who, try as he would, and
he did try, could hardly touch the hem of the garment of great things
outside his art; who loved his work before anything in the world, who
was not cultured, and whose manners were neither pretty nor engaging,
who cared nothing for social conventions, but who went his own rough
way, preferring Wapping and the sailors and the river, and rum and
brown sherry, to the conventional delights and the fine feeding of
Belgravia. Here are the two passages. The first is from Ruskin's
_Modern Painters_, published in 1843, magnificent rhetoric, magical,
and meaning very little:--
'Glorious in conception--unfathomable in knowledge--solitary in
power--with the elements waiting upon his will, and the night and
morning obedient to his call, sent as a prophet of God to reveal to
men the mysteries of the universe, standing, like the great angel of
the Apocalypse, clothed with a cloud, and with a rainbow upon his
head, and with the sun and stars given into his hand.'
The second is from Thornbury's _Life of Turner_, published in 1862.
There is no confirmation of Thornbury's suggestion that Turner ever
'wallowed' at Wapping:--
'Towards the end of his career he would often, I am assured on the
best authority, paint hard all the week till Saturday night; and he
would then put by his work, slip a five-pound note into his pocket,
button it securely up there, and set off to some low sailor's house in
Wapping or Rotherhithe, to wallow till Monday morning summoned him to
mope through another week.'
The boy who was shocked at that extract from Thornbury's _Life_,
following so closely upon Ruskin's eulogy, found consolation in an
understanding passage written by Cosmo Monkhouse. It seemed to explain
Turner.
'He lived in two worlds--one the pictorial sight-world, in which he
was a profound scholar and a poet, the other the articulate, moral,
social word-world, in which he was a dunce and underbred. In the one
he was great and happy, in the other he was small and miserable; for
what philosophy he had was fatalist. The riddle of life was too hard
for his uncultivated intellect and starved heart to contemplate with
any hope; he was only at rest in his dreamland.'
His dreamland served him to the end, to that day in 1851, when the old
war-man, warring always for the beautiful, having lost the cunning of
his hand, but not the vision of his eyes, died gazing on the river, his
old companion, whom he had loved always.
Gradually, the boy who grew up in the seventies, and who knew golden
'Orvieto' by heart, began to form a mental picture of the man Turner,
gathered from the pictures and caricatures of him, and the innumerable
stories, some untrue, many exaggerated, that have collected about the
hairdresser's son who became the world's greatest landscape painter.
His friend and patron, Mr. Fawkes of Farnley, made a caricature of
Turner which shows him as a little man, 'in an ill-cut brown tail
coat, striped waistcoat and enormous frilled shirt, the feet and hands
notably small, sketching on a small piece of paper, held down almost
level with his waist.' Yes, Turner was an odd man, odd in looks, rough
in manner. When he had passed middle age the world meant very little to
him. He cared for nobody: he was hardly interested in Ruskin's magical
extravagance of eulogy. 'My own admiration,' said Ruskin, 'was wild
enthusiasm, but it gave him no ray of pleasure. He loved me, but cared
nothing for what I said.' About the time that Ruskin was lecturing the
world for not admiring Turner, and lashing himself into ecstasy over
his idol, the idol was seen on board the old Margate steamer, studying
sky and water, and eating his lunch of shrimps out of a huge red
handkerchief laid across his knees.
Turner lived outside the world--in his dreamland. When the buoyancy of
youth had passed; when 'dad' was dead, he grew more morose, more untidy
and more exclusive, but his dream did not change. No! it became more
mystical, more subtle, more unrealisable to his ageing eyes. Was he
not in dreamland on that Varnishing Day of the Royal Academy of 1846
when George Parrott made a humorous sketch of him. There were four
varnishing days in those halcyon times, and it was Turner's habit to
send in his pictures merely laid in with white and grey, and to finish
them on the walls. We see him in Parrott's Varnishing Day sketch at the
age of seventy-one, a short, thick-set, clumsy figure, with ruffled
silk hat upon his head and gingham propped against a chair--painting on
a large picture, engrossed, oblivious of everything happening around.
'I am told,' says Scarlett Davies, 'it was good fun to see the great
man whacking away with about fifty stupid apes standing round him,
peeping into his colour-box and examining all his brushes and colours.'
He was in dreamland while the 'stupid apes' watched him.
Did they hope to discover the dreamer's secret? Ah, gentlemen, you did
not find the secret in the colour-box. And the dumb poet could never
have told in words how he produced his pictures, although when he sold
one he was wont to say, 'I've lost one of my children.'
The dumb poet!
There is a chapter in the second volume of Thornbury's _Life_ headed
'Turner's Poetry,' that seemed to the boy who loved 'Orvieto' to
express absolutely, strangely, sadly, how illiterate and inarticulate
outside his art was Turner, and how eager to express the emotions
that moved dimly in his starved brain. Twelve pages of his halting,
imperfect verse are printed, scraps from the longest fragments found
among his papers after death, perhaps a portion of that interminable,
chaotic poem, _The Fallacies of Hope_, extracts from which he used
to append to his Academy pictures. There is hardly a clause that is
coherent, there is no continuous thought, and some words are used in
any sense. The impulse to sing is there, but the dumb poet has not
begun to understand even the elements of the technique of composition.
But the boy dug out and remembered two broken lines, and they became
almost as much a part of his life as golden 'Orvieto.'
'... still the chief advanced,
Looked on the sun with hope...'
'Looked on the sun with hope' might have served for Turner's epitaph.
'Still the chief advanced' might have served as a motto for that
amazing book published in 1909, called _A Complete Inventory of the
Drawings of the Turner Bequest._
When that book in two volumes was issued, the boy who loved 'Orvieto'
as a middle-aged man. Having read the _Inventory_--no, read is not the
word;--when he had spent many hours over it, his wonder of Turner, if
that were possible, increased. And dreaming of the drawings of the
Turner Bequest, set forth so fully and patiently in this book, he
echoed the words of the Director of the National Gallery, who wrote in
the preface, 'There is nothing like it anywhere in the world.'
[1] _A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest_,
arranged chronologically by A. J. Finberg. His Majesty's Stationery
Office. 2 vols. 15s.
CHAPTER IV
THE BOY, HAVING BECOME A MAN, WONDERS AT THE 'INVENTORY' OF THE TURNER
BEQUEST DRAWINGS
Not until the _Inventory_ was published was it possible to realise the
amount of spade work--loving, minute, unwearying--that Turner did from
the age of twelve to the age of seventy-one, spade work that enabled
him to will the golden visions of his maturity.
Everybody who has examined the Turner Bequest of water-colours, and
sketches in colour and in pencil, numbering over nineteen thousand
pieces of paper contained in three hundred Sketch-Books, must agree
that 'there is nothing like it anywhere in the world'; and everybody
must rejoice that, through the munificence of the late Sir Joseph
Duveen, there has now arisen as an annexe to the Tate Gallery the
long, long deferred Turner Gallery, a tardy fulfilment of the Wizard's
desire, one of the few dispositions, besides his eagerness to found
a home for decayed artists, that was clear in his interminable and
muddled will and codicils.
The story of the litigation over the will, and of the vicissitudes of
the bequest has been often told, and it will have to be told again in
its proper place in this book; how the pictures bequeathed by Turner
to the nation were gradually selected for exhibition; how in 1857 the
number had reached one hundred and five; how in that year Ruskin began
to sift and arrange the finished water-colours, the pencil drawings,
the colour sketches, and 'unfinished oils'; how he chose what he
considered the best of the water-colours for intermittent exhibition;
how he rolled up the 'unfinished oils'; how he classified and commented
upon the 'nineteen thousand pieces of paper, worm-eaten, mouse-eaten,
in various states of fragile decay, drawn upon by Turner in one way or
another, many on both sides'; how in 1906 the art world was astonished
and delighted by the exhibition at the Tate Gallery of the 'unfinished
oils' by Turner, reclaimed from the cellars at Trafalgar Square; and
how in 1908 several other 'unfinished' works, described as experiments
'in oil on thin veneer,' and a number of early water-colours and
studies were for the first time exposed.
By that time Mr. A. J. Finberg was nearing the end of his vast work
of cataloguing the Turner water-colours, and the 'nineteen thousand
pieces of paper,' belonging to the nation. The two volumes known as the
_Inventory_ are the monument of his labour, which has been thoroughly
done, indeed, with an attention to detail that wins the gratitude
of all students. Wisely a strictly chronological arrangement was
determined upon. The difficulties were immense, owing to the almost
entire absence of reliable chronological information as to Turner's
movements. He was not the kind of man to babble his plans, and Mr.
Finberg admits that some of his judgments as to date and place are
tentative; but we now have a guide, trustworthy as extreme care could
make it, to the infinite variety of Turner's structural plans, his
daily visions, his notes of things seen and quickly recorded, upon
which his life-work was based.
The _Inventory_ begins with 1787, when he was twelve; it proceeds,
year by year, to almost the end of his life, to 1846, when he was
seventy-one. Almost every summer, one might say every summer, with
painting materials, knapsack, and umbrella, he was off on his travels
through England, Scotland, Wales, or the Continent, and, roughly
speaking, to each year there is a sketch-book. Perhaps general-utility
book would be the better name, for Turner drew and scribbled anything
and everything on the leaves in his almost unintelligible handwriting.
Mixed up with his sketches, we read how he got from place to place;
of articles of clothing in use and wanted; the numbers of bank-notes;
elemental French and German phrases; fragments of poetry, his own and
others; extracts from Sir Joshua's _Discourses_; a cure for the bite
of a mad dog; a recipe for surfeit; criticism of pictures, including
Rembrandt's 'Mill,' Titian's 'Entombment,' and Rubens's 'Rainbow';
notes on the colours of hills; the names of flowers; descriptions of
skies; fragments of letters, such as 'Give my love to Miss Wickham,'
and so on, and so on.
Such things are for the general, for anybody and everybody who is
interested in the commerce with daily life of a man of genius. For
the student of Turner's work, these details of his sketching tours,
chronologically arranged, are invaluable.
The boy who loved 'Orvieto,' and who is now a man, having contracted to
write a book on 'Turner's Golden Visions,' felt, with this _Inventory_
before him, wherein Turner himself tells in disjointed fragments the
autobiography of his working life, that the way to write the book was
to take the years in progression, to dwell on each significant epoch
and the work it produced, and thus to trace the development of the dumb
poet from darkness to light, from the black 'Moonlight at Millbank,' to
such an ethereal golden vision as 'Norham Castle at Sunrise.'
He begins at the very beginning with the year 1775, when a son was
born to two humble people in a dark court off the Strand, whom they
christened Joseph Mallord William Turner.
PART TWO
1775-1803
FROM 'FOLLY BRIDGE' TO 'CALAIS PIER'
CHAPTER V
1775
BIRTHPLACE AND PARENTS
Few of the wayfarers who hurry along Maiden Lane from Covent Garden to
Bedford Street remember that in this busy, refurbished street Turner
was born. London has changed much since his time, and Maiden Lane has
changed also. Hand Court, opposite the Cider Cellar, in which was
the entrance to the barber's shop kept by Turner's father, has long
disappeared, and so has the modest dwelling.
