The National Gallery collection contains just on three hundr_The Water-Colours of J. M. W. Turner

Turner’s sketch books, and practically the whole of his work done

immediately in the presence of nature. This data enables us to speak

with absolute authority upon the difficult question as to the relation

between Turner’s art and nature. They prove that he very seldom, if

ever, painted a picture simply “out of his head.” In everything he

did--even, I believe, in the case of what have been called his classical

nonsense pictures--there was a nucleus of immediately perceived fact.

This sensuous basis is seldom, if ever, absent from his work, but it is

invariably overlaid and distorted by the purely subjective forces of the

artist’s personality, which appropriate the data of sense, and mould

them into any shape they choose. It is impossible, especially since

“Modern Painters” was written, to overlook the important part played by

natural fact in all of Turner’s creations, but it is just as important

not to overlook the equally obvious and certain truth that Turner never

uses nature simply for its own sake, but only as a means of expression.

The methods employed in the particular case we have just studied are,

with few exceptions, the methods which he adopted during the whole of

his career.

Yet Turner did undoubtedly upon occasion paint in oil directly from

nature. An instance of this kind is described by Sir Charles Eastlake in

“Thornbury” (p. 153, 3rd edition). Eastlake met Turner during his second

visit to Devonshire, probably in the summer of 1813, and accompanied him

to a cottage near Calstock, the residence of Eastlake’s aunt, where they

stayed for a few days. Another artist was with them, a Mr. Ambrose

Johns, of Plymouth. It was during their rambles in the neighbourhood of

Calstock that Turner gathered the material for his picture of “_Crossing

the Brook_.” Eastlake says that “Turner made his sketches in pencil and

by stealth,” that is to say, he did not like to have people looking over

his shoulder while he was at work. The sketch book Turner used on this

occasion is with the others in the National Gallery. But after the three

artists had returned to Plymouth, “in the neighbourhood of which he

(Turner) remained some weeks, Mr. Johns fitted up a small portable

painting-box, containing some prepared paper for oil sketches, as well

as the other necessary materials. When Turner halted at a scene and

seemed inclined to sketch it, Johns produced the inviting box, and the

great artist, finding everything ready to his hand, immediately began to

work. As he sometimes wanted assistance in the use of the box, the

presence of Johns was indispensable, and after a few days he made his

oil sketches freely in our presence. Johns accompanied him always; I was

only with them occasionally. Turner seemed pleased when the rapidity

with which those sketches were done was talked of; for, departing from

his habitual reserve in the instance of his pencil sketches, he made no

difficulty of showing them. On one occasion, when, on his return after a

sketching ramble to a country residence belonging to my father, near

Plympton, the day’s work was shown, he himself remarked that one of the

sketches (and perhaps the best) was done in less than half an hour.” “On

my enquiring afterwards,” Sir Charles Eastlake adds, “what had become of

those sketches, Turner replied that they were worthless, in consequence,

as he supposed, of some defect in the preparation of the paper; all the

grey tints, he observed, had nearly disappeared. Although I did not

implicitly rely on that statement, I do not remember to have seen any of

them afterwards.”

