1822: AGED FORTY-SEVEN
HE THROWS OFF ANOTHER 'NORHAM CASTLE' AND PREPARES TO STARTLE THE WORLD
WITH 'THE BAY OF BAIÆ'
Turner sent nothing to the Royal Academy of 1821, and in 1822 he
exhibited only the unimportant 'What you Will,' a mere nothing, a
memory of some other painter. 'What you Will' was probably forgotten
except by its owner and students of Turner; but in 1910 it appeared at
Christie's and was described by an influential daily paper as a fine
early Turner 'depicting a party of ladies and gentlemen in a garden
near some groups of statuary.' It realised £1,176, an enormous rise
on the price, one hundred and fifty guineas, which Chantrey gave for
'What you Will.' He wrote the price on the back of the picture, so that
there might be no mistake. Turner would have been amazed to learn what
the twentieth century thought of this experiment of his in 'figured
landscape.' Perhaps the price it fetched answers a caustic comment
of Hazlitt's: 'Mr. Turner's pictures have not like Claude's become a
sentiment in the heart of Europe; his fame has not been stamped and
rendered sacred by the hand of time. Perhaps it never will.'
A Sketch-Book of this year is called 'King's Visit to Scotland.' On
leaf 58, _à propos_ of the reception of George IV., is this note in
Turner's handwriting: 'Custom House Key. The Authorities in Blue and
White Gowns. Red Flags and Gold.' According to Ruskin's endorsement on
the wrapper Turner went to Edinburgh by sea.
In the 'Medway' Sketch-Book of the previous year on a drawing
of 'Scenes on Medway' are these notes on Clouds in his own
handwriting:--'Cold,' 'Warm,' 'Yellow Clouds,' 'Rain with ... Colour
along its edge,' 'Rain in Shade.'
No labour either with pen or pencil was too arduous to hinder him
from noting down his impressions of the effects of nature from hour
to hour and day to day. And always every year there is some work that
starts out and affects us by its beauty. With this year I associate the
imposing 'Norham Castle' in the National Collection engraved for _River
Scenery_ in 1824. The tyranny of the foreground still holds him--cows,
boats, shed, outbuildings; but this foreground is less insistent than
usual. How beautiful is the blue-grey ruin rising up against the pale
sunset sky; how limpid is the water, with its reflection of castle and
sail rippling on the quiet surface.
This 'Norham Castle' is one of his 'delight pictures,' but the more
arduous work of the Wizard in 1822 was meditating upon and painting the
'Bay of Baiæ,' with which he proposed to startle the world at the next
Royal Academy exhibition.