The house in which Turner was born, and where father, mother, and son
lived, is thus described by Ruskin:--
'Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit or
well is formed by a close-set block of houses, to the back windows of
which it admits a few rays of light. Access to the bottom of it is
obtained out of Maiden Lane, through a low archway and an iron gate;
and if you stand long enough under the archway to accustom your eyes
to the darkness, you may see, on the left hand, a narrow door, which
formerly gave access to a respectable barber's shop.'
Thornbury has the following:--
'I remember the house well--I have been up and down and all over it.
The old barber's shop was on the ground floor, entered by a little
dark door on the left side of Hand Court. The window was a long, low
one; the stairs were narrow, steep and winding; the rooms low, dark,
and small, but square and cosy, however dirty and confined they may
have been. Turner's bedroom, where he generally painted, looked into
the lane, and was commanded by the opposite windows. The house where I
suppose he afterwards went to for more quiet and room, is at the end
of Hand Court, and is on a larger scale, with two windows in front;
but it must have been rather dark, though less noisy than his father's
house.'
It is said that the very early drawing by Turner, called 'Interior of
a Kitchen,' in the possession of the nation, represents the kitchen of
the house in Maiden Lane, and that the old woman crooning over the fire
is Turner's mother; but this has been doubted by that arch-doubter, Mr.
A. J. Finberg. Mrs. Turner's aspect is reported to have been masculine,
not to say fierce; she is said to have been a person of ungovernable
temper, to have 'led her husband a sad life,' to have been odd to the
point of insanity. Indeed she was quite insane at times, and maybe
Turner derived something of his genius from this ill-starred mother
with the unbalanced wits.
It is probable that the Mary Turner who was removed from St. Paul's,
Covent Garden, and admitted into Bethlehem Hospital on December 27th,
1800, was Turner's mother. She was discharged uncured in the following
year.
'Dad' was sane and cheerful, a friend and companion to his son, proud
of his genius, and helpful to him. His name will often appear in these
pages. He is described by Henry Trimmer, vicar of Heston, one of
Turner's few intimate friends, as a chatty old fellow who talked fast.
We are also told that his cheerfulness was greater than his son's,
and that a smile was always on his face. To this strangely assorted
couple, a chirpy father and a crazy mother, a son was born on the 23rd
of April 1775, about one year and eight months after their marriage. So
Nature works, and the good folk who would 'select' parents for their
wholesomeness and sanity may not be as successful in producing a genius
as Nature in her unpremeditated way. Joseph Mallord William Turner was
baptized at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, in the following month.
Ruskin has devoted a brilliant chapter to contrasting the boyhoods
of Turner and Giorgione. But is Turner to be pitied? Art occurs, and
perhaps there could not have been a more suitable place for a great
landscape painter to be born than in a dark court off Maiden Lane by
the Strand. For, being born in a dark court, he had to seek the world
of beauty, the wonder of undefiled sunrises and sunsets, green fields
and purple hills, pale streams and opalescent lakes. He had to make an
effort to find them.
At home there was at least mental excitement. His father's customers
were continually coming and going, curious men from the outside world,
who talked wittily and wore pretty clothes, and gave to the watchful
boy glimpses of the vivid world in which they lived. And near by was
the river, with its shipping, and the ever-changing aspect of the
tides, the old Thames, which he loved all his life, and from which he
derived inspiration and consolation.
CHAPTER VI
1790: AGED FIFTEEN
HE EXHIBITS AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY AND IS DESCRIBED AS A LIGHT-HEARTED,
MERRY CREATURE
As Thomas Stothard was a customer of Turner's father, and as many
artists lived about Covent Garden, the boy's interest in art must have
been early aroused. It is said that at the age of nine young Turner
made a drawing of Margate Church, shortly before he went to his first
school at New Brentford.
An old schoolfellow tells how he drew cocks and hens on the walls, and
birds and flowers and trees from the schoolroom windows; and there is
a story, which has been learnedly revised by _Notes and Queries_, of a
sketch which he made of a coat-of-arms from a drawing at Mr. Tomkison's
the jeweller. At the age of thirteen he is described as short and
thick-set, with grey-blue eyes and arched eyebrows, a handsome boy,
careless of dress, but sturdy and determined.
Turner's education was perfunctory; indeed, he had no real education
at all, but he acquired the rudiments at New Brentford and in Mr.
Coleman's school at Margate. We are told that he made the journey 'in a
hoy, a bluff-bowed cutter-rigged craft, with a long bowsprit and heavy
main boom.' That voyage must have been one of the events of his boyhood.
Mr. Palice, a floral drawing-master, also had the honour of instructing
him, and Mr. Thomas Malton, a perspective draughtsman. Later he
learnt something at Paul Sandby's Drawing Academy in St. Martin's
Lane, but more from Mr. Hardwick, the architect, who employed him in
adding landscape backgrounds to plans, etc., and who introduced him,
it is believed, to the schools of the Royal Academy, where we find
him enrolled as a student in 1789. But all this was fugitive and not
very important. His real lifelong teacher was Nature, and he learnt
how to express the ways of Nature by first studying the works of his
contemporaries and predecessors.
He developed slowly. 'Folly Bridge and Bacon's Tower,' which appears
as the first item in the _Inventory_, under the year 1787, when he was
twelve, is not an original drawing. Turner showed little or none of
the early facility of genius. For long years he leaned on and learned
from others. 'Folly Bridge' is merely a copy of a steel engraving by
J. Besire of a drawing perhaps by E. Dayes. The colouring, says Mr.
Finberg, is probably the boy's own invention. It is signed and dated W.
Turner, 1787, and hangs to-day on a wall of the new Turner Gallery at
Millbank.
From an early age he made money. His father showed his drawings and
coloured prints in his shop-window, and sold them at prices ranging
from one to three shillings. The acquisition of wealth remained one
of the most persistent occupations of his life. He was 'found out,'
as Monkhouse says, almost in his childhood, was paid for colouring
prints and washing in the skies for architects--excellent practice. The
knowing boy knew it. When, in after life, somebody expressed wonder
that he should have worked for half a crown a night, he retorted that
nothing could have been better practice. Sometimes he received as much
as a guinea. An old architect told Thornbury that he paid him that sum
in the shop in Maiden Lane for putting in a background.
But the most important episode of Turner's boyhood was the meeting with
Girtin, at about twelve or thirteen years of age, in the workshop of
the famous engraver, John Raphael Smith--Thomas Girtin, who was to have
such an influence on his dawning art, and whose personality was to be
one of the happiest memories of his life.
Turner's work up till about the age of fifteen has been summed up thus:
(1) Making drawings at home to sell; (2) Colouring prints for John
Raphael Smith; (3) Washing in backgrounds for architects; (4) Sketching
with Girtin.
Even in those early days Turner was secretive. Nobody was allowed to
see him draw, and he was as determined as he was secretive. Thornbury
tells the following story:--
'Turner was busy one morning in the bedroom at Maiden Lane, working
at some drawings for one of Britton's patrons--I think for the Earl
of Essex. Suddenly the door opens and Britton enters, nominally to
inquire how the drawings progressed, really to spy out all he could
of Turner's professional secrets. In an instant Turner covered up his
drawings, and ran to stop the crafty intruder's entrance.
'"I've come to see the drawings for the Earl."
'"You shan't see 'em," said Turner.
'"Is that the answer I am to take back to his lord-ship?"
'"Yes; and mind the next time you come through the shop, and not up
the back way. I allow no one to come here "; and so shutting the door
on sly Britton, Turner returned to growl at him over his work.'
The _Inventory_ shows that Turner was hard at work at this early age.
In Sketch-Book No. II., dated 1789, twenty-five leaves are drawn on;
No. III. contains five drawings, and includes his 'First View of
Oxford,' signed and dated 1789. In Sketch-Book No. IV. there is a
pencil outline of 'Wanstead New Church,' against the belfry of which
he has written the word 'Ionic.' As I have said, these Sketch-Books
might also be called general-utility books. Thus, in Sketch-Book No.
V., containing drawings probably made in the Royal Academy Schools, on
the back of a black-and-white chalk of the 'Belvedere Apollo' are these
notes, showing that his busy brain was already beginning to consider
etching, and that he was already indifferent to spelling:--
1 Get an Etching Ground, 26.
2 Heat the Back of P.
3 Rub it over with the Ball.
4 Dab it over with the Dabber of
'Well Hot. {
5 Smoke it over with Wax Tapur
6 Put some ... at back of Palte (? Plate)
7 Re ... of Wax.
Turpentine Varnish and Lamp black.'
About this time Turner began to study oil painting, receiving
instruction from no less a person than Sir Joshua Reynolds. Little did
Sir Joshua think, when he laid down the brush in 1789, that among the
young men in his studio, and perhaps working on his pictures under his
superintendence, was a youth whose name was to become as famous as the
name of Reynolds.
We can tell exactly what degree of accomplishment Turner had reached at
the age of fifteen, as the first drawing he sent to the Royal Academy,
the year being 1790, the locality Somerset House, a view of 'The
Archbishop's Palace, Lambeth,' is in a state of perfect preservation
in the collection of Mr. W. G. Rawlinson. He does not yet show any
originality. It is one of the tinted architectural drawings of the
period, but the work is conscientious, the drawing firm, and the
reflected lights on the houses well rendered. Here, too, are the Turner
figures, taller than life, a little grotesque, but accurate as regards
the costumes.
He must have been a merry, attractive boy when in congenial company:
he did not lack friends. There was Mr. Narraway, whom he visited at
Bristol, and the house of Mr. W. H. Wells, the artist, was open to him,
where he was a constant and welcome inmate. Mrs. Wheeler has recorded
the following charming reminiscences of Turner at this period:--
'In early life my father's house was his second home, a haven of rest
from many domestic trials too sacred to touch upon. Turner loved my
father with a son's affection; and to me he was as an elder brother.
Many are the times I have gone out sketching with him. I remember
his scrambling up a tree to obtain a better view, and then he made a
coloured sketch, I handing up his colours as he wanted them.... Oh!
what a different man would Turner have been if all the good and kindly
feelings of his great mind had been called into action; but they lay
dormant, and were known to so very few. He was by nature suspicious,
and no tender hand had wiped away early prejudices, the inevitable
consequence of a defective education. Of all the light-hearted merry
creatures I ever knew, Turner was the most so; and the laughter
and fun that abounded when he was an inmate of our cottage was
inconceivable, particularly with the juvenile members of the family.'
That is a happy glimpse of Turner the boy, and with that I leave his
boyhood. He has just had a drawing exhibited at the Royal Academy; he
is advancing towards proficiency in water-colour, his first and his
last love; but not yet has he reached the 'golden simplicity' that
Girtin realised, nor the 'silver sweetness' of Cozens.
