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diff --git a/40878-0.txt b/40878-0.txt index dd319fa..e062061 100644 --- a/40878-0.txt +++ b/40878-0.txt @@ -1,25 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Turner, by William Cosmo Monkhouse - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Turner - -Author: William Cosmo Monkhouse - -Release Date: September 27, 2012 [EBook #40878] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURNER *** - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40878 *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was @@ -4747,365 +4726,4 @@ such debt. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Turner - -Author: William Cosmo Monkhouse - -Release Date: September 27, 2012 [EBook #40878] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURNER *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -_ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF -THE GREAT ARTISTS._ - -[Illustration: decoration] - -JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER - -ROYAL ACADEMICIAN. - -[Illustration: decoration] - - -ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES -OF -THE GREAT ARTISTS. - -TITIAN From the most recent authorities. - _By Richard Ford Heath, M.A., Hertford Coll. Oxford._ - -REMBRANDT From the Text of C. VOSMAER. - _By J. W. Mollett, B.A., Brasenose Coll. Oxford._ - -RAPHAEL From the Text of J. D. PASSAVANT. - _By N. D’Anvers, Author of “Elementary History of Art.”_ - -VAN DYCK & HALS From the most recent authorities. - _By Percy R. Head, Lincoln Coll. Oxford._ - -HOLBEIN From the Text of Dr. WOLTMANN. - _By the Editor, Author of “Life and Genius of Rembrandt”_ - -TINTORETTO From recent investigations. - _By W. Roscoe Osler, Author of occasional Essays on Art._ - -TURNER From the most recent authorities. - _By Cosmo Monkhouse, Author of “Studies of Sir E. Landseer.”_ - -THE LITTLE MASTERS From the most recent authorities. - _By W. B. Scott, Author of “Lectures on the Fine Arts.”_ - -HOGARTH From recent investigations. - _By Austin Dobson, Author of “Vignettes in Rhyme,” &c._ - -RUBENS From recent investigations. - _By C. W. Kett, M.A., Hertford Coll. Oxford._ - -MICHELANGELO From the most recent authorities. - _By Charles Clément, Author of “Michel-Ange, Léonard, et Raphael.”_ - -LIONARDO From recent researches. - _By Dr. J. Paul Richter, Author of “Die Mosaiken von Ravenna.”_ - -GIOTTO From recent investigations. - _By Harry Quilter, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge._ - -THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF THE NETHERLANDS. - _By Lord Ronald Gower, Author of “Guide to the Galleries of Holland.”_ - -VELAZQUEZ From the most recent authorities. - _By Edwin Stowe, B.A., Brasenose Coll. Oxford._ - -GAINSBOROUGH From the most recent authorities. - _By George M. Brock-Arnold, M.A., Hertford Coll. Oxford._ - -PEUGINO From recent investigations. - _By T. Adolphus Trollope, Author of many Essays on Art._ - -DELAROCHE & VERNET From the works of CHARLES BLANC. - _By Mrs. Ruutz Rees, Author of various Essays on Art._ - -[Illustration: JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER. - -_From a sketch by John Gilbert._] - -“_The whole world without Art would be one great wilderness._” - -[Illustration: decoration] - - - - -TURNER - -BY W. COSMO MONKHOUSE - -_Author of_ “_Studies of Sir E. Landseer._” - -[Illustration] - -NEW YORK: -SCRIBNER AND WELFORD. - -LONDON: -SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, -1879. - -(_All rights reserved._) - -CHISWICK PRESS:--C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, -CHANCERY LANE. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PREFACE. - - -The late Mr. Thornbury lost such an opportunity of writing a worthy -biography of Turner as will never occur again. How he dealt with the -valuable materials which he collected is well known to all who have had -to test the accuracy of his statements; and unfortunately many of the -channels from which he derived information have since been closed by -death. Mr. Ruskin, who might have helped so much, has contributed little -to the life of the artist but some brilliant passages of pathetic -rhetoric. Overgrown by his luxuriant eloquence, and buried beneath the -_débris_ of Thornbury, the ruins of Turner’s Life lay hidden till last -year. - -Mr. Hamerton’s “Life of Turner” has done much to remove a very serious -blot from English literature. Very careful, but very frank, it presents -a clear and consistent view of the great painter and his art, and is, -moreover, penetrated with that intellectual insight and refined thought -which illuminate all its author’s work. - -He has, however, left much to be done, and this book will, I hope, help -a little in clearing away long-standing errors, and reducing the known -facts about Turner to something like order. To these facts I have been -able to add a few hitherto unpublished; and it is a pleasant duty to -return my thanks to the many kind friends and strangers for the pains -which they have taken to supply me with information. To Mr. F. E. -Trimmer, of Heston, the son of Turner’s old friend and executor; to Mr. -John L. Roget; to Mr. Mayall, and to Mr. J. Beavington Atkinson, my -thanks are especially due. - -In so small a book upon so large a subject, I have often had much -difficulty in deciding what to select and what to reject, and have -always preferred those events and stories which seem to me to throw most -light upon Turner’s character. On purely technical matters I have -touched only when I thought it absolutely necessary. This part of the -subject has been already so well and fully treated by Mr. Ruskin in -numerous works, too well known to need mention; by Mr. Hamerton in his -“Life of Turner,” and “Etching and Etchers;” by Messrs. Redgrave in -their “Century of English Painters,” and by Mr. S. Redgrave in his -introduction to the collection of water-colours at South Kensington, -that I need only refer to these works such few among my readers as are -not already acquainted with them. I would also refer them for similar -reasons to Mr. Rawlinson’s recent work on the “Liber Studiorum.” - -I should have liked to add to this volume accurate lists of Turner’s -works and the engravings from them, with information of their -possessors, and the extraordinary fluctuation in the prices which they -have realized, but this would have entailed great labour and have -swelled unduly the bulk of this volume, which is already greater than -that of its fellows. Fortunately this information is likely to be soon -supplied by Mr. Algernon Graves, whose accurate catalogue of Landseer’s -works is sufficient guarantee of the manner in which he will perform -this more difficult task. - -The edition of Thornbury’s “Life of Turner” referred to throughout these -pages, is that of 1877. - -W. COSMO MONKHOUSE. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CONTENTS. - - -PART I. - -1775 TO 1797. DAYS OF EDUCATION AND PRACTICE. - -CHAPTER I. - - Page - -Introductory 1 - -CHAPTER II. - -Early Days--1775 to 1789 6 - -CHAPTER III. - -Youth--1789 to 1796 20 - -PART II. - -1797 TO 1820. DAYS OF MASTERY AND EMULATION. - -CHAPTER IV. - -Yorkshire and the young Academician--1797 to 1807 38 - -CHAPTER V. - -The “Liber Studiorum” and the Dragons 55 - -CHAPTER VI. - -Harley Street, Devonshire, Hammersmith, and Twickenham 75 - -PART III. - -1820 TO 1851. DAYS OF GLORY AND DECLINE. - -CHAPTER VII. - -Page - -Italy and France--1820 to 1840 92 - -CHAPTER VIII. - -Light and Darkness--1840 to 1851 121 - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -TURNER. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -INTRODUCTORY. - - -The task of writing a satisfactory life of Turner is one of more than -usual difficulty. He hid himself, partly intentionally, partly because -he could not express himself except by means of his brush. His -secretiveness was so consistent, and commenced so early, that it seems -to have been an instinct, or what used to be called by that name. Akin -to the most divinely gifted poets by his supreme pictorial imagination, -he also seems on the other side to have been related to beings whose -reasoning faculty is less than human. When we look at such pictures as -_Crossing the Brook_, _The Fighting Téméraire_, and _Ulysses and -Polyphemus_, we feel that we are in the presence of a mind as sensitive -as Keats’s, as tender as Goldsmith’s, and as penetrative as Shelley’s; -when we read of the dirty discomfort of his home and of the difficulty -with which his patrons, and even his relations, obtained access to his -presence--how even his most intimate friends were not admitted to his -confidence--we can only think of a hedgehog, whose offensive powers -being limited, is warned by nature to live in a hole and roll itself up -into a ball of spikes at the approach of strangers. - -We are used to having our idols broken; but we still fashion them with a -persistency which seems to argue it a necessity of our nature, that we -should think of the life and character of gifted men as being the -outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace we perceive -in their works. It is this habit which makes any attempt to write a life -of Turner pre-eminently unsatisfactory, for his refined sense of the -most ethereal of natural phenomena is not relieved by any refinement in -his manners, his supreme feeling for the splendour of the sun is -unmatched by any light or brilliance in his social life; his extreme -sensibility, a sensibility not only artistic but human, to all the -emotional influences of nature, stands for ever as a contrast to his -self-absorbed, suspicious individuality. There is of course no reason -why a landscape painter should be refined in manner or choice in his -habits. There is no necessary connection between the subjects of such an -artist and himself, except his hand and eye. He lives a life of visions -that may come and go without affecting his life or even his thought, as -we generally use that word. The most tremendous phenomena of nature may -be seen and studied, and reproduced with such power as to strike terror -into those who see the picture, and yet leave the artist unaltered in -demeanour and taste. Even those men of genius who, instead of employing -their imagination upon nature’s inanimate works, devote themselves to -the study of man himself, socially and morally, do not by any means -show that relation between themselves and their finest work that we -appear naturally to expect. - -But all this, though it may explain much, still leaves unsatisfactory -the task of writing the life of a man of whom such passages as the -following could be sincerely written:-- - - “Glorious in conception--unfathomable in knowledge--solitary in - power--with the elements waiting upon his will, and the night and - morning obedient to his call, sent as a prophet of God to reveal to - men the mysteries of the universe, standing, like the great angel - of the Apocalypse, clothed with a cloud, and with a rainbow upon - his head, and with the sun and stars given into his hand.”--_Modern - Painters_ (1843), p. 92. - - “Towards the end of his career he would often, I am assured on the - best authority, paint hard all the week till Saturday night; and he - would then put by his work, slip a five-pound note into his pocket, - button it securely up there, and set off to some low sailor’s house - in Wapping or Rotherhithe, to wallow till Monday morning summoned - him to mope through another week.”--THORNBURY’S _Life of Turner_ - (1877), pp. 313, 314. - -The contrast is too great to make the picture pleasant, the facts are -too few to make it perfect; to make it one or the other, it would be -necessary to do as Turner did, and rightly did, with his perfect -drawings--suppress facts that jarred with his scheme of form and colour, -and insert figures or mountains or clouds that were necessary to -complete it; but a biography is nothing if not real--it belongs to the -other side of art. The task would be rendered lighter, if not more -agreeable, if we were frankly to accept the principle of a dual nature, -and cutting up our subject into halves, treat Turner the artist and -Turner the man as two separate beings; and there would, at first sight, -seem to be no more convincing proof of this duality than is afforded by -Turner. He had an exquisitely sensitive apprehension of all physical -phenomena, and was able to hoard away his impressions by the thousand in -that wonderful brain-store of his, until they were wanted for pictures. -He stored them with his eye, he reproduced them with his hand and -memory. These three were all of the finest, and seemed to act without -that process which is necessary to most of us before we can make use of -our impressions, viz., the translation of them into words. This process -is as necessary for the nourishment of most minds as digestion for the -nourishment of the body, but to him it appears to have been almost -entirely denied. He had grasp enough of his impressions without it, to -enable him to analyze them and compose them pictorially; but he could -not give any account of them or of his method of composition, and they -had no sensible effect on his conversation. - -He thus lived in two worlds--one the pictorial sight-world, in which he -was a profound scholar and a poet, the other the articulate, moral, -social word-world in which he was a dunce and underbred. In the one he -was great and happy, in the other he was small and miserable; for what -philosophy he had was fatalist. The riddle of life was too hard for his -uncultivated intellect and starved heart to contemplate with any hope; -he was only at rest in his dreamland. When he came down into this world -of ours from his own clouds, he brought some of his glory with him, but -without any cheerful effect; for it came but as a foil to ruined -castles, the vice of mortals and the decay of nations. - -Yet, while at a first view this distinction between Turner as a man and -Turner as an artist seems complete, further study shows that the man had -a great and often a fatal influence on the artist, and that this was not -without reaction both serious and deep, and so we find that his art and -himself are no more to be divided in any human view of him than were his -body and his soul when he was yet alive. For these reasons we shall keep -as close together as possible the histories of his life and his art, a -task always difficult and sometimes impossible on account of the -scantiness of trustworthy data for the one and the almost infinite -material for the other. - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -EARLY DAYS. - -1775 TO 1789. - - -The appearance of Turner’s genius in this world is not to be accounted -for by any known facts. Given his father and his mother, his grandfather -and grandmother, on the father’s side, which is all we know of his -ancestry, given the date of his birth, even though that was the 23rd -April (St. George’s day, as has been so childishly insisted on), 1775, -there seems to be positively no reason why William Turner, barber, of -26, Maiden Lane, opposite the Cider Cellar, in the parish of St. Paul’s, -Covent Garden, and Mary Turner, _née_ Marshall, his wife, should have -produced an artist, still less, one of the greatest artists that the -world has yet seen. There is only one fact, and that a very sad one, -which might be held to have some connection with his genius. “Great wits -are sure to madness near allied,” sang Dryden,[1] and poor Mrs. Turner -became insane “towards the end of her days.” This, however, will in no -way account for the special quality of Turner’s genius. He arose like -many other great men in those days to help in opening the eyes of -England to the beauties of nature, one of the large and illustrious -constellation of men of genius that lit the end of the last and the -beginning of the present century, and with that truth we must be -content. - -The earliest fact that we have on record which had any influence on -Turner is that his paternal grandfather and grandmother spent all their -lives at South Molton in Devonshire. Although he is not known to have -visited Devonshire till he was thirty-seven years of age;[2] he appears -to have been proud of his connection with the county, and to have -asserted that he was a Devonshire man. This is, as far as we know, the -solitary effect of Turner’s ancestry upon him. Of his father and mother -the influence was necessarily great. From his father he undoubtedly -obtained his extraordinary habits of economy, that spirit of a petty -tradesman, which was one of his most unlovely characteristics, and, be -it added, his honesty and industry also. Of his father we have several -descriptions by persons who knew him; of his mother, one only, and that, -unfortunately, not so authentic. We will give the lady the first place, -and it must be remembered that this unfavourable picture is drawn by Mr. -Thornbury from information derived from the Rev. Henry Syer Trimmer, the -son of Turner’s old friend and executor, the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, -of Heston, who obtained it from Hannah Danby, Turner’s housekeeper in -Queen Anne Street, who got it from Turner’s father. - - “In an unfinished portrait of her by her son, which was one of his - first attempts, my informant perceived no mark of promise; and he - extended the same remark to Turner’s first essays at landscape. - The portrait was not wanting in force or decision of touch, but the - drawing was defective. There was a strong likeness to Turner about - the nose and eyes; her eyes being represented as blue, of a lighter - hue than her son’s; her nose aquiline, and the nether lip having a - slight fall. Her hair was well frizzed--for which she might have - been indebted to her husband’s professional skill--and it was - surmounted by a cap with large flappers. Her posture therein - (_sic_) was erect, and her aspect masculine, not to say fierce; and - this impression of her character was confirmed by report, which - proclaimed her to have been a person of ungovernable temper, and to - have led her husband a sad life. Like her son, her stature was - below the average.” - -This as the result of a painted portrait by her son, and verbal -description by her husband, is not too flattering, and it is all we know -of the character and appearance of poor Mary Turner. Of her belongings -we know still less. She is said to have been sister to Mr. Marshall, a -butcher, of Brentford, and first cousin to the grandmother of Dr. Shaw, -author of “Gallops in the Antipodes,” and to have been related to the -Marshalls, formerly of Shelford Manor House, near Nottingham.[3] We are -able to add to this scanty information that she was the younger sister -of Mrs. Harpur, the wife of the curate of Islington, who was grandfather -of Mr. Henry Harpur, one of Turner’s executors. He (the grandfather) -fell in love with his future wife when at Oxford, and their marriage -brought her sister to London. We are also informed that the -hard-featured woman crooning over the smoke, in an early drawing by -Turner in the National Gallery (_An Interior_, No. 15), is Turner’s -mother, and the kitchen in which she is sitting, the kitchen in Maiden -Lane. We have also ascertained that one Mary Turner, from St. Paul’s, -Covent Garden, was admitted into Bethlehem Hospital on Dec. 27th, 1800, -one of whose sponsors for removal was “Richard Twenlow, Peruke Maker.” -This unfortunate lady, whether Turner’s mother or not, was discharged -uncured in the following year. Altogether what we know about Turner’s -mother does not inspire curiosity, and we fear that she was never -destined to figure in an edition of “The Mothers of Great Men.” The “sad -life” which she is said to have led her husband could scarcely have been -sadder than her own. - -Of his father we have fuller information. - - “Mr. Trimmer’s description of the painter’s parent, the result of - close knowledge of him, is that he was about the height of his son, - spare and muscular, with a head below the average standards” - (whatever that may mean) “small blue eyes, parrot nose, projecting - chin, and a fresh complexion indicative of health, which he - apparently enjoyed to the full. He was a chatty old fellow, and - talked fast, and his words acquired a peculiar transatlantic twang - from his nasal enunciation. His cheerfulness was greater than that - of his son, and a smile was always on his countenance.” - -This description is of him when an old man, but he must have been not -very different from this when about one year and eighteen months after -his marriage, which took place on August 29th, 1773, the little William -was born. He was not a man likely to alter much in habit or appearance. -He was always stingy, if we may judge by the story of his following a -customer down Maiden Lane to recover a halfpenny which he omitted to -charge for soap, and from his son’s statement that his “Dad” never -praised him for anything but saving a halfpenny. As barbers are -proverbially talkative, and as persons do not generally develop -cheerfulness in later life, we may consider Mr. Trimmer’s portrait of -the old man to be essentially correct of him when young, especially as -we find that Turner the younger was always “old looking,” a peculiarity -which is generally hereditary. - -The house (now pulled down) in which Turner was born, and in which, for -at least some time after, father, mother, and son resided together, is -thus described by Mr. Ruskin: “Near the south-west corner of Covent -Garden, a square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set block of -houses, to the back windows of which it admits a few rays of light. -Access to the bottom of it is obtained out of Maiden Lane, through a low -archway and an iron gate; and if you stand long enough under the archway -to accustom your eyes to the darkness, you may see, on the left hand, a -narrow door, which formerly gave access to a respectable barber’s shop, -of which the front window, looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant.” -Maiden Lane is not a very brilliant thoroughfare, and was still narrower -and darker at this time, but still this picture, though doubtless -accurate, seems to make it still darker, and in the engraving of the -house in Thornbury’s life of Turner, even the front window that looked -into Maiden Lane is rendered ominously black by the shadow of a watchman -thrown up by his low-held lantern. To us it seems that there is plenty -of dark in Turner’s life without thus unduly heightening the gloom of -his first dwelling-place. A barber cannot do his work without light, and -we have no doubt that whatever sorrow fell upon Turner in his life was -in no way deepened by his having to pass through a low archway and an -iron gate in order to get to his father’s shop. - -[Illustration: HOUSE IN MAIDEN LANE IN WHICH TURNER WAS BORN.] - -The house in Maiden Lane would have been a cheerful enough and a -wholesome enough nest for little William[4] if it had contained a happy -family presided over by a sweetly smiling mother. This want is the real -dark porch and iron gateway of his life, the want which could never be -supplied. In that wonderful memory of his, so faithful, by all -accounts, to all places where he had once been happy, there was no -chamber stored with sweet pictures of the home of his youth; no -exhaustless reservoir of tender, healthy sentiment, such as most of us -have, however poor. Here is a note of pathos on which we might dwell -long and strongly without fear of dispute or charge of false sentiment. -Children, indeed, do not miss what they have not: present sorrows did -not probably affect his appetite, future forebodings did not dim his -hopes; but then, and for ever afterwards, he was terribly handicapped in -the struggle for peace and happiness on earth, in his desire after right -thinking and right doing, in his aims at self-development, in his chance -of wholesome fellowship with his kind, in his capacity for understanding -others and making himself understood, for all these things are more -difficult of attainment to one who never has known by personal -experience the charm of what we mean by “home.” - -This want in his life runs through his art, full as it is of feeling for -his fellow-creatures, their daily labour, their merry-makings, their -fateful lives and deaths; there is at least one note missing in his -gamut of human circumstance--that of domesticity. He shows us men at -work in the fields, on the seas, in the mines, in the battle, bargaining -in the market, and carousing at the fair, but never at home. This is one -of the principal reasons why his art has never been truly popular in -home-loving domestic England. - -It is not good for man, still less for a boy, to be alone, and we do not -think we can be wrong in thinking that he was a solitary boy. How soon -he became so we do not know. We may hope that in his earliest years at -least he was tenderly cared for by his mother, and petted by his father. -There is no reason why we may not draw a bright picture of his -childhood, and fancy him walking on Sundays with his father and mother -in the Mall of St. James’s Park, wearing a short flat-crowned hat with a -broad brim over his curly brown hair, with snowy ruffles round his neck -and wrists, and a gay sash tied round his waist, concealing the junction -between his jacket-waistcoat and his pantaloons; but this bright period -cannot have lasted long. Soon he must have been driven upon himself for -his amusement, and fortunate it was for him that nature provided him -with one wholesome and endless. - -It is known that one artist, Stothard, was a customer of his father, and -it is probable that as there was an academy in St. Martin’s Lane, and -the Society of Artists at the Lyceum, and many artists resided about -Covent Garden, the little boy’s emulation may have been excited by -hearing of them, and perhaps chatting with them and seeing their -sketches. - -He certainly began very early. We are told that he first showed his -talent by drawing with his finger in milk spilt on the teatray, and the -story of his sketching a coat-of-arms from a set of castors at Mr. -Tomkison’s the jeweller, and father of the celebrated pianoforte maker, -must belong to a very early age.[5] The earliest known drawing by him of -a building is one of Margate Church, when he was nine years old, shortly -before he went to his uncle’s at New Brentford for change of air. There -he went to his first school and drew cocks and hens on the walls, and -birds, flowers, and trees from the school-room windows, and it is added -that “his schoolfellows, sympathizing with his taste, often did his -sums for him, while he pursued the bent of his compelling genius.” Very -soon after this, if not before, he began to make drawings, some of these -copies of engravings coloured, which were exhibited in his father’s shop -window at the price of a few shillings, and he drew portraits of his -father and mother, and of himself at an early age. It is said that his -father intended him to be a barber at first,[6] but struck with his -talent for drawing soon determined that he should follow his bent and be -a painter. He is said to have delighted in going into the fields and -down the river to sketch, but all the very early drawings we have seen, -including those purchased at his father’s shop, are drawings of -buildings, mostly in London. Of these there is one of the interior of -_Westminster Abbey_, in Mr. Crowle’s edition of “Pennant’s London,” now -in the print room of the British Museum. There is nothing to distinguish -these from the work of any clever boy, but this drawing and one in the -National Gallery, of a scene near Oxford, both probably copied from -prints, show a sense not only of light but colour. We have also seen a -copy of Boswell’s “Antiquities of England and Wales,” with about seventy -of the plates very cleverly coloured by him when a boy at Brentford. - -Whatever defects Turner, the barber, may have had as a father, neglect -of his son’s talents was not one of them, and, though very careful for -the pence, he showed that he could make a pecuniary sacrifice when he -had a chance of furthering his son’s prospects, for he refused to allow -him to become the apprentice of one architect who offered to take him -for nothing, and paid the whole of a legacy he had been left to place -him with another, and we may presume a better one. - -The information given by Mr. Thornbury about his early training, -scholastic and professional, is very meagre, inconsecutive, and -puzzling. According to him it was in 1785 that Turner, having been -previously taught reading, but not writing, by his father, went to his -first school, which was kept by Mr. John White, at New Brentford; in -1786 or 1787, by which time at least his destination for an artist’s -career appears to have been settled, he was sent to “Mr. Palice, a -floral drawing-master,” at an Academy in Soho, and in 1788, to a school -kept by a Mr. Coleman at Margate; at some time before 1789, to Mr. -Thomas Malton, a perspective draughtsman, who kept a school in Long -Acre, and in this year to Mr. Hardwick, the architect, and to the school -of the Royal Academy. He also went to Paul Sandby’s drawing school in -St. Martin’s Lane. During all, or nearly all this time, he was, -according to Mr. Thornbury, employed: 1. In making drawings at home to -sell. 2. In colouring prints for John Raphael Smith, the engraver, -printseller, and miniature painter. 3. Out sketching with Girtin. 4. -Making drawings of an evening at Dr. Monro’s[7] in the Adelphi. 5. -Washing in backgrounds for Mr. Porden. If he was really employed in this -way from 1785 to 1789, and could only read and not write when he began -this extraordinary course of training, it is no wonder that he remained -illiterate all his life, or that his mind was utterly incapacitated for -taking in and assimilating knowledge in the usual way. Spending a few -months at a day school, and a few more at a “floral drawing master,” -then a few more at school at Margate, making drawings for sale, -colouring prints, fruitlessly studying perspective, bandied about from -school master to drawing master, and from drawing master to -architect--such a life for a young mind from ten to fourteen years of -age is enough to spoil the finest intellectual digestion. - -One fact, however, comes clear out of all this confusion, that of -regular and ordinary schooling he had little or none, and there is no -reason to suppose that it was because of the peculiar quality of his -mind that he always spoke and wrote like a dunce. He never had a fair -chance of acquiring in his youth more than a traveller’s knowledge of -his own language, and so his mind had a very small outlet through the -ordinary channels of speech. On the other hand, faculties of drawing and -composition were trained to the utmost, and this compensated him in a -measure. His mind had only one entrance, his eye, and only one exit, his -hand; but they were both exceptional, and cultivated exceptionally. - -[Illustration: CHATEAU D’AMBOISE. - -_From “Rivers of France.”_] - -There was, however, much of pleasure in this life for a boy like Turner, -for though he evidently worked hard, he liked work and the work he had -to do was especially congenial to him. He met friends and encouragers on -all sides; from his father to his school-fellows. However much reason he -may have had for disappointment in later years, there was none in his -early life. He was “found out” in his childhood. Encouraged by his -father, with his drawings finding a ready sale to such men as Mr. -Henderson, Mr. Crowle, and Mr. Tomkison, with plenty of employment in no -slavish mean work for such a youngster, such as colouring prints and -putting in backgrounds to drawings, with Mr. Porden generously offering -to take him as an apprentice for nothing, with a kind friend like Dr. -Monro always willing to give him a supper and half-a-crown for sketches -of the country near his residence at Bushey, or the result of an -evening’s copying of the then best attainable water colours; his life -was far more agreeable, far more tended to make him think well of the -world and of the people in it than has been usually represented, and -probably as good as he could have had for attaining early proficiency in -his art. London at that time was not a bad place for a landscape artist. -It was neither so clouded nor so sooty as it is now; there were -healthier trees in it, and more of them, a more picturesque and a purer -river, and within less than half an hour’s walk from Maiden Lane there -were green fields, for north of the British Museum the country was still -open. - -But he was not entirely dependent upon his art and his employers for -enjoyment, or for forming his opinion of the human race. There were -houses at which he visited and where he was received warmly. When at -school at Margate he got an “introduction to the pleasant family of a -favourite school-fellow;” at Bristol there was Mr. Narraway,[8] a -fellmonger in Broadmead, and an old friend of his father, at whose house -he drew two of the children and his own portrait; and at the house of -Mr. William Frederick Wells, the artist, he was evidently one of the -family, as is proved by the charmingly tender reminiscences of Mrs. -Wheeler. - - “In early life my father’s house was his second home, a haven of - rest from many domestic trials too sacred to touch upon. Turner - loved my father with a son’s affection; and to me he was as an - elder brother. Many are the times I have gone out sketching with - him. I remember his scrambling up a tree to obtain a better view, - and then he made a coloured sketch, I handing up his colours as he - wanted them. Of course, at that time, I was quite a young girl. He - was a firm affectionate friend to the end of his life; his feelings - were seldom seen on the surface, but they were deep and enduring. - No one would have imagined, under that rather rough and cold - exterior, how very strong were the affections which lay hidden - beneath. I have more than once seen him weep bitterly, particularly - at the death of my own dear father,[9] which took him by surprise, - for he was blind to the coming event, which he dreaded. He came - immediately to my house in an agony of tears. Sobbing like a child, - he said, ‘Oh, Clara, Clara! these are iron tears. I have lost the - best friend I ever had in my life.’ Oh! what a different man would - Turner have been if all the good and kindly feelings of his great - mind had been called into action; but they lay dormant, and were - known to so very few. He was by nature suspicious, and no tender - hand had wiped away early prejudices, the inevitable consequence of - a defective education. Of all the light-hearted merry creatures I - ever knew, Turner was the most so; and the laughter and fun that - abounded when he was an inmate of our cottage was inconceivable, - particularly with the juvenile members of the family.”--THORNBURY’S - _Life of Turner_ (1877), pp. 235, 236. - -A man who knew this lady for sixty years, and about whom so kind a heart -could have thus written, could not have been driven to a life of morbid -seclusion because the world had treated him so badly in his youth. His -home may have been, and probably was a cheerless one, and we may well -pity him on that account. The rest of our pity we had better reserve for -his want of education, and the secretive, suspicious disposition which -nature gave him, and which he allowed to master his more genial -propensities. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -YOUTH. - -1789 to 1796. - - -The only rebuff with which the young artist appears to have met was from -Tom Malton, the perspective draughtsman, who sent him back to his father -as a boy to whom it was impossible to teach geometrical perspective. As -Mr. Hamerton observes, “There is nothing in this which need surprise us -in the least. Scientific perspective is a pursuit which may amuse or -occupy a mathematician, but the stronger the artistic faculty in a -painter the less he is likely to take to it, for it exercises other -faculties than his. Besides this, he feels instinctively that he can do -very well without it.” No doubt he did feel this, and the feeling very -much lessened the disappointment at being “sent back,” and he did very -well without it, so well that he was appointed Professor of Perspective -to the Royal Academy without it, and not unfrequently exhibited pictures -on its walls, which showed how very much “without it” he was. - -Otherwise he met with no rebuffs in his art. We have seen that he got -plenty of employment, and have expressed an opinion that that -employment--colouring engravings, and putting in backgrounds and -foregrounds and skies for architectural drawings--was no mean employment -for a youngster. He himself, when pitied in later years for this -supposed degradation and slavery, replied, “Well, and what could be -better practice!” and it was this and more. It not only taught him to -work neatly, to lay flat washes smoothly and accurately, but it taught -him to exercise his ingenuity and artistic taste. He probably succeeded -so well, because it gave him an opportunity of displaying his artistic -faculty. Every sketch that he had thus to beautify presented an artistic -problem, how best to light and decorate and make a picture of the bare -bones of an architectural design. It gave him a sense of power and -importance thus to be the converter of topography into art; it taught -him the value of light and shade, and the decorative capacities of trees -and sky. His success gave him self-reliance. It also, and this was -perhaps a more doubtful advantage, taught him to consider drawing as a -skill in beautifying. He got the habit of treating buildings as objects -less valuable as objects of art in themselves, than for the breaking of -sunbeams, and as straight lines to contrast with the endless curves of -nature; and also the habit of using trees as he wanted them, of bending -their boughs and moulding their contours in harmony with the -poem-picture of his imagination. To this early treatment of -architectural drawings may be traced his great power of composition, and -also much of his mannerism. - -That he soon knew his power, and had his secrets of manipulation, may be -one reason for his early secretiveness about his art; for though there -is little in these early works of his to prefigure his coming greatness, -he, when a youth, attained a proficiency equal to that of the best -water-colour artists of his day, and, with his friend Girtin, soon -surpassed all except Cozens; and he could not have done this without a -sense of superiority and many private experiments; or, on the other -hand, he may, like many men, have required complete solitude to work at -all, though this was not the case in later life, as he often painted -almost the whole of his pictures on the Academy walls. At all events, -the degree of his secretiveness is extraordinary. “I knew him,” says an -old architect, “when a boy, and have often paid him a guinea for putting -backgrounds to my architectural drawings, calling upon him for this -purpose at his father’s shop in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. He never -would suffer me to see him draw, but concealed, as I understood, all -that he did in his bedroom.” When in this bedroom one morning, the door -suddenly opened, and Mr. Britton entered.[10] In an instant Turner -covered up his drawings and ran to bar the crafty intruder’s progress. -“I’ve come to see the drawings for the Earl.”[11] “You shan’t see ’em,” -was the reply. “Is that the answer I am to take back to his lordship?” -“Yes; and mind that next time you come through the shop, and not up the -back way.” When Mr. Newby Lowson accompanied him on a tour on the -continent he “did not show his companion a single sketch.” Similar -stories could be added to show how this habit continued through his -life. - -The dates of these two early stories are not given by Mr. Thornbury, nor -the name of the “old architect,” but they show that he was early -employed by a nobleman, and that he got a guinea a piece for his -backgrounds, not only “good practice,” but good pay for a youth; he was, -in fact, better employed and better paid than any young artist whose -history we can remember. Nor does it seem to have been the fault of -Providence if he did not enjoy the crowning happiness of life, a friend -of suitable tastes, for Girtin was sent to him, a youth of his own age -endowed with similar gifts, and of a most sociable disposition; nor did -he want a capable mentor, for he had Dr. Monro, “his true master,” as -Mr. Ruskin calls him. - -It was at Raphael Smith’s that he formed an intimacy with Girtin, says -Mr. Alaric Watts.[12] “His son, Mr. Calvert Girtin, described his father -and young Turner as associated in a friendly rivalry, under the -hospitable roof and superintendence of that lover of art, Dr. Monro -(then residing in the Adelphi). Nor was Turner forgetful of the Doctor’s -kindness, for on referring to that period of his career, in a -conversation with Mr. David Roberts, he said, ‘There,’ pointing to -Harrow, ‘Girtin and I have often walked to Bushey and back, to make -drawings for good Dr. Monro, at half-a-crown apiece and a supper.’” - -If a saying quoted by T. Miller in his “Memoirs of Turner and Girtin” -may be trusted,[13] Turner may have met Gainsborough and other eminent -painters of the day at Dr. Monro’s. Speaking of Dr. Monro’s -conversaziones, “Old Pine, of ‘Wine and Walnuts’ celebrity, used to say, -‘What a glorious coterie there was, when Wilson, Marlow, Gainsborough, -Paul, and Tom Sandby, Rooker, Hearne, and Cozins (_sic_) used to meet, -and you, old Jack,’ turning to Varley, ‘were a boy in a pinafore, with -Turner, Girtin, and Edridge as bigwigs, on whom you used to look as -something beyond the usual amount of clay.’” As Gainsborough died in -1788, when Turner was thirteen years old, and Turner was only two years -the senior of John Varley, this shows how early he began to have a -reputation. - -The acquaintance between Turner and Girtin is one of the most -interesting facts in Turner’s Life. Being more than two years Turner’s -senior (Girtin was born on February 18th, 1773) and having at least -equal talent as a boy, it is probable that he was “ahead” of Turner at -first, and that Turner learnt much from him. We may therefore accept as -true his reputed sayings, “Had Tom Girtin lived, I should have -starved;”[14] and (of one of Girtin’s “yellow” drawings), “I never in my -whole life could make a drawing like that, I would at any time have -given one of my little fingers to have made such a one.”[14] With regard -to their mutual studies and their respective talents we have information -in the studies and drawings themselves, but with regard to their human -relationship we have very little. Turner always spoke of him as “Poor -Tom,” and proposed to, and possibly did, put up a tablet to his memory; -but there are no letters or anecdotes to show that what we all mean by -“friendship” ever existed between them. - -We are equally ignorant as to the amount of intimacy between him and Dr. -Monro, for though the latter did not die till 1833, there is nothing to -show that they ever met after Turner’s student days were over. - -It may, however, be fairly assumed that we should have known more about -his intimacy with his Achates and his Mæcenas if it had been great and -continuous. The absence of documents or rumours on the subject are all -in favour of his having kept himself to himself, of his absorption in -his art from an early date, neglecting the social advantages that were -open to him, neglecting intellectual intercourse with his artistic -peers, neglecting everything except the pursuit of his art, and the road -to wealth and fame. This self-absorption, this concentration of all his -time and power to this one but triple object, the trinity of his desire, -may have arisen from a natural cause, the strength of impelling genius -over which he had no control; it may have arisen from secretiveness, -suspicion, selfishness, and ambition, which he could have controlled but -would not; but whatever its cause, there is no doubt that it existed, -and that with every external facility for becoming a social and -cultivated being, he took the solitary path which led him to greatness -(not perhaps greater than he might have otherwise attained), but a -greatness accompanied with mental isolation and ignorance of all but -what he could gather from unaided observation, and an uncultivated -intellect. - -The education of Turner may be summed up as follows: he learnt reading -from his father, writing and probably little else at his schools at -Brentford and Margate, perspective (imperfectly) from T. Malton, -architecture (imperfectly and classical only) from Mr. Hardwick, -water-colour drawing from Dr. Monro, and perhaps some hints as to -painting in oils from Sir Joshua Reynolds, in whose house he studied for -a while. The rest of his power he cultivated himself, being much helped -by the early companionship of Girtin. Nearly all, if not all, this -education except that mentioned in the last paragraph was over in 1789, -when Sir Joshua laid down his brush, conscious of failing sight, and -young Turner became a student of the Royal Academy. - -[Illustration: NANTES. - -_From “Rivers of France.”_] - -These were his principal living instructors, but he learnt more from the -dead--from Claude and Vandevelde, from Titian and Canaletto, from Cuyp -and Wilson. He learnt most of all from nature, but in the beginning of -his career his studies from art are more apparent in his works. There is -scarcely one of his predecessors or contemporaries of any character in -water-colour painting that he did not copy, whose style and method he -did not study, and in part adopt. We have within the last few years only -been able to study at ease the works of the early water-colour painters -of England, and the result of the interesting collections now at South -Kensington and the British Museum, bequests of Mr. and Mrs. Ellison, Mr. -Towshend, Mr. William Smith, and Mr. Henderson, has been on the one hand -to increase our opinion of their merit, and on the other to show how far -Turner outstripped them. We can now see how true and delicate were the -lightly-washed monochrome water scenes of Hearne; how robust the studies -of Sandby; that Daniell and Dayes could not only draw architecture well, -but could warm their buildings with sun, and surround them with space -and air; that Cozens could conceive a landscape-poem, and execute it in -delicate harmonies of green and silver; that Girtin could invest the -simplest study with the feeling of the pathos of ruin and solemnity of -evening; the first of water-colour painters to feel and paint the soft -penetrative influence of sunlight, subduing all things with its golden -charm. In looking at one of his drawings now at South Kensington, a -_View of the Wharfe_, and comparing it with the works around, one cannot -help being struck with this difference, that it is complete as far as -it goes, the realization of one thought, the perfect rendering of an -impression, harmonious to a touch. Broad and almost rough as it is, it -is yet finished in the true sense as no English work of the kind ever -was before. There are more elaborate drawings around, plenty of struggle -after effects of brighter colour, much cleverness, much skill, but -nowhere a picture so completely at peace with itself. In looking at it -we can realize what Turner meant when he said that he could never make -drawings like Girtin. Equal harmony of tone, far greater and more -splendid harmonies of colour, miracles of delicate drawing, triumphs -over the most difficult effects, dreams of ineffable loveliness, very -many things unattempted by Girtin he could achieve, but never this -simple sweet gravity, never this perfection of spiritual peace. - -But in spite of this, the great fact in comparing Turner with the other -water-colour painters of his own time--and we are speaking now of his -early works--is this, that whereas each of the best of the others is -remarkable for one or two special beauties of style or effect, he is -remarkable for all. He could reach near, if not quite, to the golden -simplicity of Girtin, to the silver sweetness of Cozens; he could draw -trees with the delicate dexterity of Edridge, and equal the beautiful -distances of Glover; he could use the poor body-colours of the day, or -the simple wash of sepia, with equal cleverness. He was not only -technically the equal, if not master of them all, but he comprehended -them, almost without exception. - -Such mastery was not attained without extraordinary diligence in the -study of pictures. At Dr. Monro’s he could study all the best modern -men, including Gainsborough, Morland, Wilson, and De Loutherbourg, and -he could also study Salvator Rosa, Rembrandt, Claude, and Vandevelde. -One day looking over some prints with Mr. Trimmer,[15] he took up a -Vandevelde and said, “That made me a painter.” And Dayes (Girtin’s -master) wrote in 1804:--“The way he acquired his professional powers was -by borrowing where he could a drawing or a picture to copy from, or _by -making a sketch of any one in the Exhibition[16] early in the morning, -and finishing it at home_.” The character of his early works is -sufficient of itself to prove the extent of his study of pictures, and -we are inclined to think that most of his early practice was from works -of art, and not from nature. The spirit of rivalry commenced in him very -early; it was the only test of his powers, and he seems to have pitted -himself in the beginning of his career against all his contemporaries, -from Mr. Henderson to Girtin, and many of the old masters, and never to -have entirely relinquished the habit. When we think of the number of -years he spent in doing little but topographical drawings, a castle -here, a town there, an abbey there, with appropriate figures in the -foreground, using only sober browns and blues for colours, his progress -seems to have been very slow; but when we see most of the artists of his -time doing exactly the same, and that the old landscape painters whom he -principally studied were almost as limited in the colours they employed, -especially in their drawings, we do not see how he could well have -progressed more quickly; and when we further consider the enormous -distance which he travelled--from the very bottom to the very height of -his art--that he should have accomplished it all in one short life -appears miraculous. The milestones of his journey are not shown plainly -in his early work, that is all. - -That there was much conscious restraint on his part in the use of -colours, that he of wise purpose devoted himself to perfection of his -technical power before he endeavoured to show his strength to the world, -we see no reason to believe. He could not well have done otherwise, and -for such an original mind one marvels to observe how throughout his -career he was led in the chains of circumstance. The poet-painter, the -dumb-poet, as he has well been called, shows little eccentricity of -genius in his youth. There was the strong inclination to draw, but no -strong inclination to draw anything in particular, or anything very -beautiful. On the contrary, he drew the most uninteresting and prosaic -of things, copied bad topographical prints and ugly buildings. When it -was proposed to make him an architect he did not rebel; when it was -afterwards proposed to make him a portrait-painter he did not murmur. It -was Mr. Hardwick, not himself, that insisted on his going to the Royal -Academy. His first essay in oils was due to another’s instigation. -Whatever work came to him, he did; that which he could do best, that -which he had special genius for, the painting of pure landscape, he -scarcely attempted at all for years. Almost every artist of that day -went about England drawing abbeys, seats, and castles for topographical -works. What others did, he did. What others did not do, he did not do. -No doubt it was the only profitable employment he could get, and he very -properly took it, and worked hard at it; he was borne along the stream -of circumstance as everybody else is, but he, unlike most men of strong -genius, seems never to have attempted to stem its tide, or get out of -its way. His genius was a growth to which every event and accident of -his life added its contribution of nourishment. Though stirred with -unusual power, he was probably almost as unconscious as to what it -tended as a seed in the ground; he had a dim perception of a light -towards which he was growing; he was conscious that he put forth leaves, -and that he should some day flower, but when, and with what special -bloom he was destined to surprise the world, we doubt if he had any -prophetic glimpse. His development was extraordinary, and could only -have been produced by special careful training, but this training was -mainly due to circumstances over which he had no control. Nature came to -his assistance in a thousand different ways, and in nothing more than -giving him a quiet temperament, like that of Coleridge’s child, “that -always finds, and never seeks.” He was not fastidious, except with -regard to his own work, and about that, more as to the arrangement and -finish of it than the subject. He had an excellent constitution, early -inured to rough it, and his comforts were very simple and easily -obtained. He was not particular, even about his materials and tools; any -scrap of paper would do for a sketch on an emergency. He was always able -to work, and to work swiftly and well. No fidgeting about for hours and -days because he was not in the mood; no sacrifice of sketch after sketch -because they did not please him; none of that nervous restlessness which -so often attends imaginative workers; and his work was imaginative from -the first--if not in conception, in execution. Solitude seems to have -been the only necessary condition for the free exercise of his powers, -which were as happily employed in “making a picture” of one thing as of -another, and when he wanted something to put in it to get it “right,” -he never had much trouble in finding it. He said, “If when out sketching -you felt a loss, you have only to turn round, or walk a few paces -further, and you had what you wanted before you.” His physical powers -were also great, and his mind was active in receiving impressions. Mr. -Lovell Reeve, as quoted by Mr. Alaric Watts, says:--“His religious study -of nature was such that he would walk through portions of England, -twenty to twenty-five miles a day, with his little modicum of baggage at -the end of a stick, sketching rapidly on his way all striking pieces of -composition, and marking effects with a power that daguerreotyped them -in his mind. There were few moving phenomena in clouds and shadows that -he did not fix indelibly in his memory, though he might not call them -into requisition for years afterwards.” He was not tied to any -particular method, or bound to any particular habit; when he found that -his way of sketching was too minute and slow to enable him to make his -drawings pay their expenses, he changed his style to a broader, swifter -one. So, without going quite to the length of Mr. Hamerton, who appears -to think that everything in Turner’s youth (including ugliness and bandy -legs) happened for the best in the best of possible worlds, we may -safely affirm that he could scarcely have been gifted with a temperament -better suited for steady progress, or one which was more calculated to -make him happy, for it enabled him to exercise his body and mind at the -same time, to earn his living and to lay up stores of pictorial beauty -in his memory, to do whatever task was set him, and yet get artistic -pleasure out of even the most commonplace study by embellishing it with -his imagination. - -In 1789 he became a student of the Royal Academy, and in the year after -he exhibited a _View of the Archbishop’s Palace at Lambeth_. In 1791, 2, -and 3 he exhibited several topographical drawings, but down to this time -he seems to have made no sketching tours of any length. He drew in the -neighbourhood of London, and his journeys to stay with friends at -Margate and Bristol will account for his drawings of Malmesbury, -Canterbury, and Bristol. But about 1792 he received a commission from -Mr. J. Walker, the engraver (who also afterwards employed Girtin), to -make drawings for his “Copper-plate Magazine.” This was the beginning of -the long series of engravings from his works, and it may have been one -of the reasons which decided him to set up a studio for himself, which -he did in Hand Court, Maiden Lane, close to his father, where he -remained till he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1800, -when he removed to 64, Harley Street. A year or so after his employment -by Walker he got similar commissions from Mr. Harrison for his “Pocket -Magazine.” These commissions sent him on his travels over England -referred to by Mr. Lovell Reeve. The copper-plates of the sketches for -Walker, including some after Girtin, were found about sixty years -afterwards by Mr. T. Miller, who republished them in 1854, in a volume -called “Turner and Girtin’s Picturesque Views, sixty years since.” These -drawings mark his first tour to Wales, on which he set forth on a pony -lent by Mr. Narraway. The first public results of this tour were the -drawing of _Chepstow_ in “Walker’s Magazine” for November, 1794, and -three drawings in the Royal Academy for that year. By the next year’s -engravings and pictures we trace him to “Nottingham,” “Bridgnorth,” -“Matlock,” “Birmingham,” “Cambridge,” “Lincoln,” “Wrexham,” -“Peterborough,” and “Shrewsbury,” and by those of 1796 and 1797 to -“Chester,” “Neath,” “Tunbridge,” “Bath,” “Staines,” “Wallingford,” -“Windsor,” “Ely,” “Flint,” “Hampton Court, Herefordshire,” “Salisbury,” -“Wolverhampton,” “Llandilo,” “The Isle of Wight,” “Llandaff,” “Waltham,” -and “Ewenny (Glamorgan),” not including drawings of places he had been -to before. - -His furthest point north was Lincoln, his farthest west (in England) -Bristol. The only parts in which he reached the coast were in Wales and -the Isle of Wight. Lancashire and the Lakes, Yorkshire and its -waterfalls, were yet to come, and nearly all coast scenery, except that -of Kent. - -The drawings for the Magazines were not remarkable for any poetry or -originality of treatment perceptible in the engravings, the cathedrals -being generally taken from an unpicturesque point of view, more with the -object of showing their length and size than their beauty, to which he -appears to have been somewhat insensible always; they show a great love -of bridges and anglers--there is scarcely one without a bridge, and some -have two; a desire to tell as much about the place as possible by the -introduction of figures; they show his habit of taking his scenes from a -distance, generally from very high ground, and his delight in putting as -much in a small space as possible, and his power of drawing masses of -houses, as in the _Birmingham_ and the _Chester_. - -The result of these tours may be said to have been the perfection of his -technical skill, the partial displacement of traditional notions of -composition, and the storing of his memory with infinite effects of -nature. It was as good and thorough discipline in the study of nature, -as his former life had been in the study of art, and though his visit to -Yorkshire in the next year (1797) seemed necessary to bring thoroughly -to the surface all the knowledge and power he had acquired, it was not -without present fruit. Rather of necessity than choice, we may observe, -he confined his powers mainly to the drawing of views of places supposed -to be of interest to the subscribers of the Magazines, but his -individual inclinations in the choice of subject, and his tendency to -purer landscape and sea-view, showed themselves now and then. First in -his drawing of _The Pantheon, the Morning after the Fire_, exhibited in -1792; next in 1793, in his _View on the River Avon, near St. Vincent’s -Rocks, Bristol_, and the _Rising Squall, Hot Wells_,[17] from the same -place; then in 1794, _Second Fall of the River Monach, Devil’s Bridge_; -in 1795, _View near the Devil’s Bridge, Cardiganshire, with the River -Ryddol_; in 1796, _Fishermen at Sea_; and in 1797, _Fishermen coming -Ashore at Sunset, previous to a Gale_, and _Moonlight: a study in -Milbank_,[18] now in the National Gallery. - -That his genius was perceptible even in these early days is evident from -the notice taken in a contemporary review of his drawings in 1794, when -he was nineteen. - - “388. _Christchurch Gate, Canterbury._ W. Turner. This deserving - picture, with Nos. 333 and 336, are amongst the best in the present - exhibition. They are the productions of a very young artist, and - give strong indications of first-rate ability; the character of - Gothic architecture is most happily preserved, and its profusion of - minute parts massed with judgment and tinctured with truth and - fidelity. This young artist should beware of contemporary - imitations. His present effort evinces an eye for nature, which - should scorn to look to any other source.” - -Again in 1796, the “Companion to the Exhibition,” with regard to his -first sea-piece contains this paradoxical sentence, attempting to -express his peculiar power of giving a distinct impression of -ill-defined objects, which was apparently evident even in this early -work. - - “Colouring natural, figures masterly, not too distinct--obscure - perception of the objects distinctly seen--through the obscurity of - the night--partially illumined.” - -Again in 1797, we have this testimony as to the extraordinary (for that -time) character of his work, from an entry in the diary of Thomas -Greene, of Ipswich, about the _Fishermen_ of 1797. - - “June 2, 1797. Visited the Royal Academy Exhibition. Particularly - struck with a sea-view by Turner; fishing vessels coming in, with a - heavy swell, in apprehension of tempest gathering in the distance, - and casting, as it advances, a night of shade, while a parting glow - is spread with fine effect upon the shore. The whole composition - bold in design and masterly in execution. I am entirely - unacquainted with the artist; but if he proceeds as he has begun, - he cannot fail to become the first in his department.” - -Here, then, before Turner’s visit to Yorkshire, we have evidence that -not only was the superiority of his work apparent, but that one or two -of the special qualities which were to mark it in the future were -already perceived, and publicly praised. - -After looking carefully at all the ascertainable facts of Turner’s -youth, we can only come to the conclusion that it was not the fault of -nature or mankind that he grew into a solitary and disappointed man. - -Secretiveness on his own part and want of trust in his fellow-creatures -seem to have been bred in him, and to have resisted all the many proofs -which the friends of his youth, and we may say of his life, afforded, -that there were kind and unselfish persons in the world whom he could -trust, and who would trust him. There is no proof that he ever had -confidential relations with any human being, not even Girtin. That he -should have willingly cut himself adrift from human fellowship we are -loath to believe, in spite of the many facts which seem to support it. -It seems more natural, and on the whole (sad as even this is) more -pleasant, to believe that he met with a severe blow to his confidence; -that, though naturally suspicious, the many kindnesses he received were -not without a gracious effect, but that his budding trust was killed by -a sudden unexpected frost. For these reasons we are inclined to believe -in the story of his early love; although it, as told by Mr. Thornbury, -is not without inconsistencies. - -Turner is said to have plighted vows with the sister of his school -friend at Margate; he left on a tour, giving her his portrait, the -letters between them were intercepted, and after waiting two years she -accepted another. When he reappeared she was on the eve of her marriage, -and thinking her honour involved, refused to return to her old love. - -Such in short is the story which we wish to believe, and as it came to -Mr. Thornbury from one who heard it from relatives of the lady, to whom -she told it, there is probably some truth in it. It is, however, almost -impossible to believe that Turner, whose tours never extended to two -years, and whose power of locomotion was extraordinary, should allow -that time to elapse without going to see one whom he really loved. If -he did not get any letters he would have been desperate; if he did get -letters they would have shown him that she had not received his, which -would have made him, if possible, more desperate still. As the name of -the lady is not given, it is next to impossible to find out the truth. -Our faith, however, as a balance of probability, still remains that -Turner was jilted, and that the effect of it was to confirm for ever his -want of confidence in his fellow-creatures. - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -YORKSHIRE AND THE YOUNG ACADEMICIAN. - -1797 TO 1807. - - -From the facts of the foregoing chapter it may be fairly presumed that -although Turner’s election as Associate in 1799 followed quickly after -his fine display of pictures from the northern counties in 1798, he was -before this a marked man, whose superiority over all then living -landscape painters was visible to critics and lovers of art, and could -not have been disguised from the eyes of the artists of the Royal -Academy. It did not require a genius like that of Turner to distance -competitors on the Academy walls in those days. England was almost at -its lowest point both in literature and art. The great men of the -earlier part of the eighteenth century, Pope, Thomson, Gray, Collins, -Swift, Fielding, Sterne and Richardson, had long been dead, and of the -later brilliant, but small circle of artists and men of letters of which -Dr. Johnson was the centre (Goldsmith and Burke, Garrick and Reynolds, -Hume and Gibbon), Reynolds only was left, and he was moribund. Of other -artists with any title to fame there was none left but De Loutherbourg -and Morland; Hogarth had died in 1764, Wilson in 1782, Gainsborough in -1788. The new generation of men of genius were born; some were growing -up, some in their cradles. A few had already shown signs. Wordsworth and -Coleridge had just put forth their “Lyrical Ballads” at Bristol, Burns -was famous in Scotland, Charles Lamb had written “Rosamund Gray,” but -Scott the “Great Unknown,” was as yet “unknown” only, though five years -older than Turner; Byron had not gone to Harrow, and the united ages of -Keats and Shelley did not amount to ten years; the only living poets of -deserved repute were Cowper and Crabbe. Della Crusca in poetry, and West -in art, were the bright particular stars of this gloomy period. The -landscape painters who were Academicians were such men as Sir William -Beechey, Sir Francis Bourgeois, Garvey, Farington, and Paul Sandby, and -among the Associates, Turner had no more important rival than Philip -Reinagle. Girtin and De Loutherbourg alone of all the then exhibitors -were anything like a match for him, and Girtin spoilt (till 1801) any -chance he might otherwise have had of Academic honours by not exhibiting -pictures in oil; he died in 1802, leaving Turner undisputed master of -the field. It is not greatly therefore to be wondered at that Turner was -elected Associate in 1799, and a full Academician in 1802. It was, -however, much to the credit of the Academy that they recognized his -talent so soon and welcomed him as an honour to their body, instead of -keeping him out from jealous motives. Turner never forgot what he owed -to the Academy, and whether it taught him nothing, as Mr. Ruskin says, -or a great deal, as Mr. Hamerton thinks, does not much matter--it taught -him all it knew, and gave him ungrudgingly every honour in its gift. But -its claims on his gratitude did not stop here, for it was his school in -more than one branch of learning; from its catalogues he derived the -subjects of most of his pictures, they directed him to the poems which -set flame to his imagination, and helped (unfortunately), with their -queer spelling and grammar and truncated quotations, to form what -literary style he had; but the greatest boon which the Academy afforded -was the opportunity of fame, a field for that ambition which was one of -the ruling powers of his nature. - -But his tour in the North in 1797 was before his days of Academic -rivalries and glories. He was only two-and-twenty, and seems to have -been actuated by no motive but to paint as well and truly as he could -the beautiful scenery through which he passed. The effect upon him of -the fells and vales of Yorkshire and Cumberland seems to have been much -the same as that of Scotland upon Landseer; it braced all his powers, -developed manhood of art, turned him from a toilsome student into a -triumphant master. Mr. Ruskin writes more eloquently than truly about -this first visit. “For the first time the silence of nature around him, -her freedom sealed to him, her glory opened to him. Peace at last, and -freedom at last, and loveliness at last; it is here then, among the -deserted vales--not among men; those pale, poverty-struck, or cruel -faces--that multitudinous marred humanity--are not the only things which -God has made.” These are fine words, but what a picture, if true! Can -this young man who has travelled through all these many counties in -England and Wales, which we have already enumerated, never have known -the “silence of nature,” or “freedom,” or “peace,” or “loveliness?” Can -his experience of mankind, of Dr. Monro, of Girtin, of Mr. Hardwick, of -Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Mr. Henderson, have left upon him such an -impression of the failure of God’s handiwork in making men, that a -mountain seems to him in comparison as a revelation of unexpected -success? If Turner had been cooped in a garret of the foulest alley in -London since his birth, and had only escaped now and then from the -hardest drudgery to read the works of Mr. Carlyle, this picture might be -near the truth, but we doubt even then if it could escape the charge of -being over-coloured. - -Whether Turner had any special object in this journey to the North in -1797 is not clear, but it is at least probable that Girtin’s success at -the Exhibition of this year with his drawings from Yorkshire and -Scotland may have influenced him, and that he may have already received -a commission from Dr. Whitaker to make drawings for the “Parish of -Whalley,” published three years afterwards. He must at all events have -had much leisure from other employment in order to produce the important -pictures in oil and water-colour which he exhibited the next year. Of -these we only know _Morning on the Coniston Fells_ and _Buttermere -Lake_, now in the National Gallery. Another, whether water or oils we do -not know, was _Norham Castle on the Tweed--Summer’s Morn_, the first of -several pictures of the same subject, which was a favourite of his for a -good reason. Many years after (probably about 1824 or 1825), when making -sketches for “Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of -Scotland, with descriptive illustrations by Sir Walter Scott, 1826,” he -took off his hat to Norham Castle, and Cadell the publisher, who was -with him, expressed surprise. “Oh,” was the reply, “I made a drawing or -painting of Norham several years since. It took; and from that day to -this I have had as much to do as my hands could execute.” If the Castle -was treated in the same way in this first as in the subsequent pictures -of Norham, with the hill and ruin in the middle distance set against a -brightly illumined sky, the effect was sufficiently new and striking to -make the reputation of any painter in those days. It was an effect which -as far as we know had never been attempted before, this casting of the -whole shadow of hill and castle straight at the spectator, so that, in -spite of the bright reflections in the watery foreground, he seems to be -within it, and to see through the soft shadowy air, the solemn bulk of -mound and ruin, with their outlines blurred with light, grand and -indistinct against the burning sky. - -[Illustration: NORHAM CASTLE, ON THE TWEED.] - -The pictures of 1797-99 confirmed beyond any doubt that a great artist -had arisen, who was not only a painter but a poet--a poet, not so much -of the pathos of ruin, though so many of his pictures had ruins in them, -nor of the chequered fate of mankind, though there is something of the -“Fallacies of Hope” indicated in the quotations to his pictures--as of -the mystery and beauty of light, of the power of nature, her -inexhaustible variety and energy, her infinite complexity and fulness. -No one can look upon his splendid drawing of _Warkworth Castle_, -exhibited in 1799, and now at South Kensington, with its rich glow of -sunset and transparent shadow, and its wonderful masses of clouds, -without feeling that such work as this was a revelation in those days. -Sparing and not very pleasant in colour, it is yet in this respect a -great advance upon the former work of others and of his own; such colour -as there is penetrates the shade and is complete in harmony and tone, -while the sky has no blank space and is part of the picture, the -vivifying uniting power of the composition, with more interest and -feeling in one roll of its truly-studied masses of cloud-form than could -be found in the whole of any sky of his contemporaries. - -Altogether it is difficult to over-estimate the influence of this first -journey to the North upon Turner’s mind and art, although he had almost -perfected his skill and shown unmistakable signs of genius before. But -these tours had other gifts not less important, though in a different -way, for his introductions to Dr. Whitaker, the local historian, to Mr. -Basire, the engraver, to Mr. Fawkes of Farnley, to Lord Harewood, and to -Sir John Leicester (afterwards (1826) Lord de Tabley), through Mr. -Lister-Parker of Browsholme Hall, his guardian, may all be said to have -resulted from this tour. - -Dr. Whitaker was the vicar of the parish of Whalley, and was writing a -book upon it in the manner of those days, giving descriptions of the -local antiquities, the churches, the ruins, the crosses, and an account -of the county families, with their pedigrees and engravings of their -ancestral seats. Not only each county, but almost every parish had such -a historian in those days, and although the spirit of these works is -archaeological rather than artistic, engaged with genealogy rather than -history, and with pride of family and county rather than of the people -and nation, they did a great deal of valuable work. Dr. Whitaker’s work -is no exception to this rule, and he was in many ways a typical writer -of the kind, for he himself, though he “chose” the Church as his -profession, was a man of property and county importance. Valuable as -artists were in those days to the writers of these works, they were yet -considered of very secondary rank. They were indeed not called “artists” -but “draftsmen,” and notwithstanding that Dr. Whitaker recognized -Turner’s genius, he did not think it necessary in this “Parish of -Whalley” to mention in the preface the existence of such a person, -although the names of all the gentlemen of the county who had furnished -him with drawings or information are carefully acknowledged therein; but -nothing will show better the relations between the two men than an -extract from a letter from the reverend bookmaker to one of his county -friends, Mr. Wilson, of Clitheroe, dated Feb. 8th, 1800. - - “I have just had a ludicrous dispute to settle between Mr. Townley” - (Charles Townley, Esq. of Townley), “myself and Turner, the - draftsman. Mr. Townley it seems has found out an old and very bad - painting of Gawthorpe at Mr. Shuttleworth’s house in London, as it - stood in the last century, with all its contemporary accompaniments - of clipped yews, parterres, &c.: this he insisted would be more - characteristic than Turner’s own sketch, which he desired him to - lay aside, and copy the other. Turner, abhorring the landscape and - contemning the execution of it, refused to comply, and wrote to me - very tragically on the subject. Next arrived a letter from Mr. - Townley, recommending it to me to allow Turner to take his own way, - but while he wrote, his mind (which is not unfrequent) veered - about, and he concluded with desiring me to urge Turner to the - performance of his requisition, as from myself. I have, however, - attempted something of a compromise, which I fear will not succeed, - as Turner has all the irritability of youthful genius.”[19] - -The “compromise” was handing over the task of drawing from the -objectionable picture to Mr. J. Basire the engraver. - -We should like to see Turner’s “tragical” letter, and also his rejected -drawing; we should also like to have seen Dr. Whitaker’s face if he had -been told that not many years after a book would have been published of -drawings by Turner, the draftsman, with “descriptions by the Rev. Dr. -Whitaker.” - -Of Mr. Fawkes, of whose hall at Farnley Turner made a drawing for the -“Parish of Whalley,” but with whom he is said by Thornbury to have -become acquainted about 1802, it may be said that he was one of Turner’s -longest and staunchest friends. The number of drawings (still at -Farnley) which he made when visiting Mr. Fawkes between 1803 and 1820 -(including as they do studies of birds shot while he was there, of the -outhouses, porches, and gateways on the property, of the old places in -the vicinity, and of the rooms in Farnley Hall) attest the frequency of -his visits and his affection for the place and its occupants, while the -splendid series of drawings in England, Switzerland, Italy, and on the -Rhine, and the few precious oil pictures purchased by Mr. Fawkes, show -him to have been not only a true friend, but a warm and sympathizing -admirer of his genius. He indeed was a friend such as few are permitted -to know--one of a goodly number who in Turner’s youth and manhood should -have made the world to him specially pleasant and sociable, frank and -healthy. If he could not or would not have it so, it was not from -insensibility, for his feeling was deep and his heart was sound. “He -could not make up his mind to visit Farnley after his old friend’s -death,” and he could not speak of the shore of the Wharfe (on which -Farnley Hall looks down) “but his voice faltered.” Dayes wrote of him in -1804, “This man must be loved for his works, for his person is not -striking, nor his conversation brilliant.” At Farnley, as at Mr. Wells’ -cottage, Turner was made at home, but that he did not escape -good-humoured ridicule even at Farnley is plain from a caricature by Mr. -Fawkes, “which is thought by old friends to be very like. It shows us a -little Jewish-nosed man in an ill-cut brown tail coat, striped -waistcoat, and enormous frilled shirt, with feet and hands notably -small, sketching on a small piece of paper, held down almost level with -his waist.”[20] It is evident that at this time, in spite of his clear -little blue eyes, and his small hands and feet, his appearance was not -one likely to prepossess women, or to inspire consideration among men, -and that one of the ills from which his painting room afforded a refuge -may have often been a wounded vanity. There can be nothing more -constantly galling to a sensitive man of genius than to feel that his -appearance does not inspire the respect he feels due to him. If he has -eloquence sufficient to command attention, this will not matter so much; -but if he has not even that (and Turner had not), his natural refuge is -solitude, his one absorbing occupation is his art, his only worldly -ambition is to show what is in him, and to compel respect to his genius -through his works. - -From the time that Turner became an Associate his struggles, if he can -ever be said to have had any, were over, and many changes took place in -his life and art. He ceased almost entirely from making topographical -drawings for the engravers, limiting his efforts to a heading to the -“Oxford Almanack,” and a few drawings for “Britannia Depicta,” “Mawman’s -Tour,” and some other books, until the commencement of the “Southern -Coast” in 1814. He had in effect emancipated himself from “hackwork,” -and could turn his attention to more congenial and ambitious labour. The -“draftsman” had become the artist, and he showed the improvement in his -position by moving from Hand Court, Maiden Lane, to 64, Harley Street. - -In future his exhibited pictures show very few “castles” or “abbeys,” -unless they are the seats of his distinguished patrons, Mr. Beckford of -Fonthill (for whom in 1799 he painted several views of that ill-fated -tower, which might have formed a subject for a canto of Turner’s -“Fallacies of Hope”), Sir J. L. Leicester, and others. His other -castles, Carnarvon, 1800, Pembroke, 1801 and 1806, St. Donat’s, 1801, -and Kilchurn, 1802, were all probably compositions in which local -fidelity was cared for little in comparison with effects of light and -pictorial beauty. How completely he disregarded local fact in the case -of Kilchurn has been very completely shown by Mr. Hamerton, and Mr. -Ruskin says, “Observe generally, Turner never, after this time, 1800, -drew from nature without _composing_. His lightest pencil sketch was the -plan of a picture, his completest study on the spot a part of one.” - -Of this period, 1800-1810, Mr. Ruskin says, “His manner is stern, -reserved, quiet, grave in colour, forceful in hand. His mind tranquil; -fixed in physical study, on mountain subject; in moral study, on the -Mythology of Homer, and the Law of the Old Testament.” We wish he had -given his reasons for this last astonishing statement. For those who -only know the working of Turner’s mind through his pictures, it is -bewildering in the extreme, for in these there is no trace that he ever -at any time studied the Law of the Old Testament, and the only classical -pictures of this period, including the plates in the “Liber,” were -_Jason_ and _Narcissus and Echo_. If we include the pictures of 1811, we -get one Homeric subject, _Chryses_, but that has nothing to do with -mythology. - -The evidence of Turner’s pictures shows little tranquillity of mind -during this period, but, on the contrary, all the restlessness of -unsatisfied ambition. As he had already pitted himself against, and -beaten all the water-colourists, he now commenced a course of rivalry -against all the oil painters past and present, who came anywhere within -the reach of his art, which he endeavoured to extend far beyond -landscape limits. - -His first tilt was probably against De Loutherbourg in 1799 with his -_Battle of the Nile, at ten o’clock, when the l’Orient blew up, from the -station of the gunboats between the battery and Castle of Aboukir_; and -his _Fifth Plague of Egypt_ (1800), his _Army of the Medes destroyed in -the Desert by a Whirlwind_, and _The Tenth plague of Ægypt_ (1802), -probably owed more to De Loutherbourg’s grand but theatrical pictures -and _Eidophusicon_, than to any meditation on the “Law of the Old -Testament.”[21] Of Wilson, though dead, and neglected even when alive, -he continued in active rivalry as late as 1822, when he proposed to Mr. -J. Robinson, of the firm of Hurst and Robinson, to have four of his -pictures (three of which were to be painted expressly for the venture) -engraved in rivalry with Wilson and Woollett. “Whether we can in the -present day,” he writes, “contend with such powerful antagonists as -Wilson and Woollett would be at least tried by size, security against -risk, and some remuneration for the time of painting. The pictures of -ultimate sale I shall be content with; to succeed would perhaps form -another epoch in the English school; and if we fall, we fall by -contending with giant strength.” It is difficult to make out the meaning -of even this short extract from this illiterate composition, but it is -quite plain that the open rivalry with Wilson, which commenced about -1800, had not ceased in 1822. - -But he did not confine his rivalries to English painters, or to the -field of landscape art. His long rivalry with Claude commenced with the -“Liber Studiorum” in 1807, that with Vandevelde earlier. His famous -_Shipwreck_ (painted 1805) now in the National Gallery, his perhaps -finer _Wreck of the Minotaur_, painted for Lord Yarborough, and his -_Fishing Boats in a Squall_, painted for the Marquis of Stafford, and -now in the Ellesmere Gallery, besides a fine sea-piece, painted for the -Earl of Egremont, are examples of the latter. The Ellesmere picture was -painted in direct rivalry with one of Vandevelde’s on the same subject, -and both hang together in the Ellesmere Gallery. Of them John Burnet -wrote:-- - - “The figures (in the Vandevelde) are made out and coloured without - reference to the situation they are in; the sea is beautifully - painted, and the foamy tops of the waves blown off by the wind with - great observation of nature; nevertheless, the whole work looks - little and defined compared with its great competitor. Turner’s - boat is advancing towards the spectator with all sails set, and a - similarity in both pictures is that the sails are prevented from - being too cutting and harsh from their melting into and being - softened by other sails of a similar shape and colour. A small boat - is brought in contact in Turner’s, stowing away fish, which forms - the principal light, if it may be so called, for there is no strong - light in the picture; the lights are of a subdued grey tone even in - the yeasty waves; the shape of the mass of light on the water is - broad, and of a beautiful form; in Vandervelde’s (_sic_) picture it - is spotty and devoid of union with the vessel. In Turner we see an - obscure outlined form in everything, for though the warm tints of - the masses of clouds serve to break down and diffuse the colour of - the sails, their form is disturbed by the handling of his brush. In - comparing the two pictures as works of art, Vandervelde’s must - have the preference as far as priority of composition is concerned; - but Turner has had the boldness to tell the same story, clothing it - with all the grandeur and sublimity of natural representation. The - light and shade is very excellent; the mass of dark sky, brought in - contact with the sail of the advancing boat, is broad in the - extreme.” - -[Illustration: THE SHIPWRECK.] - -Of his other rivalries at this period, those with the Poussins and -Titian are the most notable. The one produced the famous, and, in spite -of its poorness of colour and conventionality, the magnificent, _Goddess -of Discord choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of -Hesperides_, exhibited at the British Institution in 1806, and now in -the National Gallery; the other, the _Venus and Adonis_, still more -wonderful by reason of the beauty of its colour, its composition, and -the audacity of the attempt. This was bought by Mr. Munro of Novar, and -was lately sold at Christie’s, on the dispersion of the Novar -collection, for £1,942. It is, as far as we know, the only picture in -which he attempted with success to draw the human form on a large scale, -and is certainly one of the best efforts of the English school to rival -the “old masters;” the figures, the dogs, and the glorious vine-clad -bower in which they are set are all worthy of the subject, and make a -picture which reminds one of Titian, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Etty in -about equal proportions. - -It is strange that the great sea-pieces we have mentioned were not -exhibited (except perhaps that at Petworth), but the occupation of his -time by these magnificent works of emulation accounts for his doing so -little for the engravers in these years, for they were all probably, -except the _Wreck of the Minotaur_, painted before 1807, when he turned -his attention to his greatest, and perhaps most successful work of the -kind, the “Liber Studiorum.” And here we may remark, that emulation with -Turner, though it may have been a mark of jealousy, was always a token -of respect. Feelings crossed each other in Turner’s mind as colours did -in his works; it is often difficult to know whether his feeling is to be -called noble or base, and the same complexity may be noticed in his -“artistic” motives. When imitating other masters he brought his -knowledge of nature to bear strongly on his work to make it more -natural; when painting a natural scene, he employed all his traditional -study to make it more “artistic.” - -By this time, however, he had learnt nearly all that was to be learnt -from art, ancient or modern, in the landscape way, but it was different -with nature. That was a book which he could not exhaust, though he was -never tired of turning over fresh pages. It was almost his only book, -and he began a new chapter about 1801 or 1802, when he made his first -tour on the Continent. Previous to this he must have paid a visit to -Scotland, for the Exhibition of 1802 contained three Scotch views, one -of which was the _Kilchurn_ already mentioned. In 1803 he exhibited no -less than six foreign subjects, of which one was the _Calais Pier_, now -in the National Gallery, another the _Festival upon the opening of the -Vintage of Macon_, in the possession of Lord Yarborough; the others were -_Bonneville, Savoy, with Mont Blanc_; _Chateaux de Michael, Bonneville, -Savoy_; _St. Hugh denouncing vengeance on the Shepherd of Courmayeur in -the Valley of d’Aoust_; and _Glacier and Source of the Arvèron going up -to the Mer de Glace, in the Valley of the Chamouni_.[22] After this -burst of foreign subjects he did not exhibit another scene from abroad -for twelve years, except the _Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen_ (1806), -and content this time with simpler, safer, English, a _View of the -Castle of St. Michael, near Bonneville, Savoy_ (1812). During the next -few years the most important picture, and one of the most beautiful he -ever painted, was the famous _Sun Rising through vapour: Fishermen -cleaning and selling Fish_, exchanged with Sir J. F. Leicester for _The -Shipwreck_, and now in the National Gallery, together with _The -Shipwreck_ and _Spithead: Boat’s Crew recovering an Anchor_, another -fine picture of the Vandevelde class. - -In all these years, during which he kept up this constant rivalry with -so many artists, living and dead--and we have not exhausted the list of -them--he was continuing his unresting severe study of nature. For many -more years this was to continue, this double artistic life, the strife -for fame by grand pictures, of which emulation was the motive, the -patient development of his knowledge and power by the close study of -nature. Few who watched his pictures from year to year could have -guessed what a store of beautiful studies of the Alps, about Chamouni, -Grenoble, and the Grande Chartreuse he had lying in his portfolios; few -could imagine that with materials for landscapes of a truthfulness and -an original power never before known, he should prefer to paint pictures -in rivalry with the fames of dead men. Possibly he thought that it was -the nearest way to fame to show the public that he could beat -Vandevelde, Poussin, and the rest of them on their own ground; possibly -he may have been diffident of his power to dispense with their aid in -composition. However this may have been, he chose to ground his fame so. -Even in his “Liber,” he in three years gave only three foreign subjects -out of twenty plates: _Basle_, _Mount St. Gothard_, and the _Lake of -Thun_. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -THE LIBER STUDIORUM--HIS POETRY AND DRAGONS. - - -In 1807 Turner commenced his most serious rivalry, “The Liber -Studiorum,” a rivalry which not only exceeded in force but differed in -quality from his others. Previously he had pitted his skill only against -that of the artist rivalled, adopting the style of his rival, but in -these engravings he pitted not only his skill, but also his style and -range of art against Claude’s. There are indeed only a few of the -“Liber” prints which are in Claude’s style, and most of the best are in -his own. Lovely as are _Woman Playing Tambourine_, and _Hindoo -Devotions_, they seem to us far lower in value than _Mount St. Gothard_ -and _Hind Head Hill_. There is the usual mixture of feeling in the -motives with which Turner undertook this work, the same dependence on -others for the starting impulse which we see throughout his art-life, -the same originality, industry, and confusion of thought in carrying out -his design. The idea of the “Liber” did not originate with him, but with -his friend Mr. W. F. Wells. The idea was noble in so far as it attempted -to extend the bounds of landscape art beyond previous limits, to break -down the Claude worship which blinded the eyes of the public to the -merit that existed in contemporary work, and prevented them, and artists -also, from looking to nature as the source of landscape art. It is -scarcely too much to say that in those days Claude stood between nature -and the artist, and that he was as much the standard of landscape art as -Pheidias of sculpture. To try to clear away this barrier of progress, as -Hogarth had striven years before to abolish the “black masters,” was no -ignoble effort, and it was done in a nobler spirit than that of Hogarth, -for he did not attempt to depreciate his rival. Yet the nobility of the -attempt was not unmixed, for if he did not disparage Claude, he -attempted to make himself famous at Claude’s expense. He did not indeed -say, as Hogarth would have done, “Claude is bad, I am good;” but he -said, “Claude is good, but I am better.” His own experience even from -very early days should have told him that, despite the cant of -connoisseurs and the strength of old traditions, no purely original work -of his had passed unnoticed, and that the truest and noblest way of -educating the public taste was by following the bent of his original -genius, and leaving the public to draw their own comparisons. - -[Illustration: THE DEVIL’S BRIDGE. - -_From the “Liber Studiorum.”_] - -Mr. Wells’s daughter states that not only did the “Liber Studiorum” -entirely owe its existence to her father’s persuasion, but the divisions -into “Pastoral,” “Elegant Pastoral,” “Marine,” &c., were also suggested -by him. Turner determined to print and publish and sell the “Liber” -himself, but to employ an engraver. His first choice fell on “Mr. F. C. -Lewis, the best aquatint engraver of the day, who at the very time was -at work on facsimiles of Claude’s drawings.”[23] With him he soon -quarrelled. The terms were, that Turner was to etch and Lewis to -aquatint at five guineas a plate. The first plate, _Bridge and Goats_, -was finished and accepted by Turner, though not published till April, -1812; but the second plate Turner gave Lewis the option of etching as -well as aquatinting, and he etched it accordingly, and sent a proof to -Turner, raising his charge from five guineas to eight, in consideration -of the extra work. Turner praised it, but declined to have the plate -engraved, on the ground that Lewis had raised his charges. This ended -Mr. Lewis’s connection with the “Liber,” and Turner next employed Mr. -Charles Turner, the mezzotint engraver, but he had to pay him eight -guineas a plate. Charles Turner agreed to engrave fifty plates at this -price, but after he had finished twenty, he wished to raise his charge -to ten guineas, which led to a quarrel. With reference to these quarrels -of Turner with his engravers, Mr. Thornbury says, “The painter who had -never had quarter given to him when he was struggling, now in his turn, -I grieve to say, gave no quarter,” and “inflexibly exacting as he was, -Turner could not understand how an engraver who had contracted to do -fifty engravings should try to get off his bargain at the twenty-first.” -This, like most of Thornbury’s statements, is utterly untrustworthy. -There is no evidence to show that a hard bargain was ever driven with -him when he was struggling, there is no word of any dispute with -engravers till he began to employ them himself, and as to his “not being -able to understand” how any man should endeavour to obtain more than the -price contracted for, it was exactly what he tried to do himself, when -afterwards employed by Cooke. - -[Illustration: THE ALPS AT DAYBREAK. - -_From Rogers’s “Poems.”_] - -The fact is that in all business arrangements Turner’s worse nature, the -mean, grasping spirit of the little tradesman, was brought into -prominence. In the case of Lewis he was evidently in the wrong, in the -case of Charles Turner he was only hard; but in all business -transactions he was as a rule ungenerous, and sometimes dishonest. His -action towards the public with regard to the “Liber” can be called by no -other name. His prices at first were fifteen shillings for prints, and -twenty-five shillings for proofs. When the plates got worn (and -mezzotint plates are subject to rapid deterioration in the light parts), -Turner used to alter them, sometimes changing the effect greatly, as in -the _Mer de Glace_, where he transformed the smooth, snow-covered -glacier into spiky ridges of ice, or in the _Æsacus_ and _Hesperie_, -where the effect of sunbeams through the wood was effaced, and the -direction in which the head of Hesperie was looking was changed, and the -face afterwards concealed. The changes were not always for the worse; -the very wear of the plate in some cases, as in that of the _Calm_, -improved the effect, and what we have called his confusion of thought, -and what Thornbury has called his “distorted logic,” may have led him to -believe that he was not wrong in selling as he did these worn and -altered plates as proofs. A kind casuistry may lend us a word less -disagreeable than dishonest to such transactions, but when we know that -he habitually from the first made no distinction between proofs and -prints--that he sold the same things under different names at different -prices--every plea breaks down, and we are forced to the conclusion that -when he thought he could cheat safely “the pack of geese,”[24] as he -thought the public, he did so. - -Nor can we acquit Turner of unfairness in issuing the “Liber Studiorum” -in competition with the French painter’s “Liber Veritatis,” a book -well-known to the public and to him, as the third edition of its plates, -engraved by Earlom, was just issued, when the “Liber Studiorum” was -begun. He must have known what the public did not probably know--that -Claude’s rough sketches were mere memoranda of the effects of his -pictures taken by him to identify them, and never meant for publication; -whereas his were carefully-finished compositions, into which he threw -his whole power. Not only was the publication unfair as regards Claude, -but it was misleading to the public as regards himself. The title, -“Liber Studiorum,” applies only to some of the prints. A few of the -poorer plates, especially the architectural ones, and such simple -designs as the _Hedging and Ditching_, might properly perhaps have been -called studies, but even upon these he bestowed a care and a finish that -would entitle them to be called pictures, monochrome as they are. - -The want of a well-considered plan, and the capricious way in which they -were published, contributed to the ill-success of the work; and though -we are accustomed to look upon its failure as a severe judgment on the -taste of the time, we are not at all sure that it would have succeeded -if published in the present day, unless Mr. Ruskin had written the -advertisement. - - “The meaning of the entire book,” according to that eloquent - writer, “was symbolized in the frontispiece,[25] which he engraved - with his own hand:[26] Tyre at Sunset, with the Rape of Europa, - indicating the symbolism of the decay of Europe by that of Tyre, - its beauty passing away into terror and judgment (Europa being the - Mother of Minos and Rhadamanthus).” - -Turner’s advertisement thus describes the intention of the work:-- - - “Intended as an illustration of Landscape Composition, classed as - follows: Historical, Mountainous, Pastoral, Marine, and - Architectural.” - -We think Turner’s description the more correct, and that the intention -of his frontispiece was to give all the “classes” in one composition, -and we are extremely doubtful whether Turner knew or cared anything -about either Minos or Rhadamanthus. - -The most obvious intention of the work was to show his own power, and -there never was, and perhaps never will be again, such an exhibition of -genius in the same direction. No rhetoric can say for it as much as it -says for itself in those ninety plates, twenty of which were never -published. If he did not exhaust art or nature, he may be fairly said to -have exhausted all that was then known of landscape art, and to have -gone further than any one else in the interpretation of nature. -Notwithstanding, the merit of the plates is very unequal, some, as -_Solway Moss_ and the _Little Devil’s Bridge_, being more valuable as -works of art than many of his large pictures; others, especially the -architectural subjects, the _Interior of a Church_, and _Pembury Mill_, -being almost devoid of interest. As to any one thought running through -the series, we can see none, except desire to show the whole range of -his power; and as to sentiment, it seems to us to be thoroughly -impersonal, impartial, and artistic. He turns on the pastoral or -historical stop as easily as if he were playing the organ, and his only -concern with his figures is that they shall perform their parts -adequately, which is as much as some of them do. - -We have spoken of the book as an attack on Claude, and of the -“intention” of the work, but we are not sure that we are not using too -definite ideas to express the variety of impulses in Turner’s mind that -tended to the commencement of the “Liber.” We have seen that the first -notion of it, and its divisions, were suggested by Mr. Wells, and the -plates are nothing more nor less than a selection from his sketches and -pictures, arranged under these heads. His early topographical drawings -and studies in England provided him with the architectural and pastoral -subjects, his studies of Claude and the Poussins and Wilson, with the -elegant pastoral, Vandevelde and nature with the marine, and his one or -two visits to the Continent with the mountainous. The frontispiece, the -first attempt to give a coherent signification to the whole, was not -published till 1812, and it was not till 1816 that the advertisement to -which we have called attention appeared when, after four years’ -intermission, the issue of the “Liber” was recommenced; even then it is -only described as “an illustration of Landscape Composition;” and it is -quite probable that the desire to make money, to display his art, to -rival Claude, and to educate the public, contributed to the production -of the work, without any very vivid consciousness on his part as to his -motives of action. It has, like all Turner’s work, the characteristics -of a gradual growth rather than of the carrying out of a well-defined -conception. - -[Illustration: FALLS IN VALOMBRÉ. - -_From Rogers’s “Jacqueline.”_] - -There is one way in which the title of the book may be considered as -appropriate, and that is to take “studia” to mean “studies,” in the -usual general sense of the word, for it is an index to his whole course -of study (including books and excepting colour), down to the time of -its publication. With the exception of his Venetian pictures and his -later extravagances, it may be said to be an epitome of his art without -colour. Poets and painters may change their style, and may develop their -powers in after-life in an unexpected manner; but after the age at which -Turner had arrived when he commenced to publish the “Liber,” viz., -thirty-two, there are few, if any, mental germs which have not at least -sprouted. Turner, though he never left off acquiring knowledge, or -developing his style, is no exception to this rule, and this makes the -“Liber” valuable, not only as a collection of works of art, but as a -nearly complete summary of the great artist’s work and mind. Amongst his -more obvious claims to the first place among landscape artists, are his -power of rendering atmospherical effects, and the structure and growth -of things. He not only knew how a tree looked, but he showed how it -grew. Others may have drawn foliage with more habitual fidelity, but -none ever drew trunks and branches with such knowledge of their inner -life; if you look at the trunks in the drawing of _Hornby Castle_ for -instance (which we mention because it is easily seen at the South -Kensington Museum), and compare them with any others in the same room, -the superior indication of texture of bark, of truly varied swelling, of -consistency, and all essential differences between living wood and other -things, cannot fail to be apparent to the least observant. Although the -trees of the “Liber” are not of equal merit (Mr. Ruskin says the firs -are not good), this quality may be observed in many of the plates. -Others have drawn the appearance of clouds, but Turner knew how they -formed. Others have drawn rocks, but he could give their structure, -consistency, and quality of surface, with a few deft lines and a wash; -others could hide things in a mist, but he could reveal things through -mist. Others could make something like a rainbow, but he, almost alone, -and without colour, could show it standing out, a bow of light arrested -by vapour in mid-air, not flat upon a mountain, or printed on a cloud. -If all his power over atmospheric effects and all his knowledge of -structure are not contained in the “Liber,” there is sufficient proof of -them scattered through its plates to do as much justice to them as black -and white will allow. If we want to know the result of his studies of -architecture we see it here also, little knowledge or care of buildings -for their own sakes, but perfect sense of their value pictorially for -breaking of lights and casting of shadows; for contrast with the -undefined beauty of natural forms, and for masses in composition; for -the sentiment that ruins lend, and for the names which they give to -pictures. If we seek the books from which his imagination took fire, we -have the Bible and Ovid, the first of small, the latter of great and -almost solitary power. Jason daring the huge glittering serpent, Syrinx -fleeing from Pan, Cephalus and Procris, Æsacus and Hesperie, Glaucus and -Scylla, Narcissus and Echo; if we want to know the artists he most -admired and imitated, or the places to which he had been, we shall find -easily nearly all the former, and sufficient of the latter to show the -wide range of his travel. In a word, one who has carefully studied the -“Liber” had indeed little to learn of the range and power of Turner’s -art and mind, except his colour and his fatalism. - -The first quotation from the “Fallacies of Hope,” nevertheless, was -published in the catalogue of 1812, as the motto of his picture of -_Snowstorm--Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps_, and it is -probable that the ill-success of the “Liber” contributed not a little to -the gloomy habit of mind which breathes through the fragments of this -unfinished composition. These were the lines appended to that grand -picture:-- - - “Craft, treachery, and fraud--Salassian force - Hung on the fainting rear! then Plunder seiz’d - The victor and the captive--Saguntum’s spoil, - Alike became their prey; still the chief advanc’d, - Look’d on the sun with hope;--low, broad, and wan. - While the fierce archer of the downward year - Stains Italy’s blanch’d barrier with storms. - In vain each pass, ensanguin’d deep with dead, - Or rocky fragments, wide destruction roll’d. - Still on Campania’s fertile plains--he thought - But the loud breeze sob’d, Capua’s joys beware.” - -This is nearer to poetry than Turner ever got again. The picture is -well-known, and was suggested partly by a storm observed at Farnley, -partly by a picture by J. Cozens,[27] of the same subject, from which -Turner is reported to have said that he learnt more than from any other. - -Turner’s love of poetry was shown from the first possible moment. The -first pictures to which he appended poetical mottoes were those of 1798, -but he could not have used them before, as quotations were never -published in the Academy Catalogue prior to that year. When his first -original verses were published we cannot tell, but there is little doubt -that the lines to his _Apollo and the Python_, in the Catalogue of -1811, were of his own fabrication. They are not from Callimachus, as -asserted in the catalogue, but a jumble of the descriptions of two of -Ovid’s dragons, the Python, and Cadmus’s tremendous worm, and are just -the peculiar mixture of Ovid, Milton, Thomson, Pope, and the quotations -in Royal Academy Catalogues, out of which he formed his poetical style. -The Turneresque style of poetry is in fact formed very much in the same -way as the Turneresque style of landscape, but the result is not so -satisfactory. It required a totally different kind of brain machinery -from that which Turner possessed. He may have had a good ear for the -music of tones, for he used to play the flute, but he had none for the -music of words. Coleridge was an instance of how distinct these two -faculties are, as he, whose verses exceed almost all other English -verses in beauty of sound, could not tell one note of music from -another. Turner lived in a world of light and colour, and beautiful -changeful indefinite forms; his thought had visions in place of words; -his mind communed with itself in sights and symbols; the procession of -his ideas was a panorama. So, where a poet would jot down lines and -thoughts, he would print off the impressions on his mental retina; his -true poetry was drawn not written--the poetry of instant act, not of -laboured thought. How sensible he himself was of the difference, is -shown in his clumsy lines:-- - - “Perception, reasoning, _action’s slow ally_, - Thoughts that in the mind awakened lie-- - Kindly expand the monumental stone - And as the ... continue power.” - -This is Mr. Thornbury’s reading of part of the longest piece of poetry -by Turner yet published, which he has printed without any care, making -greater nonsense than even Turner ever wrote, which is saying a great -deal. “Awakened” for instance is probably “unwakened,” and “monumental -stone” is probably “mental store” with another word at the commencement, -the word “power” is possibly “pours,” as the next line goes on, “a -steady current, nor with headlong force,” &c. We quite agree with Mr. W. -M. Rossetti, that these extracts are not made the best of, though it is -doubtful whether the result of more careful editing would be worth the -trouble. - -There is no picture which better shows the greatness of Turner’s power -of pictorial imagination than the _Apollo and Python_. We have said that -nature was almost Turner’s only book. The only written book which there -is evidence that he really studied--read through, probably, again and -again--is Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” That he was fond of poetry there is no -doubt, but the sparks that lit his imagination for nearly all his best -classical compositions came from this book. This is the only poem which -he really _illustrated_, and an edition of Ovid, with engravings from -all the scenes which he drew from this source, would make one of the -best illustrated books in the world. It would contain _Jason_, -_Narcissus and Echo_, _Mercury and Herse_, _Apollo and Python_, _Apuleia -in search of Apuleius_ (which is really the story of Appulus, who was -turned into a wild olive-tree, Apuleia being a characteristic mistake of -Turner’s for Apulia. He is sometimes called “a shepherd of Apulia,” in -notes and translations, and Turner evidently took the name of the -country for the name of a woman), _Apollo and the Sibyl_, _The Vision of -Medea_, _The Golden Bough_, _Mercury and Argus_, _Pluto and Proserpine_, -_Glaucus and Scylla_, _Pan and Syrinx_, _Ulysses and Polyphemus_. Of -all these pictures and designs we have no doubt that, though he referred -to other poets in the catalogues and got the idea of some part of the -composition from other poets, the original germs are to be found in no -other book than Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” We have not exhausted the list -of his debts to this poet, for it is probable that the first ideas of -his Carthage pictures, and all that deal with the history of Æneas, came -from the same source, assisted by references to Vergil. - -[Illustration: ALLEGORY. - -_From Rogers’s “Voyage of Columbus.”_] - -Of all these, excepting the _Ulysses and Polyphemus_, there is none -greater than the _Apollo and Python_. Although the figure of Apollo is -not satisfactory, it gives an adequate impression of the small size of -the boy-god, the radiating glory of his presence, the keen enjoyment of -his struggle with the monster, and the triumph of “mind over matter.” Of -the landscape and the dragon it is difficult to exaggerate the grandeur -of the conception; the rocks and trees convulsed with the dying -struggles of the gigantic worm, the agony of the brute himself, -expressed in the distorted jaws and the twisted tail, the awful dark -pool of blood below, the seams in its terrible riven side, studded with -a thousand little shafts from Apollo’s bow, and the fragments of rock -flying in the air above the griffin-like head and noisome steam of -breath, make a picture without any rival of its kind in ancient or -modern art. It is, as we have said, taken from two dragons of Ovid. -Turner seems to have been of the same opinion about books as about -nature, and if he wanted anything to complete his picture, went on a few -pages and found it. The idea of the god and his bow and arrows is taken -from the account of the combat in the first book of the “Metamorphoses,” -and the idea of the huge dragon with his “poyson-paunch,” comes from -the same place; but the ruin of the woodland, the flying stones, and the -earth blackened with the dragon’s gore, come from the description of the -combat of Cadmus and his dragon in the third. The larger stone is too -huge indeed to be that which Cadmus flung, it has been either, as Mr. -Ruskin thinks, lashed into the air by his tail, or, as we think, torn -off the rock and vomited into the air; but there is the tree, which the -“serpent’s weight” did make to bend, and which was “grieved his body of -the serpent’s tail thus scourged for to be,” there is “the stinking -breath that goth out from his black and hellish mouth,” there is the -blood which “did die the green grass black,” an idea not in Callimachus -nor in Ovid’s description of the Python, but which occurs both in the -lines appended to the picture and in Ovid’s description of Cadmus’s -serpent. If there were any doubt left as to the influence of this dragon -on the picture, there is still another piece of evidence, viz., -something very like a javelin, Cadmus’s weapon, which is sticking in the -dragon, and has reappeared after being painted out, so that it is -possible that Turner meant the hero of the picture, in the first -instance, to be Cadmus and not Apollo. - -The two great dragons of Turner, that which guards the Garden of the -Hesperides, and the Python, are specially interesting as the greatest -efforts made by Turner’s imagination in the creation of living forms, -excepting, perhaps, the cloud figure of Polyphemus. They are perhaps the -only monsters of the kind created by an artist’s fancy, which are -credible even for a moment. They will not stand analysis any more than -any other painters’ monsters, but you can enjoy the pictures without -being disturbed by palpable impossibilities. The distance at which we -see Ladon helps the illusion; with his fiery eyes and smoking jaws, his -spiny back and terrible tail, no one could wish for a more probable -reptile. The only objection that has been made to him is that his jaws -are too thin and brittle, while Mr. Buskin is extravagant in his praise. -It is wonderful to him-- - - “This anticipation, by Turner, of the grandest reaches of recent - inquiry into the form of the dragons of the old earth ... this - saurian of Turner’s is very nearly an exact counterpart of the - model of the iguanodon, now the guardian of the Hesperian Garden of - the Crystal Palace, wings only excepted, which are, here, almost - accurately, those of the pterodactyle. The instinctive grasp which - a healthy imagination takes of _possible_ truth, even in its - wildest flights, was never more marvellously demonstrated.” - -Mr. Ruskin then goes on to call attention to-- - - “The mighty articulations of his body, rolling in great iron waves, - a cataract of coiling strength and crashing armour, down amongst - the mountain rents. Fancy him moving, and the roaring of the ground - under his rings; the grinding down of the rocks by his toothed - whorls; the skeleton glacier of him in thunderous march, and the - ashes of the hills rising round him like smoke, and encompassing - him like a curtain.” - -The description, fine as it is, seems to us to destroy all belief in -Turner’s dragon. The wings of a pterodactyle would never lift the body -of an iguanodon, and Turner’s dragon could not even walk, his -comparatively puny body could never even move his miles of tail, let -alone lift them. It is far better to leave him where he is; the fact -that he is at the top of that rock is sufficient evidence that he got -there somehow; how he got there, and how he will get down again, are -questions which we had better not ask if we wish to keep our faith in -him. Nor can anything be more confused than the notion of a “saurian” -with “coiling strength and crashing armour,” making the ground “roar -under his rings.” This might be well enough of a fabulous monster made -of iron, but quite inappropriate when applied to a saurian, like the -alligator, for instance, with its soft, slow movements, and its bony, -skin-padded, noiseless armour. - -The Python will stand still less an attempt to define in words what -Turner has purposely left mysterious. Not even Mr. Ruskin, we fancy, -would dare to pull him out straight from amongst his rocks and trees, -and put his griffin’s head and talons on to that marvellous body, half -worm, half caterpillar. But he is grand, and believable as he is. More -simple than either of the other monsters is the single wave of Jason’s -dragon in his den. This is a mere magnified coil of a simple snake; but -its size, its glitter, its incompleteness, the terrible energy of it, -its peculiar serpentine wiriness, that elasticity combined with -stiffness which is so horrible to see and to feel, make it more awful -even than the Python. - -We do not believe in Turner’s power to evolve even as imperfect a -saurian as his Ladon out of his imagination, however “healthy;” and have -no doubt that he had seen the fossil remains of an ichthyosaurus. We -have the testimony of Mrs. Wheeler that he was much interested in -geology,[28] and think it more than probable that the thinness of the -monster’s jaws and, we may add, the emptiness of his eye socket are due -to his drawing them from a fossil, which his knowledge was not great -enough to pad with flesh. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -HARLEY STREET, DEVONSHIRE, HAMMERSMITH, AND TWICKENHAM. - -1800 TO 1820. - - -During the first ten years of this period we have very little -intelligence respecting Turner’s life. He moved from Hand Court, Maiden -Lane, to 64, Harley Street, in 1799 or 1800, and it is not improbable -that he bought the house, as No. 64 and the house next to it in Harley -Street, and the house in Queen Anne Street, all belonged to him at the -time of his death. There was communication between the three houses at -the back, although the corner house fronting both streets did not belong -to him. In 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1804, his address in the Royal Academy -Catalogue is 75, Norton Street, Portland Road; but in 1804 it is again -64, Harley Street. In 1808[29] it is 64, Harley Street, and West End, -Upper Mall, Hammersmith; and this double address is given till 1811, -when it is West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, only. In and after 1812 it -is always Queen Anne Street West, with the addition, from 1814 to 1826, -of his house at Twickenham, called Solus Lodge in 1814, and Sandycombe -Lodge from 1815 to 1826. It is remarkable that in the Catalogue of the -British Institution for 1814 his address is given as Harley Street, -Cavendish Square, showing that he had not then given up his house in -this street, and this is good evidence that it belonged to him. - -The war which broke out with Bonaparte in 1803,[30] and was not finally -closed till 1815, prevented him from pursuing his studies of Continental -scenery, and he seems during this time to have devoted himself -principally to the composition of his great rival pictures, and the -“Liber Studiorum,” about which we have already written: he stayed -occasionally with his friends, Mr. Fawkes at Farnley, where he studied -the storm for _Hannibal Crossing the Alps_, and Lord Egremont at -Petworth, where he painted _Apuleia and Apuleius_. Almost the only -glimpse that we get of his house in Harley Street, though it is very -doubtful to what period it belongs, was sent to Mr. Thornbury by Mr. -Rose of Jersey:-- - - “Two ladies, Mrs. R---- and Mrs. H---- once paid him a visit in - Harley Street, an extremely rare (in fact, if not the only) - occasion of such an occurrence, for it must be known he was not - fond of parties prying, as he fancied, into the secrets of his - _ménage_. On sending in their names, after having ascertained that - he was at home, they were politely requested to walk in, and were - shown into a large sitting room without a fire. This was in the - depth of winter; and lying about in various places were several - cats without tails. In a short time our talented friend made his - appearance, asking the ladies if they felt cold. The youngest - replied in the negative; her companion, more curious, wished she - had stated otherwise, as she hoped they might have been shown into - his sanctum or studio. After a little conversation he offered them - wine and biscuits, which they partook of for the novelty, such an - event being almost unprecedented in his house. One of the ladies - bestowing some notice upon the cats, he was induced to remark that - he had seven, and that they came from the Isle of Man.”[31] - -Whatever is the proper date of this story, it is to be feared that he -had good reason for not wishing persons to pry into the secrets of his -_ménage_. We ourselves have no wish to pry into those secrets; but the -fact that Turner had for the greater part of his life a home of which he -was ashamed, is sufficient to explain a great deal of his want of -hospitality, his churlishness to visitors, and his confirmed habits of -secrecy and seclusion. - -There is no doubt that he habitually lived with a mistress. Hannah -Danby, who entered his service, a girl of sixteen, in the year 1801, and -was his housekeeper in Queen Anne Street at his death, is generally -considered to have been one; and Sophia Caroline Booth, with whom he -spent his last years in an obscure lodging in Chelsea, another. There -are many who have lived more immoral lives, and have done more harm to -others by their immorality; but he chose a kind of illegal connection -which was particularly destructive to himself. He made his home the -scene of his irregularities, and, by entering into ultimate relations -with uneducated women, cut himself off from healthy social influences -which would have given daily employment to his naturally warm heart, and -prevented him from growing into a selfish, solitary man. Not to be able -to enjoy habitually the society of pure educated women, not to be able -to welcome your friend to your hearth, could not have been good for a -man’s character, or his art, or his intellect. - -His uninterrupted privacy possibly enabled him to produce more, and to -develop his genius farther in one direction; but we could have well -spared many of his pictures for a few works graced with a wider culture -and a healthier sentiment. He could paint, and paint, perhaps, better -for his isolation-- - - “The light that never was on sea or land, - The consecration and the Poet’s dream.” - -But it would have been better for him, and, we think, for his art also, -if he could have said:-- - - “Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone - Housed in a dream, at distance from the kind! - Such happiness, wherever it be known, - Is to be pitied; for ’tis surely blind.”[32] - -It was not from any scorn of the conventions of society that he -disregarded them, for there is no trace of any feeling of this sort in -his pictures or his reported conversations, and in his will he required -that the “Poor and Decayed Male Artists,” for whom he intended to found -a charitable institution (“Turner’s Gift”), should be “of _lawful -issue_.” One reason why he never married may have been his shyness and -consciousness of his want of address and personal attraction. Mr. Cyrus -Redding, from whom we have one of the brightest and best glimpses of -Turner as a man, says:-- - - “He was aware that he could not hope to gain credit in the world - out of his profession. I believe that his own ordinary person was, - in his clear-mindedness, somewhat considered in estimating his - career in life. He was once at a party where there were several - beautiful women. One of them struck him much with her charms and - captivating appearance; and he said to a friend, in a moment of - unguarded admiration, ‘If she would marry me, I would give her a - hundred thousand.’” - -This, and the increasing absorption in his art of all of himself that -could be so absorbed; his desire to economize both his time and his -money; his innate hatred of interference with his liberty; his aversion -from undertaking any obligation, the consequences of which he could not -calculate--all tended to keep him from matrimony, and to make him -content with the most unromantic amours. - -That he in 1811 or thereabouts could be hospitable and a good companion -away from home, is shown by Mr. Redding in his pleasant volume, from -which we have just quoted. He met Turner on what appears to have been -his first visit to the county to which his family belonged--Devonshire. -He met him first, Mr. Redding thinks, at the house of Mr. Collier (the -father of Sir Robert Collier), an eminent merchant of Plymouth, and -accompanied him on many excursions. On one of these Turner actually gave -a picnic “in excellent taste” at a seat on the summit of the hill, -overlooking the Sound and Cawsand Bay. - - “Cold meats, shell fish, and good wines were provided on that - delightful and unrivalled spot. Our host was agreeable, but terse, - blunt, and almost epigrammatic at times. Never given to waste his - words, nor remarkably choice in their arrangement, they were always - in their right place, and admirably effective.”[33] - -This last sentence sounds somewhat paradoxical, but for that reason is -probably all the more accurately descriptive of Turner’s art in words. -Further on, when defending the great painter, we get a portrait of him -as a “plain figure” with “somewhat bandy legs,” and “dingy complexion.” -On another excursion, Redding spent a night at a small country inn with -Turner, about three miles from Tavistock, as the artist had a great -desire to see the country round at sunrise. The rest of the party, Mr. -Collier and two friends, who had spent the day with them on the shores -of the Tamar with a scanty supply of provisions, preferred to pass the -night at Tavistock. - - “Turner was content with bread and cheese and beer, tolerably good, - for dinner and supper in one. I contrived to feast somewhat less - simply on bacon and eggs, through an afterthought inspiration. In - the little sanded room we conversed by the light of an attenuated - candle, and some aid from the moon, until nearly midnight, when - Turner laid his head upon the table, and was soon sound asleep. I - placed two or three chairs in a line, and followed his example at - full recumbency. In this way three or four hours’ rest were (_sic_) - obtained, and we were both fresh enough to go out, as soon as the - sun was up, to explore the scenery in the neighbourhood, and get a - humble breakfast, before our friends rejoined us from Tavistock. It - was in that early morning Turner made a sketch of the picture - (_Crossing the Brook_)to which I have alluded, and which he invited - me to his gallery to see.” - -Another of these excursions was to Burr or Borough Island, in Bigbury -Bay, “To eat hot lobsters fresh from the sea.” - - “The morning was squally, and the sea rolled boisterously into the - Sound. As we ran out, the sea continued to rise, and off Stake’s - point became stormy. Our Dutch boat rode bravely over the furrows, - which in that low part of the Channel roll grandly in unbroken - ridges from the Atlantic.” - -[Illustration: IVY BRIDGE. - -_Water-colour in National Gallery._] - -Two of the party were ill; one, an officer in the army, wanted to throw -himself overboard, and they “were obliged to keep him down among the -rusty iron ballast, with a spar across him.” - - “Turner was all the while quiet, watching the troubled scene, and - it was not unworthy his notice. The island, the solitary hut upon - it, the bay in the bight of which it lay, and the long gloomy Bolt - Head to sea-ward, against which the waves broke with fury, seemed - to absorb the entire notice of the artist, who scarcely spoke a - syllable. While the fish were getting ready, Turner mounted nearly - to the highest point of the island rock, _and seemed writing rather - than drawing_. The wind was almost too violent for either purpose; - what he particularly noted he did not say.” - -These reminiscences of Mr. Redding contain the most graphic picture of -Turner we possess. His carelessness of comfort, his devotion to his art, -his power of continuous observation in despite of tumult and discomfort, -his love of the sun and the sea, his habit of sketching from a high -point of view, his ability to take “pictorial memoranda” in a violent -wind, are all striking and essential peculiarities. - -It is interesting to learn also from Mr. Redding, that “early in the -morning before the rest were up, Turner and myself walked to Dodbrooke, -hard by the town, to see the house that had belonged to Dr. Walcot -(_sic_), Peter Pindar, and where he was born. Walcot sold it, and there -had been a house erected there since; of this the artist took a sketch.” -Turner probably appreciated Peter’s “Advice to Landscape Painters.” - -One piece of Turner’s conversation is also worthy of record, if only on -account of its rarity. - - “He was looking at a seventy-four gun ship, which lay in the shadow - under Saltash. The ship seemed one dark mass. - - “‘I told you that would be the effect,’ said Turner, referring to - some previous conversation. ‘Now, as you observe, it is all shade.’ - - “‘Yes, I perceive it; and yet the ports are there.’ - - “‘We can only take what is visible--no matter what may be there. - There are people in the ship; we don’t see them through the - planks.’” - -This reads like a speech of Dr. Johnson. - -We have another account of this same visit to Devonshire from Sir -Charles Eastlake, which bears testimony to the hospitality which he -received. Miss Pearce, an aunt of Sir Charles, appears to have been his -hostess, and her cottage at Calstock the centre of his excursions. A -landscape painter, Mr. Ambrose Johns, of great merit, according to Sir -Charles, fitted up a small portable painting box, which was of much use -to Turner in affording him ready appliances for sketching in oil. - - “Turner seemed pleased when the rapidity with which these sketches - were done was talked of; for departing from his habitual reserve in - the instance of his pencil sketches, he made no difficulty in - 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 inquiring what had become of these sketches, - Turner replied that they were worthless, in consequence, as he - supposed, of some defects 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.”[34] - -Mr. Johns’s devotion was not rewarded till long afterwards, when the -great painter sent him a small oil sketch in a letter. Mr. Redding -obtained at the time a rough sketch, and these seem to have been the -only returns he made for the kindness that was shown to him at Plymouth, -though many years afterwards he spoke to Mr. Redding “of the reception -he met with on this tour, in a strain that exhibited his possession of a -mind not unsusceptible or forgetful of kindness.” - -The date of this tour is given by Mr. Redding as probably 1811, and by -Eastlake 1813 or 1814. The principal pictorial results of it were -_Crossing the Brook_ (exhibited in 1815), and various drawings for -Cooke’s _Southern Coast_, which commenced in 1814. It seems probable -that his engagement on this work determined his visit to Cornwall and -Devonshire, but this is uncertain, as is also whether he paid more than -one visit to the locality. - -This tour is also interesting from its being the only occasion on which -Turner is known to have visited his kinsfolk. We are enabled to state on -the authority of one of his family that he went to Barnstaple and called -upon his relations there, and a gentleman, late of the Chancery Bar, has -kindly supplied us with the following extract of a memorandum made by -him in 1853, from facts sworn to in suits instituted to administer -Turner’s estate. - - “Price Turner, an uncle of the painter’s, having some idea of - educating his son, Thomas Price Turner (now (1853) living at North - Street, in the parish of St. Kerrian, Exeter, Professor of Music) - as a painter, T. P. T. made, at the request of William Turner, the - great artist’s father, two drawings as specimens of his ability, - one a view of the city of Exeter, taken from the south side, and - the other a view of Rougemont Castle, and sent them by Wm. Turner - to his son. Shortly after, he (T. P. T.) received a number of water - colour drawings, sketches, &c. Some of these were afterwards sent - for again, one of which, a water colour view of Redcliffe Church, - Bristol, Thomas Price Turner previously copied, which copy, - together with the residue of Turner’s drawings, are still in his - cousin’s possession. - - “J. M. W. Turner called at Price Turner’s house at Exeter about - forty years ago (about 1813), and, saying that he called at his - father’s request, had a conversation with Price Turner and his son - and daughter. Thomas Price Turner went to London in 1834 to attend - the Royal Musical Festival in commemoration of Handel, in which he - was engaged as a chorus singer. He called three times on his - cousin, and the third time saw him, but though he (J. M. W. T.) - immediately recognized him, the painter gave him a cool reception, - never so much as asking him to sit down.” - -It is probable that Turner’s father removed with him to Harley Street in -1800. The powder tax of 1795 is said to have destroyed his trade, and he -lived with his son till he died in 1830. He used to strain his son’s -canvasses and varnish his pictures, “which made Turner say that his -father began and finished his pictures for him.” As early as 1809, -Turner “was in the habit of privately exhibiting such pictures as he did -not sell, and the small accumulation he had at Harley Street in 1809 was -already dignified with the name of the “Turner Gallery.”[35] This -gallery Turner’s father attended to, showing in visitors &c., and when -they stayed at Twickenham he came up to town every morning to open it. -Thornbury says that the cost of this weighed upon his spirits until he -made friends with a market-gardener, who for a glass of gin a-day, -brought him up in his cart on the top of the vegetables. This is said to -have been after Turner removed from Harley Street, and was very well off -if not rich, for he had built his house in Queen Anne Street and his -lodge at Twickenham,[36] both of which belonged to him, as well as the -land at Twickenham, and (probably) the house in Harley Street. Turner’s -father made great exertions to add to his son’s estate at Sandycombe, by -running out little earthworks in the road and then fencing them round. -At one time there was a regular row of these fortifications, which used -to be called “Turner’s Cribs.” One day, however, they were ruthlessly -swept away by some local authority. If, however, both father and son -were very “saving” and eccentric in their ways, they were devoted to -one another from the beginning to the end, to an extent very touching -and beautiful, however strange in its manifestation. - -Of Turner’s life at West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, we have only the -following glimpse in a communication to Thornbury by “a friend.” - - “The garden, which ran down to the river, terminated in a - summer-house; and here, out in the open air, were painted some of - his best pictures. It was there that my father, who then resided at - Kew, became first acquainted with him; and expressing his surprise - that Turner could paint under such circumstances, he remarked that - lights and room were absurdities, and that a picture could be - painted anywhere. His eyes were remarkably strong. He would throw - down his water-colour drawings on the floor of the summer-house, - requesting my father not to touch them, as he could see them there, - and they would be drying at the same time.” - -It may have been when at Hammersmith that he became acquainted with Mr. -Trimmer, for in a letter to Mr. Wyatt of Oxford respecting two pictures -of that city, which is dated “West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, Feb. 4, -1810,” he says, “Pray tell me likewise of a gentleman of the name of -Trimmer, who has written to you to be a subscriber for the print.” This -gentleman was the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, Vicar of Heston, who was one -of Turner’s best and most intimate friends till his death. It is said -that he first went to Hammersmith to be near De Loutherbourg, and it is -probable that one of his reasons for building on his free--hold at -Twickenham was to be nearer Mr. Trimmer. De Loutherbourg died in 1812. - -Sandycombe Lodge, first called Solus Lodge, is on the road from -Twickenham to Isleworth, and is built on low lying ground and damp. The -original structure has been added to, but the additions being built of -brick, it is easy to see how it looked in Turner’s time--a small -semi-Italian villa covered with plaster and decorated with iron -balustrades and steps. It is within walking distance (4 miles) of -Heston. We are able by the kindness of Mr. F. E. Trimmer, the youngest -son of Turner’s friend, to correct some false impressions conveyed by -Thornbury’s garbled account of what he was told by the eldest son. - -The Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, the son of the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer, -and father of the Rev. Henry Syer Trimmer, who gave Thornbury his -information, was about the same age as Turner, and very much interested -in art. As an amateur painter he attained considerable skill, having a -wonderful faculty for catching the manner of other artists. His great -knowledge of pictures, and his continual experiments in the way of -mediums, colours, and devices for obtaining effects, made his -acquaintance specially interesting and valuable to Turner, and Turner’s -to him. No better proof of his ability can be found than the two -following stories:-- - -There is a picture at Heston before which Turner would frequently stand -studying. It is a sea-piece with the sun behind a mist, and with a -golden hazy effect not unlike Turner’s famous _Sun rising in a Mist_, -but the sea washes up to the frame. One day Turner said to Mr. Trimmer, -“I like that picture; there’s a good deal in it. Where did you get it?” -(Or words to this effect.) “I painted it,” was the reply; upon which the -artist turned away without a word, and never looked at the picture -again. - -The true story of the picture, supposed to be by Sir Joshua Reynolds, to -which Mr. Trimmer added a background, is this.[37] He purchased it in an -unfinished condition of a dealer in Holborn, and finished it himself, -and it remained in his possession till his death, when his son (Mr. F. -E. Trimmer), knowing its history, kept it out of the sale at Christie’s -of his father’s fine collection, and sold it, among other less valuable -and genuine productions, at Heston. The dealer who bought it (for £6) -thought he had made a great catch, and inquired of Mr. Trimmer’s son the -history of the picture, which he considered a splendid Sir Joshua, -speaking especially of the background as being a proof of its -authenticity. When Mr. Trimmer told him that his father had bought it in -his own shop and had finished it himself, he would not believe it for a -long time. - -Of the other stories of Turner’s connection with Heston, and of his -power to assist others in the composition of their pictures, the -following is perhaps the most interesting:--[38] - -Once when Howard (R.A.) was staying at the vicarage, painting a portrait -of Mr. Trimmer’s second son, the Rev. Barrington James Trimmer, Turner -was always finding fault with the work in progress. It was a full-size -and full-length portrait of a boy of three years old, dressed in a white -frock and red morocco shoes. One day Howard, annoyed at Turner’s -frequent objections, told him that he had better do it himself, on which -Turner said, “This is what I should do,” and taking up the cat he -wrapped its body in his red pocket handkerchief, and put it under the -boy’s arm. The effect of this, as may still be seen in the picture at -the house of Mr. Trimmer’s son at Heston, was excellent. The cat gave an -interest to the figure which it wanted, the red morocco shoes were no -longer isolated patches of bright colour at the bottom of the picture, -the blank expanse of white frock was varied and lightened up by the red -handkerchief and pussy’s tabby face, and the work, which was on the -brink of failure, was a decided success. Parts of the cat, handkerchief, -and landscape were put in by Turner. - -Sketching with oils on a large canvas in a boat, driving out on little -sketching excursions in his gig with his ill-tempered nag Crop Ear, said -to have been immortalized in his picture of the _Frosty Morning_ (which -was, however, painted before he went to Twickenham), fishing for trout -in the Old Brent, or for roach in the Thames, with Mr. Trimmer’s sons, -digging his pond in his garden and planting it round with weeping -willows and alders, the picture of Turner’s life at Twickenham is a -pleasant and healthy one. At Heston he drew his _Interior of a Church_ -for the “Liber,” and actually gave away two of his drawings to Mrs. -Trimmer, one of a Gainsborough, which they had seen together on an -excursion to Osterley House, and one of a woman gathering watercresses, -whom they had met on their way. But these gifts were asked for by the -lady, and Turner would not let them go without making _replicas_. He -once stood with a long rod two whole days in a pouring rain under an -umbrella fishing in a small pond in the vicarage garden, without even a -nibble. - -In connection with the Trimmers we get other instances of his rare and -bare hospitality, which showed that he never altered his manner of -living after he left Maiden Lane. We must refer the reader to Mr. -Thornbury’s life for the remainder of these varied, interesting, and on -the whole pleasant reminiscences. - -Space, however, we must spare for a letter, very incorrectly given by -Thornbury, the only record of his second attachment, the object of -which was the sister of the Rev. H. Scott Trimmer, who was at that time -being courted by her future husband:-- - - “_Tuesday. Aug. 1. 1815._ - - “QUEEN ANNE ST. - - “MY DEAR SIR, - - “I lament that all hope of the pleasure of seeing you or getting to - Heston--must for the present wholly vanish. My father told me on - Saturday last when I was as usual compelled to return to town the - same day, that you and Mrs. Trimmer would leave Heston for Suffolk - as tomorrow Wednesday, in the first place, I am glad to hear that - her health is so far established as to be equal to the journey, and - believe me your utmost hope, for her benefitting by the sea air - being fully realized will give me great pleasure to hear, and the - earlier the better. - - “After next Tuesday--if you have a moments time to spare, a line - will reach me at Farnley Hall, near Otley Yorkshire, and for some - time, as Mr. Fawkes talks of keeping me in the north by a trip to - the Lakes &c. until November therefore I suspect I am not to see - Sandycombe. Sandycombe sounds just now in my ears as an act of - folly, when I reflect how little I have been able to be there this - year, and less chance (perhaps) for the next in looking forward to - a Continental excursion, & poor Daddy seems as much plagued with - weeds as I am with disapointments, that if Miss ---- would but wave - bashfulness, or--in other words--make an offer instead of expecting - one--the same might change occupiers--but not to teaze you further, - allow with most sincere respects to Mrs. Trimmer and family, to - consider myself - - “Your most truly (or sincerely) obliged - - “J. M. TURNER.” - -But for the assurance of the present Mr. Trimmer, of Heston, that this -attachment of Turner to Miss Trimmer was undoubted, and that this letter -has always been considered in the family as a declaration thereof, we -should have thought that the offer he wanted was one for Sandycombe -Lodge and not for his hand. It is, however, past doubt that Turner was -violently smitten, and though forty years old, felt it much. - -The above letter was the only one known to have been written by Turner -to his friend the Vicar of Heston, and it is quite untrue, as asserted -by Thornbury, that the Vicar’s letters were burnt in sackfuls by his -son. His large correspondence was patiently gone through--a task which -took some years. Thornbury was probably thinking of the destruction of -the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer’s correspondence by her daughter, in which -it is true that sackfuls of interesting letters perished. - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -ITALY AND FRANCE. - -1820 TO 1840. - - -The life of Turner the man, that is, what we know of it, during these -twenty years, may be written almost in a page--the history of his art -might be made to fill many volumes. During this period he exhibited -nearly eighty pictures at the Royal Academy, and about five hundred -engravings were published from his drawings. If he had been famous -before, he was something else, if not something more than famous now; he -was “the fashion.” It was on this ground that Sir Walter Scott, who -would have preferred Thomson of Duddingstone to illustrate his -‘Provincial Antiquities’ (published in 1826), agreed to the employment -of Turner, who afterwards (in 1834) furnished a beautiful series of -sixty-five vignettes for Cadell’s edition of Sir Walter’s prose and -poetical works. - -In 1819 Turner paid his first visit to Italy, which had a marked -influence on his style. From this time forward his works become -remarkable for their colour. Down to this time he had painted -principally in browns, blues, and greys, employing red and yellow very -sparingly, but he had been gradually warming his scale almost from the -beginning. From the wash of sepia and Prussian blue, he had slowly -proceeded in the direction of golden and reddish brown, and had produced -both drawings and pictures with wonderful effects of mist and sunlight, -but he had scarcely gone beyond the sober colouring of Vandevelde and -Ruysdael till he began his great pictures in rivalry with Claude. In -them may be seen perhaps the dawn of the new power in his art. In the -Exhibition of 1815 were two prophecies of his new style, in which he was -to transcend all former efforts in the painting of distance and in -colour. These were _Crossing the Brook_, with its magical distance, and -_Dido building Carthage_, with its blazing sky and brilliant feathery -clouds. The first is the purest and most beautiful of all his oil -pictures of the loveliness of English scenery, the most simple in its -motive, the most tranquil in its sentiment, the perfect expression of -his enjoyment of the exquisite scenery in the neighbourhood of Plymouth. -The latter with all its faults was the finest of the kind he ever -painted, and his greatest effect in the way of colour before his visit -to Italy. In his other Carthage picture of this period, _The Decline_ -(exhibited 1817), the “brown demon,” as Mr. Ruskin calls it, was in full -force, and his pictures of _Dido and Æneas_ (1814), _The Temple of -Jupiter_ (1817), and _Apuleia and Apuleius_, are cold and heavy in -comparison. Indeed, from 1815 to 1823 his power, judged by his exhibited -pictures, seemed to be flagging. Whether his second disappointment in -love had anything to do with this we have no means of judging, but if it -disturbed for a time his power of painting for fame, it certainly had no -ill effect either as to the quantity or quality of his water-colours -for the engravers. - -His most worthy and beautiful work of these years is to be found not in -his oil pictures but in his drawings for Dr. Whitaker’s ‘History of -Richmondshire’ (published 1823) and the ‘Rivers of England’ (1824). Both -series were engraved in line in a manner worthy of the artist. One of -the former, the _Hornby Castle_, a little faded perhaps, but still -exquisite in its harmonies of blue and amber, is to be seen at South -Kensington. Three more were lately exhibited by Mr. Ruskin--_Heysham -Village_, _Egglestone Abbey_, and _Richmond_. Of this series Mr. Ruskin -says, “The foliage is rich and marvellous in composition, the effects of -mist more varied and true” (than in the _Hakewill_ drawings), “the rock -and hill drawing insuperable, the skies exquisite in complex form.” The -engravings probably owed much to Turner’s own supervision, and many of -them, such as _Egglestone Abbey_, by T. Higham, and _Wycliffe_, by John -Pye, Middiman’s _Moss Dale Fall_, and Radcliffe’s _Hornby Castle_, were -perfect translations of the originals, showing an advance in the art of -engraving as great as that which Turner had made in water-colour -drawing. Except in the heightened scale of colour there is little in -this series to show the influence of Italy, their temper is that of -_Crossing the Brook_, and the foliage and scenery that of England. Nor -do we find anything but England in the ‘Rivers.’ Nothing can be more -purely English than the exquisite drawing of _Totnes on the Dart_ (of -which we give a woodcut). The original is one of the treasures of the -National Gallery, and is marvellous for the minuteness of its finish and -the breadth and truth of its effect. The tiny group of poplars in the -middle distance are painted with such dexterity that the impression of -multitudinous leafage is perfectly conveyed, and the stillness of clear -smooth water filled with innumerable variegated reflections, the -beautiful distance with castle, church, and town, and the group of gulls -in the foreground, make a picture of placid beauty in which there is no -straining for effect, no mannerism, nothing to remind you of the artist. -It is only in the touches of red in the fore of the river (touches -unaccounted for by anything in the drawing) that you discern him at -last, and find that you are looking not at nature but “a Turner.” If you -are inclined to be angry with these touches, cover them with the hand -and find out how much of the charm is lost. - -[Illustration: TOTNES ON THE DART. - -_From “Rivers of England.”_] - -After the ‘Rivers of England,’ Turner produced work more magnificent in -colour, more transcendent in imagination, indeed _the_ work which -singles him out individually from all landscape artists, in which the -essences of the material world were revealed in a manner which was not -only unrealized but unconceived before; but for perfect balance of -power, for the mirroring of nature as it appears to ninety-nine out of -every hundred, for fidelity of colour of both sky and earth, and form -(especially of trees), for carefulness and accuracy of drawing, for work -that neither startles you by its eccentricity nor puzzles you as to its -meaning, which satisfies without cloying, and leaves no doubt as to the -truth of its illusion, there is none to compare with these drawings of -his of England after his first visit to Italy--and especially (though -perhaps it is because we know them best that we say so) the drawings for -the ‘Rivers of England.’ We are certain at least of this, that no one -has a right to form an opinion about Turner’s power generally, either to -go into ecstasies over or to deride his later work, till he has seen -some of these matchless drawings. They form the true centre of his -artistic life, the point at which his desire for the simple truth and -the imperious demands of his imagination were most nearly balanced. - -In 1821 and 1824 Turner exhibited no pictures at the Royal Academy, and -it would have been no loss to his fame if his pictures of 1820 and 1822, -_Rome, from the Vatican_, and _What you will_, had never left his -studio; but in 1823 he astonished the world with the first of those -magnificent dreams of landscape loveliness with which his name will -always be specially associated;--_The Say of Baiæ with Apollo and the -Sibyl_ (1823). The three supreme works of this class, _The Bay of Baiæ_, -_Caligula’s Palace and Bridge_ (1831), and _Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_ -(1832), are too well known to need description, and have been too much -written about to need much comment. They were the realization of his -impressions of Italy, with its sunny skies, its stone-pines, its ruins, -its luxuriance of vegetation, its heritage of romance. How little the -names given to these pictures really influence their effect, is shown by -the frequency with which one of them is confused with another. What -verses of what poet, what episode of history may have been in the -artist’s mind is of little consequence, when the thought is expressed in -the same terms of infinite sunny distance, crumbling ruin and towering -tree. The artist may have meant to embody the whole of Byron’s mind in -the _Childe Harold_, the history of Italy in _Caligula’s Palace and -Bridge_, the folly of life in _Apollo and the Sibyl_, but it does not -matter now, the things are “Turners,” neither more nor less; we doubt -very much whether Turner cared greatly for the particular stories -attached to many of his pictures. Some of them remind us of a title of -a picture in the Academy of 1808, _A Temple and Portico, with the -drowning of Aristobulus, vide Josephus, book 15, chap. 3_. In some it -was no doubt his ardent desire to proclaim his thoughts on history and -fate, but the result is much the same, for the medium in which he -attempted to convey them was that least suited for his purpose. It was, -however, his only means of expression, and there is something very sad -in the idea of a mind struggling in vain to give its most serious -thoughts didactic force. If these thoughts had been profound, and the -mind that of a prophet, the failure would have been tragical. The -language employed was the highest of its kind, but it was as inadequate -for its purpose as music. It has, however, like fine music, the power of -starting vibrations of sentiment full of suggestion, giving birth to -endless dreams of beauty and pleasure, of sadness and foreboding, -according to the personality and humour of those who are sensitive to -its charm. - -In 1825 were published his first illustrations to a modern poet--Byron; -he contributed some more to the editions of 1833 and 1834, most of them -being views of places which he had never seen, and therefore -compositions from the sketches of others, like his drawings for -Hakewill’s “Picturesque Tour of Italy” and Finden’s “Illustrations of -the Bible.” No doubt the experience of his youth in improving the -sketches of amateurs and the liberty which such work gave to his -imagination, made it easy and congenial to him. These drawings show the -variety of his artistic power and the perfection of his technical skill. -The _Hakewill_ series is marvellous for minute accuracy (being taken -from camera sketches) and for beautiful tree drawing, and the Bible -series for imagination. They are, however, of less interest in a -biography than those which were based upon his own impressions of the -scenes depicted, such as his illustrations to Rogers and Scott. - -[Illustration] - -In 1825 he exhibited only one picture, _Harbour of Dieppe_, and in 1826, -the year when the publication of the “Southern Coast” terminated, three, -of one of which there is told a story of unselfish generosity, which -deserves special record. The picture was called _Cologne--the arrival of -a Packet-boat--Evening_. Of this Mr. Hamerton writes: “There were such -unity and serenity in the work, and such a glow of light and colour, -that it seemed like a window opened upon the land of the ideal, where -the harmonies of things are more perfect than they have ever been in the -common world.” The picture was hung between two of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s -portraits, and Turner covered its glowing glory with a wash of -lampblack, so as not to spoil their effect. “Poor Lawrence was so -unhappy,” he said. “It will all wash off after the Exhibition.” As Mr. -Hamerton truly observes, “It is not as if Turner had been indifferent to -fame.” - -There are many stories of apparently contrary action on Turner’s part, -namely, of heightening the colour of his pictures to “kill” those of his -neighbours at the Academy, but they do not spoil this story. During -those merry “varnishing days” which Turner enjoyed so much, attempts to -outcolour one another were ordinary jokes--give-and-take sallies of -skill, made in good humour. No one entered into such contests with more -zest than Turner, and he was not always the victor. This story seems to -us to prove that when Turner saw that any one was really hurt, his -tenderness was greater than his spirit of emulation and jest. - -Leslie tells the best of the “counter stories.” - - “In 1832, when Constable exhibited his _Opening of Waterloo - Bridge_,[39] it was placed in the School of Painting--one of the - small rooms at Somerset House. A sea piece,[40] by Turner, was next - to it--a grey picture, beautiful and true, but with no positive - colour in any part of it--Constable’s _Waterloo_ seemed as if - painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times - into the room while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the - decorations and flags of the City barges. Turner stood behind him, - looking from the _Waterloo_ to his own picture, and at last brought - his palette from the great room, where he was touching another - picture, and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than - a shilling, on his grey sea, went away without saying a word. The - intensity of the red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of the - picture, caused even the vermilion and lake of Constable to look - weak. I came into the room just as Turner left it. ‘He has been - here,’ said Constable, ‘and fired a gun.’” - - On the opposite wall was a picture, by Jones, of Shadrach, Meshach, - and Abednego in the furnace.[41] “A coal,” said Cooper, “has - bounced across the room from Jones’s picture, and set fire to - Turner’s sea.” The great man did not come into the room for a day - and a half; and then in the last moments that were allowed for - painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his picture, and - shaped it into a buoy.”[42] - -This daub of red lead was rather defensive than offensive, and there is -no story of Turner which shows any malice in his nature. To his brother -artists he was always friendly and just; he never spoke in their -disparagement, and often helped young artists with a kind word or a -practical suggestion. Even Constable--between whom and Turner not much -love was lost, according to Thornbury--he helped on one occasion by -striking in a ripple in the foreground of his picture--the “something” -just wanted to make the composition satisfactory. We think, then, that -we may enjoy the beautiful story of self-sacrifice for Lawrence’s sake, -without any disagreeable reflection that it is spoilt by others showing -a contrary spirit towards his brother artists. - -The year 1826 was his last at Sandycombe. As he had taken it for the -sake of his father, so he gave it up, for “Dad” was always working in -the garden and catching cold. He took this step much to his own sorrow, -we believe, and much to our and his loss. Without the pleasant and -wholesome neighbourhood of the Trimmers, with no home but the gloomy, -dirty, disreputable Queen Anne Street, he became more solitary, more -self-absorbed, or absorbed in his art (much the same thing with him), -and lived only to follow unrestrained wherever his wayward genius led -him, and to amass money for which he could find no use. How he still -loved to grasp it, however, and how unscrupulous he was in doing so, is -painfully shown in his dispute with Cooke about this time (1827), which -prevented a proposed continuation of the “Southern Coast.” Mr. Cooke’s -letter relating to it, though long, is too important to omit, and, -though it may be said to be _ex parte_, carries sad conviction of its -truth:-- - - “_January 1, 1827._ - - “DEAR SIR, - - “I cannot help regretting that you persist in demanding twenty-five - sets of India proofs before the letters of the continuation of the - work of the ‘Coast,’ besides being paid for the drawings. It is - like a film before your eyes, to prevent your obtaining upwards of - two thousand pounds in a commission for drawings for that work. - - “Upon mature reflection you must see I have done all in my power to - satisfy you of the total impossibility of acquiescing in such a - demand; it would be unjust both to my subscribers and to myself. - - “The ‘Coast’ being my own original plan, which cost me some anxiety - before I could bring it to maturity, and an immense expense before - I applied to you, when I gave a commission for drawings to upwards - of £400, _at my own entire risk_, in which the shareholders were - not willing to take any part, I did all I could to persuade you to - have one share, and which I did from a firm conviction that it - would afford some remuneration for your exertions on the drawings, - in addition to the amount of the contract. The share was, as it - were, forced upon you by myself, with the best feelings in the - world; and was, as you well know, repeatedly refused, under the - idea that there was a possibility of losing money by it. You cannot - deny the result: a constant dividend of profit has been made to you - at various times, and will be so for some time to come. - - “On Saturday last, to my utter astonishment, you declared in my - print-rooms, before three persons, who distinctly heard it, as - follows: ‘I will have my terms, or I will oppose the work by doing - another “Coast!”’ These were the words you used, and every one must - allow them to be a _threat_. - - “And this morning (Monday), you show me a note of my own - handwriting, with these words (or words to this immediate effect): - ‘The drawings for the future “Coast” shall be paid twelve guineas - and a half each.’ - - “Now, in the name of common honesty, how can you apply the above - note to any drawings for the first division of the work called the - ‘Southern Coast,’ and tell me I owe you two guineas on each of - those drawings? Did you not agree to make the whole of the ‘South - Coast’ drawings at £7 10_s._ each? and did I not continue to pay - you that sum for the first four numbers? When a meeting of the - partners took place, to take into consideration the great exertions - that myself and my brother had made on the plates, to testify their - entire satisfaction, and considering the difficulties I had placed - myself in by such an agreement as I had made (dictated by my - enthusiasm for the welfare of a work which had been planned and - executed with so much zeal, and of my being paid the small sum only - of twenty-five guineas for each plate, including the loan of the - drawings, for which I received no return or consideration whatever - on the part of the shareholders), they unanimously (excepting on - your part) and very liberally increased the price of each plate to - £40; and I agreed, on my part, to pay you ten guineas for each - drawing after the fourth number. And have I not kept this - agreement? Yes; you have received from me, and from Messrs. Arch on - my account, the whole sum so agreed upon, and for which you have - given me and them receipts. The work has now been finished upwards - of six months, when you show me a note of my own handwriting, and - which was written to you in reply to a part of your letter, where - you say, ‘Do you imagine I shall go to John O’Groat’s House for the - same sum I receive for the Southern part?’ Is this _fair_ conduct - between man and man--to apply the note (so explicit in itself) to - the former work, and to endeavour to make me believe I still owe - you two guineas and a-half on each drawing? Why, let me ask you, - should I promise you such a sum? What possible motive could I have - in heaping gold into your pockets, when you have always taken such - especial care of your interests, even in the case of _Neptune’s - Trident_, which I can declare you _presented_ to me; and, in the - spirit of _this_ understanding, I presented it again to Mrs. Cooke. - You may recollect afterwards charging me two guineas for the loan - of it, and requesting me at the same time to return it to you, - which has been done. - - “The ungracious remarks I experienced this morning at your house, - where I pointed out to you the meaning of my former note--that it - referred to the future part of the work, and not to the ‘Southern - Coast’--were such as to convince me that you maintain a mistaken - and most unaccountable idea of profit and advantage in the new work - of the ‘Coast,’ and that no estimate or calculation will convince - you to the contrary. - - “Ask yourself if Hakewill’s ‘Italy,’ ‘Scottish Scenery,’ or - ‘Yorkshire’ works have either of them succeeded in the return of - the capital laid out on them. - - “These works have had in them as much of your individual talent as - the ‘Southern Coast,’ being modelled on the principle of it; and - although they have answered your purpose, by the commissions for - drawings, yet there is considerable doubt remaining whether the - shareholders and proprietors will ever be reinstated in the money - laid out on them. So much for the profit of works. I assure you I - must turn over an entirely new leaf to make them ever return their - expenses. - - “To conclude, I regret exceedingly the time I have bestowed in - endeavouring to convince you in a calm and patient manner of a - number of calculations made for _your_ satisfaction; and I have met - in return such hostile treatment that I am positively disgusted at - the mere thought of the trouble I have given myself on such a - useless occasion. - - “I remain, - - “Your obedient servant, - - “W. B. COOKE.” - -When we realize that this was the same man that closed his connection -with Mr. Lewis, because he would not both etch and aquatint the plates -of the Liber for the same terms as those agreed upon for aquatinting -alone, we are able to understand why he was characterized as a “great -Jew,” in a letter of introduction, which he brought from a publisher in -London to one in Yorkshire, when he went to that county to illustrate -Dr. Whitaker’s _History of Richmondshire_. Mrs. Whitaker, who was his -hostess at the time, hearing of this took the phrase literally, and, -says Mr. Hamerton, “treated him as an Israelite indeed, possibly with -reference to church attendance and the consumption of ham.” - -In 1827 was published the first part of his largest series of prints, -the “England and Wales,” which were engraved with matchless skill by -that trained band of engravers who brought, with the artist’s -assistance, the art of engraving landscapes in line to a point never -before attained. The history of Turner and his engravers has yet to be -fully written; the number of them from first to last is extraordinary, -probably nearly one hundred. Of these, twenty, and nearly all the best, -were employed on this work--Goodall, Wallis, Willmore, W. Miller, -Brandard, Radcliffe, Jeavons, W. R. Smith, and others. Never before was -so great an artist surrounded by such a skilled body of interpreters in -black and white. The drawings were unequal in merit, but nearly all of -them wonderful for power of colour and daring effect, with ever -lessening regard for local accuracy. The artist threw aside all -traditions and conventions, and proclaimed himself as “Turner,” the -great composer of chromatic harmonies in forms of sea and sky, hills and -plains, sunshine and storm, towns and shipping, castles and cathedrals. -He could not do this without sacrificing much of truth, and much of -what was essential truth in a work whose aim was professedly -topographical. Imaginative art of all kinds has a code analogous to, but -not identical with, the moral code: beauty takes the seat of virtue and -harmony of truth, and when the work is purely imaginative, there is no -conflict between fancy and fact which can make the strictest shake his -head. But when known facts are dealt with by the imagination, the -conflict arises immediately, and it would scarcely be possible to find a -case in which it was more obvious than in Turner’s “England and Wales,” -in which he made the familiar scenes of his own country conform to the -authoritative conception of his pictorial fancy. Whether he was right or -wrong in raising the cliffs of England to Alpine dignity, in saturating -her verdant fields with yellow sun, in exaggerating this, in ignoring -that, has been argued often, and will be argued over and over again; but -all art is a compromise, and the precise justice of the compromise will -ever be a matter of opinion. Art _v._ Nature is a cause which will last -longer than any Chancery suit. Even artists cannot agree as to the -amount of licence which it is proper to take, but they are all conscious -that they at least keep on the right side; one thing only, all, or -nearly all, are agreed upon, and that is that licence must be taken, or -art becomes handicraft. About Turner almost the only thing which can be -said with certainty is that he stretched his liberty to the extreme -limits. - -Yet to the pictorial code of morals he was the most faithful of artists, -he almost always reached beauty, his harmonies were almost always -perfect, and he strove after his own peculiar generalization of fact, -and his own peculiar extract of truth with the greatest ardour. This -extract was his impression of a place, made up generally (at least in -his foreign scenes) of two or three sketches taken from different points -of view, and he was very careful to study not only the principal -features of the country, but the costume and employment of the -inhabitants, and the description of local vehicle, on wheels or keel. -From these studies would arise the conception of one scene, combining -all that his mind retained as essential--a growth which, however false -it might appear when compared with the actual facts of the place from -one point of view, contained nothing but what had a germ of truth, and -of local truth. That this applies to all his drawings we do not say, but -we are confident that it does to most. Many of his drawings for the -“England and Wales” were probably taken from sketches that had lain in -his portfolios for years, and were dressed up by him when wanted, with -such accessories of storm and rainbow as occurred to his fancy, or to -his memory and feelings as connected with the spot. There is, we think, -no doubt that Turner strove to be conscientious; but his conscience was -a “pictorial” conscience, and no man can judge him. We can only take his -works as they are, and be thankful that all the strange confusions of -his mind, and mingled accidents of his life, have produced so unique and -beautiful a result as the “England and Wales.” It is no use now -regretting that his vast powers in their prime were used wastefully in -what will appear to many as the falsification of English landscape; it -is far better to rejoice that the genius and knowledge of the man were -so transcendent that, in spite of all the worst that can be said, each -separate drawing is precious in itself as a record of natural phenomena, -and a masterly arrangement of indefinite forms and beautiful colour. - -Mr. Ruskin affirms that, “howsoever it came to pass, a strange, and in -many respects grievous metamorphosis takes place upon him about the year -1825. Thenceforth he shows clearly the sense of a terrific wrongness, -and sadness, mingled in the beautiful order of the earth; his work -becomes partly satirical, partly reckless, partly--and in its greatest -and noblest features--tragic.” We are not prepared to assent to this -entirely, especially as Mr. Ruskin states immediately afterwards that -one at least of the manifestations of “this new phase of temper” can be -traced unmistakably in the “Liber,” which was concluded six years -before; but there is no doubt that his work for some of these years was -distinguished by recklessness and caprice in an unusual degree, and we -have little doubt that his removal from Sandycombe, and the consequent -loss of healthy companionship, had something to do with it. During three -years he exhibited no pictures of special interest, except the _Cologne_ -of 1826, and the _Ulysses deriding Polyphemus_ of 1829. This latter -picture we take to be a sure sign of recovery, as it shows perhaps the -most complete balance of power of any of his large works, being not less -wonderful for happy choice of subject than for grandeur of conception -and splendour of colour--the first picture in which, since the _Apollo -and Python_ of 1811, the union between the literary subject and the -landscape, or (if we must use that horrid word) seascape, was perfect. -This picture was no _Temple and Portico, with the drowning of -Aristobulus_. The grand indefinite figure of the agonized giant, the -crowded ship of Ulysses, the water-nymphs and the dying sun, are all -parts of one conception, and show what Turner could do when his -imagination was thoroughly inflamed. Whence the inspiration was derived -it is difficult to say. Like most of his inspirations, it probably had -more than one source. Homer’s Odyssey is the source given in the -catalogue; but it is probable, as we before have hinted, that the figure -of Polyphemus was suggested by the splendid description in the -fourteenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Many years had lapsed since he -had shown the full force of his imagination under the influence of -classical story, and he was never to do so again. Subjects of the kind -suited to his peculiar genius were difficult to find, and he had no such -habitual intercourse with his intellectual peers as enabled him to -gather suggestions for his works. He was thrown entirely on his own -uneducated resources, and the result was, with his imperfect knowledge -of his own strength and the limits of his art, partial failure of most, -and total failure of many of his most strenuous efforts. This is one of -the saddest facts of his art-life, the frequent waste, or partial waste, -of unique power. - -His increasing isolation of mind was mitigated no doubt by constant -visits to Petworth, Farnley, and other houses of his friends and -patrons, by the chaff of “varnishing days,” by social meetings of the -Academy Club, and by frequent travel; but it increased notwithstanding. -Not Mr. Trimmer, nor Lord Egremont, nor even his friends and fellow -Academicians, Chantrey and Jones, could break through his barrier of -reserve and see the man Turner face to face. From the beginning he had -his secrets, and he kept them to the end. He could be merry and social -in a gathering where the talk never became confidential, and with -children (whom he could not distrust); but his living-rooms in Queen -Anne Street, his painting-room wherever he was, and his heart, were, -with scarcely an exception, opened to none. At Petworth, Lord Egremont -indeed was allowed to enter his studio; but he had to give a peculiar -knock agreed upon between them before he would open the door. - -In 1828 he was at Rome again, from which place he wrote the following -letters[43] to Chantrey and Jones of unusual length and interest. - - “TO GEORGE JONES, R.A. - - “ROME, - - “_Oct. 13, 1828._ - - “DEAR JONES, - - “Two months nearly in getting to this terra pictura, _and at work_; - but the length of time is my own fault. I must see the South of - France, which almost knocked me up, the heat was so intense, - particularly at Nismes and Avignon; and until I got a plunge into - the sea at Marseilles, I felt so weak that nothing but the change - of scene kept me onwards to my distant point. Genoa, and all the - sea-coast from Nice to Spezzia, is remarkably rugged and fine; so - is Massa. Tell that fat fellow Chantrey that I did think of him, - _then_ (but not the first or the last time) of the thousands he had - made out of those marble craigs which only afforded me a sour - bottle of wine and a sketch; but he deserves everything which is - good, though he did give me a fit of the spleen at Carrara. - - “Sorry to hear your friend, Sir Henry Bunbury, has lost his lady. - How did you know this? You will answer, of Captain Napier, at - _Siena_. The letter announcing the sad event arrived the next day - after I got there. They were on the wing--Mrs. W. Light to Leghorn, - to meet Colonel Light, and Captain and Mrs. Napier for Naples; so, - all things considered, I determined to quit instanter, instead of - adding to the trouble. - - “Hope that you have been better than usual, and that the pictures - go on well. If you should be passing Queen Anne Street, just say I - am well, and in Rome, for I fear young Hakewell has written to his - father of my being unwell: and may I trouble you to drop a line - into the two-penny post to Mr. C. Heath, 6, Seymour Place, New - Pancras Church, or send my people to tell him that, if he has - anything to send me, to put it up in a letter (it is the most sure - way of its reaching me), directed for me, No. 12, Piazza - Mignanelli, Rome, and to which place I hope you will send me a - line? Excuse my troubling you with my requests of business. - Remember me to all friends. So God bless you. Adieu. - - “J. M. TURNER.” - - “TO FRANCIS CHANTREY, R.A. - - “NO. 12, PIAZZA MIGNANELLI, ROME, - - “_Nov. 6, 1828_. - - “MY DEAR CHANTREY, - - “I intended long before this (but you will say, ‘Fudge!’) to have - written; but even now very little information have I to give you in - matters of Art, for I have confined myself to the painting - department at Corso; and having finished _one_, am about the - second, and getting on with Lord E.’s, which I began the very first - touch at Rome; but as the folk here talked that I would show them - _not_, I finished a small three feet four to stop their gabbling. - So now to business. Sculpture, of course, first; for it carries - away all the patronage, so it is said, in Rome; but all seem to - share in the good-will of the patrons of the day. Gott’s studio is - full. Wyatt and Rennie, Ewing, Buxton, all employed. Gibson has two - groups in hand, _Venus and Cupid_; and _The Rape of Hylas_, three - figures, very forward, though I doubt much if it will be in time - (taking the long voyage into the scale) for the Exhibition, though - it is for England. Its style is something like _The Psyche_, being - two standing figures of nymphs leaning, enamoured, over the - youthful Hylas, with his pitcher. The Venus is a sitting figure, - with the Cupid in attendance; and if it had wings like a dove, to - flee away and be at rest, the rest would not be the worse for the - change. Thorwaldsten is closely engaged on the late Pope’s (Pius - VII.) monument. Portraits of the superior animal, man, is to be - found in all. In some, the inferior--viz. greyhounds and poodles, - cats and monkeys, &c., &c. - - “Pray give my remembrances to Jones and Stokes, and tell _him_ I - have not seen a bit of coal stratum for months. My love to Mrs. - Chantrey, and take the same and good wishes of - - “Yours most truly, - - “J. M. TURNER.” - -This method of communicating with “his people” is peculiar, and shows -that he was not in the habit of corresponding with them when away on his -numerous visits and tours. Perhaps they could not read, perhaps he -wished to save postage--whatever hypothesis we may adopt, the fact is -singular. The pictures of _The Banks of the Loire_; _The Loretto -Necklace_; _Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy (par la -Diligence) in a snowdrift upon Mount Tarra, 22nd of January, 1829_--all -exhibited in 1829--were the results of this tour, besides some of the -pictures of 1830, one of which, _View of Orvieto_, is, according to Mr. -Hamerton, the identical “small three feet four” which he painted to -“stop the gabbling” of the folk at Rome. - -In this year (1830, he being then fifty-five years old) died Sir Thomas -Lawrence, whose loss he probably felt much, and of whose funeral he -painted a picture (from memory); but the year had a greater sorrow for -him than this--the loss of his “poor old Dad.” The removal from -Twickenham did not avail to preserve the old man’s life for long. We -have the testimony of the Trimmers, with whom after the event he stayed -for a few days for change of scene, that “he was fearfully out of -spirits, and felt his loss, he said, like that of an only child,” and -that he “never appeared the same man after his father’s death.” To men -like Turner, who are not accustomed to express their feelings much, or -even to realize them, such blows come with all their natural violence -unchecked, unforeseen, unprovided against. It had probably never -occurred to him how much his father was to him, how blank a space his -loss would make in his narrow garden of human affection. From this time -he was to know many losses of old friends, each of which fell heavily -upon him, leaving him more lonely than ever. His friends were few, and -they dropped one by one, nor is there any evidence to show that their -loss was ever lightened by any hope of meeting them again; the lights of -his life went out one by one, and left him alone and in the dark. In -1833 Dr. Monro died, in 1836 Mr. Wells, in 1837 Lord Egremont, in 1841 -Chantrey, and he was to feel the loss of Mr. Fawkes and Wilkie, and many -more before his own time came. - -In February, 1830, he wrote to Jones:-- - - “DEAR JONES--I delayed answering yours until the chance of this - finding you in Rome, to give you some account of the dismal - prospect of Academic affairs, and of the last sad ceremonies paid - yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourn from whence no - traveller returns. Alas! only two short months Sir Thomas followed - the coffin of Dawe to the same place. We then were his - pall-bearers. Who will do the like for me, or when, God only knows - how soon! However, it is something to feel that gifted talent can - be acknowledged by the many who yesterday waded up to their knees - in snow and muck to see the funeral pomp swelled up by carriages of - the great, _without the persons themselves_.” - -No doubt these deaths set him thinking of his own, and the disposition -of his wealth so useless to him, and he probably brooded long over the -will that he signed on the 10th of June in the next year (1831). Many -excuses have been made for his niggardly habits on the score of the -nobleness of mind shown in this document; he screwed and denied himself -(we are told) when living, to make old artists comfortable after his -death. We are afraid that there is no ground for this charitable view, -nor any evidence that he ever denied himself anything that he preferred -to hard cash, or that he ever thought of giving it, or any farthing of -it, away to anybody, till he had more than he could spend, and was -brought by the deaths of his friends to realize that he could not take -it with him when he died. Then indeed he disposed of it; but where was -the bulk to go? Not to his nearest of kin, whom he had neglected all his -life--fifty pounds was enough for uncles, and twenty-five for their -eldest sons; not to his mistress or mistresses, who had been devoted to -him all his life, or to his children--annuities of ten and fifty pounds -were enough for them; but for the perpetuation of his name and fame, as -the founder of “Turner’s Gift” and the eclipser of Claude.[44] - -We do not know when Turner became acquainted with Samuel Rogers; but -probably some years before this, as he is named as one of the executors -in the will, and the famous illustrated edition of “Italy” was published -in 1830, followed by the Poems in 1834. These contain the most exquisite -of all the engravings from Turner’s vignettes. Exquisite also are most -of the drawings, but some of them are spoilt by the capriciousness of -their colour, which seems in many cases to have been employed as an -indication to the engraver rather than for the purpose of imitating the -hues of nature. The most beautiful perhaps of all, _Tornaro’s misty -brow_, seems to us far too blue, and the yellow of the sky in others is -too strong to be probable or even in harmony with the rest of the -drawing. It would, however, be difficult to find in the whole range of -his works two really greater (though so small in size) than the _Alps at -Daybreak_, and _Datur hora quieti_, of which we give woodcuts, losing of -course much of the light refinement of the steel plates, but wonderfully -true in general effect. The former is as perfect an illustration as -possible of the sentiment of Rogers’s pretty verses, but it far -transcends them in beauty and imagination; the latter is not in -illustration of any of the poet’s verses, but is a more beautiful poem -than ever Rogers wrote. - -The illustration from “Jacqueline” which we give, though not so -transcendent in imagination, is a scene of extraordinary beauty of rock -and torrent, and castle-crowned steep, such as no hand but Turner’s -could have drawn, while the _Vision_ from “The Voyage of Columbus” is -equally characteristic, showing how he could make an impressive picture -out of the vaguest notions by his extraordinary mastery of light and -shade. - -In 1833 Turner exhibited his first pictures of Venice, the last home of -his imagination. The date of his first visit to the “floating city” is -uncertain. There are two series of Venetian sketches in the National -Gallery, which mark two distinct impressions. In the first the colour is -comparatively sober; the sky is noted as, before all things, a -marvellously blue sky; the interest of the painter is in the watery -streets, the picturesqueness of corners here and there, in narrow canals -and the different-coloured marbles of the buildings; he takes the city -in bits from the inside in broad daylight, and they are studies as -realistic as he could make them at the time. In the other series the -interest of the painter is COLOUR, not of the buildings, but of the -sunsets and sunrises, the clouds of crimson and yellow, the water of -green, in which the sapphire and the emerald and the beryl seem to blend -their hues. The substantial marble, the solid blue sky, the strong light -and sharp shadows have melted into visions of ethereal palaces and -gemlike colour, like those in the Apocalypse. As he began painting the -sea from Vandevelde and nature, so he began painting Venice from -Canaletti and nature; but the transition from the studious beginning -to the imaginative end was very swift in the latter case. Venice soon -became to him the paradise of colour, and he rose to heights of -chromatic daring which exceeded anything which even he had scaled -before. - -[Illustration: LIGHT-TOWERS OF THE HÈVE. - -_From “Rivers of France.”_] - -The time at which we have now arrived was that of his earlier sketches, -and he could turn away from Venice and draw with unabated zest the -quieter but still lovely scenery of the Seine and the Loire. To 1833-4 -and 1835 belong his beautiful series called _The Rivers of France_. -Opinions are divided, as usual, as to the truthfulness of his art to the -spirit of French scenery, and a comparison between _The Light-towers of -the Hève_ in our woodcut, and the drawing which he made on the spot (now -in the National Gallery) will show how greatly his imagination altered -the literal facts of a scene. One who has patiently followed his -footsteps in many parts of England and on the Continent testifies to the -puzzling effects of Turner’s imaginative records. He seeks in vain on -the face of the earth the original of Turner’s later drawings, but he -can never see these drawings without finding all that he has seen. -Indeed, to understand them rightly, they must be considered as poems in -colour suggested by pictorial recollections of certain scenes on the -rivers of France. Most of them are arrangements of blue, red, and -yellow, some of yellow and grey, all exquisitely beautiful in -arrangement of line and atmospheric effect. Nor has he in any other -drawings introduced figures and animals with more skill and beauty of -suggestion. The whole series palpitates with living light, although the -pigments employed are opaque, and each view charms the sense of -colour-harmony, although the colours are crude and disagreeable. It has -always appeared wonderful to us that, with his power over water-colours -and delight in clear tones, he should have been content to work with -such chalky material and impure tints; it is as though he preferred to -combat difficulties; but they were drawn to be engraved, and as long as -he got his harmonies and his light and shade true we suppose he was -content. The great skill with which he could utilize the grey paper on -which these drawings were made, leaving it uncovered in the sky and -other places where it would serve his purpose, conduced to swiftness of -work, and may have been one of his motives. The drawing of Jumièges, of -which we give a woodcut, is one of the loveliest of the series, with its -mouldering ruin standing out for a moment like a skeleton against the -steely cloud, before the fierce storm covers it with gloom. - -In these yearly visits to France, Turner was accompanied by Mr. Leitch -Ritchie, who supplied the work with some description of the places. They -travelled, however, very little together; their tastes in everything but -art being exceedingly dissimilar. “I was curious,” says his companion, -“in observing what he made of the objects he selected for his sketches, -and was frequently surprised to find what a forcible idea he conveyed of -a place with scarcely a correct detail. His exaggerations, when it -suited his purpose to exaggerate, were wonderful--lifting up, for -instance, by two or three stories, the steeple, or rather, stunted cone, -of a village church--and when I returned to London I never failed to -roast him on this habit. He took my remarks in good part, sometimes, -indeed, in great glee, never attempting to defend himself otherwise than -by rolling back the war into the enemy’s camp. In my account of the -famous Gilles de Retz, I had attempted to identify that prototype of -‘Blue Beard’ with the hero of the nursery story, by absurdly insisting -that his beard was so intensely black that it seemed to have a shade of -blue. This tickled the great painter hugely, and his only reply to my -bantering was--his little sharp eyes glistening the while--‘Blue Beard! -Blue Beard! Black Beard!’” - -[Illustration: JUMIÈGES. - -_From “Rivers of France.”_] - -We do not know when Turner became first acquainted with Mr. Munro of -Novar, one of the greatest admirers of the artist and collectors of his -later works, but it was in 1836 that we first hear of them as travelling -together, when, it is said, “a serious depression of spirits having -fallen on Mr. Munro,” Turner proposed to divert his mind into fresh -channels by travel. They went to Switzerland and Italy, and Mr. Munro -found that Turner enjoyed himself in his way--a “sort of honest Diogenes -way”--and that it was easy to get on very pleasantly with him “if you -bore with his way,” a description which, meant to be kind, does not say -much for his sociability at this period. - -Indeed, he had been all his life, and especially, we expect, since he -left Twickenham, developing as an artist and shrivelling as a man, and -after this year (1836), though he still developed in power of colour and -painted some of his finest and most distinctive works, the signs of -change, if not of decline, were also visible. He was also getting out of -the favour of the public, who could not see any beauty in such works as -the _Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons_, of 1835, or _Juliet -and her Nurse_, of 1836. - -[Illustration: FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE. - -_Exhibited in 1839. National Gallery._] - -His fame began to oscillate, tottering with one picture and set upright -by another. As long, however, as he could paint such pictures as -_Mercury and Argus_, 1836, and the _Fighting Téméraire_, of 1839, it was -in a measure safe. He was still a great genius to whom eccentricities -were natural, but the _Fighting Téméraire_ was the last picture of his -at which no stone was thrown. This is in many ways the finest of all -his pictures. Light and brilliant yet solemn in colour; penetrated with -a sentiment which finds an echo in every heart; appealing to national -feeling and to that larger sympathy with the fate of all created things; -symbolic, by its contrast between the old three-decker and the little -steam-tug, of the “old order,” which “changeth, yielding place to -new”--the picture was and always will be as popular as it deserves. It -is characteristic of Turner that the idea of the picture did not -originate with him, but with Stanfield. Would that Turner had always had -some friend at his elbow to hold the torch to his imagination. - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. - -LIGHT AND DARKNESS. - -1840 TO 1851. - - -Turner was now sixty-five years old, and his decline as an artist was to -be expected from failing health and stress of years. For little less -than half a century he had worked harder and produced more than any -other artist of whom we have any record. Nor would he rest now, although -his failing powers of body and mind required stimulants to support their -energy. - -Mr. Wilkie Collins informed Mr. Thornbury that, when a boy-- - - “He used to attend his father on varnishing days, and remembers - seeing Turner (not the more perfect in his balance for the brown - sherry at the Academy lunch) seated on the top of a flight of - steps, astride a box. There he sat, a shabby Bacchus, nodding like - a Mandarin at his picture, which he, with a pendulum motion, now - touched with his brush and now receded from. Yet, in spite of - sherry, precarious seat, and old age, he went on shaping in some - wonderful dream of colour; every touch meaning something, every - pin’s head of colour being a note in the chromatic scale.” - -We have spoken of Turner as declining as an artist, but we are not sure -that he did so till about 1845, when, Mr. Ruskin says, “his health, and -with it in great degree his mind, failed suddenly.” Down to this time -his decay seems to us to have been more physical than artistic, but with -the physical weakness there had been, we think, for some time a -deterioration of the non-artistic part of his mind. His decay, though so -unlike the decay of others, appears to us to have nothing inexplicable -about it if we consider him as a man who had never had any sympathy with -the current opinions and culture of his fellows, and who, by some -strange defect in his organization, was unable to think without the use -of his eyes. That his eyesight failed there is no doubt, but that it did -not fail in the one most essential point for a painter, viz., perception -of colour, is, we think, proved by his latest sketches in water-colour, -which show none of that apparently morbid love of yellow which appears -in his later oil pictures, and testify to that perfect perception of the -relations and harmonies of different hues which can only belong to a -healthy sight. Instead of declining, this faculty of colour seems to -have increased in perfection almost to the last. If we compare the -sketch in the National Gallery of a scene on the Lake of Zug, done -between 1840 and 1845, with one of the ‘Rivers of England’ _Dartmouth_, -two drawings wonderfully alike in composition and in general scheme of -colour, no difference in this faculty can be observed; the later drawing -is only a few notes higher in the scale. As Mr. Ruskin says, “The work -of the first five years of this decade is in many respects supremely and -with _reviving_ power, beautiful.” - -But still the decline of his non-artistic mind, never very powerful, had -been going on for years, or at least such reasoning power as he -possessed had exercised less and less control over the imperious will of -his genius, which impelled him to pursue his efforts to paint the -unpaintable. He had begun by imitation, he had gone on by rivalry, he -had achieved a style of his own by which he had upset all preconceived -notions of landscape painting, and had triumphed in establishing the -superiority of pictures painted in a light key, but he was not content. -His progress had always been towards light even from the earliest days, -when he worked in monochrome. Sunlight was his discovery, he had found -its presence in shadow, he had studied its complicated reflections, -before he commenced to work in colour. From monochrome he had adopted -the low scale of the old masters, but into it he carried his light; the -brown clouds, and shadows, and mists, had the sun behind them as it were -in veiled splendour. Then it came out and flooded his drawings and his -canvasses with a glory unseen before in art. But he must go on--refine -upon this--having eclipsed all others, he must now eclipse himself. His -gold must turn to yellow, and yellow almost into white, before his -genius could be satisfied with its efforts to express pure sunlight. - -So he went on to his goal, becoming less “understanded of the people” -each year, painting pictures more near to the truth of nature in sun and -clouds, and less true in everything else. But it was about the -everything else that the people most cared. They did not care for -sunlight which blinded them, and to which the truth of figure, and sea, -and grass, and stone, had to be sacrificed. They liked pictures which -could give them calm enjoyment, records of what they had seen or could -imagine, not of what Turner only had seen, and what seemed to them -extravagant falsity. - -Such, roughly put, was the condition of things when a champion arose to -scatter Turner’s enemies to the four winds. He, Mr. Ruskin (1836), an -undergraduate at Oxford, of the age of seventeen, was one not of “the -people,” but of those comparatively few lovers of art and colour who saw -and appreciated the artistic motives of Turner, and who reverenced, as a -revelation of hitherto unrecorded, if not undiscovered, beauties of -nature, those pictures at which the world scoffed. We cannot here enter -further into the discussion involved, but the attitude of the two -parties, the one represented by “Blackwood’s Magazine,” and the other by -“Modern Painters,” can be judged by the following extracts. The noble -enthusiasm aroused by the treatment of _Juliet and her Nurse_ by the -critics, had suggested a letter in 1836, which gradually increased into -a volume, not published till 1843, and in the meantime the undergraduate -had gained the Newdegate, and earned the right to call himself “A -Graduate of Oxford” on his title-page. - -This is what Maga said in August, 1835, of Turner’s picture of _Venice, -from the porch of Madonna della Salute_, a picture in his earlier -Venetian style:-- - - “Venice, well I have seen Venice. Venice the magnificent, glorious, - queenly, even in her decay--with her rich coloured buildings, - speaking of days gone by, reflected in the _green_ water. What is - Venice in this picture? A flimsy, whitewashed meagre assemblage of - architecture, starting off ghostlike into unnatural perspective, as - if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the - only attempt at richness in the picture). Not Venice, but the boat - is the attractive object, and what is to make this rich? Nothing - but some green and red, and yellow tinsel, which is so flimsy that - it is now cracking..... The greater part of the picture is white, - disagreeable white, without light or transparency, and the boats, - with their red worsted masts, are as gewgaw as a child’s toy, which - he may have cracked to see what it was made of. As to Venice, - nothing can be more unlike its character.” - -[Illustration: VENICE. THE DOGANA. - -_In the National Gallery._] - -This is what the Graduate of Oxford says, after stating his -dissatisfaction with the Venices of Canaletti, Prout, and Stanfield:-- - - “But let us take with Turner, the last and greatest step of - all--thank Heaven we are in sunshine again--and what sunshine! Not - the lurid, gloomy, plaguelike oppression of Canaletti, but white - flushing fulness of dazzling light, which the waves drink and the - clouds breathe, bounding and burning in intensity of joy. That - sky--it is a very visible infinity--liquid, measureless, - unfathomable, panting and melting through the chasms in the long - fields of snow-white flaked, slow-moving vapour, that guide the eye - along the multitudinous waves down to the islanded rest of the - Euganean hills. Do we dream, or does the white forked sail drift - nearer, and nearer yet, diminishing the blue sea between us with - the fulness of its wings? It pauses now; but the quivering of its - bright reflection troubles the shadows of the sea, those azure - fathomless depths of crystal mystery, on which the swiftness of the - poised gondola floats double, its black beak lifted like the crest - of a dark ocean bird, its scarlet draperies flashed back from the - kindling surface, and its bent oar breaking the radiant water into - a dust of gold. Dreamlike and dim, but glorious, the unnumbered - palaces lift their shafts out of the hollow sea--pale ranks of - motionless flame--their mighty towers sent up to heaven like - tongues of more eager fire--their grey domes looming vast and dark, - like eclipsed worlds--their sculptured arabesques and purple marble - fading farther and fainter, league beyond league, lost in the light - of distance. Detail after detail, thought beyond thought, you find - and feel them through the radiant mystery, inexhaustible as - indistinct, beautiful, but never all revealed; secret in fulness, - confused in symmetry, as nature herself is to the bewildered and - foiled glance, giving out of that indistinctness, and through that - confusion, the perpetual newness of the infinite and the beautiful. - - “Yes, Mr. Turner, we are in Venice now.” - -Unfortunately the brave young champion was too late, the eloquent voice -that could translate into such glowing words the dumb poetry of Turner’s -pictures had scarcely made the air of England thrill with its musical -enthusiasm when black night fell upon the artist. The sudden snapping of -some vital chord, of which that same Graduate of Oxford only last year -pathetically wrote, took place, and the glorious sun of his genius -disappeared without any twilight; he was dead as an artist, and dying as -a man. Neither his work nor his life could be defended any more. But the -voice that was raised so late in his honour did not die, its vibrations -have lasted from that day to this; and if the champion himself seems to -be in some need of a defender now, if mouths that once were full of his -praise are silent or raised only for the most part to depreciate, it is -only what came to Turner and what comes to all who use their imagination -too freely to enforce their convictions. A time must come when the -spirit of analysis will eat into the most brilliant rhetoric; the false -and true, which combine to make the most beautiful fabric of words, -cannot wear equally well. To us it is always painful to differ from Mr. -Ruskin, to whom we owe the grasp of so many noble truths, the memories -of so many delightful hours; and if a time has come when our faith in -his dogmas is not absolute, and we feel that he has misled us and others -now and again, we cannot close reference to him and his works in this -little book without testifying to the great and noble spirit which -pervades his work, and recording our admiration of a life devoted to the -service of art and man and God with a passionate purity as rare as it is -beautiful. - -[Illustration: VENICE, FROM THE CANAL OF THE GIUDECEA. - -_Exhibited in 1840. South Kensington Museum._] - -But before night fell, in the interval between 1840 and 1845, Turner -painted a few pictures of remarkable beauty both in colour and -sentiment--pictures which no other artist could have painted, and which -we doubt if he could himself have painted before--pictures generally -attempting to realize his later ideal of Venice, which even now, in -their wrecked beauty, fascinate all who have patience to look at them, -and watch the apparent chaos of yellow and white and purple and grey -gradually clear into a vision of ghost-like palaces rising like a dream, -from the golden sea. Besides these he painted at least three others of -unique power: one a record of what few other men could have had the -courage to study or the power to paint; one showing the passion of -despair at the loss of an old comrade; and another the boldest attempt -to represent abstract ideas in landscape that was ever made. We allude -to the _Snowstorm_; _Peace, Burial at Sea_; and _Rain, Steam, and -Speed_. - -Mr. Hamerton says, in connection with the first of these:-- - - “Let it not be supposed that these works of Turner’s decline, - however they may have exercised the wit of critics, and excited the - amusement of visitors to the Exhibition, were ever anything less - than serious performances for him. The _Snowstorm_, for example - (1842), afforded the critics a precious opportunity for the - exercise of their art. They called it soapsuds and whitewash, the - real subject being a steamer in a storm off a harbour’s mouth - making signals, and going by the lead. In this instance, nothing - could be more serious than Turner’s intention, which was to render - a storm as he had himself seen it one night when the ‘Ariel’ left - Harwich. Like Joseph Vernet, who, when in a tempest off the island - of Sardinia, had himself fastened to the mast to watch the effects, - Turner on this occasion, ‘got the sailors to lash himself to the - mast to observe it,’ and remained in that position for four hours. - He did not expect to escape, but had a curious sort of - conscientious feeling, that it was his duty to record his - impression if he survived.”