Among the many there--while the mists
Flying, and rainy vapours, call out shapes
And phantoms from the crags and solid earth,
As fast as a musician scatters sounds
Out of an instrument,--
this belongs only to Nature and to him.”
And in a later chapter of the same volume (“Modern Painters,” Vol.
I.) Mr. Ruskin again refers to this drawing as “a study of sea whose
whole organization has been broken up by constant recoils from a rocky
coast.” “The entire disorder of the surges,” he continues, “when every
one of them, divided and entangled among promontories as it rolls in,
and beaten back part by part from walls of rock on this side and that
side, recoils like the defeated division of a great army, throwing all
behind it into disorder, breaking up the succeeding waves into vertical
ridges, which in their turn, yet more totally shattered upon the shore,
retire in more hopeless confusion, until the whole surface of the sea
becomes one dizzy whirl of rushing, writhing, tortured, undirected
rage, bounding, and crashing, and coiling in an anarchy of enormous
power, subdivided into myriads of waves, of which every one is not, be
it remembered, a separate surge, but part and portion of a vast one,
actuated by internal power, and giving in every direction the mighty
undulation of impetuous line which glides over the rocks and writhes
in the wind, overwhelming the one, and piercing the other with the
form, fury, and swiftness of a sheet of lambent fire. And throughout
the rendering of all this, there is not a false curve given, not one
which is not the perfect expression of visible motion; and the forms of
the infinite sea are drawn throughout with that utmost mastery of art
which, through the deepest study of every line, makes every line appear
the wildest child of chance, while yet each is in itself a subject
and a picture different from all else around. Of the colour of this
magnificent sea I have before spoken; it is a solemn green grey (with
its foam seen dimly through the darkness of twilight), modulated with
the fulness, changefulness, and sadness of a deep, wild melody.”
The only drawing in the whole series which can be compared for tragic
power with the _Longships Lighthouse_ is the _Lowestoft_. The
time represented is an hour before sunrise in winter. A violent storm
with rain is passing over the sea; through it the lighthouses and coast
are dimly seen. Mr. Ruskin speaks of the “most hopeless, desolate,
uncontrasted greys” in this drawing.
26. _Lake Nemi_, circa 1840 (Plate XV).
This representation of the afternoon of a hot and cloudless day was
hung immediately above the _Longships_. It is a truly superb
drawing, as fine in its way as the _Longships_, yet how different!
It is so full of purely sensuous delight that one would suppose it the
work of some voluptuary who had turned his back on all the sorrows
and terrors of life; one who lived only for the gratification of his
senses. That some people should shrink from the sternness and cruelty
of _Longships_ I can understand; but I simply cannot imagine how
any one accessible to the pleasures of pictorial art can resist the
triumphal appeal of this regal and happy drawing. It would be difficult
to bring together two other drawings which illustrate so well the truly
Shakespearean range of Turner’s mind.
28. _The Rigi at Sunrise--Lake of Lucerne_ (“_The Blue
Rigi_”) (Plate XVII).
With a fine sense of congruity Messrs. Agnew hung beside the _Lake
of Nemi_ a masterpiece of Turner’s latest manner--“_The Blue
Rigi_.” This was painted in 1841, in circumstances described in his
own inimitable way by Mr. Ruskin, in the “Epilogue” to his notes on his
own collection of Turner’s drawings. There are signs in the drawing
that the painter’s age was beginning to tell on him. He was getting
near the end of his career as a water-colour painter, though his
career as an oil painter lasted a few years longer: for the _Burial
at Sea_; _The Opening of the Walhalla_; _Rain, Steam and
Speed_; _The Sun of Venice Going to Sea_, and the other late
Venetian paintings were yet to come; which supports the contention
that water-colour makes sterner demands on the artist’s physique than
oil painting. In “_The Blue Rigi_” the laboured execution and
trembling touch hint at the artist’s physical disabilities. But these
signs of weakness harmonize so well with the subject-matter that they
only heighten the pathos of this incomparably beautiful drawing.