CHAPTER VII
1795: AGED TWENTY
THE DRAWINGS OF 'THE INGENIUS MR. TURNER' ARE STATED BY A NEWSPAPER OF
THE DAY TO BE 'TINCTURED WITH TRUTH AND FIDELITY'
Five years have passed. Turner is now twenty. We will glance back and
see how he has fared. At about seventeen he attracted the attention of
Dr. Thomas Monro of Bushey, and Adelphi Terrace, physician of Bridewell
and Bethlehem Hospitals, a well-known lover of art, and patron of
certain clever young men who were to raise the coloured topographical
drawing into the well-loved art of British water-colour painting. 'Good
Dr. Monro!' The phrase has become historical. Turner was grateful to
Dr. Monro all his life, although there is no evidence of any great
intimacy between them. Years later he said to David Roberts: '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.' Turner's affection and
admiration for Girtin, that brilliant youth who died young, lasted
all his life. 'Had Tom Girtin lived I should have starved,' he is
reported to have said long afterwards; and of one of Girtin's drawings
he remarked, 'I never in my whole life could make a drawing like that.
I would many a time have given one of my little fingers to make such
a one.' When quite an old man he would mutter to himself about Tom's
'golden drawings.' Thornbury says that he praised Girtin's 'White
House' with rapture.
At Dr. Monro's house Turner, Girtin, Varley, and other young artists
were set to copy drawings by Rembrandt, Canaletto, Gainsborough, and
other masters; also the drawings of John Cozens, Turner's senior by
twenty-three years, who had lately returned from Italy and Switzerland.
Cozens, that poet with the brush, had a great influence upon him, but
Turner's drawings of this period have none of the repose, quiet beauty,
and spacious feeling of Cozens'. Perhaps the 'Pent House, Dover,'
draws nearest to the poetry of Cozens. Simple in treatment and colour,
it shows more imagination than the well-known 'Tintern Abbey' at the
Victoria and Albert Museum.
The 'Bristol and Malmesbury' Sketch-Book, dated 1791, has twenty-three
leaves, all drawn on; the 'Bristol' Sketch-Book of the same year has
seven; and in 1792 we find a drawing of the 'Burning of the Pantheon'
in Oxford Street, a carefully worked water-colour with a large number
of figures. On the left are firemen in their uniforms with hose and
engines, and a crowd of spectators and passers-by. A drawing of the
'Pantheon the Morning after the Fire' was exhibited in the Academy
of 1792. So, at the age of seventeen, while intent now, as for years
to come, on the work of other painters, Turner had begun the direct
study of life, of vivid realities. In the 'Hereford and Worcester'
Sketch-Book, 1792-93, there are 'Two Sketches near Malvern.' Beneath
the second, showing a roadway with foreground trees, the following is
inscribed in his own handwriting:--'The distance last with the sky
a lovely tint of Blue Lake and Indian--more as it approaches.' He
probably knew exactly what he meant. And no doubt the following comment
on the back of a water-colour of a 'Tree and Tower' was all he needed
to impress on his mind the effect of what he had seen:--
'In the shadow the Stones the same. Some Umber and S. Green--the
broken part umber and Bister, the distance part a Blue Green Sap and
B.'
By the year 1795, when he was twenty years of age, Turner was quite
a successful young man. His drawings were hung at the Royal Academy,
he sold them readily, and he had been commissioned by the _Copper
Plate Magazine_ to make a series of water-colours for engraving at
two guineas apiece. In one of the volumes of that publication he is
alluded to as 'The ingenius Mr. Turner.' Moreover, the public press
had begun to notice the work of 'the ingenius Mr. Turner.' Here is a
complimentary contemporary criticism:--
'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.'
'Christchurch Gate' was one of five drawings he sent to the Academy of
1794. In 1795, 'W. Turner, Hand Court, 26 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden,'
exhibited eight drawings.
It will be seen from the above extracts from the _Inventory_ how early
Turner became a traveller. He was a traveller almost to the end of
his life, and, whatever else he forgot, he never left his sketch-book
at home. 'No day without a note of Nature' might almost have been
his motto. His sketch-books are the guides to his travels, and when
I turn the pages and follow the wanderings of this unresting man of
genius, there rises before me, as a companion to the sketch-books, the
map that Mr. Huish compiled of Turner's tours through Great Britain.
The lines of his tracks cover the map, those tracks along which he
walked, or coached, or rode, and in their appointed places are marked
the sixty-six castles, the twenty-seven abbeys, and the fourteen
cathedrals that he drew. Some day, when I have leisure, I think I will
make similar maps of his tours through France, Italy and Switzerland.
He would walk his twenty miles a day with his baggage tied in a big
handkerchief, his umbrella in his hand, and often his fishing-rod. But
the clearest vision of him I have is that day in 1792, when, at the
age of seventeen, he started off on his first tour in Wales, on a pony
lent him by his friend Mr. Narraway. To be seventeen, to be conscious
of great powers, all the wide world and the wide future opening, and a
good little pony as companion. Has life anything better to offer than
that?
In the 'South Wales' Sketch-Book of 1795, among the 'Order'd Drawings,'
a list of which he has inscribed on one of the pages, is 'Newport
Castle--Mr. Kershaw.' No doubt this is the 'Newport' now in the Salting
Collection at the British Museum, one of the most accomplished of his
early drawings, pleasant in colour and bold in mass.
CHAPTER VIII
1800: AGED TWENTY-FIVE
HIS FIRST OIL PICTURES AND EXTRACTS FROM HIS SKETCH-BOOKS
Five more years have passed. Turner has made his North of England
tour about which Ruskin wrote so eloquently--and so unconvincingly.
Cosmo Monkhouse, while reproving Ruskin for the partial untruth of his
beautiful prose, says of that 1797 journey:--
'The effect upon Turner of the fells and vales of Yorkshire and
Cumberland seems to have been much the same as that of Scotland upon
Landseer: it braced all his powers, developed manhood of art, turned
him from a toilsome student into a triumphant master.'
Turner was not yet a triumphant master. He had progressed towards
triumph in water-colour, shown in the spacious, harmonious, and
atmospheric rendering of 'Derwentwater, with the Falls of Lodore,'
and the very beautiful 'Study for a Picture of Norham Castle'--rising
golden rocks and rosy sky reflected in the rosy water, one of two early
drawings of this subject, displayed in the new Turner Gallery, and
reproduced in these pages: but oil was still beyond him. He had not
mastered the difficulties of that medium; he could do no better than
the dark and dispiriting 'Morning on the Coniston Fells, Cumberland,'
and the still darker 'Buttermere Lake,' that for years has been
banished to a provincial gallery. The young chief had advanced; he had
been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy; he had removed from
dingy Hand Court to decorous Harley Street; and he was about to make
the acquaintance of Mr. Walter Fawkes, the squire of Farnley Hall,
near Leeds, which was to mean so much to him; but he was not yet a
triumphant master. Only in his water-colours has he begun to show
glimmerings of his golden visions. In oil he is studying detail rather
than light; he is pondering over masses looming in dim airless spaces;
he has not even yet begun to see the ethereal manifestations of his
maturity.
No doubt he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1799 for
the remarkable water-colours that he exhibited in that and in the
previous year, which included the powerful sunset-glowing 'Warkworth
Castle' now at South Kensington; the gloomy and magnificent 'Kirkstall
Abbey' in the Soane Museum, and the 'Norham Castle' with the golden
rocks and the rosy sky of dawn.
Norham Castle was Turner's mascot. He painted that picturesque ruin
again and again; it appears in the _Liber Studiorum_ and in _The Rivers
of England_ series, and 'Norham Castle' is the subject of two of the
'unfinished oils,' disembodied spirits of loveliness, that caused such
a sensation when they were exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1906.
In later life, when Turner was travelling with Cadell, the Edinburgh
bookseller, making sketches for _Provincial Antiquities_, the artist
suddenly raised his hat to the ruins and made them a low bow.
'What are you up to now?' asked Cadell.
'Oh,' was Turner's reply, 'I made a drawing of Norham Castle several
years since. It took, and from that day to this I have had as much to
do as my hands could execute.'
Perhaps the interest of this period for students are certain early
oil paintings, showing the germs, so meagre of promise, from which
his magnificent life-work arose. The small 'Moonlight, a study at
Millbank,' exhibited in 1797, is now so dark that the picture seems
to be encompassed in a perpetual fog, dominated by a round wafery,
whitey-yellow moon; the sprawling 'Morning on the Coniston Fells' of
1798; the 'Caernarvon Castle' of 1800, silhouetted against a cloudy
sky, so small and unimposing, that, remembering what Turner became,
one has for it a sentimental affection; and the dark, disappearing
'Dolbadern Castle' that hangs in the Diploma Gallery in Burlington
House. It was exhibited in 1800; but as Turner was not elected a full
Royal Academician until 1802, this can hardly be his Diploma picture.
The 'Tenth Plague of Egypt,' exhibited in 1802, has been honoured by a
place on the line in the new Turner Gallery at Millbank.
Thomas Green, of Ipswich, is known to fame--or perhaps I should say to
the present writer--for the inscription in his diary of the following
brief criticism of Turner's oil picture, exhibited in the Royal Academy
of 1797, called 'Fishermen Coming Ashore at Sunset, Previous to a Gale
':--
_'June 2nd,_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.'
Dayes, an architectural draughtsman, the master of Girtin, said of
Turner:--
'The way he acquired his professional powers was by borrowing where he
could a drawing or picture to copy from, or by making a sketch of any
one in the exhibition early in the morning and finishing it at home.'
Another contemporary remarked of Turner, 'He must be loved for his
works, for his person is not striking or his conversation brilliant';
a third described him as 'eccentric, but kind and amusing.' Blake,
who was one of his pupils, complained of being left quite alone, and
Thornbury states that he was too reserved and tongue-tied to be able
to teach what he knew, even if he wished to disclose his hard-earned
secrets. Turner never disclosed any of his secrets. What he knew he
kept.
The _Inventory_ from 1795 to 1800 fills nearly eighty pages of minute
records of his sketching tours. On one of the leaves of the 'South
Wales' Sketch-Book, dated 1795, I find this, but, with the exception of
the words 'Walls x White Lyon Inn,' not in his own handwriting:--
'To Tenby, 20 miles. Walls x White Lyon Inn. Before you visit Tenby
view the Castles at Llanstephen and Laugharn (Larn as it is called).
Llanstephen Castle stands at the entrance of the River Towy. At Tenby
view the cliffs, caverns, rocks, islands, etc., etc.'
The 'Studies near Brighton' Sketch-Book (1796) contains a drawing of
pigs and a donkey with this note by Ruskin:--
'Both wonderful, quite beyond telling. There is an etching of
Rembrandt's which approaches the upper study, but by no means equals
it. Examine it for a quarter of an hour through a magnifying-glass,
and you will see something of what it is.'
