[Illustration: PLYMOUTH.]
The drawing for this plate is one of Turner's most remarkable, though
not most meritorious, works: it contains the brightest rainbow he ever
painted, to my knowledge; not the best, but the most dazzling. It has
been much modified in the plate. It is very like one of Turner's pieces
of caprice to introduce a rainbow at all as a principal feature in such
a scene; for it is not through the colors of the iris that we generally
expect to be shown eighteen-pounder batteries and ninety-gun ships.
Whether he meant the dark cloud (intensely dark blue in the original
drawing), with the sunshine pursuing it back into distance; and the
rainbow, with its base set on a ship of battle, to be together types of
war and peace, and of the one as the foundation of the other, I leave it
to the reader to decide. My own impression is, that although Turner
might have some askance symbolism in his mind, the present design is,
like the former one, in many points a simple reminiscence of a seen
fact.[S]
[S] I have discovered, since this was written, that the design was
made from a vigorous and interesting sketch by Mr. S. Cousins, in
which the rainbow and most of the ships are already in their places.
Turner was, therefore, in this case, as I have found him in several
other instances, realizing, not a fact seen by himself, but a fact
as he supposed it to have been seen by another.
However, whether reminiscent or symbolic, the design is, to my mind, an
exceedingly unsatisfactory one, owing to its total want of principal
subject. The fort ceases to be of importance because of the bank and
tower in front of it; the ships, necessarily for the effect, but fatally
for themselves, are confused, and incompletely drawn, except the little
sloop, which looks paltry and like a toy; and the foreground objects
are, for work of Turner, curiously ungraceful and uninteresting.
It is possible, however, that to some minds the fresh and dewy space of
darkness, so animated with latent human power, may give a sensation of
great pleasure, and at all events the design is worth study on account
of its very strangeness.