[Illustration: MARGATE.]
This plate is not, at first sight, one of the most striking of the
series; but it is very beautiful, and highly characteristic of
Turner.[T] First, in its choice of subjects: for it seems very notably
capricious in a painter eminently capable of rendering scenes of
sublimity and mystery, to devote himself to the delineation of one of
the most prosaic of English watering-places--not once or twice, but in a
series of elaborate drawings, of which this is the fourth. The first
appeared in the Southern Coast series, and was followed by an elaborate
drawing on a large scale, with a beautiful sunrise; then came another
careful and very beautiful drawing in the England and Wales series; and
finally this, which is a sort of poetical abstract of the first. Now, if
we enumerate the English ports one by one, from Berwick to Whitehaven,
round the island, there will hardly be found another so utterly devoid
of all picturesque or romantic interest as Margate. Nearly all have some
steep eminence of down or cliff, some pretty retiring dingle, some
roughness of old harbor or straggling fisher-hamlet, some fragment of
castle or abbey on the heights above, capable of becoming a leading
point in a picture; but Margate is simply a mass of modern parades and
streets, with a little bit of chalk cliff, an orderly pier, and some
bathing-machines. Turner never conceives it as anything else; and yet
for the sake of this simple vision, again and again he quits all higher
thoughts. The beautiful bays of Northern Devon and Cornwall he never
painted but once, and that very imperfectly. The finest subjects of the
Southern Coast series--the Minehead, Clovelly, Ilfracombe, Watchet,
East and West Looe, Tintagel, Boscastle--he never touched again; but he
repeated Ramsgate, Deal, Dover, and Margate, I know not how often.
[T] It was left unfinished at his death, and I would not allow it to
be touched afterwards, desiring that the series should remain as far
as possible in an authentic state.
Whether his desire for popularity, which, in spite of his occasional
rough defiances of public opinion, was always great, led him to the
selection of those subjects which he thought might meet with most
acceptance from a large class of the London public, or whether he had
himself more pleasurable associations connected with these places than
with others, I know not; but the fact of the choice itself is a very
mournful one, considered with respect to the future interests of art.
There is only this one point to be remembered, as tending to lessen our
regret, that it is possible Turner might have felt the necessity of
compelling himself sometimes to dwell on the most familiar and prosaic
scenery, in order to prevent his becoming so much accustomed to that of
a higher class as to diminish his enthusiasm in its presence. Into this
probability I shall have occasion to examine at greater length
hereafter.
The plate of Margate now before us is nearly as complete a duplicate of
the Southern Coast view as the previous plate is of that of Ramsgate;
with this difference, that the position of the spectator is here the
same, but the class of ship is altered, though the ship remains
precisely in the same spot. A piece of old wreck, which was rather an
important object to the left of the other drawing, is here removed. The
figures are employed in the same manner in both designs.
The details of the houses of the town are executed in the original
drawing with a precision which adds almost painfully to their natural
formality. It is certainly provoking to find the great painter, who
often only deigns to bestow on some Rhenish fortress or French city,
crested with Gothic towers, a few misty and indistinguishable touches of
his brush, setting himself to indicate, with unerring toil, every
separate square window in the parades, hotels, and circulating libraries
of an English bathing-place.
The whole of the drawing is well executed, and free from fault or
affectation, except perhaps in the somewhat confused curlings of the
near sea. I had much rather have seen it breaking in the usual
straightforward way. The brilliant white of the piece of chalk cliff is
evidently one of the principal aims of the composition. In the drawing
the sea is throughout of a dark fresh blue, the sky grayish blue, and
the grass on the top of the cliffs a little sunburnt, the cliffs
themselves being left in the almost untouched white of the paper.