When Ruskin praised, he--praised.
In another Sketch-Book of this period there is a copy by Turner of
Wilson's 'Landscape with Figures'; and in 1797 we find a book full of
Wilson copies, and labelled on the back by Turner himself, 'Studies for
Pictures. Copies of Wilson.' In the 'Swans' Sketch-Book (1798) Turner
has noted on the inside cover in ink a
'Receipt for making an Efficable (?) ointment for Cut ...'
The details of the recipe are confusedly given. On the flyleaf are
several scraps of verse, probably his own. One of them runs:--
'Tell me Babbling Echo why,
Babbling Echo tell me why,
You return me sigh for sigh;
When I of slighted love complain
You delight to Mock my Pain.'
On the back of a drawing of 'Somerset House' (?) is this (I copy the
words just as he wrote them):--
Learn. Substantives
No Comparison but by
Adjectives, as, good bonne
bad, Beau, fine Positive
Plus Beau finer Comparative
le Plus Beau Superlitive of
Finer.
Masculine Le
White Blanc Positive
Whiter Plus Blanc Comparative
Whitest Le Plus Blanc Superlitive.'
Later, in the 'Dolbadern' Sketch-Book, he has copied out a list of
French pronouns and their translations. There is something pathetic in
these attempts of Turner to make up for his lack of education.
The 'Babbling Echo' poem suggests that there may be truth in the early
love-story of which some of his biographers make much. That may or may
not have soured him; it may or may not have been the reason why he
remained a bachelor. I do not think that Turner ever thought seriously
about matrimony. His art was his mistress, and to his art to his dying
day he was loyal, to the sacrifice of everything else. And he was
loyal in his way--or shall I say faithful in his way--to Hannah Danby,
who entered his service in 1800 or 1801, a girl of sixteen; who was
housekeeper in Queen Anne Street through his long life; and who, in the
end, when he had done all his great work, found him dying in hiding
as Mr. Booth, 'husband' of Mrs. Booth, in the little house at Chelsea
overlooking the river.
CHAPTER IX
1802: AGED TWENTY-SEVEN
HE EXHIBITS GRANDILOQUENT 'JASON' AND A SIMPLE 'VIEW ON CLAPHAM COMMON'
Sometimes in early life Turner, one might say almost by chance,
prefigures the golden visions of his maturity, as in 'Conway Castle,'
in the possession of the Duke of Westminster, which dates from about
this time. The foreground is awkward, and strewn with meaningless
litter; but the castle stands up magnificently against the blue sky,
darkening to orange at the horizon, and over all is a ripe golden
glow. You see this picture across the gallery, as at the Japan-British
exhibition, where it was shown. It calls: you are held by the dawning
magnificence of Turner at twenty-seven; you realise that the magician
has begun to work his spell.
The sketch-books of 1801 and 1802 are numerous and varied, showing
his travels at home and abroad: the itinerary of his first tour on
the Continent; the 'Calais Pier' Sketch-Book, with such drawings as
'Group of Figures on Pier watching Fishing-Boats at Sea,' one of the
many studies he made for his great picture of 'Calais Pier'; and the
curious and interesting 'Studies in the Louvre' Sketch-Book, in which
we find this indefatigable young man of twenty-seven not only sitting
at the feet of, but metaphorically throwing himself into the arms of,
the Old Masters. He makes copies of many pictures, such as Titian's
'Entombment,' 'Mars and Venus' by Domenichino, Rembrandt's 'Good
Samaritan,' and to some of the copies he appends long descriptive
criticisms that often elude our efforts to find their meaning.
His comment on 'The Deluge' by Nicholas Poussin begins:--'
The colour of this picture impresses the subject more than the
incidents, which are by no means fortunate either to place, position,
or colour, as they are separate spots untoned by the ... (? dark)
colour that pervades the whole.'
And here is his confused criticism of Rubens's 'Landscape with a
Rainbow':--
'The Rainbow appears to me the most to be considered as a picture, not
but this as well as the rest of his landscapes is defective as light
and the ... (? profusion) of nature. The woman in blue strikes the
eye and prevents it straying to the confused and ill-judged lines,
but as to the figure (? figures) in Mid, which is light ... (? lit
from) the opposite side, a proof that he wanted light on that side and
either chose to commit an error than continue the light by means of
the ground or (? to) where the sky is placed. Then it is lead by the
yellow within the trees to the sky and thence to the Bow, which is
hard and horny by the use of the vivid Blue in the distance, which is
another instance of his distorting what he was ignorant of--natural
effect.'
Among the pictures Turner exhibited this year are 'Jason in Search of
the Golden Fleece,' the earliest of his dragon pictures, that sometimes
seem rather grand, but usually merely grandiloquent. It was probably
inspired by Salvator Rosa. Turner referred to 'Jason' in later years as
'an old favourite with some,' and Ruskin thought 'Jason' showed 'high
imaginative faculty.' How Ruskin studied Turner! Listen to this from
_Modern Painters--_:
'In very sunny days a keen-eyed spectator may discern, even where the
picture hangs now, something in the middle of it like the arch of an
ill-built drain. This is a coil of the dragon beginning to unroll
himself.'
'Jason' is now well shown at the new Turner Gallery, but I, for one,
infinitely prefer the bold study for this composition, hanging in an
adjoining room. Sketch-Book LXI. is called the 'Jason' Sketch-Book.
To this period of his bolder experiments in oil belong such breezy
works as 'Dutch Boats in a Gale' at Bridgewater House, and 'Fishing
Boats in a Stiff Breeze,' both done in emulation of Van de Velde.
Turner said that seeing a fine Van de Velde in a shop-window had made
him a sea-painter.
In a letter from Andrew Caldwell to Bishop Percy, dated 14th June 1802,
Turner is spoken of 'as beating Loutherbourg and every other artist all
to nothing.'
It was not difficult for Turner to beat Van de Velde and de
Loutherbourg all to nothing. We think so now, they thought so then, if
Andrew Caldwell expressed the general opinion.
'A new artist has started up--one Turner. He had before exhibited
stained drawings, but now paints landscapes in oil, beats Loutherbourg
and every other artist all to nothing. A painter of my acquaintance
and a good judge declares his painting is magic; that it is worth
every landscape painter's while to make a pilgrimage to see and study
his works. Loutherbourg, he used to think of so highly, appears now
mediocre.'
But even in those days of rivalry with the so-called classical
painters, Turner was already beginning to see for himself, and to
express what his eyes saw. The 'View on Clapham Common,' probably
painted in 1802, merely a study of sward and trees with men angling, is
personal and all himself, although Ruskin thought that 'the somewhat
affected rolling and loading of the colour in the sky is founded
altogether on Morland.'
To me it is like a brief personal and sincere utterance at a political
meeting where the speakers are all trying to say the effective thing
in the effective manner. Even such a doughty critic as Meier Graefe
recognises in this simple little picture a 'sincere surrender to the
object.'
At the Tate Gallery we may see Turner, painted by himself, in the year
that he took that walk on Clapham Common, a watchful, introspective
face as of a soul trying to see through the veil, the eyes estimating
and observant, the lips betokening something sensual, the other part of
Turner.
CHAPTER X
1803: AGED TWENTY-EIGHT
THE YEAR OF 'CALAIS PIER'
Of the pictures Turner sent to the Royal Academy of 1803, including a
'Holy Family' (he tried everything in turn), one work dominates the
group--the great, dark, studio-made 'Calais Pier,' which Turner, never
afraid of a long title, called 'Calais Pier with French Poissards
preparing for Sea, an English Packet arriving.' Neither Turner nor
anybody else ever saw such a scene in Nature, and one wonders what
Turner thought of this ambition of his youth years later when he
painted the pearly visions of the 'Yachting' and 'Whalers' series, or
such an attempt to express the marriage of light and water as 'Sunrise
with a Sea Monster.'
He painted 'Calais Pier' in his dark studio, with half his brain
mumbling instructions to the other half as to how Van de Velde and the
other brothers of the sea would have done it. He made the sketches
from Nature as we have seen; but he had not yet arrived at the
degree of knowledge enabling him to paint a picture without losing
the impulse of the sketch. But Turner had to build his foundations:
he knew that. He could never have painted 'A Ship Aground' in 1830,
unless he had painted 'Calais Pier' in 1803. We may see from the
'Calais Pier' Sketch-Book how minutely he acquainted himself with such
scenes in Nature. On leaf 58 is the following eloquent line in his own
handwriting:--' Our landing at Calais. Nearly swampt.'
Ruskin refers to 'Calais Pier 'as' the first picture which bears the
sign manual and the sign mental of Turner's colossal power.' He also
observes, quite rightly, that nobody is frightened and there is no
danger. And a child can see that it is untrue. Turner was never much
concerned with what we call 'truth.' The effect was his aim, not the
fact. The sky, except for the peep of blue, is black, the whole picture
is dark almost to blackness, but Ruskin sees the first indication of
colour, 'properly so called,' in the fish, and tells the following
story:--
'The engraver of one of his most important marine pictures told me,
not long ago, that one day Turner came into his room to examine the
progress of the plate, not having seen his own picture for several
months. It was one of his dark, early pictures, but in the foreground
was a little piece of luxury, a pearly fish wrought into lines like
those of an opal. He stood before the picture for some moments; then
laughed, and pointed joyously to the fish, "They say that Turner can't
colour!" and turned away.'
The casual wayfarer through the Turner Gallery sees only the
absurdities of 'Calais Pier,' sniggers, perhaps, at the old fisherman
in the boat who is shaking his half-filled bottle of brandy towards
the woman on the pier, the lady having kept the rest for herself. But
the artist who stands before 'Calais Pier' knows what knowledge and
force there is in this dark sea picture of Turner's youth.
Such modern sea painters as Moore, Olsson, and the Frenchman, Matisse,
have, in the beauty and truth of their realism, spoilt us for the old
sea pictures. But they contained something that we have lost. Mr. W.
L. Wyllie, A.R.A., in his book on Turner, says some fine and good
things about 'Calais Pier.' After remarking that in 'Calais Pier' the
light and shade is just that of Turner's studio in Harley Street; that
the inky clouds throw black shadows just as a table or a sofa would
in a room; that the pale blue sky is not reflected anywhere, either
in the tumbling water or on the tarry sides of the fishing-boats, he
continues:--
'And yet when we are back among the conventional black old pictures,
such as 'The Shipwreck,' the 'Spithead,' or even the impossible, gloomy
'Garden of the Hesperides,' we feel that, after all, the old Wizard
was a worker of wonders, and that he in his dark London room, with
little more than black, brown, and grey, could move us to awe, terror,
or wonder by the thousand-and-one secrets which he had at his fingers'
ends; but which we moderns in the struggle to be realistic may perhaps
have forgotten, or even, it may be, have never tried to learn.'
