1842: AGED SIXTY-SEVEN
'THE SNOWSTORM' AND SOME 'FAULTLESS' WATER-COLOURS
I open my thumbed copy of _Modern Painters_, turn to a certain page in
volume I., and read this: '"The Snowstorm," one of the very grandest
statements of sea-motion, mist, and light, that has ever been put on
canvas, even by Turner.'
In this appreciation we can go all the way with Ruskin. 'The Snowstorm'
in its new home in the new Turner Gallery looks the work of a giant in
the interpretation of sea-motion, mist and light.
The 'Snowstorm; Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth making Signals in
shallow water and going by the lead,' was laughed at by the press when
it was shown in the 1842 Academy. The parody of the title that appeared
in _Punch_ was almost funny; but the old man did not think it funny: 'A
Typhoon bursting in a Simoon over the Whirlpool of Maelstrom, Norway;
with a ship on fire, an eelipse, and the effect of a lunar rainbow,'
with the following skit on the _Fallacies of Hope_:--
'O Art, how vast thy mighty wonders are
To those who roam upon the extraordinary deep;
Maelstrom, thy hand is here,'
Thornbury asserts that the critics of all kinds, learned and unlearned,
were furious when it was exhibited; some of them described it as a mass
of 'soapsuds and whitewash.'
'Turner,' wrote Ruskin, 'was passing the evening at my father's house,
on the day this criticism came out; and after dinner, sitting in
his arm-chair by the fire, I heard him muttering low to himself, at
intervals, "Soapsuds and whitewash" again, and again, and again. At
last I went to him, asking why he minded what they said. Then he burst
out, "Soapsuds and whitewash! What would they have? I wonder what they
think the sea's like? I wish they'd been in it."'
As a matter of fact, Turner had given himself infinitely more trouble
over 'The Snowstorm' than over 'The Fighting Téméraire,' and he had
been in considerable danger. To paint 'The Snowstorm,' he had put to
sea from Harwich in the _Ariel_ in a hurricane, had made the sailors
lash him to the mast, and there the student of sixty-seven remained for
four hours studying the awful scene. I look at 'The Snowstorm' to-day,
and remember. I am filled with awe at the man's power. No, we do not
smile at 'The Snowstorm' now; but certain folk still smile at 'War: The
Exile and the Rock Limpet,' depicting an attenuated Napoleon, standing
against a blood-red sunset, in the shallows of a tidal pool, on the
shore of St. Helena, gazing with folded arms out to sea. Turner failed
to make this nobly inspired dream a reality--that is all.
_Punch_ made merry over the 'Exile and the Rock Limpet,' calling it
'The Duke of Wellington and the Shrimp (Seringapatam, early morning),'
with another parody of the _Fallacies_:--
'And can it be, thou hideous imp,
That life is, ah! how brief, and glory but a shrimp!
(From an unpublished poem.)'
And remarked that:--
'The comet just rising above the cataract in the foreground, and the
conflagration of Tippoo's widow in the Banyan forest by the sea-shore,
are in the great artist's happiest manner.'
'Peace, Burial at Sea of the Body of Sir David Wilkie,' was a vision
which Turner completely realised, the poetry, the pathos, the grandeur,
the decorative splendour--all. The sails of the steamship are dark
against the evening sky, as if in mourning, and amidships, in a blaze
of torchlight, the body of Wilkie is being lowered to his watery grave.
Stanfield, who saw the picture on Varnishing Day, thought the effect of
the sails was 'untrue,' which, of course, they are, but Turner would
not alter them. 'I only wish I had any colour to make them blacker,'
said the old warrior.
From this picture of peace and solemnity I turn to the peace and
loveliness of some 'smaller' water-colours of this, his sunset, period.
Ruskin, in his 'Notes on Turner's Drawings exhibited at the Fine Art
Society in 1878,' which is printed as the Epilogue to the volume called
_Notes on Pictures_, tells how in the winter of 1841-42 Turner brought
back with him from Switzerland a series of sketches, fifteen of which
he placed, as was his custom, in the hands of his agent, Griffith of
Norwood, so that he might obtain commissions for finished drawings of
each.
Ruskin tells us that 'he made anticipatorily four, to manifest what
their quality would be, and honestly "show his hand." Four thus
exemplary drawings I say he made for specimens, or signs, as it were,
for his re-opened shop, namely:--
1. The Pass of Splugen.
2. Mont Righi, seen from Lucerne, in the morning, dark against dawn.
3. Mont Righi, seen from Lucerne at evening, red with the last rays of
sunset.
4. Lake Lucerne (The Bay of Uri) from above Brunnen, with exquisite
blue and rose mists and 'mackerel' sky on the right.
The whole story, which is told in Ruskin's most simple and charming
style, is too long to be repeated here. Nine commissions only could
be obtained, making ten with the one given to Griffith as commission.
'Turner growled, but said at last that he would do them,' and
among them was a 'Lucerne Town,' which Ruskin, by hard coaxing and
petitioning, obtained his father's leave to promise to take if it
turned out well. It did.
What a wonderful realisation of a dream of colour is another
water-colour of this period, reproduced in these pages--'Spietz on the
Lake of Thun, Looking Towards the Bernese Oberland.'
On the last page of the Ruskin Catalogue, which is now called Epilogue,
the old man, most eloquent and most sorrowful, writes:--
'The "Constance" and "Coblentz" here with the "Splugen" (1), "Bay of
Uri" (4), and "Zurich" (10), of the year 1812, are the most finished
and faultless works of his last period; but these of 1843 are the
truest and mightiest ... I can't write any more of them just now.'
About this time Munro of Novar offered twenty-five thousand pounds for
the whole contents of the Queen Anne Street Gallery. Turner hesitated,
but finally refused. Frith, in his _Autobiography_, tells the story
thus:--
'When Munro of Novar went for his final answer, Turner cried, "No! I
won't--I can't. I believe I am going to die, and I intend to be buried
in those two (pointing to "Carthage" and "The Sun Rising Through
Vapour"), so I can't--besides I can't be bothered. Good-evening!"'
The evening of his life was to last nine years, and Turner found his
own way of escape from being bothered.