1831: AGED FIFTY-SIX
HE TURNS HIS 'MAGIC LIMELIGHT' ON 'CALIGULA'S PALACE AND BRIDGE';
VISITS SIR WALTER SCOTT, AND MAKES HIS WILL
The Wizard makes a great effort this year, sending no fewer than
six pictures to the Royal Academy, and among them was the famous
'Caligula's Palace and Bridge, Bay of Baiæ,' with this quotation from
the _Fallacies of Hope_:--
'What now remains of all the mighty bridge
Which made the Lucrine lake an inner pool,
Caligula, but massy fragments left
As monuments of doubt and ruined hopes
Yet gleaming in the morning's ray, that tell
How Baiæ's shore was loved in times gone by.'
In this return to classicism Turner is even more wilful than usual with
nature. Undoubtedly there are two suns present, as Mr. Wyllie points
out, one of them shining straight through the rents in the palace wall,
the other illuminating the boy and girl sitting on an unsubstantial
yellow rock. In fact, 'Turner has turned his magic limelight on where
his fancy prompted him, and has given us only as much nature as he
thought good for us.'
Fanciful and unrealised is 'Watteau Painting,' with the following
quotation from Du Fresnoy's _Art of Painting._
'White, when it shines with unstained lustre clear,
May bear an object back, or bring it near.'
Turner was greatly interested in the theory of colour. He read and
annotated Goethe's _Theory of Colour_, his copy of which is among the
'Relics' at the Tate Gallery.
The 'Watteau Painting' panel shows that artist, standing in the centre
of the room, making a drawing of a lady and a gentleman reclining
upon a divan. We have a glimpse of Turner's fun in the sketch he made
at Petworth of himself, in the place of Watteau, painting in a room
surrounded by some of the ladies of the household. I have nothing to
say in favour of 'Lord Percy under Attainder,' except to remark that
the dame in yellow is taken from a picture by Van Dyck at Petworth.
To this year belongs the golden 'Admiral Van Tromp's Barge at the
Entrance of the Texel,' in the Soane Museum. Turner painted three or
four Van Tromp pictures at different periods: one is in Sir Edward
Tennant's collection, another is loaned by the nation to Sheffield, and
a fourth, painted as late as 1844, is in the Royal Holloway College.
All bear slightly different titles, and all are breezy and golden.
Another picture of 1831, a fine, wild sea-piece, is in the Victoria
and Albert Museum. The title is an apt description: 'Life Boat and
Manby Apparatus going off to a Stranded Vessel making Signals (Blue
Lights) of Distress.' The 'Sketch of Cochem on the Moselle' needs no
description. It is a mere impression of light and movement, a quick
record, unfinished if you like, yet quite finished in its statement of
essential beauty.
Turner made a special journey to Scotland this year to make
illustrations for Sir Walter's Scott _Poetical and Prose Works._
Turner was the guest of Sir Walter, and together they visited the
most interesting spots on the Tweed and the Border, and in one of the
plates--the Melrose--he, Scott and Cadell, small figures, are shown
together, picnicking on a height overlooking the river and the Abbey.
On the 10th of June he signed his will, to be followed later by
codicils, the vast, complicated will that he brooded over so long,
that produced interminable litigation, with the result that almost all
of his behests were disregarded. The Turner Gallery at Millbank is a
magnificent, if tardy, reparation.