'Calais Pier,' says Thornbury, was the cause 'of one of the most
painful things 'that ever happened to any of Turner's engravers. Lupton
undertook to make a mezzotint of it, but he could not satisfy the
artist.' This is not the proportion of my picture,' said Turner, 'there
is some mistake here. These are perfect dolls' boats,' and so on. After
much loss of time and innumerable corrections, it was left unfinished.
Ruskin says that Turner got tired of his own composition; doubled the
height of the sails, pushed some of the boats further apart, and some
nearer together; introduced half a dozen more; and at last brought the
whole thing into irreparable confusion--in which it was left.
We shall never know to what degree Turner's pictures have blackened.
Burnet says that when the 'Festival upon the Opening of the Vintage of
Macon' was first painted, it was full of vivid greens and yellows. This
blackening of pictures should be an anxiety to all serious painters.
Ruskin really did a great service to Turner, perhaps even greater
than the publication of _Modern Painters_, when he rolled up the
'unfinished' oils and water-colours and deposited them in the cellars
of the National Gallery. Our new joy in Turner, the rush of admiration
and veneration that came when those golden visions were exhibited in
1906, could never have been had not they been protected from the light
for so many years: then, suddenly, to reveal their splendour.
PART THREE
1804-1810
FROM 'THE SHIPWRECK' TO AN EARLY GOLDEN VISION
CHAPTER XI
1804: AGED TWENTY-NINE
HE STUDIES AN ECLIPSE AND PAINTS THE SUNSET
Throughout his life Turner produced, apart from the water-colours for
the engravers, which number nearly nine hundred examples, two kinds
of work--the pictures done for fame, and those for his own delight--a
'Calais Pier,' and a 'Stonehenge at Sunset': a 'Jason' and a 'Norham
Castle.' It is hard to believe that the broad and simple water-colour,
'Stonehenge at Sunset,' with the magnificent sky, was done about the
same time as the 'Calais Pier,' but it was 'Calais Pier' that made
Turner known to the public.
Henceforth he was rarely in want of commissions from influential
patrons, including the Earls of Egremont, Essex, Lonsdale and
Yarborough, Sir John Leicester, Sir John Soane and others. He did
not always sell his oil pictures; indeed, as the years went on they
remained in increasing numbers on his hands; but that was partly his
own desire. Turner was always loath to part with his 'children.' The
bulk of his fortune was made out of the engravings.
Yes, Turner was now a successful man, but he was still, as always, a
student. The Sketch-Books, as I have said, reveal him better than reams
of commentary. Take, for example, the 'Eclipse' Sketch-Book of 1804,
showing how he worked and how he strove to understand phenomena, even
if the wonders studied did not apply actually to the work at hand. The
'Eclipse' Sketch-Book is brief. Here are the descriptions of the six
'Eclipse' drawings he made in black and white chalk:--'
Commencement of Eclipse.
More than half of sun eclipsed.
Sun nearly three-quarters eclipsed.
Sun nearly lost among clouds.
Three-quarters of sun in eclipse.
Landscape with clouds, no sun.'
I shall always retain that mental picture of Turner alone, somewhere,
studying an eclipse; and also the picture of him, alone, at Stonehenge,
studying that solitude, and making of it a water-colour that prefigured
the freedom and sensitiveness of his later work. I see it now, the
brown, simple foreground, the ancient stones erected to record the
appearances of the sun, rising gauntly in the middle distance, and
half the drawing tingling with a sunset sky. Was there ever a painter
so obsessed by sunsets? But towards the end of his life it was
sunrises--always sunrises.
Moonlights, sunsets, sunrises! In them Turner sought light and found
hope.
CHAPTER XII
1805: AGED THIRTY
HE PAINTS 'THE SHIPWRECK' FOR FAME, AND BEGINS A SERIES OF 'DELIGHT
STUDIES' FOR LOVE
In the chronology of Turner's art life, the year 1805 may be summed up
in the words 'He painted "The Shipwreck."' That, probably, was the art
event of the year to him, but I like to think of 1805 as the beginning
of the period when his passion for colour and atmosphere began to find
expression in 'delight studies,' as they may be called. I borrow the
pretty word from Ruskin, who called some of the most beautiful of the
water-colours 'delight drawings.' He also called some of the large
pseudo-classical works 'nonsense pictures.'
Between 1805 and 1810 Turner painted the twelve landscapes in oil on
thin veneer, found in one of the store-rooms of the National Gallery,
wrapped in brown paper, first exhibited in 1908, and now hanging in
Room XIII. of the new Turner Gallery. They formed, with forty early
water-colours, the second instalment of rediscovered Turners. How well
I remember that day! How well I recall the delight of seeing for the
first time the 'Windsor Castle from the River,' and the 'Tree-tops
and Sky.' These were his between-whiles work; impulses of observation
thrown off while he was producing his mammoth pictures, the magnificent
as well as the 'nonsense' ones, painted to astonish the public,
and to show his superiority over all rivals alive or dead. But the
essential Turner was all the while expressing himself in such 'delight
studies'--'unfinished,' merely because he had said all he had to say,
scanned frowningly by his judges and deposited in the cellars of the
National Gallery as not of sufficient importance for exhibition.
And 'The Shipwreck,' which was the first of Turner's oil-pictures to
be engraved in mezzotint, what of 'The Shipwreck'? Surely there is no
need to describe it again. Dark, powerful, splendidly impossible, it
is in the same category as 'Calais Pier.' Gaze at it and wonder, say
for the hundredth time, that the crowded boat in the centre could never
live for an instant in that terrific sea, that clouds do not throw such
inky shadows, and so on, and so on. Ruskin found in it 'delicate and
mysterious grey, instead of the ponderous black'; he also remarked,
which is obvious, that 'nobody is wet.' True, Turner did not mean
to be realistic when he painted 'The Shipwreck.' Perhaps it needs a
painter, who has struggled with sea subjects, to perceive beneath the
absurdities the strength and knowledge that are the foundation of this
work. Mr. Wyllie wrote:--
'I am never tired of looking at this wonderful composition, and the
more I study it the more I find to wonder at and admire. The masterly
way in which knowledge and artifice are woven together, the endless
modulations of light merging into shadow, the variety of the tones,
each little fleck of foam or swirl of inky water seeming to play its
part in the building up of the harmonious whole. The swing and action
of the figures, too, are also among the marvels of this sombre record
of man's battle with the might of the remorseless elements.'
Evidently 'The Shipwreck' did not please Sir John Fleming Leicester,
afterwards Lord de Tabley, its purchaser in 1806 from Turner's studio
where it was exhibited, as much as it pleases Mr. Wyllie to-day. Lord
de Tabley exchanged his purchase for 'The Sun Rising Through Vapour,'
and 'The Shipwreck' went to form one of the mass of hoarded pictures in
Queen Anne Street, that eventually became the property of the nation,
with the 'delight studies,' the nineteen thousand 'pieces of paper,'
and the rest, making altogether the largest amount of work produced,
single-handed, by any artist since the world began.
CHAPTER XIII
1806: AGED THIRTY-ONE
THE CHAOS OF THE 'HESPERIDES' AND THE PEACE OF 'ABINGDON'
Perhaps it is such pictures as 'The Goddess of Discord choosing the
Apple by Contention in the Garden of the Hesperides' that folk have in
mind when they say that they neither like nor understand Turner. And
do the pages that Ruskin has devoted to the 'wonderful Hesperides,'
that futilely magnificent attempt, hardly worth attempting, to outvie
Nicolas Poussin, entice the observer to any closer observation of
'The Garden of the Hesperides'? I think not. We are uninterested in
Turner's dragons, this or any other. What does it matter if 'the mighty
articulations of his body' do roll 'in great iron waves, a cataract of
coiling strength and crashing armour, down among the mountain rents'?
Yet how often, how very often, the wonderful mind of Ruskin pierced to
the truth. What could be better said than this: 'Nearly all the faults
of the picture are owing to Poussin; and all its virtues to the Alps.'
Yes, Turner is here soaring to the mountain-tops, but he is also on
his high earthly horse. Yet, to look long enough at the 'Hesperides'
is to be lost in admiration of those mad mountain forms, and to see
in them the giant workings of the magician's mind. Turner's 'Ode to
Discord,' inspired by the idea of the 'Hesperides,' inspires us less, I
am afraid, than does the picture. Here are two of the lines:--
'The guardian dragon, in himself a host,
Awed by thy presence, slumbered at his post.'
'Venus and Adonis,' which he painted about this time in emulation of
Titian, and which was not exhibited until 1849, is simpler, but let
it pass. Turner had his golden visions, now as afterwards, but he is
too engrossed in competitive fury to rise often to the simplicity
of expressing simply his wonder at the beauty of the world. In the
'Hesperides' Sketch-Book there is a study for the famous and absurd
Dragon, and on the same page is a pen and ink suggestion for the
beautiful picture of 'Abingdon' exhibited in 1810. That was Turner: to
be busy at the same moment with the theatricality of the Dragon and
the peace of Abingdon. But his mind was ever restless, ever pushing
forward. In this year the _Liber Studiorum_ was also engaging his
attention, and other things, too, that have become interesting because
he wrote them down. On page 1 of the 'Hesperides' Sketch-Book there is
a pencil drawing of a building with trees, and written in the corner
are these words--his momentary needs:--
'Varnish
Razor
Blue Black
Bt. Sienna
Fishing Rod. Flies,
Pallet knife
Shoes.'
Turner as Fisherman. A clever writer might compose an essay on that
subject, garnering his material from the Sketch-Books.
CHAPTER XIV
1807: AGED THIRTY-TWO
HE BEGINS THE 'LIBER STUDIORUM' AND EXHIBITS 'THE SUN RISING THROUGH
VAPOUR'
On January 20, 1807, the first part, containing five plates, of the
_Liber Studiorum_ was published. It would need a book to give an
adequate account of the history of this great work of Turner's, begun
in emulation of Claude Lorrain's _Liber Veritatis_ and continued
until 1819, when, being a financial failure, it ceased to appear. The
original scheme of the _Liber_ was for one hundred plates, of which
seventy only and the frontispiece were published, leaving thirty to
make up the number, twenty of which were in various stages of etching
and mezzotinting when the work ceased in 1819. These have passed
through many vicissitudes. Mr. Frank Short has in recent years brought
his accomplished art to the engraving of sixteen of them.
Turner made the first drawings for the _Liber_ when on a visit to Mr.
Wells at Knoekholt in Kent, who persuaded him to undertake the work.
He required 'much and long-continued spurring.' At last, 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.' Then he
began, and the first five subjects 'were completed and arranged for
publication.'
Mr. W. G. Rawlinson's volume is the authority on the _Liber_,
wherein Turner sought to 'display in engraved form the whole range
of his powers, and to rival on their own ground his predecessors
--Claude, Poussin, Rembrandt, Backhuysen, Cuyp, Van de Velde, Wilson,
Gainsborough, as well as the painters of his day.' Turner made a
hundred or more sepia drawings for the work, eighty-four of which are
in the Turner Collection at Millbank. He etched with his own hand
the foundation outline on the copper plate, which was then handed
over to the professional engravers in mezzotint, who worked under his
supervision, and a hard taskmaster he proved.
