1910: THE NEW 'TURNER GALLERY' AT MILLBANK
So, at last, fifty-nine years after his death one of the wishes of his
muddled will is almost obeyed--that his works should be hung 'in a
room or rooms, to be added to the National Gallery, and to be called
"Turner's Gallery."'
It would have been better if the new Turner Gallery had adjoined
the National Gallery; but that seems to have been impossible. At
present the exhibited portion is distributed thus: 129 oils and 467
water-colours, etc., at the Tate Gallery; 20 oils and a large selection
of water-colours at the National Gallery; and 31 oils and other works
in the provinces. The Salting Bequest water-colours are in the British
Museum, and there are also many examples, varying from his first to
his last period, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, with several
oil pictures. Besides these there is the unexhibited portion of the
Bequest, and the numerous oil pictures and water-colours in private
and public collections in this country and abroad, making the largest
amount of work ever produced single-handed by any artist.
There is one word only to describe the setting of the new Turner
Gallery, the word magnificent. There are five rooms on the main floor,
and four on the ground floor. The walls of the two large rooms or halls
are covered with a rich Venetian red silk brocade, the walls of the
others are hung with gold canvas.
The first new Turner Room is 34 yards long, nearly 11 yards wide, and
13 yards high. I hardly knew the old, familiar masterpieces. At first
I saw nothing but that gorgeous red brocade, sweeping over the walls,
probably the colour Turner himself used (but certainly in a cheaper
material) in his own gallery in Queen Anne Street. Red may have been
his favourite colour, but we must remember that in his Queen Anne
Street Gallery, the walls were covered with pictures, so that the red
hangings were barely visible.
In the new Turner Gallery the eyes see first the dominating red
walls,--then the pictures. No work is skied. All the pictures are
on the line, arranged chronologically, from the dark 'Tenth Plague
of Egypt' of 1802, to the flaming 'Fire at Sea' of 1834. How well,
sombre but glowing, they all look. Hanging together are those early,
grandiose, masterful canvases, a challenge to the art world of his day,
the 'Calais Pier,' the 'Nelson,' and 'The Shipwreck.' Opposite, on the
line for the first time, is the vast 'England: Richmond Hill,' vastly
entertaining.
At one end of the room hangs the well-loved, cool, and temperate
'Crossing the Brook,' and at the other end, facing it, that mighty
effort of his imagination, 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus,' almost
dwarfed, strange to say, by its companions the whirling 'Medea,' and
the flaming 'Fire at Sea.' Here and there are the quieter works,
pastoral and appealing, done in 1809, when his mind was happy and
at rest, the 'Bligh Sand,' and the 'River Scene with Cattle,' so
tranquilly aglow.
The next room is hung with the best of the 'unfinished' oils. The red
silk brocade is almost too overpowering for the aerial loveliness of
the 'Sunrise' pictures, for that magical' Hastings,' with the tawny
sail, and the crepuscular delicacy of 'The Evening Star.' The pearly
'Yachting' series stands the ordeal better, and that glorious riot of
colour, 'Interior at Petworth,' actually flaunts the red brocade. The
old warrior pictures look better than ever--'The Fighting Téméraire,'
the 'Burial of Wilkie,' and that swift foreshadowing of Impressionism,
'Rain, Steam and Speed.' If Turner, mad for fame, as for art, could
have seen these two rooms, one hung with the pictures he did for
exhibition, the other with those he did for joy! If only he could have
had prevision of this year of his triumph!
The other seven rooms hung with gold canvas--just right--contain
a selection of his water-colours, finished and unfinished, oil
beginnings, and others. The water-colours range from the copy of 'Folly
Bridge,' which he made at the age of twelve, to such visions of his
later years, when definition became lost in light, and form in colour,
as 'Ravine and Tower,' and 'The Via Mala,' and certain dreams from the
'Rheinfelden' and 'Heidelberg' Sketch-Books, that one looks at with
wonder and joy, and again with wonder and joy.
