1826: AGED FIFTY-ONE
ANOTHER UNIMPORTANT YEAR, IN WHICH HE LEAVES TWICKENHAM
Another unimportant year as regards the exhibition of pictures. It
would almost seem as if Turner were reserving himself, pondering over
his Italian experiences; or it may have been that his time was broken
into by the trouble of leaving Twickenham.
He had taken Sandycombe for 'Dad'; he gave it up for the sake of 'Dad,'
who was always catching cold while working in the garden. 'Without,'
says Monkhouse, 'the pleasant and wholesome neighbourhood of the
Trimmers, with no home but the gloomy, dirty, disreputable Queen
Anne Street, he became more solitary, more self-absorbed or absorbed
in his art (much the same thing with him), and lived only to follow
unrestrained wherever his wayward genius led him, and to amass money
for which he could find no use.'
About this time, too, he added to his troubles by another quarrel with
Cooke the engraver, which prevented a proposed continuation of _The
Southern Coast_ series begun in 1814. Cooke's long letter is extant,
and Turner's most ardent admirers must admit that he shows badly in
the dispute. To set against his treatment of Cooke there is his gruff
kindness to Lawrence _à propos_ of his picture of this year called
'Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat, Evening.' This sea-piece,
which had a brilliant sky, was hung between two portraits by Lawrence.
Being painted in a low key, they suffered from the juxtaposition. 'Sir
Thomas was in despair,' whereupon Turner took some water-colour lamp
black and went all over his sky: 'Why, Turner, what have you done to
your picture?' asked a friend, who had seen it before the coat of
lamp-black. 'Oh! it's all right,' said Turner, 'it will all wash off
after the close of the exhibition.'
The _Inventory_ shows that Turner was abroad this year wandering mainly
by the Meuse, Moselle, and Rhine. On one of the pages containing
'Various Views' Ruskin has the following note: 'It has seven subjects
from Andernach on the Rhine, showing stormy sunsets and drifts of cloud
all completely designed; the best, that on the left in the second
row from the bottom, only measures one inch and a half in length by
three-quarters of an inch in height.'
A 'View of Dieppe Harbour' in the 'Meuse-Moselle' Sketch-Book is one
of twenty coloured sketches found in a parcel with the following
endorsement in Ruskin's handwriting:--
'There are one or two in this parcel that some people might like; I
consider them all done in some careless or sickly state of mind, and
have therefore put all aside, except one.'
Poor Turner! It is hard to have the work of one's bad days as well as
of one's good days passed before the critical eyes of a temperamental
genius who also had his bad and his good days. Ruskin was always either
hot or cold--never tepid. I dip at random into his pages and find
this:--
'In the modern French School, all the colour is taken out of Nature,
and only the mud left. By Turner, all the mud is taken out of Nature,
and only the colour left.'
Great praise for Turner, but grossly unfair to the 'modern French
School.'