To one who is enamoured of the lovely and luminous colour of Turner in
his supreme period, it is a fresh revelation of his power to see a room
hung with first states--rich, velvety, profound--of the _Liber_, and to
find how great is his spell even in monochrome. I know two such rooms,
and never does the spell fail to work. The original sepia drawings
have not this power in equal degree with the engravings, which simply
shows how well Turner knew his business. On this subject Ruskin wrote
the following letter to a correspondent, which was published in the
_Literary Gazette_ for November 13, 1858:--
'You object that the drawings for the _Liber Studiorum_ are not
included in my catalogue. They are not so, because I did not consider
them as, in a true sense, drawings at all. They are merely washes of
colour, laid roughly to guide the mezzotint engraver in his first
process; the drawing properly so-called, was all put in by Turner
when he etched the plates, or superadded by repeated touchings on the
proofs. These brown guides, for they are nothing more, are entirely
unlike the painter's usual work, and in every way inferior to it; so
that students wishing to understand the composition of the _Liber_ must
always work from the plates, and not from these first indications of
purpose.'
Little did Turner care that Claude's rough sketches in the _Liber
Veritatis_ were mere memoranda of his pictures for the purpose of
identification. Turner put his whole heart and soul into the _Liber_,
and also into the business arrangements with the engravers, and with
the public; but that was the heart and soul of a tradesman, not of an
artist. Yet the artist is very evident in his corrections on the proofs
of the _Liber_, as of all his engraved work. His way may have been
rough, ungenerous and grasping, but his corrections were always towards
perfection.
Men love the _Liber_, men whom the modern movement in art does not
intrigue. One I know counts 'The Straw Yard' the most desirable of
his possessions; another has consoled himself for the rigours of life
by acquiring 'Norham Castle,' 'Raglan Castle,' 'Calais Harbour,'
'Aesacus and Hesperie' (engraved by Turner himself), 'The Source of the
Arveron,' 'Ben Arthur,' 'The Peat Bog,' 'The Junction of the Wye and
the Severn,' and some of the plates that Mr. Frank Short has engraved
so beautifully.
At Christie's in the spring of 1910 I saw a private collector acquire
a complete set of the seventy-one published plates, all in the first
state except the 'Aesacus and Hesperie.' He paid but three hundred and
seventy guineas for the set, as the margins were hidden by mounts and
frames. Had the engravings been in portfolios, plain to the eye as
whole and uncut, he would probably have had to pay double that price.
'The meaning of the entire book,' says Ruskin, 'was symbolised in the
frontispiece, which he engraved with his own hand--"Tyre at Sunset,
with the Rape of Europa," indicating the symbolism of the decay of
Europe by that of Tyre, its beauty passing away into terror and
judgment (Europa being the mother of Minos and Rhadamathus).'
Turner's advertisement was simpler:--
'Intended as an illustration of Landscape Composition, classed as
follows: Historical, Mountainous, Pastoral, Marine, and Architectural.'
The letters on the seventy published plates indicate the class to which
they belong. Thus E. P. on the 'Woman with Tambourine,' one of the five
forming the first part, signifies Elegant Pastoral. The proportions
were as follows, Pastoral 14, Elegant Pastoral 14, Mountainous 12,
Architectural 11, Marine 11, Historical 8.
This year, in spite of the anxiety and interest of issuing the _Liber_,
Turner had the energy to tilt at Wilkie.
In the Academy of the previous year high praise had been awarded to
Wilkie's 'Politicians'; so in 1807 Turner produced 'The Blacksmith's
Shop' of which the original title was 'A Country Blacksmith Disputing
upon the price of Iron and the price charged to the Butcher for Shoeing
his Pony.' Turner never lost faith in his own works. Twenty years later
he repurchased 'The Blacksmith' at Lord de Tabley's sale.
The other picture of this year was that glowing and characteristic
Turner, with the sun nearly in the centre of the picture, where Claude
was wont to place it, now called 'The Sun Rising Through Vapour,' but
formerly catalogued as 'The Sun Rising in a Mist,' one of the first
of his large pictures of light and atmosphere. Some of his gold he
outspreads for us, but he is still under the domination of the crowded,
littered foreground. 'It is curious,' says Mr. Wyllie, 'that in this
picture, a work that the painter thought worthy to be bequeathed to the
nation, the figures of the fishermen should be taken almost exactly
from a picture by Teniers, and the men-of-war are the snub-nosed
high-pooped ships of Van de Velde's time, with sprit topmast at the
bowsprit end and lateen mizzens.'
This picture and the 'Dido Building Carthage,' exhibited in 1815, were
bequeathed by Turner to the nation on the condition that they should
be hung between Claude's 'Marriage Festival of Isaac and Rebecca' and
the 'Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba.' These four noble works are
now the feature of the small Turner room at the National Gallery which
represents the painter since the removal of the bulk of his pictures
to the Tate Gallery. The Claudes hang between the Turners, the precise
condition contained in the will having been cancelled by order of the
Court of Chancery. I do not think, as I have already stated, that
Claude suffers from the challenge.
Turner to-day, in the year of his triumph, has those who adore him; but
he also has his Laodiceans, and even those who dislike his work and
confess their dislike. So it has always been. Morris Moore, when asked
by the Lord Elcho of his day if he considered Turner a distinguished
artist, answered:--' No! Turner's early works certainly indicate a
good feeling for colour, but he is absurdly overrated. The hanging of
two such pictures as "The Sun Rising Through Vapour," and the "Dido
Building Carthage" in the immediate vicinity of the finest Claudes and
other noble works of the National Gallery is a disgrace to the country.'
The country has survived many disgraces, and we can manage to survive
this one. All great men have had their detractors, and sometimes the
detractor who comes to curse remains to bless. Such was the case of the
Japanese artist, Yoshio Markino. On page 140 of his book, _A Japanese
Artist in London_, he says:--
'Although I am myself such a great admirer of Turner now, I was not
so until Hara [a compatriot] came. In fact, I hated Turner. Just a
few days after Hara arrived in London, he and I went to the National
Gallery and sat down on the seats in the Turner room.
'I said to him, "The greatest heroes in this world were generally the
greatest deceivers. Don't you think Turner was one of the greatest
heroes and deceivers?"
'"Why?"
'"Why! come and look at this picture of 'Trafalgar Battle.' Look at
these figures! Look at Nelson! What an awful drawing! I think even a
ten years' old child could draw better figures. Oh, Turner was such a
speculator!"'
Hara made no reply. Hara waited. Later he conducted Markino to the
Tate Gallery, where the 'unfinished Turners' were exposed. Markino
continues:--
'I watched one picture more than twenty minutes, then I went back to
some certain pictures again. Those wonderful atmospheric effects! The
colours were breathing! The tones were moving! I had quite forgotten
myself until the closing time came.'
Later he returned to the National Gallery and the Turners 'looked to
him quite different.' He became a Turnerite. On page 144 he announces
that his blind eyes are opened, that he can now see 'the wonderful arts
of Turner.'
CHAPTER XV
1808: AGED THIRTY-THREE
HE WRITES P.P. AFTER HIS NAME AND PAINTS IN A GARDEN AT HAMMERSMITH
Yoshio Markino is not alone in his adverse criticism of the Battle of
Trafalgar, as seen from the mizzen starboard shrouds of the _Victory_,
known as 'The Death of Nelson, October 21st, 1805, at the Battle of
Trafalgar on board the _Victory._ We all admire this work for the
splendour of the decorative scheme, the gathered masses of golden
brown, and the towering fantasy of the sails. To me it is the most
attractive of the earlier pictures. I never look at the details; but
those details aroused adverse criticism while the picture was being
painted, and after exhibition. Turner cared little about accuracy;
he was an artist, not an illustrator. When he was asked to paint the
'Trafalgar' picture as a companion to 'A Sea Fight' by de Loutherbourg,
he had not the slightest intention of producing an accurate
representation of the death of Nelson. He saw the scene decoratively,
and decoratively he painted it.
Some of the contemporary criticisms are amusing. Nelson's Flag-Captain
pronounced it to be 'more like a street scene than a battle, and the
ships more like houses than men-of-war.' A Greenwich pensioner is said
to have exclaimed: 'I can't make English of it, Sir. It wants altering
altogether.' Another remarked: 'What a Trafalgar! It is a d----d deal
more like a brickfield.'
Turner was instructed daily, while painting 'The Death of Nelson,' by
the naval men about the court, and it is said that on eleven successive
occasions he altered the rigging to suit the fancy of eleven successive
naval visitors. Turner treated their criticisms as jokes: they amused
him. He knew precisely what he meant to do. 'The Death of Nelson' was
shown at the British Institution; later he painted another version,
which is now at Greenwich Hospital.
To the Royal Academy he sent 'The Unpaid Bill, or the Doctor reproving
his Son's Prodigality.' I have not seen this picture, which suggests
Wilkie, and is probably not worth a journey of discovery.
In the Royal Academy catalogue of this year, 1808, we find for the
first time the words, Professor of Perspective, after Turner's name,
and in addition to the address 64 Harley Street, that of West End,
Upper Mall, Hammersmith.
Turner was proud of his Professorship; this he showed by often
affixing, in his correspondence, the letters P.P. to his name.
As might be expected, his lectures on Perspective were unlike the
lectures of any other professor. Thornbury remarks: 'When Turner
lectured on perspective he was often at a loss to find words to express
the views he wished to communicate, but when the spirit did stir within
him, and he could find utterance to his thoughts, he soared as high
above the common order of lecturers as he did in the regions of art.'
Thornbury, whose stories and comments one always quotes with
trepidation, his inaccuracies being so consistent, continues with the
following humorous paragraph:--
'Turner's want of expression rendered him almost useless as a
Professor of Perspective, though he took great pains to prepare the
most learned diagrams. He confessed that he knew much more of the
art than he could explain. His sketch-books contain many drawings
evidently made in preparation for these lectures. On one memorable
occasion the hour had come for his lecture. The Professor arrived--the
buzz of the students subsided. The Professor mounts his desk--every
eye is fixed on him and on his blackboard. But the Professor is
uneasy--he is perturbed. He dives now into one pocket--now into the
other--no! Now he begins, but what he says is 'Gentlemen, I've
been and left my lecture in the hackney-coach.' I have no doubt the
Professor would rather have painted five epical pictures than have had
to deliver one lecture on Perspective.'
Among the Turner relics lent by Mr. C. Mallord Turner to the Tate
Gallery are the manuscripts of the Lectures on Perspective. Mr. D. C.