[45] - -Of the second, which was painted to commemorate Wilkie’s funeral, it is -related that Stanfield complained of the blackness of the sails, and -that Turner answered, “If I could find anything blacker than black I’d -use it.”[46] - -The history of his late Swiss sketches and the drawings he made from -them has been recently told by Mr. Ruskin in his valuable and -interesting notes to his collection of Turner’s drawings exhibited last -year (1878), and these notes and the almost equally interesting notes of -the Rev. W. Kingsley, contained between the same covers, testify not -only to the supreme beauty of his later work, but also to the nobler -motive which inspired its production, viz. the desire to “record” as far -as he could what he had seen after “fifty years’ observation.” The days -of strife and emulation were over, and a humbler, sweeter spirit made -him “put forth his full strength to depict nature as he saw it with all -his knowledge and experience.” Characteristically, as all through his -life, this better spirit showed itself rather in his water-colours made -for private persons, than in those oils which he exhibited for the -judgment of the public. - -We wish we had space here for Mr. Ruskin’s splendid description of -Turner’s picture of _Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying_--a -work which seems to us to illustrate what we have said of his manner of -decline in a remarkable way. There is no doubt about its splendour of -colour, the grandeur of its sea, and the force with which its sentiment -of horror and wrong and death is conveyed; but it shows a childishness, -a want of mental faculties of the simplest kind, which is all the more -extraordinary when brought in contrast with such gigantic pictorial -power. The sharks are quite unnecessary, the bodies in the water are too -many, the absurdity of the chains appearing above it is too gross; the -horror is overdone and melodramatic, or, in a word, one of his finest -pictorial conceptions is spoilt for want of a little common sense, of a -little power to place himself in relation to his fellows and see how it -would appear to them. Again, we cannot help wishing that he had had a -friend at his elbow like Stanfield, who would have saved him from the -laughter of small critics. He was not fit to manage such a work on such -a subject by himself. - -In his picture of _War--the Exile and the Rock-limpet_, with its extract -from the “Fallacies of Hope”-- - - “Ah! thy tent-formed shell is like - A soldier’s nightly bivouac, alone - Amidst a sea of blood ... - ...But can you join your comrades?” - -we see the same mental helplessness. It verges on the sublime, it verges -on the ridiculous. We should be sorry to call it either; but it is -childish--not with the grand simplicity of Blake, but with the confused -complicity of Turner. Mr. Ruskin says that Turner tried in vain to make -him understand the full meaning of this work, and we are not surprised. - -Such pictures as these had occurred now and then all through his -career--pictures in which the means employed were utterly inadequate to -express the sentiment duly, such as the _Waterloo_,--pictures in which -the accumulation of ideas was confused and excessive, as the _Phryne -going to the Bath as Venus, Demosthenes taunted by Æschines_; and he had -shown some hazy symbolism in connection with shell-fish in these -verses:-- - - “Roused from his long contented cot he went - Where oft he laboured, and the ... bent, - To form the snares for lobsters armed in mail; - But men, more cunning, over this prevail, - -[Illustration: THE SLAVE SHIP. - -_In the possession of Miss Alice Hooper, of Boston, U.S._] - - Lured by a few sea-snail and whelks, a prey - That they could gather on their watery way, - Caught in a wicker cage not two feet wide, - While the whole ocean’s open to their pride.” - -But now these “failures,” for failures they were, however fine the art -qualities they possessed, became chronic, and the rule rather than the -exception; and this is to us the greatest tragedy in the whole of his -career--the spectacle of a great painter, the very slave of his genius, -compelled to paint this and paint that at its bidding without being able -to distinguish between what was great and what was little, what sublime -and what ridiculous, almost as mighty as Milton and Shelley one moment, -and as poor as Blackmore or Robert Montgomery the next. He appears to us -in these last days like a great ship, rudderless, but still grand and -with all sails set, at the mercy of the wind, which played with it a -little while and then cast it on the rocks. - -Rudderless, masterless, was he also as a man. We are very loth to -believe the terrible picture of moral degradation supplied by the “best -authority” to Mr. Thornbury, and quoted in the first chapter of this -volume; but there is no doubt that he lived by no means a reputable life -in his old age. As to how he met with Mrs. Booth, at whose little house -by the side of the Thames, near Cremorne, he lived for some time before -his death, we have not cared to inquire, nor do we intend to repeat the -usual stories about it; nor will we venture an opinion as to how often -he took too much to drink or what was his favourite stimulant, or what -other excesses he committed. His whole faculties had been absorbed in -his art; and when this failed him--when he became broken in health and -failing in sight--he had no store of wise reflection to employ his -mind, no harmless pursuits to follow, no refined tastes to amuse him, -nor, as far as we know, had he any hope of any future rectification of -the unevennesses of this world. Some of his friends he had lost by -death, many were still living and ready to cheer his last years if he -would have had them, but he would not. His secretiveness and love of -solitude clung to him to the last. - -He did not, however, lose his love of art and his desire of acquiring -knowledge relating to it. It was in these last years, 1847-49, that he -paid several visits to the studio of Mr. Mayall, the celebrated -photographic artist, passing himself off as a Master in Chancery, and -taking very great interest in the development of the new process which -had not then got beyond the daguerreotype. To the interesting account of -these visits printed by Mr. Thornbury,[47] we are enabled by Mr. -Mayall’s kindness to add that at a time when his finances were at a very -low ebb in consequence of litigation about patent rights, Turner -unasked, brought him a roll of bank-notes, to the amount of £300, and -gave it him on the understanding that he was to repay him if he could. -This, Mr. Mayall was able to do very soon, but that does not lessen the -generosity of Turner’s act. - -Notwithstanding, however, such bright glimpses as this, his last years -must have been sad and dull, and his greatest source of happiness was -probably the knowledge that whatever critics might say of his later -works, there were a few men like Mr. Munro, Mr. Griffiths, the Ruskins, -father and son, who appreciated them, and that his earlier pictures not -only kept up their fame but rose in price. Though in decline, his fame -was as great as almost he could have wished. Two offers of £100,000 he -is said to have refused for the contents of Queen Anne Street; £5,000 -for his two _Carthages_. The greatest of all his triumphs was perhaps -when he was waited upon by Mr. Griffiths, with an offer from a -distinguished Committee, among whom were Sir Robert Peel, Lord Hardinge, -and others, to buy these pictures for the nation. This is the greatest -instance of his self-sacrifice, which is well attested; for he refused -to part with them because he had willed them to the nation. He might -have got the money and his wish also, but he refused. The recollection -of this, though it occurred some years before he died, should have -afforded him some pleasant reflections. - -It had been long known that Turner had another home than that in Queen -Anne Street, and he had shown considerable ingenuity in concealing it, -for he used to go out of an evening to dinner with his friends when he -so willed, and met them at the Academy and other places. Almost to the -last he could be merry and sociable at such gatherings, and there is a -very pleasant account of a dinner in 1850 at David Roberts’ house, given -in a note to Ballantyne’s life of that artist, at which Turner was. It -is a memorandum by an artist from the country, and describes Turner’s -manner as-- - - “Very agreeable, his quick bright eye sparkled, and his whole - countenance showed a desire to please. He was constantly making or - trying to make jokes; his dress, though rather old-fashioned, was - far from being shabby.” Turner’s health was proposed by an Irish - gentleman who had attended his lectures on perspective, on which he - complimented the artist. “Turner made a short reply in a jocular - way, and concluded by saying, rather sarcastically, that he was - glad this honourable gentleman had profited so much by his lectures - as thoroughly to understand perspective, for it was more than he - did.” Turner afterwards, in Roberts’ absence, took the chair, and, - at Stanfield’s request, proposed Roberts’ health, which he did, - speaking hurriedly, “but soon ran short of words and breath, and - dropped down on his chair with a hearty laugh, starting up again - and finishing with a ‘hip, hip, hurrah!’.... Turner was the last - who left, and Roberts accompanied him along the street to hail a - cab.... At this time Turner was indulging in the singular freak of - living, under the name of Mr. Booth, in a small lodging on the - banks of the Thames.... This, though now cleared up, was a mystery - to his friends then, and Roberts was anxious to unravel it. When - the cab drove up he assisted Turner to his seat, shut the door, and - asked where he should tell cabby to take him; but Turner was not to - be caught, and, with a knowing wink, replied, ‘Tell him to drive to - Oxford Street, and then I’ll direct him where to go.’” - -Turner not only kept his secret from his friends, but from Mrs. Danby, -who, says Mr. Thornbury-- - - “One day, as she was brushing an old coat of Turner’s, in turning - out a pocket, she found and pounced on a letter directed to him, - and written by a friend who lived at Chelsea. Mrs. Danby, it - appears, came to the conclusion that Turner himself was probably at - Chelsea, and went there to seek for him, in company with another - infirm old woman. From inquiries in a place by the river-side, - where gingerbread was sold, they came to the conclusion that Turner - was living in a certain small house close by, and informed a Mr. - Harpur,[48] whom she and Turner knew. He went to the place and - found the painter sinking. This was on the 18th of December, 1851, - and on the following day Turner died.” - -So died the great solitary genius, Turner, the first of all men to -endeavour to paint the full power of the sun, the greatest imagination -that ever sought expression in landscape, the greatest pictorial -interpreter of the elemental forces of nature, that ever lived. His -life, and character, and art, complex as they were in their -manifestation, were as simple in motive as those of the most ordinary -man. Art, fame, and money were what he strived for from the beginning -to the end of his days, and those days were embittered at the end by -fallacies of hope with regard to all three. Critics laughed at him, he -was given no social honour, (neither knighted nor made President of the -Royal Academy), and his money was useless. For the meanness and -isolation of his existence he had no one to thank but himself, but this -was also, as we hope we have shown in the course of these pages, the -natural result of the motives of his life. - -[Illustration: THE ROOM IN WHICH TURNER DIED.] - -The nobleness of his life consisted in his devotion to landscape art, -and this should cover many sins. He found it sunk very low: he left it -raised to a height which it had never attained before. That he could -have done this by painting falsely is absurd. The falsity of his works -is just of that kind which comes from almost infinite knowledge of -truth. He knew little else but art and nature, and he knew these by -heart. He could make nature, and this confidence in his creative power -led him sometimes into strange errors, which no one else could have -made, such as putting the sun and moon in impossible positions in the -same picture, and making boats sail in opposite directions before the -wind; but how much more truth of natural phenomena has he not given even -in such pictures than can be found in any literal transcript of nature! -His colour appears to many to be untrue; but this is greatly due to his -clinging from first to last to one central truth--the sun. It was that -which gave the pitch to his light, and his colour too, as in nature. To -that great light all must be subservient; it is not the local colour of -an object in the foreground, or the strength of shade of a particular -cave, that controls the chiaroscuro and colouring of nature, but the -sun. So all things were sacrificed to this; the green must go from the -grass, and the shadows must become scarlet, rather than this truth -should be lost. His preference for harmonies of blue, red, and yellow, -to the exclusion of green, never giving, as Mr. Leslie pointed out, the -“verdure” of England, is remarkable; he is the only artist we know who, -instead of the usual “bit of red,” to correct the green of a landscape, -introduces a bit of “green” (generally harsh crude green), to correct -its too great redness. (See, for instance, the apron of the woman in the -left-hand corner of his drawing of Rouen Cathedral for the “Rivers of -France.”) His constant fault, and, as we think, an inexcusable one, is -the careless drawing of his figures. It is not an excuse to say that -they must not be painted so as to draw attention from the landscape; -first, because Turner in his earlier pictures showed that he could -introduce well-finished figures without doing this; and secondly, -because Turner’s figures in his later pictures do this by their badness. -This carelessness gradually grew on him, because he would not take pains -with them. He could draw very small figures very well, giving more -spirit and essence than any other artist, in a touch. He could indicate -a shamble, a strut, a march, lassitude, confidence, any physical or -mental quality of a figure as easily as he could a bough or a cloud; but -when he had to draw a figure to which time must be given, to perfect a -definite, complex, organized form, he scamped it. His indication of the -spirit of animals is often wonderful, as in the deer in _Arundel Park_, -and the dogs in _Troyes_. - -Of Turner’s mind and character apart from his art not much can be said -in praise. The former we have already said so much about that we need -only say here that although not of a very high order, except in -sensibility and perception, he showed now and then capacities which -might have been turned to good account by more generous training. -Although his jokes were mainly practical, or of that kind which is -understood by the term “waggery;” a few good things which he said have -been reported, such for instance as that “indistinctness was his forte;” -and though his poetry is generally miserable, it here and there contains -a fine expression. It is remarkable, however, how both his wit, and what -is good in his poetry, are connected with his art. He never said a thing -worth recording about anything else, and the few good bits in his poetry -are all reflections of a pictorial image. The utter helplessness of his -mind, when he tried to put his reasoning into words, is shown by Mr. -Hamerton, in one wonderful extract. (See his “Life of Turner,” p. 143.) -We do not wonder that his attempts at teaching (though he is said at one -time in his youth to have got as much as a guinea a lesson) and his -lectures as a professor of perspective were failures. - -As to his character, it was mainly negative, on all points except art -and money. The best part of it was the tenderness of his heart; but -though we have no doubt about this fact, or that he could occasionally -in his later years be generous even in money,[49] this does not raise -our opinion of him much, for he had more than he wished to spend. If he -was remarkable for kind and generous impulses, he was still more -remarkable for the success with which he, in general, controlled them. -We cannot dispute Mr. Ruskin’s assertion that he never “failed in an -undertaken trust,” but we have yet to learn that he ever undertook one. - -If it be really true that, unasked and without any question of -repayment, he gave a sum of many thousand pounds on more than one -occasion to the son of one of his friends and patrons, such an act -deserves more accurate record and complete proof. The money was repaid -in both cases, it is said. - -He showed his best disposition in his kindness to children and animals, -and his fellow-artists. Of the last he always spoke kindly, and to young -or old was ever just and kind and patient. Poor Haydon said that he “did -him justice;” he assisted many a young man with a useful hint, and once -took down one of his pictures at the Academy to find a place for one of -an unknown man. He took great interest in the founding of the Artists’ -Benevolent Fund, and meant his accumulated wealth to be spent in a home -for decayed artists. - -There is no doubt that long before he died he felt the uselessness of -wealth and a desire to dispose of his own in a good way. The only proof -we have of his notions of a good way is his will, and that, as we have -already said, is not an unselfish document, and the codicils which he -added to it from 1831 to 1849 do not show any increase of unselfishness. -On the contrary, he revoked his legacies to his uncles and cousins, and -left his finished pictures to form a Turner Gallery, and money to found -a Turner medal and a monument to himself in St. Paul’s Cathedral. - -The will and its codicils were so confused that all the legal ability of -England was unable to decide what Turner really wanted to be done with -his money, and after years of miserable litigation, during which a large -portion of it was wasted in legal expenses, a compromise was effected, -in which the wishes of the parties to the suits and others concerned, -including the nation and the Royal Academy, were consulted rather than -the wishes of the testator: his desire to found a charity for decayed -artists, the only thing upon which his mind seems to have been fixed -from first to last in these puzzled documents, was over--thrown, and his -next of kin, the only persons mentioned in his will whom he certainly -did not mean to get a farthing, got the bulk of the property (excepting -the pictures). We have no doubt it was quite right; we are very glad the -nation got all the pictures and drawings, finished and unfinished, and -the Royal Academy £20,000; that there are a Turner medal and a Turner -Gallery, and we think that the next of kin should have had a great deal -of his money: but surely the greatest fallacy of all Turner’s hope was -that his will would be construed according to his intentions. - -Two of his wishes with regard to himself were, however, fully carried -out--his desire to be buried in St. Paul’s and the expenditure of £1,000 -on his monument. His funeral was conducted with considerable pomp and -ceremony, his “gifted talents,” to use his own words, “acknowledged by -the many,” and many of his fellow-artists and admirers followed him to -the grave; nor amongst the crowd were wanting a few old friends who in -their hearts still cherished him as “dear old Turner.” - -[Illustration: “DATUR BORA QUIETI.”] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -INDEX. - -(_The Names of Paintings and Drawings are printed in Italics._) - - - Page - -Academy, Royal, School of, 15 - -Academy Club, 108 - -Academy, in St. Martin’s Lane, 13 - -Academy, in Soho, 15 - -Almanacks, drawings for, 47 - -_Alps at Daybreak_, 113 - -_Apollo and Python_, 67, 107 - -_Apuleia and Apuleius_, 69, 76, 93 - -_Army of the Medes_, 49 - -Artists’ Benevolent Fund, 139 - -_Arundel Park_, 137 - - -_Banks of the Loire_, 111 - -Basire, 44 - -_Battle of the Nile_, 49 - -_Bay of Baiæ_, 97 - -Bible, Illustrations of, Finden’s, 98, 99 - -_Birmingham_, 33 - -“Blackwood’s Magazine”, 124 - -_Bonneville_, 53 - -Booth, Mrs., 131 - -Boswell’s “Antiquities”, 14 - -“Britannia Depicta”, 47 - -Britton, John, 22 - -Burnet, John, 50 - -_Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons_, 118 - -Bushey, 18, 23 - -_Buttermere, Lake_, 41 - -Byron, Illustrations to, 98 - - -_Calais Pier_, 53 - -_Caligula’s Palace and Bridge_, 97 - -Canaletti, 114 - -_Carthage_, 70 - -_Carthage, Decline of_, 93 - -_Carthage, Dido building_, 93, 113 - -Chantrey, 108, 109, 110, 112 - -_Chateau de St. Michel_, 53, 54 - -_Chester_, 33 - -_Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_, 97 - -_Chryses_, 48 - -Claude Lorrain, 50, 61, 63, 113 - -Collins, Wilkie--Description of Turner, 121 - -_Cologne_, 99, 107 - -Composition, Turner’s method, 105, 106 - -Constable’s _Opening of Waterloo Bridge_, 100 - -Constable’s _Whitehall Stairs_, 100 - -Continent, Second Tour on the, 76 - -Cooke, Dispute with, 58, 101 - Letter from, 101, &c. - -“Copper-plate Magazine,” drawings for, 32 - -Cozens, J., 21, 26, 27, 67 - -_Crossing the Brook_, 80, 84, 93, 94 - -Crowle, Mr., early patron of Turner, 14, 16 - - -Danby, Mrs., 134 - -Daniell, 26 - -_Dartmouth_, 122 - -_Datur hora quieti_, 113 - -Dayes, 26, 28 - -De Loutherbourg, 27, 38, 39, 49, 86 - -Devonshire, Tour in, 79 - -_Dido and Æneas_, 93 - -Dragons, 70-74 - - -Eastlake, Sir Charles, 83 - -Edridge, 15, 23, 27 - -_Egglestone Abbey_, 94 - -Egremont, Lord, 76, 108, 109, 110 - -“England and Wales”, 104 - -Engravings coloured at Brentford, 14 - -Exeter, Turner’s visit to, 84 - - -_Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen_, 53 - -“Fallacies of Hope”, 130 - -_Falls in Valombrè_--Illustration of “Jacqueline”, 114 - -Farnley, 45, 46, 108 - -Fawkes, 44, 45, 76, 112 - -_Festival of the Vintage of Macon_, 53 - -_Fifth Plague_, 49 - -Finden’s Illustrations of the Bible, 98, 99 - -_Fishermen at Sea_, 34 - -_Fishermen Coming Ashore_, 34, 35 - -_Fishing Boats in a Squall_, 50 - -Fonthill, drawings of, 48 - -_Frosty Morning_, 89 - -_Funeral of Sir Thomas Lawrence_, 111 - - -Gainsborough, 23, 24, 27, 38 - -_Gawthorpe_, drawing of, 45 - -Girtin, 15, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28 - -_Glacier and Source of the Arvèron_, 53 - -Glover, 27 - -_Goddess of Discord_, 52, 72 - -Greene, Thomas (extract from Diary), 35 - -Griffiths, 132, 133 - - -Hakewills, The, 109 - -Hakewill’s “Picturesque Tour”--Illustrations to, 98, 99, 103 - -Hamerton, 31, 39, 48, 104, 128 - -Hammersmith, Turner’s life at, 86 - -Hand Court, Turner’s Studio in, 32 - -_Hannibal Crossing the Alps_, 66, 76 - -_Harbour of Dieppe_, 99 - -Hardinge, Lord, 133 - -Hardwick, Architect, 15, 25 - -Harpur, Henry, executor, 8 - -Harpur, Mrs. Turner’s aunt, 8 - -Harrison, employed by, 32 - -Haydon, 139 - -Hearne, 15, 23, 26 - -Heath, C., 109 - -_Helvoetsluys_, 100 - -Henderson, Mr., 16, 26, 28 - -_Heysham Village_, 94 - -Higham, T., 94 - -_Hornby Castle_, 64, 94 - -Howard (R.A.), Portrait by, at Heston, 88 - -Hunt, W., 15 - - -Italy, First Visit to, 92 - -Italy, Picturesque Tour of, Hakewill’s, 98, 99, 103 - - -_Jason_, 48, 74 - -Johns, Ambrose, 83 - -Jones, 108 - Letter to, 109, 112 - -_Juliet and her Nurse_, 118, 124 - -_Jumièges_, 116 - - -Kingsley, Rev. W., Notes of, 129 - - -_Lambeth, Archbishop’s Palace at_, 32 - -Lawrence, Sir Thomas, Turner’s generosity to, 99 - -Lawrence, Sir Thomas, death of, 111 - -Lectures on perspective, 133, 138 - -Leslie’s Autobiographical Recollections, 100 - -Lewis, Engraver, quarrel with Turner, 57 - -“Liber Studiorum”, 52, 55, 66, 89, 107 - -_Light-towers of the Hève_, 115 - -_Little Devil’s Bridge_, 62 - -_Loretto Necklace_, 111 - -Lowson, Newby, 22 - - -Maiden Lane, 10 - -Malton, Thoma, 15, 20, 25 - -_Margate Church_, early drawing of, 13 - -Margate, School at, 15 - -Marlow, 23 - -Marshall, Mother’s maiden name, 6 - -Marshall, Uncle, 8, 13 - -“Mawman’s Tour”, 47 - -Mayall, Mr., 132 - -_Mercury and Argus_, 118 - -_Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy_, 111 - -Miller, T., 23 - -“Modern Painters”, 124 - -Monro, Dr., 15, 18, 23, 24, 25, 27, 112 - -_Moonlight_, 34 - -Morland, 27, 38 - -_Morning on the Coniston Fells_, 41 - -Munro of Novar, 118, 132 - - -_Narcissus and Echo_, 48 - -Narraway, 18, 32 - -National Gallery, Drawing in, 94 - -_Neptune’s Trident_, 103 - -_Norham Castle_, 41 - - -_Orvieto_, 110, 111 - -Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, 66, 68, 69, 108 - -_Oxford_, Pictures of, 86 - -_Oxford, Scene near_, early drawing, 14 - - -Palice, Mr., Drawing Master, 15 - -_Pantheon, After Fire_, 34 - -_Peace, Burial at Sea_, 128 - -Pearce, Miss, 83 - -Peel, Sir Robert, 133 - -_Pembury Mill_, 62 - -Perspective, Professor of, 75 - -Petworth, 76, 108, 109 - -_Phryne_, 130 - -Pindar, Peter, 82 - -Pine, 23 - -“Pocket Magazine,” drawings for, 32 - -Poetry, Turner’s, 67, 68 - -Porden, 15, 16 - -Poussin, Nicolas, 63 - -“Provincial Antiquities,” Illustrations to, 92 - -Pye, John, 94 - - -Radcliffe, Engraver, 94 - -_Rain, Steam, and Speed_, 128 - -Rawlinson’s “Turner’s Liber Studiorum”, 60 - -_Redcliffe Church, Bristol_, 84 - -Redding, Cyrus, 78, 82 - -Reeve, Lovell, description of Turner when young, 31 - -Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 25 - -_Richmond_, 94 - -“Richmondshire, Dr. Whitaker’s History of”, 94 - -_Rising Squall_, 34 - -Ritchie, Leitch, 116 - -“Rivers of England”, 94, 96 - -“Rivers of France”, 115, 116 - -Roberts, David, 23, 133 - -Rogers, Illustrations to, 99, 113, 114 - -Rome, 109, 110 - -_Rome, from the Vatican_, 97 - -Rooker, 23 - -_Rouen Cathedral_, 137 - -Ruskin, J., 39, 40, 48, 61, 73, 121, 122, 124, 132 - -Ruskin, J., his Collection of Turner’s Drawings, 94, 129 - - -Sandycombe Lodge, 85, 86, 101 - -_St. Vincent’s Rocks, Bristol, View near_, 34 - -Sandby, Paul, 23 - -Sandby, Tom, 23 - -School, First, at New Brentford, 13 - -Scott, Sir Walter, 92, 99 - -Shaw, Dr., 8 - -_Shipwreck, The_, 50, 54 - -_Slave Ship, The_, 129 - -Smith, John Raphael, 15, 23 - -_Snowstorm_, 128 - -Society of Artists, 13 - -Solus Lodge, 86 - -_Solway Moss_, 62 - -“Southern Coast”, 47, 84, 99 - -_Spithead_, 54 - -Stanfield, 120, 128 - -_Sun rising through Vapour_, 54, 113 - -Switzerland, Sketches in, 54 - - -_Téméraire, The Fighting_, 118 - -_Temple of Jupiter_, 93 - -_Tenth Plague_, 49 - -Thomson, of Duddingstone, 92 - -Tomkison, 13, 16 - -_Tornaro_, 113 - -_Totnes_, 94 - -Townley, 45 - -Trimmer (Vicar of Heston), 86, 87, 88, 91, 101, 108, 111 - -Trimmer, Miss, attachment of Turner to, 89, 90 - -_Troyes_, 137 - -“Turner’s Cribs”, 85 - -“Turner Gallery” in Harley Street and Queen Anne Street, 85 - -“Turner and Girtin’s Picturesque Views”, 32 - -Turner’s Gift, 78, 112 - -Turner, Charles, engraver, quarrel with Turner, 58 - -Turner, Price, uncle, 84 - -Turner, Thomas Price, first cousin, 84 - - -_Ulysses and Polyphemus_, 70, 107 - - -Vandevelde, 28, 50 - -Varley, 23, 24 - -Varnishing days, 99, 108 - -Venice, First pictures of, 114 - Sketches in National Gallery, 114 - -_Venice from Madonna della Salute_, 124 - -Venice, later pictures of, 126 - -_Venus and Adonis_, 52 - -Vergil, 70 - -Vignettes, 113 - -_Vision_, from “Voyage of Columbus”, 114 - - -Wales, First Tour in, 32 - -Walker, J., 32 - -_War, the Exile and the Rock Limpet_, 130 - -_Warkworth Castle_, 43 - -_Waterloo_, 130 - -Watts, Alaric, 23, 31 - -Wedmore’s “Essay on Girtin”, 24 - -Wells, W. F., 18, 55, 112 - -_Westminster Abbey_, early drawing of, 14 - -“Whalley, Parish of,” drawings for, 41 - -_What you Will_, 97 - -Wheeler, Mrs., 18 - -Whitaker, Dr., 41, 44 - -Wilkie, Sir D., 112, 128 - -Will, Turner’s, 112, 139, 140 - -Wilson, 23, 27, 38, 49 - -Wolcot, Dr., 82 - -_Wreck of the Minotaur_, 50 - -Wyatt, Print Publisher, of Oxford, 86 - -_Wycliffe_, 94 - - -Yorkshire, Tour in, 34, 40 - - - - -CHRONOLOGY OF TURNER’S LIFE. - - - - Date. Page - - 1775. Born, 23rd April 6 - 1784. Drawing of Margate Church 13 - 1785. Goes to School at Brentford 15 - 1789. Student of Royal Academy 32 - 1791. First exhibits at Royal Academy 32 - 1792. First Tour in Wales 32 - 1792. Studio in Hand Court 32 - 1794. First engraving from Turner published 32 - 1793 or 1797. First exhibits in oil 34 - 1794. Noticed by the Press 34 - 1797. Tour in the North of England 40 - 1799. Elected A.R.A. 39 - 1799. Removes to Harley Street 75 - 1800. Visits Scotland 53 - 1801 or 1802. First Tour on Continent 53 - 1802. Elected R.A. 39 - 1804. Second Tour on Continent 76 - 1805. Paints _The Shipwreck_ 50 - 1807. Commences “Liber Studiorum” 55 - 1808. Professor of Perspective--Takes House at Hammersmith 75 - 1811. Exhibits _Apollo and the Python_ 67 - 1811 or 1812. Visits Devonshire 79 - 1812. Town address changed to Queen Anne Street 75 - 1814. Goes to Twickenham 75 - 1814. Commences _Southern Coast_ 84 - 1815. Exhibits _Crossing the Brook_ and _Dido Building Carthage_ 93 - 1819. First visit to Italy 92 - 1823. “History of Richmondshire” published 94 - 1824. “Rivers of England” published 94 - 1823. Exhibits _Bay of Baiæ_ 97 - 1826. Leaves Twickenham 101 - 1827. Quarrels with Cooke 101 - 1827. “England and Wales” commenced 104 - 1828. Visits Rome 109 - 1829. Exhibits _Ulysses deriding Polyphemus_ 107 - 1830. Death of his Father 111 - 1830. Illustrations to Rogers’s “Italy” published 113 - 1831. Makes his Will 112 - 1833. Exhibits first Venetian Picture 114 - 1833. “Rivers of France” commenced 115 - 1839. Exhibits _Fighting Téméraire_ 118 - 1843. Publication of “Modern Painters” 124 - 1851. Death 134 - -[Illustration: decoration] - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -The Fighting Temeraire=> The Fighting Téméraire {pg 1} - -Similiar stories could=> Similar stories could {pg 22} - -Glacier and Source of the Arveron=> Glacier and Source of the Arvèron -{pg 53} - -Yours must truly,=> Yours most truly, {pg 110} - - * * * * * - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] “Absalom and Achitophel.” - -[2] Mr. Cyrus Redding met him there in 1812, and Sir Charles Eastlake -then or after then. There is no engraved drawing by him from Devonshire -till the _Southern Coast_, which began in 1814, or picture, till the -_Crossing of the Brook_, exhibited in 1815. - -[3] Mr. Thornbury treats this as an absurd tradition, but it is -supported by an account given by Dr. Shaw of an interview between him -and the artist, and printed by Mr. T. pp. 318, 319. “May I ask you if -you are the Mr. Turner who visited at Shelford Manor, in the county of -Nottingham, in your youth?” “I am,” he answered. On being further -questioned as to whether his mother’s name was Marshall, he grew very -angry, and accused his visitor of taking “an unwarrantable liberty,” but -was pacified by an apology, and invited Dr. Shaw to give him “the favour -of a visit” whenever he came to town. - -[4] He was called “William” at home. - -[5] See “Notes and Queries,” 2nd series, v. 475, for the true version of -this story. - -[6] Wornum. - -[7] Dr. Thomas Monro, of Bushey and Adelphi Terrace, physician of -Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals, a well-known lover of art and patron -of Edridge, Girtin, Turner, W. Hunt, and other young artists. He erected -monuments at Bushey Church to Edridge and Hearne. - -[8] This gentleman is described by Mr. Thornbury as Mr. _H_arraway, a -_fish_monger in Broad_way_. - -[9] This took place in 1836. - -[10] Mr. John Britton, publisher, and author of “Beauties of Wiltshire,” -&c., &c. - -[11] Perhaps the Earl of Essex. - -[12] See Memoir prefixed to “Liber Fluviorum.” - -[13] “Turner and Girtin’s Picturesque Views,” London, 1854. - -[14] See also Mr. Wedmore’s interesting essay on Girtin for a story -about Turner and Girtin’s drawing of the _White House at Chelsea_. - -[15] Whether father or son does not appear. - -[16] Down to 1851 the Exhibition, in common parlance, always meant the -Exhibition of the Royal Academy. - -[17] His first exhibited oil picture, according to Mr. S. Redgrave. See -“Dictionary of Artists of the English School.” - -[18] According to most accounts his first exhibited oil picture. - -[19] See Whitaker’s “Parish of Whalley,” vol. ii. p. 183. - -[20] See also Willis’s “Current Notes” for Jan. 1852. - -[21] In a letter from Andrew Caldwell to Bishop Percy, dated 14th June, -1802, printed by Nicholls in his “Illustrations of the Literary History -of the Eighteenth Century,” vol. viii. p. 43, Turner is spoken of as -beating “Loutherbourg and every other artist all to nothing.” “A painter -of my acquaintance, and a good judge, declares his pencil is magic; that -it is worth every landscape-painter’s while to make a pilgrimage to see -and study his works. Loutherbourg, he used to think of so highly, -appears now mediocre.” - -[22] The names of these pictures are given as printed in the Catalogue. - -[23] Rawlinson. - -[24] See saying of Turner’s reported by Mr. Halstead, and printed in -note in Mr. Rawlinson’s “Turner’s Liber Studiorum, Macmillan and Co., -1878,” from which excellent work most of the above information is -derived. - -[25] Not issued till the 10th part, or over five years from the -publication of the first. - -[26] Only a portion of it, the picture. - -[27] The only picture exhibited at the Academy by this artist. It was -called _A Landscape, with Hannibal in his March over the Alps, showing -to his Army the Fertile Plains of Italy_. As its year of exhibition was -1776, it would be interesting to learn where Turner saw this picture. -Where is it now? Our information on the subject is derived from -Redgrave’s “Century of Painters.” - -[28] Thornbury, p. 236. - -[29] He became Professor of Perspective to the Royal Academy in this -year. - -[30] Turner seems to have paid a visit to the Continent in 1804, as Mr. -Thornbury refers to some powerful water-colour Swiss scenes of 1804 at -Farnley, p. 240. - -[31] There is no record of a visit by Turner to the Isle of Man. - -[32] Wordsworth’s “Elegiac Stanzas,” suggested by a picture of ‘Peele -Castle in a storm,’ painted by Sir George Beaumont. - -[33] “Past Celebrities,” by Cyrus Redding, vol. i. - -[34] Thornbury, p. 152. - -[35] See Wornum, “Turner Gallery,” p. xv., for a Catalogue of Turner’s -Gallery in 1809. - -[36] He is said to have been his own architect for both houses. - -[37] See Thornbury, p. 224. - -[38] See Thornbury, p. 223. - -[39] Called in the Catalogue _Whitehall Stairs, June 18th, 1817_. - -[40] _Helvoetsluys_: _the City of Utrecht, 64, going to sea_. - -[41] Turner had a picture of the same subject in another room. The two -artists had agreed together that each should paint it. - -[42] Leslie’s “Autobiographical Recollections,” vol. i. pp. 202, 203. - -[43] They are printed as given by Thornbury. - -[44] In his first will he only leaves two pictures to the Nation, the -_Sun Rising through Mist_ and the _Carthage_, and on condition that they -were to be hung side by side with the great Claudes. - -[45] Hamerton, pp. 286-87. - -[46] Ibid., p. 292. - -[47] Thornbury, pp. 349-51. - -[48] Mr. Harpur, the grandson of the sister of his mother, one of his -executors. - -[49] We are informed by Mr. J. Beavington Atkinson, to whom we are -indebted for other interesting facts in connection with Turner, that he -was not ungrateful to his early friends, the Narraways of Bristol, but -supplied them from time to time with sums of money, and that at his -death there was a sum owing by one of the family who wished to repay it, -but was informed by the executors that Turner had left no record of any -such debt. - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Turner, by William Cosmo Monkhouse - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURNER *** - -***** This file should be named 40878-0.txt or 40878-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/8/7/40878/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily -keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. - - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: - - http://www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/40878-0.zip b/old/40878-0.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 2d3af8c..0000000 --- a/old/40878-0.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/40878-8.txt b/old/40878-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 836c2c7..0000000 --- a/old/40878-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5111 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Turner, by William Cosmo Monkhouse - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Turner - -Author: William Cosmo Monkhouse - -Release Date: September 27, 2012 [EBook #40878] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURNER *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -_ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF -THE GREAT ARTISTS._ - -[Illustration: decoration] - -JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER - -ROYAL ACADEMICIAN. - -[Illustration: decoration] - - -ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES -OF -THE GREAT ARTISTS. - -TITIAN From the most recent authorities. - _By Richard Ford Heath, M.A., Hertford Coll. Oxford._ - -REMBRANDT From the Text of C. VOSMAER. - _By J. W. Mollett, B.A., Brasenose Coll. Oxford._ - -RAPHAEL From the Text of J. D. PASSAVANT. - _By N. D'Anvers, Author of "Elementary History of Art."_ - -VAN DYCK & HALS From the most recent authorities. - _By Percy R. Head, Lincoln Coll. Oxford._ - -HOLBEIN From the Text of Dr. WOLTMANN. - _By the Editor, Author of "Life and Genius of Rembrandt"_ - -TINTORETTO From recent investigations. - _By W. Roscoe Osler, Author of occasional Essays on Art._ - -TURNER From the most recent authorities. - _By Cosmo Monkhouse, Author of "Studies of Sir E. Landseer."_ - -THE LITTLE MASTERS From the most recent authorities. - _By W. B. Scott, Author of "Lectures on the Fine Arts."_ - -HOGARTH From recent investigations. - _By Austin Dobson, Author of "Vignettes in Rhyme," &c._ - -RUBENS From recent investigations. - _By C. W. Kett, M.A., Hertford Coll. Oxford._ - -MICHELANGELO From the most recent authorities. - _By Charles Clment, Author of "Michel-Ange, Lonard, et Raphael."_ - -LIONARDO From recent researches. - _By Dr. J. Paul Richter, Author of "Die Mosaiken von Ravenna."_ - -GIOTTO From recent investigations. - _By Harry Quilter, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge._ - -THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF THE NETHERLANDS. - _By Lord Ronald Gower, Author of "Guide to the Galleries of Holland."_ - -VELAZQUEZ From the most recent authorities. - _By Edwin Stowe, B.A., Brasenose Coll. Oxford._ - -GAINSBOROUGH From the most recent authorities. - _By George M. Brock-Arnold, M.A., Hertford Coll. Oxford._ - -PEUGINO From recent investigations. - _By T. Adolphus Trollope, Author of many Essays on Art._ - -DELAROCHE & VERNET From the works of CHARLES BLANC. - _By Mrs. Ruutz Rees, Author of various Essays on Art._ - -[Illustration: JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER. - -_From a sketch by John Gilbert._] - -"_The whole world without Art would be one great wilderness._" - -[Illustration: decoration] - - - - -TURNER - -BY W. COSMO MONKHOUSE - -_Author of_ "_Studies of Sir E. Landseer._" - -[Illustration] - -NEW YORK: -SCRIBNER AND WELFORD. - -LONDON: -SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, -1879. - -(_All rights reserved._) - -CHISWICK PRESS:--C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, -CHANCERY LANE. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PREFACE. - - -The late Mr. Thornbury lost such an opportunity of writing a worthy -biography of Turner as will never occur again. How he dealt with the -valuable materials which he collected is well known to all who have had -to test the accuracy of his statements; and unfortunately many of the -channels from which he derived information have since been closed by -death. Mr. Ruskin, who might have helped so much, has contributed little -to the life of the artist but some brilliant passages of pathetic -rhetoric. Overgrown by his luxuriant eloquence, and buried beneath the -_dbris_ of Thornbury, the ruins of Turner's Life lay hidden till last -year. - -Mr. Hamerton's "Life of Turner" has done much to remove a very serious -blot from English literature. Very careful, but very frank, it presents -a clear and consistent view of the great painter and his art, and is, -moreover, penetrated with that intellectual insight and refined thought -which illuminate all its author's work. - -He has, however, left much to be done, and this book will, I hope, help -a little in clearing away long-standing errors, and reducing the known -facts about Turner to something like order. To these facts I have been -able to add a few hitherto unpublished; and it is a pleasant duty to -return my thanks to the many kind friends and strangers for the pains -which they have taken to supply me with information. To Mr. F. E. -Trimmer, of Heston, the son of Turner's old friend and executor; to Mr. -John L. Roget; to Mr. Mayall, and to Mr. J. Beavington Atkinson, my -thanks are especially due. - -In so small a book upon so large a subject, I have often had much -difficulty in deciding what to select and what to reject, and have -always preferred those events and stories which seem to me to throw most -light upon Turner's character. On purely technical matters I have -touched only when I thought it absolutely necessary. This part of the -subject has been already so well and fully treated by Mr. Ruskin in -numerous works, too well known to need mention; by Mr. Hamerton in his -"Life of Turner," and "Etching and Etchers;" by Messrs. Redgrave in -their "Century of English Painters," and by Mr. S. Redgrave in his -introduction to the collection of water-colours at South Kensington, -that I need only refer to these works such few among my readers as are -not already acquainted with them. I would also refer them for similar -reasons to Mr. Rawlinson's recent work on the "Liber Studiorum." - -I should have liked to add to this volume accurate lists of Turner's -works and the engravings from them, with information of their -possessors, and the extraordinary fluctuation in the prices which they -have realized, but this would have entailed great labour and have -swelled unduly the bulk of this volume, which is already greater than -that of its fellows. Fortunately this information is likely to be soon -supplied by Mr. Algernon Graves, whose accurate catalogue of Landseer's -works is sufficient guarantee of the manner in which he will perform -this more difficult task. - -The edition of Thornbury's "Life of Turner" referred to throughout these -pages, is that of 1877. - -W. COSMO MONKHOUSE. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CONTENTS. - - -PART I. - -1775 TO 1797. DAYS OF EDUCATION AND PRACTICE. - -CHAPTER I. - - Page - -Introductory 1 - -CHAPTER II. - -Early Days--1775 to 1789 6 - -CHAPTER III. - -Youth--1789 to 1796 20 - -PART II. - -1797 TO 1820. DAYS OF MASTERY AND EMULATION. - -CHAPTER IV. - -Yorkshire and the young Academician--1797 to 1807 38 - -CHAPTER V. - -The "Liber Studiorum" and the Dragons 55 - -CHAPTER VI. - -Harley Street, Devonshire, Hammersmith, and Twickenham 75 - -PART III. - -1820 TO 1851. DAYS OF GLORY AND DECLINE. - -CHAPTER VII. - -Page - -Italy and France--1820 to 1840 92 - -CHAPTER VIII. - -Light and Darkness--1840 to 1851 121 - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -TURNER. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -INTRODUCTORY. - - -The task of writing a satisfactory life of Turner is one of more than -usual difficulty. He hid himself, partly intentionally, partly because -he could not express himself except by means of his brush. His -secretiveness was so consistent, and commenced so early, that it seems -to have been an instinct, or what used to be called by that name. Akin -to the most divinely gifted poets by his supreme pictorial imagination, -he also seems on the other side to have been related to beings whose -reasoning faculty is less than human. When we look at such pictures as -_Crossing the Brook_, _The Fighting Tmraire_, and _Ulysses and -Polyphemus_, we feel that we are in the presence of a mind as sensitive -as Keats's, as tender as Goldsmith's, and as penetrative as Shelley's; -when we read of the dirty discomfort of his home and of the difficulty -with which his patrons, and even his relations, obtained access to his -presence--how even his most intimate friends were not admitted to his -confidence--we can only think of a hedgehog, whose offensive powers -being limited, is warned by nature to live in a hole and roll itself up -into a ball of spikes at the approach of strangers. - -We are used to having our idols broken; but we still fashion them with a -persistency which seems to argue it a necessity of our nature, that we -should think of the life and character of gifted men as being the -outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace we perceive -in their works. It is this habit which makes any attempt to write a life -of Turner pre-eminently unsatisfactory, for his refined sense of the -most ethereal of natural phenomena is not relieved by any refinement in -his manners, his supreme feeling for the splendour of the sun is -unmatched by any light or brilliance in his social life; his extreme -sensibility, a sensibility not only artistic but human, to all the -emotional influences of nature, stands for ever as a contrast to his -self-absorbed, suspicious individuality. There is of course no reason -why a landscape painter should be refined in manner or choice in his -habits. There is no necessary connection between the subjects of such an -artist and himself, except his hand and eye. He lives a life of visions -that may come and go without affecting his life or even his thought, as -we generally use that word. The most tremendous phenomena of nature may -be seen and studied, and reproduced with such power as to strike terror -into those who see the picture, and yet leave the artist unaltered in -demeanour and taste. Even those men of genius who, instead of employing -their imagination upon nature's inanimate works, devote themselves to -the study of man himself, socially and morally, do not by any means -show that relation between themselves and their finest work that we -appear naturally to expect. - -But all this, though it may explain much, still leaves unsatisfactory -the task of writing the life of a man of whom such passages as the -following could be sincerely written:-- - - "Glorious in conception--unfathomable in knowledge--solitary in - power--with the elements waiting upon his will, and the night and - morning obedient to his call, sent as a prophet of God to reveal to - men the mysteries of the universe, standing, like the great angel - of the Apocalypse, clothed with a cloud, and with a rainbow upon - his head, and with the sun and stars given into his hand."--_Modern - Painters_ (1843), p. 92. - - "Towards the end of his career he would often, I am assured on the - best authority, paint hard all the week till Saturday night; and he - would then put by his work, slip a five-pound note into his pocket, - button it securely up there, and set off to some low sailor's house - in Wapping or Rotherhithe, to wallow till Monday morning summoned - him to mope through another week."--THORNBURY'S _Life of Turner_ - (1877), pp. 313, 314. - -The contrast is too great to make the picture pleasant, the facts are -too few to make it perfect; to make it one or the other, it would be -necessary to do as Turner did, and rightly did, with his perfect -drawings--suppress facts that jarred with his scheme of form and colour, -and insert figures or mountains or clouds that were necessary to -complete it; but a biography is nothing if not real--it belongs to the -other side of art. The task would be rendered lighter, if not more -agreeable, if we were frankly to accept the principle of a dual nature, -and cutting up our subject into halves, treat Turner the artist and -Turner the man as two separate beings; and there would, at first sight, -seem to be no more convincing proof of this duality than is afforded by -Turner. He had an exquisitely sensitive apprehension of all physical -phenomena, and was able to hoard away his impressions by the thousand in -that wonderful brain-store of his, until they were wanted for pictures. -He stored them with his eye, he reproduced them with his hand and -memory. These three were all of the finest, and seemed to act without -that process which is necessary to most of us before we can make use of -our impressions, viz., the translation of them into words. This process -is as necessary for the nourishment of most minds as digestion for the -nourishment of the body, but to him it appears to have been almost -entirely denied. He had grasp enough of his impressions without it, to -enable him to analyze them and compose them pictorially; but he could -not give any account of them or of his method of composition, and they -had no sensible effect on his conversation. - -He thus lived in two worlds--one the pictorial sight-world, in which he -was a profound scholar and a poet, the other the articulate, moral, -social word-world in which he was a dunce and underbred. In the one he -was great and happy, in the other he was small and miserable; for what -philosophy he had was fatalist. The riddle of life was too hard for his -uncultivated intellect and starved heart to contemplate with any hope; -he was only at rest in his dreamland. When he came down into this world -of ours from his own clouds, he brought some of his glory with him, but -without any cheerful effect; for it came but as a foil to ruined -castles, the vice of mortals and the decay of nations. - -Yet, while at a first view this distinction between Turner as a man and -Turner as an artist seems complete, further study shows that the man had -a great and often a fatal influence on the artist, and that this was not -without reaction both serious and deep, and so we find that his art and -himself are no more to be divided in any human view of him than were his -body and his soul when he was yet alive. For these reasons we shall keep -as close together as possible the histories of his life and his art, a -task always difficult and sometimes impossible on account of the -scantiness of trustworthy data for the one and the almost infinite -material for the other. - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -EARLY DAYS. - -1775 TO 1789. - - -The appearance of Turner's genius in this world is not to be accounted -for by any known facts. Given his father and his mother, his grandfather -and grandmother, on the father's side, which is all we know of his -ancestry, given the date of his birth, even though that was the 23rd -April (St. George's day, as has been so childishly insisted on), 1775, -there seems to be positively no reason why William Turner, barber, of -26, Maiden Lane, opposite the Cider Cellar, in the parish of St. Paul's, -Covent Garden, and Mary Turner, _ne_ Marshall, his wife, should have -produced an artist, still less, one of the greatest artists that the -world has yet seen. There is only one fact, and that a very sad one, -which might be held to have some connection with his genius. "Great wits -are sure to madness near allied," sang Dryden,[1] and poor Mrs. Turner -became insane "towards the end of her days." This, however, will in no -way account for the special quality of Turner's genius. He arose like -many other great men in those days to help in opening the eyes of -England to the beauties of nature, one of the large and illustrious -constellation of men of genius that lit the end of the last and the -beginning of the present century, and with that truth we must be -content. - -The earliest fact that we have on record which had any influence on -Turner is that his paternal grandfather and grandmother spent all their -lives at South Molton in Devonshire. Although he is not known to have -visited Devonshire till he was thirty-seven years of age;[2] he appears -to have been proud of his connection with the county, and to have -asserted that he was a Devonshire man. This is, as far as we know, the -solitary effect of Turner's ancestry upon him. Of his father and mother -the influence was necessarily great. From his father he undoubtedly -obtained his extraordinary habits of economy, that spirit of a petty -tradesman, which was one of his most unlovely characteristics, and, be -it added, his honesty and industry also. Of his father we have several -descriptions by persons who knew him; of his mother, one only, and that, -unfortunately, not so authentic. We will give the lady the first place, -and it must be remembered that this unfavourable picture is drawn by Mr. -Thornbury from information derived from the Rev. Henry Syer Trimmer, the -son of Turner's old friend and executor, the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, -of Heston, who obtained it from Hannah Danby, Turner's housekeeper in -Queen Anne Street, who got it from Turner's father. - - "In an unfinished portrait of her by her son, which was one of his - first attempts, my informant perceived no mark of promise; and he - extended the same remark to Turner's first essays at landscape. - The portrait was not wanting in force or decision of touch, but the - drawing was defective. There was a strong likeness to Turner about - the nose and eyes; her eyes being represented as blue, of a lighter - hue than her son's; her nose aquiline, and the nether lip having a - slight fall. Her hair was well frizzed--for which she might have - been indebted to her husband's professional skill--and it was - surmounted by a cap with large flappers. Her posture therein - (_sic_) was erect, and her aspect masculine, not to say fierce; and - this impression of her character was confirmed by report, which - proclaimed her to have been a person of ungovernable temper, and to - have led her husband a sad life. Like her son, her stature was - below the average." - -This as the result of a painted portrait by her son, and verbal -description by her husband, is not too flattering, and it is all we know -of the character and appearance of poor Mary Turner. Of her belongings -we know still less. She is said to have been sister to Mr. Marshall, a -butcher, of Brentford, and first cousin to the grandmother of Dr. Shaw, -author of "Gallops in the Antipodes," and to have been related to the -Marshalls, formerly of Shelford Manor House, near Nottingham.[3] We are -able to add to this scanty information that she was the younger sister -of Mrs. Harpur, the wife of the curate of Islington, who was grandfather -of Mr. Henry Harpur, one of Turner's executors. He (the grandfather) -fell in love with his future wife when at Oxford, and their marriage -brought her sister to London. We are also informed that the -hard-featured woman crooning over the smoke, in an early drawing by -Turner in the National Gallery (_An Interior_, No. 15), is Turner's -mother, and the kitchen in which she is sitting, the kitchen in Maiden -Lane. We have also ascertained that one Mary Turner, from St. Paul's, -Covent Garden, was admitted into Bethlehem Hospital on Dec. 27th, 1800, -one of whose sponsors for removal was "Richard Twenlow, Peruke Maker." -This unfortunate lady, whether Turner's mother or not, was discharged -uncured in the following year. Altogether what we know about Turner's -mother does not inspire curiosity, and we fear that she was never -destined to figure in an edition of "The Mothers of Great Men." The "sad -life" which she is said to have led her husband could scarcely have been -sadder than her own. - -Of his father we have fuller information. - - "Mr. Trimmer's description of the painter's parent, the result of - close knowledge of him, is that he was about the height of his son, - spare and muscular, with a head below the average standards" - (whatever that may mean) "small blue eyes, parrot nose, projecting - chin, and a fresh complexion indicative of health, which he - apparently enjoyed to the full. He was a chatty old fellow, and - talked fast, and his words acquired a peculiar transatlantic twang - from his nasal enunciation. His cheerfulness was greater than that - of his son, and a smile was always on his countenance." - -This description is of him when an old man, but he must have been not -very different from this when about one year and eighteen months after -his marriage, which took place on August 29th, 1773, the little William -was born. He was not a man likely to alter much in habit or appearance. -He was always stingy, if we may judge by the story of his following a -customer down Maiden Lane to recover a halfpenny which he omitted to -charge for soap, and from his son's statement that his "Dad" never -praised him for anything but saving a halfpenny. As barbers are -proverbially talkative, and as persons do not generally develop -cheerfulness in later life, we may consider Mr. Trimmer's portrait of -the old man to be essentially correct of him when young, especially as -we find that Turner the younger was always "old looking," a peculiarity -which is generally hereditary. - -The house (now pulled down) in which Turner was born, and in which, for -at least some time after, father, mother, and son resided together, is -thus described by Mr. Ruskin: "Near the south-west corner of Covent -Garden, a square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set block of -houses, to the back windows of which it admits a few rays of light. -Access to the bottom of it is obtained out of Maiden Lane, through a low -archway and an iron gate; and if you stand long enough under the archway -to accustom your eyes to the darkness, you may see, on the left hand, a -narrow door, which formerly gave access to a respectable barber's shop, -of which the front window, looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant." -Maiden Lane is not a very brilliant thoroughfare, and was still narrower -and darker at this time, but still this picture, though doubtless -accurate, seems to make it still darker, and in the engraving of the -house in Thornbury's life of Turner, even the front window that looked -into Maiden Lane is rendered ominously black by the shadow of a watchman -thrown up by his low-held lantern. To us it seems that there is plenty -of dark in Turner's life without thus unduly heightening the gloom of -his first dwelling-place. A barber cannot do his work without light, and -we have no doubt that whatever sorrow fell upon Turner in his life was -in no way deepened by his having to pass through a low archway and an -iron gate in order to get to his father's shop. - -[Illustration: HOUSE IN MAIDEN LANE IN WHICH TURNER WAS BORN.] - -The house in Maiden Lane would have been a cheerful enough and a -wholesome enough nest for little William[4] if it had contained a happy -family presided over by a sweetly smiling mother. This want is the real -dark porch and iron gateway of his life, the want which could never be -supplied. In that wonderful memory of his, so faithful, by all -accounts, to all places where he had once been happy, there was no -chamber stored with sweet pictures of the home of his youth; no -exhaustless reservoir of tender, healthy sentiment, such as most of us -have, however poor. Here is a note of pathos on which we might dwell -long and strongly without fear of dispute or charge of false sentiment. -Children, indeed, do not miss what they have not: present sorrows did -not probably affect his appetite, future forebodings did not dim his -hopes; but then, and for ever afterwards, he was terribly handicapped in -the struggle for peace and happiness on earth, in his desire after right -thinking and right doing, in his aims at self-development, in his chance -of wholesome fellowship with his kind, in his capacity for understanding -others and making himself understood, for all these things are more -difficult of attainment to one who never has known by personal -experience the charm of what we mean by "home." - -This want in his life runs through his art, full as it is of feeling for -his fellow-creatures, their daily labour, their merry-makings, their -fateful lives and deaths; there is at least one note missing in his -gamut of human circumstance--that of domesticity. He shows us men at -work in the fields, on the seas, in the mines, in the battle, bargaining -in the market, and carousing at the fair, but never at home. This is one -of the principal reasons why his art has never been truly popular in -home-loving domestic England. - -It is not good for man, still less for a boy, to be alone, and we do not -think we can be wrong in thinking that he was a solitary boy. How soon -he became so we do not know. We may hope that in his earliest years at -least he was tenderly cared for by his mother, and petted by his father. -There is no reason why we may not draw a bright picture of his -childhood, and fancy him walking on Sundays with his father and mother -in the Mall of St. James's Park, wearing a short flat-crowned hat with a -broad brim over his curly brown hair, with snowy ruffles round his neck -and wrists, and a gay sash tied round his waist, concealing the junction -between his jacket-waistcoat and his pantaloons; but this bright period -cannot have lasted long. Soon he must have been driven upon himself for -his amusement, and fortunate it was for him that nature provided him -with one wholesome and endless. - -It is known that one artist, Stothard, was a customer of his father, and -it is probable that as there was an academy in St. Martin's Lane, and -the Society of Artists at the Lyceum, and many artists resided about -Covent Garden, the little boy's emulation may have been excited by -hearing of them, and perhaps chatting with them and seeing their -sketches. - -He certainly began very early. We are told that he first showed his -talent by drawing with his finger in milk spilt on the teatray, and the -story of his sketching a coat-of-arms from a set of castors at Mr. -Tomkison's the jeweller, and father of the celebrated pianoforte maker, -must belong to a very early age.[5] The earliest known drawing by him of -a building is one of Margate Church, when he was nine years old, shortly -before he went to his uncle's at New Brentford for change of air. There -he went to his first school and drew cocks and hens on the walls, and -birds, flowers, and trees from the school-room windows, and it is added -that "his schoolfellows, sympathizing with his taste, often did his -sums for him, while he pursued the bent of his compelling genius." Very -soon after this, if not before, he began to make drawings, some of these -copies of engravings coloured, which were exhibited in his father's shop -window at the price of a few shillings, and he drew portraits of his -father and mother, and of himself at an early age. It is said that his -father intended him to be a barber at first,[6] but struck with his -talent for drawing soon determined that he should follow his bent and be -a painter. He is said to have delighted in going into the fields and -down the river to sketch, but all the very early drawings we have seen, -including those purchased at his father's shop, are drawings of -buildings, mostly in London. Of these there is one of the interior of -_Westminster Abbey_, in Mr. Crowle's edition of "Pennant's London," now -in the print room of the British Museum. There is nothing to distinguish -these from the work of any clever boy, but this drawing and one in the -National Gallery, of a scene near Oxford, both probably copied from -prints, show a sense not only of light but colour. We have also seen a -copy of Boswell's "Antiquities of England and Wales," with about seventy -of the plates very cleverly coloured by him when a boy at Brentford. - -Whatever defects Turner, the barber, may have had as a father, neglect -of his son's talents was not one of them, and, though very careful for -the pence, he showed that he could make a pecuniary sacrifice when he -had a chance of furthering his son's prospects, for he refused to allow -him to become the apprentice of one architect who offered to take him -for nothing, and paid the whole of a legacy he had been left to place -him with another, and we may presume a better one. - -The information given by Mr. Thornbury about his early training, -scholastic and professional, is very meagre, inconsecutive, and -puzzling. According to him it was in 1785 that Turner, having been -previously taught reading, but not writing, by his father, went to his -first school, which was kept by Mr. John White, at New Brentford; in -1786 or 1787, by which time at least his destination for an artist's -career appears to have been settled, he was sent to "Mr. Palice, a -floral drawing-master," at an Academy in Soho, and in 1788, to a school -kept by a Mr. Coleman at Margate; at some time before 1789, to Mr. -Thomas Malton, a perspective draughtsman, who kept a school in Long -Acre, and in this year to Mr. Hardwick, the architect, and to the school -of the Royal Academy. He also went to Paul Sandby's drawing school in -St. Martin's Lane. During all, or nearly all this time, he was, -according to Mr. Thornbury, employed: 1. In making drawings at home to -sell. 2. In colouring prints for John Raphael Smith, the engraver, -printseller, and miniature painter. 3. Out sketching with Girtin. 4. -Making drawings of an evening at Dr. Monro's[7] in the Adelphi. 5. -Washing in backgrounds for Mr. Porden. If he was really employed in this -way from 1785 to 1789, and could only read and not write when he began -this extraordinary course of training, it is no wonder that he remained -illiterate all his life, or that his mind was utterly incapacitated for -taking in and assimilating knowledge in the usual way. Spending a few -months at a day school, and a few more at a "floral drawing master," -then a few more at school at Margate, making drawings for sale, -colouring prints, fruitlessly studying perspective, bandied about from -school master to drawing master, and from drawing master to -architect--such a life for a young mind from ten to fourteen years of -age is enough to spoil the finest intellectual digestion. - -One fact, however, comes clear out of all this confusion, that of -regular and ordinary schooling he had little or none, and there is no -reason to suppose that it was because of the peculiar quality of his -mind that he always spoke and wrote like a dunce. He never had a fair -chance of acquiring in his youth more than a traveller's knowledge of -his own language, and so his mind had a very small outlet through the -ordinary channels of speech. On the other hand, faculties of drawing and -composition were trained to the utmost, and this compensated him in a -measure. His mind had only one entrance, his eye, and only one exit, his -hand; but they were both exceptional, and cultivated exceptionally. - -[Illustration: CHATEAU D'AMBOISE. - -_From "Rivers of France."_] - -There was, however, much of pleasure in this life for a boy like Turner, -for though he evidently worked hard, he liked work and the work he had -to do was especially congenial to him. He met friends and encouragers on -all sides; from his father to his school-fellows. However much reason he -may have had for disappointment in later years, there was none in his -early life. He was "found out" in his childhood. Encouraged by his -father, with his drawings finding a ready sale to such men as Mr. -Henderson, Mr. Crowle, and Mr. Tomkison, with plenty of employment in no -slavish mean work for such a youngster, such as colouring prints and -putting in backgrounds to drawings, with Mr. Porden generously offering -to take him as an apprentice for nothing, with a kind friend like Dr. -Monro always willing to give him a supper and half-a-crown for sketches -of the country near his residence at Bushey, or the result of an -evening's copying of the then best attainable water colours; his life -was far more agreeable, far more tended to make him think well of the -world and of the people in it than has been usually represented, and -probably as good as he could have had for attaining early proficiency in -his art. London at that time was not a bad place for a landscape artist. -It was neither so clouded nor so sooty as it is now; there were -healthier trees in it, and more of them, a more picturesque and a purer -river, and within less than half an hour's walk from Maiden Lane there -were green fields, for north of the British Museum the country was still -open. - -But he was not entirely dependent upon his art and his employers for -enjoyment, or for forming his opinion of the human race. There were -houses at which he visited and where he was received warmly. When at -school at Margate he got an "introduction to the pleasant family of a -favourite school-fellow;" at Bristol there was Mr. Narraway,[8] a -fellmonger in Broadmead, and an old friend of his father, at whose house -he drew two of the children and his own portrait; and at the house of -Mr. William Frederick Wells, the artist, he was evidently one of the -family, as is proved by the charmingly tender reminiscences of Mrs. -Wheeler. - - "In early life my father's house was his second home, a haven of - rest from many domestic trials too sacred to touch upon. Turner - loved my father with a son's affection; and to me he was as an - elder brother. Many are the times I have gone out sketching with - him. I remember his scrambling up a tree to obtain a better view, - and then he made a coloured sketch, I handing up his colours as he - wanted them. Of course, at that time, I was quite a young girl. He - was a firm affectionate friend to the end of his life; his feelings - were seldom seen on the surface, but they were deep and enduring. - No one would have imagined, under that rather rough and cold - exterior, how very strong were the affections which lay hidden - beneath. I have more than once seen him weep bitterly, particularly - at the death of my own dear father,[9] which took him by surprise, - for he was blind to the coming event, which he dreaded. He came - immediately to my house in an agony of tears. Sobbing like a child, - he said, 'Oh, Clara, Clara! these are iron tears. I have lost the - best friend I ever had in my life.' Oh! what a different man would - Turner have been if all the good and kindly feelings of his great - mind had been called into action; but they lay dormant, and were - known to so very few. He was by nature suspicious, and no tender - hand had wiped away early prejudices, the inevitable consequence of - a defective education. Of all the light-hearted merry creatures I - ever knew, Turner was the most so; and the laughter and fun that - abounded when he was an inmate of our cottage was inconceivable, - particularly with the juvenile members of the family."--THORNBURY'S - _Life of Turner_ (1877), pp. 235, 236. - -A man who knew this lady for sixty years, and about whom so kind a heart -could have thus written, could not have been driven to a life of morbid -seclusion because the world had treated him so badly in his youth. His -home may have been, and probably was a cheerless one, and we may well -pity him on that account. The rest of our pity we had better reserve for -his want of education, and the secretive, suspicious disposition which -nature gave him, and which he allowed to master his more genial -propensities. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -YOUTH. - -1789 to 1796. - - -The only rebuff with which the young artist appears to have met was from -Tom Malton, the perspective draughtsman, who sent him back to his father -as a boy to whom it was impossible to teach geometrical perspective. As -Mr. Hamerton observes, "There is nothing in this which need surprise us -in the least. Scientific perspective is a pursuit which may amuse or -occupy a mathematician, but the stronger the artistic faculty in a -painter the less he is likely to take to it, for it exercises other -faculties than his. Besides this, he feels instinctively that he can do -very well without it." No doubt he did feel this, and the feeling very -much lessened the disappointment at being "sent back," and he did very -well without it, so well that he was appointed Professor of Perspective -to the Royal Academy without it, and not unfrequently exhibited pictures -on its walls, which showed how very much "without it" he was. - -Otherwise he met with no rebuffs in his art. We have seen that he got -plenty of employment, and have expressed an opinion that that -employment--colouring engravings, and putting in backgrounds and -foregrounds and skies for architectural drawings--was no mean employment -for a youngster. He himself, when pitied in later years for this -supposed degradation and slavery, replied, "Well, and what could be -better practice!" and it was this and more. It not only taught him to -work neatly, to lay flat washes smoothly and accurately, but it taught -him to exercise his ingenuity and artistic taste. He probably succeeded -so well, because it gave him an opportunity of displaying his artistic -faculty. Every sketch that he had thus to beautify presented an artistic -problem, how best to light and decorate and make a picture of the bare -bones of an architectural design. It gave him a sense of power and -importance thus to be the converter of topography into art; it taught -him the value of light and shade, and the decorative capacities of trees -and sky. His success gave him self-reliance. It also, and this was -perhaps a more doubtful advantage, taught him to consider drawing as a -skill in beautifying. He got the habit of treating buildings as objects -less valuable as objects of art in themselves, than for the breaking of -sunbeams, and as straight lines to contrast with the endless curves of -nature; and also the habit of using trees as he wanted them, of bending -their boughs and moulding their contours in harmony with the -poem-picture of his imagination. To this early treatment of -architectural drawings may be traced his great power of composition, and -also much of his mannerism. - -That he soon knew his power, and had his secrets of manipulation, may be -one reason for his early secretiveness about his art; for though there -is little in these early works of his to prefigure his coming greatness, -he, when a youth, attained a proficiency equal to that of the best -water-colour artists of his day, and, with his friend Girtin, soon -surpassed all except Cozens; and he could not have done this without a -sense of superiority and many private experiments; or, on the other -hand, he may, like many men, have required complete solitude to work at -all, though this was not the case in later life, as he often painted -almost the whole of his pictures on the Academy walls. At all events, -the degree of his secretiveness is extraordinary. "I knew him," says an -old architect, "when a boy, and have often paid him a guinea for putting -backgrounds to my architectural drawings, calling upon him for this -purpose at his father's shop in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. He never -would suffer me to see him draw, but concealed, as I understood, all -that he did in his bedroom." When in this bedroom one morning, the door -suddenly opened, and Mr. Britton entered.[10] In an instant Turner -covered up his drawings and ran to bar the crafty intruder's progress. -"I've come to see the drawings for the Earl."[11] "You shan't see 'em," -was the reply. "Is that the answer I am to take back to his lordship?" -"Yes; and mind that next time you come through the shop, and not up the -back way." When Mr. Newby Lowson accompanied him on a tour on the -continent he "did not show his companion a single sketch." Similar -stories could be added to show how this habit continued through his -life. - -The dates of these two early stories are not given by Mr. Thornbury, nor -the name of the "old architect," but they show that he was early -employed by a nobleman, and that he got a guinea a piece for his -backgrounds, not only "good practice," but good pay for a youth; he was, -in fact, better employed and better paid than any young artist whose -history we can remember. Nor does it seem to have been the fault of -Providence if he did not enjoy the crowning happiness of life, a friend -of suitable tastes, for Girtin was sent to him, a youth of his own age -endowed with similar gifts, and of a most sociable disposition; nor did -he want a capable mentor, for he had Dr. Monro, "his true master," as -Mr. Ruskin calls him. - -It was at Raphael Smith's that he formed an intimacy with Girtin, says -Mr. Alaric Watts.[12] "His son, Mr. Calvert Girtin, described his father -and young Turner as associated in a friendly rivalry, under the -hospitable roof and superintendence of that lover of art, Dr. Monro -(then residing in the Adelphi). Nor was Turner forgetful of the Doctor's -kindness, for on referring to that period of his career, in a -conversation with Mr. David Roberts, he said, 'There,' pointing to -Harrow, 'Girtin and I have often walked to Bushey and back, to make -drawings for good Dr. Monro, at half-a-crown apiece and a supper.'" - -If a saying quoted by T. Miller in his "Memoirs of Turner and Girtin" -may be trusted,[13] Turner may have met Gainsborough and other eminent -painters of the day at Dr. Monro's. Speaking of Dr. Monro's -conversaziones, "Old Pine, of 'Wine and Walnuts' celebrity, used to say, -'What a glorious coterie there was, when Wilson, Marlow, Gainsborough, -Paul, and Tom Sandby, Rooker, Hearne, and Cozins (_sic_) used to meet, -and you, old Jack,' turning to Varley, 'were a boy in a pinafore, with -Turner, Girtin, and Edridge as bigwigs, on whom you used to look as -something beyond the usual amount of clay.'" As Gainsborough died in -1788, when Turner was thirteen years old, and Turner was only two years -the senior of John Varley, this shows how early he began to have a -reputation. - -The acquaintance between Turner and Girtin is one of the most -interesting facts in Turner's Life. Being more than two years Turner's -senior (Girtin was born on February 18th, 1773) and having at least -equal talent as a boy, it is probable that he was "ahead" of Turner at -first, and that Turner learnt much from him. We may therefore accept as -true his reputed sayings, "Had Tom Girtin lived, I should have -starved;"[14] and (of one of Girtin's "yellow" drawings), "I never in my -whole life could make a drawing like that, I would at any time have -given one of my little fingers to have made such a one."[14] With regard -to their mutual studies and their respective talents we have information -in the studies and drawings themselves, but with regard to their human -relationship we have very little. Turner always spoke of him as "Poor -Tom," and proposed to, and possibly did, put up a tablet to his memory; -but there are no letters or anecdotes to show that what we all mean by -"friendship" ever existed between them. - -We are equally ignorant as to the amount of intimacy between him and Dr. -Monro, for though the latter did not die till 1833, there is nothing to -show that they ever met after Turner's student days were over. - -It may, however, be fairly assumed that we should have known more about -his intimacy with his Achates and his Mcenas if it had been great and -continuous. The absence of documents or rumours on the subject are all -in favour of his having kept himself to himself, of his absorption in -his art from an early date, neglecting the social advantages that were -open to him, neglecting intellectual intercourse with his artistic -peers, neglecting everything except the pursuit of his art, and the road -to wealth and fame. This self-absorption, this concentration of all his -time and power to this one but triple object, the trinity of his desire, -may have arisen from a natural cause, the strength of impelling genius -over which he had no control; it may have arisen from secretiveness, -suspicion, selfishness, and ambition, which he could have controlled but -would not; but whatever its cause, there is no doubt that it existed, -and that with every external facility for becoming a social and -cultivated being, he took the solitary path which led him to greatness -(not perhaps greater than he might have otherwise attained), but a -greatness accompanied with mental isolation and ignorance of all but -what he could gather from unaided observation, and an uncultivated -intellect. - -The education of Turner may be summed up as follows: he learnt reading -from his father, writing and probably little else at his schools at -Brentford and Margate, perspective (imperfectly) from T. Malton, -architecture (imperfectly and classical only) from Mr. Hardwick, -water-colour drawing from Dr. Monro, and perhaps some hints as to -painting in oils from Sir Joshua Reynolds, in whose house he studied for -a while. The rest of his power he cultivated himself, being much helped -by the early companionship of Girtin. Nearly all, if not all, this -education except that mentioned in the last paragraph was over in 1789, -when Sir Joshua laid down his brush, conscious of failing sight, and -young Turner became a student of the Royal Academy. - -[Illustration: NANTES. - -_From "Rivers of France."_] - -These were his principal living instructors, but he learnt more from the -dead--from Claude and Vandevelde, from Titian and Canaletto, from Cuyp -and Wilson. He learnt most of all from nature, but in the beginning of -his career his studies from art are more apparent in his works. There is -scarcely one of his predecessors or contemporaries of any character in -water-colour painting that he did not copy, whose style and method he -did not study, and in part adopt. We have within the last few years only -been able to study at ease the works of the early water-colour painters -of England, and the result of the interesting collections now at South -Kensington and the British Museum, bequests of Mr. and Mrs. Ellison, Mr. -Towshend, Mr. William Smith, and Mr. Henderson, has been on the one hand -to increase our opinion of their merit, and on the other to show how far -Turner outstripped them. We can now see how true and delicate were the -lightly-washed monochrome water scenes of Hearne; how robust the studies -of Sandby; that Daniell and Dayes could not only draw architecture well, -but could warm their buildings with sun, and surround them with space -and air; that Cozens could conceive a landscape-poem, and execute it in -delicate harmonies of green and silver; that Girtin could invest the -simplest study with the feeling of the pathos of ruin and solemnity of -evening; the first of water-colour painters to feel and paint the soft -penetrative influence of sunlight, subduing all things with its golden -charm. In looking at one of his drawings now at South Kensington, a -_View of the Wharfe_, and comparing it with the works around, one cannot -help being struck with this difference, that it is complete as far as -it goes, the realization of one thought, the perfect rendering of an -impression, harmonious to a touch. Broad and almost rough as it is, it -is yet finished in the true sense as no English work of the kind ever -was before. There are more elaborate drawings around, plenty of struggle -after effects of brighter colour, much cleverness, much skill, but -nowhere a picture so completely at peace with itself. In looking at it -we can realize what Turner meant when he said that he could never make -drawings like Girtin. Equal harmony of tone, far greater and more -splendid harmonies of colour, miracles of delicate drawing, triumphs -over the most difficult effects, dreams of ineffable loveliness, very -many things unattempted by Girtin he could achieve, but never this -simple sweet gravity, never this perfection of spiritual peace. - -But in spite of this, the great fact in comparing Turner with the other -water-colour painters of his own time--and we are speaking now of his -early works--is this, that whereas each of the best of the others is -remarkable for one or two special beauties of style or effect, he is -remarkable for all. He could reach near, if not quite, to the golden -simplicity of Girtin, to the silver sweetness of Cozens; he could draw -trees with the delicate dexterity of Edridge, and equal the beautiful -distances of Glover; he could use the poor body-colours of the day, or -the simple wash of sepia, with equal cleverness. He was not only -technically the equal, if not master of them all, but he comprehended -them, almost without exception. - -Such mastery was not attained without extraordinary diligence in the -study of pictures. At Dr. Monro's he could study all the best modern -men, including Gainsborough, Morland, Wilson, and De Loutherbourg, and -he could also study Salvator Rosa, Rembrandt, Claude, and Vandevelde. -One day looking over some prints with Mr. Trimmer,[15] he took up a -Vandevelde and said, "That made me a painter." And Dayes (Girtin's -master) wrote in 1804:--"The way he acquired his professional powers was -by borrowing where he could a drawing or a picture to copy from, or _by -making a sketch of any one in the Exhibition[16] early in the morning, -and finishing it at home_." The character of his early works is -sufficient of itself to prove the extent of his study of pictures, and -we are inclined to think that most of his early practice was from works -of art, and not from nature. The spirit of rivalry commenced in him very -early; it was the only test of his powers, and he seems to have pitted -himself in the beginning of his career against all his contemporaries, -from Mr. Henderson to Girtin, and many of the old masters, and never to -have entirely relinquished the habit. When we think of the number of -years he spent in doing little but topographical drawings, a castle -here, a town there, an abbey there, with appropriate figures in the -foreground, using only sober browns and blues for colours, his progress -seems to have been very slow; but when we see most of the artists of his -time doing exactly the same, and that the old landscape painters whom he -principally studied were almost as limited in the colours they employed, -especially in their drawings, we do not see how he could well have -progressed more quickly; and when we further consider the enormous -distance which he travelled--from the very bottom to the very height of -his art--that he should have accomplished it all in one short life -appears miraculous. The milestones of his journey are not shown plainly -in his early work, that is all. - -That there was much conscious restraint on his part in the use of -colours, that he of wise purpose devoted himself to perfection of his -technical power before he endeavoured to show his strength to the world, -we see no reason to believe. He could not well have done otherwise, and -for such an original mind one marvels to observe how throughout his -career he was led in the chains of circumstance. The poet-painter, the -dumb-poet, as he has well been called, shows little eccentricity of -genius in his youth. There was the strong inclination to draw, but no -strong inclination to draw anything in particular, or anything very -beautiful. On the contrary, he drew the most uninteresting and prosaic -of things, copied bad topographical prints and ugly buildings. When it -was proposed to make him an architect he did not rebel; when it was -afterwards proposed to make him a portrait-painter he did not murmur. It -was Mr. Hardwick, not himself, that insisted on his going to the Royal -Academy. His first essay in oils was due to another's instigation. -Whatever work came to him, he did; that which he could do best, that -which he had special genius for, the painting of pure landscape, he -scarcely attempted at all for years. Almost every artist of that day -went about England drawing abbeys, seats, and castles for topographical -works. What others did, he did. What others did not do, he did not do. -No doubt it was the only profitable employment he could get, and he very -properly took it, and worked hard at it; he was borne along the stream -of circumstance as everybody else is, but he, unlike most men of strong -genius, seems never to have attempted to stem its tide, or get out of -its way. His genius was a growth to which every event and accident of -his life added its contribution of nourishment. Though stirred with -unusual power, he was probably almost as unconscious as to what it -tended as a seed in the ground; he had a dim perception of a light -towards which he was growing; he was conscious that he put forth leaves, -and that he should some day flower, but when, and with what special -bloom he was destined to surprise the world, we doubt if he had any -prophetic glimpse. His development was extraordinary, and could only -have been produced by special careful training, but this training was -mainly due to circumstances over which he had no control. Nature came to -his assistance in a thousand different ways, and in nothing more than -giving him a quiet temperament, like that of Coleridge's child, "that -always finds, and never seeks." He was not fastidious, except with -regard to his own work, and about that, more as to the arrangement and -finish of it than the subject. He had an excellent constitution, early -inured to rough it, and his comforts were very simple and easily -obtained. He was not particular, even about his materials and tools; any -scrap of paper would do for a sketch on an emergency. He was always able -to work, and to work swiftly and well. No fidgeting about for hours and -days because he was not in the mood; no sacrifice of sketch after sketch -because they did not please him; none of that nervous restlessness which -so often attends imaginative workers; and his work was imaginative from -the first--if not in conception, in execution. Solitude seems to have -been the only necessary condition for the free exercise of his powers, -which were as happily employed in "making a picture" of one thing as of -another, and when he wanted something to put in it to get it "right," -he never had much trouble in finding it. He said, "If when out sketching -you felt a loss, you have only to turn round, or walk a few paces -further, and you had what you wanted before you." His physical powers -were also great, and his mind was active in receiving impressions. Mr. -Lovell Reeve, as quoted by Mr. Alaric Watts, says:--"His religious study -of nature was such that he would walk through portions of England, -twenty to twenty-five miles a day, with his little modicum of baggage at -the end of a stick, sketching rapidly on his way all striking pieces of -composition, and marking effects with a power that daguerreotyped them -in his mind. There were few moving phenomena in clouds and shadows that -he did not fix indelibly in his memory, though he might not call them -into requisition for years afterwards." He was not tied to any -particular method, or bound to any particular habit; when he found that -his way of sketching was too minute and slow to enable him to make his -drawings pay their expenses, he changed his style to a broader, swifter -one. So, without going quite to the length of Mr. Hamerton, who appears -to think that everything in Turner's youth (including ugliness and bandy -legs) happened for the best in the best of possible worlds, we may -safely affirm that he could scarcely have been gifted with a temperament -better suited for steady progress, or one which was more calculated to -make him happy, for it enabled him to exercise his body and mind at the -same time, to earn his living and to lay up stores of pictorial beauty -in his memory, to do whatever task was set him, and yet get artistic -pleasure out of even the most commonplace study by embellishing it with -his imagination. - -In 1789 he became a student of the Royal Academy, and in the year after -he exhibited a _View of the Archbishop's Palace at Lambeth_. In 1791, 2, -and 3 he exhibited several topographical drawings, but down to this time -he seems to have made no sketching tours of any length. He drew in the -neighbourhood of London, and his journeys to stay with friends at -Margate and Bristol will account for his drawings of Malmesbury, -Canterbury, and Bristol. But about 1792 he received a commission from -Mr. J. Walker, the engraver (who also afterwards employed Girtin), to -make drawings for his "Copper-plate Magazine." This was the beginning of -the long series of engravings from his works, and it may have been one -of the reasons which decided him to set up a studio for himself, which -he did in Hand Court, Maiden Lane, close to his father, where he -remained till he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1800, -when he removed to 64, Harley Street. A year or so after his employment -by Walker he got similar commissions from Mr. Harrison for his "Pocket -Magazine." These commissions sent him on his travels over England -referred to by Mr. Lovell Reeve. The copper-plates of the sketches for -Walker, including some after Girtin, were found about sixty years -afterwards by Mr. T. Miller, who republished them in 1854, in a volume -called "Turner and Girtin's Picturesque Views, sixty years since." These -drawings mark his first tour to Wales, on which he set forth on a pony -lent by Mr. Narraway. The first public results of this tour were the -drawing of _Chepstow_ in "Walker's Magazine" for November, 1794, and -three drawings in the Royal Academy for that year. By the next year's -engravings and pictures we trace him to "Nottingham," "Bridgnorth," -"Matlock," "Birmingham," "Cambridge," "Lincoln," "Wrexham," -"Peterborough," and "Shrewsbury," and by those of 1796 and 1797 to -"Chester," "Neath," "Tunbridge," "Bath," "Staines," "Wallingford," -"Windsor," "Ely," "Flint," "Hampton Court, Herefordshire," "Salisbury," -"Wolverhampton," "Llandilo," "The Isle of Wight," "Llandaff," "Waltham," -and "Ewenny (Glamorgan)," not including drawings of places he had been -to before. - -His furthest point north was Lincoln, his farthest west (in England) -Bristol. The only parts in which he reached the coast were in Wales and -the Isle of Wight. Lancashire and the Lakes, Yorkshire and its -waterfalls, were yet to come, and nearly all coast scenery, except that -of Kent. - -The drawings for the Magazines were not remarkable for any poetry or -originality of treatment perceptible in the engravings, the cathedrals -being generally taken from an unpicturesque point of view, more with the -object of showing their length and size than their beauty, to which he -appears to have been somewhat insensible always; they show a great love -of bridges and anglers--there is scarcely one without a bridge, and some -have two; a desire to tell as much about the place as possible by the -introduction of figures; they show his habit of taking his scenes from a -distance, generally from very high ground, and his delight in putting as -much in a small space as possible, and his power of drawing masses of -houses, as in the _Birmingham_ and the _Chester_. - -The result of these tours may be said to have been the perfection of his -technical skill, the partial displacement of traditional notions of -composition, and the storing of his memory with infinite effects of -nature. It was as good and thorough discipline in the study of nature, -as his former life had been in the study of art, and though his visit to -Yorkshire in the next year (1797) seemed necessary to bring thoroughly -to the surface all the knowledge and power he had acquired, it was not -without present fruit. Rather of necessity than choice, we may observe, -he confined his powers mainly to the drawing of views of places supposed -to be of interest to the subscribers of the Magazines, but his -individual inclinations in the choice of subject, and his tendency to -purer landscape and sea-view, showed themselves now and then. First in -his drawing of _The Pantheon, the Morning after the Fire_, exhibited in -1792; next in 1793, in his _View on the River Avon, near St. Vincent's -Rocks, Bristol_, and the _Rising Squall, Hot Wells_,[17] from the same -place; then in 1794, _Second Fall of the River Monach, Devil's Bridge_; -in 1795, _View near the Devil's Bridge, Cardiganshire, with the River -Ryddol_; in 1796, _Fishermen at Sea_; and in 1797, _Fishermen coming -Ashore at Sunset, previous to a Gale_, and _Moonlight: a study in -Milbank_,[18] now in the National Gallery. - -That his genius was perceptible even in these early days is evident from -the notice taken in a contemporary review of his drawings in 1794, when -he was nineteen. - - "388. _Christchurch Gate, Canterbury._ W. Turner. This deserving - picture, with Nos. 333 and 336, are amongst the best in the present - exhibition. They are the productions of a very young artist, and - give strong indications of first-rate ability; the character of - Gothic architecture is most happily preserved, and its profusion of - minute parts massed with judgment and tinctured with truth and - fidelity. This young artist should beware of contemporary - imitations. His present effort evinces an eye for nature, which - should scorn to look to any other source." - -Again in 1796, the "Companion to the Exhibition," with regard to his -first sea-piece contains this paradoxical sentence, attempting to -express his peculiar power of giving a distinct impression of -ill-defined objects, which was apparently evident even in this early -work. - - "Colouring natural, figures masterly, not too distinct--obscure - perception of the objects distinctly seen--through the obscurity of - the night--partially illumined." - -Again in 1797, we have this testimony as to the extraordinary (for that -time) character of his work, from an entry in the diary of Thomas -Greene, of Ipswich, about the _Fishermen_ of 1797. - - "June 2, 1797. Visited the Royal Academy Exhibition. Particularly - struck with a sea-view by Turner; fishing vessels coming in, with a - heavy swell, in apprehension of tempest gathering in the distance, - and casting, as it advances, a night of shade, while a parting glow - is spread with fine effect upon the shore. The whole composition - bold in design and masterly in execution. I am entirely - unacquainted with the artist; but if he proceeds as he has begun, - he cannot fail to become the first in his department." - -Here, then, before Turner's visit to Yorkshire, we have evidence that -not only was the superiority of his work apparent, but that one or two -of the special qualities which were to mark it in the future were -already perceived, and publicly praised. - -After looking carefully at all the ascertainable facts of Turner's -youth, we can only come to the conclusion that it was not the fault of -nature or mankind that he grew into a solitary and disappointed man. - -Secretiveness on his own part and want of trust in his fellow-creatures -seem to have been bred in him, and to have resisted all the many proofs -which the friends of his youth, and we may say of his life, afforded, -that there were kind and unselfish persons in the world whom he could -trust, and who would trust him. There is no proof that he ever had -confidential relations with any human being, not even Girtin. That he -should have willingly cut himself adrift from human fellowship we are -loath to believe, in spite of the many facts which seem to support it. -It seems more natural, and on the whole (sad as even this is) more -pleasant, to believe that he met with a severe blow to his confidence; -that, though naturally suspicious, the many kindnesses he received were -not without a gracious effect, but that his budding trust was killed by -a sudden unexpected frost. For these reasons we are inclined to believe -in the story of his early love; although it, as told by Mr. Thornbury, -is not without inconsistencies. - -Turner is said to have plighted vows with the sister of his school -friend at Margate; he left on a tour, giving her his portrait, the -letters between them were intercepted, and after waiting two years she -accepted another. When he reappeared she was on the eve of her marriage, -and thinking her honour involved, refused to return to her old love. - -Such in short is the story which we wish to believe, and as it came to -Mr. Thornbury from one who heard it from relatives of the lady, to whom -she told it, there is probably some truth in it. It is, however, almost -impossible to believe that Turner, whose tours never extended to two -years, and whose power of locomotion was extraordinary, should allow -that time to elapse without going to see one whom he really loved. If -he did not get any letters he would have been desperate; if he did get -letters they would have shown him that she had not received his, which -would have made him, if possible, more desperate still. As the name of -the lady is not given, it is next to impossible to find out the truth. -Our faith, however, as a balance of probability, still remains that -Turner was jilted, and that the effect of it was to confirm for ever his -want of confidence in his fellow-creatures. - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -YORKSHIRE AND THE YOUNG ACADEMICIAN. - -1797 TO 1807. - - -From the facts of the foregoing chapter it may be fairly presumed that -although Turner's election as Associate in 1799 followed quickly after -his fine display of pictures from the northern counties in 1798, he was -before this a marked man, whose superiority over all then living -landscape painters was visible to critics and lovers of art, and could -not have been disguised from the eyes of the artists of the Royal -Academy. It did not require a genius like that of Turner to distance -competitors on the Academy walls in those days. England was almost at -its lowest point both in literature and art. The great men of the -earlier part of the eighteenth century, Pope, Thomson, Gray, Collins, -Swift, Fielding, Sterne and Richardson, had long been dead, and of the -later brilliant, but small circle of artists and men of letters of which -Dr. Johnson was the centre (Goldsmith and Burke, Garrick and Reynolds, -Hume and Gibbon), Reynolds only was left, and he was moribund. Of other -artists with any title to fame there was none left but De Loutherbourg -and Morland; Hogarth had died in 1764, Wilson in 1782, Gainsborough in -1788. The new generation of men of genius were born; some were growing -up, some in their cradles. A few had already shown signs. Wordsworth and -Coleridge had just put forth their "Lyrical Ballads" at Bristol, Burns -was famous in Scotland, Charles Lamb had written "Rosamund Gray," but -Scott the "Great Unknown," was as yet "unknown" only, though five years -older than Turner; Byron had not gone to Harrow, and the united ages of -Keats and Shelley did not amount to ten years; the only living poets of -deserved repute were Cowper and Crabbe. Della Crusca in poetry, and West -in art, were the bright particular stars of this gloomy period. The -landscape painters who were Academicians were such men as Sir William -Beechey, Sir Francis Bourgeois, Garvey, Farington, and Paul Sandby, and -among the Associates, Turner had no more important rival than Philip -Reinagle. Girtin and De Loutherbourg alone of all the then exhibitors -were anything like a match for him, and Girtin spoilt (till 1801) any -chance he might otherwise have had of Academic honours by not exhibiting -pictures in oil; he died in 1802, leaving Turner undisputed master of -the field. It is not greatly therefore to be wondered at that Turner was -elected Associate in 1799, and a full Academician in 1802. It was, -however, much to the credit of the Academy that they recognized his -talent so soon and welcomed him as an honour to their body, instead of -keeping him out from jealous motives. Turner never forgot what he owed -to the Academy, and whether it taught him nothing, as Mr. Ruskin says, -or a great deal, as Mr. Hamerton thinks, does not much matter--it taught -him all it knew, and gave him ungrudgingly every honour in its gift. But -its claims on his gratitude did not stop here, for it was his school in -more than one branch of learning; from its catalogues he derived the -subjects of most of his pictures, they directed him to the poems which -set flame to his imagination, and helped (unfortunately), with their -queer spelling and grammar and truncated quotations, to form what -literary style he had; but the greatest boon which the Academy afforded -was the opportunity of fame, a field for that ambition which was one of -the ruling powers of his nature. - -But his tour in the North in 1797 was before his days of Academic -rivalries and glories. He was only two-and-twenty, and seems to have -been actuated by no motive but to paint as well and truly as he could -the beautiful scenery through which he passed. The effect upon him of -the fells and vales of Yorkshire and Cumberland seems to have been much -the same as that of Scotland upon Landseer; it braced all his powers, -developed manhood of art, turned him from a toilsome student into a -triumphant master. Mr. Ruskin writes more eloquently than truly about -this first visit. "For the first time the silence of nature around him, -her freedom sealed to him, her glory opened to him. Peace at last, and -freedom at last, and loveliness at last; it is here then, among the -deserted vales--not among men; those pale, poverty-struck, or cruel -faces--that multitudinous marred humanity--are not the only things which -God has made." These are fine words, but what a picture, if true! Can -this young man who has travelled through all these many counties in -England and Wales, which we have already enumerated, never have known -the "silence of nature," or "freedom," or "peace," or "loveliness?" Can -his experience of mankind, of Dr. Monro, of Girtin, of Mr. Hardwick, of -Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Mr. Henderson, have left upon him such an -impression of the failure of God's handiwork in making men, that a -mountain seems to him in comparison as a revelation of unexpected -success? If Turner had been cooped in a garret of the foulest alley in -London since his birth, and had only escaped now and then from the -hardest drudgery to read the works of Mr. Carlyle, this picture might be -near the truth, but we doubt even then if it could escape the charge of -being over-coloured. - -Whether Turner had any special object in this journey to the North in -1797 is not clear, but it is at least probable that Girtin's success at -the Exhibition of this year with his drawings from Yorkshire and -Scotland may have influenced him, and that he may have already received -a commission from Dr. Whitaker to make drawings for the "Parish of -Whalley," published three years afterwards. He must at all events have -had much leisure from other employment in order to produce the important -pictures in oil and water-colour which he exhibited the next year. Of -these we only know _Morning on the Coniston Fells_ and _Buttermere -Lake_, now in the National Gallery. Another, whether water or oils we do -not know, was _Norham Castle on the Tweed--Summer's Morn_, the first of -several pictures of the same subject, which was a favourite of his for a -good reason. Many years after (probably about 1824 or 1825), when making -sketches for "Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of -Scotland, with descriptive illustrations by Sir Walter Scott, 1826," he -took off his hat to Norham Castle, and Cadell the publisher, who was -with him, expressed surprise. "Oh," was the reply, "I made a drawing or -painting of Norham several years since. It took; and from that day to -this I have had as much to do as my hands could execute." If the Castle -was treated in the same way in this first as in the subsequent pictures -of Norham, with the hill and ruin in the middle distance set against a -brightly illumined sky, the effect was sufficiently new and striking to -make the reputation of any painter in those days. It was an effect which -as far as we know had never been attempted before, this casting of the -whole shadow of hill and castle straight at the spectator, so that, in -spite of the bright reflections in the watery foreground, he seems to be -within it, and to see through the soft shadowy air, the solemn bulk of -mound and ruin, with their outlines blurred with light, grand and -indistinct against the burning sky. - -[Illustration: NORHAM CASTLE, ON THE TWEED.] - -The pictures of 1797-99 confirmed beyond any doubt that a great artist -had arisen, who was not only a painter but a poet--a poet, not so much -of the pathos of ruin, though so many of his pictures had ruins in them, -nor of the chequered fate of mankind, though there is something of the -"Fallacies of Hope" indicated in the quotations to his pictures--as of -the mystery and beauty of light, of the power of nature, her -inexhaustible variety and energy, her infinite complexity and fulness. -No one can look upon his splendid drawing of _Warkworth Castle_, -exhibited in 1799, and now at South Kensington, with its rich glow of -sunset and transparent shadow, and its wonderful masses of clouds, -without feeling that such work as this was a revelation in those days. -Sparing and not very pleasant in colour, it is yet in this respect a -great advance upon the former work of others and of his own; such colour -as there is penetrates the shade and is complete in harmony and tone, -while the sky has no blank space and is part of the picture, the -vivifying uniting power of the composition, with more interest and -feeling in one roll of its truly-studied masses of cloud-form than could -be found in the whole of any sky of his contemporaries. - -Altogether it is difficult to over-estimate the influence of this first -journey to the North upon Turner's mind and art, although he had almost -perfected his skill and shown unmistakable signs of genius before. But -these tours had other gifts not less important, though in a different -way, for his introductions to Dr. Whitaker, the local historian, to Mr. -Basire, the engraver, to Mr. Fawkes of Farnley, to Lord Harewood, and to -Sir John Leicester (afterwards (1826) Lord de Tabley), through Mr. -Lister-Parker of Browsholme Hall, his guardian, may all be said to have -resulted from this tour. - -Dr. Whitaker was the vicar of the parish of Whalley, and was writing a -book upon it in the manner of those days, giving descriptions of the -local antiquities, the churches, the ruins, the crosses, and an account -of the county families, with their pedigrees and engravings of their -ancestral seats. Not only each county, but almost every parish had such -a historian in those days, and although the spirit of these works is -archaeological rather than artistic, engaged with genealogy rather than -history, and with pride of family and county rather than of the people -and nation, they did a great deal of valuable work. Dr. Whitaker's work -is no exception to this rule, and he was in many ways a typical writer -of the kind, for he himself, though he "chose" the Church as his -profession, was a man of property and county importance. Valuable as -artists were in those days to the writers of these works, they were yet -considered of very secondary rank. They were indeed not called "artists" -but "draftsmen," and notwithstanding that Dr. Whitaker recognized -Turner's genius, he did not think it necessary in this "Parish of -Whalley" to mention in the preface the existence of such a person, -although the names of all the gentlemen of the county who had furnished -him with drawings or information are carefully acknowledged therein; but -nothing will show better the relations between the two men than an -extract from a letter from the reverend bookmaker to one of his county -friends, Mr. Wilson, of Clitheroe, dated Feb. 8th, 1800. - - "I have just had a ludicrous dispute to settle between Mr. Townley" - (Charles Townley, Esq. of Townley), "myself and Turner, the - draftsman. Mr. Townley it seems has found out an old and very bad - painting of Gawthorpe at Mr. Shuttleworth's house in London, as it - stood in the last century, with all its contemporary accompaniments - of clipped yews, parterres, &c.: this he insisted would be more - characteristic than Turner's own sketch, which he desired him to - lay aside, and copy the other. Turner, abhorring the landscape and - contemning the execution of it, refused to comply, and wrote to me - very tragically on the subject. Next arrived a letter from Mr. - Townley, recommending it to me to allow Turner to take his own way, - but while he wrote, his mind (which is not unfrequent) veered - about, and he concluded with desiring me to urge Turner to the - performance of his requisition, as from myself. I have, however, - attempted something of a compromise, which I fear will not succeed, - as Turner has all the irritability of youthful genius."