There are about a dozen small oil sketches of Devonshire subjects in the

National Gallery, which are doubtless part of those made under the

circumstances described by Sir Charles Eastlake. They are made on a

brownish millboard, prepared with a thin coating of paint and size. On

the back of one of them there happens to be some lettering showing that

Johns had laid violent hands on the covers of some parts of William

Young Ottley’s “British Gallery of Pictures,” then being issued

serially. Several of these paintings have long been hung among the

exhibited drawings; _e.g._, Nos. 746, 750, 754, 758, and one, No. 849,

which has somehow got the obviously incorrect title of _Bridge over

River Lugwy, Capel Curig_. These paintings have undoubtedly sunk very

much into the absorbent millboard, thus proving that Turner’s remark to

Eastlake about the disappearance of the grey tints--which he “did not

implicitly rely on”--was justified. But otherwise the work is in good

condition, and I have very little doubt that when Mr. Buttery comes to

take them in hand, he will be able to bring them back to something like

their original freshness. The chief point of interest with regard to

them, from our present point of view, is the curious fact that Turner

does not seem to have made the slightest use of them in any of the

Devonshire pictures he painted on his return. He evidently found his

tiny little pencil sketches much more suggestive and adaptable to his

purposes. Even the large oil picture of _Crossing the Brook_ is based

entirely on his slight and rapidly made little pencil notes. Another

point of interest is that even when painting in oil face to face with

nature he did not merely copy what he had in front of him. As our

illustration shows, these sketches are as carefully composed as his

pictures. They are indeed only technically sketches from nature; in

reality they are designs for pictures or pictures in miniature, though

they happen to have been painted out of doors. Even in working direct

from nature Turner remained firmly entrenched in his artistic position

as the master of nature. He still retained his power of selection,

taking what suited his purpose, ignoring the rest, and supplementing

from the stores of his own knowledge what for his purpose were the

defects of the momentary image before his eyes.

The fact that Turner always worked in this way makes it exceedingly

difficult to separate his sketches from nature from the studies or

designs for his pictures. Throughout his sketch books and amongst his

loose drawings there are a large number of sketches in colour, and one’s

first impulse is to assume that these were made immediately from nature.

But careful observation shows that Turner was in the constant habit of

working over his pencil sketches in colour when away from the scenes he

had depicted. In this way the beautiful little sketch of “_Edinburgh

from St. Margaret’s Loch_,” here reproduced (Plate VI.), is much more

probably the draft of a picture the artist had in his mind’s eye than a

study from nature. But the point whether such a drawing was made “on the

spot” or not is relatively unimportant; what is more important is to

realise how very small a part the merely imitative or representative

study of the colour and tone (as opposed to form) of nature played in

Turner’s work. His colour is never merely descriptive. The whole bent of

his mind is so essentially pictorial that, whether he works face to face

with nature or from what is loosely called “memory,” his slightest

sketch as well as his most elaborate work is always an attempt to

express a subjective conception, and never a merely literal transcript

of what is given in sense-perception.

Perhaps the most important group of drawings in the national collection

are those which Turner made during the last ten years of his working

life, _i.e._, between 1835 and 1845. These drawings were not made for

sale or for exhibition, hence Mr. Ruskin’s description of them as

“delight drawings,” because they were done entirely for the artist’s own

pleasure and delight. Several of them are reproduced in this volume,

among them the beautiful sketch of “_Lucerne_” (Plate XXI.) realized for

Mr. Ruskin in 1842, the almost equally fine “_Bellinzona, from the road

to Locarno_” (Plate XXIV.), and “_Zurich_” (Plate XXVII.).

These inimitable and delightful sketches have been very widely admired,

as they deserve to be, but they have also been praised, somewhat

perversely as it seems to me, for their truth and accuracy of

representation. As Mr. Ruskin has pointed out, these sketches “are not,

strictly speaking, sketches from nature; but plans or designs of

pictures which Turner, if he had had time, would have made of each

place. They indicate, therefore, a perfectly formed conception of the

finished picture; and they are of exactly the same value as memoranda

would be, if made by Turner’s own hand, of pictures of his not in our

possession. They are just to be regarded as quick descriptions or

reminiscences of noble pictures.” Mr. Ruskin is also unquestionably

correct when he adds “that nothing but the pencilling in them was done

on the spot, and not always that. Turner used to walk about a town with

a roll of thin paper in his pocket, and make a few scratches upon a

sheet or two of it, which were so much shorthand indication of all he

wished to remember. When he got to his inn in the evening, he completed

the pencilling rapidly, and added as much colour as was needed to record

his plan of the picture” (“Ruskin on Pictures,” pp. 86-7).