There is a room of his early water-colours with two exquisite
interpretations of 'Norham Castle'; there is a room of the sepia
drawings for the _Liber Studiorum_, with a case in the middle
containing twenty-one supreme water-colours, dominated, at the end of
the case, by the 'Venetian Fishing Boat'--a fairy thing flashing green,
blue, and gold; and elsewhere there is a range of his water-colours,
each a treasure; but I think my choice would fall upon 'Sunshine on the
Sea,' everything omitted except--sunshine upon the sea.
On the ground floor, approached by a staircase (on the stair walls
hang three of his colossal failures, 'Waterloo,' 'The Deluge,' and
'Pilate'--do not look at them!--), are four more rooms. One contains
seventeen 'beginnings' of oil pictures, painted about 1807, never
exhibited before in public, but probably shown in his studio in Queen
Anne Street in 1808, to tempt patrons to commission 'finished' pictures
from them. Times have changed. We value beginnings now. Another
ground-floor room is hung with large 'unfinished' early water-colours,
including a lovely beginning in a rosy flush, of 'Coniston Old Man,'
and an atmospheric filmy blue 'Valley with Mountains.'
An adjoining room contains the oils on thin veneer, painted between
1805 and 1810, and first exhibited in 1908. My choice would be 'Tree
Tops and Sky.' And the last room of all, a light, cheerful apartment,
as it should be, includes his last four pictures, painted the year
before he died, and other magnificent failures and experiments. Here
is a picture of the period when he was haunted by the idea of Whalers
in Arctic seas; and when he muddled off a final beauty in despair of
Venice at sunset with a blue sky and ragged clouds; and when he tried
to see 'The Angel Standing in the Sun,' driving Death before him,
Turner then being seventy-one; and other dreams by this amazing man,
whose art vision endured, not only to the end, but became more ethereal
and dehumanised and seer-like as his physical frame shrank and tottered.
All that is over. The immortal part of him remains, and this is the
year of his final triumph, long delayed. He who loved fame and praise,
and spent much of his life pitting himself against his contemporaries
and predecessors, would chuckle to know that his works in the new
Catalogue of the Tate Gallery extend to 144 pages, while all the other
artists represented have but 264 pages between them.
It was almost a shock to return from these golden lower rooms to the
two large galleries on the main floor, adorned with the rich red silk
brocade, that dazzles and distresses. I cannot like these red, flaming
walls, but there is no doubt that the pictures look finer than they
did in Trafalgar Square. Indeed, we seem to see some of them for the
first time. I never realised before what a stupendous work is the
'Snowstorm--Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth, Making Signals.' One
could spend an hour studying the swirl of the waves and the whirl of
the storm, the movement of those deep water waves, and the lights that
gleam in and through them. Incline your head a little to the right, and
there is 'A Ship Aground,' with the tugging movement of shallow water,
the reflections and the gleams portrayed with equal skill. Then turn
your eyes still further to the right, and there is 'Rain, Steam, and
Speed' and the 'Burial of Wilkie.' For some reason or another--the red
walls, or the wonderful lighting of the gallery, or the flame of Turner
that in this year of his triumph spiritualises our perceptions--these
pictures seem to have taken on more delicate delicacies of eolour, new
intricacies of vision.
And what about the 'Interior at Petworth,' that Mr. MacColl has bravely
hung in the place of honour in the gallery where 'The Evening Star' and
'The Fighting Téméraire' dispute for our allegiance? The 'Interior at
Petworth' is a puzzle to almost everybody. I watched a nice father and
his nice little daughter, who had been talkative before most of the
Turners, stand in front of this orgy of colour--dumb. Then the little
girl said: 'Daddy, what does it mean?' And he after a long pause and
another long look said, very seriously, as if he were a little ashamed:
'I don't know what it means, my dear.'
