1820: AGED FORTY-FIVE
RETURN FROM ITALY: HE BEGINS TO SIGHT HIS MYSTICAL VISIONS
Visitors to the Royal Academy of 1820 saw that the great man had
been in Rome. How like Turner it was to call a picture 'Rome from
the Vatican: Raeffaelle, accompanied by La Fornarina, preparing his
pictures for the Decoration of the Loggia.' He loved to introduce a
painter whom he admired into a picture--Raphael, Rembrandt, Ruysdael,
Van Goyen, Watteau and the rest. This Raphael-Roman picture was one of
Turner's failures, and like other failures it is no longer exhibited
in the National Collection. What a contrast it is to such an essential
Turner as the atmospheric 'Lancaster Sands' in the Farnley Hall
collection, produced about this time. Another, a later version now in
the Salting Collection at the British Museum, showing the sun setting
behind the Cumberland Hills, and the stage coach, carts and figures
hurrying to escape the rising tide, was engraved for the _England and
Wales_ series and published in 1828.
Here we stand at a halting-place in Turner's career. He has trained
himself; he has fought his rivals, and, perhaps with the exception
of Claude, has beaten them all on their own ground. He has expressed
himself in the luminous atmosphere of 'The Sun Rising Through Vapour';
in the hoar-frost sparkle of 'The Frosty Morning'; in the cool blues
and greys of 'Crossing the Brook,' and in the splendour of 'Dido
Building Carthage.' In water-colour he has advanced from the formalism
of the early tinted drawings to the restrained beauty of the _Southern
Coast_ and the accomplishment of the _Richmondshire_ series. And he has
been to Italy: his eyes are dazzled. Colour is to be his master, but
after a few years he is to become almost impatient of local colour and
form, and to lose form and local colour in the radiance of suffused
light. He is to paint the aspect, not the object. I turn once more
to the _Inventory_ and under the rubric 1820 dealing with 'Colour
Beginnings,' find this comment by Mr. Finberg:--
'As a rule these studies are of a highly abstract character, _i.e._,
they deal only with the composition of fundamental colour masses--the
ground tones, as it were, of a picture, which in the final result
are largely concealed under the subsequent embroidery of secondary
incidents and motives.'
In these 'Colour Beginnings' 'projects for designs which may or may
not have been carried out,' Turner seems to be beginning to sight his
mystical visions. The very titles of some are eloquent 'Moonlight Among
Ruins,' 'Hulks on Tamar, Twilight,' 'The Rainbow,' 'Lighthouse against
a Stormy Sky.' Eloquent, too, are three slight water-colours, showing
only faint indications of the difference between sky and land.
PART FIVE
1821-1829
FROM 'THE BAY OF BALE' TO 'ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS'