"May 17th, 4 P.M. Looking east the water is calm, and reflects the sky

and vessels, with this peculiarity; the sky, which is pale blue, is in

its reflection of the same kind of blue, only a little deeper; but the

_vessels' hulls, which are black, are reflected in pale sea green_,

_i.e._, the natural color of the water under sunlight; while the _orange

masts_ of the vessels, wet with a recent shower, are reflected _without

change of color_, only not quite so bright as above. One ship has a

white, another a red stripe," (I ought to have said horizontal along the

gunwales,) '_of these the water takes no notice_.'

"What is curious, a boat passes across with white and dark figures, the

water reflects the dark ones in green, and misses out all the white;

this is chiefly owing to the dark images being opposed to the bright

reflected sky."

I have left the passage about the white and red stripe, because it will

be useful to us presently; all that I wish to insist upon here is the

showing of the local color (pea green) of the water in the spaces which

were occupied by dark reflections, and the unaltered color of the bright

ones.

Sec. 8. Water takes no shadow.

Third: Clear water takes no shadow, and that for two reasons; A perfect

surface of speculum metal takes no shadow, (this the reader may

instantly demonstrate for himself,) and a perfectly transparent body as

air takes no shadow; hence water, whether transparent or reflective,

takes no shadow.

But shadows, or the forms of them, appear on water frequently and

sharply: it is necessary carefully to explain the causes of these, as

they are one of the most eminent sources of error in water painting.

First: Water in shade is much more reflective than water in sunlight.

Under sunlight the local color of the water is commonly vigorous and

active, and forcibly affects, as we have seen, all the dark reflections,

commonly diminishing their depth. Under shade, the reflective power is

in a high degree increased,[61] and it will be found most frequently

that the forms of shadows are expressed on the surface of water, not by

actual shade, but by more genuine reflection of objects above. This is

another most important and valuable circumstance, and we owe to it some

phenomena of the highest beauty.

A very muddy river, as the Arno for instance at Florence, is seen during

sunshine of its own yellow color, rendering all reflections discolored

and feeble. At twilight it recovers its reflective power to the fullest

extent, and the mountains of Carrara are seen reflected in it as clearly

as if it were a crystalline lake. The Mediterranean, whose determined

blue yields to hardly any modifying color in daytime, receives at

evening the image of its rocky shores. On our own seas, seeming shadows

are seen constantly cast in purple and blue, upon pale green. These are

no shadows, but the pure reflection of dark or blue sky above, seen in

the shadowed space, refused by the local color of the sea in the

sunlighted spaces, and turned more or less purple by the opposition of

the vivid green.

Sec. 9. Modification of dark reflections by shadow.

We have seen, however, above, that the local color of water, while it

comparatively refuses dark reflections, accepts bright ones without

deadening them. Hence when a shadow is thrown across a space of water of

strong local color, receiving, alternately, light and dark reflections,

it has no power of increasing the reflectiveness of the water in the

bright spaces, still less of diminishing it; hence, on all the dark

reflections it is seen more or less distinctly, on all the light ones it

vanishes altogether.

Let us take an instance of the exquisite complexity of effect induced by

these various circumstances in co-operation.

Suppose a space of clear water showing the bottom under a group of

trees, showing sky through their branches, casting shadows on the

surface of the water, which we will suppose also to possess some color

of its own. Close to us, we shall see the bottom, with the shadows of

the trees clearly thrown upon it, and the color of the water seen in its

genuineness by transmitted light. Farther off, the bottom will be

gradually lost sight of, but it will be seen in the dark reflections

much farther than in the light ones. At last it ceases to affect even

the former, and the pure surface effect takes place. The blue bright sky

is reflected truly, but the dark trees are reflected imperfectly, and

the color of the water is seen instead. Where the shadow falls on these

dark reflections a darkness is seen plainly, which is found to be

composed of the pure clear reflection of the dark trees; when it crosses

the reflection of the sky, the shadow of course, being thus fictitious,

vanishes.

Farther, of course on whatever dust and other foulness may be present in

water, real shadow falls clear and dark in proportion to the quantity

of solid substance present. On very muddy rivers, real shadow falls in

sunlight nearly as sharply as on land; on our own sea, the apparent

shadow caused by increased reflection, is much increased in depth by the

chalkiness and impurity of the water.

Farther, when surface is rippled, every ripple, up to a certain variable

distance on each side of the spectator, and at a certain angle between

him and the sun, varying with the size and shape of the ripples,

reflects to him a small image of the sun. Hence those dazzling fields of

expanding light so often seen upon the sea.

Any object that comes between the sun and these ripples, takes from them

the power of reflecting the sun, and in consequence, all their light;

hence any intervening objects cast apparent shadows upon such spaces of

intense force, and of the exact shape, and in the exact place of real

shadows, and yet which are no more real shadows than the withdrawal of

an image of a piece of white paper from a mirror is a shadow on the

mirror. Farther, in all shallow water, more or less in proportion to its

shallowness, but in some measure, I suppose, up to depths of forty or

fifty fathoms, and perhaps more, the local color of the water depends in

great measure on light reflected from the bottom. This, however, is

especially manifest in clear rivers like the Rhone, where the absence of

the light reflected from below forms an apparent shadow, often visibly

detached some distance from the floating object which casts it.

Sec. 10. Examples on the water of the Rhone.

The following extract from my own diary at Geneva, with the subsequent

one, which is a continuation of that already given in part at Venice,

will illustrate both this and the other points we have been stating.

"GENEVA, _21st April, Morning._

"The sunlight falls from the cypresses of Rousseau's island straight

towards the bridge. The shadows of the bridge and of the trees fall on

the water in leaden purple, opposed to its general hue of aquamarine

green. This green color is caused by the light being reflected from the

bottom, though the bottom is not seen; as is evident by its becoming

paler towards the middle of the river, where the water shoals, on which

pale part the purple shadow of the small bridge falls most forcibly,

which shadow, however, is still only apparent, being the absence of this

reflected light, associated with the increased reflective power of the

water, which in those spaces reflects blue sky above. A boat swings in

the shoal water; its reflection is cast in a transparent pea-green,

which is considerably darker than the pale aquamarine of the surface at

the spot. Its shadow is detached from it just about half the depth of

the reflection; which, therefore, forms a bright green light between the

keel of the boat and its shadow; where the shadow cuts the reflection,

the reflection is darkest and something like the true color of the boat;

where the shadow falls out of the reflection, it is of a leaden purple,

pale. The boat is at an angle of about 20 deg. below. Another boat nearer,

in deeper water, shows no shadow, whatsoever, and the reflection is

marked by its transparent green, while the surrounding water takes a

lightish blue reflection from the sky."

The above notes, after what has been said, require no comment; but one

more case must be stated belonging to rough water. Every large wave of

the sea is in ordinary circumstances divided into, or rather covered by,

innumerable smaller waves, each of which, in all probability, from some

of its edges or surfaces reflects the sunbeams; and hence result a

glitter, polish, and vigorous light over the whole flank of the wave,

which are, of course, instantly withdrawn within the space of a cast

shadow, whose form, therefore, though it does not affect the great body

or ground of the water in the least, is sufficiently traceable by the

withdrawal of the high lights; also every string and wreath of foam

above or within the wave takes real shadow, and thus adds to the

impression.

I have not stated one-half of the circumstances which produce or

influence effects of shadow on water; but lest I should confuse or weary

the reader, I leave him to pursue the subject for himself; enough having

been stated to establish this general principle, that whenever shadow is

seen on clear water, and, in a measure, even on foul water, it is not,

as on land, a dark shade subduing where it falls the sunny general hue

to a lower tone; but it is a space of an entirely different color,

subject itself, by its susceptibility of reflection, to infinite

varieties of depth and hue, and liable, under certain circumstances, to

disappear altogether; and that, therefore, whenever we have to paint

such shadows, it is not only the hue of the water itself that we have to

consider, but all the circumstances by which in the position attributed

to them such shaded spaces could be affected.

Sec. 11. Effect of ripple on distant water.

Fourth: If water be rippled, the side of every ripple next to us

reflects a piece of the sky, and the side of every ripple farthest from

us reflects a piece of the opposite shore, or of whatever objects may be

beyond the ripple. But as we soon lose sight of the farther sides of the

ripples on the retiring surface, the whole rippled space will then be

reflective of the sky only. Thus, where calm distant water receives

reflections of high shores, every extent of rippled surface appears as a

bright line interrupting that reflection with the color of the sky.

Sec. 12. Elongation of reflections by moving water.

Fifth: When a ripple or swell is seen at such an angle as to afford a

view of its farther side, it carries the reflection of objects farther

down than calm water would. Therefore all motion in water elongates

reflections, and throws them into confused vertical lines. The real

amount of this elongation is not distinctly visible, except in the case

of very bright objects, and especially of lights, as of the sun, moon,

or lamps by a river shore, whose reflections are hardly ever seen as

circles or points, which of course they are on perfectly calm water, but

as long streams of tremulous light.

But it is strange that while we are constantly in the habit of seeing

the reflection of the sun, which ought to be a mere circle, elongated

into a stream of light extending from the horizon to the shore, the

elongation of the reflection of a sail or other object to one-half of

this extent is received, if represented in a picture, with incredulity

by the greater number of spectators. In one of Turner's Venices the

image of the white lateen-sails of the principal boat is about twice as

long as the sails themselves. I have heard the truth of this simple

effect disputed over and over again by intelligent persons, and yet on

any water so exposed as the lagoons of Venice, the periods are few and

short when there is so little motion as that the reflection of sails a

mile off shall not affect the swell within six feet of the spectator.

There is, however, a strange arbitrariness about this elongation of

reflection, which prevents it from being truly felt. If we see on an

extent of lightly swelling water surface the image of a bank of white

clouds, with masses of higher accumulation at intervals, the water will

not usually reflect the whole bank in an elongated form, but it will

commonly take the eminent parts, and reflect them in long straight

columns of defined breadth, and miss the intermediate lower parts

altogether; and even in doing this it will be capricious, for it will

take one eminence, and miss another, with no apparent reason; and often

when the sky is covered with white clouds, some of those clouds will

cast long tower-like reflections, and others none, so arbitrarily that

the spectator is often puzzled to find out which are the accepted and

which the refused.

In many cases of this kind it will be found rather that the eye is, from

want of use and care, insensible to the reflection than that the

reflection is not there; and a little thought and careful observation

will show us that what we commonly suppose to be a surface of uniform

color is, indeed, affected more or less by an infinite variety of hues,

prolonged, like the sun image, from a great distance, and that our

apprehension of its lustre, purity, and even of its surface, is in no

small degree dependent on our feeling of these multitudinous hues, which

the continual motion of that surface prevents us from analyzing or

understanding for what they are.

Sec. 13. Effect of rippled water on horizontal and inclined images.

Sixth: Rippled water, of which we can see the farther side of the waves,

will reflect a perpendicular line clearly, a bit of its length being

given on the side of each wave, and easily joined by the eye. But if the

line slope, its reflection will be excessively confused and disjointed;

and if horizontal, nearly invisible. It was this circumstance which

prevented the red and white stripe of the ships at Venice, noticed

above, from being visible.

Sec. 14. To what extent reflection is visible from above.

Seventh: Every reflection is the image in reverse of just so much of the

objects beside the water, as we could see if we were placed as much

under the level of the water as we are actually above it. If an object

be so far back from the bank, that if we were five feet under the water

level we could not see it over the bank, then, standing five feet above

the water, we shall not be able to see its image under the reflected

bank. Hence the reflection of all objects that have any slope back from

the water is shortened, and at last disappears as we rise above it.

Lakes seen from a great height appear like plates of metal set in the

landscape, reflecting the sky but none of their shores.

Sec. 15. Deflection of images on agitated water.

Eighth: Any given point of the object above the water is reflected, if

reflected at all, at some spot in a vertical line beneath it, so long as

the plane of the water is horizontal. On rippled water a slight

deflection sometimes takes place, and the image of a vertical tower will

slope a little away from the wind, owing to the casting of the image on

the sloping sides of the ripples. On the sloping sides of large waves

the deflection is in proportion to the slope. For rough practice, after

the slope of the wave is determined, let the artist turn his paper until

it becomes horizontal, and then paint the reflections of any object upon

it as on level water, and he will be right.

Sec. 16. Necessity of watchfulness as well as of science.

Licenses, how taken by great men.

Such are the most common and general optical laws which are to be taken

into consideration in the painting of water. Yet, in the application of

them, as tests of good or bad water painting, we must be cautious in the

extreme. An artist may know all these laws, and comply with them, and

yet paint water execrably; and he may be ignorant of every one of them,

and, in their turn, and in certain places, violate every one of them,

and yet paint water gloriously. Thousands of exquisite effects take

place in nature, utterly inexplicable, and which can be believed only

while they are seen; the combinations and applications of the above laws

are so varied and complicated that no knowledge or labor could, if

applied analytically, keep pace with them. Constant and eager

watchfulness, and portfolios filled with actual statements of

water-effect, drawn on the spot and on the instant, are worth more to

the painter than the most extended optical knowledge; without these all

his knowledge will end in a pedantic falsehood. With these it does not

matter how gross or how daring here and there may be his violations of

this or that law; his very transgressions will be admirable.

It may be said, that this is a dangerous principle to advance in these

days of idleness. I cannot help it; it is true, and must be affirmed.

Of all contemptible criticism, the most to be contemned is that which

punishes great works of art when they fight without armor, and refuses

to feel or acknowledge the great spiritual refracted sun of their truth,

because it has risen at a false angle, and burst upon them before its

appointed time. And yet, on the other hand, let it be observed that it

is not feeling, nor fancy, nor imagination, so called, that I have put

before science, but watchfulness, experience, affection and trust in

nature; and farther let it be observed, that there is a difference

between the license taken by one man and another, which makes one

license admirable, and the other punishable; and that this difference is

of a kind sufficiently discernible by every earnest person, though it is

not so explicable as that we can beforehand say where and when, or even

to whom, the license is to be forgiven. In the Paradise of Tintoret, in

the Academy of Venice, the Angel is seen in the distance driving Adam

and Eve out of the garden. Not, for Tintoret, the leading to the gate

with consolation or counsel; his strange ardor of conception is seen

here as everywhere. Full speed they fly, the angel and the human

creatures; the angel wrapt in an orb of light floats on, stooped forward

in his fierce flight, and does not touch the ground; the chastised

creatures rush before him in abandoned terror. All this might have been

invented by another, though in other hands it would assuredly have been

offensive; but one circumstance which completes the story could have

been thought of or dared by none but Tintoret. The Angel casts a SHADOW

before him towards Adam and Eve.

Now that a globe of light should cast a shadow is a license, as far as

mere optical matters are concerned, of the most audacious kind. But how

beautiful is the circumstance in its application here, showing that the

angel, who is light to all else around him, is darkness to those whom he

is commissioned to banish forever.

I have before noticed the license of Rubens in making his horizon an

oblique line. His object is to carry the eye to a given point in the

distance. The road winds to it, the clouds fly at it, the trees nod to

it, a flock of sheep scamper towards it, a carter points his whip at it,

his horses pull for it, the figures push for it, and the horizon slopes

to it. If the horizon had been horizontal, it would have embarrassed

everything and everybody.

In Turner's Pas de Calais there is a buoy poised on the ridge of a near

wave. It casts its reflection vertically down the flank of the wave,

which slopes steeply. I cannot tell whether this is a license or a

mistake; I suspect the latter, for the same thing occurs not

unfrequently in Turner's seas; but I am almost certain that it would

have been done wilfully in this case, even had the mistake been pointed

out, for the vertical line is necessary to the picture, and the eye is

so little accustomed to catch the real bearing of the reflections on the

slopes of waves that it does not feel the fault.

Sec. 17. Various licenses or errors in water painting of Claude, Cuyp,

Vandevelde.

In one of the smaller rooms of the Uffizii at Florence, off the Tribune,

there are two so-called Claudes; one a pretty wooded landscape, I think

a copy, the other a marine with architecture, very sweet and genuine.

The sun is setting at the side of the picture, it casts a long stream of

light upon the water. This stream of light is oblique, and comes from

the horizon, where it is under the sun, to a point near the centre of

the picture. If this had been done as a license, it would be an instance

of most absurd and unjustifiable license, as the fault is detected by

the eye in a moment, and there is no occasion nor excuse for it. But I

imagine it to be an instance rather of the harm of imperfect science.

Taking his impression instinctively from nature, Claude usually did what

is right and put his reflection vertically under the sun; probably,

however, he had read in some treatise on optics that every point in this

reflection was in a vertical plane between the sun and spectator; or he

might have noticed walking on the shore that the reflection came

straight from the sun to his feet, and intending to indicate the

position of the spectator, drew in his next picture the reflection

sloping to the supposed point, the error being excusable enough, and

plausible enough to have been lately revived and systematized.[62]

In the picture of Cuyp, No. 83 in the Dulwich Gallery, the post at the

end of the bank casts three or four radiating reflections. This is

visibly neither license nor half science, but pure ignorance. Again, in

the picture attributed to Paul Potter, No. 176, Dulwich Gallery, I

believe most people must feel, the moment they look at it, that there is

something wrong with the water, that it looks odd, and hard, and like

ice or lead; and though they may not be able to tell the reason of the

impression--for when they go near they will find it smooth and lustrous,

and prettily painted--yet they will not be able to shake off the

unpleasant sense of its being like a plate of bad mirror set in a model

landscape among moss, rather than like a pond. The reason is, that while

this water receives clear reflections from the fence and hedge on the

left, and is everywhere smooth and evidently capable of giving true

images, it yet reflects none of the cows.

In the Vandevelde (113) there is not a line of ripple or swell in any

part of the sea; it is absolutely windless, and the near boat casts its

image with great fidelity, which being unprolonged downwards informs us

that the calm is perfect, (Rule V.,) and being unshortened informs us

that we are on a level with the water, or nearly so. (Rule VII.) Yet

underneath the vessel on the right, the gray shade which stands for

reflection breaks off immediately, descending like smoke a little way

below the hull, then leaving the masts and sails entirely unrecorded.

This I imagine to be not ignorance, but unjustifiable license.

Vandevelde evidently desired to give an impression of great extent of

surface, and thought that if he gave the reflection more faithfully, as

the tops of the masts would come down to the nearest part of the

surface, they would destroy the evidence of distance, and appear to set

the ship above the boat instead of beyond it. I doubt not in such

awkward hands that such would indeed have been the case, but he is not

on that account to be excused for painting his surface with gray

horizontal lines, as is done by nautically-disposed children; for no

destruction of distance in the ocean is so serious a loss as that of its

liquidity. It is better to feel a want of extent in the sea, than an

extent which we might walk upon or play at billiards upon.

Sec. 18. And Canaletto.

Among all the pictures of Canaletto, which I have ever seen, and they

are not a few, I remember but one or two where there is any variation

from one method of treatment of the water. He almost always covers the

whole space of it with one monotonous ripple, composed of a coat of

well-chosen, but perfectly opaque and smooth sea-green, covered with a

certain number, I cannot state the exact average, but it varies from

three hundred and fifty to four hundred and upwards, according to the

extent of canvas to be covered, of white concave touches, which are very

properly symbolical of ripple.

And, as the canal retires back from the eye, he very geometrically

diminishes the size of his ripples, until he arrives at an even field of

apparently smooth water. By our sixth rule, this rippling water as it

retires should show more and more of the reflection of the sky above it,

and less and less of that of objects beyond it, until, at two or three

hundred yards down the canal, the whole field of water should be one

even gray or blue, the color of the sky receiving no reflections

whatever of other objects. What does Canaletto do? Exactly in proportion

as he retires, he displays _more_ and _more_ of the reflection of

objects, and less and less of the sky, until, three hundred yards away,

all the houses are reflected as clear and sharp as in a quiet lake.

This, again, is wilful and inexcusable violation of truth, of which the

reason, as in the last case, is the painter's consciousness of weakness.

It is one of the most difficult things in the world to express the light

reflection of the blue sky on a distant ripple, and to make the eye

understand the cause of the color, and the motion of the apparently

smooth water, especially where there are buildings above to be

reflected, for the eye never understands the want of the reflection. But

it is the easiest and most agreeable thing in the world to give the

inverted image: it occupies a vast space of otherwise troublesome

distance in the simplest way possible, and is understood by the eye at

once. Hence Canaletto is glad, as any other inferior workman would be,

not to say obliged, to give the reflections in the distance. But when he

comes up close to the spectator, he finds the smooth surface just as

troublesome near, as the ripple would have been far off. It is a very

nervous thing for an ignorant artist to have a great space of vacant

smooth water to deal with, close to him, too far down to take

reflections from buildings, and yet which must be made to look flat and

retiring and transparent. Canaletto, with his sea-green, did not at all

feel himself equal to anything of this kind, and had therefore no

resource but in the white touches above described, which occupy the

alarming space without any troublesome necessity for knowledge or

invention, and supply by their gradual diminution some means of

expressing retirement of surface. It is easily understood, therefore,

why he should adopt this system, which is just what any awkward workman

would naturally cling to, trusting to the inaccuracy of observation of

the public to secure him from detection.

Sec. 19. Why unpardonable.

Now in all these cases it is not the mistake or the license itself, it

is not the infringement of this or that law which condemns the picture,

but it is the spirit and habit of mind in which the license is taken,

the cowardice or bluntness of feeling, which infects every part alike,

and deprives the whole picture of vitality. Canaletto, had he been a

great painter, might have cast his reflections wherever he chose, and

rippled the water wherever he chose, and painted his sea sloping if he

chose, and neither I nor any one else should have dared to say a word

against him; but he is a little and a bad painter, and so continues

everywhere multiplying and magnifying mistakes, and adding apathy to

error, until nothing can any more be pardoned in him. If it be but

remembered that every one of the surfaces of those multitudinous ripples

is in nature a mirror which catches, according to its position, either

the image of the sky or of the silver beaks of the gondolas, or of their

black bodies and scarlet draperies, or of the white marble, or the green

sea-weed on the low stones, it cannot but be felt that those waves would

have something more of color upon them than that opaque dead green.

Green they are by their own nature, but it is a transparent and emerald

hue, mixing itself with the thousand reflected tints without

overpowering the weakest of them; and thus, in every one of those

individual waves, the truths of color are contradicted by Canaletto by

the thousand.

Venice is sad and silent now, to what she was in his time; the canals

are choked gradually one by one, and the foul water laps more and more

sluggishly against the rent foundations; but even yet, could I but place

the reader at the early morning on the quay below the Rialto, when the

market boats, full laden, float into groups of golden color, and let him

watch the dashing of the water about their glittering steely heads, and

under the shadows of the vine leaves, and show him the purple of the

grapes and the figs, and the glowing of the scarlet gourds carried away

in long streams upon the waves, and among them, the crimson fish

baskets, plashing and sparkling, and flaming as the morning sun falls on

their wet tawny sides, and above, the painted sails of the fishing

boats, orange and white, scarlet and blue, and better than all such

florid color, the naked, bronzed, burning limbs of the seamen, the last

of the old Venetian race, who yet keep the right Giorgione color on

their brows and bosoms, in strange contrast with the sallow sensual

degradation of the creatures that live in the cafes of the Piazza, he

would not be merciful to Canaletto any more.

Sec. 20. The Dutch painters of sea.

Yet even Canaletto, in relation to the truths he had to paint, is

spiritual, faithful, powerful, compared to the Dutch painters of sea. It

is easily understood why his green paint and concave touches should be

thought expressive of the water on which the real colors are not to be

discerned but by attention, which is never given; but it is not so

easily understood, considering how many there are who love the sea, and

look at it, that Vandevelde and such others should be tolerated. As I

before said, I feel utterly hopeless in addressing the admirers of these

men, because I do not know what it is in their works which is supposed

to be like nature. Foam appears to me to curdle and cream on the wave

sides and to fly, flashing from their crests, and not to be set astride

upon them like a peruke; and waves appear to me to fall, and plunge, and

toss, and nod, and crash over, and not to curl up like shavings; and

water appears to me, when it is gray, to have the gray of stormy air

mixed with its own deep, heavy, thunderous, threatening blue, and not

the gray of the first coat of cheap paint on a deal door; and many other

such things appear to me which, as far as I can conjecture by what is

admired of marine painting, appear to no one else; yet I shall have

something more to say about these men presently, with respect to the

effect they have had upon Turner; and something more, I hope, hereafter,

with the help of illustration.

Sec. 21. Ruysdael, Claude, and Salvator.

There is a sea-piece of Ruysdael's in the Louvre[63] which, though

nothing very remarkable in any quality of art, is at least forceful,

agreeable, and, as far as it goes, natural; the waves have much freedom

of action, and power of color; the wind blows hard over the shore, and

the whole picture may be studied with profit as a proof that the

deficiency of color and everything else in Backhuysen's works, is no

fault of the Dutch sea. There is sublimity and power in every field of

nature from the pole to the line; and though the painters of one country

are often better and greater, universally, than those of another, this

is less because the subjects of art are wanting anywhere, than because

one country or one age breeds mighty and thinking men, and another none.

Ruysdael's painting of falling water and brook scenery is also generally

agreeable--more than agreeable it can hardly be considered. There

appears no exertion of mind in any of his works; nor are they calculated

to produce either harm or good by their feeble influence. They are good

furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.

The seas of Claude are the finest pieces of water-painting in ancient

art. I do not say that I like them, because they appear to me selections

of the particular moment when the sea is most insipid and characterless;

but I think that they are exceedingly true to the forms and time

selected, or at least that the fine instances of them are so, of which

there are exceedingly few.

On the right hand of one of the marines of Salvator, in the Pitti

palace, there is a passage of sea reflecting the sunrise, which is

thoroughly good, and very like Turner; the rest of the picture, as the

one opposite to it, utterly virtueless. I have not seen any other

instance of Salvator's painting water with any care, it is usually as

conventional as the rest of his work, yet conventionalism is perhaps

more tolerable in water-painting than elsewhere; and if his trees and

rocks had been good, the rivers might have been generally accepted

without objection.

Sec. 22. Nicholas Poussin.

The merits of Poussin as a sea or water painter may, I think, be

sufficiently determined by the Deluge in the Louvre, where the breaking

up of the fountains of the deep is typified by the capsizing of a wherry

over a weir.

In the outer porch of St. Mark's at Venice, among the mosaics on the

roof, there is a representation of the deluge. The ground is dark blue;

the rain is represented in bright white undulating parallel stripes;

between these stripes is seen the massy outline of the ark, a bit

between each stripe, very dark and hardly distinguishable from the sky;

but it has a square window with a bright golden border, which glitters

out conspicuously, and leads the eye to the rest--the sea below is

almost concealed with dead bodies.

On the font of the church of San Frediano at Lucca, there is a

representation of--possibly--the Israelites and Egyptians in the Red

Sea. The sea is typified by undulating bands of stone, each band

composed of three plies (almost the same type is to be seen in the

glass-painting of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as especially at

Chartres). These bands would perhaps be hardly felt as very aqueous, but

for the fish which are interwoven with them in a complicated manner,

their heads appearing at one side of every band, and their tails at the

other.

Both of these representatives of deluge, archaic and rude as they are, I

consider better, more suggestive, more inventive, and more natural,

than Poussin's. Indeed, this is not saying anything very depreciatory,

as regards the St. Mark's one, for the glittering of the golden window

through the rain is wonderfully well conceived, and almost deceptive,

looking as if it had just caught a gleam of sunlight on its panes, and

there is something very sublime in the gleam of this light above the

floating corpses. But the other instance is sufficiently grotesque and

imperfect, and yet, I speak with perfect seriousness, it is, I think,

very far preferable to Poussin's.

On the other hand, there is a just medium between the meanness and

apathy of such a conception as his, and the extravagance, still more

contemptible, with which the subject has been treated in modern

days.[64] I am not aware that I can refer to any instructive example of

this intermediate course, for I fear the reader is by this time wearied

of hearing of Turner, and the plate of Turner's picture of the deluge is

so rare that it is of no use to refer to it.

Sec. 23. Venetians and Florentines. Conclusion.

It seems exceedingly strange that the great Venetian painters should

have left us no instance, as far as I know, of any marine effects

carefully studied. As already noted, whatever passages of sea occur in

their backgrounds are merely broad extents of blue or green surface,

fine in color, and coming dark usually against the horizon, well enough

to be understood as sea, (yet even that not always without the help of a

ship,) but utterly unregarded in all questions of completion and detail.

The water even in Titian's landscape is almost always violently though

grandly conventional, and seldom forms an important feature. Among the

religious schools very sweet motives occur, but nothing which for a

moment can be considered as real water-painting. Perugino's sea is

usually very beautifully felt; his river in the fresco of S^ta.

Maddalena at Florence is freely indicated, and looks level and clear;

the reflections of the trees given with a rapid zigzag stroke of the

brush. On the whole, I suppose that the best imitations of level water

surface to be found in ancient art are in the clear Flemish landscapes.

Cuyp's are usually very satisfactory, but even the best of these attain

nothing more than the agreeable suggestion of calm pond or river. Of any

tolerable representation of water in agitation, or under any

circumstances that bring out its power and character, I know no

instance; and the more capable of noble treatment the subject happens to

be, the more manifest invariably is the painter's want of feeling in

every effort, and of knowledge in every line.

FOOTNOTES

[61] I state this merely as a fact: I am unable satisfactorily to

account for it on optical principles, and were it otherwise, the

investigation would be of little interest to the general reader, and

little value to the artist.

[62] Parsey's "Convergence of Perpendiculars." I have not space here

to enter into any lengthy exposure of this mistake, but reasoning is

fortunately unnecessary, the appeal to experiment being easy. Every

picture is the representation, as before stated, of a vertical plate

of glass, with what might be seen through it, drawn on its surface.

Let a vertical plate of glass be taken, and wherever it be placed,

whether the sun be at its side or at its centre, the reflection will

always be found in a vertical line under the sun, parallel with the

side of the glass. The pane of any window looking to sea is all the

apparatus necessary for this experiment, and yet it is not long

since this very principle was disputed with me by a man of much

taste and information, who supposed Turner to be wrong in drawing

the reflection straight down at the side of his picture, as in his

Lancaster Sands, and innumerable other instances.

[63] In the last edition of this work was the following passage:--"I

wish Ruysdael had painted one or two rough seas. I believe if he had

he might have saved the unhappy public from much grievous

victimizing, both in mind and pocket, for he would have shown that

Vandevelde and Backhuysen were not quite sea-deities." The writer

has to thank the editor of Murray's Handbook of Painting in Italy

for pointing out the oversight. He had passed many days in the

Louvre before the above passage was written, but had not been in the

habit of pausing long anywhere except in the last two rooms,

containing the pictures of the Italian school. The conjecture,

however, shows that he had not ill-estimated the power of Ruysdael;

nor does he consider it as in anywise unfitting him for the task he

has undertaken, that for every hour passed in galleries he has

passed days on the seashore.

[64] I am here, of course, speaking of the treatment of the subject

as a landscape only; many mighty examples of its conception occur

where the sea, and all other adjuncts, are entirely subservient to

the figures, as with Raffaelle and M. Angelo.

CHAPTER II.

OF WATER, AS PAINTED BY THE MODERNS.

Sec. 1. General power of the moderns in painting quiet water. The lakes of

Fielding.

There are few men among modern landscape painters, who cannot paint

quiet water at least suggestively, if not faithfully. Those who are

incapable of doing this, would scarcely be considered artists at all;

and anything like the ripples of Canaletto, or the black shadows of

Vandevelde, would be looked upon as most unpromising, even in the work

of a novice. Among those who most fully appreciate and render the

qualities of space and surface in calm water, perhaps Copley Fielding

stands first. His expanses of windless lake are among the most perfect

passages of his works; for he can give surface as well as depth, and

make his lake look not only clear, but, which is far more difficult,

lustrous. He is less dependent than most of our artists upon

reflections; and can give substance, transparency, and extent, where

another painter would be reduced to paper; and he is exquisitely refined

in his expression of distant breadth, by the delicate line of ripple

interrupting the reflection, and by aerial qualities of color. Nothing,

indeed, can be purer or more refined than his general feeling of lake

sentiment, were it not for a want of simplicity--a fondness for pretty,

rather than impressive color, and a consequent want of some of the

higher expression of repose.

Sec. 2. The calm rivers of De Wint, J. Holland, etc.

Sec. 3. The character of bright and violent falling water.

Sec. 4. As given by Nesfield.

Hundreds of men might be named, whose works are highly instructive in

the management of calm water. De Wint is singularly powerful and

certain, exquisitely bright and vigorous in color. The late John Varley

produced some noble passages. I have seen, some seven years ago, works

by J. Holland, which were, I think, as near perfection as water-color

can be carried--for _bona fide_ truth, refined and finished to the

highest degree. But the power of modern artists is not brought out until

they have greater difficulties to struggle with. Stand for half an hour

beside the fall of Schaffhausen, on the north side where the rapids are

long, and watch how the vault of water first bends, unbroken, in pure,

polished velocity, over the arching rocks at the brow of the cataract,

covering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet thick--so swift that

its motion is unseen except when a foam globe from above darts over it

like a falling star; and how the trees are lighted above it under all

their leaves, at the instant that it breaks into foam; and how all the

hollows of that foam burn with green fire like so much shattering

chrysoprase; and how, ever and anon, startling you with its white flash,

a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall like a rocket, bursting in

the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how,

through the curdling wreaths of the restless, crashing abyss below, the

blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the

sky through white rain-cloud; while the shuddering iris stoops in

tremulous stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through

the choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among

the thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild

water; their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded

corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again upon the

mossy rocks as its roar dies away; the dew gushing from their thick

branches through drooping clusters of emerald herbage, and sparkling in

white threads along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding the lichens

which chase and checker them with purple and silver. I believe, when you

have stood by this for half an hour, you will have discovered that there

is something more in nature than has been given by Ruysdael. Probably

you will not be much disposed to think of any mortal work at the time;

but when you look back to what you have seen, and are inclined to

compare it with art, you will remember--or ought to remember--Nesfield.