It is not my intention now to dwell upon the beauty of these

incomparable drawings, on their passionate intensity and emotional

sincerity, their nervous eloquence and elusive suggestiveness. The point

I wish to insist on at present is that they must not be regarded as

attempts to reproduce or imitate the merely superficial qualities of

physical nature, as attempts to give an accurate representation of

effects of air or light, or of the shapes and forms of mountain, water

or cloud. The artist is not immersed in the definite character of

physical objects. He seems to feel that as a spiritual and

self-conscious being he is something higher than the merely natural, and

it is as modes of expression of human freedom and self-consciousness

that these lyrical fragments must be regarded.

The colour and tone of Turner’s work must therefore be taken as strictly

ideal, that is, as a medium of subjective expression, as a mode of

spiritual manifestation, and not as an attempt to represent the merely

abstract qualities of sense-perception. And what is true of Turner’s

colour and tone is also true of his form. I doubt if he ever made a

tolerably careful and elaborate drawing of a natural scene from the

beginning to the end of his long career--nearly all his elaborate

drawings being of architectural subjects. But instead of the prosaic and

plodding drawings that other artists make (see, for example, the

elaborate pencil studies of trees by Constable in the Victoria and

Albert Museum), we find hundreds and hundreds of nervous, eager pencil

sketches. When we come to study these ravishing sketches with care we

make the astonishing discovery that the bugbear of the drawing school,

the prosaic accumulation of particular physical facts known in art

academies as “nature,” is simply a hideous abstraction of the

theoretical mind. Nature, in this sense of the word, never existed for

Turner. The world he saw around him was replete with intelligence, was

permeated with spirit; where other artists see only the bare, unrelated

physical fact and sensuous surface, his mind is already busy with the

inner and invisible significance, and his cunning hand is instantly

shaping forth a pictorial embodiment of his own insight and passionate

convictions.

On the whole, then, this was Turner’s consistent attitude towards

nature, though of course, in his earlier years, his sketches were

comparatively less swift and eloquent than they afterwards became. And

there was indeed a short period during which the merely physical fact

was forced into undue prominence. This period culminated in the first

visit to Italy in 1819-1820. Here the novelty of the scenery and

buildings stimulated the thirst for detailed observation which had been

gradually growing on Turner during the previous six or seven years. But

in England the very quickness and strength of his intuitions had always

prevented the desire for precise observation from gaining the upper

hand. In Italy his powers of intuition were useless. He was disoriented.

Everything disconcerted and thwarted him. His rapid glance no longer

penetrated to the inner essence of the scenes around him. He did not

understand the people and their ways, and their relation to their

surroundings. For a time he seemed to become less certain than usual of

his artistic mission. But he set to work with his usual pluck and energy

to assimilate his strange surroundings by tireless observation of the

outside. The result was a vast accumulation of disorganized or of only

partially organized impressions.

It is conceded on all hands that Turner’s artistic work went all to

pieces as a result of his Italian experiences. The _Bay of Baiæ_

contains faults altogether new in his completed works. Even the feeblest

of his earlier works had been animated by some central idea or emotion,

to which all the parts were subordinated, and which infused into them

whatever of life or significance they possessed. In the _Bay of Baiæ_

the artist has an unusual quantity of material on his hands, but he can

neither find nor invent a pictorial idea to give coherence to his

disconnected observations. The picture is made up of bits of visual

experiences elaborately dovetailed into one another, but which

absolutely refuse to combine into any kind of conceptual unity.