MCColl, in an article on 'Turner's Lectures at the Academy' which he
contributed to the _Burlington Magazine_, said:--
'I am not yet in a position to say whether the labour of disentangling
that part of the text which deals with the ordinary problems of
perspective, would be repaid by its result; but the series concludes
with a review of landscape painting by Turner, which certainly
deserved to be printed. However halting in expression, Turner's word
upon Dürer, Holbein, Titian, Rubens, Claude, Wilson and Gainsborough
should not be lost. The lecture also on 'Reflexes'--_i.e._ reflections
of light and colour--and incidental passages in the other lectures
should be put on record.'
Turner's word, halting in expression, upon many great painters,
together with his own aesthetic searchings, may be found, as the reader
knows, in the _Inventory._ In the 'Tabley' Sketch-Book, dated 1808,
there is a long involved passage on reflections, beginning 'Reflections
not only appear darker but longer than the object which occasions them,
and if the ripple or hollow of the wave is long enough to make an angle
with the eye, it is on these undulating lines that the object reflects,
and transmits all perpendicular objects lower towards the spectator....'
Turner's 'Windmill and Lock' in the collection of Sir Frederick Cook at
Richmond is clearly based on a close study of Rembrandt's 'Mill.' Pages
17 and 19 of the 'Greenwich' Sketch-Book contain the following 'halting
in expression' notes:--
'... Rembrandt is a strong instance of caution as to reflected light
and Correggio (?) to refracted light. Two instances of the strongest
class may be found in the celebrated pictures of the Mill and La
Notte. The Mill has but one light, that is to say, upon the mill, for
the sky altho' a greater body or mass if reduced to black and white
yet is not perceptible of sun's ray by any indication of form, but
rather a glow of approaching light, but the sails of the mill are
loaded with the ... ray, while all below is lost in ... gloom without
the value of Reflected light which even the sky commands, and the ray
upon the mill insists upon, while the 1/2 gleam upon the water admits
the reflection of the sky. Ev ... twilight is all reflection but in
Rembrandt it is all darkness and gleam of light, etc'.
I turn with relief from Turner on Perspective and Reflected Light to
the thought of his pretty country retreat at West End, Upper Mall,
Hammersmith, whither he went, it is said, to be near de Loutherbourg,
'whose imaginative genius he much admired.'
'A friend' communicated to Thornbury the following glimpse of the life
at Hammersmith:--
'The garden, which ran down to the river, terminated in a summer-house;
and here, out in the open air, were painted some of his best pictures.
It was there that my father, who then resided at Kew, became first
acquainted with him; and expressing his surprise that Turner could
paint under such circumstances, he remarked that lights and room were
absurdities, and that a picture could be painted anywhere. His eyes
were remarkably strong. He would throw down his water-colour drawings
on the floor of the summer-house, requesting my father not to touch
them, as he could see them there, and they would be drying at the same
time.'
In that happy mood no doubt he painted the seventeen 'beginnings' of
pictures, exhibited for the first time in 1910 in Room XI. of the new
Turner Gallery--large beginnings of riparian and rural scenes, free
and decorative, that he no doubt exhibited in his own studio, inviting
patrons to commission 'finished' pictures from these delightful
suggestions.
He spent happy days making them, and in the garden at Hammersmith,
but it is probable that the important event of 1808 to Turner, ever
ambitious, ever reaching forward, ever clutching at fame, was the
privilege of writing the letters P.P. after his name.
CHAPTER XVI
1809: AGED THIRTY-FOUR
HE EXHIBITS THE GLOWING 'RIVER SCENE WITH CATTLE,' AND REFUSES TO SELL
'BLIGH SAND'
Turner was an experimentalist, a seeker. If we did not possess the
actual dates when most of his pictures were painted or exhibited, it
would be difficult to assign a year to many. Some are a recurrent
surprise and joy, standing out from their period, swift interpretations
of something seen in nature, evocations of colour or decorative
harmony. Consider his 'River Scene with Cattle' exhibited in his studio
in 1809. For a long time it hung apart from the other Turners at the
Tate Gallery, and it was always with a feeling of exhilaration that I
encountered the russet cattle standing by this golden river, golden
clouds and golden sand, and the two sailing barges gliding down the
wide estuary to the sea. The work is harmonious; nothing in it offends.
The children wading and playing on the shore are natural; the cattle
seen against the sky 'happen' as beasts do in nature, and the whole
picture lies bathed in a rich glow.
Equally pleasant to look upon is 'Bligh Sand,' beautiful still, but
what must it have been in its first freshness? It was becoming darker
in Thornbury's time, which he ascribes to Turner's use of the dangerous
sugar of lead. Although painted in 1809 'Bligh Sand' was not exhibited
at the Royal Academy until 1815. Sir George Beaumont wished to buy it
from the studio, but Turner, having a grudge against Constable's patron
for his lack of early appreciation of his works, refused to sell 'Bligh
Sand near Sheerness.' Years later, when the Turner Gallery in Queen
Anne Street fell into disorder and untidiness, this beautiful picture
was placed in front of a broken window and used as a draught protector.
The Turnerian cats were able to squeeze past it as they passed to and
from the studio.
'London from Greenwich,' a quiet, meditative Turner, was also painted
in 1809, and 'Spithead: Boat's Crew Recovering an Anchor,' also the
little panel called 'The Garreteer's Petition.' As nobody ever looks
at this stupid little picture, I may remark that it represents a poet
working in his attic at midnight, that on the walls of the attic are
pasted a plan of Parnassus and a table of fasts, and that the catalogue
contained these lines, manifestly Turner's, with the words 'long
sought' italicised, pathetically sincere coming from Turner:--
'Aid me, ye powers? O bid my thoughts to roll
In quick succession, animate my soul;
Descend my Muse, and every thought refine,
And finish well my long, my _long sought_ line.'
To this year belongs one of the 'Petworth' Sketch-Books with views of
the house and the park where he was to spend so many happy days. At
Petworth House and at Farnley Hall he was always welcome, and they are
still places of pilgrimage for Turnerians eager to see works which have
never left the walls for which they were painted.
Farnley Hall has been called Turner's shrine. Two of the modern
rooms are consecrated to him. 'One,' says Sir Walter Armstrong, 'is
hung round with drawings; in the other, three great oil-pictures
"Dordrecht," "Rembrandt's Daughter," and an unnamed "Sea Piece"
decorate the walls, while the tables groan under albums and solander
cases fitted with smaller things, and those studies of birds which so
moved the soul of Ruskin.'
1809 is also memorable as being the initial year of what Ruskin called
his 'Yorkshire period,' which continued with various developments
until about 1820. Ruskin, in his beautiful prose, describes the
characteristics of the Yorkshire drawings:--
'Of all his drawings, I think those of the Yorkshire series have the
most heart in them, the most affectionate, simple, unwearied serious
finishings of truth. There is in them little seeking after effect,
but a strong love of place; little exhibition of the artist's own
powers or peculiarities, but intense appreciation of the smallest
local minutiæ.... No alpine cloud could efface, no Italian sunshine
outshine the memories of the pleasant days of Rokeby and Bolton; and
many a simple promontory dim with southern olive, many a lone cliff
that stooped unnoticed over some alien wave, was recorded by him with
a love and delicate care that were the shadows of old thoughts and
long-lost delights, whose charm yet hung like morning mist above the
chanting waves of Wharfe and Greta.'
What was Turner like in appearance and dress about this period? Well,
the following description has been preserved:--
'The very moral of a master carpenter, with lobster-red face,
twinkling staring grey eyes, white tie, blue coat with brass buttons,
crab-shell turned up boots, large fluffy hat and enormous umbrella.'
A somewhat rough and rude description. His manners could be rude and
rough, too. A year or two later, Thomson of Duddingston invited him to
see his pictures. Turner came, and his companion was eager to hear what
the great landscape painter would say about his works. He surveyed them
carefully, but the only remark he made was: 'You beat me in frames.'
CHAPTER XVII
1810: AGED THIRTY-FIVE
A QUIET YEAR AND AN EARLY GOLDEN VISION
Enter an early golden vision.
The title in the catalogue is 'A Mountain Stream' and the official
description runs: 'The torrent winds swiftly round the base of a
rocky cliff surmounted by trees, and lashes itself into foam here and
there as it flows over boulders in the river bed.' I know not where
this attractive but somewhat hard golden vision was painted, but its
date is certainly about 1810. What a simplification of vision and of
title after such a medley as 'The Goddess of Discord choosing the
Apple of Contention in the Garden of the Hesperides'; how reposeful is
this unsophisticated statement of the seeing eye after the piled up
incidents of 'Calais Pier.'
It would seem that Turner was in a reflective peace-with-the-world mood
in this year, as indeed he had been since he painted the seventeen
large 'beginnings' of riparian and rural oil-pictures mentioned in
Chapter XV. To 1810 we may ascribe the placid 'Windsor' and the
pastoral 'Abingdon' which was sold to Mr. G. Hibbert, and re-purchased
by Turner at the Hibbert sale in 1829. It must have been an interesting
sight to watch Turner re-purchasing his sold pictures, and taking them
back to his cheerless gallery. In later years he owned three houses,
two in Harley Street and one in Queen Anne Street, communicating
mysteriously at the back, and leaving the corner building in other
hands. The houses are now pulled down, and the tablet commemorating his
residence is affixed to the new building of the Howard de Walden estate
office in Queen Anne Street. It may have been about this period that
Mrs. R---- and Mrs. H---- paid Turner the visit, an account of which
was communicated to Thornbury by Mr. Rose of Jersey:--
'Two ladies, Mrs. R---- and Mrs. H---- once paid him a visit in Harley
Street, an extremely rare (in fact, if not the only) occasion of
such an occurrence, for it must be known he was not fond of parties
prying, as he fancied, into the secrets of his _ménage._ On sending
in their names, after having ascertained that he was at home, they
were politely requested to walk in, and were shown into a large
sitting-room without a fire. This was in the depth of winter; and
lying about in various places were several cats without tails. In
a short time our talented friend made his appearance, asking the
ladies if they felt cold. The youngest replied in the negative; her
companion, more curious, wished she had stated otherwise, as she hoped
they might have been shown into his sanctum or studio. After a little
conversation he offered them wine and biscuits, which they partook
of for the novelty, such an event being almost unprecedented in his
house. One of the ladies bestowing some notice upon the cats, he was
induced to remark that he had seven, and that they came from the Isle
of Man.'
The Wreck of the _Minotaur_ on the Haak Sands' was a subject after his
own heart. I have not seen this sea-piece, which Mr. Wyllie describes
as the most 'splendid sea-picture that has ever been painted; the power
of the waves and the littleness of man have never been so magnificently
suggested.' That is high praise for a Turnerian sea-picture by a modern
painter of the sea.
Yes, a quiet year this seems to have been for Turner, marked by the
repose of the 'Abingdon' and the 'Windsor,' the stately pictures of
'Lowther Castle' at noon and evening, 'Petworth House, Dewy Morning,'
and that golden dream called 'A Mountain Stream,' to which probably
he gave no title, a little hard, a little tight, but an augury of the
subtle effects of light and vapour that were to float from his brush
when the chief had advanced to a complete realisation of his vision of
essential beauty.