He is a man of extraordinary feeling, both for the color and the

spirituality of a great waterfall; exquisitely delicate in his

management of the changeful veil of spray or mist; just in his curves

and contours; and unequalled in color except by Turner. None of our

water-color painters can approach him in the management of the variable

hues of clear water over weeded rocks; but his feeling for it often

leads him a little too far, and, like Copley Fielding, he loses sight of

simplicity and dignity for the sake of delicacy or prettiness. His

waterfalls are, however, unequalled in their way; and, if he would

remember, that in all such scenes there is much gloom as well as much

splendor, and relieve the lustre of his attractive passages of color

with more definite and prevalent grays, and give a little more substance

to parts of his picture unaffected by spray, his work would be nearly

perfect. His seas are also most instructive; a little confused in

chiaroscuro, but refined in form and admirable in color.

Sec. 5. The admirable water-drawing of J. D. Harding.

Sec. 6. His color; and painting of sea.

J. D. Harding is, I think, nearly unequalled in the _drawing_ of running

water. I do not know what Stanfield would do; I have never seen an

important piece of torrent drawn by him; but I believe even he could

scarcely contend with the magnificent _abandon_ of Harding's brush.

There is perhaps nothing which tells more in the drawing of water than

decisive and swift execution; for, in a rapid touch the hand naturally

falls into the very curve of projection which is the absolute truth;

while in slow finish, all precision of curve and character is certain to

be lost, except under the hand of an unusually powerful master. But

Harding has both knowledge and velocity, and the fall of his torrents is

beyond praise; impatient, chafing, substantial, shattering, crystalline,

and capricious; full of various form, yet all apparently instantaneous

and accidental, nothing conventional, nothing dependent upon parallel

lines or radiating curves; all broken up and dashed to pieces over the

irregular rock, and yet all in unity of motion. The color also of his

_falling_ and bright water is very perfect; but in the dark and level

parts of his torrents he has taken up a bad gray, which has hurt some of

his best pictures. His gray in shadows under rocks or dark reflections

is admirable; but it is when the stream is in full light, and unaffected

by reflections in distance, that he gets wrong. We believe that the

fault is in a want of expression of darkness in the color, making it

appear like a positive hue of the water, for which it is much too dead

and cold.

Harding seldom paints sea, and it is well for Stanfield that he does

not, or the latter would have to look to his crown. All that we have

seen from his hand is, as coast sea, quite faultless; we only wish he

would paint it more frequently; always, however, with a veto upon French

fishing-boats. In the Exhibition of 1842, he spoiled one of the most

superb pieces of seashore and sunset which modern art has produced, with

the pestilent square sail of one of these clumsy craft, which the eye

could not escape from.

Sec. 7. The sea of Copley Fielding. Its exceeding grace and rapidity.

Before passing to our great sea painter, we must again refer to the

works of Copley Fielding. It is with his sea as with his sky, he can

only paint one, and that an easy one, but it is, for all that, an

impressive and a true one. No man has ever given, with the same flashing

freedom, the race of a running tide under a stiff breeze, nor caught,

with the same grace and precision, the curvature of the breaking wave,

arrested or accelerated by the wind. The forward fling of his foam, and

the impatient run of his surges, whose quick, redoubling dash we can

almost hear, as they break in their haste upon their own bosoms, are

nature itself, and his sea gray or green was, nine years ago, very

right, as color; always a little wanting in transparency, but never cold

or toneless. Since that time, he seems to have lost the sense of

greenness in water, and has verged more and more on the purple and

black, with unhappy results. His sea was always dependent for effect on

its light or dark relief against the sky, even when it possessed color;

but it now has lost all local color and transparency together, and is

little more than a study of chiaroscuro in an exceedingly ill-chosen

gray. Besides, the perpetual repetition of the same idea is singularly

weakening to the mind. Fielding, in all his life, can only be considered

as having produced _one_ sea picture. The others are duplicates. He

ought to go to some sea of perfect clearness and brilliant color, as

that on the coast of Cornwall, or of the Gulf of Genoa, and study it

sternly in broad daylight, with no black clouds nor drifting rain to

help him out of his difficulties. He would then both learn his strength

and add to it.

Sec. 8. Its high aim at character.

Sec. 9. But deficiency in the requisite quality of grays.

Sec. 10. Variety of the grays of nature.

But there is one point in all his seas deserving especial praise--a

marked aim at _character_. He desires, especially in his latter works,

not so much to produce an agreeable picture, a scientific piece of

arrangement, or delightful melody of color, as to make us feel the

utter desolation, the cold, withering, frozen hopelessness of the

continuous storm and merciless sea. And this is peculiarly remarkable in

his denying himself all color, just in the little bits which an artist

of inferior mind would paint in sienna and cobalt. If a piece of broken

wreck is allowed to rise for an instant through the boiling foam, though

the blue stripe of a sailor's jacket, or a red rag of a flag would do

all our hearts good, we are not allowed to have it; it would make us too

comfortable, and prevent us from shivering and shrinking as we look, and

the artist, with admirable intention, and most meritorious self-denial,

expresses his piece of wreck with a dark, cold brown. Now we think this

aim and effort worthy of the highest praise, and we only wish the lesson

were taken up and acted on by our other artists; but Mr. Fielding should

remember that nothing of this kind can be done with success unless by

the most studied management of the general tones of the picture; for the

eye, deprived of all means of enjoying the gray hues, merely as a

contrast to bright points, becomes painfully fastidious in the quality

of the hues themselves, and demands for its satisfaction such melodies

and richness of gray as may in some degree atone to it for the loss of

points of stimulus. That gray which would be taken frankly and freely

for an expression of gloom, if it came behind a yellow sail or a red

cap, is examined with invidious and merciless intentness when there is

nothing to relieve it, and, if not able to bear the investigation, if

neither agreeable nor variable in its hue, renders the picture weak

instead of impressive, and unpleasant instead of awful. And indeed the

management of nature might teach him this; for though, when using

violent contrasts, she frequently makes her gloom somewhat monotonous,

the moment she gives up her vivid color, and depends upon her

desolation, that moment she begins to steal the greens into her

sea-gray, and the browns and yellows into her cloud-gray, and the

expression of variously tinted light through all. Nor is Mr. Fielding

without a model in art, for the Land's End, and Lowestoffe, and

Snowstorm, (in the Academy, 1842,) of Turner, are nothing more than

passages of the most hopeless, desolate, uncontrasted grays, and yet are

three of the very finest pieces of color that have come from his hand.

And we sincerely hope that Mr. Fielding will gradually feel the

necessity of such studied melodies of quiet color, and will neither fall

back into the old tricks of contrast, nor continue to paint with purple

and ink. If he will only make a few careful studies of gray from the

mixed atmosphere of spray, rain, and mist of a gale that has been three

days hard at work, not of a rainy squall, but of a persevering and

powerful storm, and not where the sea is turned into milk and magnesia

by a chalk coast, but where it breaks pure and green on gray slate or

white granite, as along the cliffs of Cornwall, we think his pictures

would present some of the finest examples of high intention and feeling

to be found in modern art.

Sec. 11. Works of Stanfield. His perfect knowledge and power.

Sec. 12. But want of feeling. General sum of truth presented by modern art.

The works of Stanfield evidently, and at all times, proceed from the

hand of a man who has both thorough knowledge of his subject, and

thorough acquaintance with all the means and principles of art. We never

criticise them, because we feel, the moment we look carefully at the

drawing of any single wave, that the knowledge possessed by the master

is much greater than our own, and therefore believe that if anything

offends us in any part of the work, it is nearly certain to be our

fault, and not the painter's. The local color of Stanfield's sea is

singularly true and powerful, and entirely independent of any tricks of

chiaroscuro. He will carry a mighty wave up against the sky, and make

its whole body dark and substantial against the distant light, using all

the while nothing more than chaste and unexaggerated local color to gain

the relief. His surface is at once lustrous, transparent, and accurate

to a hairbreadth in every curve; and he is entirely independent of dark

skies, deep blues, driving spray, or any other means of concealing want

of form, or atoning for it. He fears no difficulty, desires no

assistance, takes his sea in open daylight, under general sunshine, and

paints the _element_ in its pure color and complete forms. But we wish

that he were less powerful, and more interesting; or that he were a

little less Diogenes-like, and did not scorn all that he does not want.

Now that he has shown us what he can do without such aids, we wish he

would show us what he can do with them. He is, as we have already said,

wanting in what we have just been praising in Fielding--impressiveness.

We should like him to be less clever, and more affecting--less

wonderful, and more terrible; and as the very first step towards such an

end, to learn how to conceal. We are, however, trenching upon matters

with which we have at present nothing to do; our concern is now only

with truth, and one work of Stanfield alone presents us with as much

concentrated knowledge of sea and sky, as, diluted, would have lasted

any one of the old masters his life. And let it be especially observed,

how extensive and how varied is the truth of our modern masters--how it

comprises a complete history of that nature of which, from the ancients,

you only here and there can catch a stammering descriptive syllable--how

Fielding has given us every character of the quiet lake, Robson[65] of

the mountain tarn, De Wint of the lowland river, Nesfield of the radiant

cataract, Harding of the roaring torrent, Fielding of the desolate sea,

Stanfield of the blue, open, boundless ocean. Arrange all this in your

mind, observe the perfect truth of it in all its parts, compare it with

the fragmentary falsities of the ancients, and then, come with me to

Turner.

FOOTNOTES

[65] I ought before to have alluded to the works of the late G.

Robson. They are a little disagreeable in execution, but there is a

feeling of the character of _deep_ calm water in them quite

unequalled, and different from the works and thoughts of all other

men.

CHAPTER III.

OF WATER, AS PAINTED BY TURNER.

Sec. 1. The difficulty of giving surface to smooth water.

Sec. 2. Is dependent on the structure of the eye, and the focus by which

the reflected rays are perceived.

I believe it is a result of the experience of all artists, that it is

the easiest thing in the world to give a certain degree of depth and

transparency to water; but that it is next thing to impossible, to give

a full impression of surface. If no reflection be given--a ripple being

supposed--the water looks like lead: if reflection be given, it in nine

cases out of ten looks _morbidly_ clear and deep, so that we always go

down _into_ it, even when the artist most wishes us to glide _over_ it.

Now, this difficulty arises from the very same circumstance which

occasions the frequent failure in effect of the best drawn foregrounds,

noticed in Section II. Chapter III., the change, namely, of focus

necessary in the eye in order to receive rays of light coming from

different distances. Go to the edge of a pond, in a perfectly calm day,

at some place where there is duckweed floating on the surface,--not

thick, but a leaf here and there. Now, you may either see in the water

the reflection of the sky, or you may see the duckweed; but you cannot,

by any effort, see both together. If you look for the reflection, you

will be sensible of a sudden change or effort in the eye, by which it

adapts itself to the reception of the rays which have come all the way

from the clouds, have struck on the water, and so been sent up again to

the eye. The focus you adopt is one fit for great distance; and,

accordingly, you will feel that you are looking down a great way under

the water, while the leaves of the duckweed, though they lie upon the

water at the very spot on which you are gazing so intently, are felt

only as a vague, uncertain interruption, causing a little confusion in

the image below, but entirely indistinguishable as leaves,--and even

their color unknown and unperceived. Unless you think of them, you will

not even feel that anything interrupts your sight, so excessively

slight is their effect. If, on the other hand, you make up your mind to

look for the leaves of the duckweed, you will perceive an instantaneous

change in the effort of the eye, by which it becomes adapted to receive

near rays--those which have only come from the surface of the pond. You

will then see the delicate leaves of the duckweed with perfect

clearness, and in vivid green; but while you do so, you will be able to

perceive nothing of the reflections in the very water on which they

float--nothing but a vague flashing and melting of light and dark hues,

without form or meaning, which, to investigate, or find out what they

mean or are, you must quit your hold of the duckweed, and plunge down.

Sec. 3. Morbid clearness occasioned in painting of water by distinctness of

reflections.

