strongly manifested are Mrs. Radcliffe and Rousseau; in both of whom the
love of natural scenery, though mingled in the one case with what was
merely dramatic, and in the other with much that was pitifully morbid or
vicious, was still itself genuine, and intense, differing altogether in
character from any sentiments previously traceable in literature. And
then rapidly followed a group of writers, who expressed, in various
ways, the more powerful or more pure feeling which had now become one of
the strongest instincts of the age. Of these, the principal is your own
Walter Scott. Many writers, indeed, describe nature more minutely and
more profoundly; but none show in higher intensity the peculiar passion
for what is majestic or lovely in _wild_ nature, to which I am now
referring. The whole of the poem of the "Lady of the Lake" is written
with almost a boyish enthusiasm for rocks, and lakes, and cataracts; the
early novels show the same instinct in equal strength wherever he
approaches Highland scenery; and the feeling is mingled, observe, with a
most touching and affectionate appreciation of the Gothic architecture,
in which alone he found the elements of natural beauty seized by art; so
that, to this day, his descriptions of Melrose and Holy Island
Cathedral, in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" and "Marmion," as well as
of the ideal abbeys in the "Monastery" and "Antiquary," together with
those of Caerlaverock and Lochleven Castles in "Guy Mannering" and "The
Abbot," remain the staple possessions and text-books of all travelers,
not so much for their beauty or accuracy, as for their _exactly
expressing that degree of feeling with which most men in this century
can sympathize_.
Together with Scott appeared the group of poets--Byron, Wordsworth,
Keats, Shelley, and, finally, Tennyson--differing widely in moral
principles and spiritual temper, but all agreeing more or less in this
love for natural scenery.
93. Now, you will ask me--and you will ask me most reasonably--how this
love of nature in modern days can be connected with Christianity, seeing
it is as strong in the infidel Shelley as in the sacred Wordsworth. Yes,
and it is found in far worse men than Shelley. Shelley was an honest
unbeliever, and a man of warm affections; but this new love of nature is
found in the most reckless and unprincipled of the French novelists--in
Eugene Sue, in Dumas, in George Sand--and that intensely. How is this?
Simply because the feeling is reactionary; and, in this phase of it,
common to the diseased mind as well as to the healthy one. A man dying
in the fever of intemperance will cry out for water, and that with a
bitterer thirst than a man whose healthy frame naturally delights in the
mountain spring more than in the wine cup. The water is not dishonored
by that thirst of the diseased, nor is nature dishonored by the love of
the unworthy. That love is, perhaps, the only saving element in their
minds; and it still remains an indisputable truth that the love of
nature is a characteristic of the Christian heart, just as the hunger
for healthy food is characteristic of the healthy frame.
In order to meet this new feeling for nature, there necessarily arose a
new school of landscape painting. That school, like the literature to
which it corresponded, had many weak and vicious elements mixed with its
noble ones; it had its Mrs. Radcliffes and Rousseaus, as well as its
Wordsworths; but, on the whole, the feeling with which Robson drew
mountains, and Prout architecture, with which Fielding draws moors, and
Stanfield sea--is altogether pure, true, and precious, as compared with
that which suggested the landscape of the seventeenth century.
94. Now observe, how simple the whole subject becomes. You have, first,
your great ancient landscape divided into its three periods--Giottesque,
Leonardesque, Titianesque. Then you have a great gap, full of
nonentities and abortions; a gulf of foolishness, into the bottom of
which you may throw Claude and Salvator, neither of them deserving to
give a name to anything. Call it "pastoral" landscape, "guarda e passa,"
and then you have, lastly, the pure, wholesome, simple, modern
landscape. You want a name for that: I will give you one in a moment;
for the whole character and power of that landscape is originally based
on the work of one man.
95. Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in Maiden Lane, London, about
eighty years ago. The register of his birth was burned, and his age at
his death could only be arrived at by conjecture. He was the son of a
barber; and his father intended him, very properly, for his own
profession. The bent of the boy was, however, soon manifested, as is
always the case in children of extraordinary genius, too strongly to be
resisted; and a sketch of a coat of arms on a silver salver, made while
his father was shaving a customer, obtained for him, in reluctant
compliance with the admiring customer's advice, the permission to follow
art as a profession.
He had, of course, the usual difficulties of young artists to encounter,
and they were then far greater than they are now. But Turner differed
from most men in this,--that he was always willing to take anything to
do that came in his way. He did not shut himself up in a garret to
produce unsalable works of "high art," and starve, or lose his senses.
He hired himself out every evening to wash in skies in Indian ink, on
other people's drawings, as many as he could, at half-a-crown a-night,
getting his supper into the bargain. "What could I have done better?" he
said afterwards: "it was first-rate practice." Then he took to
illustrating guide-books and almanacs, and anything that wanted cheap
frontispieces. The Oxford Almanack, published on a single sheet, with a
copper-plate at the top of it, consisting of a "View"--you perhaps, some
of you, know the kind of print characteristic of the last century, under
which the word "View" is always printed in large letters, with a
dedication, obsequious to the very dust, to the Grand Signior of the
neighborhood. Well, this Almanack had always such a view of some Oxford
College at the top of it, dedicated, I think, always to the head of the
College; and it owed this, its principal decoration, to Turner for many
years. I have myself two careful drawings of some old seals, made by him
for a local book on the antiquities of Whalley Abbey. And there was
hardly a gentleman's seat of any importance in England, towards the
close of the last century, of which you will not find some rude
engraving in the local publications of the time, inscribed with the
simple name "W. Turner."
96. There was another great difference between Turner and other men. In
doing these drawings for the commonest publications of the day, and for
a remuneration altogether contemptible, he never did his work badly
because he thought it beneath him, or because he was ill-paid. There
does not exist such a thing as a slovenly drawing by Turner. With what
people were willing to give him for his work he was content; but he
considered that work in its relation to himself, not in its relation to
the purchaser. He took a poor price, that he might _live_; but he made
noble drawings, that he might _learn_. Of course some are slighter than
others, and they vary in their materials; those executed with pencil and
Indian ink being never finished to the degree of those which are
executed in color. But he is _never_ careless. According to the time and
means at his disposal, he always did his best. He never let a drawing
leave his hands without having made a step in advance, and having done
better in it than he had ever done before; and there is no important
drawing of the period which is not executed with a _total_ disregard of
time and price, and which was not, even then, worth four or five times
what Turner received for it.
Even without genius, a man who thus felt and thus labored was sure to do
great things; though it is seldom that, without great genius, men either
thus feel or thus labor. Turner was as far beyond all other men in
intellect as in industry; and his advance in power and grasp of thought
was as steady as the increasing light of sunrise.
97. His reputation was soon so far established that he was able to
devote himself to more consistent study. He never appears literally to
have _copied_ any picture; but whenever any master interested him, or
was of so established a reputation that he thought it necessary to study
him, he painted pictures of his own subjects in the style of that
master, until he felt himself able to rival his excellencies, whatever
they were. There are thus multitudes of pictures by Turner which are
direct imitations of other masters; especially of Claude, Wilson,
Loutherbourg, Gaspar Poussin, Vandevelde, Cuyp, and Rembrandt. It has
been argued by Mr. Leslie that, because Turner thus in his early years
imitated many of the old masters, therefore he must to the end of his
life have considered them greater than himself. The _non sequitur_ is
obvious. I trust there are few men so unhappy as never to have learned
anything from their inferiors; and I fear there are few men so wise as
never to have imitated anything but what was deserving of imitation. The
young Turner, indeed, would have been more than mortal if, in a period
utterly devoid of all healthy examples of landscape art, he had been
able at once to see his way to the attainment of his ultimate ends; or
if, seeing it, he had felt himself at once strong enough to defy the
authority of every painter and connoisseur whose style had formed the
taste of the public, or whose dicta directed their patronage.
98. But the period when he both felt and resolved to assert his own
superiority was indicated with perfect clearness, by his publishing a
series of engravings, which were nothing else than direct challenges to
Claude--then the landscape painter supposed to be the greatest in the
world--upon his own ground and his own terms. You are probably all aware
that the studies made by Claude for his pictures, and kept by him under
the name of the "Liber Veritatis," were for the most part made with pen
and ink, washed over with a brown tint; and that these drawings have
been carefully facsimiled and published in the form of mezzotint
engravings, long supposed to be models of taste in landscape
composition. In order to provoke comparison between Claude and himself,
Turner published a series of engravings, called the "Liber Studiorum,"
executed in exactly the same manner as these drawings of Claude,--an
etching representing what was done with the pen, while mezzotint stood
for color. You see the notable publicity of this challenge. Had he
confined himself to _pictures_ in his trial of skill with Claude, it
would only have been in the gallery or the palace that the comparison
could have been instituted; but now it is in the power of all who are
interested in the matter to make it at their ease.[32]
[Footnote 32: When this lecture was delivered, an enlarged copy of a
portion of one of these studies by Claude was set beside a similarly
magnified portion of one by Turner. It was impossible, without much
increasing the cost of the publication, to prepare two mezzotint
engravings with the care requisite for this purpose; and the portion of
the Lecture relating to these examples is therefore omitted. It is,
however, in the power of every reader to procure one or more plates of
each series; and to judge for himself whether the conclusion of Turner's
superiority, which is assumed in the next sentence of the text, be a
just one or not.]
* * * * *
99. Now, what Turner did in contest with Claude, he did with every other
then-known master of landscape, each in his turn. He challenged, and
vanquished, each in his own peculiar field, Vandevelde on the sea,
Salvator among rocks, and Cuyp on Lowland rivers; and, having done this,
set himself to paint the natural scenery of skies, mountains, and lakes,
which, until his time, had never been so much as attempted.
He thus, in the extent of his sphere, far surpassed even Titian and
Leonardo, the great men of the earlier schools. In their foreground work
neither Titian nor Leonardo _could_ be excelled; but Titian and Leonardo
were throughly conventional in all _but_ their foregrounds. Turner was
equally great in all the elements of landscape, and it is on him, and on
his daring additions to the received schemes of landscape art, that all
modern landscape has been founded. You will never meet any truly great
living landscape painter who will not at once frankly confess his
obligations to Turner, not, observe, as having copied him, but as having
been led by Turner to look in nature for what he would otherwise either
not have discerned, or discerning, not have dared to represent.
100. Turner, therefore, was the first man who presented us with the
_type_ of perfect landscape art: and the richness of that art, with
which you are at present surrounded, and which enables you to open your
walls as it were into so many windows, through which you can see
whatever has charmed you in the fairest scenery of your country, you
will do well to remember as _Turneresque_.
So then you have these five periods to recollect--you will have no
difficulty, I trust, in doing so,--the periods of Giotto, Leonardo,
Titian, pastoralism, and Turner.
101. But Turner's work is yet only begun. His greatness is, as yet,
altogether denied by many; and to the full, felt by very few. But every
day that he lies in his grave will bring some new acknowledgment of his
power; and through those eyes, now filled with dust, generations yet
unborn will learn to behold the light of nature.
You have some ground to-night to accuse me of dogmatism. I can bring no
proof before you of what I so boldly assert. But I would not have
accepted your invitation to address you, unless I had felt that I had a
right to be, in this matter, dogmatic. I did not come here to tell you
of my beliefs or my conjectures; I came to tell you the truth which I
have given fifteen years of my life to ascertain, that this man, this
Turner, of whom you have known so little while he was living among you,
will one day take his place beside Shakespeare and Verulam, in the
annals of the light of England.
Yes: beside Shakespeare and Verulam, a third star in that central
constellation, round which, in the astronomy of intellect, all other
stars make their circuit. By Shakespeare, humanity was unsealed to you;
by Verulam the _principles_ of nature; and by Turner, her _aspect_. All
these were sent to unlock one of the gates of light, and to unlock it
for the first time. But of all the three, though not the greatest,
Turner was the most unprecedented in his work. Bacon did what Aristotle
had attempted; Shakespeare did perfectly what AEschylus did partially;
but none before Turner had lifted the veil from the face of nature; the
majesty of the hills and forests had received no interpretation, and the
clouds passed unrecorded from the face of the heaven which they
adorned, and of the earth to which they ministered.
102. And now let me tell you something of his personal character. You
have heard him spoken of as ill-natured, and jealous of his brother
artists. I will tell you how jealous he was. I knew him for ten years,
and during that time had much familiar intercourse with him. I _never
once_ heard him say an unkind thing of a brother artist, and _I never
once heard him find a fault_ with another man's work. I could say this
of _no other_ artist whom I have ever known.
