1818: AGED FORTY-THREE
'THE ABBOTSFORD TURNERS,' AND AN AUCTION PRICE OF A TURNER WATER-COLOUR
'The Field of Waterloo,' exhibited in 1818, with its obvious quotation
from Byron, is as dead as rider and horse, friend and foe piled in the
foreground. It now hangs on the outer stair-case of the new Turner
Gallery, as if in disgrace.
Turner journeyed north this year to make drawings for the _Provincial
Antiquities of Scotland_, for which Sir Walter Scott was gratuitously
writing the letterpress. He did not meet Scott on this occasion,
but the artist and author met in 1831, when Turner was illustrating
Cadell's edition of _Scott's Poetical and Prose Works._ The _Provincial
Antiquities_ drawings, which include the important 'Edinburgh from the
Calton Hill,' were afterwards presented by the publishers to Sir Walter
in recognition of his aid in the production of the book. For a long
time they hung at Abbotsford, and the group was known by the honoured
name of the 'Abbotsford Turners.' They are now scattered.
It would take a lifetime to follow the vicissitudes of all Turner's
water-colours, when they were painted, and where they are to-day.
The 'Heysham' of this year, with the elaborate lovely sky, is in the
Salting Collection at the British Museum. To the 'Heysham' Ruskin
devoted half a dozen pages in his _Elements of Drawing._
Turner's water-colours are constantly changing hands. The gleaming eyes
of the wizard, that some called covetous, would indeed have looked
covetous could he have known that, in the twentieth century, a fine
water-colour of his best period, for which he received a few guineas,
may realise two thousand pounds.
'What do you think the Turner "Lake of Lucerne" will fetch?' said a
Turner collector to me the day before an auction in June 1910. 'Oh, two
thousand pounds,' I answered.
'Absurd!' he cried. It brought one thousand nine hundred and
ninety-five pounds. I believe that there are certain men who would
rather possess a fine Turner water-colour than any other work of art.