I think that Turner made hardly more than a dozen finished drawings
after “_The Blue Rigi_.” This was partly because the sustained
effort such work demanded was too much for him, and partly because
there was no demand among his patrons for such work. But he could still
make sketches like the _Mouth of the Grand Canal_ (Plate XXIII),
_Lake of Lucerne_: _Brunnen in the Distance_ (Plate XX) and
the _Alpine Stream_, marvellous in their freshness of colour, the
vigour and delicacy of their washes, and full of poetical suggestion
and pictorial enchantment. The old war-horse no doubt regretted
that his patrons would give him no opportunities to elaborate these
wonderful sketches--for the distinction which modern criticism has
obliterated between a sketch and a “finished” drawing was ingrained in
Turner’s mind--but we cannot share these regrets. The gain in fullness
and authority of statement would have provided little compensation for
the loss of delicacy and freshness, and effortless vigour of execution.
But these remarks have taken me slightly out of my chronological
course. The following sketches I am inclined to date conjecturally
somewhere between 1835 and 1840.
126. _Rheinfels Castle._
Can this drawing be correctly named? It does not seem much like the
other drawings and engravings of the old fortress of Rheinfels which I
have compared with it. And what is the meaning of “Dib,” which Turner
has written in pencil in the foreground? I cannot help wondering
whether “Dib” was meant to refer to Dieblich, on the Moselle. If it
did, the mountain on the right would be the Niederburg, and the two
buildings on the mountain beyond would be the two castles of the
Knights of Cobern. Turner passed along this part of the Moselle in
1834. But, as a famous commentator once said, I put forward this
suggested emendation without much confidence in its correctness.
115. _A Gorge_ (Plate XXIV).
131. _Alpine Scene._
133. _Swiss Landscape._
I can offer no suggestion as to the identity of the places represented
in these sketches, except that _A Gorge_ may be one of the falls
of the Reichenbach.
39. _The Rainbow._
This is a strange drawing which I do not understand. The rainbow has
only two colours, viz. yellow and crimson lake.
138. _Ehrenbreitstein._
135. _Alpine Stream._
The latter sketch contains an entrancing play of colour and suggestion.
What a fine foundation for the airy structure raised above it that
band of rich darkness makes which runs straight across the centre of
the design! I suppose it represents loose rocks in shadow. Above them
a range of mountains, faintly touched with crimson, rises out of the
pale blue mist, with an opalescent sky above; on the right a cluster
of white roofs carries the eye to a narrow defile. The foreground is
just as elusive as the distance and middle distance. There are streams
flowing among the stones, but those touches of white, are they birds
or foam? And is that a figure on the right almost lost in the shadow
of the rocks? What a beautiful dream it all is! And I cannot help
wondering what earthly place suggested the dream. It reminds me vaguely
of the neighbourhood of Bellinzona. Somewhere north of Lugano I fancy
the happy wanderer might chance at daybreak upon some such scene as
Turner has suggested.
130. _Lake of Lucerne: Brunnen in the Distance_ (Plate XX).
There can be no doubt about the locality which furnished the motive of
this lovely vision, though I believe some years ago the drawing was
described as a “View on the Rhine.” There in the distance are the two
Mythens; and there at the edge of the lake is Brunnen. The drawing must
have been made at or near Treib, on the Lake of Lucerne.
127. _Mouth of the Grand Canal_ (Plate XXIII).
On the right is the Dogana, with the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in
the distance; on the left are tall buildings which once were palaces
and are now mostly hotels, among them probably the Palazzo Giustiniani,
which became the Hôtel de l’Europe, where Turner put up during his
later visits to Venice. It is no good my trying to describe the colour
of such a drawing. When it was sold at Christie’s in the Beecham sale
an enthusiastic scribe writing in one the newspapers said that it was
“as if drawn by a butterfly.” I remember that the expression struck me
at the time as--impressionistic, but I think I know what the writer
felt. There is something that makes one think of butterflies in its
elusiveness and its fluttering beauty of colour.
