1841: AGED SIXTY-SIX
HOW TURNER DID IT? HE 'GRASPED THE HANDLE AND PLUNGED THE WHOLE DRAWING
INTO A PAIL OF WATER'
Turner was represented by six pictures at the Royal Academy this
year--unimportant, not one worthy of his reputation. There was a
topographical Venice, which Chantrey bought on Varnishing Day before
he had seen it; and the rather decorative, rather splendid, rather
fatigued picture called 'Depositing of Giovanni Bellini's three
pictures in the Church of the Redentore, Venice,' not one of which
modern expert criticism allows to Bellini. Little that would have
mattered to Turner; he was concerned with the look of the pageant only,
a little confused--gold, red and blue surging in sunlight. No doubt it
pleased the old man to add the name of Giovanni Bellini to the famous
painters who are associated with the descriptions of his pictures.
The titles of the Sketch-Books of this year evoke all manner of visions
of beautiful places and the works associated with them--Lucerne, the
Rhine, Thun, Zug, Goldau, Fluelen, Bellinzona, Como, Splugen and
Grenoble.
In the Salting Collection at the British Museum is a 'Bellinzona' of
the period, faint greens, faint purples, with touches of red, the form
all lost in colour, brooded over by the ridge of snow mountains, the
pencilled line of which has been left. In the possession of Sir Hickman
Bacon is a water-colour simply called 'A Swiss Lake,' the still water
reflecting the rosy hills, and the delicate blues and yellows of the
sky--just iridescent atmosphere floated upon the paper. I look at it,
wonder how it was done, and decide that the explanation by Leitch, the
water-colour painter, told by Mr. Shaw Sparrow in _The Studio_, as to
'how Turner did it,' does not help me.
Leitch informed a friend of Mr. Sparrow's that he once accompanied
Pickersgill to Turner's studio, and there watched the great man
working, or shall I say composing. There were four drawing-boards, each
of which had a handle screwed to the back. After the subject had been
lightly sketched in, Turner grasped the handle and plunged the whole
drawing into a pail of water by his side. 'Then quickly he washed in
the principal hues that he required, flowing tint into tint, until this
stage of the work was complete. Leaving this first drawing to dry,
he took the second board and repeated the operation. By the time the
fourth drawing was laid in, the first would be ready for the finishing
touches; and Leitch was greatly impressed by the commonsense of the
whole proceeding.'
Commonsense and genius, knowledge and daring, cunning and simplicity:
result--Turner's later water-colours.