[19] - -The "compromise" was handing over the task of drawing from the -objectionable picture to Mr. J. Basire the engraver. - -We should like to see Turner's "tragical" letter, and also his rejected -drawing; we should also like to have seen Dr. Whitaker's face if he had -been told that not many years after a book would have been published of -drawings by Turner, the draftsman, with "descriptions by the Rev. Dr. -Whitaker." - -Of Mr. Fawkes, of whose hall at Farnley Turner made a drawing for the -"Parish of Whalley," but with whom he is said by Thornbury to have -become acquainted about 1802, it may be said that he was one of Turner's -longest and staunchest friends. The number of drawings (still at -Farnley) which he made when visiting Mr. Fawkes between 1803 and 1820 -(including as they do studies of birds shot while he was there, of the -outhouses, porches, and gateways on the property, of the old places in -the vicinity, and of the rooms in Farnley Hall) attest the frequency of -his visits and his affection for the place and its occupants, while the -splendid series of drawings in England, Switzerland, Italy, and on the -Rhine, and the few precious oil pictures purchased by Mr. Fawkes, show -him to have been not only a true friend, but a warm and sympathizing -admirer of his genius. He indeed was a friend such as few are permitted -to know--one of a goodly number who in Turner's youth and manhood should -have made the world to him specially pleasant and sociable, frank and -healthy. If he could not or would not have it so, it was not from -insensibility, for his feeling was deep and his heart was sound. "He -could not make up his mind to visit Farnley after his old friend's -death," and he could not speak of the shore of the Wharfe (on which -Farnley Hall looks down) "but his voice faltered." Dayes wrote of him in -1804, "This man must be loved for his works, for his person is not -striking, nor his conversation brilliant." At Farnley, as at Mr. Wells' -cottage, Turner was made at home, but that he did not escape -good-humoured ridicule even at Farnley is plain from a caricature by Mr. -Fawkes, "which is thought by old friends to be very like. It shows us a -little Jewish-nosed man in an ill-cut brown tail coat, striped -waistcoat, and enormous frilled shirt, with feet and hands notably -small, sketching on a small piece of paper, held down almost level with -his waist."[20] It is evident that at this time, in spite of his clear -little blue eyes, and his small hands and feet, his appearance was not -one likely to prepossess women, or to inspire consideration among men, -and that one of the ills from which his painting room afforded a refuge -may have often been a wounded vanity. There can be nothing more -constantly galling to a sensitive man of genius than to feel that his -appearance does not inspire the respect he feels due to him. If he has -eloquence sufficient to command attention, this will not matter so much; -but if he has not even that (and Turner had not), his natural refuge is -solitude, his one absorbing occupation is his art, his only worldly -ambition is to show what is in him, and to compel respect to his genius -through his works. - -From the time that Turner became an Associate his struggles, if he can -ever be said to have had any, were over, and many changes took place in -his life and art. He ceased almost entirely from making topographical -drawings for the engravers, limiting his efforts to a heading to the -"Oxford Almanack," and a few drawings for "Britannia Depicta," "Mawman's -Tour," and some other books, until the commencement of the "Southern -Coast" in 1814. He had in effect emancipated himself from "hackwork," -and could turn his attention to more congenial and ambitious labour. The -"draftsman" had become the artist, and he showed the improvement in his -position by moving from Hand Court, Maiden Lane, to 64, Harley Street. - -In future his exhibited pictures show very few "castles" or "abbeys," -unless they are the seats of his distinguished patrons, Mr. Beckford of -Fonthill (for whom in 1799 he painted several views of that ill-fated -tower, which might have formed a subject for a canto of Turner's -"Fallacies of Hope"), Sir J. L. Leicester, and others. His other -castles, Carnarvon, 1800, Pembroke, 1801 and 1806, St. Donat's, 1801, -and Kilchurn, 1802, were all probably compositions in which local -fidelity was cared for little in comparison with effects of light and -pictorial beauty. How completely he disregarded local fact in the case -of Kilchurn has been very completely shown by Mr. Hamerton, and Mr. -Ruskin says, "Observe generally, Turner never, after this time, 1800, -drew from nature without _composing_. His lightest pencil sketch was the -plan of a picture, his completest study on the spot a part of one." - -Of this period, 1800-1810, Mr. Ruskin says, "His manner is stern, -reserved, quiet, grave in colour, forceful in hand. His mind tranquil; -fixed in physical study, on mountain subject; in moral study, on the -Mythology of Homer, and the Law of the Old Testament." We wish he had -given his reasons for this last astonishing statement. For those who -only know the working of Turner's mind through his pictures, it is -bewildering in the extreme, for in these there is no trace that he ever -at any time studied the Law of the Old Testament, and the only classical -pictures of this period, including the plates in the "Liber," were -_Jason_ and _Narcissus and Echo_. If we include the pictures of 1811, we -get one Homeric subject, _Chryses_, but that has nothing to do with -mythology. - -The evidence of Turner's pictures shows little tranquillity of mind -during this period, but, on the contrary, all the restlessness of -unsatisfied ambition. As he had already pitted himself against, and -beaten all the water-colourists, he now commenced a course of rivalry -against all the oil painters past and present, who came anywhere within -the reach of his art, which he endeavoured to extend far beyond -landscape limits. - -His first tilt was probably against De Loutherbourg in 1799 with his -_Battle of the Nile, at ten o'clock, when the l'Orient blew up, from the -station of the gunboats between the battery and Castle of Aboukir_; and -his _Fifth Plague of Egypt_ (1800), his _Army of the Medes destroyed in -the Desert by a Whirlwind_, and _The Tenth plague of gypt_ (1802), -probably owed more to De Loutherbourg's grand but theatrical pictures -and _Eidophusicon_, than to any meditation on the "Law of the Old -Testament."[21] Of Wilson, though dead, and neglected even when alive, -he continued in active rivalry as late as 1822, when he proposed to Mr. -J. Robinson, of the firm of Hurst and Robinson, to have four of his -pictures (three of which were to be painted expressly for the venture) -engraved in rivalry with Wilson and Woollett. "Whether we can in the -present day," he writes, "contend with such powerful antagonists as -Wilson and Woollett would be at least tried by size, security against -risk, and some remuneration for the time of painting. The pictures of -ultimate sale I shall be content with; to succeed would perhaps form -another epoch in the English school; and if we fall, we fall by -contending with giant strength." It is difficult to make out the meaning -of even this short extract from this illiterate composition, but it is -quite plain that the open rivalry with Wilson, which commenced about -1800, had not ceased in 1822. - -But he did not confine his rivalries to English painters, or to the -field of landscape art. His long rivalry with Claude commenced with the -"Liber Studiorum" in 1807, that with Vandevelde earlier. His famous -_Shipwreck_ (painted 1805) now in the National Gallery, his perhaps -finer _Wreck of the Minotaur_, painted for Lord Yarborough, and his -_Fishing Boats in a Squall_, painted for the Marquis of Stafford, and -now in the Ellesmere Gallery, besides a fine sea-piece, painted for the -Earl of Egremont, are examples of the latter. The Ellesmere picture was -painted in direct rivalry with one of Vandevelde's on the same subject, -and both hang together in the Ellesmere Gallery. Of them John Burnet -wrote:-- - - "The figures (in the Vandevelde) are made out and coloured without - reference to the situation they are in; the sea is beautifully - painted, and the foamy tops of the waves blown off by the wind with - great observation of nature; nevertheless, the whole work looks - little and defined compared with its great competitor. Turner's - boat is advancing towards the spectator with all sails set, and a - similarity in both pictures is that the sails are prevented from - being too cutting and harsh from their melting into and being - softened by other sails of a similar shape and colour. A small boat - is brought in contact in Turner's, stowing away fish, which forms - the principal light, if it may be so called, for there is no strong - light in the picture; the lights are of a subdued grey tone even in - the yeasty waves; the shape of the mass of light on the water is - broad, and of a beautiful form; in Vandervelde's (_sic_) picture it - is spotty and devoid of union with the vessel. In Turner we see an - obscure outlined form in everything, for though the warm tints of - the masses of clouds serve to break down and diffuse the colour of - the sails, their form is disturbed by the handling of his brush. In - comparing the two pictures as works of art, Vandervelde's must - have the preference as far as priority of composition is concerned; - but Turner has had the boldness to tell the same story, clothing it - with all the grandeur and sublimity of natural representation. The - light and shade is very excellent; the mass of dark sky, brought in - contact with the sail of the advancing boat, is broad in the - extreme." - -[Illustration: THE SHIPWRECK.] - -Of his other rivalries at this period, those with the Poussins and -Titian are the most notable. The one produced the famous, and, in spite -of its poorness of colour and conventionality, the magnificent, _Goddess -of Discord choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of -Hesperides_, exhibited at the British Institution in 1806, and now in -the National Gallery; the other, the _Venus and Adonis_, still more -wonderful by reason of the beauty of its colour, its composition, and -the audacity of the attempt. This was bought by Mr. Munro of Novar, and -was lately sold at Christie's, on the dispersion of the Novar -collection, for 1,942. It is, as far as we know, the only picture in -which he attempted with success to draw the human form on a large scale, -and is certainly one of the best efforts of the English school to rival -the "old masters;" the figures, the dogs, and the glorious vine-clad -bower in which they are set are all worthy of the subject, and make a -picture which reminds one of Titian, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Etty in -about equal proportions. - -It is strange that the great sea-pieces we have mentioned were not -exhibited (except perhaps that at Petworth), but the occupation of his -time by these magnificent works of emulation accounts for his doing so -little for the engravers in these years, for they were all probably, -except the _Wreck of the Minotaur_, painted before 1807, when he turned -his attention to his greatest, and perhaps most successful work of the -kind, the "Liber Studiorum." And here we may remark, that emulation with -Turner, though it may have been a mark of jealousy, was always a token -of respect. Feelings crossed each other in Turner's mind as colours did -in his works; it is often difficult to know whether his feeling is to be -called noble or base, and the same complexity may be noticed in his -"artistic" motives. When imitating other masters he brought his -knowledge of nature to bear strongly on his work to make it more -natural; when painting a natural scene, he employed all his traditional -study to make it more "artistic." - -By this time, however, he had learnt nearly all that was to be learnt -from art, ancient or modern, in the landscape way, but it was different -with nature. That was a book which he could not exhaust, though he was -never tired of turning over fresh pages. It was almost his only book, -and he began a new chapter about 1801 or 1802, when he made his first -tour on the Continent. Previous to this he must have paid a visit to -Scotland, for the Exhibition of 1802 contained three Scotch views, one -of which was the _Kilchurn_ already mentioned. In 1803 he exhibited no -less than six foreign subjects, of which one was the _Calais Pier_, now -in the National Gallery, another the _Festival upon the opening of the -Vintage of Macon_, in the possession of Lord Yarborough; the others were -_Bonneville, Savoy, with Mont Blanc_; _Chateaux de Michael, Bonneville, -Savoy_; _St. Hugh denouncing vengeance on the Shepherd of Courmayeur in -the Valley of d'Aoust_; and _Glacier and Source of the Arvron going up -to the Mer de Glace, in the Valley of the Chamouni_.[22] After this -burst of foreign subjects he did not exhibit another scene from abroad -for twelve years, except the _Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen_ (1806), -and content this time with simpler, safer, English, a _View of the -Castle of St. Michael, near Bonneville, Savoy_ (1812). During the next -few years the most important picture, and one of the most beautiful he -ever painted, was the famous _Sun Rising through vapour: Fishermen -cleaning and selling Fish_, exchanged with Sir J. F. Leicester for _The -Shipwreck_, and now in the National Gallery, together with _The -Shipwreck_ and _Spithead: Boat's Crew recovering an Anchor_, another -fine picture of the Vandevelde class. - -In all these years, during which he kept up this constant rivalry with -so many artists, living and dead--and we have not exhausted the list of -them--he was continuing his unresting severe study of nature. For many -more years this was to continue, this double artistic life, the strife -for fame by grand pictures, of which emulation was the motive, the -patient development of his knowledge and power by the close study of -nature. Few who watched his pictures from year to year could have -guessed what a store of beautiful studies of the Alps, about Chamouni, -Grenoble, and the Grande Chartreuse he had lying in his portfolios; few -could imagine that with materials for landscapes of a truthfulness and -an original power never before known, he should prefer to paint pictures -in rivalry with the fames of dead men. Possibly he thought that it was -the nearest way to fame to show the public that he could beat -Vandevelde, Poussin, and the rest of them on their own ground; possibly -he may have been diffident of his power to dispense with their aid in -composition. However this may have been, he chose to ground his fame so. -Even in his "Liber," he in three years gave only three foreign subjects -out of twenty plates: _Basle_, _Mount St. Gothard_, and the _Lake of -Thun_. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -THE LIBER STUDIORUM--HIS POETRY AND DRAGONS. - - -In 1807 Turner commenced his most serious rivalry, "The Liber -Studiorum," a rivalry which not only exceeded in force but differed in -quality from his others. Previously he had pitted his skill only against -that of the artist rivalled, adopting the style of his rival, but in -these engravings he pitted not only his skill, but also his style and -range of art against Claude's. There are indeed only a few of the -"Liber" prints which are in Claude's style, and most of the best are in -his own. Lovely as are _Woman Playing Tambourine_, and _Hindoo -Devotions_, they seem to us far lower in value than _Mount St. Gothard_ -and _Hind Head Hill_. There is the usual mixture of feeling in the -motives with which Turner undertook this work, the same dependence on -others for the starting impulse which we see throughout his art-life, -the same originality, industry, and confusion of thought in carrying out -his design. The idea of the "Liber" did not originate with him, but with -his friend Mr. W. F. Wells. The idea was noble in so far as it attempted -to extend the bounds of landscape art beyond previous limits, to break -down the Claude worship which blinded the eyes of the public to the -merit that existed in contemporary work, and prevented them, and artists -also, from looking to nature as the source of landscape art. It is -scarcely too much to say that in those days Claude stood between nature -and the artist, and that he was as much the standard of landscape art as -Pheidias of sculpture. To try to clear away this barrier of progress, as -Hogarth had striven years before to abolish the "black masters," was no -ignoble effort, and it was done in a nobler spirit than that of Hogarth, -for he did not attempt to depreciate his rival. Yet the nobility of the -attempt was not unmixed, for if he did not disparage Claude, he -attempted to make himself famous at Claude's expense. He did not indeed -say, as Hogarth would have done, "Claude is bad, I am good;" but he -said, "Claude is good, but I am better." His own experience even from -very early days should have told him that, despite the cant of -connoisseurs and the strength of old traditions, no purely original work -of his had passed unnoticed, and that the truest and noblest way of -educating the public taste was by following the bent of his original -genius, and leaving the public to draw their own comparisons. - -[Illustration: THE DEVIL'S BRIDGE. - -_From the "Liber Studiorum."_] - -Mr. Wells's daughter states that not only did the "Liber Studiorum" -entirely owe its existence to her father's persuasion, but the divisions -into "Pastoral," "Elegant Pastoral," "Marine," &c., were also suggested -by him. Turner determined to print and publish and sell the "Liber" -himself, but to employ an engraver. His first choice fell on "Mr. F. C. -Lewis, the best aquatint engraver of the day, who at the very time was -at work on facsimiles of Claude's drawings."[23] With him he soon -quarrelled. The terms were, that Turner was to etch and Lewis to -aquatint at five guineas a plate. The first plate, _Bridge and Goats_, -was finished and accepted by Turner, though not published till April, -1812; but the second plate Turner gave Lewis the option of etching as -well as aquatinting, and he etched it accordingly, and sent a proof to -Turner, raising his charge from five guineas to eight, in consideration -of the extra work. Turner praised it, but declined to have the plate -engraved, on the ground that Lewis had raised his charges. This ended -Mr. Lewis's connection with the "Liber," and Turner next employed Mr. -Charles Turner, the mezzotint engraver, but he had to pay him eight -guineas a plate. Charles Turner agreed to engrave fifty plates at this -price, but after he had finished twenty, he wished to raise his charge -to ten guineas, which led to a quarrel. With reference to these quarrels -of Turner with his engravers, Mr. Thornbury says, "The painter who had -never had quarter given to him when he was struggling, now in his turn, -I grieve to say, gave no quarter," and "inflexibly exacting as he was, -Turner could not understand how an engraver who had contracted to do -fifty engravings should try to get off his bargain at the twenty-first." -This, like most of Thornbury's statements, is utterly untrustworthy. -There is no evidence to show that a hard bargain was ever driven with -him when he was struggling, there is no word of any dispute with -engravers till he began to employ them himself, and as to his "not being -able to understand" how any man should endeavour to obtain more than the -price contracted for, it was exactly what he tried to do himself, when -afterwards employed by Cooke. - -[Illustration: THE ALPS AT DAYBREAK. - -_From Rogers's "Poems."_] - -The fact is that in all business arrangements Turner's worse nature, the -mean, grasping spirit of the little tradesman, was brought into -prominence. In the case of Lewis he was evidently in the wrong, in the -case of Charles Turner he was only hard; but in all business -transactions he was as a rule ungenerous, and sometimes dishonest. His -action towards the public with regard to the "Liber" can be called by no -other name. His prices at first were fifteen shillings for prints, and -twenty-five shillings for proofs. When the plates got worn (and -mezzotint plates are subject to rapid deterioration in the light parts), -Turner used to alter them, sometimes changing the effect greatly, as in -the _Mer de Glace_, where he transformed the smooth, snow-covered -glacier into spiky ridges of ice, or in the _sacus_ and _Hesperie_, -where the effect of sunbeams through the wood was effaced, and the -direction in which the head of Hesperie was looking was changed, and the -face afterwards concealed. The changes were not always for the worse; -the very wear of the plate in some cases, as in that of the _Calm_, -improved the effect, and what we have called his confusion of thought, -and what Thornbury has called his "distorted logic," may have led him to -believe that he was not wrong in selling as he did these worn and -altered plates as proofs. A kind casuistry may lend us a word less -disagreeable than dishonest to such transactions, but when we know that -he habitually from the first made no distinction between proofs and -prints--that he sold the same things under different names at different -prices--every plea breaks down, and we are forced to the conclusion that -when he thought he could cheat safely "the pack of geese,"[24] as he -thought the public, he did so. - -Nor can we acquit Turner of unfairness in issuing the "Liber Studiorum" -in competition with the French painter's "Liber Veritatis," a book -well-known to the public and to him, as the third edition of its plates, -engraved by Earlom, was just issued, when the "Liber Studiorum" was -begun. He must have known what the public did not probably know--that -Claude's rough sketches were mere memoranda of the effects of his -pictures taken by him to identify them, and never meant for publication; -whereas his were carefully-finished compositions, into which he threw -his whole power. Not only was the publication unfair as regards Claude, -but it was misleading to the public as regards himself. The title, -"Liber Studiorum," applies only to some of the prints. A few of the -poorer plates, especially the architectural ones, and such simple -designs as the _Hedging and Ditching_, might properly perhaps have been -called studies, but even upon these he bestowed a care and a finish that -would entitle them to be called pictures, monochrome as they are. - -The want of a well-considered plan, and the capricious way in which they -were published, contributed to the ill-success of the work; and though -we are accustomed to look upon its failure as a severe judgment on the -taste of the time, we are not at all sure that it would have succeeded -if published in the present day, unless Mr. Ruskin had written the -advertisement. - - "The meaning of the entire book," according to that eloquent - writer, "was symbolized in the frontispiece,[25] which he engraved - with his own hand:[26] Tyre at Sunset, with the Rape of Europa, - indicating the symbolism of the decay of Europe by that of Tyre, - its beauty passing away into terror and judgment (Europa being the - Mother of Minos and Rhadamanthus)." - -Turner's advertisement thus describes the intention of the work:-- - - "Intended as an illustration of Landscape Composition, classed as - follows: Historical, Mountainous, Pastoral, Marine, and - Architectural." - -We think Turner's description the more correct, and that the intention -of his frontispiece was to give all the "classes" in one composition, -and we are extremely doubtful whether Turner knew or cared anything -about either Minos or Rhadamanthus. - -The most obvious intention of the work was to show his own power, and -there never was, and perhaps never will be again, such an exhibition of -genius in the same direction. No rhetoric can say for it as much as it -says for itself in those ninety plates, twenty of which were never -published. If he did not exhaust art or nature, he may be fairly said to -have exhausted all that was then known of landscape art, and to have -gone further than any one else in the interpretation of nature. -Notwithstanding, the merit of the plates is very unequal, some, as -_Solway Moss_ and the _Little Devil's Bridge_, being more valuable as -works of art than many of his large pictures; others, especially the -architectural subjects, the _Interior of a Church_, and _Pembury Mill_, -being almost devoid of interest. As to any one thought running through -the series, we can see none, except desire to show the whole range of -his power; and as to sentiment, it seems to us to be thoroughly -impersonal, impartial, and artistic. He turns on the pastoral or -historical stop as easily as if he were playing the organ, and his only -concern with his figures is that they shall perform their parts -adequately, which is as much as some of them do. - -We have spoken of the book as an attack on Claude, and of the -"intention" of the work, but we are not sure that we are not using too -definite ideas to express the variety of impulses in Turner's mind that -tended to the commencement of the "Liber." We have seen that the first -notion of it, and its divisions, were suggested by Mr. Wells, and the -plates are nothing more nor less than a selection from his sketches and -pictures, arranged under these heads. His early topographical drawings -and studies in England provided him with the architectural and pastoral -subjects, his studies of Claude and the Poussins and Wilson, with the -elegant pastoral, Vandevelde and nature with the marine, and his one or -two visits to the Continent with the mountainous. The frontispiece, the -first attempt to give a coherent signification to the whole, was not -published till 1812, and it was not till 1816 that the advertisement to -which we have called attention appeared when, after four years' -intermission, the issue of the "Liber" was recommenced; even then it is -only described as "an illustration of Landscape Composition;" and it is -quite probable that the desire to make money, to display his art, to -rival Claude, and to educate the public, contributed to the production -of the work, without any very vivid consciousness on his part as to his -motives of action. It has, like all Turner's work, the characteristics -of a gradual growth rather than of the carrying out of a well-defined -conception. - -[Illustration: FALLS IN VALOMBR. - -_From Rogers's "Jacqueline."_] - -There is one way in which the title of the book may be considered as -appropriate, and that is to take "studia" to mean "studies," in the -usual general sense of the word, for it is an index to his whole course -of study (including books and excepting colour), down to the time of -its publication. With the exception of his Venetian pictures and his -later extravagances, it may be said to be an epitome of his art without -colour. Poets and painters may change their style, and may develop their -powers in after-life in an unexpected manner; but after the age at which -Turner had arrived when he commenced to publish the "Liber," viz., -thirty-two, there are few, if any, mental germs which have not at least -sprouted. Turner, though he never left off acquiring knowledge, or -developing his style, is no exception to this rule, and this makes the -"Liber" valuable, not only as a collection of works of art, but as a -nearly complete summary of the great artist's work and mind. Amongst his -more obvious claims to the first place among landscape artists, are his -power of rendering atmospherical effects, and the structure and growth -of things. He not only knew how a tree looked, but he showed how it -grew. Others may have drawn foliage with more habitual fidelity, but -none ever drew trunks and branches with such knowledge of their inner -life; if you look at the trunks in the drawing of _Hornby Castle_ for -instance (which we mention because it is easily seen at the South -Kensington Museum), and compare them with any others in the same room, -the superior indication of texture of bark, of truly varied swelling, of -consistency, and all essential differences between living wood and other -things, cannot fail to be apparent to the least observant. Although the -trees of the "Liber" are not of equal merit (Mr. Ruskin says the firs -are not good), this quality may be observed in many of the plates. -Others have drawn the appearance of clouds, but Turner knew how they -formed. Others have drawn rocks, but he could give their structure, -consistency, and quality of surface, with a few deft lines and a wash; -others could hide things in a mist, but he could reveal things through -mist. Others could make something like a rainbow, but he, almost alone, -and without colour, could show it standing out, a bow of light arrested -by vapour in mid-air, not flat upon a mountain, or printed on a cloud. -If all his power over atmospheric effects and all his knowledge of -structure are not contained in the "Liber," there is sufficient proof of -them scattered through its plates to do as much justice to them as black -and white will allow. If we want to know the result of his studies of -architecture we see it here also, little knowledge or care of buildings -for their own sakes, but perfect sense of their value pictorially for -breaking of lights and casting of shadows; for contrast with the -undefined beauty of natural forms, and for masses in composition; for -the sentiment that ruins lend, and for the names which they give to -pictures. If we seek the books from which his imagination took fire, we -have the Bible and Ovid, the first of small, the latter of great and -almost solitary power. Jason daring the huge glittering serpent, Syrinx -fleeing from Pan, Cephalus and Procris, sacus and Hesperie, Glaucus and -Scylla, Narcissus and Echo; if we want to know the artists he most -admired and imitated, or the places to which he had been, we shall find -easily nearly all the former, and sufficient of the latter to show the -wide range of his travel. In a word, one who has carefully studied the -"Liber" had indeed little to learn of the range and power of Turner's -art and mind, except his colour and his fatalism. - -The first quotation from the "Fallacies of Hope," nevertheless, was -published in the catalogue of 1812, as the motto of his picture of -_Snowstorm--Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps_, and it is -probable that the ill-success of the "Liber" contributed not a little to -the gloomy habit of mind which breathes through the fragments of this -unfinished composition. These were the lines appended to that grand -picture:-- - - "Craft, treachery, and fraud--Salassian force - Hung on the fainting rear! then Plunder seiz'd - The victor and the captive--Saguntum's spoil, - Alike became their prey; still the chief advanc'd, - Look'd on the sun with hope;--low, broad, and wan. - While the fierce archer of the downward year - Stains Italy's blanch'd barrier with storms. - In vain each pass, ensanguin'd deep with dead, - Or rocky fragments, wide destruction roll'd. - Still on Campania's fertile plains--he thought - But the loud breeze sob'd, Capua's joys beware." - -This is nearer to poetry than Turner ever got again. The picture is -well-known, and was suggested partly by a storm observed at Farnley, -partly by a picture by J. Cozens,[27] of the same subject, from which -Turner is reported to have said that he learnt more than from any other. - -Turner's love of poetry was shown from the first possible moment. The -first pictures to which he appended poetical mottoes were those of 1798, -but he could not have used them before, as quotations were never -published in the Academy Catalogue prior to that year. When his first -original verses were published we cannot tell, but there is little doubt -that the lines to his _Apollo and the Python_, in the Catalogue of -1811, were of his own fabrication. They are not from Callimachus, as -asserted in the catalogue, but a jumble of the descriptions of two of -Ovid's dragons, the Python, and Cadmus's tremendous worm, and are just -the peculiar mixture of Ovid, Milton, Thomson, Pope, and the quotations -in Royal Academy Catalogues, out of which he formed his poetical style. -The Turneresque style of poetry is in fact formed very much in the same -way as the Turneresque style of landscape, but the result is not so -satisfactory. It required a totally different kind of brain machinery -from that which Turner possessed. He may have had a good ear for the -music of tones, for he used to play the flute, but he had none for the -music of words. Coleridge was an instance of how distinct these two -faculties are, as he, whose verses exceed almost all other English -verses in beauty of sound, could not tell one note of music from -another. Turner lived in a world of light and colour, and beautiful -changeful indefinite forms; his thought had visions in place of words; -his mind communed with itself in sights and symbols; the procession of -his ideas was a panorama. So, where a poet would jot down lines and -thoughts, he would print off the impressions on his mental retina; his -true poetry was drawn not written--the poetry of instant act, not of -laboured thought. How sensible he himself was of the difference, is -shown in his clumsy lines:-- - - "Perception, reasoning, _action's slow ally_, - Thoughts that in the mind awakened lie-- - Kindly expand the monumental stone - And as the ... continue power." - -This is Mr. Thornbury's reading of part of the longest piece of poetry -by Turner yet published, which he has printed without any care, making -greater nonsense than even Turner ever wrote, which is saying a great -deal. "Awakened" for instance is probably "unwakened," and "monumental -stone" is probably "mental store" with another word at the commencement, -the word "power" is possibly "pours," as the next line goes on, "a -steady current, nor with headlong force," &c. We quite agree with Mr. W. -M. Rossetti, that these extracts are not made the best of, though it is -doubtful whether the result of more careful editing would be worth the -trouble. - -There is no picture which better shows the greatness of Turner's power -of pictorial imagination than the _Apollo and Python_. We have said that -nature was almost Turner's only book. The only written book which there -is evidence that he really studied--read through, probably, again and -again--is Ovid's "Metamorphoses." That he was fond of poetry there is no -doubt, but the sparks that lit his imagination for nearly all his best -classical compositions came from this book. This is the only poem which -he really _illustrated_, and an edition of Ovid, with engravings from -all the scenes which he drew from this source, would make one of the -best illustrated books in the world. It would contain _Jason_, -_Narcissus and Echo_, _Mercury and Herse_, _Apollo and Python_, _Apuleia -in search of Apuleius_ (which is really the story of Appulus, who was -turned into a wild olive-tree, Apuleia being a characteristic mistake of -Turner's for Apulia. He is sometimes called "a shepherd of Apulia," in -notes and translations, and Turner evidently took the name of the -country for the name of a woman), _Apollo and the Sibyl_, _The Vision of -Medea_, _The Golden Bough_, _Mercury and Argus_, _Pluto and Proserpine_, -_Glaucus and Scylla_, _Pan and Syrinx_, _Ulysses and Polyphemus_. Of -all these pictures and designs we have no doubt that, though he referred -to other poets in the catalogues and got the idea of some part of the -composition from other poets, the original germs are to be found in no -other book than Ovid's "Metamorphoses." We have not exhausted the list -of his debts to this poet, for it is probable that the first ideas of -his Carthage pictures, and all that deal with the history of neas, came -from the same source, assisted by references to Vergil. - -[Illustration: ALLEGORY. - -_From Rogers's "Voyage of Columbus."_] - -Of all these, excepting the _Ulysses and Polyphemus_, there is none -greater than the _Apollo and Python_. Although the figure of Apollo is -not satisfactory, it gives an adequate impression of the small size of -the boy-god, the radiating glory of his presence, the keen enjoyment of -his struggle with the monster, and the triumph of "mind over matter." Of -the landscape and the dragon it is difficult to exaggerate the grandeur -of the conception; the rocks and trees convulsed with the dying -struggles of the gigantic worm, the agony of the brute himself, -expressed in the distorted jaws and the twisted tail, the awful dark -pool of blood below, the seams in its terrible riven side, studded with -a thousand little shafts from Apollo's bow, and the fragments of rock -flying in the air above the griffin-like head and noisome steam of -breath, make a picture without any rival of its kind in ancient or -modern art. It is, as we have said, taken from two dragons of Ovid. -Turner seems to have been of the same opinion about books as about -nature, and if he wanted anything to complete his picture, went on a few -pages and found it. The idea of the god and his bow and arrows is taken -from the account of the combat in the first book of the "Metamorphoses," -and the idea of the huge dragon with his "poyson-paunch," comes from -the same place; but the ruin of the woodland, the flying stones, and the -earth blackened with the dragon's gore, come from the description of the -combat of Cadmus and his dragon in the third. The larger stone is too -huge indeed to be that which Cadmus flung, it has been either, as Mr. -Ruskin thinks, lashed into the air by his tail, or, as we think, torn -off the rock and vomited into the air; but there is the tree, which the -"serpent's weight" did make to bend, and which was "grieved his body of -the serpent's tail thus scourged for to be," there is "the stinking -breath that goth out from his black and hellish mouth," there is the -blood which "did die the green grass black," an idea not in Callimachus -nor in Ovid's description of the Python, but which occurs both in the -lines appended to the picture and in Ovid's description of Cadmus's -serpent. If there were any doubt left as to the influence of this dragon -on the picture, there is still another piece of evidence, viz., -something very like a javelin, Cadmus's weapon, which is sticking in the -dragon, and has reappeared after being painted out, so that it is -possible that Turner meant the hero of the picture, in the first -instance, to be Cadmus and not Apollo. - -The two great dragons of Turner, that which guards the Garden of the -Hesperides, and the Python, are specially interesting as the greatest -efforts made by Turner's imagination in the creation of living forms, -excepting, perhaps, the cloud figure of Polyphemus. They are perhaps the -only monsters of the kind created by an artist's fancy, which are -credible even for a moment. They will not stand analysis any more than -any other painters' monsters, but you can enjoy the pictures without -being disturbed by palpable impossibilities. The distance at which we -see Ladon helps the illusion; with his fiery eyes and smoking jaws, his -spiny back and terrible tail, no one could wish for a more probable -reptile. The only objection that has been made to him is that his jaws -are too thin and brittle, while Mr. Buskin is extravagant in his praise. -It is wonderful to him-- - - "This anticipation, by Turner, of the grandest reaches of recent - inquiry into the form of the dragons of the old earth ... this - saurian of Turner's is very nearly an exact counterpart of the - model of the iguanodon, now the guardian of the Hesperian Garden of - the Crystal Palace, wings only excepted, which are, here, almost - accurately, those of the pterodactyle. The instinctive grasp which - a healthy imagination takes of _possible_ truth, even in its - wildest flights, was never more marvellously demonstrated." - -Mr. Ruskin then goes on to call attention to-- - - "The mighty articulations of his body, rolling in great iron waves, - a cataract of coiling strength and crashing armour, down amongst - the mountain rents. Fancy him moving, and the roaring of the ground - under his rings; the grinding down of the rocks by his toothed - whorls; the skeleton glacier of him in thunderous march, and the - ashes of the hills rising round him like smoke, and encompassing - him like a curtain." - -The description, fine as it is, seems to us to destroy all belief in -Turner's dragon. The wings of a pterodactyle would never lift the body -of an iguanodon, and Turner's dragon could not even walk, his -comparatively puny body could never even move his miles of tail, let -alone lift them. It is far better to leave him where he is; the fact -that he is at the top of that rock is sufficient evidence that he got -there somehow; how he got there, and how he will get down again, are -questions which we had better not ask if we wish to keep our faith in -him. Nor can anything be more confused than the notion of a "saurian" -with "coiling strength and crashing armour," making the ground "roar -under his rings." This might be well enough of a fabulous monster made -of iron, but quite inappropriate when applied to a saurian, like the -alligator, for instance, with its soft, slow movements, and its bony, -skin-padded, noiseless armour. - -The Python will stand still less an attempt to define in words what -Turner has purposely left mysterious. Not even Mr. Ruskin, we fancy, -would dare to pull him out straight from amongst his rocks and trees, -and put his griffin's head and talons on to that marvellous body, half -worm, half caterpillar. But he is grand, and believable as he is. More -simple than either of the other monsters is the single wave of Jason's -dragon in his den. This is a mere magnified coil of a simple snake; but -its size, its glitter, its incompleteness, the terrible energy of it, -its peculiar serpentine wiriness, that elasticity combined with -stiffness which is so horrible to see and to feel, make it more awful -even than the Python. - -We do not believe in Turner's power to evolve even as imperfect a -saurian as his Ladon out of his imagination, however "healthy;" and have -no doubt that he had seen the fossil remains of an ichthyosaurus. We -have the testimony of Mrs. Wheeler that he was much interested in -geology,[28] and think it more than probable that the thinness of the -monster's jaws and, we may add, the emptiness of his eye socket are due -to his drawing them from a fossil, which his knowledge was not great -enough to pad with flesh. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -HARLEY STREET, DEVONSHIRE, HAMMERSMITH, AND TWICKENHAM. - -1800 TO 1820. - - -During the first ten years of this period we have very little -intelligence respecting Turner's life. He moved from Hand Court, Maiden -Lane, to 64, Harley Street, in 1799 or 1800, and it is not improbable -that he bought the house, as No. 64 and the house next to it in Harley -Street, and the house in Queen Anne Street, all belonged to him at the -time of his death. There was communication between the three houses at -the back, although the corner house fronting both streets did not belong -to him. In 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1804, his address in the Royal Academy -Catalogue is 75, Norton Street, Portland Road; but in 1804 it is again -64, Harley Street. In 1808[29] it is 64, Harley Street, and West End, -Upper Mall, Hammersmith; and this double address is given till 1811, -when it is West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, only. In and after 1812 it -is always Queen Anne Street West, with the addition, from 1814 to 1826, -of his house at Twickenham, called Solus Lodge in 1814, and Sandycombe -Lodge from 1815 to 1826. It is remarkable that in the Catalogue of the -British Institution for 1814 his address is given as Harley Street, -Cavendish Square, showing that he had not then given up his house in -this street, and this is good evidence that it belonged to him. - -The war which broke out with Bonaparte in 1803,[30] and was not finally -closed till 1815, prevented him from pursuing his studies of Continental -scenery, and he seems during this time to have devoted himself -principally to the composition of his great rival pictures, and the -"Liber Studiorum," about which we have already written: he stayed -occasionally with his friends, Mr. Fawkes at Farnley, where he studied -the storm for _Hannibal Crossing the Alps_, and Lord Egremont at -Petworth, where he painted _Apuleia and Apuleius_. Almost the only -glimpse that we get of his house in Harley Street, though it is very -doubtful to what period it belongs, was sent to Mr. Thornbury by Mr. -Rose of Jersey:-- - - "Two ladies, Mrs. R---- and Mrs. H---- once paid him a visit in - Harley Street, an extremely rare (in fact, if not the only) - occasion of such an occurrence, for it must be known he was not - fond of parties prying, as he fancied, into the secrets of his - _mnage_. On sending in their names, after having ascertained that - he was at home, they were politely requested to walk in, and were - shown into a large sitting room without a fire. This was in the - depth of winter; and lying about in various places were several - cats without tails. In a short time our talented friend made his - appearance, asking the ladies if they felt cold. The youngest - replied in the negative; her companion, more curious, wished she - had stated otherwise, as she hoped they might have been shown into - his sanctum or studio. After a little conversation he offered them - wine and biscuits, which they partook of for the novelty, such an - event being almost unprecedented in his house. One of the ladies - bestowing some notice upon the cats, he was induced to remark that - he had seven, and that they came from the Isle of Man."[31] - -Whatever is the proper date of this story, it is to be feared that he -had good reason for not wishing persons to pry into the secrets of his -_mnage_. We ourselves have no wish to pry into those secrets; but the -fact that Turner had for the greater part of his life a home of which he -was ashamed, is sufficient to explain a great deal of his want of -hospitality, his churlishness to visitors, and his confirmed habits of -secrecy and seclusion. - -There is no doubt that he habitually lived with a mistress. Hannah -Danby, who entered his service, a girl of sixteen, in the year 1801, and -was his housekeeper in Queen Anne Street at his death, is generally -considered to have been one; and Sophia Caroline Booth, with whom he -spent his last years in an obscure lodging in Chelsea, another. There -are many who have lived more immoral lives, and have done more harm to -others by their immorality; but he chose a kind of illegal connection -which was particularly destructive to himself. He made his home the -scene of his irregularities, and, by entering into ultimate relations -with uneducated women, cut himself off from healthy social influences -which would have given daily employment to his naturally warm heart, and -prevented him from growing into a selfish, solitary man. Not to be able -to enjoy habitually the society of pure educated women, not to be able -to welcome your friend to your hearth, could not have been good for a -man's character, or his art, or his intellect. - -His uninterrupted privacy possibly enabled him to produce more, and to -develop his genius farther in one direction; but we could have well -spared many of his pictures for a few works graced with a wider culture -and a healthier sentiment. He could paint, and paint, perhaps, better -for his isolation-- - - "The light that never was on sea or land, - The consecration and the Poet's dream." - -But it would have been better for him, and, we think, for his art also, -if he could have said:-- - - "Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone - Housed in a dream, at distance from the kind! - Such happiness, wherever it be known, - Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind."[32] - -It was not from any scorn of the conventions of society that he -disregarded them, for there is no trace of any feeling of this sort in -his pictures or his reported conversations, and in his will he required -that the "Poor and Decayed Male Artists," for whom he intended to found -a charitable institution ("Turner's Gift"), should be "of _lawful -issue_." One reason why he never married may have been his shyness and -consciousness of his want of address and personal attraction. Mr. Cyrus -Redding, from whom we have one of the brightest and best glimpses of -Turner as a man, says:-- - - "He was aware that he could not hope to gain credit in the world - out of his profession. I believe that his own ordinary person was, - in his clear-mindedness, somewhat considered in estimating his - career in life. He was once at a party where there were several - beautiful women. One of them struck him much with her charms and - captivating appearance; and he said to a friend, in a moment of - unguarded admiration, 'If she would marry me, I would give her a - hundred thousand.'" - -This, and the increasing absorption in his art of all of himself that -could be so absorbed; his desire to economize both his time and his -money; his innate hatred of interference with his liberty; his aversion -from undertaking any obligation, the consequences of which he could not -calculate--all tended to keep him from matrimony, and to make him -content with the most unromantic amours. - -That he in 1811 or thereabouts could be hospitable and a good companion -away from home, is shown by Mr. Redding in his pleasant volume, from -which we have just quoted. He met Turner on what appears to have been -his first visit to the county to which his family belonged--Devonshire. -He met him first, Mr. Redding thinks, at the house of Mr. Collier (the -father of Sir Robert Collier), an eminent merchant of Plymouth, and -accompanied him on many excursions. On one of these Turner actually gave -a picnic "in excellent taste" at a seat on the summit of the hill, -overlooking the Sound and Cawsand Bay. - - "Cold meats, shell fish, and good wines were provided on that - delightful and unrivalled spot. Our host was agreeable, but terse, - blunt, and almost epigrammatic at times. Never given to waste his - words, nor remarkably choice in their arrangement, they were always - in their right place, and admirably effective."[33] - -This last sentence sounds somewhat paradoxical, but for that reason is -probably all the more accurately descriptive of Turner's art in words. -Further on, when defending the great painter, we get a portrait of him -as a "plain figure" with "somewhat bandy legs," and "dingy complexion." -On another excursion, Redding spent a night at a small country inn with -Turner, about three miles from Tavistock, as the artist had a great -desire to see the country round at sunrise. The rest of the party, Mr. -Collier and two friends, who had spent the day with them on the shores -of the Tamar with a scanty supply of provisions, preferred to pass the -night at Tavistock. - - "Turner was content with bread and cheese and beer, tolerably good, - for dinner and supper in one. I contrived to feast somewhat less - simply on bacon and eggs, through an afterthought inspiration. In - the little sanded room we conversed by the light of an attenuated - candle, and some aid from the moon, until nearly midnight, when - Turner laid his head upon the table, and was soon sound asleep. I - placed two or three chairs in a line, and followed his example at - full recumbency. In this way three or four hours' rest were (_sic_) - obtained, and we were both fresh enough to go out, as soon as the - sun was up, to explore the scenery in the neighbourhood, and get a - humble breakfast, before our friends rejoined us from Tavistock. It - was in that early morning Turner made a sketch of the picture - (_Crossing the Brook_)to which I have alluded, and which he invited - me to his gallery to see." - -Another of these excursions was to Burr or Borough Island, in Bigbury -Bay, "To eat hot lobsters fresh from the sea." - - "The morning was squally, and the sea rolled boisterously into the - Sound. As we ran out, the sea continued to rise, and off Stake's - point became stormy. Our Dutch boat rode bravely over the furrows, - which in that low part of the Channel roll grandly in unbroken - ridges from the Atlantic." - -[Illustration: IVY BRIDGE. - -_Water-colour in National Gallery._] - -Two of the party were ill; one, an officer in the army, wanted to throw -himself overboard, and they "were obliged to keep him down among the -rusty iron ballast, with a spar across him." - - "Turner was all the while quiet, watching the troubled scene, and - it was not unworthy his notice. The island, the solitary hut upon - it, the bay in the bight of which it lay, and the long gloomy Bolt - Head to sea-ward, against which the waves broke with fury, seemed - to absorb the entire notice of the artist, who scarcely spoke a - syllable. While the fish were getting ready, Turner mounted nearly - to the highest point of the island rock, _and seemed writing rather - than drawing_. The wind was almost too violent for either purpose; - what he particularly noted he did not say." - -These reminiscences of Mr. Redding contain the most graphic picture of -Turner we possess. His carelessness of comfort, his devotion to his art, -his power of continuous observation in despite of tumult and discomfort, -his love of the sun and the sea, his habit of sketching from a high -point of view, his ability to take "pictorial memoranda" in a violent -wind, are all striking and essential peculiarities. - -It is interesting to learn also from Mr. Redding, that "early in the -morning before the rest were up, Turner and myself walked to Dodbrooke, -hard by the town, to see the house that had belonged to Dr. Walcot -(_sic_), Peter Pindar, and where he was born. Walcot sold it, and there -had been a house erected there since; of this the artist took a sketch." -Turner probably appreciated Peter's "Advice to Landscape Painters." - -One piece of Turner's conversation is also worthy of record, if only on -account of its rarity. - - "He was looking at a seventy-four gun ship, which lay in the shadow - under Saltash. The ship seemed one dark mass. - - "'I told you that would be the effect,' said Turner, referring to - some previous conversation. 'Now, as you observe, it is all shade.' - - "'Yes, I perceive it; and yet the ports are there.' - - "'We can only take what is visible--no matter what may be there. - There are people in the ship; we don't see them through the - planks.'" - -This reads like a speech of Dr. Johnson. - -We have another account of this same visit to Devonshire from Sir -Charles Eastlake, which bears testimony to the hospitality which he -received. Miss Pearce, an aunt of Sir Charles, appears to have been his -hostess, and her cottage at Calstock the centre of his excursions. A -landscape painter, Mr. Ambrose Johns, of great merit, according to Sir -Charles, fitted up a small portable painting box, which was of much use -to Turner in affording him ready appliances for sketching in oil. - - "Turner seemed pleased when the rapidity with which these sketches - were done was talked of; for departing from his habitual reserve in - the instance of his pencil sketches, he made no difficulty in - 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 inquiring what had become of these sketches, - Turner replied that they were worthless, in consequence, as he - supposed, of some defects 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."[34] - -Mr. Johns's devotion was not rewarded till long afterwards, when the -great painter sent him a small oil sketch in a letter. Mr. Redding -obtained at the time a rough sketch, and these seem to have been the -only returns he made for the kindness that was shown to him at Plymouth, -though many years afterwards he spoke to Mr. Redding "of the reception -he met with on this tour, in a strain that exhibited his possession of a -mind not unsusceptible or forgetful of kindness." - -The date of this tour is given by Mr. Redding as probably 1811, and by -Eastlake 1813 or 1814. The principal pictorial results of it were -_Crossing the Brook_ (exhibited in 1815), and various drawings for -Cooke's _Southern Coast_, which commenced in 1814. It seems probable -that his engagement on this work determined his visit to Cornwall and -Devonshire, but this is uncertain, as is also whether he paid more than -one visit to the locality. - -This tour is also interesting from its being the only occasion on which -Turner is known to have visited his kinsfolk. We are enabled to state on -the authority of one of his family that he went to Barnstaple and called -upon his relations there, and a gentleman, late of the Chancery Bar, has -kindly supplied us with the following extract of a memorandum made by -him in 1853, from facts sworn to in suits instituted to administer -Turner's estate. - - "Price Turner, an uncle of the painter's, having some idea of - educating his son, Thomas Price Turner (now (1853) living at North - Street, in the parish of St. Kerrian, Exeter, Professor of Music) - as a painter, T. P. T. made, at the request of William Turner, the - great artist's father, two drawings as specimens of his ability, - one a view of the city of Exeter, taken from the south side, and - the other a view of Rougemont Castle, and sent them by Wm. Turner - to his son. Shortly after, he (T. P. T.) received a number of water - colour drawings, sketches, &c. Some of these were afterwards sent - for again, one of which, a water colour view of Redcliffe Church, - Bristol, Thomas Price Turner previously copied, which copy, - together with the residue of Turner's drawings, are still in his - cousin's possession. - - "J. M. W. Turner called at Price Turner's house at Exeter about - forty years ago (about 1813), and, saying that he called at his - father's request, had a conversation with Price Turner and his son - and daughter. Thomas Price Turner went to London in 1834 to attend - the Royal Musical Festival in commemoration of Handel, in which he - was engaged as a chorus singer. He called three times on his - cousin, and the third time saw him, but though he (J. M. W. T.) - immediately recognized him, the painter gave him a cool reception, - never so much as asking him to sit down." - -It is probable that Turner's father removed with him to Harley Street in -1800. The powder tax of 1795 is said to have destroyed his trade, and he -lived with his son till he died in 1830. He used to strain his son's -canvasses and varnish his pictures, "which made Turner say that his -father began and finished his pictures for him." As early as 1809, -Turner "was in the habit of privately exhibiting such pictures as he did -not sell, and the small accumulation he had at Harley Street in 1809 was -already dignified with the name of the "Turner Gallery."[35] This -gallery Turner's father attended to, showing in visitors &c., and when -they stayed at Twickenham he came up to town every morning to open it. -Thornbury says that the cost of this weighed upon his spirits until he -made friends with a market-gardener, who for a glass of gin a-day, -brought him up in his cart on the top of the vegetables. This is said to -have been after Turner removed from Harley Street, and was very well off -if not rich, for he had built his house in Queen Anne Street and his -lodge at Twickenham,[36] both of which belonged to him, as well as the -land at Twickenham, and (probably) the house in Harley Street. Turner's -father made great exertions to add to his son's estate at Sandycombe, by -running out little earthworks in the road and then fencing them round. -At one time there was a regular row of these fortifications, which used -to be called "Turner's Cribs." One day, however, they were ruthlessly -swept away by some local authority. If, however, both father and son -were very "saving" and eccentric in their ways, they were devoted to -one another from the beginning to the end, to an extent very touching -and beautiful, however strange in its manifestation. - -Of Turner's life at West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, we have only the -following glimpse in a communication to Thornbury by "a friend." - - "The garden, which ran down to the river, terminated in a - summer-house; and here, out in the open air, were painted some of - his best pictures. It was there that my father, who then resided at - Kew, became first acquainted with him; and expressing his surprise - that Turner could paint under such circumstances, he remarked that - lights and room were absurdities, and that a picture could be - painted anywhere. His eyes were remarkably strong. He would throw - down his water-colour drawings on the floor of the summer-house, - requesting my father not to touch them, as he could see them there, - and they would be drying at the same time." - -It may have been when at Hammersmith that he became acquainted with Mr. -Trimmer, for in a letter to Mr. Wyatt of Oxford respecting two pictures -of that city, which is dated "West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, Feb. 4, -1810," he says, "Pray tell me likewise of a gentleman of the name of -Trimmer, who has written to you to be a subscriber for the print." This -gentleman was the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, Vicar of Heston, who was one -of Turner's best and most intimate friends till his death. It is said -that he first went to Hammersmith to be near De Loutherbourg, and it is -probable that one of his reasons for building on his free--hold at -Twickenham was to be nearer Mr. Trimmer. De Loutherbourg died in 1812. - -Sandycombe Lodge, first called Solus Lodge, is on the road from -Twickenham to Isleworth, and is built on low lying ground and damp. The -original structure has been added to, but the additions being built of -brick, it is easy to see how it looked in Turner's time--a small -semi-Italian villa covered with plaster and decorated with iron -balustrades and steps. It is within walking distance (4 miles) of -Heston. We are able by the kindness of Mr. F. E. Trimmer, the youngest -son of Turner's friend, to correct some false impressions conveyed by -Thornbury's garbled account of what he was told by the eldest son. - -The Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, the son of the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer, -and father of the Rev. Henry Syer Trimmer, who gave Thornbury his -information, was about the same age as Turner, and very much interested -in art. As an amateur painter he attained considerable skill, having a -wonderful faculty for catching the manner of other artists. His great -knowledge of pictures, and his continual experiments in the way of -mediums, colours, and devices for obtaining effects, made his -acquaintance specially interesting and valuable to Turner, and Turner's -to him. No better proof of his ability can be found than the two -following stories:-- - -There is a picture at Heston before which Turner would frequently stand -studying. It is a sea-piece with the sun behind a mist, and with a -golden hazy effect not unlike Turner's famous _Sun rising in a Mist_, -but the sea washes up to the frame. One day Turner said to Mr. Trimmer, -"I like that picture; there's a good deal in it. Where did you get it?" -(Or words to this effect.) "I painted it," was the reply; upon which the -artist turned away without a word, and never looked at the picture -again. - -The true story of the picture, supposed to be by Sir Joshua Reynolds, to -which Mr. Trimmer added a background, is this.[37] He purchased it in an -unfinished condition of a dealer in Holborn, and finished it himself, -and it remained in his possession till his death, when his son (Mr. F. -E. Trimmer), knowing its history, kept it out of the sale at Christie's -of his father's fine collection, and sold it, among other less valuable -and genuine productions, at Heston. The dealer who bought it (for 6) -thought he had made a great catch, and inquired of Mr. Trimmer's son the -history of the picture, which he considered a splendid Sir Joshua, -speaking especially of the background as being a proof of its -authenticity. When Mr. Trimmer told him that his father had bought it in -his own shop and had finished it himself, he would not believe it for a -long time. - -Of the other stories of Turner's connection with Heston, and of his -power to assist others in the composition of their pictures, the -following is perhaps the most interesting:--[38] - -Once when Howard (R.A.) was staying at the vicarage, painting a portrait -of Mr. Trimmer's second son, the Rev. Barrington James Trimmer, Turner -was always finding fault with the work in progress. It was a full-size -and full-length portrait of a boy of three years old, dressed in a white -frock and red morocco shoes. One day Howard, annoyed at Turner's -frequent objections, told him that he had better do it himself, on which -Turner said, "This is what I should do," and taking up the cat he -wrapped its body in his red pocket handkerchief, and put it under the -boy's arm. The effect of this, as may still be seen in the picture at -the house of Mr. Trimmer's son at Heston, was excellent. The cat gave an -interest to the figure which it wanted, the red morocco shoes were no -longer isolated patches of bright colour at the bottom of the picture, -the blank expanse of white frock was varied and lightened up by the red -handkerchief and pussy's tabby face, and the work, which was on the -brink of failure, was a decided success. Parts of the cat, handkerchief, -and landscape were put in by Turner. - -Sketching with oils on a large canvas in a boat, driving out on little -sketching excursions in his gig with his ill-tempered nag Crop Ear, said -to have been immortalized in his picture of the _Frosty Morning_ (which -was, however, painted before he went to Twickenham), fishing for trout -in the Old Brent, or for roach in the Thames, with Mr. Trimmer's sons, -digging his pond in his garden and planting it round with weeping -willows and alders, the picture of Turner's life at Twickenham is a -pleasant and healthy one. At Heston he drew his _Interior of a Church_ -for the "Liber," and actually gave away two of his drawings to Mrs. -Trimmer, one of a Gainsborough, which they had seen together on an -excursion to Osterley House, and one of a woman gathering watercresses, -whom they had met on their way. But these gifts were asked for by the -lady, and Turner would not let them go without making _replicas_. He -once stood with a long rod two whole days in a pouring rain under an -umbrella fishing in a small pond in the vicarage garden, without even a -nibble. - -In connection with the Trimmers we get other instances of his rare and -bare hospitality, which showed that he never altered his manner of -living after he left Maiden Lane. We must refer the reader to Mr. -Thornbury's life for the remainder of these varied, interesting, and on -the whole pleasant reminiscences. - -Space, however, we must spare for a letter, very incorrectly given by -Thornbury, the only record of his second attachment, the object of -which was the sister of the Rev. H. Scott Trimmer, who was at that time -being courted by her future husband:-- - - "_Tuesday. Aug. 1. 1815._ - - "QUEEN ANNE ST. - - "MY DEAR SIR, - - "I lament that all hope of the pleasure of seeing you or getting to - Heston--must for the present wholly vanish. My father told me on - Saturday last when I was as usual compelled to return to town the - same day, that you and Mrs. Trimmer would leave Heston for Suffolk - as tomorrow Wednesday, in the first place, I am glad to hear that - her health is so far established as to be equal to the journey, and - believe me your utmost hope, for her benefitting by the sea air - being fully realized will give me great pleasure to hear, and the - earlier the better. - - "After next Tuesday--if you have a moments time to spare, a line - will reach me at Farnley Hall, near Otley Yorkshire, and for some - time, as Mr. Fawkes talks of keeping me in the north by a trip to - the Lakes &c. until November therefore I suspect I am not to see - Sandycombe. Sandycombe sounds just now in my ears as an act of - folly, when I reflect how little I have been able to be there this - year, and less chance (perhaps) for the next in looking forward to - a Continental excursion, & poor Daddy seems as much plagued with - weeds as I am with disapointments, that if Miss ---- would but wave - bashfulness, or--in other words--make an offer instead of expecting - one--the same might change occupiers--but not to teaze you further, - allow with most sincere respects to Mrs. Trimmer and family, to - consider myself - - "Your most truly (or sincerely) obliged - - "J. M. TURNER." - -But for the assurance of the present Mr. Trimmer, of Heston, that this -attachment of Turner to Miss Trimmer was undoubted, and that this letter -has always been considered in the family as a declaration thereof, we -should have thought that the offer he wanted was one for Sandycombe -Lodge and not for his hand. It is, however, past doubt that Turner was -violently smitten, and though forty years old, felt it much. - -The above letter was the only one known to have been written by Turner -to his friend the Vicar of Heston, and it is quite untrue, as asserted -by Thornbury, that the Vicar's letters were burnt in sackfuls by his -son. His large correspondence was patiently gone through--a task which -took some years. Thornbury was probably thinking of the destruction of -the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer's correspondence by her daughter, in which -it is true that sackfuls of interesting letters perished. - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -ITALY AND FRANCE. - -1820 TO 1840. - - -The life of Turner the man, that is, what we know of it, during these -twenty years, may be written almost in a page--the history of his art -might be made to fill many volumes. During this period he exhibited -nearly eighty pictures at the Royal Academy, and about five hundred -engravings were published from his drawings. If he had been famous -before, he was something else, if not something more than famous now; he -was "the fashion." It was on this ground that Sir Walter Scott, who -would have preferred Thomson of Duddingstone to illustrate his -'Provincial Antiquities' (published in 1826), agreed to the employment -of Turner, who afterwards (in 1834) furnished a beautiful series of -sixty-five vignettes for Cadell's edition of Sir Walter's prose and -poetical works. - -In 1819 Turner paid his first visit to Italy, which had a marked -influence on his style. From this time forward his works become -remarkable for their colour. Down to this time he had painted -principally in browns, blues, and greys, employing red and yellow very -sparingly, but he had been gradually warming his scale almost from the -beginning. From the wash of sepia and Prussian blue, he had slowly -proceeded in the direction of golden and reddish brown, and had produced -both drawings and pictures with wonderful effects of mist and sunlight, -but he had scarcely gone beyond the sober colouring of Vandevelde and -Ruysdael till he began his great pictures in rivalry with Claude. In -them may be seen perhaps the dawn of the new power in his art. In the -Exhibition of 1815 were two prophecies of his new style, in which he was -to transcend all former efforts in the painting of distance and in -colour. These were _Crossing the Brook_, with its magical distance, and -_Dido building Carthage_, with its blazing sky and brilliant feathery -clouds. The first is the purest and most beautiful of all his oil -pictures of the loveliness of English scenery, the most simple in its -motive, the most tranquil in its sentiment, the perfect expression of -his enjoyment of the exquisite scenery in the neighbourhood of Plymouth. -The latter with all its faults was the finest of the kind he ever -painted, and his greatest effect in the way of colour before his visit -to Italy. In his other Carthage picture of this period, _The Decline_ -(exhibited 1817), the "brown demon," as Mr. Ruskin calls it, was in full -force, and his pictures of _Dido and neas_ (1814), _The Temple of -Jupiter_ (1817), and _Apuleia and Apuleius_, are cold and heavy in -comparison. Indeed, from 1815 to 1823 his power, judged by his exhibited -pictures, seemed to be flagging. Whether his second disappointment in -love had anything to do with this we have no means of judging, but if it -disturbed for a time his power of painting for fame, it certainly had no -ill effect either as to the quantity or quality of his water-colours -for the engravers. - -His most worthy and beautiful work of these years is to be found not in -his oil pictures but in his drawings for Dr. Whitaker's 'History of -Richmondshire' (published 1823) and the 'Rivers of England' (1824). Both -series were engraved in line in a manner worthy of the artist. One of -the former, the _Hornby Castle_, a little faded perhaps, but still -exquisite in its harmonies of blue and amber, is to be seen at South -Kensington. Three more were lately exhibited by Mr. Ruskin--_Heysham -Village_, _Egglestone Abbey_, and _Richmond_. Of this series Mr. Ruskin -says, "The foliage is rich and marvellous in composition, the effects of -mist more varied and true" (than in the _Hakewill_ drawings), "the rock -and hill drawing insuperable, the skies exquisite in complex form." The -engravings probably owed much to Turner's own supervision, and many of -them, such as _Egglestone Abbey_, by T. Higham, and _Wycliffe_, by John -Pye, Middiman's _Moss Dale Fall_, and Radcliffe's _Hornby Castle_, were -perfect translations of the originals, showing an advance in the art of -engraving as great as that which Turner had made in water-colour -drawing. Except in the heightened scale of colour there is little in -this series to show the influence of Italy, their temper is that of -_Crossing the Brook_, and the foliage and scenery that of England. Nor -do we find anything but England in the 'Rivers.' Nothing can be more -purely English than the exquisite drawing of _Totnes on the Dart_ (of -which we give a woodcut). The original is one of the treasures of the -National Gallery, and is marvellous for the minuteness of its finish and -the breadth and truth of its effect. The tiny group of poplars in the -middle distance are painted with such dexterity that the impression of -multitudinous leafage is perfectly conveyed, and the stillness of clear -smooth water filled with innumerable variegated reflections, the -beautiful distance with castle, church, and town, and the group of gulls -in the foreground, make a picture of placid beauty in which there is no -straining for effect, no mannerism, nothing to remind you of the artist. -It is only in the touches of red in the fore of the river (touches -unaccounted for by anything in the drawing) that you discern him at -last, and find that you are looking not at nature but "a Turner." If you -are inclined to be angry with these touches, cover them with the hand -and find out how much of the charm is lost. - -[Illustration: TOTNES ON THE DART. - -_From "Rivers of England."_] - -After the 'Rivers of England,' Turner produced work more magnificent in -colour, more transcendent in imagination, indeed _the_ work which -singles him out individually from all landscape artists, in which the -essences of the material world were revealed in a manner which was not -only unrealized but unconceived before; but for perfect balance of -power, for the mirroring of nature as it appears to ninety-nine out of -every hundred, for fidelity of colour of both sky and earth, and form -(especially of trees), for carefulness and accuracy of drawing, for work -that neither startles you by its eccentricity nor puzzles you as to its -meaning, which satisfies without cloying, and leaves no doubt as to the -truth of its illusion, there is none to compare with these drawings of -his of England after his first visit to Italy--and especially (though -perhaps it is because we know them best that we say so) the drawings for -the 'Rivers of England.' We are certain at least of this, that no one -has a right to form an opinion about Turner's power generally, either to -go into ecstasies over or to deride his later work, till he has seen -some of these matchless drawings. They form the true centre of his -artistic life, the point at which his desire for the simple truth and -the imperious demands of his imagination were most nearly balanced. - -In 1821 and 1824 Turner exhibited no pictures at the Royal Academy, and -it would have been no loss to his fame if his pictures of 1820 and 1822, -_Rome, from the Vatican_, and _What you will_, had never left his -studio; but in 1823 he astonished the world with the first of those -magnificent dreams of landscape loveliness with which his name will -always be specially associated;--_The Say of Bai with Apollo and the -Sibyl_ (1823). The three supreme works of this class, _The Bay of Bai_, -_Caligula's Palace and Bridge_ (1831), and _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ -(1832), are too well known to need description, and have been too much -written about to need much comment. They were the realization of his -impressions of Italy, with its sunny skies, its stone-pines, its ruins, -its luxuriance of vegetation, its heritage of romance. How little the -names given to these pictures really influence their effect, is shown by -the frequency with which one of them is confused with another. What -verses of what poet, what episode of history may have been in the -artist's mind is of little consequence, when the thought is expressed in -the same terms of infinite sunny distance, crumbling ruin and towering -tree. The artist may have meant to embody the whole of Byron's mind in -the _Childe Harold_, the history of Italy in _Caligula's Palace and -Bridge_, the folly of life in _Apollo and the Sibyl_, but it does not -matter now, the things are "Turners," neither more nor less; we doubt -very much whether Turner cared greatly for the particular stories -attached to many of his pictures. Some of them remind us of a title of -a picture in the Academy of 1808, _A Temple and Portico, with the -drowning of Aristobulus, vide Josephus, book 15, chap. 3_. In some it -was no doubt his ardent desire to proclaim his thoughts on history and -fate, but the result is much the same, for the medium in which he -attempted to convey them was that least suited for his purpose. It was, -however, his only means of expression, and there is something very sad -in the idea of a mind struggling in vain to give its most serious -thoughts didactic force. If these thoughts had been profound, and the -mind that of a prophet, the failure would have been tragical. The -language employed was the highest of its kind, but it was as inadequate -for its purpose as music. It has, however, like fine music, the power of -starting vibrations of sentiment full of suggestion, giving birth to -endless dreams of beauty and pleasure, of sadness and foreboding, -according to the personality and humour of those who are sensitive to -its charm. - -In 1825 were published his first illustrations to a modern poet--Byron; -he contributed some more to the editions of 1833 and 1834, most of them -being views of places which he had never seen, and therefore -compositions from the sketches of others, like his drawings for -Hakewill's "Picturesque Tour of Italy" and Finden's "Illustrations of -the Bible." No doubt the experience of his youth in improving the -sketches of amateurs and the liberty which such work gave to his -imagination, made it easy and congenial to him. These drawings show the -variety of his artistic power and the perfection of his technical skill. -The _Hakewill_ series is marvellous for minute accuracy (being taken -from camera sketches) and for beautiful tree drawing, and the Bible -series for imagination. They are, however, of less interest in a -biography than those which were based upon his own impressions of the -scenes depicted, such as his illustrations to Rogers and Scott. - -[Illustration] - -In 1825 he exhibited only one picture, _Harbour of Dieppe_, and in 1826, -the year when the publication of the "Southern Coast" terminated, three, -of one of which there is told a story of unselfish generosity, which -deserves special record. The picture was called _Cologne--the arrival of -a Packet-boat--Evening_. Of this Mr. Hamerton writes: "There were such -unity and serenity in the work, and such a glow of light and colour, -that it seemed like a window opened upon the land of the ideal, where -the harmonies of things are more perfect than they have ever been in the -common world." The picture was hung between two of Sir Thomas Lawrence's -portraits, and Turner covered its glowing glory with a wash of -lampblack, so as not to spoil their effect. "Poor Lawrence was so -unhappy," he said. "It will all wash off after the Exhibition." As Mr. -Hamerton truly observes, "It is not as if Turner had been indifferent to -fame." - -There are many stories of apparently contrary action on Turner's part, -namely, of heightening the colour of his pictures to "kill" those of his -neighbours at the Academy, but they do not spoil this story. During -those merry "varnishing days" which Turner enjoyed so much, attempts to -outcolour one another were ordinary jokes--give-and-take sallies of -skill, made in good humour. No one entered into such contests with more -zest than Turner, and he was not always the victor. This story seems to -us to prove that when Turner saw that any one was really hurt, his -tenderness was greater than his spirit of emulation and jest. - -Leslie tells the best of the "counter stories." - - "In 1832, when Constable exhibited his _Opening of Waterloo - Bridge_,[39] it was placed in the School of Painting--one of the - small rooms at Somerset House. A sea piece,[40] by Turner, was next - to it--a grey picture, beautiful and true, but with no positive - colour in any part of it--Constable's _Waterloo_ seemed as if - painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times - into the room while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the - decorations and flags of the City barges. Turner stood behind him, - looking from the _Waterloo_ to his own picture, and at last brought - his palette from the great room, where he was touching another - picture, and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than - a shilling, on his grey sea, went away without saying a word. The - intensity of the red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of the - picture, caused even the vermilion and lake of Constable to look - weak. I came into the room just as Turner left it. 'He has been - here,' said Constable, 'and fired a gun.'" - - On the opposite wall was a picture, by Jones, of Shadrach, Meshach, - and Abednego in the furnace.[41] "A coal," said Cooper, "has - bounced across the room from Jones's picture, and set fire to - Turner's sea." The great man did not come into the room for a day - and a half; and then in the last moments that were allowed for - painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his picture, and - shaped it into a buoy."