Sec. 4. How avoided by Turner.

Sec. 5. All reflections on distant water are distinct.

Hence it appears, that whenever we see plain reflections of

comparatively distant objects, in near water, we cannot possibly see the

surface, and _vice versa_; so that when in a painting we give the

reflections with the same clearness with which they are visible in

nature, we presuppose the effort of the eye to look under the surface,

and, of course, destroy the surface, and induce an effect of clearness

which, perhaps, the artist has not particularly wished to attain, but

which he has found himself forced into, by his reflections, in spite of

himself. And the reason of this effect of clearness appearing

preternatural is, that people are not in the habit of looking at water

with the distant focus adapted to the reflections, unless by particular

effort. We invariably, under ordinary circumstances, use the surface

focus; and, in consequence, receive nothing more than a vague and

confused impression of the reflected colors and lines, however clearly,

calmly, and vigorously all may be defined underneath, if we choose to

look for them. We do not look for them, but glide along over the

surface, catching only playing light and capricious color for evidence

of reflection, except where we come to images of objects close to the

surface, which the surface focus is of course adapted to receive; and

these we see clearly, as of the weeds on the shore, or of sticks rising

out of the water, etc. Hence, the ordinary effect of water is only to be

rendered by giving the reflections of the _margin_ clear and distinct

(so clear they usually are in nature, that it is impossible to tell

where the water begins;) but the moment we touch the reflection of

distant objects, as of high trees or clouds, that instant we must become

vague and uncertain in drawing, and, though vivid in color and light as

the object itself, quite indistinct in form and feature. If we take such

a piece of water as that in the foreground of Turner's Chateau of Prince

Albert, the first impression from it is,--"What a wide _surface_!" We

glide over it a quarter of a mile into the picture before we know where

we are, and yet the water is as calm and crystalline as a mirror; but we

are not allowed to tumble into it, and gasp for breath as we go

down,--we are kept upon the surface, though that surface is flashing and

radiant with every hue of cloud, and sun, and sky, and foliage. But the

secret is in the drawing of these reflections.[66] We cannot tell when

we look _at_ them and _for_ them, what they mean. They have all

character, and are evidently reflections of something definite and

determined; but yet they are all uncertain and inexplicable; playing

color and palpitating shade, which, though we recognize in an instant

for images of something, and feel that the water is bright, and lovely,

and calm, we cannot penetrate nor interpret: we are not allowed to go

down to them, and we repose, as we should in nature, upon the lustre of

the level surface. It is in this power of saying everything, and yet

saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art here, as in all

other cases, consists. But as it was before shown in Sect. II. Chap.

III. that the focus of the eye required little alteration after the

first half mile of distance, it is evident that on the _distant_ surface

of water, _all_ reflections will be seen plainly; for the same focus

adapted to a moderate distance of surface will receive with distinctness

rays coming from the sky, or from any other distance, however great.

Thus we always see the reflection of Mont Blanc on the Lake of Geneva,

whether we take pains to look for it or not, because the water upon

which it is cast is itself a mile off; but if we would see the

reflection of Mont Blanc in the Lac de Chede, which is close to us, we

must take some trouble about the matter, leave the green snakes swimming

upon the surface, and plunge for it. Hence reflections, if viewed

collectively, are always clear in proportion to the distance of the

water on which they are cast. And now look at Turner's Ulleswater, or

any of his distant lake expanses, and you will find every crag and line

of the hills rendered in them with absolute fidelity, while the near

surface shows nothing but a vague confusion of exquisite and lustrous

tint. The reflections even of the clouds will be given far off, while

those of near boats and figures will be confused and mixed among each

other, except just at the water-line.

Sec. 6. The error of Vandevelde.

And now we see what Vandevelde _ought_ to have done with the shadow of

his ship spoken of in the first chapter of this section. In such a calm,

we should in nature, if we had looked for the reflection, have seen it

clear from the water-line to the flag on the mainmast; but in so doing,

we should have appeared to ourselves to be looking under the water, and

should have lost all feeling of surface. When we looked at the surface

of the sea,--as we naturally should,--we should have seen the image of

the hull absolutely clear and perfect, because that image is cast on

distant water; but we should have seen the image of the masts and sails

gradually more confused as they descended, and the water close to us

would have borne only upon its surface a maze of flashing color and

indefinite hue. Had Vandevelde, therefore, given the perfect image of

his ship, he would have represented a truth dependent on a particular

effort of the eye, and destroyed his surface. But his business was to

give, not a distinct reflection, but the colors of the reflection in

mystery and disorder upon his near water, all perfectly vivid, but none

intelligible; and had he done so, the eye would not have troubled itself

to search them out; it would not have cared whence or how the colors

came, but it would have felt them to be true and right, and rested

satisfied upon the polished surface of the clear sea. Of the perfect

truth, the best examples I can give are Turner's Saltash and Castle

Upnor.

Sec. 7. Difference in arrangement of parts between the reflected object and

its image.

Be it next observed that the reflection of all near objects is, by our

fifth rule, not an exact copy of the parts of them which we see above

the water, but a totally different view and arrangement of them, that

which we should get if we were looking at them from beneath. Hence we

see the dark sides of leaves hanging over a stream, in their reflection,

though we see the light sides above, and all objects and groups of

objects are thus seen in the reflection under different lights, and in

different positions with respect to each other from those which they

assume above; some which we see on the bank being entirely lost in their

reflection, and others which we cannot see on the bank brought into

view. Hence nature contrives never to repeat herself, and the surface of

water is not a mockery, but a new view of what is above it. And this

difference in what is represented, as well as the obscurity of the

representation, is one of the chief sources by which the sensation of

surface is kept up in the reality. The reflection is not so remarkable,

it does not attract the eye in the same degree when it is entirely

different from the images above, as when it mocks them and repeats them,

and we feel that the space and surface have color and character of their

own, and that the bank is one thing and the water another. It is by not

making this change manifest, and giving underneath a mere duplicate of

what is seen above, that artists are apt to destroy the essence and

substance of water, and to drop us through it.

Sec. 8. Illustrated from the works of Turner.

Sec. 9. The boldness and judgment shown in the observance of it.

Now one instance will be sufficient to show the exquisite care of Turner

in this respect. On the left-hand side of his Nottingham, the water (a

smooth canal) is terminated by a bank fenced up with wood, on which,

just at the edge of the water, stands a white sign-post. A quarter of a

mile back, the hill on which Nottingham Castle stands rises steeply

nearly to the top of the picture. The upper part of this hill is in

bright golden light, and the lower in very deep gray shadow, against

which the white board of the sign-post is seen entirely in light relief,

though, being turned from the light, it is itself in delicate middle

tint, illumined only on the edge. But the image of all this in the

canal is very different. First, we have the reflection of the piles of

the bank, sharp and clear, but under this we have not what we see above

it, the dark _base_ of the hill, (for this being a quarter of a mile

back, we could not see over the fence if we were looking from below,)

but the golden summit of the hill, the shadow of the under part having

no record nor place in the reflection. But this summit, being very

distant, cannot be seen clearly by the eye while its focus is adapted to

the surface of the water, and accordingly its reflection is entirely

vague and confused; you cannot tell what it is meant for, it is mere

playing golden light. But the sign-post, being on the bank close to us,

will be reflected clearly, and accordingly its distinct image is seen in

the midst of this confusion. But it now is relieved, not against the

dark base, but against the illumined summit of the hill, and it appears,

therefore, instead of a white space thrown out from blue shade, a dark

gray space thrown out from golden light. I do not know that any more

magnificent example could be given of concentrated knowledge, or of the

daring statement of most difficult truth. For who but this consummate

artist would have had courage, even if he had perceived the laws which

required it, to undertake in a single small space of water, the painting

of an entirely new picture, with all its tones and arrangements

altered,--what was made above bright by opposition to blue, being

underneath made cool and dark by opposition to gold;--or would have

dared to contradict so boldly the ordinary expectation of the

uncultivated eye, to find in the reflection a mockery for the reality?

But the reward is immediate, for not only is the change most grateful to

the eye, and most exquisite as composition, but the surface of the water

in consequence of it is felt to be as spacious as it is clear, and the

eye rests not on the inverted image of the material objects, but on the

element which receives them. And we have a farther instance in this

passage of the close study which is required to enjoy the works of

Turner, for another artist might have altered the reflection or confused

it, but he would not have reasoned upon it so as to find out _what the

exact alteration must be_; and if we had tried to account for the

reflection, we should have found it false or inaccurate. But the master

mind of Turner, without effort, showers its knowledge into every touch,

and we have only to trace out even his slightest passages, part by part,

to find in them the universal working of the deepest thought, that

consistency of every minor truth which admits of and invites the same

ceaseless study as the work of nature herself.

Sec. 10. The _texture_ of surface in Turner's painting of calm water.

There is, however, yet another peculiarity in Turner's painting of

smooth water, which, though less deserving of admiration, as being

merely a mechanical excellence, is not less wonderful than its other

qualities, nor less unique--a peculiar texture, namely, given to the

most delicate tints of the surface, when there is little reflection from

anything except sky or atmosphere, and which, just at the points where

other painters are reduced to paper, gives to the surface of Turner the

greatest appearance of substantial liquidity. It is impossible to say

how it is produced; it looks like some modification of body color; but

it certainly is not body color used as by other men, for I have seen

this expedient tried over and over again without success; and it is

often accompanied by crumbling touches of a dry brush, which never could

have been put upon body color, and which could not have shown through

underneath it. As a piece of mechanical excellence, it is one of the

most remarkable things in the works of the master; and it brings the

truth of his water-painting up to the last degree of perfection, often

rendering those passages of it the most attractive and delightful, which

from their delicacy and paleness of tint, would have been weak and

papery in the hands of any other man. The best instance of it I can

give, is, I think, the distance of the Devonport with the Dockyards.

Sec. 11. Its united qualities.

After all, however, there is more in Turner's painting of water surface

than any philosophy of reflection, or any peculiarity of means, can

account for or accomplish; there is a might and wonder about it which

will not admit of our whys and hows. Take, for instance, the picture of

the Sun of Venice going to Sea, of 1843, respecting which, however,

there are one or two circumstances which may as well be noted besides

its water-painting. The reader, if he has not been at Venice, ought to

be made aware that the Venetian fishing-boats, almost without exception,

carry canvas painted with bright colors, the favorite design for the

centre being either a cross or a large sun with many rays, the favorite

colors being red, orange, and black, blue occurring occasionally. The

radiance of these sails and of the bright and grotesque vanes at the

mast-heads under sunlight is beyond all painting, but it is strange

that, of constant occurrence as these boats are on all the lagoons,

Turner alone should have availed himself of them. Nothing could be more

faithful than the boat which was the principal object in this picture,

in the cut of the sail, the filling of it, the exact height of the boom

above the deck, the quartering of it with color, finally and especially,

the hanging of the fish-baskets about the bows. All these, however, are

comparatively minor merits, (though not the blaze of color which the

artist elicited from the right use of these circumstances,) but the

peculiar power of the picture was the painting of the sea surface, where

there were no reflections to assist it. A stream of splendid color fell

from the boat, but that occupied the centre only; in the distance, the

city and crowded boats threw down some playing lines, but these still

left on each side of the boat a large space of water reflecting nothing

but the morning sky. This was divided by an eddying swell, on whose

continuous sides the local color of the water was seen, pure aquamarine,

(a beautiful occurrence of closely-observed truth,) but still there

remained a large blank space of pale water to be treated, the sky above

had no distinct details and was pure faint gray, with broken white

vestiges of cloud: it gave no help therefore. But there the water lay,

no dead gray flat paint, but downright clear, playing, palpable surface,

full of indefinite hue, and retiring as regularly and visibly back and

far away, as if there had been objects all over it to tell the story by

perspective. Now it is the doing of this which tries the painter, and it

is his having done this which made me say above that "no man had ever

painted the surface of calm water but Turner." The San Benedetto,

looking towards Fusina, contained a similar passage, equally fine; in

one of the Canale della Guidecca the specific green color of the water

is seen in front, with the shadows of the boats thrown on it in purple;

all, as it retires, passing into the pure reflective blue.