Yet if we confine our attention to the merely formal and abstract side

of art, there is assuredly much to move us even to enthusiastic

admiration among the immense quantity of sketches accumulated during

this Italian visit. The very fact that Turner’s inspiration was checked

prevented his sketches from possessing their wonted rudimentary or

forward-pointing character. Instead of being hasty drafts of the

pictures that thronged instantly into his mind upon contact with the

scenes of his native land, they became more like the drawings which less

completely equipped creative artists are in the habit of making; they

became “studies” in the modern use of the term. The conditions of their

production gave full play to Turner’s marvellous powers of

draughtsmanship and formal design. Before drawings like _Rome from Monte

Mario_ who can help waxing enthusiastic over the exquisitely deft and

graceful play of hand, the subtle observation and the almost superhuman

mastery of the design? No wonder Mr. Ruskin has declared that “no

drawings in the world are to be named with these ... as lessons in

landscape drawing” (“Ruskin on Pictures,” p. 157). But before assenting

wholly to this dictum we must remember that, in spite of all their

attractiveness, Turner found these drawings worse than useless for his

general artistic purposes, and that only bad and foolish pictures came

from them; and the more carefully we study the matter the more clearly

do we see that nothing but bad and foolish pictures could come from work

in which the spirit of curiosity and of cold and accurate observation is

predominant.

We have fixed our attention thus far upon the sketches and drawings made

from nature in the National Gallery collection, to the exclusion of the

finished water-colours. This may seem all the more inexcusable, as I

have preferred to treat these sketches rather with regard to their

bearing upon the artist’s finished work--as stages in the development of

the complete work of art--than as independent productions which can be

accepted entirely for their own sake. But in a short paper like the

present it is impossible to do justice to all the sides of such an

important collection as the Drawings of the Turner Bequest. Numerically,

the finished drawings form only a small fraction of the whole

collection--about two hundred out of a total of over 20,000 drawings.

Among them are about two-thirds of the “Rivers of France” drawings, and

most of the “Ports” and “Rivers of England,” and Rogers’s “Vignettes.”

These drawings were engraved during Turner’s lifetime and under his

active superintendence; they are, therefore, amongst the best known of

his works. The whole of the finished drawings have, moreover, been

constantly on exhibition for more than fifty years. There remains,

therefore, little either of praise or blame to be said of them that has

not already been said many times. While, on the other hand, the studies

and sketches are only now on the point of being made accessible to the

public.

The practically complete series of Turner’s sketches and studies from

nature seems to call for comprehensive treatment. Their careful study

throws a wholly new and unexpected light upon the fundamental and

essential qualities of Turner’s attitude towards nature, and therefore

upon the essential character and limitations of his art. Or where the

light is not altogether unexpected--as it would not be perhaps in the

case of a diligent and methodical student of Turner’s completed

works--the sketches amplify and illustrate in an abundant and forcible

way what before could only have been surmised. I propose, therefore, to

devote the remainder of my limited space to an attempt to indicate as

briefly as possible the main features of Turner’s conception of nature,

as it is revealed in his sketches, and to point out its importance both

for the proper understanding of his finished work and for its bearing

upon some adverse criticisms that have been brought against his work.

In my opening remarks I ventured to contrast Turner’s attitude towards

nature with the attitude of the majority of contemporary artists. My

intention in thus opposing these two different methods of work was not

to suggest that one of them was either right or wrong in itself, or that

one way was necessarily better or worse than the other. My intention was

exactly the opposite. There is not one type of art production to which

all artists must conform, and two totally different methods of procedure

may each be positively right and equally valid. I will even go farther

than this and confess that I regard the present-day method of working

from nature as the only right and proper way of attaining the results

that are aimed at. But it is the result, the purpose of the artist, that

justifies the means, and this applies with just as much force to

Turner’s way of working as to the modern way. To condemn Turner’s

procedure, therefore, simply because it differs from that now in vogue,

would be as unwise and unfair as to condemn the modern way because it

differed from his. Different conceptions of the aim and scope of art

involve different attitudes towards nature, and necessitate different

methods of study.

Let us begin with the current conception--the conception of the

landscape artist of to-day and of the public for which he works. The

aim of this art is what is called “naturalness,” that is, the picture

should be made to look as much like nature as possible. The standard of

excellence here is just the ordinary common appearance of physical

reality. A picture that looks like nature is good, and one that looks

“unnatural” is therefore bad. This kind of art is capable of giving a

great deal of innocent pleasure to people who like to be reminded of

scenes they love or are interested in. But it has its limits. It cannot

go beyond the bare physical world. And it is bound to treat even this

limited area of experience from a strictly limited point of view. It is

bound to take the physical world as something which exists in entire

independence of the spectator, as something which is indeed given in

sense-perception, but which the spectator emphatically finds and does

not make. Now so far as we take nature in this sense we have to do with

an external power which is utterly indifferent to our merely human aims

and purposes, and the artist can only look upon himself as a passive

recipient, a _tabula rasa_, on which external nature is reflected. This

is the standpoint of the prosaic intelligence, the level upon which much

of the ordinary reflection and discussion of the day moves.