[42] - -This daub of red lead was rather defensive than offensive, and there is -no story of Turner which shows any malice in his nature. To his brother -artists he was always friendly and just; he never spoke in their -disparagement, and often helped young artists with a kind word or a -practical suggestion. Even Constable--between whom and Turner not much -love was lost, according to Thornbury--he helped on one occasion by -striking in a ripple in the foreground of his picture--the "something" -just wanted to make the composition satisfactory. We think, then, that -we may enjoy the beautiful story of self-sacrifice for Lawrence's sake, -without any disagreeable reflection that it is spoilt by others showing -a contrary spirit towards his brother artists. - -The year 1826 was his last at Sandycombe. As he had taken it for the -sake of his father, so he gave it up, for "Dad" was always working in -the garden and catching cold. He took this step much to his own sorrow, -we believe, and much to our and his loss. Without the pleasant and -wholesome neighbourhood of the Trimmers, with no home but the gloomy, -dirty, disreputable Queen Anne Street, he became more solitary, more -self-absorbed, or absorbed in his art (much the same thing with him), -and lived only to follow unrestrained wherever his wayward genius led -him, and to amass money for which he could find no use. How he still -loved to grasp it, however, and how unscrupulous he was in doing so, is -painfully shown in his dispute with Cooke about this time (1827), which -prevented a proposed continuation of the "Southern Coast." Mr. Cooke's -letter relating to it, though long, is too important to omit, and, -though it may be said to be _ex parte_, carries sad conviction of its -truth:-- - - "_January 1, 1827._ - - "DEAR SIR, - - "I cannot help regretting that you persist in demanding twenty-five - sets of India proofs before the letters of the continuation of the - work of the 'Coast,' besides being paid for the drawings. It is - like a film before your eyes, to prevent your obtaining upwards of - two thousand pounds in a commission for drawings for that work. - - "Upon mature reflection you must see I have done all in my power to - satisfy you of the total impossibility of acquiescing in such a - demand; it would be unjust both to my subscribers and to myself. - - "The 'Coast' being my own original plan, which cost me some anxiety - before I could bring it to maturity, and an immense expense before - I applied to you, when I gave a commission for drawings to upwards - of 400, _at my own entire risk_, in which the shareholders were - not willing to take any part, I did all I could to persuade you to - have one share, and which I did from a firm conviction that it - would afford some remuneration for your exertions on the drawings, - in addition to the amount of the contract. The share was, as it - were, forced upon you by myself, with the best feelings in the - world; and was, as you well know, repeatedly refused, under the - idea that there was a possibility of losing money by it. You cannot - deny the result: a constant dividend of profit has been made to you - at various times, and will be so for some time to come. - - "On Saturday last, to my utter astonishment, you declared in my - print-rooms, before three persons, who distinctly heard it, as - follows: 'I will have my terms, or I will oppose the work by doing - another "Coast!"' These were the words you used, and every one must - allow them to be a _threat_. - - "And this morning (Monday), you show me a note of my own - handwriting, with these words (or words to this immediate effect): - 'The drawings for the future "Coast" shall be paid twelve guineas - and a half each.' - - "Now, in the name of common honesty, how can you apply the above - note to any drawings for the first division of the work called the - 'Southern Coast,' and tell me I owe you two guineas on each of - those drawings? Did you not agree to make the whole of the 'South - Coast' drawings at 7 10_s._ each? and did I not continue to pay - you that sum for the first four numbers? When a meeting of the - partners took place, to take into consideration the great exertions - that myself and my brother had made on the plates, to testify their - entire satisfaction, and considering the difficulties I had placed - myself in by such an agreement as I had made (dictated by my - enthusiasm for the welfare of a work which had been planned and - executed with so much zeal, and of my being paid the small sum only - of twenty-five guineas for each plate, including the loan of the - drawings, for which I received no return or consideration whatever - on the part of the shareholders), they unanimously (excepting on - your part) and very liberally increased the price of each plate to - 40; and I agreed, on my part, to pay you ten guineas for each - drawing after the fourth number. And have I not kept this - agreement? Yes; you have received from me, and from Messrs. Arch on - my account, the whole sum so agreed upon, and for which you have - given me and them receipts. The work has now been finished upwards - of six months, when you show me a note of my own handwriting, and - which was written to you in reply to a part of your letter, where - you say, 'Do you imagine I shall go to John O'Groat's House for the - same sum I receive for the Southern part?' Is this _fair_ conduct - between man and man--to apply the note (so explicit in itself) to - the former work, and to endeavour to make me believe I still owe - you two guineas and a-half on each drawing? Why, let me ask you, - should I promise you such a sum? What possible motive could I have - in heaping gold into your pockets, when you have always taken such - especial care of your interests, even in the case of _Neptune's - Trident_, which I can declare you _presented_ to me; and, in the - spirit of _this_ understanding, I presented it again to Mrs. Cooke. - You may recollect afterwards charging me two guineas for the loan - of it, and requesting me at the same time to return it to you, - which has been done. - - "The ungracious remarks I experienced this morning at your house, - where I pointed out to you the meaning of my former note--that it - referred to the future part of the work, and not to the 'Southern - Coast'--were such as to convince me that you maintain a mistaken - and most unaccountable idea of profit and advantage in the new work - of the 'Coast,' and that no estimate or calculation will convince - you to the contrary. - - "Ask yourself if Hakewill's 'Italy,' 'Scottish Scenery,' or - 'Yorkshire' works have either of them succeeded in the return of - the capital laid out on them. - - "These works have had in them as much of your individual talent as - the 'Southern Coast,' being modelled on the principle of it; and - although they have answered your purpose, by the commissions for - drawings, yet there is considerable doubt remaining whether the - shareholders and proprietors will ever be reinstated in the money - laid out on them. So much for the profit of works. I assure you I - must turn over an entirely new leaf to make them ever return their - expenses. - - "To conclude, I regret exceedingly the time I have bestowed in - endeavouring to convince you in a calm and patient manner of a - number of calculations made for _your_ satisfaction; and I have met - in return such hostile treatment that I am positively disgusted at - the mere thought of the trouble I have given myself on such a - useless occasion. - - "I remain, - - "Your obedient servant, - - "W. B. COOKE." - -When we realize that this was the same man that closed his connection -with Mr. Lewis, because he would not both etch and aquatint the plates -of the Liber for the same terms as those agreed upon for aquatinting -alone, we are able to understand why he was characterized as a "great -Jew," in a letter of introduction, which he brought from a publisher in -London to one in Yorkshire, when he went to that county to illustrate -Dr. Whitaker's _History of Richmondshire_. Mrs. Whitaker, who was his -hostess at the time, hearing of this took the phrase literally, and, -says Mr. Hamerton, "treated him as an Israelite indeed, possibly with -reference to church attendance and the consumption of ham." - -In 1827 was published the first part of his largest series of prints, -the "England and Wales," which were engraved with matchless skill by -that trained band of engravers who brought, with the artist's -assistance, the art of engraving landscapes in line to a point never -before attained. The history of Turner and his engravers has yet to be -fully written; the number of them from first to last is extraordinary, -probably nearly one hundred. Of these, twenty, and nearly all the best, -were employed on this work--Goodall, Wallis, Willmore, W. Miller, -Brandard, Radcliffe, Jeavons, W. R. Smith, and others. Never before was -so great an artist surrounded by such a skilled body of interpreters in -black and white. The drawings were unequal in merit, but nearly all of -them wonderful for power of colour and daring effect, with ever -lessening regard for local accuracy. The artist threw aside all -traditions and conventions, and proclaimed himself as "Turner," the -great composer of chromatic harmonies in forms of sea and sky, hills and -plains, sunshine and storm, towns and shipping, castles and cathedrals. -He could not do this without sacrificing much of truth, and much of -what was essential truth in a work whose aim was professedly -topographical. Imaginative art of all kinds has a code analogous to, but -not identical with, the moral code: beauty takes the seat of virtue and -harmony of truth, and when the work is purely imaginative, there is no -conflict between fancy and fact which can make the strictest shake his -head. But when known facts are dealt with by the imagination, the -conflict arises immediately, and it would scarcely be possible to find a -case in which it was more obvious than in Turner's "England and Wales," -in which he made the familiar scenes of his own country conform to the -authoritative conception of his pictorial fancy. Whether he was right or -wrong in raising the cliffs of England to Alpine dignity, in saturating -her verdant fields with yellow sun, in exaggerating this, in ignoring -that, has been argued often, and will be argued over and over again; but -all art is a compromise, and the precise justice of the compromise will -ever be a matter of opinion. Art _v._ Nature is a cause which will last -longer than any Chancery suit. Even artists cannot agree as to the -amount of licence which it is proper to take, but they are all conscious -that they at least keep on the right side; one thing only, all, or -nearly all, are agreed upon, and that is that licence must be taken, or -art becomes handicraft. About Turner almost the only thing which can be -said with certainty is that he stretched his liberty to the extreme -limits. - -Yet to the pictorial code of morals he was the most faithful of artists, -he almost always reached beauty, his harmonies were almost always -perfect, and he strove after his own peculiar generalization of fact, -and his own peculiar extract of truth with the greatest ardour. This -extract was his impression of a place, made up generally (at least in -his foreign scenes) of two or three sketches taken from different points -of view, and he was very careful to study not only the principal -features of the country, but the costume and employment of the -inhabitants, and the description of local vehicle, on wheels or keel. -From these studies would arise the conception of one scene, combining -all that his mind retained as essential--a growth which, however false -it might appear when compared with the actual facts of the place from -one point of view, contained nothing but what had a germ of truth, and -of local truth. That this applies to all his drawings we do not say, but -we are confident that it does to most. Many of his drawings for the -"England and Wales" were probably taken from sketches that had lain in -his portfolios for years, and were dressed up by him when wanted, with -such accessories of storm and rainbow as occurred to his fancy, or to -his memory and feelings as connected with the spot. There is, we think, -no doubt that Turner strove to be conscientious; but his conscience was -a "pictorial" conscience, and no man can judge him. We can only take his -works as they are, and be thankful that all the strange confusions of -his mind, and mingled accidents of his life, have produced so unique and -beautiful a result as the "England and Wales." It is no use now -regretting that his vast powers in their prime were used wastefully in -what will appear to many as the falsification of English landscape; it -is far better to rejoice that the genius and knowledge of the man were -so transcendent that, in spite of all the worst that can be said, each -separate drawing is precious in itself as a record of natural phenomena, -and a masterly arrangement of indefinite forms and beautiful colour. - -Mr. Ruskin affirms that, "howsoever it came to pass, a strange, and in -many respects grievous metamorphosis takes place upon him about the year -1825. Thenceforth he shows clearly the sense of a terrific wrongness, -and sadness, mingled in the beautiful order of the earth; his work -becomes partly satirical, partly reckless, partly--and in its greatest -and noblest features--tragic." We are not prepared to assent to this -entirely, especially as Mr. Ruskin states immediately afterwards that -one at least of the manifestations of "this new phase of temper" can be -traced unmistakably in the "Liber," which was concluded six years -before; but there is no doubt that his work for some of these years was -distinguished by recklessness and caprice in an unusual degree, and we -have little doubt that his removal from Sandycombe, and the consequent -loss of healthy companionship, had something to do with it. During three -years he exhibited no pictures of special interest, except the _Cologne_ -of 1826, and the _Ulysses deriding Polyphemus_ of 1829. This latter -picture we take to be a sure sign of recovery, as it shows perhaps the -most complete balance of power of any of his large works, being not less -wonderful for happy choice of subject than for grandeur of conception -and splendour of colour--the first picture in which, since the _Apollo -and Python_ of 1811, the union between the literary subject and the -landscape, or (if we must use that horrid word) seascape, was perfect. -This picture was no _Temple and Portico, with the drowning of -Aristobulus_. The grand indefinite figure of the agonized giant, the -crowded ship of Ulysses, the water-nymphs and the dying sun, are all -parts of one conception, and show what Turner could do when his -imagination was thoroughly inflamed. Whence the inspiration was derived -it is difficult to say. Like most of his inspirations, it probably had -more than one source. Homer's Odyssey is the source given in the -catalogue; but it is probable, as we before have hinted, that the figure -of Polyphemus was suggested by the splendid description in the -fourteenth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Many years had lapsed since he -had shown the full force of his imagination under the influence of -classical story, and he was never to do so again. Subjects of the kind -suited to his peculiar genius were difficult to find, and he had no such -habitual intercourse with his intellectual peers as enabled him to -gather suggestions for his works. He was thrown entirely on his own -uneducated resources, and the result was, with his imperfect knowledge -of his own strength and the limits of his art, partial failure of most, -and total failure of many of his most strenuous efforts. This is one of -the saddest facts of his art-life, the frequent waste, or partial waste, -of unique power. - -His increasing isolation of mind was mitigated no doubt by constant -visits to Petworth, Farnley, and other houses of his friends and -patrons, by the chaff of "varnishing days," by social meetings of the -Academy Club, and by frequent travel; but it increased notwithstanding. -Not Mr. Trimmer, nor Lord Egremont, nor even his friends and fellow -Academicians, Chantrey and Jones, could break through his barrier of -reserve and see the man Turner face to face. From the beginning he had -his secrets, and he kept them to the end. He could be merry and social -in a gathering where the talk never became confidential, and with -children (whom he could not distrust); but his living-rooms in Queen -Anne Street, his painting-room wherever he was, and his heart, were, -with scarcely an exception, opened to none. At Petworth, Lord Egremont -indeed was allowed to enter his studio; but he had to give a peculiar -knock agreed upon between them before he would open the door. - -In 1828 he was at Rome again, from which place he wrote the following -letters[43] to Chantrey and Jones of unusual length and interest. - - "TO GEORGE JONES, R.A. - - "ROME, - - "_Oct. 13, 1828._ - - "DEAR JONES, - - "Two months nearly in getting to this terra pictura, _and at work_; - but the length of time is my own fault. I must see the South of - France, which almost knocked me up, the heat was so intense, - particularly at Nismes and Avignon; and until I got a plunge into - the sea at Marseilles, I felt so weak that nothing but the change - of scene kept me onwards to my distant point. Genoa, and all the - sea-coast from Nice to Spezzia, is remarkably rugged and fine; so - is Massa. Tell that fat fellow Chantrey that I did think of him, - _then_ (but not the first or the last time) of the thousands he had - made out of those marble craigs which only afforded me a sour - bottle of wine and a sketch; but he deserves everything which is - good, though he did give me a fit of the spleen at Carrara. - - "Sorry to hear your friend, Sir Henry Bunbury, has lost his lady. - How did you know this? You will answer, of Captain Napier, at - _Siena_. The letter announcing the sad event arrived the next day - after I got there. They were on the wing--Mrs. W. Light to Leghorn, - to meet Colonel Light, and Captain and Mrs. Napier for Naples; so, - all things considered, I determined to quit instanter, instead of - adding to the trouble. - - "Hope that you have been better than usual, and that the pictures - go on well. If you should be passing Queen Anne Street, just say I - am well, and in Rome, for I fear young Hakewell has written to his - father of my being unwell: and may I trouble you to drop a line - into the two-penny post to Mr. C. Heath, 6, Seymour Place, New - Pancras Church, or send my people to tell him that, if he has - anything to send me, to put it up in a letter (it is the most sure - way of its reaching me), directed for me, No. 12, Piazza - Mignanelli, Rome, and to which place I hope you will send me a - line? Excuse my troubling you with my requests of business. - Remember me to all friends. So God bless you. Adieu. - - "J. M. TURNER." - - "TO FRANCIS CHANTREY, R.A. - - "NO. 12, PIAZZA MIGNANELLI, ROME, - - "_Nov. 6, 1828_. - - "MY DEAR CHANTREY, - - "I intended long before this (but you will say, 'Fudge!') to have - written; but even now very little information have I to give you in - matters of Art, for I have confined myself to the painting - department at Corso; and having finished _one_, am about the - second, and getting on with Lord E.'s, which I began the very first - touch at Rome; but as the folk here talked that I would show them - _not_, I finished a small three feet four to stop their gabbling. - So now to business. Sculpture, of course, first; for it carries - away all the patronage, so it is said, in Rome; but all seem to - share in the good-will of the patrons of the day. Gott's studio is - full. Wyatt and Rennie, Ewing, Buxton, all employed. Gibson has two - groups in hand, _Venus and Cupid_; and _The Rape of Hylas_, three - figures, very forward, though I doubt much if it will be in time - (taking the long voyage into the scale) for the Exhibition, though - it is for England. Its style is something like _The Psyche_, being - two standing figures of nymphs leaning, enamoured, over the - youthful Hylas, with his pitcher. The Venus is a sitting figure, - with the Cupid in attendance; and if it had wings like a dove, to - flee away and be at rest, the rest would not be the worse for the - change. Thorwaldsten is closely engaged on the late Pope's (Pius - VII.) monument. Portraits of the superior animal, man, is to be - found in all. In some, the inferior--viz. greyhounds and poodles, - cats and monkeys, &c., &c. - - "Pray give my remembrances to Jones and Stokes, and tell _him_ I - have not seen a bit of coal stratum for months. My love to Mrs. - Chantrey, and take the same and good wishes of - - "Yours most truly, - - "J. M. TURNER." - -This method of communicating with "his people" is peculiar, and shows -that he was not in the habit of corresponding with them when away on his -numerous visits and tours. Perhaps they could not read, perhaps he -wished to save postage--whatever hypothesis we may adopt, the fact is -singular. The pictures of _The Banks of the Loire_; _The Loretto -Necklace_; _Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy (par la -Diligence) in a snowdrift upon Mount Tarra, 22nd of January, 1829_--all -exhibited in 1829--were the results of this tour, besides some of the -pictures of 1830, one of which, _View of Orvieto_, is, according to Mr. -Hamerton, the identical "small three feet four" which he painted to -"stop the gabbling" of the folk at Rome. - -In this year (1830, he being then fifty-five years old) died Sir Thomas -Lawrence, whose loss he probably felt much, and of whose funeral he -painted a picture (from memory); but the year had a greater sorrow for -him than this--the loss of his "poor old Dad." The removal from -Twickenham did not avail to preserve the old man's life for long. We -have the testimony of the Trimmers, with whom after the event he stayed -for a few days for change of scene, that "he was fearfully out of -spirits, and felt his loss, he said, like that of an only child," and -that he "never appeared the same man after his father's death." To men -like Turner, who are not accustomed to express their feelings much, or -even to realize them, such blows come with all their natural violence -unchecked, unforeseen, unprovided against. It had probably never -occurred to him how much his father was to him, how blank a space his -loss would make in his narrow garden of human affection. From this time -he was to know many losses of old friends, each of which fell heavily -upon him, leaving him more lonely than ever. His friends were few, and -they dropped one by one, nor is there any evidence to show that their -loss was ever lightened by any hope of meeting them again; the lights of -his life went out one by one, and left him alone and in the dark. In -1833 Dr. Monro died, in 1836 Mr. Wells, in 1837 Lord Egremont, in 1841 -Chantrey, and he was to feel the loss of Mr. Fawkes and Wilkie, and many -more before his own time came. - -In February, 1830, he wrote to Jones:-- - - "DEAR JONES--I delayed answering yours until the chance of this - finding you in Rome, to give you some account of the dismal - prospect of Academic affairs, and of the last sad ceremonies paid - yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourn from whence no - traveller returns. Alas! only two short months Sir Thomas followed - the coffin of Dawe to the same place. We then were his - pall-bearers. Who will do the like for me, or when, God only knows - how soon! However, it is something to feel that gifted talent can - be acknowledged by the many who yesterday waded up to their knees - in snow and muck to see the funeral pomp swelled up by carriages of - the great, _without the persons themselves_." - -No doubt these deaths set him thinking of his own, and the disposition -of his wealth so useless to him, and he probably brooded long over the -will that he signed on the 10th of June in the next year (1831). Many -excuses have been made for his niggardly habits on the score of the -nobleness of mind shown in this document; he screwed and denied himself -(we are told) when living, to make old artists comfortable after his -death. We are afraid that there is no ground for this charitable view, -nor any evidence that he ever denied himself anything that he preferred -to hard cash, or that he ever thought of giving it, or any farthing of -it, away to anybody, till he had more than he could spend, and was -brought by the deaths of his friends to realize that he could not take -it with him when he died. Then indeed he disposed of it; but where was -the bulk to go? Not to his nearest of kin, whom he had neglected all his -life--fifty pounds was enough for uncles, and twenty-five for their -eldest sons; not to his mistress or mistresses, who had been devoted to -him all his life, or to his children--annuities of ten and fifty pounds -were enough for them; but for the perpetuation of his name and fame, as -the founder of "Turner's Gift" and the eclipser of Claude.[44] - -We do not know when Turner became acquainted with Samuel Rogers; but -probably some years before this, as he is named as one of the executors -in the will, and the famous illustrated edition of "Italy" was published -in 1830, followed by the Poems in 1834. These contain the most exquisite -of all the engravings from Turner's vignettes. Exquisite also are most -of the drawings, but some of them are spoilt by the capriciousness of -their colour, which seems in many cases to have been employed as an -indication to the engraver rather than for the purpose of imitating the -hues of nature. The most beautiful perhaps of all, _Tornaro's misty -brow_, seems to us far too blue, and the yellow of the sky in others is -too strong to be probable or even in harmony with the rest of the -drawing. It would, however, be difficult to find in the whole range of -his works two really greater (though so small in size) than the _Alps at -Daybreak_, and _Datur hora quieti_, of which we give woodcuts, losing of -course much of the light refinement of the steel plates, but wonderfully -true in general effect. The former is as perfect an illustration as -possible of the sentiment of Rogers's pretty verses, but it far -transcends them in beauty and imagination; the latter is not in -illustration of any of the poet's verses, but is a more beautiful poem -than ever Rogers wrote. - -The illustration from "Jacqueline" which we give, though not so -transcendent in imagination, is a scene of extraordinary beauty of rock -and torrent, and castle-crowned steep, such as no hand but Turner's -could have drawn, while the _Vision_ from "The Voyage of Columbus" is -equally characteristic, showing how he could make an impressive picture -out of the vaguest notions by his extraordinary mastery of light and -shade. - -In 1833 Turner exhibited his first pictures of Venice, the last home of -his imagination. The date of his first visit to the "floating city" is -uncertain. There are two series of Venetian sketches in the National -Gallery, which mark two distinct impressions. In the first the colour is -comparatively sober; the sky is noted as, before all things, a -marvellously blue sky; the interest of the painter is in the watery -streets, the picturesqueness of corners here and there, in narrow canals -and the different-coloured marbles of the buildings; he takes the city -in bits from the inside in broad daylight, and they are studies as -realistic as he could make them at the time. In the other series the -interest of the painter is COLOUR, not of the buildings, but of the -sunsets and sunrises, the clouds of crimson and yellow, the water of -green, in which the sapphire and the emerald and the beryl seem to blend -their hues. The substantial marble, the solid blue sky, the strong light -and sharp shadows have melted into visions of ethereal palaces and -gemlike colour, like those in the Apocalypse. As he began painting the -sea from Vandevelde and nature, so he began painting Venice from -Canaletti and nature; but the transition from the studious beginning -to the imaginative end was very swift in the latter case. Venice soon -became to him the paradise of colour, and he rose to heights of -chromatic daring which exceeded anything which even he had scaled -before. - -[Illustration: LIGHT-TOWERS OF THE HVE. - -_From "Rivers of France."_] - -The time at which we have now arrived was that of his earlier sketches, -and he could turn away from Venice and draw with unabated zest the -quieter but still lovely scenery of the Seine and the Loire. To 1833-4 -and 1835 belong his beautiful series called _The Rivers of France_. -Opinions are divided, as usual, as to the truthfulness of his art to the -spirit of French scenery, and a comparison between _The Light-towers of -the Hve_ in our woodcut, and the drawing which he made on the spot (now -in the National Gallery) will show how greatly his imagination altered -the literal facts of a scene. One who has patiently followed his -footsteps in many parts of England and on the Continent testifies to the -puzzling effects of Turner's imaginative records. He seeks in vain on -the face of the earth the original of Turner's later drawings, but he -can never see these drawings without finding all that he has seen. -Indeed, to understand them rightly, they must be considered as poems in -colour suggested by pictorial recollections of certain scenes on the -rivers of France. Most of them are arrangements of blue, red, and -yellow, some of yellow and grey, all exquisitely beautiful in -arrangement of line and atmospheric effect. Nor has he in any other -drawings introduced figures and animals with more skill and beauty of -suggestion. The whole series palpitates with living light, although the -pigments employed are opaque, and each view charms the sense of -colour-harmony, although the colours are crude and disagreeable. It has -always appeared wonderful to us that, with his power over water-colours -and delight in clear tones, he should have been content to work with -such chalky material and impure tints; it is as though he preferred to -combat difficulties; but they were drawn to be engraved, and as long as -he got his harmonies and his light and shade true we suppose he was -content. The great skill with which he could utilize the grey paper on -which these drawings were made, leaving it uncovered in the sky and -other places where it would serve his purpose, conduced to swiftness of -work, and may have been one of his motives. The drawing of Jumiges, of -which we give a woodcut, is one of the loveliest of the series, with its -mouldering ruin standing out for a moment like a skeleton against the -steely cloud, before the fierce storm covers it with gloom. - -In these yearly visits to France, Turner was accompanied by Mr. Leitch -Ritchie, who supplied the work with some description of the places. They -travelled, however, very little together; their tastes in everything but -art being exceedingly dissimilar. "I was curious," says his companion, -"in observing what he made of the objects he selected for his sketches, -and was frequently surprised to find what a forcible idea he conveyed of -a place with scarcely a correct detail. His exaggerations, when it -suited his purpose to exaggerate, were wonderful--lifting up, for -instance, by two or three stories, the steeple, or rather, stunted cone, -of a village church--and when I returned to London I never failed to -roast him on this habit. He took my remarks in good part, sometimes, -indeed, in great glee, never attempting to defend himself otherwise than -by rolling back the war into the enemy's camp. In my account of the -famous Gilles de Retz, I had attempted to identify that prototype of -'Blue Beard' with the hero of the nursery story, by absurdly insisting -that his beard was so intensely black that it seemed to have a shade of -blue. This tickled the great painter hugely, and his only reply to my -bantering was--his little sharp eyes glistening the while--'Blue Beard! -Blue Beard! Black Beard!'" - -[Illustration: JUMIGES. - -_From "Rivers of France."_] - -We do not know when Turner became first acquainted with Mr. Munro of -Novar, one of the greatest admirers of the artist and collectors of his -later works, but it was in 1836 that we first hear of them as travelling -together, when, it is said, "a serious depression of spirits having -fallen on Mr. Munro," Turner proposed to divert his mind into fresh -channels by travel. They went to Switzerland and Italy, and Mr. Munro -found that Turner enjoyed himself in his way--a "sort of honest Diogenes -way"--and that it was easy to get on very pleasantly with him "if you -bore with his way," a description which, meant to be kind, does not say -much for his sociability at this period. - -Indeed, he had been all his life, and especially, we expect, since he -left Twickenham, developing as an artist and shrivelling as a man, and -after this year (1836), though he still developed in power of colour and -painted some of his finest and most distinctive works, the signs of -change, if not of decline, were also visible. He was also getting out of -the favour of the public, who could not see any beauty in such works as -the _Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons_, of 1835, or _Juliet -and her Nurse_, of 1836. - -[Illustration: FIGHTING TMRAIRE. - -_Exhibited in 1839. National Gallery._] - -His fame began to oscillate, tottering with one picture and set upright -by another. As long, however, as he could paint such pictures as -_Mercury and Argus_, 1836, and the _Fighting Tmraire_, of 1839, it was -in a measure safe. He was still a great genius to whom eccentricities -were natural, but the _Fighting Tmraire_ was the last picture of his -at which no stone was thrown. This is in many ways the finest of all -his pictures. Light and brilliant yet solemn in colour; penetrated with -a sentiment which finds an echo in every heart; appealing to national -feeling and to that larger sympathy with the fate of all created things; -symbolic, by its contrast between the old three-decker and the little -steam-tug, of the "old order," which "changeth, yielding place to -new"--the picture was and always will be as popular as it deserves. It -is characteristic of Turner that the idea of the picture did not -originate with him, but with Stanfield. Would that Turner had always had -some friend at his elbow to hold the torch to his imagination. - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. - -LIGHT AND DARKNESS. - -1840 TO 1851. - - -Turner was now sixty-five years old, and his decline as an artist was to -be expected from failing health and stress of years. For little less -than half a century he had worked harder and produced more than any -other artist of whom we have any record. Nor would he rest now, although -his failing powers of body and mind required stimulants to support their -energy. - -Mr. Wilkie Collins informed Mr. Thornbury that, when a boy-- - - "He used to attend his father on varnishing days, and remembers - seeing Turner (not the more perfect in his balance for the brown - sherry at the Academy lunch) seated on the top of a flight of - steps, astride a box. There he sat, a shabby Bacchus, nodding like - a Mandarin at his picture, which he, with a pendulum motion, now - touched with his brush and now receded from. Yet, in spite of - sherry, precarious seat, and old age, he went on shaping in some - wonderful dream of colour; every touch meaning something, every - pin's head of colour being a note in the chromatic scale." - -We have spoken of Turner as declining as an artist, but we are not sure -that he did so till about 1845, when, Mr. Ruskin says, "his health, and -with it in great degree his mind, failed suddenly." Down to this time -his decay seems to us to have been more physical than artistic, but with -the physical weakness there had been, we think, for some time a -deterioration of the non-artistic part of his mind. His decay, though so -unlike the decay of others, appears to us to have nothing inexplicable -about it if we consider him as a man who had never had any sympathy with -the current opinions and culture of his fellows, and who, by some -strange defect in his organization, was unable to think without the use -of his eyes. That his eyesight failed there is no doubt, but that it did -not fail in the one most essential point for a painter, viz., perception -of colour, is, we think, proved by his latest sketches in water-colour, -which show none of that apparently morbid love of yellow which appears -in his later oil pictures, and testify to that perfect perception of the -relations and harmonies of different hues which can only belong to a -healthy sight. Instead of declining, this faculty of colour seems to -have increased in perfection almost to the last. If we compare the -sketch in the National Gallery of a scene on the Lake of Zug, done -between 1840 and 1845, with one of the 'Rivers of England' _Dartmouth_, -two drawings wonderfully alike in composition and in general scheme of -colour, no difference in this faculty can be observed; the later drawing -is only a few notes higher in the scale. As Mr. Ruskin says, "The work -of the first five years of this decade is in many respects supremely and -with _reviving_ power, beautiful." - -But still the decline of his non-artistic mind, never very powerful, had -been going on for years, or at least such reasoning power as he -possessed had exercised less and less control over the imperious will of -his genius, which impelled him to pursue his efforts to paint the -unpaintable. He had begun by imitation, he had gone on by rivalry, he -had achieved a style of his own by which he had upset all preconceived -notions of landscape painting, and had triumphed in establishing the -superiority of pictures painted in a light key, but he was not content. -His progress had always been towards light even from the earliest days, -when he worked in monochrome. Sunlight was his discovery, he had found -its presence in shadow, he had studied its complicated reflections, -before he commenced to work in colour. From monochrome he had adopted -the low scale of the old masters, but into it he carried his light; the -brown clouds, and shadows, and mists, had the sun behind them as it were -in veiled splendour. Then it came out and flooded his drawings and his -canvasses with a glory unseen before in art. But he must go on--refine -upon this--having eclipsed all others, he must now eclipse himself. His -gold must turn to yellow, and yellow almost into white, before his -genius could be satisfied with its efforts to express pure sunlight. - -So he went on to his goal, becoming less "understanded of the people" -each year, painting pictures more near to the truth of nature in sun and -clouds, and less true in everything else. But it was about the -everything else that the people most cared. They did not care for -sunlight which blinded them, and to which the truth of figure, and sea, -and grass, and stone, had to be sacrificed. They liked pictures which -could give them calm enjoyment, records of what they had seen or could -imagine, not of what Turner only had seen, and what seemed to them -extravagant falsity. - -Such, roughly put, was the condition of things when a champion arose to -scatter Turner's enemies to the four winds. He, Mr. Ruskin (1836), an -undergraduate at Oxford, of the age of seventeen, was one not of "the -people," but of those comparatively few lovers of art and colour who saw -and appreciated the artistic motives of Turner, and who reverenced, as a -revelation of hitherto unrecorded, if not undiscovered, beauties of -nature, those pictures at which the world scoffed. We cannot here enter -further into the discussion involved, but the attitude of the two -parties, the one represented by "Blackwood's Magazine," and the other by -"Modern Painters," can be judged by the following extracts. The noble -enthusiasm aroused by the treatment of _Juliet and her Nurse_ by the -critics, had suggested a letter in 1836, which gradually increased into -a volume, not published till 1843, and in the meantime the undergraduate -had gained the Newdegate, and earned the right to call himself "A -Graduate of Oxford" on his title-page. - -This is what Maga said in August, 1835, of Turner's picture of _Venice, -from the porch of Madonna della Salute_, a picture in his earlier -Venetian style:-- - - "Venice, well I have seen Venice. Venice the magnificent, glorious, - queenly, even in her decay--with her rich coloured buildings, - speaking of days gone by, reflected in the _green_ water. What is - Venice in this picture? A flimsy, whitewashed meagre assemblage of - architecture, starting off ghostlike into unnatural perspective, as - if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the - only attempt at richness in the picture). Not Venice, but the boat - is the attractive object, and what is to make this rich? Nothing - but some green and red, and yellow tinsel, which is so flimsy that - it is now cracking..... The greater part of the picture is white, - disagreeable white, without light or transparency, and the boats, - with their red worsted masts, are as gewgaw as a child's toy, which - he may have cracked to see what it was made of. As to Venice, - nothing can be more unlike its character." - -[Illustration: VENICE. THE DOGANA. - -_In the National Gallery._] - -This is what the Graduate of Oxford says, after stating his -dissatisfaction with the Venices of Canaletti, Prout, and Stanfield:-- - - "But let us take with Turner, the last and greatest step of - all--thank Heaven we are in sunshine again--and what sunshine! Not - the lurid, gloomy, plaguelike oppression of Canaletti, but white - flushing fulness of dazzling light, which the waves drink and the - clouds breathe, bounding and burning in intensity of joy. That - sky--it is a very visible infinity--liquid, measureless, - unfathomable, panting and melting through the chasms in the long - fields of snow-white flaked, slow-moving vapour, that guide the eye - along the multitudinous waves down to the islanded rest of the - Euganean hills. Do we dream, or does the white forked sail drift - nearer, and nearer yet, diminishing the blue sea between us with - the fulness of its wings? It pauses now; but the quivering of its - bright reflection troubles the shadows of the sea, those azure - fathomless depths of crystal mystery, on which the swiftness of the - poised gondola floats double, its black beak lifted like the crest - of a dark ocean bird, its scarlet draperies flashed back from the - kindling surface, and its bent oar breaking the radiant water into - a dust of gold. Dreamlike and dim, but glorious, the unnumbered - palaces lift their shafts out of the hollow sea--pale ranks of - motionless flame--their mighty towers sent up to heaven like - tongues of more eager fire--their grey domes looming vast and dark, - like eclipsed worlds--their sculptured arabesques and purple marble - fading farther and fainter, league beyond league, lost in the light - of distance. Detail after detail, thought beyond thought, you find - and feel them through the radiant mystery, inexhaustible as - indistinct, beautiful, but never all revealed; secret in fulness, - confused in symmetry, as nature herself is to the bewildered and - foiled glance, giving out of that indistinctness, and through that - confusion, the perpetual newness of the infinite and the beautiful. - - "Yes, Mr. Turner, we are in Venice now." - -Unfortunately the brave young champion was too late, the eloquent voice -that could translate into such glowing words the dumb poetry of Turner's -pictures had scarcely made the air of England thrill with its musical -enthusiasm when black night fell upon the artist. The sudden snapping of -some vital chord, of which that same Graduate of Oxford only last year -pathetically wrote, took place, and the glorious sun of his genius -disappeared without any twilight; he was dead as an artist, and dying as -a man. Neither his work nor his life could be defended any more. But the -voice that was raised so late in his honour did not die, its vibrations -have lasted from that day to this; and if the champion himself seems to -be in some need of a defender now, if mouths that once were full of his -praise are silent or raised only for the most part to depreciate, it is -only what came to Turner and what comes to all who use their imagination -too freely to enforce their convictions. A time must come when the -spirit of analysis will eat into the most brilliant rhetoric; the false -and true, which combine to make the most beautiful fabric of words, -cannot wear equally well. To us it is always painful to differ from Mr. -Ruskin, to whom we owe the grasp of so many noble truths, the memories -of so many delightful hours; and if a time has come when our faith in -his dogmas is not absolute, and we feel that he has misled us and others -now and again, we cannot close reference to him and his works in this -little book without testifying to the great and noble spirit which -pervades his work, and recording our admiration of a life devoted to the -service of art and man and God with a passionate purity as rare as it is -beautiful. - -[Illustration: VENICE, FROM THE CANAL OF THE GIUDECEA. - -_Exhibited in 1840. South Kensington Museum._] - -But before night fell, in the interval between 1840 and 1845, Turner -painted a few pictures of remarkable beauty both in colour and -sentiment--pictures which no other artist could have painted, and which -we doubt if he could himself have painted before--pictures generally -attempting to realize his later ideal of Venice, which even now, in -their wrecked beauty, fascinate all who have patience to look at them, -and watch the apparent chaos of yellow and white and purple and grey -gradually clear into a vision of ghost-like palaces rising like a dream, -from the golden sea. Besides these he painted at least three others of -unique power: one a record of what few other men could have had the -courage to study or the power to paint; one showing the passion of -despair at the loss of an old comrade; and another the boldest attempt -to represent abstract ideas in landscape that was ever made. We allude -to the _Snowstorm_; _Peace, Burial at Sea_; and _Rain, Steam, and -Speed_. - -Mr. Hamerton says, in connection with the first of these:-- - - "Let it not be supposed that these works of Turner's decline, - however they may have exercised the wit of critics, and excited the - amusement of visitors to the Exhibition, were ever anything less - than serious performances for him. The _Snowstorm_, for example - (1842), afforded the critics a precious opportunity for the - exercise of their art. They called it soapsuds and whitewash, the - real subject being a steamer in a storm off a harbour's mouth - making signals, and going by the lead. In this instance, nothing - could be more serious than Turner's intention, which was to render - a storm as he had himself seen it one night when the 'Ariel' left - Harwich. Like Joseph Vernet, who, when in a tempest off the island - of Sardinia, had himself fastened to the mast to watch the effects, - Turner on this occasion, 'got the sailors to lash himself to the - mast to observe it,' and remained in that position for four hours. - He did not expect to escape, but had a curious sort of - conscientious feeling, that it was his duty to record his - impression if he survived."[45] - -Of the second, which was painted to commemorate Wilkie's funeral, it is -related that Stanfield complained of the blackness of the sails, and -that Turner answered, "If I could find anything blacker than black I'd -use it."[46] - -The history of his late Swiss sketches and the drawings he made from -them has been recently told by Mr. Ruskin in his valuable and -interesting notes to his collection of Turner's drawings exhibited last -year (1878), and these notes and the almost equally interesting notes of -the Rev. W. Kingsley, contained between the same covers, testify not -only to the supreme beauty of his later work, but also to the nobler -motive which inspired its production, viz. the desire to "record" as far -as he could what he had seen after "fifty years' observation." The days -of strife and emulation were over, and a humbler, sweeter spirit made -him "put forth his full strength to depict nature as he saw it with all -his knowledge and experience." Characteristically, as all through his -life, this better spirit showed itself rather in his water-colours made -for private persons, than in those oils which he exhibited for the -judgment of the public. - -We wish we had space here for Mr. Ruskin's splendid description of -Turner's picture of _Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying_--a -work which seems to us to illustrate what we have said of his manner of -decline in a remarkable way. There is no doubt about its splendour of -colour, the grandeur of its sea, and the force with which its sentiment -of horror and wrong and death is conveyed; but it shows a childishness, -a want of mental faculties of the simplest kind, which is all the more -extraordinary when brought in contrast with such gigantic pictorial -power. The sharks are quite unnecessary, the bodies in the water are too -many, the absurdity of the chains appearing above it is too gross; the -horror is overdone and melodramatic, or, in a word, one of his finest -pictorial conceptions is spoilt for want of a little common sense, of a -little power to place himself in relation to his fellows and see how it -would appear to them. Again, we cannot help wishing that he had had a -friend at his elbow like Stanfield, who would have saved him from the -laughter of small critics. He was not fit to manage such a work on such -a subject by himself. - -In his picture of _War--the Exile and the Rock-limpet_, with its extract -from the "Fallacies of Hope"-- - - "Ah! thy tent-formed shell is like - A soldier's nightly bivouac, alone - Amidst a sea of blood ... - ...But can you join your comrades?" - -we see the same mental helplessness. It verges on the sublime, it verges -on the ridiculous. We should be sorry to call it either; but it is -childish--not with the grand simplicity of Blake, but with the confused -complicity of Turner. Mr. Ruskin says that Turner tried in vain to make -him understand the full meaning of this work, and we are not surprised. - -Such pictures as these had occurred now and then all through his -career--pictures in which the means employed were utterly inadequate to -express the sentiment duly, such as the _Waterloo_,--pictures in which -the accumulation of ideas was confused and excessive, as the _Phryne -going to the Bath as Venus, Demosthenes taunted by schines_; and he had -shown some hazy symbolism in connection with shell-fish in these -verses:-- - - "Roused from his long contented cot he went - Where oft he laboured, and the ... bent, - To form the snares for lobsters armed in mail; - But men, more cunning, over this prevail, - -[Illustration: THE SLAVE SHIP. - -_In the possession of Miss Alice Hooper, of Boston, U.S._] - - Lured by a few sea-snail and whelks, a prey - That they could gather on their watery way, - Caught in a wicker cage not two feet wide, - While the whole ocean's open to their pride." - -But now these "failures," for failures they were, however fine the art -qualities they possessed, became chronic, and the rule rather than the -exception; and this is to us the greatest tragedy in the whole of his -career--the spectacle of a great painter, the very slave of his genius, -compelled to paint this and paint that at its bidding without being able -to distinguish between what was great and what was little, what sublime -and what ridiculous, almost as mighty as Milton and Shelley one moment, -and as poor as Blackmore or Robert Montgomery the next. He appears to us -in these last days like a great ship, rudderless, but still grand and -with all sails set, at the mercy of the wind, which played with it a -little while and then cast it on the rocks. - -Rudderless, masterless, was he also as a man. We are very loth to -believe the terrible picture of moral degradation supplied by the "best -authority" to Mr. Thornbury, and quoted in the first chapter of this -volume; but there is no doubt that he lived by no means a reputable life -in his old age. As to how he met with Mrs. Booth, at whose little house -by the side of the Thames, near Cremorne, he lived for some time before -his death, we have not cared to inquire, nor do we intend to repeat the -usual stories about it; nor will we venture an opinion as to how often -he took too much to drink or what was his favourite stimulant, or what -other excesses he committed. His whole faculties had been absorbed in -his art; and when this failed him--when he became broken in health and -failing in sight--he had no store of wise reflection to employ his -mind, no harmless pursuits to follow, no refined tastes to amuse him, -nor, as far as we know, had he any hope of any future rectification of -the unevennesses of this world. Some of his friends he had lost by -death, many were still living and ready to cheer his last years if he -would have had them, but he would not. His secretiveness and love of -solitude clung to him to the last. - -He did not, however, lose his love of art and his desire of acquiring -knowledge relating to it. It was in these last years, 1847-49, that he -paid several visits to the studio of Mr. Mayall, the celebrated -photographic artist, passing himself off as a Master in Chancery, and -taking very great interest in the development of the new process which -had not then got beyond the daguerreotype. To the interesting account of -these visits printed by Mr. Thornbury,[47] we are enabled by Mr. -Mayall's kindness to add that at a time when his finances were at a very -low ebb in consequence of litigation about patent rights, Turner -unasked, brought him a roll of bank-notes, to the amount of 300, and -gave it him on the understanding that he was to repay him if he could. -This, Mr. Mayall was able to do very soon, but that does not lessen the -generosity of Turner's act. - -Notwithstanding, however, such bright glimpses as this, his last years -must have been sad and dull, and his greatest source of happiness was -probably the knowledge that whatever critics might say of his later -works, there were a few men like Mr. Munro, Mr. Griffiths, the Ruskins, -father and son, who appreciated them, and that his earlier pictures not -only kept up their fame but rose in price. Though in decline, his fame -was as great as almost he could have wished. Two offers of 100,000 he -is said to have refused for the contents of Queen Anne Street; 5,000 -for his two _Carthages_. The greatest of all his triumphs was perhaps -when he was waited upon by Mr. Griffiths, with an offer from a -distinguished Committee, among whom were Sir Robert Peel, Lord Hardinge, -and others, to buy these pictures for the nation. This is the greatest -instance of his self-sacrifice, which is well attested; for he refused -to part with them because he had willed them to the nation. He might -have got the money and his wish also, but he refused. The recollection -of this, though it occurred some years before he died, should have -afforded him some pleasant reflections. - -It had been long known that Turner had another home than that in Queen -Anne Street, and he had shown considerable ingenuity in concealing it, -for he used to go out of an evening to dinner with his friends when he -so willed, and met them at the Academy and other places. Almost to the -last he could be merry and sociable at such gatherings, and there is a -very pleasant account of a dinner in 1850 at David Roberts' house, given -in a note to Ballantyne's life of that artist, at which Turner was. It -is a memorandum by an artist from the country, and describes Turner's -manner as-- - - "Very agreeable, his quick bright eye sparkled, and his whole - countenance showed a desire to please. He was constantly making or - trying to make jokes; his dress, though rather old-fashioned, was - far from being shabby." Turner's health was proposed by an Irish - gentleman who had attended his lectures on perspective, on which he - complimented the artist. "Turner made a short reply in a jocular - way, and concluded by saying, rather sarcastically, that he was - glad this honourable gentleman had profited so much by his lectures - as thoroughly to understand perspective, for it was more than he - did." Turner afterwards, in Roberts' absence, took the chair, and, - at Stanfield's request, proposed Roberts' health, which he did, - speaking hurriedly, "but soon ran short of words and breath, and - dropped down on his chair with a hearty laugh, starting up again - and finishing with a 'hip, hip, hurrah!'.... Turner was the last - who left, and Roberts accompanied him along the street to hail a - cab.... At this time Turner was indulging in the singular freak of - living, under the name of Mr. Booth, in a small lodging on the - banks of the Thames.... This, though now cleared up, was a mystery - to his friends then, and Roberts was anxious to unravel it. When - the cab drove up he assisted Turner to his seat, shut the door, and - asked where he should tell cabby to take him; but Turner was not to - be caught, and, with a knowing wink, replied, 'Tell him to drive to - Oxford Street, and then I'll direct him where to go.'" - -Turner not only kept his secret from his friends, but from Mrs. Danby, -who, says Mr. Thornbury-- - - "One day, as she was brushing an old coat of Turner's, in turning - out a pocket, she found and pounced on a letter directed to him, - and written by a friend who lived at Chelsea. Mrs. Danby, it - appears, came to the conclusion that Turner himself was probably at - Chelsea, and went there to seek for him, in company with another - infirm old woman. From inquiries in a place by the river-side, - where gingerbread was sold, they came to the conclusion that Turner - was living in a certain small house close by, and informed a Mr. - Harpur,[48] whom she and Turner knew. He went to the place and - found the painter sinking. This was on the 18th of December, 1851, - and on the following day Turner died." - -So died the great solitary genius, Turner, the first of all men to -endeavour to paint the full power of the sun, the greatest imagination -that ever sought expression in landscape, the greatest pictorial -interpreter of the elemental forces of nature, that ever lived. His -life, and character, and art, complex as they were in their -manifestation, were as simple in motive as those of the most ordinary -man. Art, fame, and money were what he strived for from the beginning -to the end of his days, and those days were embittered at the end by -fallacies of hope with regard to all three. Critics laughed at him, he -was given no social honour, (neither knighted nor made President of the -Royal Academy), and his money was useless. For the meanness and -isolation of his existence he had no one to thank but himself, but this -was also, as we hope we have shown in the course of these pages, the -natural result of the motives of his life. - -[Illustration: THE ROOM IN WHICH TURNER DIED.] - -The nobleness of his life consisted in his devotion to landscape art, -and this should cover many sins. He found it sunk very low: he left it -raised to a height which it had never attained before. That he could -have done this by painting falsely is absurd. The falsity of his works -is just of that kind which comes from almost infinite knowledge of -truth. He knew little else but art and nature, and he knew these by -heart. He could make nature, and this confidence in his creative power -led him sometimes into strange errors, which no one else could have -made, such as putting the sun and moon in impossible positions in the -same picture, and making boats sail in opposite directions before the -wind; but how much more truth of natural phenomena has he not given even -in such pictures than can be found in any literal transcript of nature! -His colour appears to many to be untrue; but this is greatly due to his -clinging from first to last to one central truth--the sun. It was that -which gave the pitch to his light, and his colour too, as in nature. To -that great light all must be subservient; it is not the local colour of -an object in the foreground, or the strength of shade of a particular -cave, that controls the chiaroscuro and colouring of nature, but the -sun. So all things were sacrificed to this; the green must go from the -grass, and the shadows must become scarlet, rather than this truth -should be lost. His preference for harmonies of blue, red, and yellow, -to the exclusion of green, never giving, as Mr. Leslie pointed out, the -"verdure" of England, is remarkable; he is the only artist we know who, -instead of the usual "bit of red," to correct the green of a landscape, -introduces a bit of "green" (generally harsh crude green), to correct -its too great redness. (See, for instance, the apron of the woman in the -left-hand corner of his drawing of Rouen Cathedral for the "Rivers of -France.") His constant fault, and, as we think, an inexcusable one, is -the careless drawing of his figures. It is not an excuse to say that -they must not be painted so as to draw attention from the landscape; -first, because Turner in his earlier pictures showed that he could -introduce well-finished figures without doing this; and secondly, -because Turner's figures in his later pictures do this by their badness. -This carelessness gradually grew on him, because he would not take pains -with them. He could draw very small figures very well, giving more -spirit and essence than any other artist, in a touch. He could indicate -a shamble, a strut, a march, lassitude, confidence, any physical or -mental quality of a figure as easily as he could a bough or a cloud; but -when he had to draw a figure to which time must be given, to perfect a -definite, complex, organized form, he scamped it. His indication of the -spirit of animals is often wonderful, as in the deer in _Arundel Park_, -and the dogs in _Troyes_. - -Of Turner's mind and character apart from his art not much can be said -in praise. The former we have already said so much about that we need -only say here that although not of a very high order, except in -sensibility and perception, he showed now and then capacities which -might have been turned to good account by more generous training. -Although his jokes were mainly practical, or of that kind which is -understood by the term "waggery;" a few good things which he said have -been reported, such for instance as that "indistinctness was his forte;" -and though his poetry is generally miserable, it here and there contains -a fine expression. It is remarkable, however, how both his wit, and what -is good in his poetry, are connected with his art. He never said a thing -worth recording about anything else, and the few good bits in his poetry -are all reflections of a pictorial image. The utter helplessness of his -mind, when he tried to put his reasoning into words, is shown by Mr. -Hamerton, in one wonderful extract. (See his "Life of Turner," p. 143.) -We do not wonder that his attempts at teaching (though he is said at one -time in his youth to have got as much as a guinea a lesson) and his -lectures as a professor of perspective were failures. - -As to his character, it was mainly negative, on all points except art -and money. The best part of it was the tenderness of his heart; but -though we have no doubt about this fact, or that he could occasionally -in his later years be generous even in money,[49] this does not raise -our opinion of him much, for he had more than he wished to spend. If he -was remarkable for kind and generous impulses, he was still more -remarkable for the success with which he, in general, controlled them. -We cannot dispute Mr. Ruskin's assertion that he never "failed in an -undertaken trust," but we have yet to learn that he ever undertook one. - -If it be really true that, unasked and without any question of -repayment, he gave a sum of many thousand pounds on more than one -occasion to the son of one of his friends and patrons, such an act -deserves more accurate record and complete proof. The money was repaid -in both cases, it is said. - -He showed his best disposition in his kindness to children and animals, -and his fellow-artists. Of the last he always spoke kindly, and to young -or old was ever just and kind and patient. Poor Haydon said that he "did -him justice;" he assisted many a young man with a useful hint, and once -took down one of his pictures at the Academy to find a place for one of -an unknown man. He took great interest in the founding of the Artists' -Benevolent Fund, and meant his accumulated wealth to be spent in a home -for decayed artists. - -There is no doubt that long before he died he felt the uselessness of -wealth and a desire to dispose of his own in a good way. The only proof -we have of his notions of a good way is his will, and that, as we have -already said, is not an unselfish document, and the codicils which he -added to it from 1831 to 1849 do not show any increase of unselfishness. -On the contrary, he revoked his legacies to his uncles and cousins, and -left his finished pictures to form a Turner Gallery, and money to found -a Turner medal and a monument to himself in St. Paul's Cathedral. - -The will and its codicils were so confused that all the legal ability of -England was unable to decide what Turner really wanted to be done with -his money, and after years of miserable litigation, during which a large -portion of it was wasted in legal expenses, a compromise was effected, -in which the wishes of the parties to the suits and others concerned, -including the nation and the Royal Academy, were consulted rather than -the wishes of the testator: his desire to found a charity for decayed -artists, the only thing upon which his mind seems to have been fixed -from first to last in these puzzled documents, was over--thrown, and his -next of kin, the only persons mentioned in his will whom he certainly -did not mean to get a farthing, got the bulk of the property (excepting -the pictures). We have no doubt it was quite right; we are very glad the -nation got all the pictures and drawings, finished and unfinished, and -the Royal Academy 20,000; that there are a Turner medal and a Turner -Gallery, and we think that the next of kin should have had a great deal -of his money: but surely the greatest fallacy of all Turner's hope was -that his will would be construed according to his intentions. - -Two of his wishes with regard to himself were, however, fully carried -out--his desire to be buried in St. Paul's and the expenditure of 1,000 -on his monument. His funeral was conducted with considerable pomp and -ceremony, his "gifted talents," to use his own words, "acknowledged by -the many," and many of his fellow-artists and admirers followed him to -the grave; nor amongst the crowd were wanting a few old friends who in -their hearts still cherished him as "dear old Turner." - -[Illustration: "DATUR BORA QUIETI."] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -INDEX. - -(_The Names of Paintings and Drawings are printed in Italics._) - - - Page - -Academy, Royal, School of, 15 - -Academy Club, 108 - -Academy, in St. Martin's Lane, 13 - -Academy, in Soho, 15 - -Almanacks, drawings for, 47 - -_Alps at Daybreak_, 113 - -_Apollo and Python_, 67, 107 - -_Apuleia and Apuleius_, 69, 76, 93 - -_Army of the Medes_, 49 - -Artists' Benevolent Fund, 139 - -_Arundel Park_, 137 - - -_Banks of the Loire_, 111 - -Basire, 44 - -_Battle of the Nile_, 49 - -_Bay of Bai_, 97 - -Bible, Illustrations of, Finden's, 98, 99 - -_Birmingham_, 33 - -"Blackwood's Magazine", 124 - -_Bonneville_, 53 - -Booth, Mrs., 131 - -Boswell's "Antiquities", 14 - -"Britannia Depicta", 47 - -Britton, John, 22 - -Burnet, John, 50 - -_Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons_, 118 - -Bushey, 18, 23 - -_Buttermere, Lake_, 41 - -Byron, Illustrations to, 98 - - -_Calais Pier_, 53 - -_Caligula's Palace and Bridge_, 97 - -Canaletti, 114 - -_Carthage_, 70 - -_Carthage, Decline of_, 93 - -_Carthage, Dido building_, 93, 113 - -Chantrey, 108, 109, 110, 112 - -_Chateau de St. Michel_, 53, 54 - -_Chester_, 33 - -_Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, 97 - -_Chryses_, 48 - -Claude Lorrain, 50, 61, 63, 113 - -Collins, Wilkie--Description of Turner, 121 - -_Cologne_, 99, 107 - -Composition, Turner's method, 105, 106 - -Constable's _Opening of Waterloo Bridge_, 100 - -Constable's _Whitehall Stairs_, 100 - -Continent, Second Tour on the, 76 - -Cooke, Dispute with, 58, 101 - Letter from, 101, &c. - -"Copper-plate Magazine," drawings for, 32 - -Cozens, J., 21, 26, 27, 67 - -_Crossing the Brook_, 80, 84, 93, 94 - -Crowle, Mr., early patron of Turner, 14, 16 - - -Danby, Mrs., 134 - -Daniell, 26 - -_Dartmouth_, 122 - -_Datur hora quieti_, 113 - -Dayes, 26, 28 - -De Loutherbourg, 27, 38, 39, 49, 86 - -Devonshire, Tour in, 79 - -_Dido and neas_, 93 - -Dragons, 70-74 - - -Eastlake, Sir Charles, 83 - -Edridge, 15, 23, 27 - -_Egglestone Abbey_, 94 - -Egremont, Lord, 76, 108, 109, 110 - -"England and Wales", 104 - -Engravings coloured at Brentford, 14 - -Exeter, Turner's visit to, 84 - - -_Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen_, 53 - -"Fallacies of Hope", 130 - -_Falls in Valombr_--Illustration of "Jacqueline", 114 - -Farnley, 45, 46, 108 - -Fawkes, 44, 45, 76, 112 - -_Festival of the Vintage of Macon_, 53 - -_Fifth Plague_, 49 - -Finden's Illustrations of the Bible, 98, 99 - -_Fishermen at Sea_, 34 - -_Fishermen Coming Ashore_, 34, 35 - -_Fishing Boats in a Squall_, 50 - -Fonthill, drawings of, 48 - -_Frosty Morning_, 89 - -_Funeral of Sir Thomas Lawrence_, 111 - - -Gainsborough, 23, 24, 27, 38 - -_Gawthorpe_, drawing of, 45 - -Girtin, 15, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28 - -_Glacier and Source of the Arvron_, 53 - -Glover, 27 - -_Goddess of Discord_, 52, 72 - -Greene, Thomas (extract from Diary), 35 - -Griffiths, 132, 133 - - -Hakewills, The, 109 - -Hakewill's "Picturesque Tour"--Illustrations to, 98, 99, 103 - -Hamerton, 31, 39, 48, 104, 128 - -Hammersmith, Turner's life at, 86 - -Hand Court, Turner's Studio in, 32 - -_Hannibal Crossing the Alps_, 66, 76 - -_Harbour of Dieppe_, 99 - -Hardinge, Lord, 133 - -Hardwick, Architect, 15, 25 - -Harpur, Henry, executor, 8 - -Harpur, Mrs. Turner's aunt, 8 - -Harrison, employed by, 32 - -Haydon, 139 - -Hearne, 15, 23, 26 - -Heath, C., 109 - -_Helvoetsluys_, 100 - -Henderson, Mr., 16, 26, 28 - -_Heysham Village_, 94 - -Higham, T., 94 - -_Hornby Castle_, 64, 94 - -Howard (R.A.), Portrait by, at Heston, 88 - -Hunt, W., 15 - - -Italy, First Visit to, 92 - -Italy, Picturesque Tour of, Hakewill's, 98, 99, 103 - - -_Jason_, 48, 74 - -Johns, Ambrose, 83 - -Jones, 108 - Letter to, 109, 112 - -_Juliet and her Nurse_, 118, 124 - -_Jumiges_, 116 - - -Kingsley, Rev. W., Notes of, 129 - - -_Lambeth, Archbishop's Palace at_, 32 - -Lawrence, Sir Thomas, Turner's generosity to, 99 - -Lawrence, Sir Thomas, death of, 111 - -Lectures on perspective, 133, 138 - -Leslie's Autobiographical Recollections, 100 - -Lewis, Engraver, quarrel with Turner, 57 - -"Liber Studiorum", 52, 55, 66, 89, 107 - -_Light-towers of the Hve_, 115 - -_Little Devil's Bridge_, 62 - -_Loretto Necklace_, 111 - -Lowson, Newby, 22 - - -Maiden Lane, 10 - -Malton, Thoma, 15, 20, 25 - -_Margate Church_, early drawing of, 13 - -Margate, School at, 15 - -Marlow, 23 - -Marshall, Mother's maiden name, 6 - -Marshall, Uncle, 8, 13 - -"Mawman's Tour", 47 - -Mayall, Mr., 132 - -_Mercury and Argus_, 118 - -_Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy_, 111 - -Miller, T., 23 - -"Modern Painters", 124 - -Monro, Dr., 15, 18, 23, 24, 25, 27, 112 - -_Moonlight_, 34 - -Morland, 27, 38 - -_Morning on the Coniston Fells_, 41 - -Munro of Novar, 118, 132 - - -_Narcissus and Echo_, 48 - -Narraway, 18, 32 - -National Gallery, Drawing in, 94 - -_Neptune's Trident_, 103 - -_Norham Castle_, 41 - - -_Orvieto_, 110, 111 - -Ovid's "Metamorphoses", 66, 68, 69, 108 - -_Oxford_, Pictures of, 86 - -_Oxford, Scene near_, early drawing, 14 - - -Palice, Mr., Drawing Master, 15 - -_Pantheon, After Fire_, 34 - -_Peace, Burial at Sea_, 128 - -Pearce, Miss, 83 - -Peel, Sir Robert, 133 - -_Pembury Mill_, 62 - -Perspective, Professor of, 75 - -Petworth, 76, 108, 109 - -_Phryne_, 130 - -Pindar, Peter, 82 - -Pine, 23 - -"Pocket Magazine," drawings for, 32 - -Poetry, Turner's, 67, 68 - -Porden, 15, 16 - -Poussin, Nicolas, 63 - -"Provincial Antiquities," Illustrations to, 92 - -Pye, John, 94 - - -Radcliffe, Engraver, 94 - -_Rain, Steam, and Speed_, 128 - -Rawlinson's "Turner's Liber Studiorum", 60 - -_Redcliffe Church, Bristol_, 84 - -Redding, Cyrus, 78, 82 - -Reeve, Lovell, description of Turner when young, 31 - -Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 25 - -_Richmond_, 94 - -"Richmondshire, Dr. Whitaker's History of", 94 - -_Rising Squall_, 34 - -Ritchie, Leitch, 116 - -"Rivers of England", 94, 96 - -"Rivers of France", 115, 116 - -Roberts, David, 23, 133 - -Rogers, Illustrations to, 99, 113, 114 - -Rome, 109, 110 - -_Rome, from the Vatican_, 97 - -Rooker, 23 - -_Rouen Cathedral_, 137 - -Ruskin, J., 39, 40, 48, 61, 73, 121, 122, 124, 132 - -Ruskin, J., his Collection of Turner's Drawings, 94, 129 - - -Sandycombe Lodge, 85, 86, 101 - -_St. Vincent's Rocks, Bristol, View near_, 34 - -Sandby, Paul, 23 - -Sandby, Tom, 23 - -School, First, at New Brentford, 13 - -Scott, Sir Walter, 92, 99 - -Shaw, Dr., 8 - -_Shipwreck, The_, 50, 54 - -_Slave Ship, The_, 129 - -Smith, John Raphael, 15, 23 - -_Snowstorm_, 128 - -Society of Artists, 13 - -Solus Lodge, 86 - -_Solway Moss_, 62 - -"Southern Coast", 47, 84, 99 - -_Spithead_, 54 - -Stanfield, 120, 128 - -_Sun rising through Vapour_, 54, 113 - -Switzerland, Sketches in, 54 - - -_Tmraire, The Fighting_, 118 - -_Temple of Jupiter_, 93 - -_Tenth Plague_, 49 - -Thomson, of Duddingstone, 92 - -Tomkison, 13, 16 - -_Tornaro_, 113 - -_Totnes_, 94 - -Townley, 45 - -Trimmer (Vicar of Heston), 86, 87, 88, 91, 101, 108, 111 - -Trimmer, Miss, attachment of Turner to, 89, 90 - -_Troyes_, 137 - -"Turner's Cribs", 85 - -"Turner Gallery" in Harley Street and Queen Anne Street, 85 - -"Turner and Girtin's Picturesque Views", 32 - -Turner's Gift, 78, 112 - -Turner, Charles, engraver, quarrel with Turner, 58 - -Turner, Price, uncle, 84 - -Turner, Thomas Price, first cousin, 84 - - -_Ulysses and Polyphemus_, 70, 107 - - -Vandevelde, 28, 50 - -Varley, 23, 24 - -Varnishing days, 99, 108 - -Venice, First pictures of, 114 - Sketches in National Gallery, 114 - -_Venice from Madonna della Salute_, 124 - -Venice, later pictures of, 126 - -_Venus and Adonis_, 52 - -Vergil, 70 - -Vignettes, 113 - -_Vision_, from "Voyage of Columbus", 114 - - -Wales, First Tour in, 32 - -Walker, J., 32 - -_War, the Exile and the Rock Limpet_, 130 - -_Warkworth Castle_, 43 - -_Waterloo_, 130 - -Watts, Alaric, 23, 31 - -Wedmore's "Essay on Girtin", 24 - -Wells, W. F., 18, 55, 112 - -_Westminster Abbey_, early drawing of, 14 - -"Whalley, Parish of," drawings for, 41 - -_What you Will_, 97 - -Wheeler, Mrs., 18 - -Whitaker, Dr., 41, 44 - -Wilkie, Sir D., 112, 128 - -Will, Turner's, 112, 139, 140 - -Wilson, 23, 27, 38, 49 - -Wolcot, Dr., 82 - -_Wreck of the Minotaur_, 50 - -Wyatt, Print Publisher, of Oxford, 86 - -_Wycliffe_, 94 - - -Yorkshire, Tour in, 34, 40 - - - - -CHRONOLOGY OF TURNER'S LIFE. - - - - Date. Page - - 1775. Born, 23rd April 6 - 1784. Drawing of Margate Church 13 - 1785. Goes to School at Brentford 15 - 1789. Student of Royal Academy 32 - 1791. First exhibits at Royal Academy 32 - 1792. First Tour in Wales 32 - 1792. Studio in Hand Court 32 - 1794. First engraving from Turner published 32 - 1793 or 1797. First exhibits in oil 34 - 1794. Noticed by the Press 34 - 1797. Tour in the North of England 40 - 1799. Elected A.R.A. 39 - 1799. Removes to Harley Street 75 - 1800. Visits Scotland 53 - 1801 or 1802. First Tour on Continent 53 - 1802. Elected R.A. 39 - 1804. Second Tour on Continent 76 - 1805. Paints _The Shipwreck_ 50 - 1807. Commences "Liber Studiorum" 55 - 1808. Professor of Perspective--Takes House at Hammersmith 75 - 1811. Exhibits _Apollo and the Python_ 67 - 1811 or 1812. Visits Devonshire 79 - 1812. Town address changed to Queen Anne Street 75 - 1814. Goes to Twickenham 75 - 1814. Commences _Southern Coast_ 84 - 1815. Exhibits _Crossing the Brook_ and _Dido Building Carthage_ 93 - 1819. First visit to Italy 92 - 1823. "History of Richmondshire" published 94 - 1824. "Rivers of England" published 94 - 1823. Exhibits _Bay of Bai_ 97 - 1826. Leaves Twickenham 101 - 1827. Quarrels with Cooke 101 - 1827. "England and Wales" commenced 104 - 1828. Visits Rome 109 - 1829. Exhibits _Ulysses deriding Polyphemus_ 107 - 1830. Death of his Father 111 - 1830. Illustrations to Rogers's "Italy" published 113 - 1831. Makes his Will 112 - 1833. Exhibits first Venetian Picture 114 - 1833. "Rivers of France" commenced 115 - 1839. Exhibits _Fighting Tmraire_ 118 - 1843. Publication of "Modern Painters" 124 - 1851. Death 134 - -[Illustration: decoration] - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -The Fighting Temeraire=> The Fighting Tmraire {pg 1} - -Similiar stories could=> Similar stories could {pg 22} - -Glacier and Source of the Arveron=> Glacier and Source of the Arvron -{pg 53} - -Yours must truly,=> Yours most truly, {pg 110} - - * * * * * - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] "Absalom and Achitophel." - -[2] Mr. Cyrus Redding met him there in 1812, and Sir Charles Eastlake -then or after then. There is no engraved drawing by him from Devonshire -till the _Southern Coast_, which began in 1814, or picture, till the -_Crossing of the Brook_, exhibited in 1815. - -[3] Mr. Thornbury treats this as an absurd tradition, but it is -supported by an account given by Dr. Shaw of an interview between him -and the artist, and printed by Mr. T. pp. 318, 319. "May I ask you if -you are the Mr. Turner who visited at Shelford Manor, in the county of -Nottingham, in your youth?" "I am," he answered. On being further -questioned as to whether his mother's name was Marshall, he grew very -angry, and accused his visitor of taking "an unwarrantable liberty," but -was pacified by an apology, and invited Dr. Shaw to give him "the favour -of a visit" whenever he came to town. - -[4] He was called "William" at home. - -[5] See "Notes and Queries," 2nd series, v. 475, for the true version of -this story. - -[6] Wornum. - -[7] Dr. Thomas Monro, of Bushey and Adelphi Terrace, physician of -Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals, a well-known lover of art and patron -of Edridge, Girtin, Turner, W. Hunt, and other young artists. He erected -monuments at Bushey Church to Edridge and Hearne. - -[8] This gentleman is described by Mr. Thornbury as Mr. _H_arraway, a -_fish_monger in Broad_way_. - -[9] This took place in 1836. - -[10] Mr. John Britton, publisher, and author of "Beauties of Wiltshire," -&c., &c. - -[11] Perhaps the Earl of Essex. - -[12] See Memoir prefixed to "Liber Fluviorum." - -[13] "Turner and Girtin's Picturesque Views," London, 1854. - -[14] See also Mr. Wedmore's interesting essay on Girtin for a story -about Turner and Girtin's drawing of the _White House at Chelsea_. - -[15] Whether father or son does not appear. - -[16] Down to 1851 the Exhibition, in common parlance, always meant the -Exhibition of the Royal Academy. - -[17] His first exhibited oil picture, according to Mr. S. Redgrave. See -"Dictionary of Artists of the English School." - -[18] According to most accounts his first exhibited oil picture. - -[19] See Whitaker's "Parish of Whalley," vol. ii. p. 183. - -[20] See also Willis's "Current Notes" for Jan. 1852. - -[21] In a letter from Andrew Caldwell to Bishop Percy, dated 14th June, -1802, printed by Nicholls in his "Illustrations of the Literary History -of the Eighteenth Century," vol. viii. p. 43, Turner is spoken of as -beating "Loutherbourg and every other artist all to nothing." "A painter -of my acquaintance, and a good judge, declares his pencil is magic; that -it is worth every landscape-painter's while to make a pilgrimage to see -and study his works. Loutherbourg, he used to think of so highly, -appears now mediocre." - -[22] The names of these pictures are given as printed in the Catalogue. - -[23] Rawlinson. - -[24] See saying of Turner's reported by Mr. Halstead, and printed in -note in Mr. Rawlinson's "Turner's Liber Studiorum, Macmillan and Co., -1878," from which excellent work most of the above information is -derived. - -[25] Not issued till the 10th part, or over five years from the -publication of the first. - -[26] Only a portion of it, the picture. - -[27] The only picture exhibited at the Academy by this artist. It was -called _A Landscape, with Hannibal in his March over the Alps, showing -to his Army the Fertile Plains of Italy_. As its year of exhibition was -1776, it would be interesting to learn where Turner saw this picture. -Where is it now? Our information on the subject is derived from -Redgrave's "Century of Painters." - -[28] Thornbury, p. 236. - -[29] He became Professor of Perspective to the Royal Academy in this -year. - -[30] Turner seems to have paid a visit to the Continent in 1804, as Mr. -Thornbury refers to some powerful water-colour Swiss scenes of 1804 at -Farnley, p. 240. - -[31] There is no record of a visit by Turner to the Isle of Man. - -[32] Wordsworth's "Elegiac Stanzas," suggested by a picture of 'Peele -Castle in a storm,' painted by Sir George Beaumont. - -[33] "Past Celebrities," by Cyrus Redding, vol. i. - -[34] Thornbury, p. 152. - -[35] See Wornum, "Turner Gallery," p. xv., for a Catalogue of Turner's -Gallery in 1809. - -[36] He is said to have been his own architect for both houses. - -[37] See Thornbury, p. 224. - -[38] See Thornbury, p. 223. - -[39] Called in the Catalogue _Whitehall Stairs, June 18th, 1817_. - -[40] _Helvoetsluys_: _the City of Utrecht, 64, going to sea_. - -[41] Turner had a picture of the same subject in another room. The two -artists had agreed together that each should paint it. - -[42] Leslie's "Autobiographical Recollections," vol. i. pp. 202, 203. - -[43] They are printed as given by Thornbury. - -[44] In his first will he only leaves two pictures to the Nation, the -_Sun Rising through Mist_ and the _Carthage_, and on condition that they -were to be hung side by side with the great Claudes. - -[45] Hamerton, pp. 286-87. - -[46] Ibid., p. 292. - -[47] Thornbury, pp. 349-51. - -[48] Mr. Harpur, the grandson of the sister of his mother, one of his -executors. - -[49] We are informed by Mr. J. Beavington Atkinson, to whom we are -indebted for other interesting facts in connection with Turner, that he -was not ungrateful to his early friends, the Narraways of Bristol, but -supplied them from time to time with sums of money, and that at his -death there was a sum owing by one of the family who wished to repay it, -but was informed by the executors that Turner had left no record of any -such debt. - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Turner, by William Cosmo Monkhouse - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURNER *** - -***** This file should be named 40878-8.txt or 40878-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/8/7/40878/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Turner - -Author: William Cosmo Monkhouse - -Release Date: September 27, 2012 [EBook #40878] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURNER *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 368px;"> -<a href="images/cover_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="368" height="550" alt="image of the book's cover" title="image of the book's cover" /></a> -</div> - -<p class="cb"><i>ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF<br /> -THE GREAT ARTISTS.</i></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/p_i_a.png"> -<img src="images/p_i_a_sml.png" width="89" height="38" alt="decoration" title="decoration" /></a> -</p> - -<p class="cb"><big>JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER</big><br /> -ROYAL ACADEMICIAN.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/p_i.png"> -<img src="images/p_i_sml.png" width="90" height="41" alt="decoration" title="decoration" /></a> -</p> - -<p class="cb"> -ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES<br /> -OF<br /> -THE GREAT ARTISTS.</p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="" -style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto; max-width:80%;"> - -<tr valign="top"><td>TITIAN</td><td>From the most recent authorities.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By Richard Ford Heath, M.A., Hertford Coll. Oxford.</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>REMBRANDT</td><td>From the Text of C. Vosmaer.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By J. W. Mollett, B.A., Brasenose Coll. Oxford.</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>RAPHAEL</td><td>From the Text of J. D. Passavant.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By N. D’Anvers, Author of “Elementary History of Art.”</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>VAN DYCK & HALS</td><td>From the most recent authorities.</td></tr> -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By Percy R. Head, Lincoln Coll. Oxford.</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>HOLBEIN</td><td>From the Text of Dr. Woltmann.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By the Editor, Author of “Life and Genius of Rembrandt”</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>TINTORETTO</td><td>From recent investigations.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By W. Roscoe Osler, Author of occasional Essays on Art.</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>TURNER</td><td>From the most recent authorities.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By Cosmo Monkhouse, Author of “Studies of Sir E. Landseer.”</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>THE LITTLE MASTERS</td><td>From the most recent authorities.</td></tr> -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By W. B. Scott, Author of “Lectures on the Fine Arts.”</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>HOGARTH</td><td>From recent investigations.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By Austin Dobson, Author of “Vignettes in Rhyme,” &c.</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>RUBENS</td><td>From recent investigations.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By C. W. Kett, M.A., Hertford Coll. Oxford.</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>MICHELANGELO</td><td>From the most recent authorities.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By Charles Clément, Author of “Michel-Ange, Léonard, et Raphael.”</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>LIONARDO</td><td>From recent researches.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By Dr. J. Paul Richter, Author of “Die Mosaiken von Ravenna.”</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>GIOTTO</td><td>From recent investigations.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By Harry Quilter, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge.</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td colspan="2">THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF THE NETHERLANDS.</td></tr> -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By Lord Ronald Gower, Author of “Guide to the Galleries of Holland.”</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>VELAZQUEZ</td><td>From the most recent authorities.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By Edwin Stowe, B.A., Brasenose Coll. Oxford.</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>GAINSBOROUGH</td><td>From the most recent authorities.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By George M. Brock-Arnold, M.A., Hertford Coll. Oxford.</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>PEUGINO</td><td>From recent investigations.</td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By T. Adolphus Trollope, Author of many Essays on Art.</i></td></tr> - -<tr valign="top"><td>DELAROCHE & VERNET</td><td>From the works of C<small>HARLES</small> B<small>LANC</small>.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><i>By Mrs. Ruutz Rees, Author of various Essays on Art.</i></td></tr> - -</table> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_frontispiece_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_frontispiece_sml.jpg" width="458" height="628" alt="JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER. -From a sketch by John Gilbert." title="JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER. -From a sketch by John Gilbert." /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER.<br /> - -From a sketch by John Gilbert.</span> -</p> - -<p class="cb">“<i>The whole world without Art would be one great wilderness.</i>”</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/p_0.png" width="80" height="23" alt="decoration" title="decoration" /> -</p> - -<h1>TURNER</h1> - -<p class="cb">BY W. COSMO MONKHOUSE<br /> -<i>Author of</i> “<i>Studies of Sir E. Landseer.</i>”<br /> -<br /><br /> -<a href="images/title.png"> -<img src="images/title_sml.png" width="71" height="106" alt="" title="" /></a> -<br /><br /> -NEW YORK:<br /> -SCRIBNER AND WELFORD.<br /> -<br /> -LONDON:<br /> -SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON,<br /> -1879.<br /> -<br /><br /><br /> -(<i>All rights reserved.</i>)<br /> -<br /> -<small>CHISWICK PRESS:—C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT,<br /> -CHANCERY LANE.</small></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_preface.png"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_preface_sml.png" width="450" height="79" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> -</p> - -<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE late Mr. Thornbury lost such an opportunity of writing a worthy -biography of Turner as will never occur again. How he dealt with the -valuable materials which he collected is well known to all who have had -to test the accuracy of his statements; and unfortunately many of the -channels from which he derived information have since been closed by -death. Mr. Ruskin, who might have helped so much, has contributed little -to the life of the artist but some brilliant passages of pathetic -rhetoric. Overgrown by his luxuriant eloquence, and buried beneath the -<i>débris</i> of Thornbury, the ruins of Turner’s Life lay hidden till last -year.</p> - -<p>Mr. Hamerton’s “Life of Turner” has done much to remove a very serious -blot from English literature. Very careful, but very frank, it presents -a clear and consistent view of the great painter and his art, and is, -moreover, penetrated with that intellectual insight and refined thought -which illuminate all its author’s work.</p> - -<p>He has, however, left much to be done, and this book will, I hope, help -a little in clearing away long-standing errors, and reducing the known -facts about Turner to something like order. To these facts I have been -able to add a few hitherto unpublished; and it is a pleasant duty to -return my thanks to the many kind friends and strangers for the pains -which they have taken to supply me with information. To Mr. F. E. -Trimmer, of Heston, the son of Turner’s old friend and executor; to Mr. -John L. Roget; to Mr. Mayall, and to Mr. J. Beavington Atkinson, my -thanks are especially due.</p> - -<p>In so small a book upon so large a subject, I have often had much -difficulty in deciding what to select and what to reject, and have -always preferred those events and stories which seem to me to throw most -light upon Turner’s character. On purely technical matters I have -touched only when I thought it absolutely necessary. This part of the -subject has been already so well and fully treated by Mr. Ruskin in -numerous works, too well known to need mention; by Mr. Hamerton in his -“Life of Turner,” and “Etching and Etchers;” by Messrs. Redgrave in -their “Century of English Painters,” and by Mr. S. Redgrave in his -introduction to the collection of water-colours at South Kensington, -that I need only refer to these works such few among my readers as are -not already acquainted with them. I would also refer them for similar -reasons to Mr. Rawlinson’s recent work on the “Liber Studiorum.”</p> - -<p>I should have liked to add to this volume accurate lists of Turner’s -works and the engravings from them, with information of their -possessors, and the extraordinary fluctuation in the prices which they -have realized, but this would have entailed great labour and have -swelled unduly the bulk of this volume, which is already greater than -that of its fellows. Fortunately this information is likely to be soon -supplied by Mr. Algernon Graves, whose accurate catalogue of Landseer’s -works is sufficient guarantee of the manner in which he will perform -this more difficult task.</p> - -<p>The edition of Thornbury’s “Life of Turner” referred to throughout these -pages, is that of 1877.</p> - -<p class="r">W. C<small>OSMO</small> M<small>ONKHOUSE</small>.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_contents.png"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_contents_sml.png" width="450" height="88" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> -</p> - -<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2">PART I.</td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">1775 to 1797. Days of Education and Practice.</span></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="right" colspan="2"><small>Page</small></td></tr> - -<tr><td>Introductory</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_001">1</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>Early Days—1775 to 1789</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_006">6</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>Youth—1789 to 1796</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_020">20</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2">PART II.</td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">1797 to 1820. Days of Mastery and Emulation.</span></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>Yorkshire and the young Academician—1797 to 1807</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_038">38</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>The “Liber Studiorum” and the Dragons</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_055">55</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>Harley Street, Devonshire, Hammersmith, and Twickenham</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_075">75</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2">PART III.</td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">1820 to 1851. Days of Glory and Decline.</span></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>Italy and France—1820 to 1840</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_092">92</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td align="center" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td>Light and Darkness—1840 to 1851</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_121">121</a></td></tr> -<tr><td colspan="2"><a href="#INDEX">Index.</a></td></tr> -<tr><td colspan="2"><a href="#CHRONOLOGY_OF_TURNERS_LIFE">Chronology Of Turner’s Life.</a></td></tr> - -</table> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/contents_end.png"> -<img src="images/contents_end_sml.png" width="125" height="68" alt="decoration" title="decoration" /></a> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p001.png"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p001_sml.png" width="450" height="159" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> -</p> - -<h1>T U R N E R.</h1> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.<br /><br /> -<small>I N T R O D U C T O R Y.</small></h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE task of writing a satisfactory life of Turner is one of more than -usual difficulty. He hid himself, partly intentionally, partly because -he could not express himself except by means of his brush. His -secretiveness was so consistent, and commenced so early, that it seems -to have been an instinct, or what used to be called by that name. Akin -to the most divinely gifted poets by his supreme pictorial imagination, -he also seems on the other side to have been related to beings whose -reasoning faculty is less than human. When we look at such pictures as -<i>Crossing the Brook</i>, <i>The Fighting Téméraire</i>, and <i>Ulysses and -Polyphemus</i>, we feel that we are in the presence of a mind as sensitive -as Keats’s, as tender as Goldsmith’s, and as penetrative as Shelley’s; -when we read of the dirty discomfort of his home and of the difficulty -with which his patrons, and even his relations, obtained access<a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a> to his -presence—how even his most intimate friends were not admitted to his -confidence—we can only think of a hedgehog, whose offensive powers -being limited, is warned by nature to live in a hole and roll itself up -into a ball of spikes at the approach of strangers.</p> - -<p>We are used to having our idols broken; but we still fashion them with a -persistency which seems to argue it a necessity of our nature, that we -should think of the life and character of gifted men as being the -outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace we perceive -in their works. It is this habit which makes any attempt to write a life -of Turner pre-eminently unsatisfactory, for his refined sense of the -most ethereal of natural phenomena is not relieved by any refinement in -his manners, his supreme feeling for the splendour of the sun is -unmatched by any light or brilliance in his social life; his extreme -sensibility, a sensibility not only artistic but human, to all the -emotional influences of nature, stands for ever as a contrast to his -self-absorbed, suspicious individuality. There is of course no reason -why a landscape painter should be refined in manner or choice in his -habits. There is no necessary connection between the subjects of such an -artist and himself, except his hand and eye. He lives a life of visions -that may come and go without affecting his life or even his thought, as -we generally use that word. The most tremendous phenomena of nature may -be seen and studied, and reproduced with such power as to strike terror -into those who see the picture, and yet leave the artist unaltered in -demeanour and taste. Even those men of genius who, instead of employing -their imagination upon nature’s inanimate works, devote themselves to -the study of man himself, socially and morally, do not<a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a> by any means -show that relation between themselves and their finest work that we -appear naturally to expect.</p> - -<p>But all this, though it may explain much, still leaves unsatisfactory -the task of writing the life of a man of whom such passages as the -following could be sincerely written:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Glorious in conception—unfathomable in knowledge—solitary in -power—with the elements waiting upon his will, and the night and -morning obedient to his call, sent as a prophet of God to reveal to -men the mysteries of the universe, standing, like the great angel -of the Apocalypse, clothed with a cloud, and with a rainbow upon -his head, and with the sun and stars given into his hand.”—<i>Modern -Painters</i> (1843), p. 92.</p> - -<p>“Towards the end of his career he would often, I am assured on the -best authority, paint hard all the week till Saturday night; and he -would then put by his work, slip a five-pound note into his pocket, -button it securely up there, and set off to some low sailor’s house -in Wapping or Rotherhithe, to wallow till Monday morning summoned -him to mope through another week.”—T<small>HORNBURY’S</small> <i>Life of Turner</i> -(1877), pp. 313, 314.</p></div> - -<p>The contrast is too great to make the picture pleasant, the facts are -too few to make it perfect; to make it one or the other, it would be -necessary to do as Turner did, and rightly did, with his perfect -drawings—suppress facts that jarred with his scheme of form and colour, -and insert figures or mountains or clouds that were necessary to -complete it; but a biography is nothing if not real—it belongs to the -other side of art. The task would be rendered lighter, if not more -agreeable, if we were frankly to accept the principle of a dual nature, -and cutting up our subject into halves, treat Turner the artist and -Turner the man as two separate beings; and there would, at first sight, -seem to be no more convincing proof of this duality than is afforded by -Turner. He had an exquisitely sensitive<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a> apprehension of all physical -phenomena, and was able to hoard away his impressions by the thousand in -that wonderful brain-store of his, until they were wanted for pictures. -He stored them with his eye, he reproduced them with his hand and -memory. These three were all of the finest, and seemed to act without -that process which is necessary to most of us before we can make use of -our impressions, viz., the translation of them into words. This process -is as necessary for the nourishment of most minds as digestion for the -nourishment of the body, but to him it appears to have been almost -entirely denied. He had grasp enough of his impressions without it, to -enable him to analyze them and compose them pictorially; but he could -not give any account of them or of his method of composition, and they -had no sensible effect on his conversation.</p> - -<p>He thus lived in two worlds—one the pictorial sight-world, in which he -was a profound scholar and a poet, the other the articulate, moral, -social word-world in which he was a dunce and underbred. In the one he -was great and happy, in the other he was small and miserable; for what -philosophy he had was fatalist. The riddle of life was too hard for his -uncultivated intellect and starved heart to contemplate with any hope; -he was only at rest in his dreamland. When he came down into this world -of ours from his own clouds, he brought some of his glory with him, but -without any cheerful effect; for it came but as a foil to ruined -castles, the vice of mortals and the decay of nations.</p> - -<p>Yet, while at a first view this distinction between Turner as a man and -Turner as an artist seems complete, further study shows that the man had -a great and often a fatal influence on the artist, and that this was not -without<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> reaction both serious and deep, and so we find that his art and -himself are no more to be divided in any human view of him than were his -body and his soul when he was yet alive. For these reasons we shall keep -as close together as possible the histories of his life and his art, a -task always difficult and sometimes impossible on account of the -scantiness of trustworthy data for the one and the almost infinite -material for the other.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/p005.png"> -<img src="images/p005_sml.png" width="65" height="118" alt="decoration" title="decoration" /></a> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p006.png"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p006_sml.png" width="450" height="81" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> -</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.<br /><br /> -<small>EARLY DAYS.</small><br /><br /> -<small>1775 TO 1789.</small></h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE appearance of Turner’s genius in this world is not to be accounted -for by any known facts. Given his father and his mother, his grandfather -and grandmother, on the father’s side, which is all we know of his -ancestry, given the date of his birth, even though that was the 23rd -April (St. George’s day, as has been so childishly insisted on), 1775, -there seems to be positively no reason why William Turner, barber, of -26, Maiden Lane, opposite the Cider Cellar, in the parish of St. Paul’s, -Covent Garden, and Mary Turner, <i>née</i> Marshall, his wife, should have -produced an artist, still less, one of the greatest artists that the -world has yet seen. There is only one fact, and that a very sad one, -which might be held to have some connection with his genius. “Great wits -are sure to madness near allied,” sang Dryden,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> and poor Mrs. Turner -became insane “towards the end of her days.” This, however, will in no -way account for the special quality of Turner’s genius. He arose like -many other great men in those days to help in opening the eyes of -England to the beauties of nature, one of the large and illustrious -constellation of men of genius<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a> that lit the end of the last and the -beginning of the present century, and with that truth we must be -content.</p> - -<p>The earliest fact that we have on record which had any influence on -Turner is that his paternal grandfather and grandmother spent all their -lives at South Molton in Devonshire. Although he is not known to have -visited Devonshire till he was thirty-seven years of age;<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> he appears -to have been proud of his connection with the county, and to have -asserted that he was a Devonshire man. This is, as far as we know, the -solitary effect of Turner’s ancestry upon him. Of his father and mother -the influence was necessarily great. From his father he undoubtedly -obtained his extraordinary habits of economy, that spirit of a petty -tradesman, which was one of his most unlovely characteristics, and, be -it added, his honesty and industry also. Of his father we have several -descriptions by persons who knew him; of his mother, one only, and that, -unfortunately, not so authentic. We will give the lady the first place, -and it must be remembered that this unfavourable picture is drawn by Mr. -Thornbury from information derived from the Rev. Henry Syer Trimmer, the -son of Turner’s old friend and executor, the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, -of Heston, who obtained it from Hannah Danby, Turner’s housekeeper in -Queen Anne Street, who got it from Turner’s father.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“In an unfinished portrait of her by her son, which was one of his -first attempts, my informant perceived no mark of promise; and he -extended<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> the same remark to Turner’s first essays at landscape. -The portrait was not wanting in force or decision of touch, but the -drawing was defective. There was a strong likeness to Turner about -the nose and eyes; her eyes being represented as blue, of a lighter -hue than her son’s; her nose aquiline, and the nether lip having a -slight fall. Her hair was well frizzed—for which she might have -been indebted to her husband’s professional skill—and it was -surmounted by a cap with large flappers. Her posture therein -(<i>sic</i>) was erect, and her aspect masculine, not to say fierce; and -this impression of her character was confirmed by report, which -proclaimed her to have been a person of ungovernable temper, and to -have led her husband a sad life. Like her son, her stature was -below the average.”</p></div> - -<p>This as the result of a painted portrait by her son, and verbal -description by her husband, is not too flattering, and it is all we know -of the character and appearance of poor Mary Turner. Of her belongings -we know still less. She is said to have been sister to Mr. Marshall, a -butcher, of Brentford, and first cousin to the grandmother of Dr. Shaw, -author of “Gallops in the Antipodes,” and to have been related to the -Marshalls, formerly of Shelford Manor House, near Nottingham.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> We are -able to add to this scanty information that she was the younger sister -of Mrs. Harpur, the wife of the curate of Islington, who was grandfather -of Mr. Henry Harpur, one of Turner’s executors. He (the grandfather) -fell in love with his future wife when at Oxford, and their marriage -brought her<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a> sister to London. We are also informed that the -hard-featured woman crooning over the smoke, in an early drawing by -Turner in the National Gallery (<i>An Interior</i>, No. 15), is Turner’s -mother, and the kitchen in which she is sitting, the kitchen in Maiden -Lane. We have also ascertained that one Mary Turner, from St. Paul’s, -Covent Garden, was admitted into Bethlehem Hospital on Dec. 27th, 1800, -one of whose sponsors for removal was “Richard Twenlow, Peruke Maker.” -This unfortunate lady, whether Turner’s mother or not, was discharged -uncured in the following year. Altogether what we know about Turner’s -mother does not inspire curiosity, and we fear that she was never -destined to figure in an edition of “The Mothers of Great Men.” The “sad -life” which she is said to have led her husband could scarcely have been -sadder than her own.</p> - -<p>Of his father we have fuller information.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Mr. Trimmer’s description of the painter’s parent, the result of -close knowledge of him, is that he was about the height of his son, -spare and muscular, with a head below the average standards” -(whatever that may mean) “small blue eyes, parrot nose, projecting -chin, and a fresh complexion indicative of health, which he -apparently enjoyed to the full. He was a chatty old fellow, and -talked fast, and his words acquired a peculiar transatlantic twang -from his nasal enunciation. His cheerfulness was greater than that -of his son, and a smile was always on his countenance.”</p></div> - -<p>This description is of him when an old man, but he must have been not -very different from this when about one year and eighteen months after -his marriage, which took place on August 29th, 1773, the little William -was born. He was not a man likely to alter much in habit or appearance. -He was always stingy, if we may judge by the<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a> story of his following a -customer down Maiden Lane to recover a halfpenny which he omitted to -charge for soap, and from his son’s statement that his “Dad” never -praised him for anything but saving a halfpenny. As barbers are -proverbially talkative, and as persons do not generally develop -cheerfulness in later life, we may consider Mr. Trimmer’s portrait of -the old man to be essentially correct of him when young, especially as -we find that Turner the younger was always “old looking,” a peculiarity -which is generally hereditary.</p> - -<p>The house (now pulled down) in which Turner was born, and in which, for -at least some time after, father, mother, and son resided together, is -thus described by Mr. Ruskin: “Near the south-west corner of Covent -Garden, a square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set block of -houses, to the back windows of which it admits a few rays of light. -Access to the bottom of it is obtained out of Maiden Lane, through a low -archway and an iron gate; and if you stand long enough under the archway -to accustom your eyes to the darkness, you may see, on the left hand, a -narrow door, which formerly gave access to a respectable barber’s shop, -of which the front window, looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant.” -Maiden Lane is not a very brilliant thoroughfare, and was still narrower -and darker at this time, but still this picture, though doubtless -accurate, seems to make it still darker, and in the engraving of the -house in Thornbury’s life of Turner, even the front window that looked -into Maiden Lane is rendered ominously black by the shadow of a watchman -thrown up by his low-held lantern. To us it seems that there is plenty -of dark in Turner’s life without thus unduly heightening the gloom of -his first dwelling-place. A barber cannot do his work without light, and -we have no doubt that whatever sorrow<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a> fell upon Turner in his life was -in no way deepened by his having to pass through a low archway and an -iron gate in order to get to his father’s shop.