PART FOUR
1811-1820
FROM A JOURNEY TO DEVONSHIRE TO HIS RETURN FROM ITALY
CHAPTER XVIII
1811: AGED THIRTY-SIX
'APOLLO KILLING THE PYTHON' AND A PICNIC
'The Python was a dragon which lived at Crissa, in the vicinity of
Delphi, and committed great havoc among cattle and the inhabitants. The
Pythian games there celebrated were established in commemoration of the
destruction of the Python by Apollo.' So runs the official description
in the catalogue appended to 'Apollo Killing the Python.' When it
was exhibited in 1811, Turner supplied six lines from the _Hymn of
Callimachus._ beginning:--
'Envenora'd by thy darts, the monster coil'd,
Portentous, horrible, and vast his snake-like form....'
'Mercury and Herse' was illumined by this couplet from
Ovid's _Metamorphoses_:--
'Close by the sacred walls in wide Munichio's plain,
The God well pleased beheld the virgin train!'
How tiresome these descriptions and tags of verse seem, and how
old-fashioned 'Apollo Killing the Python' looks, yet I have only to
gaze at it for five minutes to be hypnotised by its grandeur; but the
mood passes, and Ruskin's panegyric does not restore it, that succinct
panegyric--'This is one of the very noblest of all Turner's works, and
therefore I do not scruple to say, one of the noblest pictures in the
world.'
The pages of _Modern Painters_ roll on in magnificent and eloquent
periods on 'Apollo Killing the Python.' Certain of the passages one
knows by heart, few of them have anything to do with the art of Turner,
and some are untrue, such as--'He was without hope'; 'Turner painted
the labour of men, their sorrow and their death.' Often Ruskin's prose
leaves us breathless, almost crushed:--
'Fancy him [the dragon] moving, and the roaring of the ground under
his rings; the grinding down of the rocks by his toothed whorls;
the skeleton glacier of him in thunderous march, and the ashes of
the hills rising round him like smoke, and encompassing him like a
curtain.'
The quotation from Ovid and the theme of 'Apollo Killing the Python'
suggest that Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ was one of the few books that
Turner really studied and read through, probably again and again, as he
found most of his subjects for classical pictures in Ovid. Monkhouse
considers that with the exception of 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus,'
there is none greater than the 'Apollo Killing the Python.' That must
remain a matter of opinion. To me it seems that Ovid only confused
Turner's imagination. He needed no classical legend to paint such
masterpieces as 'Norham Castle at Sunrise,' 'The Evening Star,' 'The
Burial of Wilkie,' 'Rain, Steam and Speed,' 'The Snowstorm,' or the
later interpretations of Venice.
Let us turn from books, even from the classic _Metamorphoses_, to
nature, to Devonshire, where in this year, or thereabouts, Cyrus
Redding met him, to whom we owe delightful accounts of Turner in
holiday mood.
On one of these excursions Turner once actually gave a picnic 'in
excellent taste.' 'Our host,' says Redding, was 'agreeable but terse,
blunt, and almost epigrammatic at times. Never given to waste his
words, nor remarkably choice in their arrangement, they were always
in their right place and admirably effective.' An account has also
been preserved of a scene in an inn where they conversed until nearly
midnight, when Turner laid his head upon the table and was soon sound
asleep. They were up with the sun, and it was at that early hour that
Turner made his sketch for 'Crossing the Brook' exhibited in 1815.
Another excursion was by sea. The morning was squally, and the sea
rolled boisterously into the sound. Then they landed and--
'Turner was all the while quiet, watching the troubled scene, and it
was not unworthy his notice. The island, the solitary hut upon it, the
bay in the bight of which it lay, and the long gloomy Bolt Head to
seaward, against which the waves broke with fury, seemed to absorb the
entire notice of the artist, who scarcely spoke a syllable. While the
fish were getting ready, Turner mounted nearly to the highest point of
the island rock, _and seemed writing rather than drawing._ The wind
was almost too violent for either purpose; what he particularly noted
he did not say.'
And here is a specimen of Turner's conversation, showing how true was
his observation:--
'He was looking at a seventy-four gun ship, which lay in the shadow
under Saltash. The ship seemed one dark mass.
'"I told you that would be the effect," said Turner, referring to some
previous conversation. "Now, as you observe, it is all shade."
'"Yes, I perceive it; and yet the ports are there." '"We can only take
what is visible--no matter what may be there. There are people in the
ship; we don't see them through the planks."'
Turner's friends could have told Ruskin how untrue was such a statement
as 'he was without hope.' Like ordinary mortals he had his good days
and his bad days, his hours of fun and his hours of gloom, his moments
of kindness and his moments of cruelty.
'His spirits,' says Thornbury, 'were high, deep as were occasionally
his fits of melancholy.' Once he wrote a letter to Calcott, in which
he drew a wild duck or mallard, a pun on his second name; and as to
his kindness, there is the story, one of many, of his generosity at
the 1811 Academy to a young artist called Bird, whose picture had
been crowded out. Turner begged the Hanging Committee to restore the
work, insisting that it was too good to be rejected. They agreed,
but declined to alter the hanging. Turner had another long look at
Bird's picture, and then, taking down one of his own of the same size,
hung Bird's in its place. I wonder was that 'one of his own' the
'Scarborough,' exhibited this year, the large, beautiful, and simple
sketch for which is in the National Collection, one of the 'unfinished'
water-colours reproduced in these pages.
We begin to understand something of Turner the man as well as of Turner
the artist. As an artist he seems the more wonderful, the more one
studies him. To-day I looked again at his 'Innsbruck,' his 'Sketch of
an Italian Town,' and his 'Lake of Brienz' at the Victoria and Albert
Museum. Those three water-colours, stages in his development, are
sufficient to make an ordinary painter's reputation.
CHAPTER XIX
1812: AGED THIRTY-SEVEN
HE EXHIBITS 'HANNIBAL CROSSING THE ALPS,' SUGGESTED BY A SNOWSTORM HE
HAD SEEN AT FARNLEY
In one of the Sketch-Books for this year labelled 'Sandycombe
and Yorkshire' are the following, on the same page, in Turner's
handwriting. We can imagine the reasons why he composed the tortuous
passage on Salvator's 'powers of rapidity.' Did he, I wonder, buy the
mattress?
'Salvator Rosa painted a picture for the Constable of France in a day,
and carried it home, which rapidity so captivated the Constable that
he ordered another large one, which he likewise began, finished and
sent home, that (?) well paid for by purses of gold and as Constable
commented which would be first weary, but upon the production of the
fifth the employer sent two purses and declined rivalship with the
artist's powers of rapidity.
Candles 1
Trout 2
Pillow 16
Mattress 1. 11. 6.
The next Sketch-Book is short, and devoted to Farnley. The idea of the
'Snowstorm, Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps,' came to Turner
through a storm he saw at Farnley.
One wild day Turner called loudly from the doorway:--
'Hawkey! Hawkey! come here! Look at this thunderstorm--isn't it
wonderful? Isn't it sublime?'
And while he talked he was making notes of its form and colour on the
back of a letter. Young Mr. Hawkes proposed a drawing block but Turner
said the letter did very well. He was absorbed, entranced, while the
storm rolled and swept, and the lightning flashed over the Yorkshire
hills. When the storm had passed Turner returned to the room and said:--
'There, Hawkey. In two years you will see this again, and call it
"Hannibal Crossing the Alps."'
We look at this tumultuous picture to-day and think of that
thunderstorm at Farnley as we watch the lurid sun through the storm of
snow that threatens to overwhelm the muddled, huddled, Carthaginian
army. Yes: it is wonderful as was the thunderstorm to Turner. This
picture, in a category between his classical works and his sunlight
visions, was accompanied by nine halting, unpoetical lines from the
_Fallacies of Hope_, this being the first time that a quotation from
that poem was attached to the R. A. catalogues. The title was modified,
probably, from Campbell's _Pleasures of Hope._
'Craft, treachery, and fraud--Salassian force--
Hung on the fainting rear; then plunder seized
The victor and the captive,--Saguntum's spoil
Alike became their prey; still the chief advanc'd,
Looked on the sun with hope; low, broad, and wan
While the fierce archer of the downward year
Stains Italy's blanched barrier with storms.
In vain each pass, ensanguined deep with dead
Or rocky fragments, wide destruction roll'd.'
And the eyes fall upon two lines that mean something, that aptly
express the thought of the dumb poet, the lines which I quoted in
Chapter III.,--'Still the chief advanced, Looked on the sun with
hope'--Turner's fitting epitaph, and life-long aspiration. He added to
the _Fallacies of Hope_ off and on for forty years, and it dealt with
almost every conceivable subject from the Deluge to Napoleon.
This year his town address is given as Queen Anne Street West, but, as
I have already explained, this did not mean a change of domicile, as
the three houses, two in Harley Street and one in Queen Anne Street,
were the same dwelling with a communication at the back.
Turner, Thornbury tells us, almost entirely rebuilt his house in Queen
Anne Street, and while all the houses round it from time to time
smartened themselves up, this alone remained unchanged. The Gallery in
later years, as we know, became most dilapidated:--
The oiled paper of the skylight hung down in black, sooty, furred
slips. The damp here and there had free access; and it is certain that
while many of the pictures ripened and improved, others were cracked,
warped, chilled, and seriously injured. Both the "Hero and Leander,"
and "The Building of Carthage," suffered. Mr. E. Godall tells me that
in one picture particularly, a great white button of paint that had
stood for the sun had dropped off.
'"I think some one has picked it off intentionally," he could not help
saying.
'"I think he has," replied Turner, quite unmoved.'
Turner was 'quite unmoved.' As he grew older he cared less and less for
the things that most people deem so important. His golden visions did
not depend upon material accessories. May we not find a hint of his
almost inarticulate inner life in that little red book unearthed by
Thornbury from his studio, where, amid notes about chemistry, memoranda
as to colours, and prophylactics against the Maltese plague, are
certain scraps of verse, something about 'Anna's Kiss,' 'A Look Back,'
'A Toilsome Dream,' 'Human Joy, Ecstasy, and Hope'?
But I am anticipating. We are still in the year 1812 and Turner is
preparing 'A Frosty Morning' for exhibition, and considering one of
his earliest series of book illustrations,--_The Southern Coast of
England_, which was probably begun about 1812, although the first seven
plates, including 'St. Michael's Mount,' 'Poole,' and 'Land's End,'
were not published until 1814. The last issue was in 1826. De Wint,
Clennell and Prout were also contributors to _The Southern Coast._
Turner was to receive seven and a half guineas apiece for the drawings,
which was increased later to ten and twelve guineas. But in spite of
that advance he became dissatisfied and broke with W. B. Cooke, the
line engraver and publisher of _The Southern Coast._ Business relations
with Turner were not easy.