Sec. 12. Relation of various circumstances of past agitation, etc., by the

most trifling incidents, as in the Cowes.

But Turner is not satisfied with this. He is never altogether content

unless he can, at the same time that he takes advantage of all the

placidity of repose, tell us something either about the past commotion

of the water, or of some present stirring of tide or current which its

stillness does not show, or give us something or other to think about

and reason upon, as well as to look at. Take a few instances. His Cowes,

Isle of Wight, is a summer twilight about half an hour, or more, after

sunset. Intensity of repose is the great aim throughout, and the unity

of tone of the picture is one of the finest things that Turner has ever

done. But there is not only quietness, there is the very deepest

solemnity in the whole of the light, as well as in the stillness of the

vessels; and Turner wishes to enhance this feeling by representing not

only repose, but _power_ in repose, the emblem, in the sea, of the quiet

ships of war. Accordingly, he takes the greatest possible pains to get

his surface polished, calm, and smooth, but he indicates the reflection

of a buoy, floating a full quarter of a mile off, by three black strokes

with wide intervals between them, the last of which touches the water

within twenty yards of the spectator. Now these three reflections can

only indicate the farther sides of three rises of an enormous swell, and

give by their intervals of separation, a space of from twelve to twenty

yards for the breadth of each wave, including the sweep between them,

and this swell is farther indicated by the reflection of the new moon

falling, in a wide zigzag line. The exceeding majesty which this single

circumstance gives to the whole picture, the sublime sensation of power

and knowledge of former exertion which we instantly receive from it, if

we have but acquaintance with nature enough to understand its language,

render this work not only a piece of the most refined truth, (as which I

have at present named it,) but to my mind, one of the highest pieces of

intellectual art existing.

Sec. 13. In scenes on the Loire and Seine.

Again, in the scene on the Loire, with the square precipice and fiery

sunset, in the Rivers of France, repose has been aimed at in the same

way, and most thoroughly given; but the immense width of the river at

this spot makes it look like a lake or sea, and it was therefore

necessary that we should be made thoroughly to understand and feel that

this is not the calm of still water, but the tranquillity of a majestic

current. Accordingly, a boat swings at anchor on the right; and the

stream, dividing at its bow, flows towards us in two long, dark waves,

especial attention to which is enforced by the one on the left being

brought across the reflected stream of sunshine, which it separates, and

which is broken in the nearer water by the general undulation and

agitation caused by the boat's wake; a wake caused by the waters passing

it, not by _its_ going through the water.

Sec. 14. Expression of contrary waves caused by recoil from shore.

Sec. 15. Various other instances.

Again, in the Confluence of the Seine and Marne, we have the repose of

the wide river stirred by the paddles of the steamboat, (whose plashing

we can almost hear, for we are especially compelled to look at them by

their being made the central note of the composition--the blackest

object in it, opposed to the strongest light,) and this disturbance is

not merely caused by the two lines of surge from the boat's wake, for

any other painter must have given these, but Turner never rests

satisfied till he has told you _all_ in his power; and he has not only

given the receding surges, but these have gone on to the shore, have

struck upon it, and been beaten back from it in another line of weaker

contrary surges, whose point of intersection with those of the wake

itself is marked by the sudden subdivision and disorder of the waves of

the wake on the extreme left, and whose reverted direction is

exquisitely given where their lines cross the calm water, close to the

spectator, and marked also by the sudden vertical spring of the spray

just where they intersect the swell from the boat; and in order that we

may fully be able to account for these reverted waves, we are allowed,

just at the extreme right-hand limit of the picture, to see the point

where the swell from the boat meets the shore. In the Chaise de

Gargantua we have the still water lulled by the dead calm which usually

precedes the most violent storms, suddenly broken upon by a tremendous

burst of wind from the gathered thunder-clouds, scattering the boats,

and raising the water into rage, except where it is sheltered by the

hills. In the Jumieges and Vernon we have farther instances of local

agitation, caused, in the one instance, by a steamer, in the other, by

the large water-wheels under the bridge, not, observe, a mere splashing

about the wheel itself, this is too far off to be noticeable, so that we

should not have even known that the objects beneath the bridge were

water-wheels, but for the agitation recorded a quarter of a mile down

the river, where its current crosses the sunlight. And thus there will

scarcely ever be found a piece of quiet water by Turner, without some

story in it of one kind or another; sometimes a slight, but beautiful

incident--oftener, as in the Cowes, something on which the whole

sentiment and intention of the picture in a great degree depends; but

invariably presenting some new instance of varied knowledge and

observation, some fresh appeal to the highest faculties of the mind.

Sec. 16. Turner's painting of distant expanses of water. Calm, interrupted

by ripple.

Sec. 17. And ripple, crossed by sunshine.

Of extended surfaces of water, as rendered by Turner, the Loch Katrine

and Derwent-water, of the Illustrations to Scott, and the Loch Lomond,

vignette in Rogers's Poems, are characteristic instances. The first of

these gives us the most distant part of the lake entirely under the

influence of a light breeze, and therefore entirely without reflections

of the objects on its borders; but the whole near half is untouched by

the wind, and on that is cast the image of the upper part of Ben-Venue

and of the islands. The second gives us the surface, with just so much

motion upon it as to prolong, but not to destroy, the reflections of the

dark woods,--reflections only interrupted by the ripple of the boat's

wake. And the third gives us an example of the whole surface so much

affected by ripple as to bring into exercise all those laws which we

have seen so grossly violated by Canaletto. We see in the nearest boat

that though the lines of the gunwale are much blacker and more

conspicuous than that of the cutwater, yet the gunwale lines, being

nearly horizontal, have no reflection whatsoever; while the line of the

cutwater, being vertical, has a distinct reflection of three times its

own length. But even these tremulous reflections are only visible as far

as the islands; beyond them, as the lake retires into distance, we find

it receives only the reflection of the gray light from the clouds, and

runs in one flat white field up between the hills; and besides all this,

we have another phenomenon, quite new, given to us,--the brilliant gleam

of light along the centre of the lake. This is not caused by ripple,

for it is cast on a surface rippled all over; but it is what we could

not have without ripple,--the light of a passage of sunshine. I have

already (Chap. I., Sec. 9) explained the cause of this phenomenon, which

never can by any possibility take place on calm water, being the

multitudinous reflection of the sun from the sides of the ripples,

causing an appearance of local light and shadow; and being dependent,

like real light and shadow, on the passage of the clouds, though the

dark parts of the water are the reflections of the clouds, not the

shadows of them; and the bright parts are the reflections of the sun,

and not the light of it. This little vignette, then, will entirely

complete the system of Turner's universal truth in quiet water. We have

seen every phenomenon given by him,--the clear reflection, the prolonged

reflection, the reflection broken by ripple, and finally the ripple

broken by light and shade; and it is especially to be observed how

careful he is, in this last case, when he uses the apparent light and

shade, to account for it by showing us in the whiteness of the lake

beyond, its universal subjection to ripple.

Sec. 18. His drawing of distant rivers.

Sec. 19. And of surface associated with mist.

We have not spoken of Turner's magnificent drawing of distant rivers,

which, however, is dependent only on more complicated application of the

same laws, with exquisite perspective. The sweeps of river in the

Dryburgh, (Illustrations to Scott,) and Melrose, are bold and

characteristic examples, as well as the Rouen from St. Catherine's Hill,

and the Caudebec, in the Rivers of France. The only thing which in these

works requires particular attention, is the care with which the height

of the observer above the river is indicated by the loss of the

reflections of its banks. This is, perhaps, shown most clearly in the

Caudebec. If we had been on a level with the river, its whole surface

would have been darkened by the reflection of the steep and high banks;

but being far above it, we can see no more of the image than we could of

the hill itself, if it were actually reversed under the water; and

therefore we see that Turner gives us only a narrow line of dark water,

immediately under the precipice, the broad surface reflecting only the

sky. This is also finely shown on the left-hand side of the Dryburgh.

But all these early works of the artist have been eclipsed by some

recent drawings of Switzerland. These latter are not to be described by

any words, but they must be noted here not only as presenting records of

lake effect on grander scale, and of more imaginative character than any

other of his works, but as combining effects of the surface of mist with

the surface of water. Two or three of the Lake of Lucerne, seen from

above, give the melting of the mountain promontories beneath into the

clear depth, and above into the clouds; one of Constance shows the vast

lake at evening, seen not as water, but its surface covered with low

white mist, lying league beyond league in the twilight like a fallen

space of moony cloud; one of Goldau shows the Lake of Zug appearing

through the chasm of a thunder-cloud under sunset, its whole surface one

blaze of fire, and the promontories of the hills thrown out against it,

like spectres; another of Zurich gives the playing of the green waves of

the river among white streams of moonlight: two purple sunsets on the

Lake of Zug are distinguished for the glow obtained without positive

color, the rose and purple tints being in great measure brought by

opposition out of browns: finally, a drawing executed in 1845 of the

town of Lucerne from the lake is unique for its expression of water

surface reflecting the clear green hue of sky at twilight.

Sec. 20. His drawing of falling water, with peculiar expression of weight.

Sec. 21. The abandonment and plunge of great cataracts. How given by him.

It will be remembered that it was said above, that Turner was the only

painter who had ever represented the surface of calm or the _force_ of

agitated water. He obtains this expression of force in falling or

running water by fearless and full rendering of its forms. He never

loses himself and his subject in the splash of the fall--his presence of

mind never fails as he goes down; he does not blind us with the spray,

or veil the countenance of his fall with its own drapery. A little

crumbling white, or lightly rubbed paper, will soon give the effect of

indiscriminate foam; but nature gives more than foam--she shows beneath

it, and through it, a peculiar character of exquisitely studied form

bestowed on every wave and line of fall; and it is this variety of

definite character which Turner always aims at, rejecting, as much as

possible, everything that conceals or overwhelms it. Thus, in the Upper

Fall of the Tees, though the whole basin of the fall is blue and dim

with the rising vapor, yet the whole attention of the spectator is

directed to that which it was peculiarly difficult to render, the

concentric zones and delicate curves of the falling water itself; and it

is impossible to express with what exquisite accuracy these are given.

They are the characteristic of a powerful stream descending without

impediment or break, but from a narrow channel, so as to expand as it

falls. They are the constant form which such a stream assumes as it

descends; and yet I think it would be difficult to point to another

instance of their being rendered in art. You will find nothing in the

waterfalls even of our best painters, but springing lines of parabolic

descent, and splashing, shapeless foam; and, in consequence, though they

may make you understand the swiftness of the water, they never let you

feel the weight of it; the stream in their hands looks _active_, not

_supine_, as if it leaped, not as if it fell. Now water will leap a

little way, it will leap down a weir or over a stone, but it _tumbles_

over a high fall like this; and it is when we have lost the parabolic

line, and arrived at the catenary,--when we have lost the _spring_ of

the fall, and arrived at the _plunge_ of it, that we begin really to

feel its weight and wildness. Where water takes its first leap from the

top, it is cool, and collected, and uninteresting, and mathematical, but

it is when it finds that it has got into a scrape, and has farther to go

than it thought for, that its character comes out; it is then that it

begins to writhe, and twist, and sweep out zone after zone in wilder

stretching as it falls, and to send down the rocket-like, lance-pointed,

whizzing shafts at its sides, sounding for the bottom. And it is this

prostration, this hopeless abandonment of its ponderous power to the

air, which is always peculiarly expressed by Turner, and especially in

the case before us; while our other artists, keeping to the parabolic

line, where they do not lose themselves in smoke and foam, make their

cataract look muscular and wiry, and may consider themselves fortunate

if they can keep it from stopping. I believe the majesty of motion which

Turner has given by these concentric catenary lines must be felt even by

those who have never seen a high waterfall, and therefore cannot

appreciate their exquisite fidelity to nature.