</p> - -<div class="figright" style="width: 268px;"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p011_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p011_sml.jpg" width="268" height="541" alt="HOUSE IN MAIDEN LANE IN WHICH TURNER WAS BORN." title="HOUSE IN MAIDEN LANE IN WHICH TURNER WAS BORN." /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">HOUSE IN MAIDEN LANE IN WHICH TURNER<br /> -WAS BORN.</span> -</div> - -<p>The house in Maiden Lane would have been a cheerful enough and a -wholesome enough nest for little William<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> if it had contained a happy -family presided over by a sweetly smiling mother. This want is the real -dark porch and iron gateway of his life, the want which could never be -supplied. In that wonderful memory<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> of his, so faithful, by all -accounts, to all places where he had once been happy, there was no -chamber stored with sweet pictures of the home of his youth; no -exhaustless reservoir of tender, healthy sentiment, such as most of us -have, however poor. Here is a note of pathos on which we might dwell -long and strongly without fear of dispute or charge of false sentiment. -Children, indeed, do not miss what they have not: present sorrows did -not probably affect his appetite, future forebodings did not dim his -hopes; but then, and for ever afterwards, he was terribly handicapped in -the struggle for peace and happiness on earth, in his desire after right -thinking and right doing, in his aims at self-development, in his chance -of wholesome fellowship with his kind, in his capacity for understanding -others and making himself understood, for all these things are more -difficult of attainment to one who never has known by personal -experience the charm of what we mean by “home.”</p> - -<p>This want in his life runs through his art, full as it is of feeling for -his fellow-creatures, their daily labour, their merry-makings, their -fateful lives and deaths; there is at least one note missing in his -gamut of human circumstance—that of domesticity. He shows us men at -work in the fields, on the seas, in the mines, in the battle, bargaining -in the market, and carousing at the fair, but never at home. This is one -of the principal reasons why his art has never been truly popular in -home-loving domestic England.</p> - -<p>It is not good for man, still less for a boy, to be alone, and we do not -think we can be wrong in thinking that he was a solitary boy. How soon -he became so we do not know. We may hope that in his earliest years at -least he was tenderly cared for by his mother, and petted by his father. -There is no reason why we may not draw a bright picture<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a> of his -childhood, and fancy him walking on Sundays with his father and mother -in the Mall of St. James’s Park, wearing a short flat-crowned hat with a -broad brim over his curly brown hair, with snowy ruffles round his neck -and wrists, and a gay sash tied round his waist, concealing the junction -between his jacket-waistcoat and his pantaloons; but this bright period -cannot have lasted long. Soon he must have been driven upon himself for -his amusement, and fortunate it was for him that nature provided him -with one wholesome and endless.</p> - -<p>It is known that one artist, Stothard, was a customer of his father, and -it is probable that as there was an academy in St. Martin’s Lane, and -the Society of Artists at the Lyceum, and many artists resided about -Covent Garden, the little boy’s emulation may have been excited by -hearing of them, and perhaps chatting with them and seeing their -sketches.</p> - -<p>He certainly began very early. We are told that he first showed his -talent by drawing with his finger in milk spilt on the teatray, and the -story of his sketching a coat-of-arms from a set of castors at Mr. -Tomkison’s the jeweller, and father of the celebrated pianoforte maker, -must belong to a very early age.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The earliest known drawing by him of -a building is one of Margate Church, when he was nine years old, shortly -before he went to his uncle’s at New Brentford for change of air. There -he went to his first school and drew cocks and hens on the walls, and -birds, flowers, and trees from the school-room windows, and it is added -that<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a> “his schoolfellows, sympathizing with his taste, often did his -sums for him, while he pursued the bent of his compelling genius.” Very -soon after this, if not before, he began to make drawings, some of these -copies of engravings coloured, which were exhibited in his father’s shop -window at the price of a few shillings, and he drew portraits of his -father and mother, and of himself at an early age. It is said that his -father intended him to be a barber at first,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> but struck with his -talent for drawing soon determined that he should follow his bent and be -a painter. He is said to have delighted in going into the fields and -down the river to sketch, but all the very early drawings we have seen, -including those purchased at his father’s shop, are drawings of -buildings, mostly in London. Of these there is one of the interior of -<i>Westminster Abbey</i>, in Mr. Crowle’s edition of “Pennant’s London,” now -in the print room of the British Museum. There is nothing to distinguish -these from the work of any clever boy, but this drawing and one in the -National Gallery, of a scene near Oxford, both probably copied from -prints, show a sense not only of light but colour. We have also seen a -copy of Boswell’s “Antiquities of England and Wales,” with about seventy -of the plates very cleverly coloured by him when a boy at Brentford.</p> - -<p>Whatever defects Turner, the barber, may have had as a father, neglect -of his son’s talents was not one of them, and, though very careful for -the pence, he showed that he could make a pecuniary sacrifice when he -had a chance of furthering his son’s prospects, for he refused to allow -him to become the apprentice of one architect who offered to take him -for nothing, and paid the whole of a legacy he had been left to place -him with another, and we may presume a better one.<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a></p> - -<p>The information given by Mr. Thornbury about his early training, -scholastic and professional, is very meagre, inconsecutive, and -puzzling. According to him it was in 1785 that Turner, having been -previously taught reading, but not writing, by his father, went to his -first school, which was kept by Mr. John White, at New Brentford; in -1786 or 1787, by which time at least his destination for an artist’s -career appears to have been settled, he was sent to “Mr. Palice, a -floral drawing-master,” at an Academy in Soho, and in 1788, to a school -kept by a Mr. Coleman at Margate; at some time before 1789, to Mr. -Thomas Malton, a perspective draughtsman, who kept a school in Long -Acre, and in this year to Mr. Hardwick, the architect, and to the school -of the Royal Academy. He also went to Paul Sandby’s drawing school in -St. Martin’s Lane. During all, or nearly all this time, he was, -according to Mr. Thornbury, employed: 1. In making drawings at home to -sell. 2. In colouring prints for John Raphael Smith, the engraver, -printseller, and miniature painter. 3. Out sketching with Girtin. 4. -Making drawings of an evening at Dr. Monro’s<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> in the Adelphi. 5. -Washing in backgrounds for Mr. Porden. If he was really employed in this -way from 1785 to 1789, and could only read and not write when he began -this extraordinary course of training, it is no wonder that he remained -illiterate all his life, or that his mind was utterly incapacitated for -taking in and assimilating knowledge in the usual way. Spending a few -months at a day school, and a few more at a “floral drawing master,” -then a few<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> more at school at Margate, making drawings for sale, -colouring prints, fruitlessly studying perspective, bandied about from -school master to drawing master, and from drawing master to -architect—such a life for a young mind from ten to fourteen years of -age is enough to spoil the finest intellectual digestion.</p> - -<p>One fact, however, comes clear out of all this confusion, that of -regular and ordinary schooling he had little or none, and there is no -reason to suppose that it was because of the peculiar quality of his -mind that he always spoke and wrote like a dunce. He never had a fair -chance of acquiring in his youth more than a traveller’s knowledge of -his own language, and so his mind had a very small outlet through the -ordinary channels of speech. On the other hand, faculties of drawing and -composition were trained to the utmost, and this compensated him in a -measure. His mind had only one entrance, his eye, and only one exit, his -hand; but they were both exceptional, and cultivated exceptionally.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p017_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p017_sml.jpg" width="528" height="350" alt="CHATEAU D’AMBOISE. - -From “Rivers of France.”" title="CHATEAU D’AMBOISE. - -From “Rivers of France.”" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">CHATEAU D’AMBOISE.<br /> -From “Rivers of France.”</span> -</p> - -<p>There was, however, much of pleasure in this life for a boy like Turner, -for though he evidently worked hard, he liked work and the work he had -to do was especially congenial to him. He met friends and encouragers on -all sides; from his father to his school-fellows. However much reason he -may have had for disappointment in later years, there was none in his -early life. He was “found out” in his childhood. Encouraged by his -father, with his drawings finding a ready sale to such men as Mr. -Henderson, Mr. Crowle, and Mr. Tomkison, with plenty of employment in no -slavish mean work for such a youngster, such as colouring prints and -putting in backgrounds to drawings, with Mr. Porden generously offering -to take him as an apprentice for nothing,<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> -<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> -with a kind friend like Dr. -Monro always willing to give him a supper and half-a-crown for sketches -of the country near his residence at Bushey, or the result of an -evening’s copying of the then best attainable water colours; his life -was far more agreeable, far more tended to make him think well of the -world and of the people in it than has been usually represented, and -probably as good as he could have had for attaining early proficiency in -his art. London at that time was not a bad place for a landscape artist. -It was neither so clouded nor so sooty as it is now; there were -healthier trees in it, and more of them, a more picturesque and a purer -river, and within less than half an hour’s walk from Maiden Lane there -were green fields, for north of the British Museum the country was still -open.</p> - -<p>But he was not entirely dependent upon his art and his employers for -enjoyment, or for forming his opinion of the human race. There were -houses at which he visited and where he was received warmly. When at -school at Margate he got an “introduction to the pleasant family of a -favourite school-fellow;” at Bristol there was Mr. Narraway,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> a -fellmonger in Broadmead, and an old friend of his father, at whose house -he drew two of the children and his own portrait; and at the house of -Mr. William Frederick Wells, the artist, he was evidently one of the -family, as is proved by the charmingly tender reminiscences of Mrs. -Wheeler.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p><a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a>“In early life my father’s house was his second home, a haven of -rest from many domestic trials too sacred to touch upon. Turner -loved my father with a son’s affection; and to me he was as an -elder brother. Many are the times I have gone out sketching with -him. I remember his scrambling up a tree to obtain a better view, -and then he made a coloured sketch, I handing up his colours as he -wanted them. Of course, at that time, I was quite a young girl. He -was a firm affectionate friend to the end of his life; his feelings -were seldom seen on the surface, but they were deep and enduring. -No one would have imagined, under that rather rough and cold -exterior, how very strong were the affections which lay hidden -beneath. I have more than once seen him weep bitterly, particularly -at the death of my own dear father,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> which took him by surprise, -for he was blind to the coming event, which he dreaded. He came -immediately to my house in an agony of tears. Sobbing like a child, -he said, ‘Oh, Clara, Clara! these are iron tears. I have lost the -best friend I ever had in my life.’ Oh! what a different man would -Turner have been if all the good and kindly feelings of his great -mind had been called into action; but they lay dormant, and were -known to so very few. He was by nature suspicious, and no tender -hand had wiped away early prejudices, the inevitable consequence of -a defective education. Of all the light-hearted merry creatures I -ever knew, Turner was the most so; and the laughter and fun that -abounded when he was an inmate of our cottage was inconceivable, -particularly with the juvenile members of the family.”—T<small>HORNBURY’S</small> -<i>Life of Turner</i> (1877), pp. 235, 236.</p></div> - -<p>A man who knew this lady for sixty years, and about whom so kind a heart -could have thus written, could not have been driven to a life of morbid -seclusion because the world had treated him so badly in his youth. His -home may have been, and probably was a cheerless one, and we may well -pity him on that account. The rest of our pity we had better reserve for -his want of education, and the secretive, suspicious disposition which -nature gave him, and which he allowed to master his more genial -propensities.<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p020.png"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p020_sml.png" width="450" height="78" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> -</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.<br /><br /> -<small>YOUTH.</small><br /><br /> -<small>1789 to 1796.</small></h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE only rebuff with which the young artist appears to have met was from -Tom Malton, the perspective draughtsman, who sent him back to his father -as a boy to whom it was impossible to teach geometrical perspective. As -Mr. Hamerton observes, “There is nothing in this which need surprise us -in the least. Scientific perspective is a pursuit which may amuse or -occupy a mathematician, but the stronger the artistic faculty in a -painter the less he is likely to take to it, for it exercises other -faculties than his. Besides this, he feels instinctively that he can do -very well without it.” No doubt he did feel this, and the feeling very -much lessened the disappointment at being “sent back,” and he did very -well without it, so well that he was appointed Professor of Perspective -to the Royal Academy without it, and not unfrequently exhibited pictures -on its walls, which showed how very much “without it” he was.</p> - -<p>Otherwise he met with no rebuffs in his art. We have seen that he got -plenty of employment, and have expressed an opinion that that -employment—colouring engravings, and putting in backgrounds and -foregrounds and skies for architectural drawings—was no mean employment -for a<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> youngster. He himself, when pitied in later years for this -supposed degradation and slavery, replied, “Well, and what could be -better practice!” and it was this and more. It not only taught him to -work neatly, to lay flat washes smoothly and accurately, but it taught -him to exercise his ingenuity and artistic taste. He probably succeeded -so well, because it gave him an opportunity of displaying his artistic -faculty. Every sketch that he had thus to beautify presented an artistic -problem, how best to light and decorate and make a picture of the bare -bones of an architectural design. It gave him a sense of power and -importance thus to be the converter of topography into art; it taught -him the value of light and shade, and the decorative capacities of trees -and sky. His success gave him self-reliance. It also, and this was -perhaps a more doubtful advantage, taught him to consider drawing as a -skill in beautifying. He got the habit of treating buildings as objects -less valuable as objects of art in themselves, than for the breaking of -sunbeams, and as straight lines to contrast with the endless curves of -nature; and also the habit of using trees as he wanted them, of bending -their boughs and moulding their contours in harmony with the -poem-picture of his imagination. To this early treatment of -architectural drawings may be traced his great power of composition, and -also much of his mannerism.</p> - -<p>That he soon knew his power, and had his secrets of manipulation, may be -one reason for his early secretiveness about his art; for though there -is little in these early works of his to prefigure his coming greatness, -he, when a youth, attained a proficiency equal to that of the best -water-colour artists of his day, and, with his friend Girtin, soon -surpassed all except Cozens; and he could not have done this<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> without a -sense of superiority and many private experiments; or, on the other -hand, he may, like many men, have required complete solitude to work at -all, though this was not the case in later life, as he often painted -almost the whole of his pictures on the Academy walls. At all events, -the degree of his secretiveness is extraordinary. “I knew him,” says an -old architect, “when a boy, and have often paid him a guinea for putting -backgrounds to my architectural drawings, calling upon him for this -purpose at his father’s shop in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. He never -would suffer me to see him draw, but concealed, as I understood, all -that he did in his bedroom.” When in this bedroom one morning, the door -suddenly opened, and Mr. Britton entered.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> In an instant Turner -covered up his drawings and ran to bar the crafty intruder’s progress. -“I’ve come to see the drawings for the Earl.”<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> “You shan’t see ’em,” -was the reply. “Is that the answer I am to take back to his lordship?” -“Yes; and mind that next time you come through the shop, and not up the -back way.” When Mr. Newby Lowson accompanied him on a tour on the -continent he “did not show his companion a single sketch.” Similar -stories could be added to show how this habit continued through his -life.</p> - -<p>The dates of these two early stories are not given by Mr. Thornbury, nor -the name of the “old architect,” but they show that he was early -employed by a nobleman, and that he got a guinea a piece for his -backgrounds, not only “good practice,” but good pay for a youth; he was, -in fact, better<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a> employed and better paid than any young artist whose -history we can remember. Nor does it seem to have been the fault of -Providence if he did not enjoy the crowning happiness of life, a friend -of suitable tastes, for Girtin was sent to him, a youth of his own age -endowed with similar gifts, and of a most sociable disposition; nor did -he want a capable mentor, for he had Dr. Monro, “his true master,” as -Mr. Ruskin calls him.</p> - -<p>It was at Raphael Smith’s that he formed an intimacy with Girtin, says -Mr. Alaric Watts.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> “His son, Mr. Calvert Girtin, described his father -and young Turner as associated in a friendly rivalry, under the -hospitable roof and superintendence of that lover of art, Dr. Monro -(then residing in the Adelphi). Nor was Turner forgetful of the Doctor’s -kindness, for on referring to that period of his career, in a -conversation with Mr. David Roberts, he said, ‘There,’ pointing to -Harrow, ‘Girtin and I have often walked to Bushey and back, to make -drawings for good Dr. Monro, at half-a-crown apiece and a supper.’”</p> - -<p>If a saying quoted by T. Miller in his “Memoirs of Turner and Girtin” -may be trusted,<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> Turner may have met Gainsborough and other eminent -painters of the day at Dr. Monro’s. Speaking of Dr. Monro’s -conversaziones, <a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a>“Old Pine, of ‘Wine and Walnuts’ celebrity, used to say, -‘What a glorious coterie there was, when Wilson, Marlow, Gainsborough, -Paul, and Tom Sandby, Rooker, Hearne, and Cozins (<i>sic</i>) used to meet, -and you, old Jack,’ turning to Varley, ‘were a boy in a pinafore, with -Turner, Girtin, and Edridge as bigwigs, on whom you used to look as -something beyond the usual amount of clay.’” As Gainsborough died in -1788, when Turner was thirteen years old, and Turner was only two years -the senior of John Varley, this shows how early he began to have a -reputation.</p> - -<p>The acquaintance between Turner and Girtin is one of the most -interesting facts in Turner’s Life. Being more than two years Turner’s -senior (Girtin was born on February 18th, 1773) and having at least -equal talent as a boy, it is probable that he was “ahead” of Turner at -first, and that Turner learnt much from him. We may therefore accept as -true his reputed sayings, “Had Tom Girtin lived, I should have -starved;”[14] and (of one of Girtin’s “yellow” drawings), “I never in my -whole life could make a drawing like that, I would at any time have -given one of my little fingers to have made such a one.”<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> With regard -to their mutual studies and their respective talents we have information -in the studies and drawings themselves, but with regard to their human -relationship we have very little. Turner always spoke of him as “Poor -Tom,” and proposed to, and possibly did, put up a tablet to his memory; -but there are no letters or anecdotes to show that what we all mean by -“friendship” ever existed between them.</p> - -<p>We are equally ignorant as to the amount of intimacy between him and Dr. -Monro, for though the latter did not die till 1833, there is nothing to -show that they ever met after Turner’s student days were over.</p> - -<p>It may, however, be fairly assumed that we should have known more about -his intimacy with his Achates and his Mæcenas if it had been great and -continuous. The absence<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> of documents or rumours on the subject are all -in favour of his having kept himself to himself, of his absorption in -his art from an early date, neglecting the social advantages that were -open to him, neglecting intellectual intercourse with his artistic -peers, neglecting everything except the pursuit of his art, and the road -to wealth and fame. This self-absorption, this concentration of all his -time and power to this one but triple object, the trinity of his desire, -may have arisen from a natural cause, the strength of impelling genius -over which he had no control; it may have arisen from secretiveness, -suspicion, selfishness, and ambition, which he could have controlled but -would not; but whatever its cause, there is no doubt that it existed, -and that with every external facility for becoming a social and -cultivated being, he took the solitary path which led him to greatness -(not perhaps greater than he might have otherwise attained), but a -greatness accompanied with mental isolation and ignorance of all but -what he could gather from unaided observation, and an uncultivated -intellect.</p> - -<p>The education of Turner may be summed up as follows: he learnt reading -from his father, writing and probably little else at his schools at -Brentford and Margate, perspective (imperfectly) from T. Malton, -architecture (imperfectly and classical only) from Mr. Hardwick, -water-colour drawing from Dr. Monro, and perhaps some hints as to -painting in oils from Sir Joshua Reynolds, in whose house he studied for -a while. The rest of his power he cultivated himself, being much helped -by the early companionship of Girtin. Nearly all, if not all, this -education except that mentioned in the last paragraph was over in 1789, -when Sir Joshua laid down his brush, conscious of<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> failing sight, and -young Turner became a student of the Royal Academy.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p026_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p026_sml.jpg" width="422" height="577" alt="NANTES. - -From “Rivers of France.”" title="NANTES. - -From “Rivers of France.”" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">NANTES.<br /> -From “Rivers of France.”</span> -</p> - -<p>These were his principal living instructors, but he learnt more from the -dead—from Claude and Vandevelde, from Titian and Canaletto, from Cuyp -and Wilson. He learnt most of all from nature, but in the beginning of -his career his studies from art are more apparent in his works. There is -scarcely one of his predecessors or contemporaries of any character in -water-colour painting that he did not copy, whose style and method he -did not study, and in part adopt. We have within the last few years only -been able to study at ease the works of the early water-colour painters -of England, and the result of the interesting collections now at South -Kensington and the British Museum, bequests of Mr. and Mrs. Ellison, Mr. -Towshend, Mr. William Smith, and Mr. Henderson, has been on the one hand -to increase our opinion of their merit, and on the other to show how far -Turner outstripped them. We can now see how true and delicate were the -lightly-washed monochrome water scenes of Hearne; how robust the studies -of Sandby; that Daniell and Dayes could not only draw architecture well, -but could warm their buildings with sun, and surround them with space -and air; that Cozens could conceive a landscape-poem, and execute it in -delicate harmonies of green and silver; that Girtin could invest the -simplest study with the feeling of the pathos of ruin and solemnity of -evening; the first of water-colour painters to feel and paint the soft -penetrative influence of sunlight, subduing all things with its golden -charm. In looking at one of his drawings now at South Kensington, a -<i>View of the Wharfe</i>, and comparing it with the works around, one cannot -help being struck with this difference, that it is complete as far<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a> as -it goes, the realization of one thought, the perfect rendering of an -impression, harmonious to a touch. Broad and almost rough as it is, it -is yet finished in the true sense as no English work of the kind ever -was before. There are more elaborate drawings around, plenty of struggle -after effects of brighter colour, much cleverness, much skill, but -nowhere a picture so completely at peace with itself. In looking at it -we can realize what Turner meant when he said that he could never make -drawings like Girtin. Equal harmony of tone, far greater and more -splendid harmonies of colour, miracles of delicate drawing, triumphs -over the most difficult effects, dreams of ineffable loveliness, very -many things unattempted by Girtin he could achieve, but never this -simple sweet gravity, never this perfection of spiritual peace.</p> - -<p>But in spite of this, the great fact in comparing Turner with the other -water-colour painters of his own time—and we are speaking now of his -early works—is this, that whereas each of the best of the others is -remarkable for one or two special beauties of style or effect, he is -remarkable for all. He could reach near, if not quite, to the golden -simplicity of Girtin, to the silver sweetness of Cozens; he could draw -trees with the delicate dexterity of Edridge, and equal the beautiful -distances of Glover; he could use the poor body-colours of the day, or -the simple wash of sepia, with equal cleverness. He was not only -technically the equal, if not master of them all, but he comprehended -them, almost without exception.</p> - -<p>Such mastery was not attained without extraordinary diligence in the -study of pictures. At Dr. Monro’s he could study all the best modern -men, including Gainsborough, Morland, Wilson, and De Loutherbourg, and -he<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> could also study Salvator Rosa, Rembrandt, Claude, and Vandevelde. -One day looking over some prints with Mr. Trimmer,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> he took up a -Vandevelde and said, “That made me a painter.” And Dayes (Girtin’s -master) wrote in 1804:—“The way he acquired his professional powers was -by borrowing where he could a drawing or a picture to copy from, or <i>by -making a sketch of any one in the Exhibition<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> early in the morning, -and finishing it at home</i>.” The character of his early works is -sufficient of itself to prove the extent of his study of pictures, and -we are inclined to think that most of his early practice was from works -of art, and not from nature. The spirit of rivalry commenced in him very -early; it was the only test of his powers, and he seems to have pitted -himself in the beginning of his career against all his contemporaries, -from Mr. Henderson to Girtin, and many of the old masters, and never to -have entirely relinquished the habit. When we think of the number of -years he spent in doing little but topographical drawings, a castle -here, a town there, an abbey there, with appropriate figures in the -foreground, using only sober browns and blues for colours, his progress -seems to have been very slow; but when we see most of the artists of his -time doing exactly the same, and that the old landscape painters whom he -principally studied were almost as limited in the colours they employed, -especially in their drawings, we do not see how he could well have -progressed more quickly; and when we further consider the enormous -distance which he travelled—from the very bottom to the<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> very height of -his art—that he should have accomplished it all in one short life -appears miraculous. The milestones of his journey are not shown plainly -in his early work, that is all.</p> - -<p>That there was much conscious restraint on his part in the use of -colours, that he of wise purpose devoted himself to perfection of his -technical power before he endeavoured to show his strength to the world, -we see no reason to believe. He could not well have done otherwise, and -for such an original mind one marvels to observe how throughout his -career he was led in the chains of circumstance. The poet-painter, the -dumb-poet, as he has well been called, shows little eccentricity of -genius in his youth. There was the strong inclination to draw, but no -strong inclination to draw anything in particular, or anything very -beautiful. On the contrary, he drew the most uninteresting and prosaic -of things, copied bad topographical prints and ugly buildings. When it -was proposed to make him an architect he did not rebel; when it was -afterwards proposed to make him a portrait-painter he did not murmur. It -was Mr. Hardwick, not himself, that insisted on his going to the Royal -Academy. His first essay in oils was due to another’s instigation. -Whatever work came to him, he did; that which he could do best, that -which he had special genius for, the painting of pure landscape, he -scarcely attempted at all for years. Almost every artist of that day -went about England drawing abbeys, seats, and castles for topographical -works. What others did, he did. What others did not do, he did not do. -No doubt it was the only profitable employment he could get, and he very -properly took it, and worked hard at it; he was borne along the stream -of circumstance as everybody else is, but he, unlike most men of strong -genius, seems never to have attempted<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a> to stem its tide, or get out of -its way. His genius was a growth to which every event and accident of -his life added its contribution of nourishment. Though stirred with -unusual power, he was probably almost as unconscious as to what it -tended as a seed in the ground; he had a dim perception of a light -towards which he was growing; he was conscious that he put forth leaves, -and that he should some day flower, but when, and with what special -bloom he was destined to surprise the world, we doubt if he had any -prophetic glimpse. His development was extraordinary, and could only -have been produced by special careful training, but this training was -mainly due to circumstances over which he had no control. Nature came to -his assistance in a thousand different ways, and in nothing more than -giving him a quiet temperament, like that of Coleridge’s child, “that -always finds, and never seeks.” He was not fastidious, except with -regard to his own work, and about that, more as to the arrangement and -finish of it than the subject. He had an excellent constitution, early -inured to rough it, and his comforts were very simple and easily -obtained. He was not particular, even about his materials and tools; any -scrap of paper would do for a sketch on an emergency. He was always able -to work, and to work swiftly and well. No fidgeting about for hours and -days because he was not in the mood; no sacrifice of sketch after sketch -because they did not please him; none of that nervous restlessness which -so often attends imaginative workers; and his work was imaginative from -the first—if not in conception, in execution. Solitude seems to have -been the only necessary condition for the free exercise of his powers, -which were as happily employed in “making a picture” of one thing as of -another, and when he<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> wanted something to put in it to get it “right,” -he never had much trouble in finding it. He said, “If when out sketching -you felt a loss, you have only to turn round, or walk a few paces -further, and you had what you wanted before you.” His physical powers -were also great, and his mind was active in receiving impressions. Mr. -Lovell Reeve, as quoted by Mr. Alaric Watts, says:—“His religious study -of nature was such that he would walk through portions of England, -twenty to twenty-five miles a day, with his little modicum of baggage at -the end of a stick, sketching rapidly on his way all striking pieces of -composition, and marking effects with a power that daguerreotyped them -in his mind. There were few moving phenomena in clouds and shadows that -he did not fix indelibly in his memory, though he might not call them -into requisition for years afterwards.” He was not tied to any -particular method, or bound to any particular habit; when he found that -his way of sketching was too minute and slow to enable him to make his -drawings pay their expenses, he changed his style to a broader, swifter -one. So, without going quite to the length of Mr. Hamerton, who appears -to think that everything in Turner’s youth (including ugliness and bandy -legs) happened for the best in the best of possible worlds, we may -safely affirm that he could scarcely have been gifted with a temperament -better suited for steady progress, or one which was more calculated to -make him happy, for it enabled him to exercise his body and mind at the -same time, to earn his living and to lay up stores of pictorial beauty -in his memory, to do whatever task was set him, and yet get artistic -pleasure out of even the most commonplace study by embellishing it with -his imagination.<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a></p> - -<p>In 1789 he became a student of the Royal Academy, and in the year after -he exhibited a <i>View of the Archbishop’s Palace at Lambeth</i>. In 1791, 2, -and 3 he exhibited several topographical drawings, but down to this time -he seems to have made no sketching tours of any length. He drew in the -neighbourhood of London, and his journeys to stay with friends at -Margate and Bristol will account for his drawings of Malmesbury, -Canterbury, and Bristol. But about 1792 he received a commission from -Mr. J. Walker, the engraver (who also afterwards employed Girtin), to -make drawings for his “Copper-plate Magazine.” This was the beginning of -the long series of engravings from his works, and it may have been one -of the reasons which decided him to set up a studio for himself, which -he did in Hand Court, Maiden Lane, close to his father, where he -remained till he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1800, -when he removed to 64, Harley Street. A year or so after his employment -by Walker he got similar commissions from Mr. Harrison for his “Pocket -Magazine.” These commissions sent him on his travels over England -referred to by Mr. Lovell Reeve. The copper-plates of the sketches for -Walker, including some after Girtin, were found about sixty years -afterwards by Mr. T. Miller, who republished them in 1854, in a volume -called “Turner and Girtin’s Picturesque Views, sixty years since.” These -drawings mark his first tour to Wales, on which he set forth on a pony -lent by Mr. Narraway. The first public results of this tour were the -drawing of <i>Chepstow</i> in “Walker’s Magazine” for November, 1794, and -three drawings in the Royal Academy for that year. By the next year’s -engravings and pictures we trace him to “Nottingham,” “Bridgnorth,” -“Matlock,”<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> “Birmingham,” “Cambridge,” “Lincoln,” “Wrexham,” -“Peterborough,” and “Shrewsbury,” and by those of 1796 and 1797 to -“Chester,” “Neath,” “Tunbridge,” “Bath,” “Staines,” “Wallingford,” -“Windsor,” “Ely,” “Flint,” “Hampton Court, Herefordshire,” “Salisbury,” -“Wolverhampton,” “Llandilo,” “The Isle of Wight,” “Llandaff,” “Waltham,” -and “Ewenny (Glamorgan),” not including drawings of places he had been -to before.</p> - -<p>His furthest point north was Lincoln, his farthest west (in England) -Bristol. The only parts in which he reached the coast were in Wales and -the Isle of Wight. Lancashire and the Lakes, Yorkshire and its -waterfalls, were yet to come, and nearly all coast scenery, except that -of Kent.</p> - -<p>The drawings for the Magazines were not remarkable for any poetry or -originality of treatment perceptible in the engravings, the cathedrals -being generally taken from an unpicturesque point of view, more with the -object of showing their length and size than their beauty, to which he -appears to have been somewhat insensible always; they show a great love -of bridges and anglers—there is scarcely one without a bridge, and some -have two; a desire to tell as much about the place as possible by the -introduction of figures; they show his habit of taking his scenes from a -distance, generally from very high ground, and his delight in putting as -much in a small space as possible, and his power of drawing masses of -houses, as in the <i>Birmingham</i> and the <i>Chester</i>.</p> - -<p>The result of these tours may be said to have been the perfection of his -technical skill, the partial displacement of traditional notions of -composition, and the storing of his memory with infinite effects of -nature. It was as good<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> and thorough discipline in the study of nature, -as his former life had been in the study of art, and though his visit to -Yorkshire in the next year (1797) seemed necessary to bring thoroughly -to the surface all the knowledge and power he had acquired, it was not -without present fruit. Rather of necessity than choice, we may observe, -he confined his powers mainly to the drawing of views of places supposed -to be of interest to the subscribers of the Magazines, but his -individual inclinations in the choice of subject, and his tendency to -purer landscape and sea-view, showed themselves now and then. First in -his drawing of <i>The Pantheon, the Morning after the Fire</i>, exhibited in -1792; next in 1793, in his <i>View on the River Avon, near St. Vincent’s -Rocks, Bristol</i>, and the <i>Rising Squall, Hot Wells</i>,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> from the same -place; then in 1794, <i>Second Fall of the River Monach, Devil’s Bridge</i>; -in 1795, <i>View near the Devil’s Bridge, Cardiganshire, with the River -Ryddol</i>; in 1796, <i>Fishermen at Sea</i>; and in 1797, <i>Fishermen coming -Ashore at Sunset, previous to a Gale</i>, and <i>Moonlight: a study in -Milbank</i>,<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> now in the National Gallery.</p> - -<p>That his genius was perceptible even in these early days is evident from -the notice taken in a contemporary review of his drawings in 1794, when -he was nineteen.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p><a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a> “388. <i>Christchurch Gate, Canterbury.</i> W. Turner. This deserving -picture, with Nos. 333 and 336, are amongst the best in the present -exhibition. They are the productions of a very young artist, and -give strong indications of first-rate ability; the character of -Gothic architecture is most happily preserved, and its profusion of -minute parts massed with judgment and tinctured with truth and -fidelity. This young artist should beware of contemporary -imitations. His present effort evinces an eye for nature, which -should scorn to look to any other source.”</p></div> - -<p>Again in 1796, the “Companion to the Exhibition,” with regard to his -first sea-piece contains this paradoxical sentence, attempting to -express his peculiar power of giving a distinct impression of -ill-defined objects, which was apparently evident even in this early -work.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Colouring natural, figures masterly, not too distinct—obscure -perception of the objects distinctly seen—through the obscurity of -the night—partially illumined.”</p></div> - -<p>Again in 1797, we have this testimony as to the extraordinary (for that -time) character of his work, from an entry in the diary of Thomas -Greene, of Ipswich, about the <i>Fishermen</i> of 1797.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“June 2, 1797. Visited the Royal Academy Exhibition. Particularly -struck with a sea-view by Turner; fishing vessels coming in, with a -heavy swell, in apprehension of tempest gathering in the distance, -and casting, as it advances, a night of shade, while a parting glow -is spread with fine effect upon the shore. The whole composition -bold in design and masterly in execution. I am entirely -unacquainted with the artist; but if he proceeds as he has begun, -he cannot fail to become the first in his department.”</p></div> - -<p>Here, then, before Turner’s visit to Yorkshire, we have evidence that -not only was the superiority of his work apparent, but that one or two -of the special qualities which were to mark it in the future were -already perceived, and publicly praised.</p> - -<p>After looking carefully at all the ascertainable facts of Turner’s -youth, we can only come to the conclusion that it was not the fault of -nature or mankind that he grew into a solitary and disappointed man.<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a></p> - -<p>Secretiveness on his own part and want of trust in his fellow-creatures -seem to have been bred in him, and to have resisted all the many proofs -which the friends of his youth, and we may say of his life, afforded, -that there were kind and unselfish persons in the world whom he could -trust, and who would trust him. There is no proof that he ever had -confidential relations with any human being, not even Girtin. That he -should have willingly cut himself adrift from human fellowship we are -loath to believe, in spite of the many facts which seem to support it. -It seems more natural, and on the whole (sad as even this is) more -pleasant, to believe that he met with a severe blow to his confidence; -that, though naturally suspicious, the many kindnesses he received were -not without a gracious effect, but that his budding trust was killed by -a sudden unexpected frost. For these reasons we are inclined to believe -in the story of his early love; although it, as told by Mr. Thornbury, -is not without inconsistencies.</p> - -<p>Turner is said to have plighted vows with the sister of his school -friend at Margate; he left on a tour, giving her his portrait, the -letters between them were intercepted, and after waiting two years she -accepted another. When he reappeared she was on the eve of her marriage, -and thinking her honour involved, refused to return to her old love.</p> - -<p>Such in short is the story which we wish to believe, and as it came to -Mr. Thornbury from one who heard it from relatives of the lady, to whom -she told it, there is probably some truth in it. It is, however, almost -impossible to believe that Turner, whose tours never extended to two -years, and whose power of locomotion was extraordinary, should allow -that time to elapse without going to see one<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> whom he really loved. If -he did not get any letters he would have been desperate; if he did get -letters they would have shown him that she had not received his, which -would have made him, if possible, more desperate still. As the name of -the lady is not given, it is next to impossible to find out the truth. -Our faith, however, as a balance of probability, still remains that -Turner was jilted, and that the effect of it was to confirm for ever his -want of confidence in his fellow-creatures.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/p037.png"> -<img src="images/p037_sml.png" width="80" height="116" alt="decoration" title="decoration" /></a> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p038.png"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p038_sml.png" width="450" height="92" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> -</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br /><br /> -<small>YORKSHIRE AND THE YOUNG ACADEMICIAN.</small><br /><br /> -<small>1797 TO 1807.</small></h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">F</span>HE the facts of the foregoing chapter it may be fairly presumed that -although Turner’s election as Associate in 1799 followed quickly after -his fine display of pictures from the northern counties in 1798, he was -before this a marked man, whose superiority over all then living -landscape painters was visible to critics and lovers of art, and could -not have been disguised from the eyes of the artists of the Royal -Academy. It did not require a genius like that of Turner to distance -competitors on the Academy walls in those days. England was almost at -its lowest point both in literature and art. The great men of the -earlier part of the eighteenth century, Pope, Thomson, Gray, Collins, -Swift, Fielding, Sterne and Richardson, had long been dead, and of the -later brilliant, but small circle of artists and men of letters of which -Dr. Johnson was the centre (Goldsmith and Burke, Garrick and Reynolds, -Hume and Gibbon), Reynolds only was left, and he was moribund. Of other -artists with any title to fame there was none left but De Loutherbourg -and Morland; Hogarth had died in 1764, Wilson in 1782, Gainsborough in -1788. The new generation of<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a> men of genius were born; some were growing -up, some in their cradles. A few had already shown signs. Wordsworth and -Coleridge had just put forth their “Lyrical Ballads” at Bristol, Burns -was famous in Scotland, Charles Lamb had written “Rosamund Gray,” but -Scott the “Great Unknown,” was as yet “unknown” only, though five years -older than Turner; Byron had not gone to Harrow, and the united ages of -Keats and Shelley did not amount to ten years; the only living poets of -deserved repute were Cowper and Crabbe. Della Crusca in poetry, and West -in art, were the bright particular stars of this gloomy period. The -landscape painters who were Academicians were such men as Sir William -Beechey, Sir Francis Bourgeois, Garvey, Farington, and Paul Sandby, and -among the Associates, Turner had no more important rival than Philip -Reinagle. Girtin and De Loutherbourg alone of all the then exhibitors -were anything like a match for him, and Girtin spoilt (till 1801) any -chance he might otherwise have had of Academic honours by not exhibiting -pictures in oil; he died in 1802, leaving Turner undisputed master of -the field. It is not greatly therefore to be wondered at that Turner was -elected Associate in 1799, and a full Academician in 1802. It was, -however, much to the credit of the Academy that they recognized his -talent so soon and welcomed him as an honour to their body, instead of -keeping him out from jealous motives. Turner never forgot what he owed -to the Academy, and whether it taught him nothing, as Mr. Ruskin says, -or a great deal, as Mr. Hamerton thinks, does not much matter—it taught -him all it knew, and gave him ungrudgingly every honour in its gift. But -its claims on his gratitude did not stop here, for it was his school in -more than one branch of learning; from<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a> its catalogues he derived the -subjects of most of his pictures, they directed him to the poems which -set flame to his imagination, and helped (unfortunately), with their -queer spelling and grammar and truncated quotations, to form what -literary style he had; but the greatest boon which the Academy afforded -was the opportunity of fame, a field for that ambition which was one of -the ruling powers of his nature.</p> - -<p>But his tour in the North in 1797 was before his days of Academic -rivalries and glories. He was only two-and-twenty, and seems to have -been actuated by no motive but to paint as well and truly as he could -the beautiful scenery through which he passed. The effect upon him of -the fells and vales of Yorkshire and Cumberland seems to have been much -the same as that of Scotland upon Landseer; it braced all his powers, -developed manhood of art, turned him from a toilsome student into a -triumphant master. Mr. Ruskin writes more eloquently than truly about -this first visit. “For the first time the silence of nature around him, -her freedom sealed to him, her glory opened to him. Peace at last, and -freedom at last, and loveliness at last; it is here then, among the -deserted vales—not among men; those pale, poverty-struck, or cruel -faces—that multitudinous marred humanity—are not the only things which -God has made.” These are fine words, but what a picture, if true! Can -this young man who has travelled through all these many counties in -England and Wales, which we have already enumerated, never have known -the “silence of nature,” or “freedom,” or “peace,” or “loveliness?” Can -his experience of mankind, of Dr. Monro, of Girtin, of Mr. Hardwick, of -Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Mr. Henderson, have left upon him such an -impression of the failure of God<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a>’s handiwork in making men, that a -mountain seems to him in comparison as a revelation of unexpected -success? If Turner had been cooped in a garret of the foulest alley in -London since his birth, and had only escaped now and then from the -hardest drudgery to read the works of Mr. Carlyle, this picture might be -near the truth, but we doubt even then if it could escape the charge of -being over-coloured.</p> - -<p>Whether Turner had any special object in this journey to the North in -1797 is not clear, but it is at least probable that Girtin’s success at -the Exhibition of this year with his drawings from Yorkshire and -Scotland may have influenced him, and that he may have already received -a commission from Dr. Whitaker to make drawings for the “Parish of -Whalley,” published three years afterwards. He must at all events have -had much leisure from other employment in order to produce the important -pictures in oil and water-colour which he exhibited the next year. Of -these we only know <i>Morning on the Coniston Fells</i> and <i>Buttermere -Lake</i>, now in the National Gallery. Another, whether water or oils we do -not know, was <i>Norham Castle on the Tweed—Summer’s Morn</i>, the first of -several pictures of the same subject, which was a favourite of his for a -good reason. Many years after (probably about 1824 or 1825), when making -sketches for “Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of -Scotland, with descriptive illustrations by Sir Walter Scott, 1826,” he -took off his hat to Norham Castle, and Cadell the publisher, who was -with him, expressed surprise. “Oh,” was the reply, “I made a drawing or -painting of Norham several years since. It took; and from that day to -this I have had as much to do as my hands could execute.” If the Castle -was treated in the same way in this first as in the subsequent pictures -of Norham,<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a><a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a> with the hill and ruin in the middle distance set against a -brightly illumined sky, the effect was sufficiently new and striking to -make the reputation of any painter in those days. It was an effect which -as far as we know had never been attempted before, this casting of the -whole shadow of hill and castle straight at the spectator, so that, in -spite of the bright reflections in the watery foreground, he seems to be -within it, and to see through the soft shadowy air, the solemn bulk of -mound and ruin, with their outlines blurred with light, grand and -indistinct against the burning sky.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p042_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p042_sml.jpg" width="538" height="379" alt="NORHAM CASTLE, ON THE TWEED." title="NORHAM CASTLE, ON THE TWEED." /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">NORHAM CASTLE, ON THE TWEED.</span> -</p> - -<p>The pictures of 1797-99 confirmed beyond any doubt that a great artist -had arisen, who was not only a painter but a poet—a poet, not so much -of the pathos of ruin, though so many of his pictures had ruins in them, -nor of the chequered fate of mankind, though there is something of the -“Fallacies of Hope” indicated in the quotations to his pictures—as of -the mystery and beauty of light, of the power of nature, her -inexhaustible variety and energy, her infinite complexity and fulness. -No one can look upon his splendid drawing of <i>Warkworth Castle</i>, -exhibited in 1799, and now at South Kensington, with its rich glow of -sunset and transparent shadow, and its wonderful masses of clouds, -without feeling that such work as this was a revelation in those days. -Sparing and not very pleasant in colour, it is yet in this respect a -great advance upon the former work of others and of his own; such colour -as there is penetrates the shade and is complete in harmony and tone, -while the sky has no blank space and is part of the picture, the -vivifying uniting power of the composition, with more interest and -feeling in one roll of its truly-studied masses of cloud-form than could -be found in the whole of any sky of his contemporaries.<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a></p> - -<p>Altogether it is difficult to over-estimate the influence of this first -journey to the North upon Turner’s mind and art, although he had almost -perfected his skill and shown unmistakable signs of genius before. But -these tours had other gifts not less important, though in a different -way, for his introductions to Dr. Whitaker, the local historian, to Mr. -Basire, the engraver, to Mr. Fawkes of Farnley, to Lord Harewood, and to -Sir John Leicester (afterwards (1826) Lord de Tabley), through Mr. -Lister-Parker of Browsholme Hall, his guardian, may all be said to have -resulted from this tour.</p> - -<p>Dr. Whitaker was the vicar of the parish of Whalley, and was writing a -book upon it in the manner of those days, giving descriptions of the -local antiquities, the churches, the ruins, the crosses, and an account -of the county families, with their pedigrees and engravings of their -ancestral seats. Not only each county, but almost every parish had such -a historian in those days, and although the spirit of these works is -archaeological rather than artistic, engaged with genealogy rather than -history, and with pride of family and county rather than of the people -and nation, they did a great deal of valuable work. Dr. Whitaker’s work -is no exception to this rule, and he was in many ways a typical writer -of the kind, for he himself, though he “chose” the Church as his -profession, was a man of property and county importance. Valuable as -artists were in those days to the writers of these works, they were yet -considered of very secondary rank. They were indeed not called “artists” -but “draftsmen,” and notwithstanding that Dr. Whitaker recognized -Turner’s genius, he did not think it necessary in this “Parish of -Whalley” to mention in the preface the existence of such<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a> a person, -although the names of all the gentlemen of the county who had furnished -him with drawings or information are carefully acknowledged therein; but -nothing will show better the relations between the two men than an -extract from a letter from the reverend bookmaker to one of his county -friends, Mr. Wilson, of Clitheroe, dated Feb. 8th, 1800.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“I have just had a ludicrous dispute to settle between Mr. Townley” -(Charles Townley, Esq. of Townley), “myself and Turner, the -draftsman. Mr. Townley it seems has found out an old and very bad -painting of Gawthorpe at Mr. Shuttleworth’s house in London, as it -stood in the last century, with all its contemporary accompaniments -of clipped yews, parterres, &c.: this he insisted would be more -characteristic than Turner’s own sketch, which he desired him to -lay aside, and copy the other. Turner, abhorring the landscape and -contemning the execution of it, refused to comply, and wrote to me -very tragically on the subject. Next arrived a letter from Mr. -Townley, recommending it to me to allow Turner to take his own way, -but while he wrote, his mind (which is not unfrequent) veered -about, and he concluded with desiring me to urge Turner to the -performance of his requisition, as from myself. I have, however, -attempted something of a compromise, which I fear will not succeed, -as Turner has all the irritability of youthful genius.”<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p></div> - -<p>The “compromise” was handing over the task of drawing from the -objectionable picture to Mr. J. Basire the engraver.</p> - -<p>We should like to see Turner’s “tragical” letter, and also his rejected -drawing; we should also like to have seen Dr. Whitaker’s face if he had -been told that not many years after a book would have been published of -drawings by Turner, the draftsman, with “descriptions by the Rev. Dr. -Whitaker.”</p> - -<p>Of Mr. Fawkes, of whose hall at Farnley Turner made<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a> a drawing for the -“Parish of Whalley,” but with whom he is said by Thornbury to have -become acquainted about 1802, it may be said that he was one of Turner’s -longest and staunchest friends. The number of drawings (still at -Farnley) which he made when visiting Mr. Fawkes between 1803 and 1820 -(including as they do studies of birds shot while he was there, of the -outhouses, porches, and gateways on the property, of the old places in -the vicinity, and of the rooms in Farnley Hall) attest the frequency of -his visits and his affection for the place and its occupants, while the -splendid series of drawings in England, Switzerland, Italy, and on the -Rhine, and the few precious oil pictures purchased by Mr. Fawkes, show -him to have been not only a true friend, but a warm and sympathizing -admirer of his genius. He indeed was a friend such as few are permitted -to know—one of a goodly number who in Turner’s youth and manhood should -have made the world to him specially pleasant and sociable, frank and -healthy. If he could not or would not have it so, it was not from -insensibility, for his feeling was deep and his heart was sound. “He -could not make up his mind to visit Farnley after his old friend’s -death,” and he could not speak of the shore of the Wharfe (on which -Farnley Hall looks down) “but his voice faltered.” Dayes wrote of him in -1804, “This man must be loved for his works, for his person is not -striking, nor his conversation brilliant.” At Farnley, as at Mr. Wells’ -cottage, Turner was made at home, but that he did not escape -good-humoured ridicule even at Farnley is plain from a caricature by Mr. -Fawkes, <a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a>“which is thought by old friends to be very like. It shows us a -little Jewish-nosed man in an ill-cut brown tail coat, striped -waistcoat, and enormous frilled shirt, with feet and hands notably -small, sketching on a small piece of paper, held down almost level with -his waist.”<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> It is evident that at this time, in spite of his clear -little blue eyes, and his small hands and feet, his appearance was not -one likely to prepossess women, or to inspire consideration among men, -and that one of the ills from which his painting room afforded a refuge -may have often been a wounded vanity. There can be nothing more -constantly galling to a sensitive man of genius than to feel that his -appearance does not inspire the respect he feels due to him. If he has -eloquence sufficient to command attention, this will not matter so much; -but if he has not even that (and Turner had not), his natural refuge is -solitude, his one absorbing occupation is his art, his only worldly -ambition is to show what is in him, and to compel respect to his genius -through his works.</p> - -<p>From the time that Turner became an Associate his struggles, if he can -ever be said to have had any, were over, and many changes took place in -his life and art. He ceased almost entirely from making topographical -drawings for the engravers, limiting his efforts to a heading to the -“Oxford Almanack,” and a few drawings for “Britannia Depicta,” “Mawman’s -Tour,” and some other books, until the commencement of the “Southern -Coast” in 1814. He had in effect emancipated himself from “hackwork,” -and could turn his attention to more congenial and ambitious labour. The -“draftsman” had become the artist, and he showed the improvement in his -position by moving from Hand Court, Maiden Lane, to 64, Harley Street.</p> - -<p>In future his exhibited pictures show very few<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> “castles” or “abbeys,” -unless they are the seats of his distinguished patrons, Mr. Beckford of -Fonthill (for whom in 1799 he painted several views of that ill-fated -tower, which might have formed a subject for a canto of Turner’s -“Fallacies of Hope”), Sir J. L. Leicester, and others. His other -castles, Carnarvon, 1800, Pembroke, 1801 and 1806, St. Donat’s, 1801, -and Kilchurn, 1802, were all probably compositions in which local -fidelity was cared for little in comparison with effects of light and -pictorial beauty. How completely he disregarded local fact in the case -of Kilchurn has been very completely shown by Mr. Hamerton, and Mr. -Ruskin says, “Observe generally, Turner never, after this time, 1800, -drew from nature without <i>composing</i>. His lightest pencil sketch was the -plan of a picture, his completest study on the spot a part of one.”</p> - -<p>Of this period, 1800-1810, Mr. Ruskin says, “His manner is stern, -reserved, quiet, grave in colour, forceful in hand. His mind tranquil; -fixed in physical study, on mountain subject; in moral study, on the -Mythology of Homer, and the Law of the Old Testament.” We wish he had -given his reasons for this last astonishing statement. For those who -only know the working of Turner’s mind through his pictures, it is -bewildering in the extreme, for in these there is no trace that he ever -at any time studied the Law of the Old Testament, and the only classical -pictures of this period, including the plates in the “Liber,” were -<i>Jason</i> and <i>Narcissus and Echo</i>. If we include the pictures of 1811, we -get one Homeric subject, <i>Chryses</i>, but that has nothing to do with -mythology.</p> - -<p>The evidence of Turner’s pictures shows little tranquillity of mind -during this period, but, on the contrary, all the restlessness of -unsatisfied ambition. As he had already pitted<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a> himself against, and -beaten all the water-colourists, he now commenced a course of rivalry -against all the oil painters past and present, who came anywhere within -the reach of his art, which he endeavoured to extend far beyond -landscape limits.</p> - -<p>His first tilt was probably against De Loutherbourg in 1799 with his -<i>Battle of the Nile, at ten o’clock, when the l’Orient blew up, from the -station of the gunboats between the battery and Castle of Aboukir</i>; and -his <i>Fifth Plague of Egypt</i> (1800), his <i>Army of the Medes destroyed in -the Desert by a Whirlwind</i>, and <i>The Tenth plague of Ægypt</i> (1802), -probably owed more to De Loutherbourg’s grand but theatrical pictures -and <i>Eidophusicon</i>, than to any meditation on the “Law of the Old -Testament.”<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> Of Wilson, though dead, and neglected even when alive, -he continued in active rivalry as late as 1822, when he proposed to Mr. -J. Robinson, of the firm of Hurst and Robinson, to have four of his -pictures (three of which were to be painted expressly for the venture) -engraved in rivalry with Wilson and Woollett. “Whether we can in the -present day,” he writes,<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> “contend with such powerful antagonists as -Wilson and Woollett would be at least tried by size, security against -risk, and some remuneration for the time of painting. The pictures of -ultimate sale I shall be content with; to succeed would perhaps form -another epoch in the English school; and if we fall, we fall by -contending with giant strength.” It is difficult to make out the meaning -of even this short extract from this illiterate composition, but it is -quite plain that the open rivalry with Wilson, which commenced about -1800, had not ceased in 1822.</p> - -<p>But he did not confine his rivalries to English painters, or to the -field of landscape art. His long rivalry with Claude commenced with the -“Liber Studiorum” in 1807, that with Vandevelde earlier. His famous -<i>Shipwreck</i> (painted 1805) now in the National Gallery, his perhaps -finer <i>Wreck of the Minotaur</i>, painted for Lord Yarborough, and his -<i>Fishing Boats in a Squall</i>, painted for the Marquis of Stafford, and -now in the Ellesmere Gallery, besides a fine sea-piece, painted for the -Earl of Egremont, are examples of the latter. The Ellesmere picture was -painted in direct rivalry with one of Vandevelde’s on the same subject, -and both hang together in the Ellesmere Gallery. Of them John Burnet -wrote:—</p> - -<p><a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a></p> - -<p><a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a></p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“The figures (in the Vandevelde) are made out and coloured without -reference to the situation they are in; the sea is beautifully -painted, and the foamy tops of the waves blown off by the wind with -great observation of nature; nevertheless, the whole work looks -little and defined compared with its great competitor. Turner’s -boat is advancing towards the spectator with all sails set, and a -similarity in both pictures is that the sails are prevented from -being too cutting and harsh from their melting into and being -softened by other sails of a similar shape and colour. A small boat -is brought in contact in Turner’s, stowing away fish, which forms -the principal light, if it may be so called, for there is no strong -light in the picture; the lights are of a subdued grey tone even in -the yeasty waves; the shape of the mass of light on the water is -broad, and of a beautiful form; in Vandervelde’s (<i>sic</i>) picture it -is spotty and devoid of union with the vessel. In Turner we see an -obscure outlined form in everything, for though the warm tints of -the masses of clouds serve to break down and diffuse the colour of -the sails, their form is disturbed by the handling of his brush. In -comparing the two pictures as works of art, Vandervelde’s must -have the preference as far as priority of composition is concerned; -but Turner has had the boldness to tell the same story, clothing it -with all the grandeur and sublimity of natural representation. The -light and shade is very excellent; the mass of dark sky, brought in -contact with the sail of the advancing boat, is broad in the -extreme.”</p></div> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p051_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p051_sml.jpg" width="540" height="354" alt="THE SHIPWRECK." title="THE SHIPWRECK." /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">THE SHIPWRECK.</span> -</p> - -<p>Of his other rivalries at this period, those with the Poussins and -Titian are the most notable. The one produced the famous, and, in spite -of its poorness of colour and conventionality, the magnificent, <i>Goddess -of Discord choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of -Hesperides</i>, exhibited at the British Institution in 1806, and now in -the National Gallery; the other, the <i>Venus and Adonis</i>, still more -wonderful by reason of the beauty of its colour, its composition, and -the audacity of the attempt. This was bought by Mr. Munro of Novar, and -was lately sold at Christie’s, on the dispersion of the Novar -collection, for £1,942. It is, as far as we know, the only picture in -which he attempted with success to draw the human form on a large scale, -and is certainly one of the best efforts of the English school to rival -the “old masters;” the figures, the dogs, and the glorious vine-clad -bower in which they are set are all worthy of the subject, and make a -picture which reminds one of Titian, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Etty in -about equal proportions.</p> - -<p>It is strange that the great sea-pieces we have mentioned were not -exhibited (except perhaps that at Petworth), but the occupation of his -time by these magnificent works of emulation accounts for his doing so -little for the engravers in these years, for they were all probably, -except the <i>Wreck of the Minotaur</i>, painted before 1807, when he turned -his attention to his greatest, and perhaps most successful work of the -kind, the “Liber Studiorum.” And here we may remark, that emulation with -Turner, though<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a> it may have been a mark of jealousy, was always a token -of respect. Feelings crossed each other in Turner’s mind as colours did -in his works; it is often difficult to know whether his feeling is to be -called noble or base, and the same complexity may be noticed in his -“artistic” motives. When imitating other masters he brought his -knowledge of nature to bear strongly on his work to make it more -natural; when painting a natural scene, he employed all his traditional -study to make it more “artistic.”</p> - -<p>By this time, however, he had learnt nearly all that was to be learnt -from art, ancient or modern, in the landscape way, but it was different -with nature. That was a book which he could not exhaust, though he was -never tired of turning over fresh pages. It was almost his only book, -and he began a new chapter about 1801 or 1802, when he made his first -tour on the Continent. Previous to this he must have paid a visit to -Scotland, for the Exhibition of 1802 contained three Scotch views, one -of which was the <i>Kilchurn</i> already mentioned. In 1803 he exhibited no -less than six foreign subjects, of which one was the <i>Calais Pier</i>, now -in the National Gallery, another the <i>Festival upon the opening of the -Vintage of Macon</i>, in the possession of Lord Yarborough; the others were -<i>Bonneville, Savoy, with Mont Blanc</i>; <i>Chateaux de Michael, Bonneville, -Savoy</i>; <i>St. Hugh denouncing vengeance on the Shepherd of Courmayeur in -the Valley of d’Aoust</i>; and <i>Glacier and Source of the Arvèron going up -to the Mer de Glace, in the Valley of the Chamouni</i>.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> After this -burst of foreign subjects he did not exhibit another scene from abroad -for twelve years, except the <i>Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen</i> (1806), -and content this time with<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> simpler, safer, English, a <i>View of the -Castle of St. Michael, near Bonneville, Savoy</i> (1812). During the next -few years the most important picture, and one of the most beautiful he -ever painted, was the famous <i>Sun Rising through vapour: Fishermen -cleaning and selling Fish</i>, exchanged with Sir J. F. Leicester for <i>The -Shipwreck</i>, and now in the National Gallery, together with <i>The -Shipwreck</i> and <i>Spithead: Boat’s Crew recovering an Anchor</i>, another -fine picture of the Vandevelde class.</p> - -<p>In all these years, during which he kept up this constant rivalry with -so many artists, living and dead—and we have not exhausted the list of -them—he was continuing his unresting severe study of nature. For many -more years this was to continue, this double artistic life, the strife -for fame by grand pictures, of which emulation was the motive, the -patient development of his knowledge and power by the close study of -nature. Few who watched his pictures from year to year could have -guessed what a store of beautiful studies of the Alps, about Chamouni, -Grenoble, and the Grande Chartreuse he had lying in his portfolios; few -could imagine that with materials for landscapes of a truthfulness and -an original power never before known, he should prefer to paint pictures -in rivalry with the fames of dead men. Possibly he thought that it was -the nearest way to fame to show the public that he could beat -Vandevelde, Poussin, and the rest of them on their own ground; possibly -he may have been diffident of his power to dispense with their aid in -composition. However this may have been, he chose to ground his fame so. -Even in his “Liber,” he in three years gave only three foreign subjects -out of twenty plates: <i>Basle</i>, <i>Mount St. Gothard</i>, and the <i>Lake of -Thun</i>.<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p055.png"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p055_sml.png" width="450" height="85" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> -</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.<br /><br /> -<small>THE LIBER STUDIORUM—HIS POETRY AND DRAGONS.</small></h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span>HE 1807 Turner commenced his most serious rivalry, “The Liber -Studiorum,” a rivalry which not only exceeded in force but differed in -quality from his others. Previously he had pitted his skill only against -that of the artist rivalled, adopting the style of his rival, but in -these engravings he pitted not only his skill, but also his style and -range of art against Claude’s. There are indeed only a few of the -“Liber” prints which are in Claude’s style, and most of the best are in -his own. Lovely as are <i>Woman Playing Tambourine</i>, and <i>Hindoo -Devotions</i>, they seem to us far lower in value than <i>Mount St. Gothard</i> -and <i>Hind Head Hill</i>. There is the usual mixture of feeling in the -motives with which Turner undertook this work, the same dependence on -others for the starting impulse which we see throughout his art-life, -the same originality, industry, and confusion of thought in carrying out -his design. The idea of the “Liber” did not originate with him, but with -his friend Mr. W. F. Wells. The idea was noble in so far as it attempted -to extend the bounds of landscape art beyond previous limits, to break -down the Claude worship which blinded the eyes of the public to the -merit that existed in contemporary work, and prevented them, and artists -also, from looking to nature as the source of landscape art.</p> - -<p><a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a></p> - -<p><a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a></p> - -<p class="nind">It is scarcely too much to say that in those days Claude stood between nature -and the artist, and that he was as much the standard of landscape art as -Pheidias of sculpture. To try to clear away this barrier of progress, as -Hogarth had striven years before to abolish the “black masters,” was no -ignoble effort, and it was done in a nobler spirit than that of Hogarth, -for he did not attempt to depreciate his rival. Yet the nobility of the -attempt was not unmixed, for if he did not disparage Claude, he -attempted to make himself famous at Claude’s expense. He did not indeed -say, as Hogarth would have done, “Claude is bad, I am good;” but he -said, “Claude is good, but I am better.” His own experience even from -very early days should have told him that, despite the cant of -connoisseurs and the strength of old traditions, no purely original work -of his had passed unnoticed, and that the truest and noblest way of -educating the public taste was by following the bent of his original -genius, and leaving the public to draw their own comparisons.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p056_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p056_sml.jpg" width="513" height="361" alt="THE DEVIL’S BRIDGE. - -From the “Liber Studiorum.”" title="THE DEVIL’S BRIDGE. - -From the “Liber Studiorum.”" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">THE DEVIL’S BRIDGE.<br /> -From the “Liber Studiorum.”</span> -</p> - -<p>Mr. Wells’s daughter states that not only did the “Liber Studiorum” -entirely owe its existence to her father’s persuasion, but the divisions -into “Pastoral,” “Elegant Pastoral,” “Marine,” &c., were also suggested -by him. Turner determined to print and publish and sell the “Liber” -himself, but to employ an engraver. His first choice fell on “Mr. F. C. -Lewis, the best aquatint engraver of the day, who at the very time was -at work on facsimiles of Claude’s drawings.”<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> With him he soon -quarrelled. The terms were, that Turner was to etch and Lewis to -aquatint at five guineas a plate. The first plate, <i>Bridge and Goats</i>, -was<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a> finished and accepted by Turner, though not published till April, -1812; but the second plate Turner gave Lewis the option of etching as -well as aquatinting, and he etched it accordingly, and sent a proof to -Turner, raising his charge from five guineas to eight, in consideration -of the extra work. Turner praised it, but declined to have the plate -engraved, on the ground that Lewis had raised his charges. This ended -Mr. Lewis’s connection with the “Liber,” and Turner next employed Mr. -Charles Turner, the mezzotint engraver, but he had to pay him eight -guineas a plate. Charles Turner agreed to engrave fifty plates at this -price, but after he had finished twenty, he wished to raise his charge -to ten guineas, which led to a quarrel. With reference to these quarrels -of Turner with his engravers, Mr. Thornbury says, “The painter who had -never had quarter given to him when he was struggling, now in his turn, -I grieve to say, gave no quarter,” and “inflexibly exacting as he was, -Turner could not understand how an engraver who had contracted to do -fifty engravings should try to get off his bargain at the twenty-first.” -This, like most of Thornbury’s statements, is utterly untrustworthy. -There is no evidence to show that a hard bargain was ever driven with -him when he was struggling, there is no word of any dispute with -engravers till he began to employ them himself, and as to his “not being -able to understand” how any man should endeavour to obtain more than the -price contracted for, it was exactly what he tried to do himself, when -afterwards employed by Cooke.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p059_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p059_sml.jpg" width="435" height="417" alt="THE ALPS AT DAYBREAK. - -From Rogers’s “Poems.”" title="THE ALPS AT DAYBREAK. - -From Rogers’s “Poems.”" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">THE ALPS AT DAYBREAK.<br /> -From Rogers’s “Poems.”</span> -</p> - -<p>The fact is that in all business arrangements Turner’s worse nature, the -mean, grasping spirit of the little tradesman, was brought into -prominence. In the case of Lewis he was evidently in the wrong, in the -case of Charles Turner<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a><a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a> -he was only hard; but in all business -transactions he was as a rule ungenerous, and sometimes dishonest. His -action towards the public with regard to the “Liber” can be called by no -other name. His prices at first were fifteen shillings for prints, and -twenty-five shillings for proofs. When the plates got worn (and -mezzotint plates are subject to rapid deterioration in the light parts), -Turner used to alter them, sometimes changing the effect greatly, as in -the <i>Mer de Glace</i>, where he transformed the smooth, snow-covered -glacier into spiky ridges of ice, or in the <i>Æsacus</i> and <i>Hesperie</i>, -where the effect of sunbeams through the wood was effaced, and the -direction in which the head of Hesperie was looking was changed, and the -face afterwards concealed. The changes were not always for the worse; -the very wear of the plate in some cases, as in that of the <i>Calm</i>, -improved the effect, and what we have called his confusion of thought, -and what Thornbury has called his “distorted logic,” may have led him to -believe that he was not wrong in selling as he did these worn and -altered plates as proofs. A kind casuistry may lend us a word less -disagreeable than dishonest to such transactions, but when we know that -he habitually from the first made no distinction between proofs and -prints—that he sold the same things under different names at different -prices—every plea breaks down, and we are forced to the conclusion that -when he thought he could cheat safely “the pack of geese,”<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> as he -thought the public, he did so.</p> - -<p>Nor can we acquit Turner of unfairness in issuing the<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> “Liber Studiorum” -in competition with the French painter’s “Liber Veritatis,” a book -well-known to the public and to him, as the third edition of its plates, -engraved by Earlom, was just issued, when the “Liber Studiorum” was -begun. He must have known what the public did not probably know—that -Claude’s rough sketches were mere memoranda of the effects of his -pictures taken by him to identify them, and never meant for publication; -whereas his were carefully-finished compositions, into which he threw -his whole power. Not only was the publication unfair as regards Claude, -but it was misleading to the public as regards himself. The title, -“Liber Studiorum,” applies only to some of the prints. A few of the -poorer plates, especially the architectural ones, and such simple -designs as the <i>Hedging and Ditching</i>, might properly perhaps have been -called studies, but even upon these he bestowed a care and a finish that -would entitle them to be called pictures, monochrome as they are.</p> - -<p>The want of a well-considered plan, and the capricious way in which they -were published, contributed to the ill-success of the work; and though -we are accustomed to look upon its failure as a severe judgment on the -taste of the time, we are not at all sure that it would have succeeded -if published in the present day, unless Mr. Ruskin had written the -advertisement.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“The meaning of the entire book,” according to that eloquent -writer,<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a> “was symbolized in the frontispiece,<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> which he engraved -with his own hand:<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> Tyre at Sunset, with the Rape of Europa, -indicating the symbolism of the decay of Europe by that of Tyre, -its beauty passing away into terror and judgment (Europa being the -Mother of Minos and Rhadamanthus).”</p></div> - -<p>Turner’s advertisement thus describes the intention of the work:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Intended as an illustration of Landscape Composition, classed as -follows: Historical, Mountainous, Pastoral, Marine, and -Architectural.”</p></div> - -<p>We think Turner’s description the more correct, and that the intention -of his frontispiece was to give all the “classes” in one composition, -and we are extremely doubtful whether Turner knew or cared anything -about either Minos or Rhadamanthus.</p> - -<p>The most obvious intention of the work was to show his own power, and -there never was, and perhaps never will be again, such an exhibition of -genius in the same direction. No rhetoric can say for it as much as it -says for itself in those ninety plates, twenty of which were never -published. If he did not exhaust art or nature, he may be fairly said to -have exhausted all that was then known of landscape art, and to have -gone further than any one else in the interpretation of nature. -Notwithstanding, the merit of the plates is very unequal, some, as -<i>Solway Moss</i> and the <i>Little Devil’s Bridge</i>, being more valuable as -works of art than many of his large pictures; others, especially the -architectural subjects, the <i>Interior of a Church</i>, and <i>Pembury Mill</i>, -being almost devoid of interest. As to any one thought running through -the series, we can see none, except desire to show the whole range of -his power; and as to sentiment, it seems to us to be thoroughly -impersonal, impartial, and artistic. He turns on the pastoral or -historical stop as easily as if he were playing the organ, and his only -concern with his figures is that they shall<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a> perform their parts -adequately, which is as much as some of them do.</p> - -<p>We have spoken of the book as an attack on Claude, and of the -“intention” of the work, but we are not sure that we are not using too -definite ideas to express the variety of impulses in Turner’s mind that -tended to the commencement of the “Liber.” We have seen that the first -notion of it, and its divisions, were suggested by Mr. Wells, and the -plates are nothing more nor less than a selection from his sketches and -pictures, arranged under these heads. His early topographical drawings -and studies in England provided him with the architectural and pastoral -subjects, his studies of Claude and the Poussins and Wilson, with the -elegant pastoral, Vandevelde and nature with the marine, and his one or -two visits to the Continent with the mountainous. The frontispiece, the -first attempt to give a coherent signification to the whole, was not -published till 1812, and it was not till 1816 that the advertisement to -which we have called attention appeared when, after four years’ -intermission, the issue of the “Liber” was recommenced; even then it is -only described as “an illustration of Landscape Composition;” and it is -quite probable that the desire to make money, to display his art, to -rival Claude, and to educate the public, contributed to the production -of the work, without any very vivid consciousness on his part as to his -motives of action. It has, like all Turner’s work, the characteristics -of a gradual growth rather than of the carrying out of a well-defined -conception.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p065_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p065_sml.jpg" width="367" height="532" alt="FALLS IN VALOMBRÉ. - -From Rogers’s “Jacqueline.”" title="FALLS IN VALOMBRÉ. - -From Rogers’s “Jacqueline.”" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">FALLS IN VALOMBRÉ.<br /> -From Rogers’s “Jacqueline.”</span> -</p> - -<p>There is one way in which the title of the book may be considered as -appropriate, and that is to take “studia” to mean “studies,” in the -usual general sense of the word, for it is an index to his whole course -of study (including books<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> and excepting colour), down to the time of -its publication. With the exception of his Venetian pictures and his -later extravagances, it may be said to be an epitome of his art without -colour. Poets and painters may change their style, and may develop their -powers in after-life in an unexpected manner; but after the age at which -Turner had arrived when he commenced to publish the “Liber,” viz., -thirty-two, there are few, if any, mental germs which have not at least -sprouted. Turner, though he never left off acquiring knowledge, or -developing his style, is no exception to this rule, and this makes the -“Liber” valuable, not only as a collection of works of art, but as a -nearly complete summary of the great artist’s work and mind. Amongst his -more obvious claims to the first place among landscape artists, are his -power of rendering atmospherical effects, and the structure and growth -of things. He not only knew how a tree looked, but he showed how it -grew. Others may have drawn foliage with more habitual fidelity, but -none ever drew trunks and branches with such knowledge of their inner -life; if you look at the trunks in the drawing of <i>Hornby Castle</i> for -instance (which we mention because it is easily seen at the South -Kensington Museum), and compare them with any others in the same room, -the superior indication of texture of bark, of truly varied swelling, of -consistency, and all essential differences between living wood and other -things, cannot fail to be apparent to the least observant. Although the -trees of the “Liber” are not of equal merit (Mr. Ruskin says the firs -are not good), this quality may be observed in many of the plates. -Others have drawn the appearance of clouds, but Turner knew how they -formed. Others have drawn rocks, but he could give their structure, -consistency, and quality of<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a><a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> -surface, with a few deft lines and a wash; -others could hide things in a mist, but he could reveal things through -mist. Others could make something like a rainbow, but he, almost alone, -and without colour, could show it standing out, a bow of light arrested -by vapour in mid-air, not flat upon a mountain, or printed on a cloud. -If all his power over atmospheric effects and all his knowledge of -structure are not contained in the “Liber,” there is sufficient proof of -them scattered through its plates to do as much justice to them as black -and white will allow. If we want to know the result of his studies of -architecture we see it here also, little knowledge or care of buildings -for their own sakes, but perfect sense of their value pictorially for -breaking of lights and casting of shadows; for contrast with the -undefined beauty of natural forms, and for masses in composition; for -the sentiment that ruins lend, and for the names which they give to -pictures. If we seek the books from which his imagination took fire, we -have the Bible and Ovid, the first of small, the latter of great and -almost solitary power. Jason daring the huge glittering serpent, Syrinx -fleeing from Pan, Cephalus and Procris, Æsacus and Hesperie, Glaucus and -Scylla, Narcissus and Echo; if we want to know the artists he most -admired and imitated, or the places to which he had been, we shall find -easily nearly all the former, and sufficient of the latter to show the -wide range of his travel. In a word, one who has carefully studied the -“Liber” had indeed little to learn of the range and power of Turner’s -art and mind, except his colour and his fatalism.</p> - -<p>The first quotation from the “Fallacies of Hope,” nevertheless, was -published in the catalogue of 1812, as the motto of his picture of -<i>Snowstorm—Hannibal and his Army<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> Crossing the Alps</i>, and it is -probable that the ill-success of the “Liber” contributed not a little to -the gloomy habit of mind which breathes through the fragments of this -unfinished composition. These were the lines appended to that grand -picture:—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Craft, treachery, and fraud—Salassian force<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Hung on the fainting rear! then Plunder seiz’d<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The victor and the captive—Saguntum’s spoil,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Alike became their prey; still the chief advanc’d,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Look’d on the sun with hope;—low, broad, and wan.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While the fierce archer of the downward year<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Stains Italy’s blanch’d barrier with storms.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">In vain each pass, ensanguin’d deep with dead,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Or rocky fragments, wide destruction roll’d.<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Still on Campania’s fertile plains—he thought<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But the loud breeze sob’d, Capua’s joys beware.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>This is nearer to poetry than Turner ever got again. The picture is -well-known, and was suggested partly by a storm observed at Farnley, -partly by a picture by J. Cozens,<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> of the same subject, from which -Turner is reported to have said that he learnt more than from any other.</p> - -<p>Turner’s love of poetry was shown from the first possible moment. The -first pictures to which he appended poetical mottoes were those of 1798, -but he could not have used them before, as quotations were never -published in the Academy Catalogue prior to that year. When his first -original verses were published we cannot tell, but there is little doubt -that the lines to his <i>Apollo and the Python</i>, in<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a> the Catalogue of -1811, were of his own fabrication. They are not from Callimachus, as -asserted in the catalogue, but a jumble of the descriptions of two of -Ovid’s dragons, the Python, and Cadmus’s tremendous worm, and are just -the peculiar mixture of Ovid, Milton, Thomson, Pope, and the quotations -in Royal Academy Catalogues, out of which he formed his poetical style. -The Turneresque style of poetry is in fact formed very much in the same -way as the Turneresque style of landscape, but the result is not so -satisfactory. It required a totally different kind of brain machinery -from that which Turner possessed. He may have had a good ear for the -music of tones, for he used to play the flute, but he had none for the -music of words. Coleridge was an instance of how distinct these two -faculties are, as he, whose verses exceed almost all other English -verses in beauty of sound, could not tell one note of music from -another. Turner lived in a world of light and colour, and beautiful -changeful indefinite forms; his thought had visions in place of words; -his mind communed with itself in sights and symbols; the procession of -his ideas was a panorama. So, where a poet would jot down lines and -thoughts, he would print off the impressions on his mental retina; his -true poetry was drawn not written—the poetry of instant act, not of -laboured thought. How sensible he himself was of the difference, is -shown in his clumsy lines:—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Perception, reasoning, <i>action’s slow ally</i>,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Thoughts that in the mind awakened lie—<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Kindly expand the monumental stone<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And as the ... continue power.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>This is Mr. Thornbury’s reading of part of the longest piece of poetry -by Turner yet published, which he has<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> printed without any care, making -greater nonsense than even Turner ever wrote, which is saying a great -deal. “Awakened” for instance is probably “unwakened,” and “monumental -stone” is probably “mental store” with another word at the commencement, -the word “power” is possibly “pours,” as the next line goes on, “a -steady current, nor with headlong force,” &c. We quite agree with Mr. W. -M. Rossetti, that these extracts are not made the best of, though it is -doubtful whether the result of more careful editing would be worth the -trouble.</p> - -<p>There is no picture which better shows the greatness of Turner’s power -of pictorial imagination than the <i>Apollo and Python</i>. We have said that -nature was almost Turner’s only book. The only written book which there -is evidence that he really studied—read through, probably, again and -again—is Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” That he was fond of poetry there is no -doubt, but the sparks that lit his imagination for nearly all his best -classical compositions came from this book. This is the only poem which -he really <i>illustrated</i>, and an edition of Ovid, with engravings from -all the scenes which he drew from this source, would make one of the -best illustrated books in the world. It would contain <i>Jason</i>, -<i>Narcissus and Echo</i>, <i>Mercury and Herse</i>, <i>Apollo and Python</i>, <i>Apuleia -in search of Apuleius</i> (which is really the story of Appulus, who was -turned into a wild olive-tree, Apuleia being a characteristic mistake of -Turner’s for Apulia. He is sometimes called “a shepherd of Apulia,” in -notes and translations, and Turner evidently took the name of the -country for the name of a woman), <i>Apollo and the Sibyl</i>, <i>The Vision of -Medea</i>, <i>The Golden Bough</i>, <i>Mercury and Argus</i>, <i>Pluto and Proserpine</i>, -<i>Glaucus and Scylla</i>, <i>Pan and Syrinx</i>, <i>Ulysses<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a> and Polyphemus</i>. Of -all these pictures and designs we have no doubt that, though he referred -to other poets in the catalogues and got the idea of some part of the -composition from other poets, the original germs are to be found in no -other book than Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” We have not exhausted the list -of his debts to this poet, for it is probable that the first ideas of -his Carthage pictures, and all that deal with the history of Æneas, came -from the same source, assisted by references to Vergil.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p071_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p071_sml.jpg" width="410" height="508" alt="ALLEGORY. - -From Rogers’s “Voyage of Columbus.”" title="ALLEGORY. - -From Rogers’s “Voyage of Columbus.”" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">ALLEGORY.<br /> -From Rogers’s “Voyage of Columbus.”</span> -</p> - -<p>Of all these, excepting the <i>Ulysses and Polyphemus</i>, there is none -greater than the <i>Apollo and Python</i>. Although the figure of Apollo is -not satisfactory, it gives an adequate impression of the small size of -the boy-god, the radiating glory of his presence, the keen enjoyment of -his struggle with the monster, and the triumph of “mind over matter.” Of -the landscape and the dragon it is difficult to exaggerate the grandeur -of the conception; the rocks and trees convulsed with the dying -struggles of the gigantic worm, the agony of the brute himself, -expressed in the distorted jaws and the twisted tail, the awful dark -pool of blood below, the seams in its terrible riven side, studded with -a thousand little shafts from Apollo’s bow, and the fragments of rock -flying in the air above the griffin-like head and noisome steam of -breath, make a picture without any rival of its kind in ancient or -modern art. It is, as we have said, taken from two dragons of Ovid. -Turner seems to have been of the same opinion about books as about -nature, and if he wanted anything to complete his picture, went on a few -pages and found it. The idea of the god and his bow and arrows is taken -from the account of the combat in the first book of the “Metamorphoses,” -and the idea of the huge dragon with his “poyson-paunch,” comes<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a><a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a> -from -the same place; but the ruin of the woodland, the flying stones, and the -earth blackened with the dragon’s gore, come from the description of the -combat of Cadmus and his dragon in the third. The larger stone is too -huge indeed to be that which Cadmus flung, it has been either, as Mr. -Ruskin thinks, lashed into the air by his tail, or, as we think, torn -off the rock and vomited into the air; but there is the tree, which the -“serpent’s weight” did make to bend, and which was “grieved his body of -the serpent’s tail thus scourged for to be,” there is “the stinking -breath that goth out from his black and hellish mouth,” there is the -blood which “did die the green grass black,” an idea not in Callimachus -nor in Ovid’s description of the Python, but which occurs both in the -lines appended to the picture and in Ovid’s description of Cadmus’s -serpent. If there were any doubt left as to the influence of this dragon -on the picture, there is still another piece of evidence, viz., -something very like a javelin, Cadmus’s weapon, which is sticking in the -dragon, and has reappeared after being painted out, so that it is -possible that Turner meant the hero of the picture, in the first -instance, to be Cadmus and not Apollo.