160. _An Iceberg._
This must have been done about 1845, and it is the latest of Turner’s
sketches in the exhibition. It belongs to the time when Beale’s
“Voyage” had set him dreaming about icebergs and whalers. There is a
draft of some attempted poetry scribbled on the drawing, which I have
spent perhaps more time than it is worth in trying to decipher. The
only words I can feel sure about are the following:--
--Against all Hope--
No one has lived to tell the tail (_sic!_). No vestige found, nor deck--
no spar or mast--
Those who remember the oil painting called, _Whalers (boiling
blubber) entangled in floe-ice, endeavouring to extricate
themselves_--it was on loan at the Glasgow Art Gallery when last I
saw it--may be able to form some vague idea of what Turner was thinking
about when he made this fantastic and almost incomprehensible sketch.
TURNER’S PREDECESSORS
But the wonderful array of Turner’s works was far from exhausting the
interest of this memorable exhibition. Grouped round the Turners were
about thirty drawings by his predecessors, i.e. English water-colour
painters who were born before him, and about seventy drawings by his
contemporaries, i.e. artists who were born at or about the same time as
Turner, or whose period of work coincided with his lifetime. There were
also some drawings by later artists. I propose to speak of the former
group in this chapter.
Perhaps the earliest topographical drawings in the exhibition were
the two views of Bath, made in 1777, by Thomas Malton, the younger
(1748-1804)--the _West Front, Town Hall_ (51) and _Pulteney
Bridge_ (55). Though cold and precise these drawings have very
great charm, and they are crowded with topographical and antiquarian
interest. But they belong to an undeveloped stage of the art of
water-colour painting. The details of architecture are drawn carefully
and accurately, the figures are life-like though rather stiff, and the
indications of light and shade explain the shapes of the buildings
and knit the whole composition together. But the drawings do not go
beyond this. The few pale washes of colour diversify the surface, but
do not suggest either colour or atmosphere. Every object, the roadway,
figures, buildings and the sky, has the same texture, which makes the
general effect monotonous and abstract.
Though Paul Sandby (1725-1809) was born before the younger Malton, his
drawing of _The Swan Inn, Edmonton_ (Plate XXV) is, I fancy, some
ten or perhaps twenty years later in point of execution than these
Bath drawings; Sandby’s style, however, was always less abstract than
Malton’s. Compared with the Bath views this drawing by Sandby is like
a window opened on nature; it is flooded with light, the warm sunshine
plays on and through the trees, lighting up the road, the figures and
the whole scene. Yet Sandby’s care for detail is as great as Malton’s.
Each house, each garden, each tree has its individual character fully
recorded with unflagging industry and spirit. The spectator’s interest
is awakened by the variety of shapes, colours and incidents, and
sustained by the artist’s evident alertness and thorough enjoyment
of the spectacle. Sandby was one of the first English artists to rob
topographical delineation of its abstractness and impersonality. He
throws the charm of his genial personality over the scene. And though
his work is always alert, interesting and full of charm, this Edmonton
drawing is, I think, one of the most delightful of his works that I
have seen.
The best drawing by Edward Dayes (1763-1804) in the exhibition was
probably the view of _Norwich Cathedral_ (Plate XXVI), which
is dated 1793. Dayes, for all his cleverness and skill, was not
as likeable a man as Sandby. He seems to have been deficient in
geniality, generosity and sympathy. These defects of character show
in his work. He often seems bored and ill at ease with his subjects;
he was seldom if ever capable of taking the delight and interest in a
scene which Sandby took in his Edmonton drawing. There is a certain
coldness, not only of colour and effect, but of interest in this
Norwich Cathedral drawing. It is nevertheless a clever piece of work,
and though perhaps not so truthful and accurate as Malton’s views of
Bath, it shows much greater technical skill than they possess.