In the Chain Bridge over the Tees, this passiveness and swinging of the

water to and fro are yet more remarkable; while we have another

characteristic of a great waterfall given to us, that the wind, in this

instance coming up the valley against the current, takes the spray up

off the edges, and carries it back in little torn, reverted rags and

threads, seen in delicate form against the darkness on the left. But we

must understand a little more about the nature of running water before

we can appreciate the drawing either of this, or any other of Turner's

torrents.

Sec. 22. Difference in the action of water, when continuous and when

interrupted. The interrupted stream fills the hollows of its bed.

Sec. 23. But the continuous stream takes the shape of its bed.

Sec. 24. Its exquisite curved lines.

When water, not in very great body, runs in a rocky bed much interrupted

by hollows, so that it can rest every now and then in a pool as it goes

along, it does not acquire a continuous velocity of motion. It pauses

after every leap, and curdles about, and rests a little, and then goes

on again; and if in this comparatively tranquil and rational state of

mind it meets with an obstacle, as a rock or stone, it parts on each

side of it with a little bubbling foam, and goes round; if it comes to a

step in its bed, it leaps it lightly, and then after a little plashing

at the bottom, stops again to take breath. But if its bed be on a

continuous slope, not much interrupted by hollows, so that it cannot

rest, or if its own mass be so increased by flood that its usual

resting-places are not sufficient for it, but that it is perpetually

pushed out of them by the following current, before it has had time to

tranquillize itself, it of course gains velocity with every yard that it

runs; the impetus got at one leap is carried to the credit of the next,

until the whole stream becomes one mass of unchecked, accelerating

motion. Now when water in this state comes to an obstacle, it does not

part at it, but clears it, like a racehorse; and when it comes to a

hollow, it does not fill it up and run out leisurely at the other side,

but it rushes down into it and comes up again on the other side, as a

ship into the hollow of the sea. Hence the whole appearance of the bed

of the stream is changed, and all the lines of the water altered in

their nature. The quiet stream is a succession of leaps and pools; the

leaps are light and springy, and parabolic, and make a great deal of

splashing when they tumble into the pool; then we have a space of quiet

curdling water, and another similar leap below. But the stream when it

has gained an impetus takes the shape of its bed, never stops, is

equally deep and equally swift everywhere, goes down into every hollow,

not with a leap, but with a swing, not foaming, nor splashing, but in

the bending line of a strong sea-wave, and comes up again on the other

side, over rock and ridge, with the ease of a bounding leopard; if it

meet a rock three or four feet above the level of its bed, it will

neither part nor foam, nor express any concern about the matter, but

clear it in a smooth dome of water, without apparent exertion, coming

down again as smoothly on the other side; the whole surface of the surge

being drawn into parallel lines by its extreme velocity, but foamless,

except in places where the form of the bed opposes itself at some direct

angle to such a line of fall, and causes a breaker; so that the whole

river has the appearance of a deep and raging sea, with this only

difference, that the torrent-waves always break backwards, and sea-waves

forwards. Thus, then, in the water which has gained an impetus, we have

the most exquisite arrangements of curved lines, perpetually changing

from convex to concave, and _vice versa_, following every swell and

hollow of the bed with their modulating grace, and all in unison of

motion, presenting perhaps the most beautiful series of inorganic forms

which nature can possibly produce; for the sea runs too much into

similar and concave curves with sharp edges, but every motion of the

torrent is united, and all its curves are modifications of beautiful

line.

Sec. 25. Turner's careful choice of the historical truth.

Sec. 26. His exquisite drawing of the continuous torrent in the Llanthony

Abbey.

We see, therefore, why Turner seizes on these curved lines of the

torrent, not only as being among the most beautiful forms of nature, but

because they are an instant expression of the utmost power and velocity,

and tell us how the torrent has been flowing before we see it. For the

leap and splash might be seen in the sudden freakishness of a quiet

stream, or the fall of a rivulet over a mill-dam; but the undulating

line is the _exclusive_ attribute of the mountain-torrent,[67] whose

fall and fury have made the valleys echo for miles; and thus the moment

we see one of its curves over a stone in the foreground, we know how far

it has come, and how fiercely. And in the drawing we have been speaking

of, the lower fall of the Tees, in the foreground of the Killiecrankie

and Rhymer's Glen, and of the St. Maurice, in Rogers's Italy, we shall

find the most exquisite instances of the use of such lines; but the most

perfect of all in the Llanthony Abbey, which may be considered as the

standard of torrent-drawing. The chief light of the picture here falls

upon the surface of the stream, swelled by recent rain, and its mighty

waves come rolling down close to the spectator, green and clear, but

pale with anger, in gigantic, unbroken, oceanic curves, bending into

each other without break or foam, though jets of fiery spray are cast

into the air along the rocky shore, and rise in the sunshine in dusty

vapor. The whole surface is one united race of mad motion; all the waves

dragged, as I have described, into lines and furrows by their swiftness,

and every one of these fine forms is drawn with the most studied

chiaroscuro of delicate color, grays and greens, as silvery and pure as

the finest passages of Paul Veronese, and with a refinement of execution

which the eye strains itself in looking into. The rapidity and gigantic

force of this torrent, the exquisite refinement of its color, and the

vividness of foam which is obtained through a general middle tint,

render it about the most perfect piece of painting of running water in

existence.

Sec. 27. And of the interrupted torrent in the Mercury and Argus.

Now this picture is, as was noticed in our former reference to it, full

of expression of every kind of motion: the clouds are in wild haste; the

sun is gleaming fast and fitfully through the leaves; the rain drifting

away along the hill-side; and the torrent, the principal object, to

complete the impression, is made the wildest thing of all and not only

wild before us, and with us, but bearing with it in its every motion,

from its long course, the record of its rage. Observe how differently

Turner uses his torrent when the spirit of the picture is repose. In the

Mercury and Argus, we have also a stream in the foreground; but, in

coming down to us, we see it stopping twice in two quiet and glassy

pools, upon which the drinking cattle cast an unstirred image. From the

nearest of these, the water leaps in three cascades into another basin

close to us; it trickles in silver threads through the leaves at its

edge, and falls tinkling and splashing (though in considerable body)

into the pool, stirring its quiet surface, at which a bird is stooping

to drink, with concentric and curdling ripples which divide round the

stone at its farthest border, and descend in sparkling foam over the lip

of the basin. Thus we find, in every case, the system of Turner's truth

entirely unbroken, each phase and phenomenon of nature being recorded

exactly where it is most valuable and impressive.

Sec. 28. Various cases.

We have not, however, space to follow out the variety of his

torrent-drawing. The above two examples are characteristic of the two

great divisions or classes of torrents--that whose motion is continuous,

and whose motion is interrupted: all drawing of running water will

resolve itself into the representation of one or other of these. The

descent of the distant stream in the vignette to the Boy of Egremond is

slight, but very striking; and the Junction of the Greta and Tees, a

singular instance of the bold drawing of the complicated forms of a

shallow stream among multitudinous rocks. A still finer example occurs

in a recent drawing of Dazio Grande, on the St. Gothard, the waves of

the Toccia, clear and blue, fretting among the granite debris which were

brought down by the storm that destroyed the whole road. In the Ivy

bridge the subject is the rest of the torrent in a pool among fallen

rocks, the forms of the stones are seen through the clear brown water,

and their reflections mingle with those of the foliage.

Sec. 29. Sea painting. Impossibility of truly representing foam.

More determined efforts have at all periods been made in sea painting

than in torrent painting, yet less successful. As above stated, it is

easy to obtain a resemblance of broken running water by tricks and

dexterities, but the sea _must_ be legitimately drawn; it cannot be

given as utterly disorganized and confused, its weight and mass must be

expressed, and the efforts at expression of it end in failure with all

but the most powerful men; even with these few a partial success must be

considered worthy of the highest praise.

As the right rendering of the Alps depends on power of drawing snow, so

the right painting of the sea must depend, at least in all coast

scenery, in no small measure on the power of drawing foam. Yet there are

two conditions of foam of invariable occurrence on breaking waves, of

which I have never seen the slightest record attempted; first the thick

creamy curdling overlapping massy form which remains for a moment only

after the fall of the wave, and is seen in perfection in its running up

the beach; and secondly, the thin white coating into which this

subsides, which opens into oval gaps and clefts, marbling the waves over

their whole surface, and connecting the breakers on a flat shore by long

dragging streams of white.

It is evident that the difficulty of expressing either of these two

conditions must be immense. The lapping and curdling form is difficult

enough to catch even when the lines of its undulation alone are

considered; but the lips, so to speak, which lie along these lines, are

full, projecting, and marked by beautiful light and shade; each has its

high light, a gradation into shadow of indescribable delicacy, a bright

reflected light and a dark cast shadow; to draw all this requires labor,

and care, and firmness of work, which, as I imagine, must always,

however skilfully bestowed, destroy all impression of wildness,

accidentalism, and evanescence, and so kill the sea. Again, the openings

in the thin subsided foam in their irregular modifications of circular

and oval shapes dragged hither and thither, would be hard enough to draw

even if they could be seen on a flat surface; instead of which, every

one of the openings is seen in undulation on a tossing surface, broken

up over small surges and ripples, and so thrown into perspectives of the

most hopeless intricacy. Now it is not easy to express the lie of a

pattern with oval openings on the folds of drapery. I do not know that

any one under the mark of Veronese or Titian could even do this as it

ought to be done, yet in drapery much stiffness and error may be

overlooked; not so in sea,--the slightest inaccuracy, the slightest want

of flow and freedom in the line, is attached by the eye in a moment of

high treason, and I believe success to be impossible.

Yet there is not a wave or any violently agitated sea on which both

these forms do not appear, the latter especially, after some time of

storm, extends over their whole surfaces; the reader sees, therefore,

why I said that sea could only be painted by means of more or less

dexterous conventionalisms, since two of its most enduring phenomena

cannot be represented at all.

Sec. 30. Character of shore-breakers, also inexpressible.

Again, as respects the form of breakers on an even shore, there is

difficulty of no less formidable kind. There is in them an

irreconcilable mixture of fury and formalism. Their hollow surface is

marked by parallel lines, like those of a smooth mill-weir, and

graduated by reflected and transmitted lights of the most wonderful

intricacy, its curve being at the same time necessarily of mathematical

purity and precision; yet at the top of this curve, when it nods over,

there is a sudden laxity and giving way, the water swings and jumps

along the ridge like a shaken chain, and the motion runs from part to

part as it does through a serpent's body. Then the wind is at work on

the extreme edge, and instead of letting it fling itself off naturally,

it supports it, and, drives it back, or scrapes it off, and carries it

bodily away; so that the spray at the top is in a continual transition

between forms projected by their own weight, and forms blown and carried

off with their weight overcome; then at last, when it has come down, who

shall say what shape that may be called, which shape has none of the

great crash where it touches the beach.