How I longed to say to them: 'Friends, Turner didn't mean you to
know what his "Interior at Petworth" means. He didn't mean you to
see it. It's like this. He was a great artist, almost miraculous,
with extraordinary faculties and power of work, and an ambition,
that was almost a mania, to excel all other painters, living and
dead, and to make the public of his day realise what a mighty man he
was. So he painted his big exhibition pictures, every inch finished,
understandable by everybody, classical, pastoral, homely, heroic--"The
Bay of Baise," "Crossing the Brook," the "Frosty Morning," and "The
Fighting Téméraire"; but that was only half his life. He was mad
about drawing and painting; he never rested; he was always making
experiments, trying to capture the fleeting loveliness of dawn or
sunset, the pomp of high noon, and the splendour of colour in hot
sunshine that to some artists is as intoxicating as wine. He never
meant such experiments, done to relieve his surcharged soul, to be
seen; he never exhibited them. It is we, valuing every scrap from
Turner's hand, who are responsible for their exhibition; it is we who
have brought to the light of day these attempts of the wizard, the old
man mad about art, to force painting to realise what others would have
thought to be unrealisable. They are wonderful. Folk will come from the
end of the world to see them.
'Friends, how that room at Petworth came to be in that awful disarray
I know not. It looks like a nightmare spring-cleaning, with no witness
of the fury but the streaming sun. Turner looked on the sight--that's
certain; was intoxicated by the orgy of colour, painted it in one swift
hour, and having cased his soul, hid his colour-cry, as men hide their
love poems in youth.'
Thus would I have spoken to that nice father and nice child; but while
I was rehearsing my remarks, they had moved on. I sought them, and
found the twain in one of the lower rooms where some of the early
water-colours are displayed, 'unfinished,' because they were painted
for love, not for exhibition, and love had said in them all that love
can say.
I found the father and child standing just where I would like them to
have been--before those two exquisite drawings hanging by the window,
looking, not like paint, but like vapours of iridescent colour--the
rosy flush of 'Coniston Old Man,' and the filmy blue of 'Valley with
Mountains.'
Father and child were silent, but there was something in their eyes
more eloquent than words. Then her hand stole into his and was clutched
tight. My eyes moistened too. For I was looking upon the visible signs
of invisible things. Love made those drawings, and the watchers were
quickened by their loveliness. The father's grasp grew tighter on the
small hand as she blinked away the mist in her eyes.
I should like to have explained, to that nice father and child, the
Sketch-Books, the unseen part of Turner's prodigious achievement,
the studies direct from Nature for his own use, records as he called
them. Throughout his life his procedure seems to have been always the
same--the sketch or the mere note direct from Nature, on which later,
sometimes years later, he based an oil picture, or a water-colour for
the engravers.
He could always, when he had once 'wrenched himself free from the
trammels of topography and antiquarianism,' make a vital sketch from
Nature, but it took him years to master oil-painting. The dark, heavy,
early 'Buttermere Lake' was made from 'a pale and delicately charming
water-colour.' There is not an artist who would not be delighted
to study, in the Sketch-Books, the slight vital suggestions and to
compare them with the finished works--the beginning and the end of his
Hornby, Heysham, Watchet, Boscastle, Bolton; to look at the vigorous
studies from which the 'Bridgewater Sea Piece,' and 'The Shipwreck'
were made, and to swoop down upon that astonishing foreshadowing of
Impressionism, 'Men Chatting Round the Fireplace at Petworth,' made
during the visit to Petworth when he was fifty-five, from which his
dream, world-well-lost period dated: Turner the visionary, who, like
Wordsworth at the end, passed into regions where feeling is almost too
mystical, too rarefied for expression, and indeed can only be expressed
by allusion and suggestion.
The Turner Sketch-Books are as valuable, in their way, as, say, a
discovery of diaries kept by Shakespeare from the day he first left
Stratford to the hour he returned home full of honours and wisdom.
Turner died in hiding--by choice; and, to our great advantage, he
hoarded his Sketch-Books, as he hoarded his 'unfinished' works, meant
only for his own eyes, those gleaming, grey-blue eyes that never lost
their sparkle, and that saw and controlled his hand to paint a 'Ulysses
Deriding Polyphemus 'for fame, and a 'Teasing the Donkey at Petworth'
for joy.