</p> - -<p>The two great dragons of Turner, that which guards the Garden of the -Hesperides, and the Python, are specially interesting as the greatest -efforts made by Turner’s imagination in the creation of living forms, -excepting, perhaps, the cloud figure of Polyphemus. They are perhaps the -only monsters of the kind created by an artist’s fancy, which are -credible even for a moment. They will not stand analysis any more than -any other painters’ monsters, but you can enjoy the pictures without -being disturbed by palpable impossibilities. The distance at which we -see<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a> Ladon helps the illusion; with his fiery eyes and smoking jaws, his -spiny back and terrible tail, no one could wish for a more probable -reptile. The only objection that has been made to him is that his jaws -are too thin and brittle, while Mr. Buskin is extravagant in his praise. -It is wonderful to him—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“This anticipation, by Turner, of the grandest reaches of recent -inquiry into the form of the dragons of the old earth ... this -saurian of Turner’s is very nearly an exact counterpart of the -model of the iguanodon, now the guardian of the Hesperian Garden of -the Crystal Palace, wings only excepted, which are, here, almost -accurately, those of the pterodactyle. The instinctive grasp which -a healthy imagination takes of <i>possible</i> truth, even in its -wildest flights, was never more marvellously demonstrated.”</p></div> - -<p>Mr. Ruskin then goes on to call attention to—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“The mighty articulations of his body, rolling in great iron waves, -a cataract of coiling strength and crashing armour, down amongst -the mountain rents. Fancy him moving, and the roaring of the ground -under his rings; the grinding down of the rocks by his toothed -whorls; the skeleton glacier of him in thunderous march, and the -ashes of the hills rising round him like smoke, and encompassing -him like a curtain.”</p></div> - -<p>The description, fine as it is, seems to us to destroy all belief in -Turner’s dragon. The wings of a pterodactyle would never lift the body -of an iguanodon, and Turner’s dragon could not even walk, his -comparatively puny body could never even move his miles of tail, let -alone lift them. It is far better to leave him where he is; the fact -that he is at the top of that rock is sufficient evidence that he got -there somehow; how he got there, and how he will get down again, are -questions which we had better not ask if we wish to keep our faith in -him. Nor can anything be more confused than the notion of a “saurian” -with<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a> “coiling strength and crashing armour,” making the ground “roar -under his rings.” This might be well enough of a fabulous monster made -of iron, but quite inappropriate when applied to a saurian, like the -alligator, for instance, with its soft, slow movements, and its bony, -skin-padded, noiseless armour.</p> - -<p>The Python will stand still less an attempt to define in words what -Turner has purposely left mysterious. Not even Mr. Ruskin, we fancy, -would dare to pull him out straight from amongst his rocks and trees, -and put his griffin’s head and talons on to that marvellous body, half -worm, half caterpillar. But he is grand, and believable as he is. More -simple than either of the other monsters is the single wave of Jason’s -dragon in his den. This is a mere magnified coil of a simple snake; but -its size, its glitter, its incompleteness, the terrible energy of it, -its peculiar serpentine wiriness, that elasticity combined with -stiffness which is so horrible to see and to feel, make it more awful -even than the Python.</p> - -<p>We do not believe in Turner’s power to evolve even as imperfect a -saurian as his Ladon out of his imagination, however “healthy;” and have -no doubt that he had seen the fossil remains of an ichthyosaurus. We -have the testimony of Mrs. Wheeler that he was much interested in -geology,<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> and think it more than probable that the thinness of the -monster’s jaws and, we may add, the emptiness of his eye socket are due -to his drawing them from a fossil, which his knowledge was not great -enough to pad with flesh.<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p075.png"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p075_sml.png" width="450" height="84" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> -</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br /><br /> -<small>HARLEY STREET, DEVONSHIRE, HAMMERSMITH, AND TWICKENHAM.</small><br /><br /> -<small>1800 TO 1820.</small></h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">D</span>HE the first ten years of this period we have very little -intelligence respecting Turner’s life. He moved from Hand Court, Maiden -Lane, to 64, Harley Street, in 1799 or 1800, and it is not improbable -that he bought the house, as No. 64 and the house next to it in Harley -Street, and the house in Queen Anne Street, all belonged to him at the -time of his death. There was communication between the three houses at -the back, although the corner house fronting both streets did not belong -to him. In 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1804, his address in the Royal Academy -Catalogue is 75, Norton Street, Portland Road; but in 1804 it is again -64, Harley Street. In 1808<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> it is 64, Harley Street, and West End, -Upper Mall, Hammersmith; and this double address is given till 1811, -when it is West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, only. In and after 1812 it -is always Queen Anne Street West, with the addition, from 1814 to 1826, -of his house at Twickenham, called Solus Lodge in 1814, and Sandycombe -Lodge<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a> from 1815 to 1826. It is remarkable that in the Catalogue of the -British Institution for 1814 his address is given as Harley Street, -Cavendish Square, showing that he had not then given up his house in -this street, and this is good evidence that it belonged to him.</p> - -<p>The war which broke out with Bonaparte in 1803,<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> and was not finally -closed till 1815, prevented him from pursuing his studies of Continental -scenery, and he seems during this time to have devoted himself -principally to the composition of his great rival pictures, and the -“Liber Studiorum,” about which we have already written: he stayed -occasionally with his friends, Mr. Fawkes at Farnley, where he studied -the storm for <i>Hannibal Crossing the Alps</i>, and Lord Egremont at -Petworth, where he painted <i>Apuleia and Apuleius</i>. Almost the only -glimpse that we get of his house in Harley Street, though it is very -doubtful to what period it belongs, was sent to Mr. Thornbury by Mr. -Rose of Jersey:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p><a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a>“Two ladies, Mrs. R—— and Mrs. H—— once paid him a visit in -Harley Street, an extremely rare (in fact, if not the only) -occasion of such an occurrence, for it must be known he was not -fond of parties prying, as he fancied, into the secrets of his -<i>ménage</i>. On sending in their names, after having ascertained that -he was at home, they were politely requested to walk in, and were -shown into a large sitting room without a fire. This was in the -depth of winter; and lying about in various places were several -cats without tails. In a short time our talented friend made his -appearance, asking the ladies if they felt cold. The youngest -replied in the negative; her companion, more curious, wished she -had stated otherwise, as she hoped they might have been shown into -his sanctum or studio. After a little conversation he offered them -wine and biscuits, which they partook of for the novelty, such an -event being almost unprecedented in his house. One of the ladies -bestowing some notice upon the cats, he was induced to remark that -he had seven, and that they came from the Isle of Man.”<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p></div> - -<p>Whatever is the proper date of this story, it is to be feared that he -had good reason for not wishing persons to pry into the secrets of his -<i>ménage</i>. We ourselves have no wish to pry into those secrets; but the -fact that Turner had for the greater part of his life a home of which he -was ashamed, is sufficient to explain a great deal of his want of -hospitality, his churlishness to visitors, and his confirmed habits of -secrecy and seclusion.</p> - -<p>There is no doubt that he habitually lived with a mistress. Hannah -Danby, who entered his service, a girl of sixteen, in the year 1801, and -was his housekeeper in Queen Anne Street at his death, is generally -considered to have been one; and Sophia Caroline Booth, with whom he -spent his last years in an obscure lodging in Chelsea, another. There -are many who have lived more immoral lives, and have done more harm to -others by their immorality; but he chose a kind of illegal connection -which was particularly destructive to himself. He made his home the -scene of his irregularities, and, by entering into ultimate relations -with uneducated women, cut himself off from healthy social influences -which would have given daily employment to his naturally warm heart, and -prevented him from growing into a selfish, solitary man. Not to be able -to enjoy habitually the society of pure educated women, not to be able -to welcome your friend to your hearth, could not have been good for a -man’s character, or his art, or his intellect.</p> - -<p>His uninterrupted privacy possibly enabled him to produce<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a> more, and to -develop his genius farther in one direction; but we could have well -spared many of his pictures for a few works graced with a wider culture -and a healthier sentiment. He could paint, and paint, perhaps, better -for his isolation—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“The light that never was on sea or land,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The consecration and the Poet’s dream.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">But it would have been better for him, and, we think, for his art also, -if he could have said:—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Housed in a dream, at distance from the kind!<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Such happiness, wherever it be known,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Is to be pitied; for ’tis surely blind.”<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>It was not from any scorn of the conventions of society that he -disregarded them, for there is no trace of any feeling of this sort in -his pictures or his reported conversations, and in his will he required -that the “Poor and Decayed Male Artists,” for whom he intended to found -a charitable institution (“Turner’s Gift”), should be “of <i>lawful -issue</i>.” One reason why he never married may have been his shyness and -consciousness of his want of address and personal attraction. Mr. Cyrus -Redding, from whom we have one of the brightest and best glimpses of -Turner as a man, says:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p><a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> “He was aware that he could not hope to gain credit in the world -out of his profession. I believe that his own ordinary person was, -in his clear-mindedness, somewhat considered in estimating his -career in life. He was once at a party where there were several -beautiful women. One of them struck him much with her charms and -captivating appearance; and he said to a friend, in a moment of -unguarded admiration, ‘If she would marry me, I would give her a -hundred thousand.’”</p></div> - -<p>This, and the increasing absorption in his art of all of himself that -could be so absorbed; his desire to economize both his time and his -money; his innate hatred of interference with his liberty; his aversion -from undertaking any obligation, the consequences of which he could not -calculate—all tended to keep him from matrimony, and to make him -content with the most unromantic amours.</p> - -<p>That he in 1811 or thereabouts could be hospitable and a good companion -away from home, is shown by Mr. Redding in his pleasant volume, from -which we have just quoted. He met Turner on what appears to have been -his first visit to the county to which his family belonged—Devonshire. -He met him first, Mr. Redding thinks, at the house of Mr. Collier (the -father of Sir Robert Collier), an eminent merchant of Plymouth, and -accompanied him on many excursions. On one of these Turner actually gave -a picnic “in excellent taste” at a seat on the summit of the hill, -overlooking the Sound and Cawsand Bay.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Cold meats, shell fish, and good wines were provided on that -delightful and unrivalled spot. Our host was agreeable, but terse, -blunt, and almost epigrammatic at times. Never given to waste his -words, nor remarkably choice in their arrangement, they were always -in their right place, and admirably effective.”<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p></div> - -<p>This last sentence sounds somewhat paradoxical, but for that reason is -probably all the more accurately descriptive of Turner’s art in words. -Further on, when defending<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a> the great painter, we get a portrait of him -as a “plain figure” with “somewhat bandy legs,” and “dingy complexion.” -On another excursion, Redding spent a night at a small country inn with -Turner, about three miles from Tavistock, as the artist had a great -desire to see the country round at sunrise. The rest of the party, Mr. -Collier and two friends, who had spent the day with them on the shores -of the Tamar with a scanty supply of provisions, preferred to pass the -night at Tavistock.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Turner was content with bread and cheese and beer, tolerably good, -for dinner and supper in one. I contrived to feast somewhat less -simply on bacon and eggs, through an afterthought inspiration. In -the little sanded room we conversed by the light of an attenuated -candle, and some aid from the moon, until nearly midnight, when -Turner laid his head upon the table, and was soon sound asleep. I -placed two or three chairs in a line, and followed his example at -full recumbency. In this way three or four hours’ rest were (<i>sic</i>) -obtained, and we were both fresh enough to go out, as soon as the -sun was up, to explore the scenery in the neighbourhood, and get a -humble breakfast, before our friends rejoined us from Tavistock. It -was in that early morning Turner made a sketch of the picture -(<i>Crossing the Brook</i>)to which I have alluded, and which he invited -me to his gallery to see.”</p></div> - -<p>Another of these excursions was to Burr or Borough Island, in Bigbury -Bay, “To eat hot lobsters fresh from the sea.”</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“The morning was squally, and the sea rolled boisterously into the -Sound. As we ran out, the sea continued to rise, and off Stake’s -point became stormy. Our Dutch boat rode bravely over the furrows, -which in that low part of the Channel roll grandly in unbroken -ridges from the Atlantic.”</p></div> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p081_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p081_sml.jpg" width="547" height="380" alt="IVY BRIDGE. - -Water-colour in National Gallery." title="IVY BRIDGE. - -Water-colour in National Gallery." /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">IVY BRIDGE.<br /> -Water-colour in National Gallery.</span> -</p> - -<p>Two of the party were ill; one, an officer in the army, wanted to throw -himself overboard, and they<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a><a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> -“were obliged to keep him down among the -rusty iron ballast, with a spar across him.”</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Turner was all the while quiet, watching the troubled scene, and -it was not unworthy his notice. The island, the solitary hut upon -it, the bay in the bight of which it lay, and the long gloomy Bolt -Head to sea-ward, against which the waves broke with fury, seemed -to absorb the entire notice of the artist, who scarcely spoke a -syllable. While the fish were getting ready, Turner mounted nearly -to the highest point of the island rock, <i>and seemed writing rather -than drawing</i>. The wind was almost too violent for either purpose; -what he particularly noted he did not say.”</p></div> - -<p>These reminiscences of Mr. Redding contain the most graphic picture of -Turner we possess. His carelessness of comfort, his devotion to his art, -his power of continuous observation in despite of tumult and discomfort, -his love of the sun and the sea, his habit of sketching from a high -point of view, his ability to take “pictorial memoranda” in a violent -wind, are all striking and essential peculiarities.</p> - -<p>It is interesting to learn also from Mr. Redding, that “early in the -morning before the rest were up, Turner and myself walked to Dodbrooke, -hard by the town, to see the house that had belonged to Dr. Walcot -(<i>sic</i>), Peter Pindar, and where he was born. Walcot sold it, and there -had been a house erected there since; of this the artist took a sketch.” -Turner probably appreciated Peter’s “Advice to Landscape Painters.”</p> - -<p>One piece of Turner’s conversation is also worthy of record, if only on -account of its rarity.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“He was looking at a seventy-four gun ship, which lay in the shadow -under Saltash. The ship seemed one dark mass.</p> - -<p>“‘I told you that would be the effect,’ said Turner, referring to -some previous conversation. ‘Now, as you observe, it is all shade.’</p> - -<p>“‘Yes, I perceive it; and yet the ports are there.’</p> - -<p>“‘We can only take what is visible—no matter what may be there. -There are people in the ship; we don’t see them through the -planks.’”</p></div> - -<p><a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a></p> - -<p>This reads like a speech of Dr. Johnson.</p> - -<p>We have another account of this same visit to Devonshire from Sir -Charles Eastlake, which bears testimony to the hospitality which he -received. Miss Pearce, an aunt of Sir Charles, appears to have been his -hostess, and her cottage at Calstock the centre of his excursions. A -landscape painter, Mr. Ambrose Johns, of great merit, according to Sir -Charles, fitted up a small portable painting box, which was of much use -to Turner in affording him ready appliances for sketching in oil.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Turner seemed pleased when the rapidity with which these sketches -were done was talked of; for departing from his habitual reserve in -the instance of his pencil sketches, he made no difficulty in -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 inquiring what had become of these sketches, -Turner replied that they were worthless, in consequence, as he -supposed, of some defects 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.”<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p></div> - -<p>Mr. Johns’s devotion was not rewarded till long afterwards, when the -great painter sent him a small oil sketch in a letter. Mr. Redding -obtained at the time a rough sketch, and these seem to have been the -only returns he made for the kindness that was shown to him at Plymouth, -though many years afterwards he spoke to Mr. Redding “of the reception -he met with on this tour, in a strain that exhibited his possession of a -mind not unsusceptible or forgetful of kindness.”</p> - -<p>The date of this tour is given by Mr. Redding as probably<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> 1811, and by -Eastlake 1813 or 1814. The principal pictorial results of it were -<i>Crossing the Brook</i> (exhibited in 1815), and various drawings for -Cooke’s <i>Southern Coast</i>, which commenced in 1814. It seems probable -that his engagement on this work determined his visit to Cornwall and -Devonshire, but this is uncertain, as is also whether he paid more than -one visit to the locality.</p> - -<p>This tour is also interesting from its being the only occasion on which -Turner is known to have visited his kinsfolk. We are enabled to state on -the authority of one of his family that he went to Barnstaple and called -upon his relations there, and a gentleman, late of the Chancery Bar, has -kindly supplied us with the following extract of a memorandum made by -him in 1853, from facts sworn to in suits instituted to administer -Turner’s estate.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Price Turner, an uncle of the painter’s, having some idea of -educating his son, Thomas Price Turner (now (1853) living at North -Street, in the parish of St. Kerrian, Exeter, Professor of Music) -as a painter, T. P. T. made, at the request of William Turner, the -great artist’s father, two drawings as specimens of his ability, -one a view of the city of Exeter, taken from the south side, and -the other a view of Rougemont Castle, and sent them by Wm. Turner -to his son. Shortly after, he (T. P. T.) received a number of water -colour drawings, sketches, &c. Some of these were afterwards sent -for again, one of which, a water colour view of Redcliffe Church, -Bristol, Thomas Price Turner previously copied, which copy, -together with the residue of Turner’s drawings, are still in his -cousin’s possession.</p> - -<p>“J. M. W. Turner called at Price Turner’s house at Exeter about -forty years ago (about 1813), and, saying that he called at his -father’s request, had a conversation with Price Turner and his son -and daughter. Thomas Price Turner went to London in 1834 to attend -the Royal Musical Festival in commemoration of Handel, in which he -was engaged as a chorus singer. He called three times on his -cousin, and the third time saw him, but though he (J. M. W. T.) -immediately recognized him, the painter gave him a cool reception, -never so much as asking him to sit down.”</p></div> - -<p><a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a></p> - -<p>It is probable that Turner’s father removed with him to Harley Street in -1800. The powder tax of 1795 is said to have destroyed his trade, and he -lived with his son till he died in 1830. He used to strain his son’s -canvasses and varnish his pictures, “which made Turner say that his -father began and finished his pictures for him.” As early as 1809, -Turner “was in the habit of privately exhibiting such pictures as he did -not sell, and the small accumulation he had at Harley Street in 1809 was -already dignified with the name of the “Turner Gallery.”<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> This -gallery Turner’s father attended to, showing in visitors &c., and when -they stayed at Twickenham he came up to town every morning to open it. -Thornbury says that the cost of this weighed upon his spirits until he -made friends with a market-gardener, who for a glass of gin a-day, -brought him up in his cart on the top of the vegetables. This is said to -have been after Turner removed from Harley Street, and was very well off -if not rich, for he had built his house in Queen Anne Street and his -lodge at Twickenham,<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> both of which belonged to him, as well as the -land at Twickenham, and (probably) the house in Harley Street. Turner’s -father made great exertions to add to his son’s estate at Sandycombe, by -running out little earthworks in the road and then fencing them round. -At one time there was a regular row of these fortifications, which used -to be called “Turner’s Cribs.” One day, however, they were ruthlessly -swept away by some local authority. If, however, both father and son -were very “saving” and<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> eccentric in their ways, they were devoted to -one another from the beginning to the end, to an extent very touching -and beautiful, however strange in its manifestation.</p> - -<p>Of Turner’s life at West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, we have only the -following glimpse in a communication to Thornbury by “a friend.”</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“The garden, which ran down to the river, terminated in a -summer-house; and here, out in the open air, were painted some of -his best pictures. It was there that my father, who then resided at -Kew, became first acquainted with him; and expressing his surprise -that Turner could paint under such circumstances, he remarked that -lights and room were absurdities, and that a picture could be -painted anywhere. His eyes were remarkably strong. He would throw -down his water-colour drawings on the floor of the summer-house, -requesting my father not to touch them, as he could see them there, -and they would be drying at the same time.”</p></div> - -<p>It may have been when at Hammersmith that he became acquainted with Mr. -Trimmer, for in a letter to Mr. Wyatt of Oxford respecting two pictures -of that city, which is dated “West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, Feb. 4, -1810,” he says, “Pray tell me likewise of a gentleman of the name of -Trimmer, who has written to you to be a subscriber for the print.” This -gentleman was the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, Vicar of Heston, who was one -of Turner’s best and most intimate friends till his death. It is said -that he first went to Hammersmith to be near De Loutherbourg, and it is -probable that one of his reasons for building on his free—hold at -Twickenham was to be nearer Mr. Trimmer. De Loutherbourg died in 1812.</p> - -<p>Sandycombe Lodge, first called Solus Lodge, is on the road from -Twickenham to Isleworth, and is built on low lying ground and damp. The -original structure has been added to, but the additions being built of -brick, it is easy<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> to see how it looked in Turner’s time—a small -semi-Italian villa covered with plaster and decorated with iron -balustrades and steps. It is within walking distance (4 miles) of -Heston. We are able by the kindness of Mr. F. E. Trimmer, the youngest -son of Turner’s friend, to correct some false impressions conveyed by -Thornbury’s garbled account of what he was told by the eldest son.</p> - -<p>The Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, the son of the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer, -and father of the Rev. Henry Syer Trimmer, who gave Thornbury his -information, was about the same age as Turner, and very much interested -in art. As an amateur painter he attained considerable skill, having a -wonderful faculty for catching the manner of other artists. His great -knowledge of pictures, and his continual experiments in the way of -mediums, colours, and devices for obtaining effects, made his -acquaintance specially interesting and valuable to Turner, and Turner’s -to him. No better proof of his ability can be found than the two -following stories:—</p> - -<p>There is a picture at Heston before which Turner would frequently stand -studying. It is a sea-piece with the sun behind a mist, and with a -golden hazy effect not unlike Turner’s famous <i>Sun rising in a Mist</i>, -but the sea washes up to the frame. One day Turner said to Mr. Trimmer, -“I like that picture; there’s a good deal in it. Where did you get it?” -(Or words to this effect.) “I painted it,” was the reply; upon which the -artist turned away without a word, and never looked at the picture -again.</p> - -<p>The true story of the picture, supposed to be by Sir Joshua Reynolds, to -which Mr. Trimmer added a background, is this.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> He purchased it in an -unfinished condition<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a> of a dealer in Holborn, and finished it himself, -and it remained in his possession till his death, when his son (Mr. F. -E. Trimmer), knowing its history, kept it out of the sale at Christie’s -of his father’s fine collection, and sold it, among other less valuable -and genuine productions, at Heston. The dealer who bought it (for £6) -thought he had made a great catch, and inquired of Mr. Trimmer’s son the -history of the picture, which he considered a splendid Sir Joshua, -speaking especially of the background as being a proof of its -authenticity. When Mr. Trimmer told him that his father had bought it in -his own shop and had finished it himself, he would not believe it for a -long time.</p> - -<p>Of the other stories of Turner’s connection with Heston, and of his -power to assist others in the composition of their pictures, the -following is perhaps the most interesting:—<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p> - -<p>Once when Howard (R.A.) was staying at the vicarage, painting a portrait -of Mr. Trimmer’s second son, the Rev. Barrington James Trimmer, Turner -was always finding fault with the work in progress. It was a full-size -and full-length portrait of a boy of three years old, dressed in a white -frock and red morocco shoes. One day Howard, annoyed at Turner’s -frequent objections, told him that he had better do it himself, on which -Turner said, “This is what I should do,” and taking up the cat he -wrapped its body in his red pocket handkerchief, and put it under the -boy’s arm. The effect of this, as may still be seen in the picture at -the house of Mr. Trimmer’s son at Heston, was excellent. The cat gave an -interest to the figure which it wanted, the red morocco shoes were no -longer isolated patches of bright<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> colour at the bottom of the picture, -the blank expanse of white frock was varied and lightened up by the red -handkerchief and pussy’s tabby face, and the work, which was on the -brink of failure, was a decided success. Parts of the cat, handkerchief, -and landscape were put in by Turner.</p> - -<p>Sketching with oils on a large canvas in a boat, driving out on little -sketching excursions in his gig with his ill-tempered nag Crop Ear, said -to have been immortalized in his picture of the <i>Frosty Morning</i> (which -was, however, painted before he went to Twickenham), fishing for trout -in the Old Brent, or for roach in the Thames, with Mr. Trimmer’s sons, -digging his pond in his garden and planting it round with weeping -willows and alders, the picture of Turner’s life at Twickenham is a -pleasant and healthy one. At Heston he drew his <i>Interior of a Church</i> -for the “Liber,” and actually gave away two of his drawings to Mrs. -Trimmer, one of a Gainsborough, which they had seen together on an -excursion to Osterley House, and one of a woman gathering watercresses, -whom they had met on their way. But these gifts were asked for by the -lady, and Turner would not let them go without making <i>replicas</i>. He -once stood with a long rod two whole days in a pouring rain under an -umbrella fishing in a small pond in the vicarage garden, without even a -nibble.</p> - -<p>In connection with the Trimmers we get other instances of his rare and -bare hospitality, which showed that he never altered his manner of -living after he left Maiden Lane. We must refer the reader to Mr. -Thornbury’s life for the remainder of these varied, interesting, and on -the whole pleasant reminiscences.</p> - -<p>Space, however, we must spare for a letter, very incorrectly given by -Thornbury, the only record of his second<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a> attachment, the object of -which was the sister of the Rev. H. Scott Trimmer, who was at that time -being courted by her future husband:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">“<i>Tuesday. Aug. 1. 1815. </i><br /> -“Q<small>UEEN</small> A<small>NNE</small> S<small>T</small>.</p> - -<p>“M<small>Y DEAR</small> S<small>IR</small>,</p> - -<p> “I lament that all hope of the pleasure of seeing you or getting to -Heston—must for the present wholly vanish. My father told me on -Saturday last when I was as usual compelled to return to town the -same day, that you and Mrs. Trimmer would leave Heston for Suffolk -as tomorrow Wednesday, in the first place, I am glad to hear that -her health is so far established as to be equal to the journey, and -believe me your utmost hope, for her benefitting by the sea air -being fully realized will give me great pleasure to hear, and the -earlier the better.</p> - -<p>“After next Tuesday—if you have a moments time to spare, a line -will reach me at Farnley Hall, near Otley Yorkshire, and for some -time, as Mr. Fawkes talks of keeping me in the north by a trip to -the Lakes &c. until November therefore I suspect I am not to see -Sandycombe. Sandycombe sounds just now in my ears as an act of -folly, when I reflect how little I have been able to be there this -year, and less chance (perhaps) for the next in looking forward to -a Continental excursion, & poor Daddy seems as much plagued with -weeds as I am with disapointments, that if Miss —— would but wave -bashfulness, or—in other words—make an offer instead of expecting -one—the same might change occupiers—but not to teaze you further, -allow with most sincere respects to Mrs. Trimmer and family, to -consider myself</p> - -<p class="r">“Your most truly (or sincerely) obliged <br /> -“J. M. T<small>URNER</small>.”</p></div> - -<p>But for the assurance of the present Mr. Trimmer, of Heston, that this -attachment of Turner to Miss Trimmer was undoubted, and that this letter -has always been considered in the family as a declaration thereof, we -should have thought that the offer he wanted was one for Sandycombe -Lodge and not for his hand. It is, however, past doubt that Turner was -violently smitten, and though forty years old, felt it much.<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a></p> - -<p>The above letter was the only one known to have been written by Turner -to his friend the Vicar of Heston, and it is quite untrue, as asserted -by Thornbury, that the Vicar’s letters were burnt in sackfuls by his -son. His large correspondence was patiently gone through—a task which -took some years. Thornbury was probably thinking of the destruction of -the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer’s correspondence by her daughter, in which -it is true that sackfuls of interesting letters perished.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/p091.png"> -<img src="images/p091_sml.png" width="125" height="109" alt="decoration" title="decoration" /></a> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p092.png"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p092_sml.png" width="450" height="82" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> -</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br /><br /> -<small>ITALY AND FRANCE.</small><br /><br /> -<small>1820 TO 1840.</small></h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE life of Turner the man, that is, what we know of it, during these -twenty years, may be written almost in a page—the history of his art -might be made to fill many volumes. During this period he exhibited -nearly eighty pictures at the Royal Academy, and about five hundred -engravings were published from his drawings. If he had been famous -before, he was something else, if not something more than famous now; he -was “the fashion.” It was on this ground that Sir Walter Scott, who -would have preferred Thomson of Duddingstone to illustrate his -‘Provincial Antiquities’ (published in 1826), agreed to the employment -of Turner, who afterwards (in 1834) furnished a beautiful series of -sixty-five vignettes for Cadell’s edition of Sir Walter’s prose and -poetical works.</p> - -<p>In 1819 Turner paid his first visit to Italy, which had a marked -influence on his style. From this time forward his works become -remarkable for their colour. Down to this time he had painted -principally in browns, blues,<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> and greys, employing red and yellow very -sparingly, but he had been gradually warming his scale almost from the -beginning. From the wash of sepia and Prussian blue, he had slowly -proceeded in the direction of golden and reddish brown, and had produced -both drawings and pictures with wonderful effects of mist and sunlight, -but he had scarcely gone beyond the sober colouring of Vandevelde and -Ruysdael till he began his great pictures in rivalry with Claude. In -them may be seen perhaps the dawn of the new power in his art. In the -Exhibition of 1815 were two prophecies of his new style, in which he was -to transcend all former efforts in the painting of distance and in -colour. These were <i>Crossing the Brook</i>, with its magical distance, and -<i>Dido building Carthage</i>, with its blazing sky and brilliant feathery -clouds. The first is the purest and most beautiful of all his oil -pictures of the loveliness of English scenery, the most simple in its -motive, the most tranquil in its sentiment, the perfect expression of -his enjoyment of the exquisite scenery in the neighbourhood of Plymouth. -The latter with all its faults was the finest of the kind he ever -painted, and his greatest effect in the way of colour before his visit -to Italy. In his other Carthage picture of this period, <i>The Decline</i> -(exhibited 1817), the “brown demon,” as Mr. Ruskin calls it, was in full -force, and his pictures of <i>Dido and Æneas</i> (1814), <i>The Temple of -Jupiter</i> (1817), and <i>Apuleia and Apuleius</i>, are cold and heavy in -comparison. Indeed, from 1815 to 1823 his power, judged by his exhibited -pictures, seemed to be flagging. Whether his second disappointment in -love had anything to do with this we have no means of judging, but if it -disturbed for a time his power of painting for fame, it certainly had no -ill effect<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a> either as to the quantity or quality of his water-colours -for the engravers.</p> - -<p>His most worthy and beautiful work of these years is to be found not in -his oil pictures but in his drawings for Dr. Whitaker’s ‘History of -Richmondshire’ (published 1823) and the ‘Rivers of England’ (1824). Both -series were engraved in line in a manner worthy of the artist. One of -the former, the <i>Hornby Castle</i>, a little faded perhaps, but still -exquisite in its harmonies of blue and amber, is to be seen at South -Kensington. Three more were lately exhibited by Mr. Ruskin—<i>Heysham -Village</i>, <i>Egglestone Abbey</i>, and <i>Richmond</i>. Of this series Mr. Ruskin -says, “The foliage is rich and marvellous in composition, the effects of -mist more varied and true” (than in the <i>Hakewill</i> drawings), “the rock -and hill drawing insuperable, the skies exquisite in complex form.” The -engravings probably owed much to Turner’s own supervision, and many of -them, such as <i>Egglestone Abbey</i>, by T. Higham, and <i>Wycliffe</i>, by John -Pye, Middiman’s <i>Moss Dale Fall</i>, and Radcliffe’s <i>Hornby Castle</i>, were -perfect translations of the originals, showing an advance in the art of -engraving as great as that which Turner had made in water-colour -drawing. Except in the heightened scale of colour there is little in -this series to show the influence of Italy, their temper is that of -<i>Crossing the Brook</i>, and the foliage and scenery that of England. Nor -do we find anything but England in the ‘Rivers.’ Nothing can be more -purely English than the exquisite drawing of <i>Totnes on the Dart</i> (of -which we give a woodcut). The original is one of the treasures of the -National Gallery, and is marvellous for the minuteness of its finish and -the breadth and truth of its effect. The tiny group of poplars in the -middle distance are<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> <a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a> painted with such dexterity that the impression of -multitudinous leafage is perfectly conveyed, and the stillness of clear -smooth water filled with innumerable variegated reflections, the -beautiful distance with castle, church, and town, and the group of gulls -in the foreground, make a picture of placid beauty in which there is no -straining for effect, no mannerism, nothing to remind you of the artist. -It is only in the touches of red in the fore of the river (touches -unaccounted for by anything in the drawing) that you discern him at -last, and find that you are looking not at nature but “a Turner.” If you -are inclined to be angry with these touches, cover them with the hand -and find out how much of the charm is lost.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p095_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p095_sml.jpg" width="540" height="367" alt="TOTNES ON THE DART. - -From “Rivers of England.”" title="TOTNES ON THE DART. - -From “Rivers of England.”" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">TOTNES ON THE DART.<br /> -From “Rivers of England.”</span> -</p> - -<p>After the ‘Rivers of England,’ Turner produced work more magnificent in -colour, more transcendent in imagination, indeed <i>the</i> work which -singles him out individually from all landscape artists, in which the -essences of the material world were revealed in a manner which was not -only unrealized but unconceived before; but for perfect balance of -power, for the mirroring of nature as it appears to ninety-nine out of -every hundred, for fidelity of colour of both sky and earth, and form -(especially of trees), for carefulness and accuracy of drawing, for work -that neither startles you by its eccentricity nor puzzles you as to its -meaning, which satisfies without cloying, and leaves no doubt as to the -truth of its illusion, there is none to compare with these drawings of -his of England after his first visit to Italy—and especially (though -perhaps it is because we know them best that we say so) the drawings for -the ‘Rivers of England.’ We are certain at least of this, that no one -has a right to form an opinion about Turner’s power generally, either to -go into ecstasies over<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a> or to deride his later work, till he has seen -some of these matchless drawings. They form the true centre of his -artistic life, the point at which his desire for the simple truth and -the imperious demands of his imagination were most nearly balanced.</p> - -<p>In 1821 and 1824 Turner exhibited no pictures at the Royal Academy, and -it would have been no loss to his fame if his pictures of 1820 and 1822, -<i>Rome, from the Vatican</i>, and <i>What you will</i>, had never left his -studio; but in 1823 he astonished the world with the first of those -magnificent dreams of landscape loveliness with which his name will -always be specially associated;—<i>The Say of Baiæ with Apollo and the -Sibyl</i> (1823). The three supreme works of this class, <i>The Bay of Baiæ</i>, -<i>Caligula’s Palace and Bridge</i> (1831), and <i>Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage</i> -(1832), are too well known to need description, and have been too much -written about to need much comment. They were the realization of his -impressions of Italy, with its sunny skies, its stone-pines, its ruins, -its luxuriance of vegetation, its heritage of romance. How little the -names given to these pictures really influence their effect, is shown by -the frequency with which one of them is confused with another. What -verses of what poet, what episode of history may have been in the -artist’s mind is of little consequence, when the thought is expressed in -the same terms of infinite sunny distance, crumbling ruin and towering -tree. The artist may have meant to embody the whole of Byron’s mind in -the <i>Childe Harold</i>, the history of Italy in <i>Caligula’s Palace and -Bridge</i>, the folly of life in <i>Apollo and the Sibyl</i>, but it does not -matter now, the things are “Turners,” neither more nor less; we doubt -very much whether Turner cared greatly for the particular stories -attached<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a> to many of his pictures. Some of them remind us of a title of -a picture in the Academy of 1808, <i>A Temple and Portico, with the -drowning of Aristobulus, vide Josephus, book 15, chap. 3</i>. In some it -was no doubt his ardent desire to proclaim his thoughts on history and -fate, but the result is much the same, for the medium in which he -attempted to convey them was that least suited for his purpose. It was, -however, his only means of expression, and there is something very sad -in the idea of a mind struggling in vain to give its most serious -thoughts didactic force. If these thoughts had been profound, and the -mind that of a prophet, the failure would have been tragical. The -language employed was the highest of its kind, but it was as inadequate -for its purpose as music. It has, however, like fine music, the power of -starting vibrations of sentiment full of suggestion, giving birth to -endless dreams of beauty and pleasure, of sadness and foreboding, -according to the personality and humour of those who are sensitive to -its charm.</p> - -<p>In 1825 were published his first illustrations to a modern poet—Byron; -he contributed some more to the editions of 1833 and 1834, most of them -being views of places which he had never seen, and therefore -compositions from the sketches of others, like his drawings for -Hakewill’s “Picturesque Tour of Italy” and Finden’s “Illustrations of -the Bible.” No doubt the experience of his youth in improving the -sketches of amateurs and the liberty which such work gave to his -imagination, made it easy and congenial to him. These drawings show the -variety of his artistic power and the perfection of his technical skill. -The <i>Hakewill</i> series is marvellous for minute accuracy (being taken -from camera sketches)<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a> and for beautiful tree drawing, and the Bible -series for imagination. They are, however, of less interest in a -biography than those which were based upon his own impressions of the -scenes depicted, such as his illustrations to Rogers and Scott.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p098_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p098_sml.jpg" width="744" height="500" alt="" title="" /></a> -</p> - -<p>In 1825 he exhibited only one picture, <i>Harbour of Dieppe</i>, and in 1826, -the year when the publication of the “Southern Coast” terminated, three, -of one of which there is told a story of unselfish generosity, which -deserves special record. The picture was called <i>Cologne—the arrival of -a Packet-boat—Evening</i>. Of this Mr. Hamerton writes: “There were such -unity and serenity in the work, and such a glow of light and colour, -that it seemed like a window opened upon the land of the ideal, where -the harmonies of things are more perfect than they have ever been in the -common world.” The picture was hung between two of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s -portraits, and Turner covered its glowing glory with a wash of -lampblack, so as not to spoil their effect. “Poor Lawrence was so -unhappy,” he said. “It will all wash off after the Exhibition.” As Mr. -Hamerton truly observes, “It is not as if Turner had been indifferent to -fame.”</p> - -<p>There are many stories of apparently contrary action on Turner’s part, -namely, of heightening the colour of his pictures to “kill” those of his -neighbours at the Academy, but they do not spoil this story. During -those merry “varnishing days” which Turner enjoyed so much, attempts to -outcolour one another were ordinary jokes—give-and-take sallies of -skill, made in good humour. No one entered into such contests with more -zest than Turner, and he was not always the victor. This story seems to -us to prove that when Turner saw that any one<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> was really hurt, his -tenderness was greater than his spirit of emulation and jest.</p> - -<p>Leslie tells the best of the “counter stories.”</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“In 1832, when Constable exhibited his <i>Opening of Waterloo -Bridge</i>,<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> it was placed in the School of Painting—one of the -small rooms at Somerset House. A sea piece,<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> by Turner, was next -to it—a grey picture, beautiful and true, but with no positive -colour in any part of it—Constable’s <i>Waterloo</i> seemed as if -painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times -into the room while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the -decorations and flags of the City barges. Turner stood behind him, -looking from the <i>Waterloo</i> to his own picture, and at last brought -his palette from the great room, where he was touching another -picture, and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than -a shilling, on his grey sea, went away without saying a word. The -intensity of the red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of the -picture, caused even the vermilion and lake of Constable to look -weak. I came into the room just as Turner left it. ‘He has been -here,’ said Constable, ‘and fired a gun.’”</p> - -<p>On the opposite wall was a picture, by Jones, of Shadrach, Meshach, -and Abednego in the furnace.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> “A coal,” said Cooper, “has -bounced across the room from Jones’s picture, and set fire to -Turner’s sea.” The great man did not come into the room for a day -and a half; and then in the last moments that were allowed for -painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his picture, and -shaped it into a buoy.”<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p></div> - -<p>This daub of red lead was rather defensive than offensive, and there is -no story of Turner which shows any malice in his nature. To his brother -artists he was always friendly and just; he never spoke in their -disparagement, and often helped young artists with a kind word or a -practical suggestion. Even Constable—between<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a> whom and Turner not much -love was lost, according to Thornbury—he helped on one occasion by -striking in a ripple in the foreground of his picture—the “something” -just wanted to make the composition satisfactory. We think, then, that -we may enjoy the beautiful story of self-sacrifice for Lawrence’s sake, -without any disagreeable reflection that it is spoilt by others showing -a contrary spirit towards his brother artists.</p> - -<p>The year 1826 was his last at Sandycombe. As he had taken it for the -sake of his father, so he gave it up, for “Dad” was always working in -the garden and catching cold. He took this step much to his own sorrow, -we believe, and much to our and his loss. Without the pleasant and -wholesome neighbourhood of the Trimmers, with no home but the gloomy, -dirty, disreputable Queen Anne Street, he became more solitary, more -self-absorbed, or absorbed in his art (much the same thing with him), -and lived only to follow unrestrained wherever his wayward genius led -him, and to amass money for which he could find no use. How he still -loved to grasp it, however, and how unscrupulous he was in doing so, is -painfully shown in his dispute with Cooke about this time (1827), which -prevented a proposed continuation of the “Southern Coast.” Mr. Cooke’s -letter relating to it, though long, is too important to omit, and, -though it may be said to be <i>ex parte</i>, carries sad conviction of its -truth:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p class="r">“<i>January 1, 1827.</i></p> - -<p>“D<small>EAR</small> S<small>IR</small>,</p> - -<p> “I cannot help regretting that you persist in demanding twenty-five -sets of India proofs before the letters of the continuation of the -work of the ‘Coast,’ besides being paid for the drawings. It is -like a film before your eyes, to prevent your obtaining upwards of -two thousand pounds in a commission for drawings for that work.<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a></p> - -<p>“Upon mature reflection you must see I have done all in my power to -satisfy you of the total impossibility of acquiescing in such a -demand; it would be unjust both to my subscribers and to myself.</p> - -<p>“The ‘Coast’ being my own original plan, which cost me some anxiety -before I could bring it to maturity, and an immense expense before -I applied to you, when I gave a commission for drawings to upwards -of £400, <i>at my own entire risk</i>, in which the shareholders were -not willing to take any part, I did all I could to persuade you to -have one share, and which I did from a firm conviction that it -would afford some remuneration for your exertions on the drawings, -in addition to the amount of the contract. The share was, as it -were, forced upon you by myself, with the best feelings in the -world; and was, as you well know, repeatedly refused, under the -idea that there was a possibility of losing money by it. You cannot -deny the result: a constant dividend of profit has been made to you -at various times, and will be so for some time to come.</p> - -<p>“On Saturday last, to my utter astonishment, you declared in my -print-rooms, before three persons, who distinctly heard it, as -follows: ‘I will have my terms, or I will oppose the work by doing -another “Coast!”’ These were the words you used, and every one must -allow them to be a <i>threat</i>.</p> - -<p>“And this morning (Monday), you show me a note of my own -handwriting, with these words (or words to this immediate effect): -‘The drawings for the future “Coast” shall be paid twelve guineas -and a half each.’</p> - -<p>“Now, in the name of common honesty, how can you apply the above -note to any drawings for the first division of the work called the -‘Southern Coast,’ and tell me I owe you two guineas on each of -those drawings? Did you not agree to make the whole of the ‘South -Coast’ drawings at £7 10<i>s.</i> each? and did I not continue to pay -you that sum for the first four numbers? When a meeting of the -partners took place, to take into consideration the great exertions -that myself and my brother had made on the plates, to testify their -entire satisfaction, and considering the difficulties I had placed -myself in by such an agreement as I had made (dictated by my -enthusiasm for the welfare of a work which had been planned and -executed with so much zeal, and of my being paid the small sum only -of twenty-five guineas for each plate, including the loan of the -drawings, for which I received no return or consideration whatever -on the part of the shareholders), they unanimously (excepting on -your part) and very liberally increased the price of each plate to -£40; and I agreed, on my part, to pay you ten guineas for each -drawing after the fourth<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a> number. And have I not kept this -agreement? Yes; you have received from me, and from Messrs. Arch on -my account, the whole sum so agreed upon, and for which you have -given me and them receipts. The work has now been finished upwards -of six months, when you show me a note of my own handwriting, and -which was written to you in reply to a part of your letter, where -you say, ‘Do you imagine I shall go to John O’Groat’s House for the -same sum I receive for the Southern part?’ Is this <i>fair</i> conduct -between man and man—to apply the note (so explicit in itself) to -the former work, and to endeavour to make me believe I still owe -you two guineas and a-half on each drawing? Why, let me ask you, -should I promise you such a sum? What possible motive could I have -in heaping gold into your pockets, when you have always taken such -especial care of your interests, even in the case of <i>Neptune’s -Trident</i>, which I can declare you <i>presented</i> to me; and, in the -spirit of <i>this</i> understanding, I presented it again to Mrs. Cooke. -You may recollect afterwards charging me two guineas for the loan -of it, and requesting me at the same time to return it to you, -which has been done.</p> - -<p>“The ungracious remarks I experienced this morning at your house, -where I pointed out to you the meaning of my former note—that it -referred to the future part of the work, and not to the ‘Southern -Coast’—were such as to convince me that you maintain a mistaken -and most unaccountable idea of profit and advantage in the new work -of the ‘Coast,’ and that no estimate or calculation will convince -you to the contrary.</p> - -<p>“Ask yourself if Hakewill’s ‘Italy,’ ‘Scottish Scenery,’ or -‘Yorkshire’ works have either of them succeeded in the return of -the capital laid out on them.</p> - -<p>“These works have had in them as much of your individual talent as -the ‘Southern Coast,’ being modelled on the principle of it; and -although they have answered your purpose, by the commissions for -drawings, yet there is considerable doubt remaining whether the -shareholders and proprietors will ever be reinstated in the money -laid out on them. So much for the profit of works. I assure you I -must turn over an entirely new leaf to make them ever return their -expenses.</p> - -<p>“To conclude, I regret exceedingly the time I have bestowed in -endeavouring to convince you in a calm and patient manner of a -number of calculations made for <i>your</i> satisfaction; and I have met -in return such hostile treatment that I am positively disgusted at -the mere thought of the trouble I have given myself on such a -useless occasion.</p> - -<p class="r"><span style="margin-right: 8em;">“I remain,</span><br /> -“Your obedient servant, <br /> -“W. B. C<small>OOKE</small>.”</p></div> - -<p><a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a></p> - -<p>When we realize that this was the same man that closed his connection -with Mr. Lewis, because he would not both etch and aquatint the plates -of the Liber for the same terms as those agreed upon for aquatinting -alone, we are able to understand why he was characterized as a “great -Jew,” in a letter of introduction, which he brought from a publisher in -London to one in Yorkshire, when he went to that county to illustrate -Dr. Whitaker’s <i>History of Richmondshire</i>. Mrs. Whitaker, who was his -hostess at the time, hearing of this took the phrase literally, and, -says Mr. Hamerton, “treated him as an Israelite indeed, possibly with -reference to church attendance and the consumption of ham.”</p> - -<p>In 1827 was published the first part of his largest series of prints, -the “England and Wales,” which were engraved with matchless skill by -that trained band of engravers who brought, with the artist’s -assistance, the art of engraving landscapes in line to a point never -before attained. The history of Turner and his engravers has yet to be -fully written; the number of them from first to last is extraordinary, -probably nearly one hundred. Of these, twenty, and nearly all the best, -were employed on this work—Goodall, Wallis, Willmore, W. Miller, -Brandard, Radcliffe, Jeavons, W. R. Smith, and others. Never before was -so great an artist surrounded by such a skilled body of interpreters in -black and white. The drawings were unequal in merit, but nearly all of -them wonderful for power of colour and daring effect, with ever -lessening regard for local accuracy. The artist threw aside all -traditions and conventions, and proclaimed himself as “Turner,” the -great composer of chromatic harmonies in forms of sea and sky, hills and -plains, sunshine and storm, towns and shipping, castles and cathedrals. -He could not do this<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> without sacrificing much of truth, and much of -what was essential truth in a work whose aim was professedly -topographical. Imaginative art of all kinds has a code analogous to, but -not identical with, the moral code: beauty takes the seat of virtue and -harmony of truth, and when the work is purely imaginative, there is no -conflict between fancy and fact which can make the strictest shake his -head. But when known facts are dealt with by the imagination, the -conflict arises immediately, and it would scarcely be possible to find a -case in which it was more obvious than in Turner’s “England and Wales,” -in which he made the familiar scenes of his own country conform to the -authoritative conception of his pictorial fancy. Whether he was right or -wrong in raising the cliffs of England to Alpine dignity, in saturating -her verdant fields with yellow sun, in exaggerating this, in ignoring -that, has been argued often, and will be argued over and over again; but -all art is a compromise, and the precise justice of the compromise will -ever be a matter of opinion. Art <i>v.</i> Nature is a cause which will last -longer than any Chancery suit. Even artists cannot agree as to the -amount of licence which it is proper to take, but they are all conscious -that they at least keep on the right side; one thing only, all, or -nearly all, are agreed upon, and that is that licence must be taken, or -art becomes handicraft. About Turner almost the only thing which can be -said with certainty is that he stretched his liberty to the extreme -limits.</p> - -<p>Yet to the pictorial code of morals he was the most faithful of artists, -he almost always reached beauty, his harmonies were almost always -perfect, and he strove after his own peculiar generalization of fact, -and his own peculiar extract of truth with the greatest ardour. This -extract<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> was his impression of a place, made up generally (at least in -his foreign scenes) of two or three sketches taken from different points -of view, and he was very careful to study not only the principal -features of the country, but the costume and employment of the -inhabitants, and the description of local vehicle, on wheels or keel. -From these studies would arise the conception of one scene, combining -all that his mind retained as essential—a growth which, however false -it might appear when compared with the actual facts of the place from -one point of view, contained nothing but what had a germ of truth, and -of local truth. That this applies to all his drawings we do not say, but -we are confident that it does to most. Many of his drawings for the -“England and Wales” were probably taken from sketches that had lain in -his portfolios for years, and were dressed up by him when wanted, with -such accessories of storm and rainbow as occurred to his fancy, or to -his memory and feelings as connected with the spot. There is, we think, -no doubt that Turner strove to be conscientious; but his conscience was -a “pictorial” conscience, and no man can judge him. We can only take his -works as they are, and be thankful that all the strange confusions of -his mind, and mingled accidents of his life, have produced so unique and -beautiful a result as the “England and Wales.” It is no use now -regretting that his vast powers in their prime were used wastefully in -what will appear to many as the falsification of English landscape; it -is far better to rejoice that the genius and knowledge of the man were -so transcendent that, in spite of all the worst that can be said, each -separate drawing is precious in itself as a record of natural phenomena, -and a masterly arrangement of indefinite forms and beautiful colour.<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a></p> - -<p>Mr. Ruskin affirms that, “howsoever it came to pass, a strange, and in -many respects grievous metamorphosis takes place upon him about the year -1825. Thenceforth he shows clearly the sense of a terrific wrongness, -and sadness, mingled in the beautiful order of the earth; his work -becomes partly satirical, partly reckless, partly—and in its greatest -and noblest features—tragic.” We are not prepared to assent to this -entirely, especially as Mr. Ruskin states immediately afterwards that -one at least of the manifestations of “this new phase of temper” can be -traced unmistakably in the “Liber,” which was concluded six years -before; but there is no doubt that his work for some of these years was -distinguished by recklessness and caprice in an unusual degree, and we -have little doubt that his removal from Sandycombe, and the consequent -loss of healthy companionship, had something to do with it. During three -years he exhibited no pictures of special interest, except the <i>Cologne</i> -of 1826, and the <i>Ulysses deriding Polyphemus</i> of 1829. This latter -picture we take to be a sure sign of recovery, as it shows perhaps the -most complete balance of power of any of his large works, being not less -wonderful for happy choice of subject than for grandeur of conception -and splendour of colour—the first picture in which, since the <i>Apollo -and Python</i> of 1811, the union between the literary subject and the -landscape, or (if we must use that horrid word) seascape, was perfect. -This picture was no <i>Temple and Portico, with the drowning of -Aristobulus</i>. The grand indefinite figure of the agonized giant, the -crowded ship of Ulysses, the water-nymphs and the dying sun, are all -parts of one conception, and show what Turner could do when his -imagination was thoroughly inflamed. Whence the inspiration was<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a> derived -it is difficult to say. Like most of his inspirations, it probably had -more than one source. Homer’s Odyssey is the source given in the -catalogue; but it is probable, as we before have hinted, that the figure -of Polyphemus was suggested by the splendid description in the -fourteenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Many years had lapsed since he -had shown the full force of his imagination under the influence of -classical story, and he was never to do so again. Subjects of the kind -suited to his peculiar genius were difficult to find, and he had no such -habitual intercourse with his intellectual peers as enabled him to -gather suggestions for his works. He was thrown entirely on his own -uneducated resources, and the result was, with his imperfect knowledge -of his own strength and the limits of his art, partial failure of most, -and total failure of many of his most strenuous efforts. This is one of -the saddest facts of his art-life, the frequent waste, or partial waste, -of unique power.</p> - -<p>His increasing isolation of mind was mitigated no doubt by constant -visits to Petworth, Farnley, and other houses of his friends and -patrons, by the chaff of “varnishing days,” by social meetings of the -Academy Club, and by frequent travel; but it increased notwithstanding. -Not Mr. Trimmer, nor Lord Egremont, nor even his friends and fellow -Academicians, Chantrey and Jones, could break through his barrier of -reserve and see the man Turner face to face. From the beginning he had -his secrets, and he kept them to the end. He could be merry and social -in a gathering where the talk never became confidential, and with -children (whom he could not distrust); but his living-rooms in Queen -Anne Street, his painting-room wherever he was, and his heart, were, -with scarcely an exception, opened to none. At<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a> Petworth, Lord Egremont -indeed was allowed to enter his studio; but he had to give a peculiar -knock agreed upon between them before he would open the door.</p> - -<p>In 1828 he was at Rome again, from which place he wrote the following -letters<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> to Chantrey and Jones of unusual length and interest.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p class="c">“TO GEORGE JONES, R.A.</p> - -<p class="r">“R<small>OME</small>, <br /> -“<i>Oct. 13, 1828.</i></p> - -<p>“D<small>EAR</small> J<small>ONES</small>,</p> - -<p> “Two months nearly in getting to this terra pictura, <i>and at work</i>; -but the length of time is my own fault. I must see the South of -France, which almost knocked me up, the heat was so intense, -particularly at Nismes and Avignon; and until I got a plunge into -the sea at Marseilles, I felt so weak that nothing but the change -of scene kept me onwards to my distant point. Genoa, and all the -sea-coast from Nice to Spezzia, is remarkably rugged and fine; so -is Massa. Tell that fat fellow Chantrey that I did think of him, -<i>then</i> (but not the first or the last time) of the thousands he had -made out of those marble craigs which only afforded me a sour -bottle of wine and a sketch; but he deserves everything which is -good, though he did give me a fit of the spleen at Carrara.</p> - -<p>“Sorry to hear your friend, Sir Henry Bunbury, has lost his lady. -How did you know this? You will answer, of Captain Napier, at -<i>Siena</i>. The letter announcing the sad event arrived the next day -after I got there. They were on the wing—Mrs. W. Light to Leghorn, -to meet Colonel Light, and Captain and Mrs. Napier for Naples; so, -all things considered, I determined to quit instanter, instead of -adding to the trouble.</p> - -<p>“Hope that you have been better than usual, and that the pictures -go on well. If you should be passing Queen Anne Street, just say I -am well, and in Rome, for I fear young Hakewell has written to his -father of my being unwell: and may I trouble you to drop a line -into the two-penny post to Mr. C. Heath, 6, Seymour Place, New -Pancras Church, or send my people to tell him that, if he has -anything to send me,<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a> to put it up in a letter (it is the most sure -way of its reaching me), directed for me, No. 12, Piazza -Mignanelli, Rome, and to which place I hope you will send me a -line? Excuse my troubling you with my requests of business. -Remember me to all friends. So God bless you. Adieu.</p> - -<p class="r">“J. M. T<small>URNER</small>.”</p></div> - -<div class="blockquot"><p class="c">“TO FRANCIS CHANTREY, R.A.</p> - -<p class="r">“No. 12, P<small>IAZZA</small> M<small>IGNANELLI</small>, R<small>OME</small>,<br /> -“<i>Nov. 6, 1828</i>. </p> - -<p>“M<small>Y DEAR</small> C<small>HANTREY</small>,</p> - -<p> “I intended long before this (but you will say, ‘Fudge!’) to have -written; but even now very little information have I to give you in -matters of Art, for I have confined myself to the painting -department at Corso; and having finished <i>one</i>, am about the -second, and getting on with Lord E.’s, which I began the very first -touch at Rome; but as the folk here talked that I would show them -<i>not</i>, I finished a small three feet four to stop their gabbling. -So now to business. Sculpture, of course, first; for it carries -away all the patronage, so it is said, in Rome; but all seem to -share in the good-will of the patrons of the day. Gott’s studio is -full. Wyatt and Rennie, Ewing, Buxton, all employed. Gibson has two -groups in hand, <i>Venus and Cupid</i>; and <i>The Rape of Hylas</i>, three -figures, very forward, though I doubt much if it will be in time -(taking the long voyage into the scale) for the Exhibition, though -it is for England. Its style is something like <i>The Psyche</i>, being -two standing figures of nymphs leaning, enamoured, over the -youthful Hylas, with his pitcher. The Venus is a sitting figure, -with the Cupid in attendance; and if it had wings like a dove, to -flee away and be at rest, the rest would not be the worse for the -change. Thorwaldsten is closely engaged on the late Pope’s (Pius -VII.) monument. Portraits of the superior animal, man, is to be -found in all. In some, the inferior—viz. greyhounds and poodles, -cats and monkeys, &c., &c.</p> - -<p>“Pray give my remembrances to Jones and Stokes, and tell <i>him</i> I -have not seen a bit of coal stratum for months. My love to Mrs. -Chantrey, and take the same and good wishes of</p> - -<p class="r">“Yours most truly, <br /> -“J. M. T<small>URNER</small>.”</p></div> - -<p>This method of communicating with “his people” is<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> peculiar, and shows -that he was not in the habit of corresponding with them when away on his -numerous visits and tours. Perhaps they could not read, perhaps he -wished to save postage—whatever hypothesis we may adopt, the fact is -singular. The pictures of <i>The Banks of the Loire</i>; <i>The Loretto -Necklace</i>; <i>Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy (par la -Diligence) in a snowdrift upon Mount Tarra, 22nd of January, 1829</i>—all -exhibited in 1829—were the results of this tour, besides some of the -pictures of 1830, one of which, <i>View of Orvieto</i>, is, according to Mr. -Hamerton, the identical “small three feet four” which he painted to -“stop the gabbling” of the folk at Rome.</p> - -<p>In this year (1830, he being then fifty-five years old) died Sir Thomas -Lawrence, whose loss he probably felt much, and of whose funeral he -painted a picture (from memory); but the year had a greater sorrow for -him than this—the loss of his “poor old Dad.” The removal from -Twickenham did not avail to preserve the old man’s life for long. We -have the testimony of the Trimmers, with whom after the event he stayed -for a few days for change of scene, that “he was fearfully out of -spirits, and felt his loss, he said, like that of an only child,” and -that he “never appeared the same man after his father’s death.” To men -like Turner, who are not accustomed to express their feelings much, or -even to realize them, such blows come with all their natural violence -unchecked, unforeseen, unprovided against. It had probably never -occurred to him how much his father was to him, how blank a space his -loss would make in his narrow garden of human affection. From this time -he was to know many losses of old friends, each of which fell heavily -upon him, leaving him more lonely than ever. His friends were few, and -they<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a> dropped one by one, nor is there any evidence to show that their -loss was ever lightened by any hope of meeting them again; the lights of -his life went out one by one, and left him alone and in the dark. In -1833 Dr. Monro died, in 1836 Mr. Wells, in 1837 Lord Egremont, in 1841 -Chantrey, and he was to feel the loss of Mr. Fawkes and Wilkie, and many -more before his own time came.</p> - -<p>In February, 1830, he wrote to Jones:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“D<small>EAR</small> J<small>ONES</small>—I delayed answering yours until the chance of this -finding you in Rome, to give you some account of the dismal -prospect of Academic affairs, and of the last sad ceremonies paid -yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourn from whence no -traveller returns. Alas! only two short months Sir Thomas followed -the coffin of Dawe to the same place. We then were his -pall-bearers. Who will do the like for me, or when, God only knows -how soon! However, it is something to feel that gifted talent can -be acknowledged by the many who yesterday waded up to their knees -in snow and muck to see the funeral pomp swelled up by carriages of -the great, <i>without the persons themselves</i>.”</p></div> - -<p>No doubt these deaths set him thinking of his own, and the disposition -of his wealth so useless to him, and he probably brooded long over the -will that he signed on the 10th of June in the next year (1831). Many -excuses have been made for his niggardly habits on the score of the -nobleness of mind shown in this document; he screwed and denied himself -(we are told) when living, to make old artists comfortable after his -death. We are afraid that there is no ground for this charitable view, -nor any evidence that he ever denied himself anything that he preferred -to hard cash, or that he ever thought of giving it, or any farthing of -it, away to anybody, till he had more than he could spend, and was -brought by the deaths of his friends to realize that he could not take -it with him when he died. Then indeed<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a> he disposed of it; but where was -the bulk to go? Not to his nearest of kin, whom he had neglected all his -life—fifty pounds was enough for uncles, and twenty-five for their -eldest sons; not to his mistress or mistresses, who had been devoted to -him all his life, or to his children—annuities of ten and fifty pounds -were enough for them; but for the perpetuation of his name and fame, as -the founder of “Turner’s Gift” and the eclipser of Claude.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p> - -<p>We do not know when Turner became acquainted with Samuel Rogers; but -probably some years before this, as he is named as one of the executors -in the will, and the famous illustrated edition of “Italy” was published -in 1830, followed by the Poems in 1834. These contain the most exquisite -of all the engravings from Turner’s vignettes. Exquisite also are most -of the drawings, but some of them are spoilt by the capriciousness of -their colour, which seems in many cases to have been employed as an -indication to the engraver rather than for the purpose of imitating the -hues of nature. The most beautiful perhaps of all, <i>Tornaro’s misty -brow</i>, seems to us far too blue, and the yellow of the sky in others is -too strong to be probable or even in harmony with the rest of the -drawing. It would, however, be difficult to find in the whole range of -his works two really greater (though so small in size) than the <i>Alps at -Daybreak</i>, and <i>Datur hora quieti</i>, of which we give woodcuts, losing of -course much of the light refinement of the steel plates, but wonderfully -true in general effect. The former is as perfect an illustration as -possible of the sentiment of Rogers’s pretty verses, but it far -transcends<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> them in beauty and imagination; the latter is not in -illustration of any of the poet’s verses, but is a more beautiful poem -than ever Rogers wrote.</p> - -<p>The illustration from “Jacqueline” which we give, though not so -transcendent in imagination, is a scene of extraordinary beauty of rock -and torrent, and castle-crowned steep, such as no hand but Turner’s -could have drawn, while the <i>Vision</i> from “The Voyage of Columbus” is -equally characteristic, showing how he could make an impressive picture -out of the vaguest notions by his extraordinary mastery of light and -shade.</p> - -<p>In 1833 Turner exhibited his first pictures of Venice, the last home of -his imagination. The date of his first visit to the “floating city” is -uncertain. There are two series of Venetian sketches in the National -Gallery, which mark two distinct impressions. In the first the colour is -comparatively sober; the sky is noted as, before all things, a -marvellously blue sky; the interest of the painter is in the watery -streets, the picturesqueness of corners here and there, in narrow canals -and the different-coloured marbles of the buildings; he takes the city -in bits from the inside in broad daylight, and they are studies as -realistic as he could make them at the time. In the other series the -interest of the painter is <small>COLOUR</small>, not of the buildings, but of the -sunsets and sunrises, the clouds of crimson and yellow, the water of -green, in which the sapphire and the emerald and the beryl seem to blend -their hues. The substantial marble, the solid blue sky, the strong light -and sharp shadows have melted into visions of ethereal palaces and -gemlike colour, like those in the Apocalypse. As he began painting the -sea from Vandevelde and nature, so he began painting Venice from -Canaletti and nature; but the transition from<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a> the studious beginning -to the imaginative end was very swift in the latter case. Venice soon -became to him the paradise of colour, and he rose to heights of -chromatic daring which exceeded anything which even he had scaled -before.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p134_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p134_sml.jpg" width="451" height="507" alt="LIGHT-TOWERS OF THE HÈVE. - -From “Rivers of France.”" title="LIGHT-TOWERS OF THE HÈVE. - -From “Rivers of France.”" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">LIGHT-TOWERS OF THE HÈVE.<br /> -From “Rivers of France.”</span> -</p> - -<p>The time at which we have now arrived was that of his earlier sketches, -and he could turn away from Venice and draw with unabated zest the -quieter but still lovely scenery of the Seine and the Loire. To 1833-4 -and 1835 belong his beautiful series called <i>The Rivers of France</i>. -Opinions are divided, as usual, as to the truthfulness of his art to the -spirit of French scenery, and a comparison between <i>The Light-towers of -the Hève</i> in our woodcut, and the drawing which he made on the spot (now -in the National Gallery) will show how greatly his imagination altered -the literal facts of a scene. One who has patiently followed his -footsteps in many parts of England and on the Continent testifies to the -puzzling effects of Turner’s imaginative records. He seeks in vain on -the face of the earth the original of Turner’s later drawings, but he -can never see these drawings without finding all that he has seen. -Indeed, to understand them rightly, they must be considered as poems in -colour suggested by pictorial recollections of certain scenes on the -rivers of France. Most of them are arrangements of blue, red, and -yellow, some of yellow and grey, all exquisitely beautiful in -arrangement of line and atmospheric effect. Nor has he in any other -drawings introduced figures and animals with more skill and beauty of -suggestion. The whole series palpitates with living light, although the -pigments employed are opaque, and each view charms the sense of -colour-harmony, although the colours are crude and disagreeable. It has -always appeared wonderful to us that, with his power over water-colours<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a> -and delight in clear tones, he should have been content to work with -such chalky material and impure tints; it is as though he preferred to -combat difficulties; but they were drawn to be engraved, and as long as -he got his harmonies and his light and shade true we suppose he was -content. The great skill with which he could utilize the grey paper on -which these drawings were made, leaving it uncovered in the sky and -other places where it would serve his purpose, conduced to swiftness of -work, and may have been one of his motives. The drawing of Jumièges, of -which we give a woodcut, is one of the loveliest of the series, with its -mouldering ruin standing out for a moment like a skeleton against the -steely cloud, before the fierce storm covers it with gloom.</p> - -<p>In these yearly visits to France, Turner was accompanied by Mr. Leitch -Ritchie, who supplied the work with some description of the places. They -travelled, however, very little together; their tastes in everything but -art being exceedingly dissimilar. “I was curious,” says his companion, -“in observing what he made of the objects he selected for his sketches, -and was frequently surprised to find what a forcible idea he conveyed of -a place with scarcely a correct detail. His exaggerations, when it -suited his purpose to exaggerate, were wonderful—lifting up, for -instance, by two or three stories, the steeple, or rather, stunted cone, -of a village church—and when I returned to London I never failed to -roast him on this habit. He took my remarks in good part, sometimes, -indeed, in great glee, never attempting to defend himself otherwise than -by rolling back the war into the enemy’s camp. In my account of the -famous Gilles de Retz, I had attempted to identify that prototype of -‘Blue Beard’ with the hero of the nursery<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a><a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a> -story, by absurdly insisting -that his beard was so intensely black that it seemed to have a shade of -blue. This tickled the great painter hugely, and his only reply to my -bantering was—his little sharp eyes glistening the while—‘Blue Beard! -Blue Beard! Black Beard!’”</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p117_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p117_sml.jpg" width="533" height="376" alt="JUMIÈGES. - -From “Rivers of France.”" title="JUMIÈGES. - -From “Rivers of France.”" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">JUMIÈGES.<br /> -From “Rivers of France.”</span> -</p> - -<p>We do not know when Turner became first acquainted with Mr. Munro of -Novar, one of the greatest admirers of the artist and collectors of his -later works, but it was in 1836 that we first hear of them as travelling -together, when, it is said, “a serious depression of spirits having -fallen on Mr. Munro,” Turner proposed to divert his mind into fresh -channels by travel. They went to Switzerland and Italy, and Mr. Munro -found that Turner enjoyed himself in his way—a “sort of honest Diogenes -way”—and that it was easy to get on very pleasantly with him “if you -bore with his way,” a description which, meant to be kind, does not say -much for his sociability at this period.</p> - -<p>Indeed, he had been all his life, and especially, we expect, since he -left Twickenham, developing as an artist and shrivelling as a man, and -after this year (1836), though he still developed in power of colour and -painted some of his finest and most distinctive works, the signs of -change, if not of decline, were also visible. He was also getting out of -the favour of the public, who could not see any beauty in such works as -the <i>Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons</i>, of 1835, or <i>Juliet -and her Nurse</i>, of 1836.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p119_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p119_sml.jpg" width="530" height="394" alt="FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE. - -Exhibited in 1839. National Gallery." title="FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE. - -Exhibited in 1839. National Gallery." /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE.<br /> -Exhibited in 1839. National Gallery.</span> -</p> - -<p>His fame began to oscillate, tottering with one picture and set upright -by another. As long, however, as he could paint such pictures as -<i>Mercury and Argus</i>, 1836, and the <i>Fighting Téméraire</i>, of 1839, it was -in a measure safe. He was still a great genius to whom eccentricities -were natural, but the <i>Fighting Téméraire</i> was the last picture of his -at<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a><a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> -which no stone was thrown. This is in many ways the finest of all -his pictures. Light and brilliant yet solemn in colour; penetrated with -a sentiment which finds an echo in every heart; appealing to national -feeling and to that larger sympathy with the fate of all created things; -symbolic, by its contrast between the old three-decker and the little -steam-tug, of the “old order,” which “changeth, yielding place to -new”—the picture was and always will be as popular as it deserves. It -is characteristic of Turner that the idea of the picture did not -originate with him, but with Stanfield. Would that Turner had always had -some friend at his elbow to hold the torch to his imagination.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/p120.png"> -<img src="images/p120_sml.png" width="80" height="132" alt="decoration" title="decoration" /></a> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p121.png"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p121_sml.png" width="450" height="82" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> -</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br /><br /> -<small>LIGHT AND DARKNESS.</small><br /><br /> -<small>1840 TO 1851.</small></h2> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE was now sixty-five years old, and his decline as an artist was to -be expected from failing health and stress of years. For little less -than half a century he had worked harder and produced more than any -other artist of whom we have any record. Nor would he rest now, although -his failing powers of body and mind required stimulants to support their -energy.</p> - -<p>Mr. Wilkie Collins informed Mr. Thornbury that, when a boy—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“He used to attend his father on varnishing days, and remembers -seeing Turner (not the more perfect in his balance for the brown -sherry at the Academy lunch) seated on the top of a flight of -steps, astride a box. There he sat, a shabby Bacchus, nodding like -a Mandarin at his picture, which he, with a pendulum motion, now -touched with his brush and now receded from. Yet, in spite of -sherry, precarious seat, and old age, he went on shaping in some -wonderful dream of colour; every touch meaning something, every -pin’s head of colour being a note in the chromatic scale.”</p></div> - -<p>We have spoken of Turner as declining as an artist, but we are not sure -that he did so till about 1845, when, Mr. Ruskin says,<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a> “his health, and -with it in great degree his mind, failed suddenly.” Down to this time -his decay seems to us to have been more physical than artistic, but with -the physical weakness there had been, we think, for some time a -deterioration of the non-artistic part of his mind. His decay, though so -unlike the decay of others, appears to us to have nothing inexplicable -about it if we consider him as a man who had never had any sympathy with -the current opinions and culture of his fellows, and who, by some -strange defect in his organization, was unable to think without the use -of his eyes. That his eyesight failed there is no doubt, but that it did -not fail in the one most essential point for a painter, viz., perception -of colour, is, we think, proved by his latest sketches in water-colour, -which show none of that apparently morbid love of yellow which appears -in his later oil pictures, and testify to that perfect perception of the -relations and harmonies of different hues which can only belong to a -healthy sight. Instead of declining, this faculty of colour seems to -have increased in perfection almost to the last. If we compare the -sketch in the National Gallery of a scene on the Lake of Zug, done -between 1840 and 1845, with one of the ‘Rivers of England’ <i>Dartmouth</i>, -two drawings wonderfully alike in composition and in general scheme of -colour, no difference in this faculty can be observed; the later drawing -is only a few notes higher in the scale. As Mr. Ruskin says, “The work -of the first five years of this decade is in many respects supremely and -with <i>reviving</i> power, beautiful.”</p> - -<p>But still the decline of his non-artistic mind, never very powerful, had -been going on for years, or at least such reasoning power as he -possessed had exercised less and less control over the imperious will of -his genius, which<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a> impelled him to pursue his efforts to paint the -unpaintable. He had begun by imitation, he had gone on by rivalry, he -had achieved a style of his own by which he had upset all preconceived -notions of landscape painting, and had triumphed in establishing the -superiority of pictures painted in a light key, but he was not content. -His progress had always been towards light even from the earliest days, -when he worked in monochrome. Sunlight was his discovery, he had found -its presence in shadow, he had studied its complicated reflections, -before he commenced to work in colour. From monochrome he had adopted -the low scale of the old masters, but into it he carried his light; the -brown clouds, and shadows, and mists, had the sun behind them as it were -in veiled splendour. Then it came out and flooded his drawings and his -canvasses with a glory unseen before in art. But he must go on—refine -upon this—having eclipsed all others, he must now eclipse himself. His -gold must turn to yellow, and yellow almost into white, before his -genius could be satisfied with its efforts to express pure sunlight.</p> - -<p>So he went on to his goal, becoming less “understanded of the people” -each year, painting pictures more near to the truth of nature in sun and -clouds, and less true in everything else. But it was about the -everything else that the people most cared. They did not care for -sunlight which blinded them, and to which the truth of figure, and sea, -and grass, and stone, had to be sacrificed. They liked pictures which -could give them calm enjoyment, records of what they had seen or could -imagine, not of what Turner only had seen, and what seemed to them -extravagant falsity.</p> - -<p>Such, roughly put, was the condition of things when a<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a> champion arose to -scatter Turner’s enemies to the four winds. He, Mr. Ruskin (1836), an -undergraduate at Oxford, of the age of seventeen, was one not of “the -people,” but of those comparatively few lovers of art and colour who saw -and appreciated the artistic motives of Turner, and who reverenced, as a -revelation of hitherto unrecorded, if not undiscovered, beauties of -nature, those pictures at which the world scoffed. We cannot here enter -further into the discussion involved, but the attitude of the two -parties, the one represented by “Blackwood’s Magazine,” and the other by -“Modern Painters,” can be judged by the following extracts. The noble -enthusiasm aroused by the treatment of <i>Juliet and her Nurse</i> by the -critics, had suggested a letter in 1836, which gradually increased into -a volume, not published till 1843, and in the meantime the undergraduate -had gained the Newdegate, and earned the right to call himself “A -Graduate of Oxford” on his title-page.</p> - -<p>This is what Maga said in August, 1835, of Turner’s picture of <i>Venice, -from the porch of Madonna della Salute</i>, a picture in his earlier -Venetian style:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Venice, well I have seen Venice. Venice the magnificent, glorious, -queenly, even in her decay—with her rich coloured buildings, -speaking of days gone by, reflected in the <i>green</i> water. What is -Venice in this picture? A flimsy, whitewashed meagre assemblage of -architecture, starting off ghostlike into unnatural perspective, as -if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the -only attempt at richness in the picture). Not Venice, but the boat -is the attractive object, and what is to make this rich? Nothing -but some green and red, and yellow tinsel, which is so flimsy that -it is now cracking..... The greater part of the picture is white, -disagreeable white, without light or transparency, and the boats, -with their red worsted masts, are as gewgaw as a child’s toy, which -he may have cracked to see what it was made of. As to Venice, -nothing can be more unlike its character.”</p></div> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p125_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p125_sml.jpg" width="740" height="486" alt="VENICE. THE DOGANA. - -In the National Gallery." title="VENICE. THE DOGANA. - -In the National Gallery." /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">VENICE. THE DOGANA.<br /> -In the National Gallery.</span> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a></p> - -<p>This is what the Graduate of Oxford says, after stating his -dissatisfaction with the Venices of Canaletti, Prout, and Stanfield:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“But let us take with Turner, the last and greatest step of -all—thank Heaven we are in sunshine again—and what sunshine! Not -the lurid, gloomy, plaguelike oppression of Canaletti, but white -flushing fulness of dazzling light, which the waves drink and the -clouds breathe, bounding and burning in intensity of joy. That -sky—it is a very visible infinity—liquid, measureless, -unfathomable, panting and melting through the chasms in the long -fields of snow-white flaked, slow-moving vapour, that guide the eye -along the multitudinous waves down to the islanded rest of the -Euganean hills. Do we dream, or does the white forked sail drift -nearer, and nearer yet, diminishing the blue sea between us with -the fulness of its wings? It pauses now; but the quivering of its -bright reflection troubles the shadows of the sea, those azure -fathomless depths of crystal mystery, on which the swiftness of the -poised gondola floats double, its black beak lifted like the crest -of a dark ocean bird, its scarlet draperies flashed back from the -kindling surface, and its bent oar breaking the radiant water into -a dust of gold. Dreamlike and dim, but glorious, the unnumbered -palaces lift their shafts out of the hollow sea—pale ranks of -motionless flame—their mighty towers sent up to heaven like -tongues of more eager fire—their grey domes looming vast and dark, -like eclipsed worlds—their sculptured arabesques and purple marble -fading farther and fainter, league beyond league, lost in the light -of distance. Detail after detail, thought beyond thought, you find -and feel them through the radiant mystery, inexhaustible as -indistinct, beautiful, but never all revealed; secret in fulness, -confused in symmetry, as nature herself is to the bewildered and -foiled glance, giving out of that indistinctness, and through that -confusion, the perpetual newness of the infinite and the beautiful.</p> - -<p>“Yes, Mr. Turner, we are in Venice now.”</p></div> - -<p>Unfortunately the brave young champion was too late, the eloquent voice -that could translate into such glowing words the dumb poetry of Turner’s -pictures had scarcely made the air of England thrill with its musical -enthusiasm when black night fell upon the artist. The sudden snapping of -some vital chord, of which that same<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a> Graduate of Oxford only last year -pathetically wrote, took place, and the glorious sun of his genius -disappeared without any twilight; he was dead as an artist, and dying as -a man. Neither his work nor his life could be defended any more. But the -voice that was raised so late in his honour did not die, its vibrations -have lasted from that day to this; and if the champion himself seems to -be in some need of a defender now, if mouths that once were full of his -praise are silent or raised only for the most part to depreciate, it is -only what came to Turner and what comes to all who use their imagination -too freely to enforce their convictions. A time must come when the -spirit of analysis will eat into the most brilliant rhetoric; the false -and true, which combine to make the most beautiful fabric of words, -cannot wear equally well. To us it is always painful to differ from Mr. -Ruskin, to whom we owe the grasp of so many noble truths, the memories -of so many delightful hours; and if a time has come when our faith in -his dogmas is not absolute, and we feel that he has misled us and others -now and again, we cannot close reference to him and his works in this -little book without testifying to the great and noble spirit which -pervades his work, and recording our admiration of a life devoted to the -service of art and man and God with a passionate purity as rare as it is -beautiful.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p127_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p127_sml.jpg" width="534" height="369" alt="VENICE, FROM THE CANAL OF THE GIUDECEA. - -Exhibited in 1840. South Kensington Museum." title="VENICE, FROM THE CANAL OF THE GIUDECEA. - -Exhibited in 1840. South Kensington Museum." /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">VENICE, FROM THE CANAL OF THE GIUDECEA.<br /> -Exhibited in 1840. South Kensington Museum.</span> -</p> - -<p>But before night fell, in the interval between 1840 and 1845, Turner -painted a few pictures of remarkable beauty both in colour and -sentiment—pictures which no other artist could have painted, and which -we doubt if he could himself have painted before—pictures generally -attempting to realize his later ideal of Venice, which even now, in -their wrecked beauty, fascinate all who have patience to<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a><a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> -look at them, -and watch the apparent chaos of yellow and white and purple and grey -gradually clear into a vision of ghost-like palaces rising like a dream, -from the golden sea. Besides these he painted at least three others of -unique power: one a record of what few other men could have had the -courage to study or the power to paint; one showing the passion of -despair at the loss of an old comrade; and another the boldest attempt -to represent abstract ideas in landscape that was ever made. We allude -to the <i>Snowstorm</i>; <i>Peace, Burial at Sea</i>; and <i>Rain, Steam, and -Speed</i>.</p> - -<p>Mr. Hamerton says, in connection with the first of these:—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Let it not be supposed that these works of Turner’s decline, -however they may have exercised the wit of critics, and excited the -amusement of visitors to the Exhibition, were ever anything less -than serious performances for him. The <i>Snowstorm</i>, for example -(1842), afforded the critics a precious opportunity for the -exercise of their art. They called it soapsuds and whitewash, the -real subject being a steamer in a storm off a harbour’s mouth -making signals, and going by the lead. In this instance, nothing -could be more serious than Turner’s intention, which was to render -a storm as he had himself seen it one night when the ‘Ariel’ left -Harwich. Like Joseph Vernet, who, when in a tempest off the island -of Sardinia, had himself fastened to the mast to watch the effects, -Turner on this occasion, ‘got the sailors to lash himself to the -mast to observe it,’ and remained in that position for four hours. -He did not expect to escape, but had a curious sort of -conscientious feeling, that it was his duty to record his -impression if he survived.”<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p></div> - -<p>Of the second, which was painted to commemorate Wilkie’s funeral, it is -related that Stanfield complained of the blackness of the sails, and -that Turner answered, “If I could find anything blacker than black I’d -use it.”