But man is not really a passive mirror in which a foreign nature is

reflected, nor is he satisfied merely to submit himself to natural

influences and vicissitudes. Man is never really satisfied to take the

world as he finds it, but sets to work to transform it into what he

feels it ought to be. The social and political world, with its realms of

morality, art and religion, came into existence as a protest against the

merely natural. In this world, created and sustained by human

intelligence and will, the physical world is not abolished or destroyed,

but it is transformed into a more or less willing accomplice of a

strange and higher power. It is in this new form which nature assumes

under the sway of intelligence and will that we find it in Turner’s

works.[B] In his presence the external world loses its stubborn

indifference to human aims and becomes saturated with purely human

aspiration and emotion. Its colours and shapes cease to belong to the

merely physical world. They become instead the garment in which the

inward spiritual nature of the artist robes itself. Nature in this new

aspect is no longer a merely hostile and mechanical system of laws; a

soul has been breathed into it which we recognize as identical with our

own.

Now it is evident that these two kinds of art, the passive and the

active, with their totally dissimilar aims, cannot and ought not to

represent nature in the same way. The art which uses nature as a medium

for the expression of ideas and feelings cannot attain its object by

representing physical objects in the simple and direct way appropriate

to the art which aims merely at naturalness. The artist’s intention must

make itself manifest even in the manner in which he represents physical

objects,--indeed, he has no other way of expressing his ideas. The

active or creative artist will therefore make it clear that he has

broken entirely with the disconnected, accidental and prosaic look of

everyday existence which it is the one aim of the passive artist to

retain.

From this point of view the charges that are often brought against

Turner, that his colour is forced and unnatural, will leave us cold and

indifferent. To make such an objection is merely a proof of mental

confusion. The creative artist _must_ break with the prosaic vision of

nature, if only to make it evident that his objects are not there for

their own sake and for their immediate effect, but to call forth a

response and echo in the mind of the observer. Turner’s colour--“dyed in

the ardours of the atmosphere”--is one of his most potent instruments of

expression, and must be judged as we judge, let us say, the verbal magic

of Shelley’s verse, as a work of free beauty, fashioned in response to

the deepest and truest cravings of man’s nature.

That Turner’s art moves mainly among the highest interests of man’s

spiritual nature accounts to some extent for the pre-eminent position he

now occupies among modern artists. It is always as an artist conscious

of man’s high destiny that he claims to be judged, and though he often

stumbled and his hand faltered, he never once sank to the level of the

passive and prosaic imitator of nature’s finitude. This is not the place

to inquire minutely into Turner’s failings and shortcomings, nor to

study their connection with the innumerable masterpieces in which he

dared and sometimes attained the very highest of which art is capable.

An adequate discussion of the subtle inter-connection of Turner’s

triumphs and failings would involve the raising of questions of which

English criticism seems to prefer to remain in happy ignorance. I cannot

therefore attempt to justify my conviction that he is not only the

greatest artist our nation has yet produced, but also one of the

greatest of modern artists, a man we must rank with Rembrandt and Jean

François Millet. But this at least will be generally conceded, that he

fully deserves that consideration and sympathy, which the ready instinct

of mankind reserves for those who devote themselves without stint and

without measure to the highest and most difficult tasks.

A. J. FINBERG.

[Illustration: Plate I

THE ARCHBISHOP’S PALACE, LAMBETH

FIRST EXHIBITED DRAWING. R.A. 1790. SIZE 15″ × 10½″