TURNER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY--AND CLAUDE. A LAST LOOK
Turner has not disappeared from the National Gallery; he still has a
small shrine there. The oil pictures retained at the National Gallery,
with 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' in the place of honour, show an
aspect of his achievement, but not the progressive splendour of his
genius. In this room hang the two famous works by Claude Lorrain.
Every one knows the story, which has been told again in these pages,
how Turner, long before his death, bequeathed 'The Sun Rising Through
Vapour' and 'Dido Building Carthage' to the nation on the condition
that they should hang for ever between two paintings by Claude. Turner
outshone Claude in all other fields, as the sun outshines the moon,
but he never conquered Claude in the particular classical garden
that the Lorrainer cultivated. You may judge for yourself. There
they hang, the two great Claudes, between the two great Turners, an
arrangement sanctioned by the Court of Chancery; there, if the spirits
of the departed do ever visit this earthly scene of competition
and aspiration, these two purified souls should have a gallant and
courteous encounter.
The twain would look gravely at the Turner pictures, and perhaps Turner
would explain, if spirits need explanations, that the supreme work of
his life is not here. But there are some works on the walls that would
make Claude wonder.
Would he not look entranced at Turner's visions of Venice--four
pictures showing how he progressed from topographical facts to
impressions of the city fading in the sea, trailing the loveliness of
her colour with her: from the hard 'Bridge of Sighs,' with the metallic
blue sky, painted in 1833, to the magic 'San Benedetto' of ten years
later, the golden sky flecked with crimson, and the golden pathway
on the sea, an open gate leading to a land that exists only in the
imagination of poets in words and in paint.
Claude would look at this golden path that 'lies o'er the sea
invisible,' and at that other splendour, glorious still, though faded
like the real Venice, called 'The "Sun of Venice" Going to Sea,' such a
sea, such a fishing-boat sailing out from the rose-red city.
Claude would look, and his eyes would glisten, and he would make
obeisance, and acknowledge the supremacy of his companion in these
paintings of the loveliness and mystery of light and colour.
With the other Turners at the National Gallery Claude would feel on
more equal ground, and while looking at 'Ancient Rome,' with the
diaphanous buildings, he might murmur the title of his own 'Enchanted
Castle,'--fantasy arising firmly from fact, not as in 'Ancient Rome,'
fantasy accompanied by uncouth facts.
And Claude would realise the inequalities of 'The Meuse,
Orange-Merehantmen going to pieces on the Bar,' the incomparable
sky, and the grotesque and ill-drawn figures of the fishermen
lolling in their boats; the glory of 'Orvieto,' in the sky, and the
unsubstantially of the figures and the fountain in the foreground; the
force and swing of the sea in 'Spithead,' and the impossible height
of the waves; the loveliness and splendour of the panorama of nature
in 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,' and the futility of the 'party of
pleasure' in the foreground; and--and--the tumbling splendour of 'Queen
Mab's Grotto,' done when the old man was seventy-one, still ambitious,
still ready at a moment's notice to realise the unrealisable.
Turner must explain to Claude, as henceforth officials must explain to
bewildered visitors, that the works at the National Gallery are but a
small part, not very representative, of his colossal life-work; that to
see his achievement in all its astonishing variety, it is neeessary to
descend to the ground floor of the National Gallery, where a selection
of the water-colours is still shown, and where the Sketch-Books are
preserved, and then to make the journey to Millbank, home of the
magnificence of Turner from the sombre masterpieces of his youth to the
golden visions of his maturity--from his early experiments in tinted
drawings to his last flashes of colour lost in light--works that have
made the child who was born in a dark London court of a crazy mother
and a chirpy father--immortal.
End of Project Gutenberg's Turner's Golden Visions, by Charles Lewis Hind