But I will add a piece of evidence on this matter of peculiar force.
Probably many here have read a book which has been lately published, to
my mind one of extreme interest and value, the life of the unhappy
artist, Benjamin Haydon. Whatever may have been his faults, I believe no
person can read his journal without coming to the conclusion that his
heart was honest, and that he does not _willfully_ misrepresent any
fact, or any person. Even supposing otherwise, the expression I am going
to quote to you would have all the more force, because, as you know,
Haydon passed his whole life in war with the Royal Academy, of which
Turner was one of the most influential members. Yet in the midst of one
of his most violent expressions of exultation at one of his victories
over the Academy, he draws back suddenly with these words:--"But Turner
behaved well, and did me justice."
103. I will give you however besides, two plain facts illustrative of
Turner's "jealousy."
You have, perhaps not many of you, heard of a painter of the name of
Bird: I do not myself know his works, but Turner saw some merit in them:
and when Bird first sent a picture to the Academy, for exhibition,
Turner was on the hanging committee. Bird's picture had great merit; but
no place for it could be found. Turner pleaded hard for it. No, the
thing was impossible. Turner sat down and looked at Bird's picture a
long time; then insisted that a place must be found for it. He was still
met by the assertion of impracticability. He said no more, but took
down one of his own pictures, sent it out of the Academy, and hung
Bird's in its place.
Match that, if you can, among the annals of hanging committees. But he
could do nobler things than this.
104. When Turner's picture of Cologne was exhibited in the year 1826, it
was hung between two portraits, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, of Lady
Wallscourt and Lady Robert Manners.
The sky of Turner's picture was exceedingly bright, and it had a most
injurious effect on the color of the two portraits. Lawrence naturally
felt mortified, and complained openly of the position of his pictures.
You are aware that artists were at that time permitted to retouch their
pictures on the walls of the Academy. On the morning of the opening of
the exhibition, at the private view, a friend of Turner's who had seen
the Cologne in all its splendor, led a group of expectant critics up to
the picture. He started back from it in consternation. The golden sky
had changed to a dun color. He ran up to Turner, who was in another part
of the room. "Turner, _what_ have you been doing to your picture?" "Oh,"
muttered Turner, in a low voice, "poor Lawrence was so unhappy. It's
only lamp-black. It'll all wash off after the exhibition!" He had
actually passed a wash of lamp-black in water-color over the whole sky,
and utterly spoiled his picture for the time, and so left it through the
exhibition, lest it should hurt Lawrence's.
You may easily find instances of self-sacrifice where men have strong
motives, and where large benefits are to be conferred by the effort, or
general admiration obtained by it; but of pure, unselfish, and perfect
generosity, showing itself in a matter of minor interest, and when few
could be aware of the sacrifice made, you will not easily find such
another example as this.
105. Thus much for his jealousy of his brother-artists. You have also
heard much of his niggardliness in money transactions. A great part of
what you have heard is perfectly true, allowing for the exaggeration
which always takes place in the accounts of an eccentric character. But
there are other parts of Turner's conduct of which you have never heard;
and which, if truly reported, would set his niggardliness in a very
different light. Every person from whom Turner exacted a due shilling,
proclaimed the exaction far and wide; but the persons to whom Turner
gave hundreds of pounds were prevented, by their "delicacy," from
reporting the kindness of their benefactor. I may, however, perhaps, be
permitted to acquaint you with one circumstance of this nature,
creditable alike to both parties concerned.
At the death of a poor drawing master, Mr. Wells,[33] whom Turner had
long known, he was deeply affected, and lent money to the widow until a
large sum had accumulated. She was both honest and grateful, and after a
long period was happy enough to be able to return to her benefactor the
whole sum she had received from him. She waited on him with it; but
Turner kept his hands in his pockets. "Keep it," he said, "and send your
children to school, and to church." He said this in bitterness; he had
himself been sent to neither.
[Footnote 33: Not the Mr. Wells who taught drawing at Addiscombe. It
appears that Turner knew two persons of the same name, and in the same
profession. I am not permitted to name my authority for the anecdote;
various egotistic "delicacies," even in this case, preventing useful
truth from being clearly assured to the public.]