Turner, I believe, got his first lessons in perspective from Malton’s
father’s “Treatise,” and both Sandby and Dayes had a great deal of
influence on his early work. Some of the earliest drawings by Turner in
existence were copied or adapted from Sandby’s drawings or engravings,
and for a short period, about the years 1794 and 1795, his style,
handling, and colour were so closely modelled on Dayes’s work that many
drawings by the elder artist are mistaken for Turner’s. Indeed, some
of Dayes’s best drawings in public and private collections are wrongly
attributed to Turner. This is no small compliment to Dayes, and it
probably accounts for the want of proper appreciation from which he now
suffers.
Of the connection between Turner and the greatest of his predecessors,
John Robert Cozens (1752-1799 (?)), it is difficult to speak with much
certainty. Nearly all recent writers on Turner say that he was greatly
influenced by Cozens’s work; but I have failed to discover any certain
evidence of this influence in his early work, unless it be in choosing
the same subject--_Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps_--for
one of his oil paintings that Cozens had chosen for one of his
water-colours. The dominant influence in Turner’s early work, as I have
already pointed out, is Richard Wilson rather than John R. Cozens.
But Cozens’s work was greatly admired by some of Turner’s early
patrons, especially by Dr. Monro, and tradition says that Dr. Monro
induced Turner to copy many of the drawings by Cozens which he
possessed. I have found it hard to discover evidence in support of this
tradition. I do not remember to have seen a copy of any of Cozens’s
works which was unmistakably done entirely by Turner; in the drawings
of this kind traditionally attributed to Turner, at least the pencil
outlines are nearly always clearly recognizable as by Girtin. Even if
we accept these copies as Turner’s, they show that he possessed, at
that time, very little appreciation of the higher beauties of Cozens’s
work. No attempt is made in them to reproduce either the general effect
or the light and shade of the originals; they rob Cozens’s work of
its grandeur and austerity, and substitute for these qualities mere
prettiness and conventionality.
Indeed it is incorrect to call these drawings copies; they are nothing
more than exercises in laying washes and inventing systems of light
and shade, based upon Cozens’s work. Their mode of production and
purpose may be thus described: the outlines were first drawn in pencil
with bold, firm strokes, by a careless and free hand, which bears
remarkable resemblances to that of Girtin. These outlines must have
been done direct from Cozens’s drawings, but what was done afterwards
seems to have been done without reference of any kind to them. These
outlines were then given to another artist, who clothed them according
to his own fancy with a commonplace arrangement of light and shade.
That these exercises in blue and grey tinting and the arrangement of
light and shade were done by Turner we cannot know for certain, but the
tradition that they were, seems too insistent to be ignored. Though the
characteristic beauties of Cozens’s work counted for little or nothing
in these academical exercises, yet they show that Turner was brought
early into contact with the work of the first great master of English
water-colour painting, and so far as this work exercised any influence
on him it must have been to his advantage.
Cozens was represented in Messrs. Agnew’s exhibition by no less
than nine drawings. The largest and most important was the _Lake
Albano_ (44), with the Castel Gandolfo in the middle distance.
An excellent reproduction in colour of this impressive drawing was
published in “The Development of British Landscape Painting in
Water-Colours” (THE STUDIO, 1918). Cozens was the first
English artist to suggest in his drawings something of the grandeur and
beauty of the Alps. _A Swiss Valley_ (Plate XXVII) is one of his
finest drawings of this kind. It owes much of its dramatic effect to
its magnificently designed sky, which is as daring as it is original.
The scene represented is probably in the Splügen Pass. Less moving,
less dramatic, are the two Roman views. _In the Farnesina Gardens_
(Plate XXVIII) is a pensive sylvan scene of great elegance and charm.
The _Villa Negroni_ (Plate XXIX) is a wonderfully fascinating and
original design with its noble group of pines and cypresses silhouetted
against the sky. In the foreground we get the brow of the hill on which
the trees are standing, with sheep feeding near an ancient statue;
the ruins on the left, in the middle distance in the plain below, are
fragments of the Claudian Aqueduct, those on the right are some of
the Neronian arches. The Villa Negroni was situated near the Porta S.
Giovanni. It has now ceased to exist and its place has been taken by
the Casino Massini.