I think it is that last crash which is the great taskmaster. Nobody can

do anything with it. I have seen Copley Fielding come very close to the

jerk and nod of the lifted threatening edge, curl it very successfully,

and without any look of its having been in papers, down nearly to the

beach, but the final fall has no thunder in it. Turner has tried hard

for it once or twice, but it will not do. The moment is given in the

Sidon of the Bible Illustrations, and more elaborately in a painting of

Bamborough; in both these cases there is little foam at the bottom, and

the fallen breaker looks like a wall, yet grand always; and in the

latter picture very beautifully assisted in expression by the tossing of

a piece of cable, which some figures are dragging ashore, and which the

breaker flings into the air as it falls. Perhaps the most successful

rendering of the forms was in the Hero and Leander, but there the

drawing was rendered easier by the powerful effect of light which

disguised the foam.

Sec. 31. Their effect, how injured when seen from the shore.

It is not, however, from the shore that Turner usually studies his sea.

Seen from the land, the curl of the breakers, even in nature, is

somewhat uniform and monotonous; the size of the waves out at sea is

uncomprehended, and those nearer the eye seem to succeed and resemble

each other, to move slowly to the beach, and to break in the same lines

and forms.

Afloat even twenty yards from the shore, we receive a totally different

impression. Every wave around us appears vast--every one different from

all the rest--and the breakers present, now that we see them with their

backs towards us, the grand, extended, and varied lines of long

curvature, which are peculiarly expressive both of velocity and power.

Recklessness, before unfelt, is manifested in the mad, perpetual,

changeful, undirected motion, not of wave after wave, as it appears from

the shore, but of the very same water rising and falling. Of waves that

successively approach and break, each appears to the mind a separate

individual, whose part being performed, it perishes, and is succeeded by

another; and there is nothing in this to impress us with the idea of

restlessness, any more than in any successive and continuous functions

of life and death. But it is when we perceive that it is no succession

of wave, but the same water constantly rising, and crashing, and

recoiling, and rolling in again in new forms and with fresh fury, that

we perceive the perturbed spirit, and feel the intensity of its

unwearied rage. The sensation of power is also trebled; for not only is

the vastness of apparent size much increased, but the whole action is

different; it is not a passive wave rolling sleepily forward until it

tumbles heavily, prostrated upon the beach, but a sweeping exertion of

tremendous and living strength, which does not now appear to _fall_, but

to _burst_ upon the shore; which never perishes, but recoils and

recovers.

Sec. 32. Turner's expression of heavy rolling sea.

Sec. 33. With peculiar expression of weight.

Aiming at these grand characters of the Sea, Turner almost always places

the spectator, not on the shore, but twenty or thirty yards from it,

beyond the first range of the breakers, as in the Land's End, Fowey,

Dunbar, and Laugharne. The latter has been well engraved, and may be

taken as a standard of the expression of fitfulness and power. The grand

division of the whole space of the sea by a few dark continuous furrows

of tremendous swell, (the breaking of one of which alone has strewed the

rocks in front with ruin,) furnishes us with an estimate of space and

strength, which at once reduces the men upon the shore to insects; and

yet through this terrific simplicity there is indicated a fitfulness and

fury in the tossing of the individual lines, which give to the whole sea

a wild, unwearied, reckless incoherency, like that of an enraged

multitude, whose masses act together in frenzy, while not one individual

feels as another. Especial attention is to be directed to the flatness

of all the lines, for the same principle holds in sea which we have seen

in mountains. All the size and sublimity of nature are given not by the

height, but by the breadth of her masses: and Turner, by following her

in her sweeping lines, while he does not lose the elevation of its

surges, adds in a tenfold degree to their power: farther, observe the

peculiar expression of _weight_ which there is in Turner's waves,

precisely of the same kind which we saw in his waterfall. We have not a

cutting, springing, elastic line--no jumping or leaping in the waves:

_that_ is the characteristic of Chelsea Reach or Hampstead Ponds in a

storm. But the surges roll and plunge with such prostration and hurling

of their mass against the shore, that we feel the rocks are shaking

under them; and, to add yet more to this impression, observe how little,

comparatively, they are broken by the wind; above the floating wood, and

along the shore, we have indication of a line of torn spray; but it is a

mere fringe along the ridge of the surge--no interference with its

gigantic body. The wind has no power over its tremendous unity of force

and weight. Finally, observe how, on the rocks on the left, the violence

and swiftness of the rising wave are indicated by precisely the same

lines which we saw were indicative of fury in the torrent. The water on

these rocks is the body of the wave which has just broken, rushing up

over them; and in doing so, like the torrent, it does not break, nor

foam, nor part upon the rock, but accommodates itself to every one of

its swells and hollows, with undulating lines, whose grace and variety

might alone serve us for a day's study; and it is only where two streams

of this rushing water meet in the hollow of the rock, that their force

is shown by the vertical bound of the spray.

[Illustration: PORT RUYSDAeL.

From a painting by Turner.]

Sec. 34. Peculiar action of recoiling waves.

Sec. 35. And of the stroke of a breaker on the shore.

Sec. 36. General character of sea on a rocky coast given by Turner in the

Land's End.

In the distance of this grand picture, there are two waves which

entirely depart from the principle observed by all the rest, and spring

high into the air. They have a message for us which it is important that

we should understand. Their leap is not a preparation for breaking,

neither is it caused by their meeting with a rock. It is caused by their

encounter with the recoil of the preceding wave. When a large surge, in

the act of breaking, just as it curls over, is hurled against the face

either of a wall or of a vertical rock, the sound of the blow is not a

crash nor a roar; it is a report as loud as, and in every respect

similar to, that of a great gun, and the wave is dashed back from the

rock with force scarcely diminished, but reversed in direction,--it now

recedes from the shore, and at the instant that it encounters the

following breaker, the result is the vertical bound of both which is

here rendered by Turner. Such a recoiling wave will proceed out to sea

through ten or twelve ranges of following breakers, before it is

overpowered. The effect of the encounter is more completely and palpably

given in the Quilleboeuf, in the Rivers of France. It is peculiarly

instructive here, as informing us of the nature of the coast, and the

force of the waves, far more clearly than any spray about the rocks

themselves could have done. But the effect of the blow at the shore

itself is given in the Land's End, and vignette to Lycidas. Under

favorable circumstances, with an advancing tide under a heavy gale,

where the breakers feel the shore underneath them a moment before they

touch the rock, so as to nod over when they strike, the effect is nearly

incredible except to an eyewitness. I have seen the whole body of the

wave rise in one white, vertical, broad fountain, eighty feet above the

sea, half of it beaten so fine as to be borne away by the wind, the rest

turning in the air when exhausted, and falling back with a weight and

crash like that of an enormous waterfall. This is given most completely

in the Lycidas, and the blow of a less violent wave among broken rocks,

not meeting it with an absolute wall, along the shore of the Land's End.

This last picture is a study of sea whose whole organization has been

broken up by constant recoils from a rocky coast. The Laugharne gives

the surge and weight of the ocean in a gale, on a comparatively level

shore; but the Land's End, the entire disorder of the surges 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 one 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 color of this magnificent

sea I have before spoken; it is a solemn green gray, (with its foam seen

dimly through the darkness of twilight,) modulated with the fulness,

changefulness, and sadness of a deep, wild melody.

Sec. 37. Open seas of Turner's earlier times.

The greater number of Turner's paintings of open sea belong to a

somewhat earlier period than these drawings; nor, generally speaking,

are they of equal value. It appears to me that the artist had at that

time either less knowledge of, or less delight in, the characteristics

of deep water than of coast sea, and that, in consequence, he suffered

himself to be influenced by some of the qualities of the Dutch

sea-painters. In particular, he borrowed from them the habit of casting

a dark shadow on the near waves, so as to bring out a stream of light

behind; and though he did this in a more legitimate way than they, that

is to say, expressing the light by touches on the foam, and indicating

the shadow as cast on foamy surface, still the habit has induced much

feebleness and conventionality in the pictures of the period. His

drawing of the waves was also somewhat petty and divided, small forms

covered with white flat spray, a condition which I doubt not the artist

has seen on some of the shallow Dutch seas, but which I have never met

with myself, and of the rendering of which therefore I cannot speak. Yet

even in these, which I think among the poorest works of the painter, the

expressions of breeze, motion, and light, are very marvellous; and it is

instructive to compare them either with the lifeless works of the Dutch

themselves, or with any modern imitations of them, as for instance with

the seas of Callcott, where all the light is white and all the shadows

gray, where no distinction is made between water and foam, or between

real and reflective shadow, and which are generally without evidence of

the artists having ever seen the sea.

Some pictures, however, belonging to this period of Turner are free from

the Dutch infection, and show the real power of the artist. A very

important one is in the possession of Lord Francis Egerton, somewhat

heavy in its forms, but remarkable for the grandeur of distance obtained

at the horizon; a much smaller, but more powerful example is the Port

Ruysdael in the possession of E. Bicknell, Esq., with which I know of no

work at all comparable for the expression of the white, wild, cold,

comfortless waves of northern sea, even though the sea is almost

subordinate to the awful rolling clouds. Both these pictures are very

gray. The Pas de Calais has more color, and shows more art than either,

yet is less impressive. Recently, two marines of the same subdued color

have appeared (1843) among his more radiant works. One, Ostend, somewhat

forced and affected, but the other, also called Port Ruysdael, is among

the most perfect sea pictures he has produced, and especially remarkable

as being painted without one marked opposition either of color or of

shade, all quiet and simple even to an extreme, so that the picture was

exceedingly unattractive at first sight. The shadow of the pier-head on

the near waves is marked solely by touches indicative of reflected

light, and so mysteriously that when the picture is seen near, it is

quite untraceable, and comes into existence as the spectator retires. It

is thus of peculiar truth and value; and instructive as a contrast to

the dark shadows of his earlier time.

Sec. 38. Effect of sea after prolonged storm.

Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the sea of a

powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four days and

nights, and to those who have not, I believe it must be unimaginable,

not from the mere force or size of surge, but from the complete

annihilation of the limit between sea and air. The water from its

prolonged agitation is beaten, not into mere creaming foam, but into

masses of accumulated yeast,[68] which hang in ropes and wreaths from

wave to wave, and where one curls over to break, form a festoon like a

drapery, from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in

dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses,

which make the air white and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a

foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in their

very bodies, underneath, making them white all through, as the water is

under a great cataract; and their masses, being thus half water and half

air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise, and carried away

in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles like actual water. Add to

this, that when the air has been exhausted of its moisture by long rain,

the spray of the sea is caught by it as described above, (Section III.

Chapter VI. Sec. 13,) and covers its surface not merely with the smoke of

finely divided water, but with boiling mist; imagine also the low

rain-clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have often

seen them, whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to wave;

and finally, conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of

power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in precipices

and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all this chaos;

and you will understand that there is indeed no distinction left between

the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any landmark or

natural evidence of position is left; that the heaven is all spray, and

the ocean all cloud, and that you can see no farther in any direction

than you could see through a cataract. Suppose the effect of the first

sunbeam sent from above to show this annihilation to itself, and you

have the sea picture of the Academy, 1842--the Snowstorm, one of the

very grandest statements of sea-motion, mist, and light that has ever

been put on canvas, even by Turner. Of course it was not understood; his

finest works never are; but there was some apology for the public's not

comprehending this, for few people have had the opportunity of seeing

the sea at such a time, and when they have, cannot face it. To hold by a

mast or a rock, and watch it, is a prolonged endurance of drowning which

few people have courage to go through. To those who have, it is one of

the noblest lessons of nature.

Sec. 39. Turner's noblest work, the deep open sea in the Slave Ship.