106. "Well, but," you will answer to me, "we have heard Turner all our
lives stigmatized as brutal, and uncharitable, and selfish, and miserly.
How are we to understand these opposing statements?"
Easily. I have told you truly what Turner was. You have often heard what
to most people he appeared to be. Imagine what it was for a man to live
seventy years in this hard world, with the kindest heart, and the
noblest intellect of his time, and never to meet with a single word or
ray of sympathy, until he felt himself sinking into the grave. From the
time he knew his true greatness all the world was turned against him: he
held his own; but it could not be without roughness of bearing, and
hardening of the temper, if not of the heart. No one understood him, no
one trusted him, and every one cried out against him. Imagine, any of
you, the effect upon your own minds, if every voice that you heard from
the human beings around you were raised, year after year, through all
your lives, only in condemnation of your efforts, and denial of your
success. This may be borne, and borne easily, by men who have fixed
religious principles, or supporting domestic ties. But Turner had no one
to teach him in his youth, and no one to love him in his old age.
Respect and affection, if they came at all, came unbelieved, or came too
late. Naturally irritable, though kind--naturally suspicious, though
generous--the gold gradually became dim, and the most fine gold changed,
or, if not changed, overcast and clouded. The deep heart was still
beating, but it was beneath a dark and melancholy mail, between whose
joints, however, sometimes the slightest arrows found entrance, and
power of giving pain. He received no consolation in his last years, nor
in his death. Cut off in great part from all society--first, by labor,
and at last by sickness--hunted to his grave by the malignities of small
critics, and the jealousies of hopeless rivalry, he died in the house of
a stranger--one companion of his life, and one only, staying with him to
the last. The window of his death-chamber was turned towards the west,
and the _sun_ shone upon his face in its setting, and rested there, as
he expired.
LECTURE IV.
PRE-RAPHAELITISM.
_Delivered November 18, 1853._
107. The subject on which I would desire to engage your attention this
evening, is the nature and probable result of a certain schism which
took place a few years ago among our British artists.
This schism, or rather the heresy which led to it, as you are probably
aware, was introduced by a small number of very young men; and consists
mainly in the assertion that the principles on which art has been taught
for these three hundred years back are essentially wrong, and that the
principles which ought to guide us are those which prevailed before the
time of Raphael; in adopting which, therefore, as their guides, these
young men, as a sort of bond of unity among themselves, took the
unfortunate and somewhat ludicrous name of "Pre-Raphaelite Brethren."
108. You must also be aware that this heresy has been opposed with all
the influence and all the bitterness of art and criticism; but that in
spite of these the heresy has gained ground, and the pictures painted on
these new principles have obtained a most extensive popularity. These
circumstances are sufficiently singular, but their importance is greater
even than their singularity; and your time will certainly not be wasted
in devoting an hour to an inquiry into the true nature of this movement.
I shall first, therefore, endeavor to state to you what the real
difference is between the principles of art before and after Raphael's
time, and then to ascertain, with you, how far these young men truly
have understood the difference, and what may be hoped or feared from
the effort they are making.
109. First, then, What is the real difference between the principles on
which art has been pursued before and since Raphael? You must be aware,
that the principal ground on which the Pre-Raphaelites have been
attacked, is the charge that they wish to bring us back to a time of
darkness and ignorance, when the principles of drawing, and of art in
general, were comparatively unknown; and this attack, therefore, is
entirely founded on the assumption that, although for some unaccountable
reason we cannot at present produce artists altogether equal to Raphael,
yet that we are on the whole in a state of greater illumination than, at
all events, any artists who preceded Raphael; so that we consider
ourselves entitled to look down upon them, and to say that, all things
considered, they did some wonderful things for their time; but that, as
for comparing the art of Giotto to that of Wilkie or Edwin Landseer, it
would be perfectly ridiculous,--the one being a mere infant in his
profession, and the others accomplished workmen.
Now, that this progress has in some things taken place is perfectly
true; but it is true also that this progress is by no means the main
thing to be noticed respecting ancient and modern art; that there are
other circumstances, connected with the change from one to the other,
immeasurably more important, and which, until very lately, have been
altogether lost sight of.