It is interesting to compare Cozens’s view of _Lake Nemi_ (Plate
XXX) with Turner’s two drawings of the same subject, one made nearly
twenty years later from Hakewill’s sketch, the other drawn from his
own impressions fifty years later. The earlier view, like the Cozens,
shows the town of Gensano on a hill in the middle distance, with
Monte Circello and the Mediterranean in the distance. There is less
exaggeration in Cozens’s drawing than in the Turners, and a certain
gauntness and strangeness repels one at the first glance as much as
Turner’s charm and glow of colour attract. Yet when one gets over the
first feeling of strangeness in this drawing, as well as in all of his
works, it exerts a very potent charm over the imagination. His drawings
are unequal, but when he is at his best, as in the _Lake Albano_
and the _Villa Negroni_, they possess a haunting beauty which
almost overawes the spirit. Such works “draw taut the strings of the
soul, and bring out her full vitality and music.”
TURNER’S CONTEMPORARIES
The greatest of Turner’s contemporaries, John Constable (1776-1837),
never took seriously to water-colour painting. He was not like Turner,
equally at home with all pictorial mediums, with oil, water-colour,
pastel, with etching and mezzotint engraving. That he could work freely
and well in water-colour is proved by drawings from his hand in the
Victoria and Albert Museum and in the Salting Bequest at the British
Museum. But he was happier with oil paint; and when his powers had
matured he used water-colour mainly for slight and hasty notes, like
_Landscape with Cottage_ (123) in Messrs. Agnew’s exhibition. I
imagine that an artist like Mr. Wilson Steer would be delighted with
this brilliant sketch, which has many affinities with his own work in
water-colour. The other contribution by Constable to this exhibition
was a large unfinished drawing of _Derwentwater_ (161). This is
little more than what artists call a “lay-in”; it consists mainly
of preliminary washes of pale colour. “Well begun is half done” the
moralists tell us; but having made so good a beginning Constable seems
to have hesitated and finally abandoned the work.
Turner’s friend and youthful rival, Thomas Girtin, was born in 1775,
the same year as Turner, but he died in 1802, at the early age of
twenty-seven. A life so tragically short did not permit of the
production of a large and varied body of work. Towards the end of his
short career he devoted much time to his great panorama of London,
which after being exhibited in Spring Gardens is said to have been
sold, “about the year 1825,” to some person in Russia and has not been
heard of since. The number of his water-colours is therefore limited,
and all of them are not entirely worthy of his genius and deservedly
high reputation.
That he was not well represented in this exhibition is hardly
surprising. But he had at least one fine architectural drawing in his
best manner--the ruins of the Lady Chapel of _Fountains Abbey_
(57); _The Road through the Village_ (2), and three specimens of
his earlier work, _Winchelsea Church_ (140), _St. Augustine’s
Priory, Canterbury_ (141), and _Kenilworth_ (Plate XXXI).
These early drawings were made soon after the termination of his
apprenticeship to Edward Dayes, and they bear evident marks of Dayes’s
influence. _St. Augustine’s Priory_ was done from a sketch by a
Mr. James Moore, an amateur who at one time employed Dayes to work
up his sketches, but who afterwards engaged Girtin for the same
purpose. Moore’s pencil drawing which provided the material for this
water-colour is now in the Ashmolean Museum, to which it was generously
presented by Mr. Thomas Girtin, the great-grandson of the artist.
The view of _Lincoln_ (Plate XXXII), which is attributed to
Girtin, bears very little resemblance to Girtin’s characteristic style
of work. The composition is too crowded for Girtin, and the drawing
and painting of the cathedral are quite unlike Girtin’s treatment of
architecture. I cannot but feel that this attribution to Girtin was
made without proper consideration. Yet the drawing is a fine one, and
it is evidently the work of a gifted and accomplished artist. In my
opinion it is much more probably the work of Peter De Wint than of
Girtin. De Wint spent a good deal of time at Lincoln, at first as a
visitor to William Hilton, his fellow-apprentice at J. R. Smith’s.
Hilton’s sister afterwards became De Wint’s wife. The treatment of the
architecture is exactly in his manner.