<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a><a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a></p> - -<p>The history of his late Swiss sketches and the drawings he made from -them has been recently told by Mr. Ruskin in his valuable and -interesting notes to his collection of Turner’s drawings exhibited last -year (1878), and these notes and the almost equally interesting notes of -the Rev. W. Kingsley, contained between the same covers, testify not -only to the supreme beauty of his later work, but also to the nobler -motive which inspired its production, viz. the desire to “record” as far -as he could what he had seen after “fifty years’ observation.” The days -of strife and emulation were over, and a humbler, sweeter spirit made -him “put forth his full strength to depict nature as he saw it with all -his knowledge and experience.” Characteristically, as all through his -life, this better spirit showed itself rather in his water-colours made -for private persons, than in those oils which he exhibited for the -judgment of the public.</p> - -<p>We wish we had space here for Mr. Ruskin’s splendid description of -Turner’s picture of <i>Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying</i>—a -work which seems to us to illustrate what we have said of his manner of -decline in a remarkable way. There is no doubt about its splendour of -colour, the grandeur of its sea, and the force with which its sentiment -of horror and wrong and death is conveyed; but it shows a childishness, -a want of mental faculties of the simplest kind, which is all the more -extraordinary when brought in contrast with such gigantic pictorial -power. The sharks are quite unnecessary, the bodies in the water are too -many, the absurdity of the chains appearing above it is too gross; the -horror is overdone and melodramatic, or, in a word, one of his finest -pictorial conceptions is spoilt for want of a little common<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> sense, of a -little power to place himself in relation to his fellows and see how it -would appear to them. Again, we cannot help wishing that he had had a -friend at his elbow like Stanfield, who would have saved him from the -laughter of small critics. He was not fit to manage such a work on such -a subject by himself.</p> - -<p>In his picture of <i>War—the Exile and the Rock-limpet</i>, with its extract -from the “Fallacies of Hope”—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Ah! thy tent-formed shell is like<br /></span> -<span class="i0">A soldier’s nightly bivouac, alone<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Amidst a sea of blood . . . .<br /></span> -<span class="i0">. . . But can you join your comrades?”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">we see the same mental helplessness. It verges on the sublime, it verges -on the ridiculous. We should be sorry to call it either; but it is -childish—not with the grand simplicity of Blake, but with the confused -complicity of Turner. Mr. Ruskin says that Turner tried in vain to make -him understand the full meaning of this work, and we are not surprised.</p> - -<p>Such pictures as these had occurred now and then all through his -career—pictures in which the means employed were utterly inadequate to -express the sentiment duly, such as the <i>Waterloo</i>,—pictures in which -the accumulation of ideas was confused and excessive, as the <i>Phryne -going to the Bath as Venus, Demosthenes taunted by Æschines</i>; and he had -shown some hazy symbolism in connection with shell-fish in these -verses:—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Roused from his long contented cot he went<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Where oft he laboured, and the . . . . bent,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">To form the snares for lobsters armed in mail;<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But men, more cunning, over this prevail,<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p130_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p130_sml.jpg" width="500" height="525" alt="THE SLAVE SHIP. - -In the possession of Miss Alice Hooper, of Boston, U.S." title="THE SLAVE SHIP. - -In the possession of Miss Alice Hooper, of Boston, U.S." /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">THE SLAVE SHIP.<br /> -In the possession of Miss Alice Hooper, of Boston, U.S.</span> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a></p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Lured by a few sea-snail and whelks, a prey<br /></span> -<span class="i0">That they could gather on their watery way,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Caught in a wicker cage not two feet wide,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">While the whole ocean’s open to their pride.”<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p class="nind">But now these “failures,” for failures they were, however fine the art -qualities they possessed, became chronic, and the rule rather than the -exception; and this is to us the greatest tragedy in the whole of his -career—the spectacle of a great painter, the very slave of his genius, -compelled to paint this and paint that at its bidding without being able -to distinguish between what was great and what was little, what sublime -and what ridiculous, almost as mighty as Milton and Shelley one moment, -and as poor as Blackmore or Robert Montgomery the next. He appears to us -in these last days like a great ship, rudderless, but still grand and -with all sails set, at the mercy of the wind, which played with it a -little while and then cast it on the rocks.</p> - -<p>Rudderless, masterless, was he also as a man. We are very loth to -believe the terrible picture of moral degradation supplied by the “best -authority” to Mr. Thornbury, and quoted in the first chapter of this -volume; but there is no doubt that he lived by no means a reputable life -in his old age. As to how he met with Mrs. Booth, at whose little house -by the side of the Thames, near Cremorne, he lived for some time before -his death, we have not cared to inquire, nor do we intend to repeat the -usual stories about it; nor will we venture an opinion as to how often -he took too much to drink or what was his favourite stimulant, or what -other excesses he committed. His whole faculties had been absorbed in -his art; and when this failed him—when he became broken in health and -failing in sight—he had no store of wise reflection to employ his<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a> -mind, no harmless pursuits to follow, no refined tastes to amuse him, -nor, as far as we know, had he any hope of any future rectification of -the unevennesses of this world. Some of his friends he had lost by -death, many were still living and ready to cheer his last years if he -would have had them, but he would not. His secretiveness and love of -solitude clung to him to the last.</p> - -<p>He did not, however, lose his love of art and his desire of acquiring -knowledge relating to it. It was in these last years, 1847-49, that he -paid several visits to the studio of Mr. Mayall, the celebrated -photographic artist, passing himself off as a Master in Chancery, and -taking very great interest in the development of the new process which -had not then got beyond the daguerreotype. To the interesting account of -these visits printed by Mr. Thornbury,<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> we are enabled by Mr. -Mayall’s kindness to add that at a time when his finances were at a very -low ebb in consequence of litigation about patent rights, Turner -unasked, brought him a roll of bank-notes, to the amount of £300, and -gave it him on the understanding that he was to repay him if he could. -This, Mr. Mayall was able to do very soon, but that does not lessen the -generosity of Turner’s act.</p> - -<p>Notwithstanding, however, such bright glimpses as this, his last years -must have been sad and dull, and his greatest source of happiness was -probably the knowledge that whatever critics might say of his later -works, there were a few men like Mr. Munro, Mr. Griffiths, the Ruskins, -father and son, who appreciated them, and that his earlier pictures not -only kept up their fame but rose in price. Though in decline, his fame -was as great as almost<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a> he could have wished. Two offers of £100,000 he -is said to have refused for the contents of Queen Anne Street; £5,000 -for his two <i>Carthages</i>. The greatest of all his triumphs was perhaps -when he was waited upon by Mr. Griffiths, with an offer from a -distinguished Committee, among whom were Sir Robert Peel, Lord Hardinge, -and others, to buy these pictures for the nation. This is the greatest -instance of his self-sacrifice, which is well attested; for he refused -to part with them because he had willed them to the nation. He might -have got the money and his wish also, but he refused. The recollection -of this, though it occurred some years before he died, should have -afforded him some pleasant reflections.</p> - -<p>It had been long known that Turner had another home than that in Queen -Anne Street, and he had shown considerable ingenuity in concealing it, -for he used to go out of an evening to dinner with his friends when he -so willed, and met them at the Academy and other places. Almost to the -last he could be merry and sociable at such gatherings, and there is a -very pleasant account of a dinner in 1850 at David Roberts’ house, given -in a note to Ballantyne’s life of that artist, at which Turner was. It -is a memorandum by an artist from the country, and describes Turner’s -manner as—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“Very agreeable, his quick bright eye sparkled, and his whole -countenance showed a desire to please. He was constantly making or -trying to make jokes; his dress, though rather old-fashioned, was -far from being shabby.” Turner’s health was proposed by an Irish -gentleman who had attended his lectures on perspective, on which he -complimented the artist. “Turner made a short reply in a jocular -way, and concluded by saying, rather sarcastically, that he was -glad this honourable gentleman had profited so much by his lectures -as thoroughly to understand perspective, for it was more than he -did.” Turner afterwards, in Roberts’ absence, took the chair, and, -at Stanfield’s request, proposed Roberts<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a>’ health, which he did, -speaking hurriedly, “but soon ran short of words and breath, and -dropped down on his chair with a hearty laugh, starting up again -and finishing with a ‘hip, hip, hurrah!’.... Turner was the last -who left, and Roberts accompanied him along the street to hail a -cab.... At this time Turner was indulging in the singular freak of -living, under the name of Mr. Booth, in a small lodging on the -banks of the Thames.... This, though now cleared up, was a mystery -to his friends then, and Roberts was anxious to unravel it. When -the cab drove up he assisted Turner to his seat, shut the door, and -asked where he should tell cabby to take him; but Turner was not to -be caught, and, with a knowing wink, replied, ‘Tell him to drive to -Oxford Street, and then I’ll direct him where to go.’”</p></div> - -<p>Turner not only kept his secret from his friends, but from Mrs. Danby, -who, says Mr. Thornbury—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“One day, as she was brushing an old coat of Turner’s, in turning -out a pocket, she found and pounced on a letter directed to him, -and written by a friend who lived at Chelsea. Mrs. Danby, it -appears, came to the conclusion that Turner himself was probably at -Chelsea, and went there to seek for him, in company with another -infirm old woman. From inquiries in a place by the river-side, -where gingerbread was sold, they came to the conclusion that Turner -was living in a certain small house close by, and informed a Mr. -Harpur,<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> whom she and Turner knew. He went to the place and -found the painter sinking. This was on the 18th of December, 1851, -and on the following day Turner died.”</p></div> - -<p>So died the great solitary genius, Turner, the first of all men to -endeavour to paint the full power of the sun, the greatest imagination -that ever sought expression in landscape, the greatest pictorial -interpreter of the elemental forces of nature, that ever lived. His -life, and character, and art, complex as they were in their -manifestation, were as simple in motive as those of the most ordinary -man. Art,<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a><a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> -fame, and money were what he strived for from the beginning -to the end of his days, and those days were embittered at the end by -fallacies of hope with regard to all three. Critics laughed at him, he -was given no social honour, (neither knighted nor made President of the -Royal Academy), and his money was useless. For the meanness and -isolation of his existence he had no one to thank but himself, but this -was also, as we hope we have shown in the course of these pages, the -natural result of the motives of his life.</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p135_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p135_sml.jpg" width="533" height="344" alt="THE ROOM IN WHICH TURNER DIED." title="THE ROOM IN WHICH TURNER DIED." /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">THE ROOM IN WHICH TURNER DIED.</span> -</p> - -<p>The nobleness of his life consisted in his devotion to landscape art, -and this should cover many sins. He found it sunk very low: he left it -raised to a height which it had never attained before. That he could -have done this by painting falsely is absurd. The falsity of his works -is just of that kind which comes from almost infinite knowledge of -truth. He knew little else but art and nature, and he knew these by -heart. He could make nature, and this confidence in his creative power -led him sometimes into strange errors, which no one else could have -made, such as putting the sun and moon in impossible positions in the -same picture, and making boats sail in opposite directions before the -wind; but how much more truth of natural phenomena has he not given even -in such pictures than can be found in any literal transcript of nature! -His colour appears to many to be untrue; but this is greatly due to his -clinging from first to last to one central truth—the sun. It was that -which gave the pitch to his light, and his colour too, as in nature. To -that great light all must be subservient; it is not the local colour of -an object in the foreground, or the strength of shade of a particular -cave, that controls the chiaroscuro and colouring of nature, but the -sun. So all<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> things were sacrificed to this; the green must go from the -grass, and the shadows must become scarlet, rather than this truth -should be lost. His preference for harmonies of blue, red, and yellow, -to the exclusion of green, never giving, as Mr. Leslie pointed out, the -“verdure” of England, is remarkable; he is the only artist we know who, -instead of the usual “bit of red,” to correct the green of a landscape, -introduces a bit of “green” (generally harsh crude green), to correct -its too great redness. (See, for instance, the apron of the woman in the -left-hand corner of his drawing of Rouen Cathedral for the “Rivers of -France.”) His constant fault, and, as we think, an inexcusable one, is -the careless drawing of his figures. It is not an excuse to say that -they must not be painted so as to draw attention from the landscape; -first, because Turner in his earlier pictures showed that he could -introduce well-finished figures without doing this; and secondly, -because Turner’s figures in his later pictures do this by their badness. -This carelessness gradually grew on him, because he would not take pains -with them. He could draw very small figures very well, giving more -spirit and essence than any other artist, in a touch. He could indicate -a shamble, a strut, a march, lassitude, confidence, any physical or -mental quality of a figure as easily as he could a bough or a cloud; but -when he had to draw a figure to which time must be given, to perfect a -definite, complex, organized form, he scamped it. His indication of the -spirit of animals is often wonderful, as in the deer in <i>Arundel Park</i>, -and the dogs in <i>Troyes</i>.</p> - -<p>Of Turner’s mind and character apart from his art not much can be said -in praise. The former we have already said so much about that we need -only say here that although<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a> not of a very high order, except in -sensibility and perception, he showed now and then capacities which -might have been turned to good account by more generous training. -Although his jokes were mainly practical, or of that kind which is -understood by the term “waggery;” a few good things which he said have -been reported, such for instance as that “indistinctness was his forte;” -and though his poetry is generally miserable, it here and there contains -a fine expression. It is remarkable, however, how both his wit, and what -is good in his poetry, are connected with his art. He never said a thing -worth recording about anything else, and the few good bits in his poetry -are all reflections of a pictorial image. The utter helplessness of his -mind, when he tried to put his reasoning into words, is shown by Mr. -Hamerton, in one wonderful extract. (See his “Life of Turner,” p. 143.) -We do not wonder that his attempts at teaching (though he is said at one -time in his youth to have got as much as a guinea a lesson) and his -lectures as a professor of perspective were failures.</p> - -<p>As to his character, it was mainly negative, on all points except art -and money. The best part of it was the tenderness of his heart; but -though we have no doubt about this fact, or that he could occasionally -in his later years be generous even in money,<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> this does not raise -our opinion of him much, for he had more than he wished to spend.<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a> If he -was remarkable for kind and generous impulses, he was still more -remarkable for the success with which he, in general, controlled them. -We cannot dispute Mr. Ruskin’s assertion that he never “failed in an -undertaken trust,” but we have yet to learn that he ever undertook one.</p> - -<p>If it be really true that, unasked and without any question of -repayment, he gave a sum of many thousand pounds on more than one -occasion to the son of one of his friends and patrons, such an act -deserves more accurate record and complete proof. The money was repaid -in both cases, it is said.</p> - -<p>He showed his best disposition in his kindness to children and animals, -and his fellow-artists. Of the last he always spoke kindly, and to young -or old was ever just and kind and patient. Poor Haydon said that he “did -him justice;” he assisted many a young man with a useful hint, and once -took down one of his pictures at the Academy to find a place for one of -an unknown man. He took great interest in the founding of the Artists’ -Benevolent Fund, and meant his accumulated wealth to be spent in a home -for decayed artists.</p> - -<p>There is no doubt that long before he died he felt the uselessness of -wealth and a desire to dispose of his own in a good way. The only proof -we have of his notions of a good way is his will, and that, as we have -already said, is not an unselfish document, and the codicils which he -added to it from 1831 to 1849 do not show any increase of unselfishness. -On the contrary, he revoked his legacies to his uncles and cousins, and -left his finished pictures to form a Turner Gallery, and money to found -a Turner medal and a monument to himself in St. Paul’s Cathedral.<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a></p> - -<p>The will and its codicils were so confused that all the legal ability of -England was unable to decide what Turner really wanted to be done with -his money, and after years of miserable litigation, during which a large -portion of it was wasted in legal expenses, a compromise was effected, -in which the wishes of the parties to the suits and others concerned, -including the nation and the Royal Academy, were consulted rather than -the wishes of the testator: his desire to found a charity for decayed -artists, the only thing upon which his mind seems to have been fixed -from first to last in these puzzled documents, was over—thrown, and his -next of kin, the only persons mentioned in his will whom he certainly -did not mean to get a farthing, got the bulk of the property (excepting -the pictures). We have no doubt it was quite right; we are very glad the -nation got all the pictures and drawings, finished and unfinished, and -the Royal Academy £20,000; that there are a Turner medal and a Turner -Gallery, and we think that the next of kin should have had a great deal -of his money: but surely the greatest fallacy of all Turner’s hope was -that his will would be construed according to his intentions.</p> - -<p>Two of his wishes with regard to himself were, however, fully carried -out—his desire to be buried in St. Paul’s and the expenditure of £1,000 -on his monument. His funeral was conducted with considerable pomp and -ceremony, his “gifted talents,” to use his own words, “acknowledged by -the many,” and many of his fellow-artists and admirers followed him to -the grave; nor amongst the crowd were wanting a few old friends who in -their hearts still cherished him as<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a> “dear old Turner.”</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p141_med.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p141_sml.jpg" width="492" height="414" alt="“DATUR BORA QUIETI.”" title="“DATUR BORA QUIETI.”" /></a> -<br /> -<span class="caption">“DATUR BORA QUIETI.”</span> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a></p> - -<p><a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a></p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_barra_p143.png"> -<img src="images/ill_barra_p143_sml.png" width="450" height="85" alt="decorative bar" title="decorative bar" /></a> -</p> - -<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX.<br /><br /> -<small>(<i>The Names of Paintings and Drawings are printed in Italics.</i>)</small></h2> - -<p class="cb"><a href="#A">A</a>, -<a href="#B">B</a>, -<a href="#C">C</a>, -<a href="#D">D</a>, -<a href="#E">E</a>, -<a href="#F">F</a>, -<a href="#G">G</a>, -<a href="#H">H</a>, -<a href="#I">I</a>, -<a href="#J">J</a>, -<a href="#K">K</a>, -<a href="#L">L</a>, -<a href="#M">M</a>, -<a href="#N">N</a>, -<a href="#O">O</a>, -<a href="#P">P</a>, -<a href="#R">R</a>, -<a href="#S">S</a>, -<a href="#T">T</a>, -<a href="#U">U</a>, -<a href="#V">V</a>, -<a href="#W">W</a>, -<a href="#Y">Y</a></p> - -<p class="nind"> -<a name="A" id="A"></a>Academy, Royal, School of, <a href="#page_015">15</a><br /> -Academy Club, <a href="#page_108">108</a><br /> -Academy, in St. Martin’s Lane, <a href="#page_013">13</a><br /> -Academy, in Soho, <a href="#page_015">15</a><br /> -Almanacks, drawings for, <a href="#page_047">47</a><br /> -<i>Alps at Daybreak</i>, <a href="#page_113">113</a><br /> -<i>Apollo and Python</i>, <a href="#page_067">67</a>, <a href="#page_107">107</a><br /> -<i>Apuleia and Apuleius</i>, <a href="#page_069">69</a>, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_093">93</a><br /> -<i>Army of the Medes</i>, <a href="#page_049">49</a><br /> -Artists’ Benevolent Fund, <a href="#page_139">139</a><br /> -<i>Arundel Park</i>, <a href="#page_137">137</a><br /> -<br /> -<i><a name="B" id="B"></a>Banks of the Loire</i>, <a href="#page_111">111</a><br /> -Basire, <a href="#page_044">44</a><br /> -<i>Battle of the Nile</i>, <a href="#page_049">49</a><br /> -<i>Bay of Baiæ</i>, <a href="#page_097">97</a><br /> -Bible, Illustrations of, Finden’s, <a href="#page_098">98</a>, <a href="#page_099">99</a><br /> -<i>Birmingham</i>, <a href="#page_033">33</a><br /> -“Blackwood’s Magazine”, <a href="#page_124">124</a><br /> -<i>Bonneville</i>, <a href="#page_053">53</a><br /> -Booth, Mrs., <a href="#page_131">131</a><br /> -Boswell’s “Antiquities”, <a href="#page_014">14</a><br /> -“Britannia Depicta”, <a href="#page_047">47</a><br /> -Britton, John, <a href="#page_022">22</a><br /> -Burnet, John, <a href="#page_050">50</a><br /> -<i>Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons</i>, <a href="#page_118">118</a><br /> -Bushey, <a href="#page_018">18</a>, <a href="#page_023">23</a><br /> -<i>Buttermere, Lake</i>, <a href="#page_041">41</a><br /> -Byron, Illustrations to, <a href="#page_098">98</a><br /> -<br /> -<i><a name="C" id="C"></a>Calais Pier</i>, <a href="#page_053">53</a><br /> -<i>Caligula’s Palace and Bridge</i>, <a href="#page_097">97</a><br /> -Canaletti, <a href="#page_114">114</a><br /> -<i>Carthage</i>, <a href="#page_070">70</a><br /> -<i>Carthage, Decline of</i>, <a href="#page_093">93</a><br /> -<i>Carthage, Dido building</i>, <a href="#page_093">93</a>, <a href="#page_113">113</a><br /> -Chantrey, <a href="#page_108">108</a>, <a href="#page_109">109</a>, <a href="#page_110">110</a>, <a href="#page_112">112</a><br /> -<i>Chateau de St. Michel</i>, <a href="#page_053">53</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a><br /> -<i>Chester</i>, <a href="#page_033">33</a><br /> -<i>Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage</i>, <a href="#page_097">97</a><br /> -<i>Chryses</i>, <a href="#page_048">48</a><br /> -Claude Lorrain, <a href="#page_050">50</a>, <a href="#page_061">61</a>, <a href="#page_063">63</a>, <a href="#page_113">113</a><br /> -Collins, Wilkie—Description of Turner, <a href="#page_121">121</a><br /> -<i>Cologne</i>, <a href="#page_099">99</a>, <a href="#page_107">107</a><br /> -Composition, Turner’s method, <a href="#page_105">105</a>, <a href="#page_106">106</a><br /> -Constable’s <i>Opening of Waterloo Bridge</i>, <a href="#page_100">100</a><br /> -Constable’s <i>Whitehall Stairs</i>, <a href="#page_100">100</a><br /> -Continent, Second Tour on the, <a href="#page_076">76</a><br /> -Cooke, Dispute with, <a href="#page_058">58</a>, <a href="#page_101">101</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Letter from, <a href="#page_101">101</a>, &c.<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a></span><br /> -“Copper-plate Magazine,” drawings for, <a href="#page_032">32</a><br /> -Cozens, J., <a href="#page_021">21</a>, <a href="#page_026">26</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_067">67</a><br /> -<i>Crossing the Brook</i>, <a href="#page_080">80</a>, <a href="#page_084">84</a>, <a href="#page_093">93</a>, <a href="#page_094">94</a><br /> -Crowle, Mr., early patron of Turner, <a href="#page_014">14</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="D" id="D"></a>Danby, Mrs., <a href="#page_134">134</a><br /> -Daniell, <a href="#page_026">26</a><br /> -<i>Dartmouth</i>, <a href="#page_122">122</a><br /> -<i>Datur hora quieti</i>, <a href="#page_113">113</a><br /> -Dayes, <a href="#page_026">26</a>, <a href="#page_028">28</a><br /> -De Loutherbourg, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_038">38</a>, <a href="#page_039">39</a>, <a href="#page_049">49</a>, <a href="#page_086">86</a><br /> -Devonshire, Tour in, <a href="#page_079">79</a><br /> -<i>Dido and Æneas</i>, <a href="#page_093">93</a><br /> -Dragons, <a href="#page_070">70-74</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="E" id="E"></a>Eastlake, Sir Charles, <a href="#page_083">83</a><br /> -Edridge, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_023">23</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a><br /> -<i>Egglestone Abbey</i>, <a href="#page_094">94</a><br /> -Egremont, Lord, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_108">108</a>, <a href="#page_109">109</a>, <a href="#page_110">110</a><br /> -“England and Wales”, <a href="#page_104">104</a><br /> -Engravings coloured at Brentford, <a href="#page_014">14</a><br /> -Exeter, Turner’s visit to, <a href="#page_084">84</a><br /> -<br /> -<i><a name="F" id="F"></a>Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen</i>, <a href="#page_053">53</a><br /> -“Fallacies of Hope”, <a href="#page_130">130</a><br /> -<i>Falls in Valombrè</i>—Illustration of “Jacqueline”, <a href="#page_114">114</a><br /> -Farnley, <a href="#page_045">45</a>, <a href="#page_046">46</a>, <a href="#page_108">108</a><br /> -Fawkes, <a href="#page_044">44</a>, <a href="#page_045">45</a>, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_112">112</a><br /> -<i>Festival of the Vintage of Macon</i>, <a href="#page_053">53</a><br /> -<i>Fifth Plague</i>, <a href="#page_049">49</a><br /> -Finden’s Illustrations of the Bible, <a href="#page_098">98</a>, <a href="#page_099">99</a><br /> -<i>Fishermen at Sea</i>, <a href="#page_034">34</a><br /> -<i>Fishermen Coming Ashore</i>, <a href="#page_034">34</a>, <a href="#page_035">35</a><br /> -<i>Fishing Boats in a Squall</i>, <a href="#page_050">50</a><br /> -Fonthill, drawings of, <a href="#page_048">48</a><br /> -<i>Frosty Morning</i>, <a href="#page_089">89</a><br /> -<i>Funeral of Sir Thomas Lawrence</i>, <a href="#page_111">111</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="G" id="G"></a>Gainsborough, <a href="#page_023">23</a>, <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_038">38</a><br /> -<i>Gawthorpe</i>, drawing of, <a href="#page_045">45</a><br /> -Girtin, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_021">21</a>, <a href="#page_023">23</a>, <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_026">26</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_028">28</a><br /> -<i>Glacier and Source of the Arvèron</i>, <a href="#page_053">53</a><br /> -Glover, <a href="#page_027">27</a><br /> -<i>Goddess of Discord</i>, <a href="#page_052">52</a>, <a href="#page_072">72</a><br /> -Greene, Thomas (extract from Diary), <a href="#page_035">35</a><br /> -Griffiths, <a href="#page_132">132</a>, <a href="#page_133">133</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="H" id="H"></a>Hakewills, The, <a href="#page_109">109</a><br /> -Hakewill’s “Picturesque Tour”—Illustrations to, <a href="#page_098">98</a>, <a href="#page_099">99</a>, <a href="#page_103">103</a><br /> -Hamerton, <a href="#page_031">31</a>, <a href="#page_039">39</a>, <a href="#page_048">48</a>, <a href="#page_104">104</a>, <a href="#page_128">128</a><br /> -Hammersmith, Turner’s life at, <a href="#page_086">86</a><br /> -Hand Court, Turner’s Studio in, <a href="#page_032">32</a><br /> -<i>Hannibal Crossing the Alps</i>, <a href="#page_066">66</a>, <a href="#page_076">76</a><br /> -<i>Harbour of Dieppe</i>, <a href="#page_099">99</a><br /> -Hardinge, Lord, <a href="#page_133">133</a><br /> -Hardwick, Architect, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_025">25</a><br /> -Harpur, Henry, executor, <a href="#page_008">8</a><br /> -Harpur, Mrs. Turner’s aunt, <a href="#page_008">8</a><br /> -Harrison, employed by, <a href="#page_032">32</a><br /> -Haydon, <a href="#page_139">139</a><br /> -Hearne, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_023">23</a>, <a href="#page_026">26</a><br /> -Heath, C., <a href="#page_109">109</a><br /> -<i>Helvoetsluys</i>, <a href="#page_100">100</a><br /> -Henderson, Mr., <a href="#page_016">16</a>, <a href="#page_026">26</a>, <a href="#page_028">28</a><br /> -<i>Heysham Village</i>, <a href="#page_094">94</a><br /> -Higham, T., <a href="#page_094">94</a><br /> -<i>Hornby Castle</i>, <a href="#page_064">64</a>, <a href="#page_094">94</a><br /> -Howard (R.A.), Portrait by, at Heston, <a href="#page_088">88</a><br /> -Hunt, W., <a href="#page_015">15</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="I" id="I"></a>Italy, First Visit to, 92<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a><br /> -Italy, Picturesque Tour of, Hakewill’s, <a href="#page_098">98</a>, <a href="#page_099">99</a>, <a href="#page_103">103</a><br /> -<br /> -<i><a name="J" id="J"></a>Jason</i>, <a href="#page_048">48</a>, <a href="#page_074">74</a><br /> -Johns, Ambrose, <a href="#page_083">83</a><br /> -Jones, <a href="#page_108">108</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Letter to, <a href="#page_109">109</a>, <a href="#page_112">112</a></span><br /> -<i>Juliet and her Nurse</i>, <a href="#page_118">118</a>, <a href="#page_124">124</a><br /> -<i>Jumièges</i>, <a href="#page_116">116</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="K" id="K"></a>Kingsley, Rev. W., Notes of, <a href="#page_129">129</a><br /> -<br /> -<i><a name="L" id="L"></a>Lambeth, Archbishop’s Palace at</i>, <a href="#page_032">32</a><br /> -Lawrence, Sir Thomas, Turner’s generosity to, <a href="#page_099">99</a><br /> -Lawrence, Sir Thomas, death of, <a href="#page_111">111</a><br /> -Lectures on perspective, <a href="#page_133">133</a>, <a href="#page_138">138</a><br /> -Leslie’s Autobiographical Recollections, <a href="#page_100">100</a><br /> -Lewis, Engraver, quarrel with Turner, <a href="#page_057">57</a><br /> -“Liber Studiorum”, <a href="#page_052">52</a>, <a href="#page_055">55</a>, <a href="#page_066">66</a>, <a href="#page_089">89</a>, <a href="#page_107">107</a><br /> -<i>Light-towers of the Hève</i>, <a href="#page_115">115</a><br /> -<i>Little Devil’s Bridge</i>, <a href="#page_062">62</a><br /> -<i>Loretto Necklace</i>, <a href="#page_111">111</a><br /> -Lowson, Newby, <a href="#page_022">22</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="M" id="M"></a>Maiden Lane, <a href="#page_010">10</a><br /> -Malton, Thoma, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_020">20</a>, <a href="#page_025">25</a><br /> -<i>Margate Church</i>, early drawing of, <a href="#page_013">13</a><br /> -Margate, School at, <a href="#page_015">15</a><br /> -Marlow, <a href="#page_023">23</a><br /> -Marshall, Mother’s maiden name, <a href="#page_006">6</a><br /> -Marshall, Uncle, <a href="#page_008">8</a>, <a href="#page_013">13</a><br /> -“Mawman’s Tour”, <a href="#page_047">47</a><br /> -Mayall, Mr., <a href="#page_132">132</a><br /> -<i>Mercury and Argus</i>, <a href="#page_118">118</a><br /> -<i>Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy</i>, <a href="#page_111">111</a><br /> -Miller, T., <a href="#page_023">23</a><br /> -“Modern Painters”, <a href="#page_124">124</a><br /> -Monro, Dr., <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_018">18</a>, <a href="#page_023">23</a>, <a href="#page_024">24</a>, <a href="#page_025">25</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_112">112</a><br /> -<i>Moonlight</i>, <a href="#page_034">34</a><br /> -Morland, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_038">38</a><br /> -<i>Morning on the Coniston Fells</i>, <a href="#page_041">41</a><br /> -Munro of Novar, <a href="#page_118">118</a>, <a href="#page_132">132</a><br /> -<br /> -<i><a name="N" id="N"></a>Narcissus and Echo</i>, <a href="#page_048">48</a><br /> -Narraway, <a href="#page_018">18</a>, <a href="#page_032">32</a><br /> -National Gallery, Drawing in, <a href="#page_094">94</a><br /> -<i>Neptune’s Trident</i>, <a href="#page_103">103</a><br /> -<i>Norham Castle</i>, <a href="#page_041">41</a><br /> -<br /> -<i><a name="O" id="O"></a>Orvieto</i>, <a href="#page_110">110</a>, <a href="#page_111">111</a><br /> -Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, <a href="#page_066">66</a>, <a href="#page_068">68</a>, <a href="#page_069">69</a>, <a href="#page_108">108</a><br /> -<i>Oxford</i>, Pictures of, <a href="#page_086">86</a><br /> -<i>Oxford, Scene near</i>, early drawing, <a href="#page_014">14</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="P" id="P"></a>Palice, Mr., Drawing Master, <a href="#page_015">15</a><br /> -<i>Pantheon, After Fire</i>, <a href="#page_034">34</a><br /> -<i>Peace, Burial at Sea</i>, <a href="#page_128">128</a><br /> -Pearce, Miss, <a href="#page_083">83</a><br /> -Peel, Sir Robert, <a href="#page_133">133</a><br /> -<i>Pembury Mill</i>, <a href="#page_062">62</a><br /> -Perspective, Professor of, <a href="#page_075">75</a><br /> -Petworth, <a href="#page_076">76</a>, <a href="#page_108">108</a>, <a href="#page_109">109</a><br /> -<i>Phryne</i>, <a href="#page_130">130</a><br /> -Pindar, Peter, <a href="#page_082">82</a><br /> -Pine, <a href="#page_023">23</a><br /> -“Pocket Magazine,” drawings for, <a href="#page_032">32</a><br /> -Poetry, Turner’s, <a href="#page_067">67</a>, <a href="#page_068">68</a><br /> -Porden, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a><br /> -Poussin, Nicolas, <a href="#page_063">63</a><br /> -“Provincial Antiquities,” Illustrations to, 92<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a><br /> -Pye, John, <a href="#page_094">94</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="R" id="R"></a>Radcliffe, Engraver, <a href="#page_094">94</a><br /> -<i>Rain, Steam, and Speed</i>, <a href="#page_128">128</a><br /> -Rawlinson’s “Turner’s Liber Studiorum”, <a href="#page_060">60</a><br /> -<i>Redcliffe Church, Bristol</i>, <a href="#page_084">84</a><br /> -Redding, Cyrus, <a href="#page_078">78</a>, <a href="#page_082">82</a><br /> -Reeve, Lovell, description of Turner when young, <a href="#page_031">31</a><br /> -Reynolds, Sir Joshua, <a href="#page_025">25</a><br /> -<i>Richmond</i>, <a href="#page_094">94</a><br /> -“Richmondshire, Dr. Whitaker’s History of”, <a href="#page_094">94</a><br /> -<i>Rising Squall</i>, <a href="#page_034">34</a><br /> -Ritchie, Leitch, <a href="#page_116">116</a><br /> -“Rivers of England”, <a href="#page_094">94</a>, <a href="#page_096">96</a><br /> -“Rivers of France”, <a href="#page_115">115</a>, <a href="#page_116">116</a><br /> -Roberts, David, <a href="#page_023">23</a>, <a href="#page_133">133</a><br /> -Rogers, Illustrations to, <a href="#page_099">99</a>, <a href="#page_113">113</a>, <a href="#page_114">114</a><br /> -Rome, <a href="#page_109">109</a>, <a href="#page_110">110</a><br /> -<i>Rome, from the Vatican</i>, <a href="#page_097">97</a><br /> -Rooker, <a href="#page_023">23</a><br /> -<i>Rouen Cathedral</i>, <a href="#page_137">137</a><br /> -Ruskin, J., <a href="#page_039">39</a>, <a href="#page_040">40</a>, <a href="#page_048">48</a>, <a href="#page_061">61</a>, <a href="#page_073">73</a>, <a href="#page_121">121</a>, <a href="#page_122">122</a>, <a href="#page_124">124</a>, <a href="#page_132">132</a><br /> -Ruskin, J., his Collection of Turner’s Drawings, <a href="#page_094">94</a>, <a href="#page_129">129</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="S" id="S"></a>Sandycombe Lodge, <a href="#page_085">85</a>, <a href="#page_086">86</a>, <a href="#page_101">101</a><br /> -<i>St. Vincent’s Rocks, Bristol, View near</i>, <a href="#page_034">34</a><br /> -Sandby, Paul, <a href="#page_023">23</a><br /> -Sandby, Tom, <a href="#page_023">23</a><br /> -School, First, at New Brentford, <a href="#page_013">13</a><br /> -Scott, Sir Walter, <a href="#page_092">92</a>, <a href="#page_099">99</a><br /> -Shaw, Dr., <a href="#page_008">8</a><br /> -<i>Shipwreck, The</i>, <a href="#page_050">50</a>, <a href="#page_054">54</a><br /> -<i>Slave Ship, The</i>, <a href="#page_129">129</a><br /> -Smith, John Raphael, <a href="#page_015">15</a>, <a href="#page_023">23</a><br /> -<i>Snowstorm</i>, <a href="#page_128">128</a><br /> -Society of Artists, <a href="#page_013">13</a><br /> -Solus Lodge, <a href="#page_086">86</a><br /> -<i>Solway Moss</i>, <a href="#page_062">62</a><br /> -“Southern Coast”, <a href="#page_047">47</a>, <a href="#page_084">84</a>, <a href="#page_099">99</a><br /> -<i>Spithead</i>, <a href="#page_054">54</a><br /> -Stanfield, <a href="#page_120">120</a>, <a href="#page_128">128</a><br /> -<i>Sun rising through Vapour</i>, <a href="#page_054">54</a>, <a href="#page_113">113</a><br /> -Switzerland, Sketches in, <a href="#page_054">54</a><br /> -<br /> -<i><a name="T" id="T"></a>Téméraire, The Fighting</i>, <a href="#page_118">118</a><br /> -<i>Temple of Jupiter</i>, <a href="#page_093">93</a><br /> -<i>Tenth Plague</i>, <a href="#page_049">49</a><br /> -Thomson, of Duddingstone, <a href="#page_092">92</a><br /> -Tomkison, <a href="#page_013">13</a>, <a href="#page_016">16</a><br /> -<i>Tornaro</i>, <a href="#page_113">113</a><br /> -<i>Totnes</i>, <a href="#page_094">94</a><br /> -Townley, <a href="#page_045">45</a><br /> -Trimmer (Vicar of Heston), <a href="#page_086">86</a>, <a href="#page_087">87</a>, <a href="#page_088">88</a>, <a href="#page_091">91</a>, <a href="#page_101">101</a>, <a href="#page_108">108</a>, <a href="#page_111">111</a><br /> -Trimmer, Miss, attachment of Turner to, <a href="#page_089">89</a>, <a href="#page_090">90</a><br /> -<i>Troyes</i>, <a href="#page_137">137</a><br /> -“Turner’s Cribs”, <a href="#page_085">85</a><br /> -“Turner Gallery” in Harley Street and Queen Anne Street, <a href="#page_085">85</a><br /> -“Turner and Girtin’s Picturesque Views”, <a href="#page_032">32</a><br /> -Turner’s Gift, <a href="#page_078">78</a>, <a href="#page_112">112</a><br /> -Turner, Charles, engraver, quarrel with Turner, <a href="#page_058">58</a><br /> -Turner, Price, uncle, <a href="#page_084">84</a><br /> -Turner, Thomas Price, first cousin, <a href="#page_084">84</a><br /> -<br /> -<i><a name="U" id="U"></a>Ulysses and Polyphemus</i>, <a href="#page_070">70</a>, <a href="#page_107">107</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="V" id="V"></a>Vandevelde, <a href="#page_028">28</a>, <a href="#page_050">50</a><br /> -Varley, <a href="#page_023">23</a>, <a href="#page_024">24</a><br /> -Varnishing days, <a href="#page_099">99</a>, 108<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a><br /> -Venice, First pictures of, <a href="#page_114">114</a><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sketches in National Gallery, <a href="#page_114">114</a></span><br /> -<i>Venice from Madonna della Salute</i>, <a href="#page_124">124</a><br /> -Venice, later pictures of, <a href="#page_126">126</a><br /> -<i>Venus and Adonis</i>, <a href="#page_052">52</a><br /> -Vergil, <a href="#page_070">70</a><br /> -Vignettes, <a href="#page_113">113</a><br /> -<i>Vision</i>, from “Voyage of Columbus”, <a href="#page_114">114</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="W" id="W"></a>Wales, First Tour in, <a href="#page_032">32</a><br /> -Walker, J., <a href="#page_032">32</a><br /> -<i>War, the Exile and the Rock Limpet</i>, <a href="#page_130">130</a><br /> -<i>Warkworth Castle</i>, <a href="#page_043">43</a><br /> -<i>Waterloo</i>, <a href="#page_130">130</a><br /> -Watts, Alaric, <a href="#page_023">23</a>, <a href="#page_031">31</a><br /> -Wedmore’s “Essay on Girtin”, <a href="#page_024">24</a><br /> -Wells, W. F., <a href="#page_018">18</a>, <a href="#page_055">55</a>, <a href="#page_112">112</a><br /> -<i>Westminster Abbey</i>, early drawing of, <a href="#page_014">14</a><br /> -“Whalley, Parish of,” drawings for, <a href="#page_041">41</a><br /> -<i>What you Will</i>, <a href="#page_097">97</a><br /> -Wheeler, Mrs., <a href="#page_018">18</a><br /> -Whitaker, Dr., <a href="#page_041">41</a>, <a href="#page_044">44</a><br /> -Wilkie, Sir D., <a href="#page_112">112</a>, <a href="#page_128">128</a><br /> -Will, Turner’s, <a href="#page_112">112</a>, <a href="#page_139">139</a>, <a href="#page_140">140</a><br /> -Wilson, <a href="#page_023">23</a>, <a href="#page_027">27</a>, <a href="#page_038">38</a>, <a href="#page_049">49</a><br /> -Wolcot, Dr., <a href="#page_082">82</a><br /> -<i>Wreck of the Minotaur</i>, <a href="#page_050">50</a><br /> -Wyatt, Print Publisher, of Oxford, <a href="#page_086">86</a><br /> -<i>Wycliffe</i>, <a href="#page_094">94</a><br /> -<br /> -<a name="Y" id="Y"></a>Yorkshire, Tour in, <a href="#page_034">34</a>, <a href="#page_040">40</a><br /> -</p> - -<h2><a name="CHRONOLOGY_OF_TURNERS_LIFE" id="CHRONOLOGY_OF_TURNERS_LIFE"></a>CHRONOLOGY OF TURNER’S LIFE.</h2> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""> -<tr><td>Date</td><td> </td><td>Page</td></tr> -<tr><td>1775.</td><td>Born, 23rd April </td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_006">6</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1784.</td><td>Drawing of Margate Church</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_013">13</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1785.</td><td>Goes to School at Brentford</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_015">15</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1789.</td><td>Student of Royal Academy</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_032">32</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1791.</td><td>First exhibits at Royal Academy</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_032">32</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1792.</td><td>First Tour in Wales</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_032">32</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1792.</td><td>Studio in Hand Court</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_032">32</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1794.</td><td>First engraving from Turner published</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_032">32</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1793 or 1797.</td><td>First exhibits in oil</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_034">34</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1794.</td><td>Noticed by the Press</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_034">34</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1797.</td><td>Tour in the North of England</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_040">40</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1799.</td><td>Elected A.R.A.</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_039">39</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1799.</td><td>Removes to Harley Street</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_075">75</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1800.</td><td>Visits Scotland</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_053">53</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1801 or 1802.</td><td>First Tour on Continent</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_053">53</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1802.</td><td>Elected R.A.</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_039">39</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1804.</td><td>Second Tour on Continent</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_076">76</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1805.</td><td>Paints <i>The Shipwreck</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_050">50</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1807.</td><td>Commences “Liber Studiorum”</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_055">55</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1808.</td><td>Professor of Perspective—Takes House at Hammersmith</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_075">75</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1811.</td><td>Exhibits <i>Apollo and the Python</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_067">67</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1811 or 1812.</td><td>Visits Devonshire</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_079">79</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1812.</td><td>Town address changed to Queen Anne Street</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_075">75</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1814.</td><td>Goes to Twickenham</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_075">75</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1814.</td><td>Commences <i>Southern Coast</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_084">84</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1815.</td><td>Exhibits <i>Crossing the Brook</i> and <i>Dido Building Carthage</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_093">93</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1819.</td><td>First visit to Italy</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_092">92</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1823.</td><td>“History of Richmondshire” published</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_094">94</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1824.</td><td>“Rivers of England” published</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_094">94</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1823.</td><td>Exhibits <i>Bay of Baiæ</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_097">97</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1826.</td><td>Leaves Twickenham</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_101">101</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1827.</td><td>Quarrels with Cooke</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_101">101</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1827.</td><td>“England and Wales” commenced</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_104">104</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1828.</td><td>Visits Rome</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_109">109</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1829.</td><td>Exhibits <i>Ulysses deriding Polyphemus</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_107">107</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1830.</td><td>Death of his Father</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_111">111</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1830.</td><td>Illustrations to Rogers’s “Italy” published</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_113">113</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1831.</td><td>Makes his Will</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_112">112</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1833.</td><td>Exhibits first Venetian Picture</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_114">114</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1833.</td><td>“Rivers of France” commenced</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_115">115</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1839.</td><td>Exhibits <i>Fighting Téméraire</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_118">118</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1843.</td><td>Publication of “Modern Painters”</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_124">124</a></td></tr> -<tr><td>1851.</td><td>Death</td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#page_134">134</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/p148.png"> -<img src="images/p148_sml.png" width="100" height="66" alt="decoration" title="decoration" /></a> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a></p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" -style="padding:2%;border:2px dotted gray;"> -<tr><th align="center">Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:</th></tr> -<tr><td align="center">The Fighting <span class="errata">Temeraire</span>=> The Fighting Téméraire {pg 1}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center"><span class="errata">Similiar</span> stories could=> Similar stories could {pg 22}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center">Glacier and Source of the Arveron=> Glacier and Source of the Arvèron {pg 53}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="center">Yours <span class="errata">must</span> truly,=> Yours most truly, {pg 110}</td></tr> -</table> - -<div class="footnotes"><p class="cb">FOOTNOTES:</p> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> “Absalom and Achitophel.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Mr. Cyrus Redding met him there in 1812, and Sir Charles -Eastlake then or after then. There is no engraved drawing by him from -Devonshire till the <i>Southern Coast</i>, which began in 1814, or picture, -till the <i>Crossing of the Brook</i>, exhibited in 1815.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Mr. Thornbury treats this as an absurd tradition, but it is -supported by an account given by Dr. Shaw of an interview between him -and the artist, and printed by Mr. T. pp. 318, 319. “May I ask you if -you are the Mr. Turner who visited at Shelford Manor, in the county of -Nottingham, in your youth?” “I am,” he answered. On being further -questioned as to whether his mother’s name was Marshall, he grew very -angry, and accused his visitor of taking “an unwarrantable liberty,” but -was pacified by an apology, and invited Dr. Shaw to give him “the favour -of a visit” whenever he came to town.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> He was called “William” at home.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> See “Notes and Queries,” 2nd series, v. 475, for the true -version of this story.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Wornum.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Dr. Thomas Monro, of Bushey and Adelphi Terrace, physician -of Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals, a well-known lover of art and -patron of Edridge, Girtin, Turner, W. Hunt, and other young artists. He -erected monuments at Bushey Church to Edridge and Hearne.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> This gentleman is described by Mr. Thornbury as Mr. -<i>H</i>arraway, a <i>fish</i>monger in Broad<i>way</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> This took place in 1836.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Mr. John Britton, publisher, and author of “Beauties of -Wiltshire,” &c., &c.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Perhaps the Earl of Essex.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> See Memoir prefixed to “Liber Fluviorum.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> “Turner and Girtin’s Picturesque Views,” London, 1854.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> See also Mr. Wedmore’s interesting essay on Girtin for a -story about Turner and Girtin’s drawing of the <i>White House at -Chelsea</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Whether father or son does not appear.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Down to 1851 the Exhibition, in common parlance, always -meant the Exhibition of the Royal Academy.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> His first exhibited oil picture, according to Mr. S. -Redgrave. See “Dictionary of Artists of the English School.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> According to most accounts his first exhibited oil -picture.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> See Whitaker’s “Parish of Whalley,” vol. ii. p. 183.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> See also Willis’s “Current Notes” for Jan. 1852.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> In a letter from Andrew Caldwell to Bishop Percy, dated -14th June, 1802, printed by Nicholls in his “Illustrations of the -Literary History of the Eighteenth Century,” vol. viii. p. 43, Turner is -spoken of as beating “Loutherbourg and every other artist all to -nothing.” “A painter of my acquaintance, and a good judge, declares his -pencil is magic; that it is worth every landscape-painter’s while to -make a pilgrimage to see and study his works. Loutherbourg, he used to -think of so highly, appears now mediocre.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> The names of these pictures are given as printed in the -Catalogue.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Rawlinson.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> See saying of Turner’s reported by Mr. Halstead, and -printed in note in Mr. Rawlinson’s “Turner’s Liber Studiorum, Macmillan -and Co., 1878,” from which excellent work most of the above information -is derived.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Not issued till the 10th part, or over five years from the -publication of the first.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Only a portion of it, the picture.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> The only picture exhibited at the Academy by this artist. -It was called <i>A Landscape, with Hannibal in his March over the Alps, -showing to his Army the Fertile Plains of Italy</i>. As its year of -exhibition was 1776, it would be interesting to learn where Turner saw -this picture. Where is it now? Our information on the subject is derived -from Redgrave’s “Century of Painters.”</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Thornbury, p. 236.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> He became Professor of Perspective to the Royal Academy in -this year.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Turner seems to have paid a visit to the Continent in -1804, as Mr. Thornbury refers to some powerful water-colour Swiss scenes -of 1804 at Farnley, p. 240.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> There is no record of a visit by Turner to the Isle of -Man.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Wordsworth’s “Elegiac Stanzas,” suggested by a picture of -‘Peele Castle in a storm,’ painted by Sir George Beaumont.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> “Past Celebrities,” by Cyrus Redding, vol. i.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Thornbury, p. 152.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> See Wornum, “Turner Gallery,” p. xv., for a Catalogue of -Turner’s Gallery in 1809.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> He is said to have been his own architect for both -houses.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> See Thornbury, p. 224.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> See Thornbury, p. 223.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Called in the Catalogue <i>Whitehall Stairs, June 18th, -1817</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>Helvoetsluys</i>: <i>the City of Utrecht, 64, going to sea</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Turner had a picture of the same subject in another room. -The two artists had agreed together that each should paint it.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Leslie’s “Autobiographical Recollections,” vol. i. pp. -202, 203.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> They are printed as given by Thornbury.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> In his first will he only leaves two pictures to the -Nation, the <i>Sun Rising through Mist</i> and the <i>Carthage</i>, and on -condition that they were to be hung side by side with the great -Claudes.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Hamerton, pp. 286-87.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Ibid., p. 292.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Thornbury, pp. 349-51.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Mr. Harpur, the grandson of the sister of his mother, one -of his executors.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> We are informed by Mr. J. Beavington Atkinson, to whom we -are indebted for other interesting facts in connection with Turner, that -he was not ungrateful to his early friends, the Narraways of Bristol, -but supplied them from time to time with sums of money, and that at his -death there was a sum owing by one of the family who wished to repay it, -but was informed by the executors that Turner had left no record of any -such debt.</p></div> - -</div> -<hr class="full" /> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Turner, by William Cosmo Monkhouse - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURNER *** - -***** This file should be named 40878-h.htm or 40878-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/8/7/40878/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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diff --git a/old/40878-h/images/title.png b/old/40878-h/images/title.png Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 6eebf11..0000000 --- a/old/40878-h/images/title.png +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/40878-h/images/title_sml.png b/old/40878-h/images/title_sml.png Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 2ac3e7a..0000000 --- a/old/40878-h/images/title_sml.png +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/40878.txt b/old/40878.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 90d3099..0000000 --- a/old/40878.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5111 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Turner, by William Cosmo Monkhouse - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Turner - -Author: William Cosmo Monkhouse - -Release Date: September 27, 2012 [EBook #40878] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURNER *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - - - - - - -_ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF -THE GREAT ARTISTS._ - -[Illustration: decoration] - -JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER - -ROYAL ACADEMICIAN. - -[Illustration: decoration] - - -ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES -OF -THE GREAT ARTISTS. - -TITIAN From the most recent authorities. - _By Richard Ford Heath, M.A., Hertford Coll. Oxford._ - -REMBRANDT From the Text of C. VOSMAER. - _By J. W. Mollett, B.A., Brasenose Coll. Oxford._ - -RAPHAEL From the Text of J. D. PASSAVANT. - _By N. D'Anvers, Author of "Elementary History of Art."_ - -VAN DYCK & HALS From the most recent authorities. - _By Percy R. Head, Lincoln Coll. Oxford._ - -HOLBEIN From the Text of Dr. WOLTMANN. - _By the Editor, Author of "Life and Genius of Rembrandt"_ - -TINTORETTO From recent investigations. - _By W. Roscoe Osler, Author of occasional Essays on Art._ - -TURNER From the most recent authorities. - _By Cosmo Monkhouse, Author of "Studies of Sir E. Landseer."_ - -THE LITTLE MASTERS From the most recent authorities. - _By W. B. Scott, Author of "Lectures on the Fine Arts."_ - -HOGARTH From recent investigations. - _By Austin Dobson, Author of "Vignettes in Rhyme," &c._ - -RUBENS From recent investigations. - _By C. W. Kett, M.A., Hertford Coll. Oxford._ - -MICHELANGELO From the most recent authorities. - _By Charles Clement, Author of "Michel-Ange, Leonard, et Raphael."_ - -LIONARDO From recent researches. - _By Dr. J. Paul Richter, Author of "Die Mosaiken von Ravenna."_ - -GIOTTO From recent investigations. - _By Harry Quilter, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge._ - -THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF THE NETHERLANDS. - _By Lord Ronald Gower, Author of "Guide to the Galleries of Holland."_ - -VELAZQUEZ From the most recent authorities. - _By Edwin Stowe, B.A., Brasenose Coll. Oxford._ - -GAINSBOROUGH From the most recent authorities. - _By George M. Brock-Arnold, M.A., Hertford Coll. Oxford._ - -PEUGINO From recent investigations. - _By T. Adolphus Trollope, Author of many Essays on Art._ - -DELAROCHE & VERNET From the works of CHARLES BLANC. - _By Mrs. Ruutz Rees, Author of various Essays on Art._ - -[Illustration: JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER. - -_From a sketch by John Gilbert._] - -"_The whole world without Art would be one great wilderness._" - -[Illustration: decoration] - - - - -TURNER - -BY W. COSMO MONKHOUSE - -_Author of_ "_Studies of Sir E. Landseer._" - -[Illustration] - -NEW YORK: -SCRIBNER AND WELFORD. - -LONDON: -SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, -1879. - -(_All rights reserved._) - -CHISWICK PRESS:--C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, -CHANCERY LANE. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -PREFACE. - - -The late Mr. Thornbury lost such an opportunity of writing a worthy -biography of Turner as will never occur again. How he dealt with the -valuable materials which he collected is well known to all who have had -to test the accuracy of his statements; and unfortunately many of the -channels from which he derived information have since been closed by -death. Mr. Ruskin, who might have helped so much, has contributed little -to the life of the artist but some brilliant passages of pathetic -rhetoric. Overgrown by his luxuriant eloquence, and buried beneath the -_debris_ of Thornbury, the ruins of Turner's Life lay hidden till last -year. - -Mr. Hamerton's "Life of Turner" has done much to remove a very serious -blot from English literature. Very careful, but very frank, it presents -a clear and consistent view of the great painter and his art, and is, -moreover, penetrated with that intellectual insight and refined thought -which illuminate all its author's work. - -He has, however, left much to be done, and this book will, I hope, help -a little in clearing away long-standing errors, and reducing the known -facts about Turner to something like order. To these facts I have been -able to add a few hitherto unpublished; and it is a pleasant duty to -return my thanks to the many kind friends and strangers for the pains -which they have taken to supply me with information. To Mr. F. E. -Trimmer, of Heston, the son of Turner's old friend and executor; to Mr. -John L. Roget; to Mr. Mayall, and to Mr. J. Beavington Atkinson, my -thanks are especially due. - -In so small a book upon so large a subject, I have often had much -difficulty in deciding what to select and what to reject, and have -always preferred those events and stories which seem to me to throw most -light upon Turner's character. On purely technical matters I have -touched only when I thought it absolutely necessary. This part of the -subject has been already so well and fully treated by Mr. Ruskin in -numerous works, too well known to need mention; by Mr. Hamerton in his -"Life of Turner," and "Etching and Etchers;" by Messrs. Redgrave in -their "Century of English Painters," and by Mr. S. Redgrave in his -introduction to the collection of water-colours at South Kensington, -that I need only refer to these works such few among my readers as are -not already acquainted with them. I would also refer them for similar -reasons to Mr. Rawlinson's recent work on the "Liber Studiorum." - -I should have liked to add to this volume accurate lists of Turner's -works and the engravings from them, with information of their -possessors, and the extraordinary fluctuation in the prices which they -have realized, but this would have entailed great labour and have -swelled unduly the bulk of this volume, which is already greater than -that of its fellows. Fortunately this information is likely to be soon -supplied by Mr. Algernon Graves, whose accurate catalogue of Landseer's -works is sufficient guarantee of the manner in which he will perform -this more difficult task. - -The edition of Thornbury's "Life of Turner" referred to throughout these -pages, is that of 1877. - -W. COSMO MONKHOUSE. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CONTENTS. - - -PART I. - -1775 TO 1797. DAYS OF EDUCATION AND PRACTICE. - -CHAPTER I. - - Page - -Introductory 1 - -CHAPTER II. - -Early Days--1775 to 1789 6 - -CHAPTER III. - -Youth--1789 to 1796 20 - -PART II. - -1797 TO 1820. DAYS OF MASTERY AND EMULATION. - -CHAPTER IV. - -Yorkshire and the young Academician--1797 to 1807 38 - -CHAPTER V. - -The "Liber Studiorum" and the Dragons 55 - -CHAPTER VI. - -Harley Street, Devonshire, Hammersmith, and Twickenham 75 - -PART III. - -1820 TO 1851. DAYS OF GLORY AND DECLINE. - -CHAPTER VII. - -Page - -Italy and France--1820 to 1840 92 - -CHAPTER VIII. - -Light and Darkness--1840 to 1851 121 - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -TURNER. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -INTRODUCTORY. - - -The task of writing a satisfactory life of Turner is one of more than -usual difficulty. He hid himself, partly intentionally, partly because -he could not express himself except by means of his brush. His -secretiveness was so consistent, and commenced so early, that it seems -to have been an instinct, or what used to be called by that name. Akin -to the most divinely gifted poets by his supreme pictorial imagination, -he also seems on the other side to have been related to beings whose -reasoning faculty is less than human. When we look at such pictures as -_Crossing the Brook_, _The Fighting Temeraire_, and _Ulysses and -Polyphemus_, we feel that we are in the presence of a mind as sensitive -as Keats's, as tender as Goldsmith's, and as penetrative as Shelley's; -when we read of the dirty discomfort of his home and of the difficulty -with which his patrons, and even his relations, obtained access to his -presence--how even his most intimate friends were not admitted to his -confidence--we can only think of a hedgehog, whose offensive powers -being limited, is warned by nature to live in a hole and roll itself up -into a ball of spikes at the approach of strangers. - -We are used to having our idols broken; but we still fashion them with a -persistency which seems to argue it a necessity of our nature, that we -should think of the life and character of gifted men as being the -outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace we perceive -in their works. It is this habit which makes any attempt to write a life -of Turner pre-eminently unsatisfactory, for his refined sense of the -most ethereal of natural phenomena is not relieved by any refinement in -his manners, his supreme feeling for the splendour of the sun is -unmatched by any light or brilliance in his social life; his extreme -sensibility, a sensibility not only artistic but human, to all the -emotional influences of nature, stands for ever as a contrast to his -self-absorbed, suspicious individuality. There is of course no reason -why a landscape painter should be refined in manner or choice in his -habits. There is no necessary connection between the subjects of such an -artist and himself, except his hand and eye. He lives a life of visions -that may come and go without affecting his life or even his thought, as -we generally use that word. The most tremendous phenomena of nature may -be seen and studied, and reproduced with such power as to strike terror -into those who see the picture, and yet leave the artist unaltered in -demeanour and taste. Even those men of genius who, instead of employing -their imagination upon nature's inanimate works, devote themselves to -the study of man himself, socially and morally, do not by any means -show that relation between themselves and their finest work that we -appear naturally to expect. - -But all this, though it may explain much, still leaves unsatisfactory -the task of writing the life of a man of whom such passages as the -following could be sincerely written:-- - - "Glorious in conception--unfathomable in knowledge--solitary in - power--with the elements waiting upon his will, and the night and - morning obedient to his call, sent as a prophet of God to reveal to - men the mysteries of the universe, standing, like the great angel - of the Apocalypse, clothed with a cloud, and with a rainbow upon - his head, and with the sun and stars given into his hand."--_Modern - Painters_ (1843), p. 92. - - "Towards the end of his career he would often, I am assured on the - best authority, paint hard all the week till Saturday night; and he - would then put by his work, slip a five-pound note into his pocket, - button it securely up there, and set off to some low sailor's house - in Wapping or Rotherhithe, to wallow till Monday morning summoned - him to mope through another week."--THORNBURY'S _Life of Turner_ - (1877), pp. 313, 314. - -The contrast is too great to make the picture pleasant, the facts are -too few to make it perfect; to make it one or the other, it would be -necessary to do as Turner did, and rightly did, with his perfect -drawings--suppress facts that jarred with his scheme of form and colour, -and insert figures or mountains or clouds that were necessary to -complete it; but a biography is nothing if not real--it belongs to the -other side of art. The task would be rendered lighter, if not more -agreeable, if we were frankly to accept the principle of a dual nature, -and cutting up our subject into halves, treat Turner the artist and -Turner the man as two separate beings; and there would, at first sight, -seem to be no more convincing proof of this duality than is afforded by -Turner. He had an exquisitely sensitive apprehension of all physical -phenomena, and was able to hoard away his impressions by the thousand in -that wonderful brain-store of his, until they were wanted for pictures. -He stored them with his eye, he reproduced them with his hand and -memory. These three were all of the finest, and seemed to act without -that process which is necessary to most of us before we can make use of -our impressions, viz., the translation of them into words. This process -is as necessary for the nourishment of most minds as digestion for the -nourishment of the body, but to him it appears to have been almost -entirely denied. He had grasp enough of his impressions without it, to -enable him to analyze them and compose them pictorially; but he could -not give any account of them or of his method of composition, and they -had no sensible effect on his conversation. - -He thus lived in two worlds--one the pictorial sight-world, in which he -was a profound scholar and a poet, the other the articulate, moral, -social word-world in which he was a dunce and underbred. In the one he -was great and happy, in the other he was small and miserable; for what -philosophy he had was fatalist. The riddle of life was too hard for his -uncultivated intellect and starved heart to contemplate with any hope; -he was only at rest in his dreamland. When he came down into this world -of ours from his own clouds, he brought some of his glory with him, but -without any cheerful effect; for it came but as a foil to ruined -castles, the vice of mortals and the decay of nations. - -Yet, while at a first view this distinction between Turner as a man and -Turner as an artist seems complete, further study shows that the man had -a great and often a fatal influence on the artist, and that this was not -without reaction both serious and deep, and so we find that his art and -himself are no more to be divided in any human view of him than were his -body and his soul when he was yet alive. For these reasons we shall keep -as close together as possible the histories of his life and his art, a -task always difficult and sometimes impossible on account of the -scantiness of trustworthy data for the one and the almost infinite -material for the other. - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -EARLY DAYS. - -1775 TO 1789. - - -The appearance of Turner's genius in this world is not to be accounted -for by any known facts. Given his father and his mother, his grandfather -and grandmother, on the father's side, which is all we know of his -ancestry, given the date of his birth, even though that was the 23rd -April (St. George's day, as has been so childishly insisted on), 1775, -there seems to be positively no reason why William Turner, barber, of -26, Maiden Lane, opposite the Cider Cellar, in the parish of St. Paul's, -Covent Garden, and Mary Turner, _nee_ Marshall, his wife, should have -produced an artist, still less, one of the greatest artists that the -world has yet seen. There is only one fact, and that a very sad one, -which might be held to have some connection with his genius. "Great wits -are sure to madness near allied," sang Dryden,[1] and poor Mrs. Turner -became insane "towards the end of her days." This, however, will in no -way account for the special quality of Turner's genius. He arose like -many other great men in those days to help in opening the eyes of -England to the beauties of nature, one of the large and illustrious -constellation of men of genius that lit the end of the last and the -beginning of the present century, and with that truth we must be -content. - -The earliest fact that we have on record which had any influence on -Turner is that his paternal grandfather and grandmother spent all their -lives at South Molton in Devonshire. Although he is not known to have -visited Devonshire till he was thirty-seven years of age;[2] he appears -to have been proud of his connection with the county, and to have -asserted that he was a Devonshire man. This is, as far as we know, the -solitary effect of Turner's ancestry upon him. Of his father and mother -the influence was necessarily great. From his father he undoubtedly -obtained his extraordinary habits of economy, that spirit of a petty -tradesman, which was one of his most unlovely characteristics, and, be -it added, his honesty and industry also. Of his father we have several -descriptions by persons who knew him; of his mother, one only, and that, -unfortunately, not so authentic. We will give the lady the first place, -and it must be remembered that this unfavourable picture is drawn by Mr. -Thornbury from information derived from the Rev. Henry Syer Trimmer, the -son of Turner's old friend and executor, the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, -of Heston, who obtained it from Hannah Danby, Turner's housekeeper in -Queen Anne Street, who got it from Turner's father. - - "In an unfinished portrait of her by her son, which was one of his - first attempts, my informant perceived no mark of promise; and he - extended the same remark to Turner's first essays at landscape. - The portrait was not wanting in force or decision of touch, but the - drawing was defective. There was a strong likeness to Turner about - the nose and eyes; her eyes being represented as blue, of a lighter - hue than her son's; her nose aquiline, and the nether lip having a - slight fall. Her hair was well frizzed--for which she might have - been indebted to her husband's professional skill--and it was - surmounted by a cap with large flappers. Her posture therein - (_sic_) was erect, and her aspect masculine, not to say fierce; and - this impression of her character was confirmed by report, which - proclaimed her to have been a person of ungovernable temper, and to - have led her husband a sad life. Like her son, her stature was - below the average." - -This as the result of a painted portrait by her son, and verbal -description by her husband, is not too flattering, and it is all we know -of the character and appearance of poor Mary Turner. Of her belongings -we know still less. She is said to have been sister to Mr. Marshall, a -butcher, of Brentford, and first cousin to the grandmother of Dr. Shaw, -author of "Gallops in the Antipodes," and to have been related to the -Marshalls, formerly of Shelford Manor House, near Nottingham.[3] We are -able to add to this scanty information that she was the younger sister -of Mrs. Harpur, the wife of the curate of Islington, who was grandfather -of Mr. Henry Harpur, one of Turner's executors. He (the grandfather) -fell in love with his future wife when at Oxford, and their marriage -brought her sister to London. We are also informed that the -hard-featured woman crooning over the smoke, in an early drawing by -Turner in the National Gallery (_An Interior_, No. 15), is Turner's -mother, and the kitchen in which she is sitting, the kitchen in Maiden -Lane. We have also ascertained that one Mary Turner, from St. Paul's, -Covent Garden, was admitted into Bethlehem Hospital on Dec. 27th, 1800, -one of whose sponsors for removal was "Richard Twenlow, Peruke Maker." -This unfortunate lady, whether Turner's mother or not, was discharged -uncured in the following year. Altogether what we know about Turner's -mother does not inspire curiosity, and we fear that she was never -destined to figure in an edition of "The Mothers of Great Men." The "sad -life" which she is said to have led her husband could scarcely have been -sadder than her own. - -Of his father we have fuller information. - - "Mr. Trimmer's description of the painter's parent, the result of - close knowledge of him, is that he was about the height of his son, - spare and muscular, with a head below the average standards" - (whatever that may mean) "small blue eyes, parrot nose, projecting - chin, and a fresh complexion indicative of health, which he - apparently enjoyed to the full. He was a chatty old fellow, and - talked fast, and his words acquired a peculiar transatlantic twang - from his nasal enunciation. His cheerfulness was greater than that - of his son, and a smile was always on his countenance." - -This description is of him when an old man, but he must have been not -very different from this when about one year and eighteen months after -his marriage, which took place on August 29th, 1773, the little William -was born. He was not a man likely to alter much in habit or appearance. -He was always stingy, if we may judge by the story of his following a -customer down Maiden Lane to recover a halfpenny which he omitted to -charge for soap, and from his son's statement that his "Dad" never -praised him for anything but saving a halfpenny. As barbers are -proverbially talkative, and as persons do not generally develop -cheerfulness in later life, we may consider Mr. Trimmer's portrait of -the old man to be essentially correct of him when young, especially as -we find that Turner the younger was always "old looking," a peculiarity -which is generally hereditary. - -The house (now pulled down) in which Turner was born, and in which, for -at least some time after, father, mother, and son resided together, is -thus described by Mr. Ruskin: "Near the south-west corner of Covent -Garden, a square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set block of -houses, to the back windows of which it admits a few rays of light. -Access to the bottom of it is obtained out of Maiden Lane, through a low -archway and an iron gate; and if you stand long enough under the archway -to accustom your eyes to the darkness, you may see, on the left hand, a -narrow door, which formerly gave access to a respectable barber's shop, -of which the front window, looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant." -Maiden Lane is not a very brilliant thoroughfare, and was still narrower -and darker at this time, but still this picture, though doubtless -accurate, seems to make it still darker, and in the engraving of the -house in Thornbury's life of Turner, even the front window that looked -into Maiden Lane is rendered ominously black by the shadow of a watchman -thrown up by his low-held lantern. To us it seems that there is plenty -of dark in Turner's life without thus unduly heightening the gloom of -his first dwelling-place. A barber cannot do his work without light, and -we have no doubt that whatever sorrow fell upon Turner in his life was -in no way deepened by his having to pass through a low archway and an -iron gate in order to get to his father's shop. - -[Illustration: HOUSE IN MAIDEN LANE IN WHICH TURNER WAS BORN.] - -The house in Maiden Lane would have been a cheerful enough and a -wholesome enough nest for little William[4] if it had contained a happy -family presided over by a sweetly smiling mother. This want is the real -dark porch and iron gateway of his life, the want which could never be -supplied. In that wonderful memory of his, so faithful, by all -accounts, to all places where he had once been happy, there was no -chamber stored with sweet pictures of the home of his youth; no -exhaustless reservoir of tender, healthy sentiment, such as most of us -have, however poor. Here is a note of pathos on which we might dwell -long and strongly without fear of dispute or charge of false sentiment. -Children, indeed, do not miss what they have not: present sorrows did -not probably affect his appetite, future forebodings did not dim his -hopes; but then, and for ever afterwards, he was terribly handicapped in -the struggle for peace and happiness on earth, in his desire after right -thinking and right doing, in his aims at self-development, in his chance -of wholesome fellowship with his kind, in his capacity for understanding -others and making himself understood, for all these things are more -difficult of attainment to one who never has known by personal -experience the charm of what we mean by "home." - -This want in his life runs through his art, full as it is of feeling for -his fellow-creatures, their daily labour, their merry-makings, their -fateful lives and deaths; there is at least one note missing in his -gamut of human circumstance--that of domesticity. He shows us men at -work in the fields, on the seas, in the mines, in the battle, bargaining -in the market, and carousing at the fair, but never at home. This is one -of the principal reasons why his art has never been truly popular in -home-loving domestic England. - -It is not good for man, still less for a boy, to be alone, and we do not -think we can be wrong in thinking that he was a solitary boy. How soon -he became so we do not know. We may hope that in his earliest years at -least he was tenderly cared for by his mother, and petted by his father. -There is no reason why we may not draw a bright picture of his -childhood, and fancy him walking on Sundays with his father and mother -in the Mall of St. James's Park, wearing a short flat-crowned hat with a -broad brim over his curly brown hair, with snowy ruffles round his neck -and wrists, and a gay sash tied round his waist, concealing the junction -between his jacket-waistcoat and his pantaloons; but this bright period -cannot have lasted long. Soon he must have been driven upon himself for -his amusement, and fortunate it was for him that nature provided him -with one wholesome and endless. - -It is known that one artist, Stothard, was a customer of his father, and -it is probable that as there was an academy in St. Martin's Lane, and -the Society of Artists at the Lyceum, and many artists resided about -Covent Garden, the little boy's emulation may have been excited by -hearing of them, and perhaps chatting with them and seeing their -sketches. - -He certainly began very early. We are told that he first showed his -talent by drawing with his finger in milk spilt on the teatray, and the -story of his sketching a coat-of-arms from a set of castors at Mr. -Tomkison's the jeweller, and father of the celebrated pianoforte maker, -must belong to a very early age.[5] The earliest known drawing by him of -a building is one of Margate Church, when he was nine years old, shortly -before he went to his uncle's at New Brentford for change of air. There -he went to his first school and drew cocks and hens on the walls, and -birds, flowers, and trees from the school-room windows, and it is added -that "his schoolfellows, sympathizing with his taste, often did his -sums for him, while he pursued the bent of his compelling genius." Very -soon after this, if not before, he began to make drawings, some of these -copies of engravings coloured, which were exhibited in his father's shop -window at the price of a few shillings, and he drew portraits of his -father and mother, and of himself at an early age. It is said that his -father intended him to be a barber at first,[6] but struck with his -talent for drawing soon determined that he should follow his bent and be -a painter. He is said to have delighted in going into the fields and -down the river to sketch, but all the very early drawings we have seen, -including those purchased at his father's shop, are drawings of -buildings, mostly in London. Of these there is one of the interior of -_Westminster Abbey_, in Mr. Crowle's edition of "Pennant's London," now -in the print room of the British Museum. There is nothing to distinguish -these from the work of any clever boy, but this drawing and one in the -National Gallery, of a scene near Oxford, both probably copied from -prints, show a sense not only of light but colour. We have also seen a -copy of Boswell's "Antiquities of England and Wales," with about seventy -of the plates very cleverly coloured by him when a boy at Brentford. - -Whatever defects Turner, the barber, may have had as a father, neglect -of his son's talents was not one of them, and, though very careful for -the pence, he showed that he could make a pecuniary sacrifice when he -had a chance of furthering his son's prospects, for he refused to allow -him to become the apprentice of one architect who offered to take him -for nothing, and paid the whole of a legacy he had been left to place -him with another, and we may presume a better one. - -The information given by Mr. Thornbury about his early training, -scholastic and professional, is very meagre, inconsecutive, and -puzzling. According to him it was in 1785 that Turner, having been -previously taught reading, but not writing, by his father, went to his -first school, which was kept by Mr. John White, at New Brentford; in -1786 or 1787, by which time at least his destination for an artist's -career appears to have been settled, he was sent to "Mr. Palice, a -floral drawing-master," at an Academy in Soho, and in 1788, to a school -kept by a Mr. Coleman at Margate; at some time before 1789, to Mr. -Thomas Malton, a perspective draughtsman, who kept a school in Long -Acre, and in this year to Mr. Hardwick, the architect, and to the school -of the Royal Academy. He also went to Paul Sandby's drawing school in -St. Martin's Lane. During all, or nearly all this time, he was, -according to Mr. Thornbury, employed: 1. In making drawings at home to -sell. 2. In colouring prints for John Raphael Smith, the engraver, -printseller, and miniature painter. 3. Out sketching with Girtin. 4. -Making drawings of an evening at Dr. Monro's[7] in the Adelphi. 5. -Washing in backgrounds for Mr. Porden. If he was really employed in this -way from 1785 to 1789, and could only read and not write when he began -this extraordinary course of training, it is no wonder that he remained -illiterate all his life, or that his mind was utterly incapacitated for -taking in and assimilating knowledge in the usual way. Spending a few -months at a day school, and a few more at a "floral drawing master," -then a few more at school at Margate, making drawings for sale, -colouring prints, fruitlessly studying perspective, bandied about from -school master to drawing master, and from drawing master to -architect--such a life for a young mind from ten to fourteen years of -age is enough to spoil the finest intellectual digestion. - -One fact, however, comes clear out of all this confusion, that of -regular and ordinary schooling he had little or none, and there is no -reason to suppose that it was because of the peculiar quality of his -mind that he always spoke and wrote like a dunce. He never had a fair -chance of acquiring in his youth more than a traveller's knowledge of -his own language, and so his mind had a very small outlet through the -ordinary channels of speech. On the other hand, faculties of drawing and -composition were trained to the utmost, and this compensated him in a -measure. His mind had only one entrance, his eye, and only one exit, his -hand; but they were both exceptional, and cultivated exceptionally. - -[Illustration: CHATEAU D'AMBOISE. - -_From "Rivers of France."_] - -There was, however, much of pleasure in this life for a boy like Turner, -for though he evidently worked hard, he liked work and the work he had -to do was especially congenial to him. He met friends and encouragers on -all sides; from his father to his school-fellows. However much reason he -may have had for disappointment in later years, there was none in his -early life. He was "found out" in his childhood. Encouraged by his -father, with his drawings finding a ready sale to such men as Mr. -Henderson, Mr. Crowle, and Mr. Tomkison, with plenty of employment in no -slavish mean work for such a youngster, such as colouring prints and -putting in backgrounds to drawings, with Mr. Porden generously offering -to take him as an apprentice for nothing, with a kind friend like Dr. -Monro always willing to give him a supper and half-a-crown for sketches -of the country near his residence at Bushey, or the result of an -evening's copying of the then best attainable water colours; his life -was far more agreeable, far more tended to make him think well of the -world and of the people in it than has been usually represented, and -probably as good as he could have had for attaining early proficiency in -his art. London at that time was not a bad place for a landscape artist. -It was neither so clouded nor so sooty as it is now; there were -healthier trees in it, and more of them, a more picturesque and a purer -river, and within less than half an hour's walk from Maiden Lane there -were green fields, for north of the British Museum the country was still -open. - -But he was not entirely dependent upon his art and his employers for -enjoyment, or for forming his opinion of the human race. There were -houses at which he visited and where he was received warmly. When at -school at Margate he got an "introduction to the pleasant family of a -favourite school-fellow;" at Bristol there was Mr. Narraway,[8] a -fellmonger in Broadmead, and an old friend of his father, at whose house -he drew two of the children and his own portrait; and at the house of -Mr. William Frederick Wells, the artist, he was evidently one of the -family, as is proved by the charmingly tender reminiscences of Mrs. -Wheeler. - - "In early life my father's house was his second home, a haven of - rest from many domestic trials too sacred to touch upon. Turner - loved my father with a son's affection; and to me he was as an - elder brother. Many are the times I have gone out sketching with - him. I remember his scrambling up a tree to obtain a better view, - and then he made a coloured sketch, I handing up his colours as he - wanted them. Of course, at that time, I was quite a young girl. He - was a firm affectionate friend to the end of his life; his feelings - were seldom seen on the surface, but they were deep and enduring. - No one would have imagined, under that rather rough and cold - exterior, how very strong were the affections which lay hidden - beneath. I have more than once seen him weep bitterly, particularly - at the death of my own dear father,[9] which took him by surprise, - for he was blind to the coming event, which he dreaded. He came - immediately to my house in an agony of tears. Sobbing like a child, - he said, 'Oh, Clara, Clara! these are iron tears. I have lost the - best friend I ever had in my life.' Oh! what a different man would - Turner have been if all the good and kindly feelings of his great - mind had been called into action; but they lay dormant, and were - known to so very few. He was by nature suspicious, and no tender - hand had wiped away early prejudices, the inevitable consequence of - a defective education. Of all the light-hearted merry creatures I - ever knew, Turner was the most so; and the laughter and fun that - abounded when he was an inmate of our cottage was inconceivable, - particularly with the juvenile members of the family."--THORNBURY'S - _Life of Turner_ (1877), pp. 235, 236. - -A man who knew this lady for sixty years, and about whom so kind a heart -could have thus written, could not have been driven to a life of morbid -seclusion because the world had treated him so badly in his youth. His -home may have been, and probably was a cheerless one, and we may well -pity him on that account. The rest of our pity we had better reserve for -his want of education, and the secretive, suspicious disposition which -nature gave him, and which he allowed to master his more genial -propensities. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -YOUTH. - -1789 to 1796. - - -The only rebuff with which the young artist appears to have met was from -Tom Malton, the perspective draughtsman, who sent him back to his father -as a boy to whom it was impossible to teach geometrical perspective. As -Mr. Hamerton observes, "There is nothing in this which need surprise us -in the least. Scientific perspective is a pursuit which may amuse or -occupy a mathematician, but the stronger the artistic faculty in a -painter the less he is likely to take to it, for it exercises other -faculties than his. Besides this, he feels instinctively that he can do -very well without it." No doubt he did feel this, and the feeling very -much lessened the disappointment at being "sent back," and he did very -well without it, so well that he was appointed Professor of Perspective -to the Royal Academy without it, and not unfrequently exhibited pictures -on its walls, which showed how very much "without it" he was. - -Otherwise he met with no rebuffs in his art. We have seen that he got -plenty of employment, and have expressed an opinion that that -employment--colouring engravings, and putting in backgrounds and -foregrounds and skies for architectural drawings--was no mean employment -for a youngster. He himself, when pitied in later years for this -supposed degradation and slavery, replied, "Well, and what could be -better practice!" and it was this and more. It not only taught him to -work neatly, to lay flat washes smoothly and accurately, but it taught -him to exercise his ingenuity and artistic taste. He probably succeeded -so well, because it gave him an opportunity of displaying his artistic -faculty. Every sketch that he had thus to beautify presented an artistic -problem, how best to light and decorate and make a picture of the bare -bones of an architectural design. It gave him a sense of power and -importance thus to be the converter of topography into art; it taught -him the value of light and shade, and the decorative capacities of trees -and sky. His success gave him self-reliance. It also, and this was -perhaps a more doubtful advantage, taught him to consider drawing as a -skill in beautifying. He got the habit of treating buildings as objects -less valuable as objects of art in themselves, than for the breaking of -sunbeams, and as straight lines to contrast with the endless curves of -nature; and also the habit of using trees as he wanted them, of bending -their boughs and moulding their contours in harmony with the -poem-picture of his imagination. To this early treatment of -architectural drawings may be traced his great power of composition, and -also much of his mannerism. - -That he soon knew his power, and had his secrets of manipulation, may be -one reason for his early secretiveness about his art; for though there -is little in these early works of his to prefigure his coming greatness, -he, when a youth, attained a proficiency equal to that of the best -water-colour artists of his day, and, with his friend Girtin, soon -surpassed all except Cozens; and he could not have done this without a -sense of superiority and many private experiments; or, on the other -hand, he may, like many men, have required complete solitude to work at -all, though this was not the case in later life, as he often painted -almost the whole of his pictures on the Academy walls. At all events, -the degree of his secretiveness is extraordinary. "I knew him," says an -old architect, "when a boy, and have often paid him a guinea for putting -backgrounds to my architectural drawings, calling upon him for this -purpose at his father's shop in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. He never -would suffer me to see him draw, but concealed, as I understood, all -that he did in his bedroom." When in this bedroom one morning, the door -suddenly opened, and Mr. Britton entered.[10] In an instant Turner -covered up his drawings and ran to bar the crafty intruder's progress. -"I've come to see the drawings for the Earl."[11] "You shan't see 'em," -was the reply. "Is that the answer I am to take back to his lordship?" -"Yes; and mind that next time you come through the shop, and not up the -back way." When Mr. Newby Lowson accompanied him on a tour on the -continent he "did not show his companion a single sketch." Similar -stories could be added to show how this habit continued through his -life. - -The dates of these two early stories are not given by Mr. Thornbury, nor -the name of the "old architect," but they show that he was early -employed by a nobleman, and that he got a guinea a piece for his -backgrounds, not only "good practice," but good pay for a youth; he was, -in fact, better employed and better paid than any young artist whose -history we can remember. Nor does it seem to have been the fault of -Providence if he did not enjoy the crowning happiness of life, a friend -of suitable tastes, for Girtin was sent to him, a youth of his own age -endowed with similar gifts, and of a most sociable disposition; nor did -he want a capable mentor, for he had Dr. Monro, "his true master," as -Mr. Ruskin calls him. - -It was at Raphael Smith's that he formed an intimacy with Girtin, says -Mr. Alaric Watts.[12] "His son, Mr. Calvert Girtin, described his father -and young Turner as associated in a friendly rivalry, under the -hospitable roof and superintendence of that lover of art, Dr. Monro -(then residing in the Adelphi). Nor was Turner forgetful of the Doctor's -kindness, for on referring to that period of his career, in a -conversation with Mr. David Roberts, he said, 'There,' pointing to -Harrow, 'Girtin and I have often walked to Bushey and back, to make -drawings for good Dr. Monro, at half-a-crown apiece and a supper.'" - -If a saying quoted by T. Miller in his "Memoirs of Turner and Girtin" -may be trusted,[13] Turner may have met Gainsborough and other eminent -painters of the day at Dr. Monro's. Speaking of Dr. Monro's -conversaziones, "Old Pine, of 'Wine and Walnuts' celebrity, used to say, -'What a glorious coterie there was, when Wilson, Marlow, Gainsborough, -Paul, and Tom Sandby, Rooker, Hearne, and Cozins (_sic_) used to meet, -and you, old Jack,' turning to Varley, 'were a boy in a pinafore, with -Turner, Girtin, and Edridge as bigwigs, on whom you used to look as -something beyond the usual amount of clay.'" As Gainsborough died in -1788, when Turner was thirteen years old, and Turner was only two years -the senior of John Varley, this shows how early he began to have a -reputation. - -The acquaintance between Turner and Girtin is one of the most -interesting facts in Turner's Life. Being more than two years Turner's -senior (Girtin was born on February 18th, 1773) and having at least -equal talent as a boy, it is probable that he was "ahead" of Turner at -first, and that Turner learnt much from him. We may therefore accept as -true his reputed sayings, "Had Tom Girtin lived, I should have -starved;"[14] and (of one of Girtin's "yellow" drawings), "I never in my -whole life could make a drawing like that, I would at any time have -given one of my little fingers to have made such a one."[14] With regard -to their mutual studies and their respective talents we have information -in the studies and drawings themselves, but with regard to their human -relationship we have very little. Turner always spoke of him as "Poor -Tom," and proposed to, and possibly did, put up a tablet to his memory; -but there are no letters or anecdotes to show that what we all mean by -"friendship" ever existed between them. - -We are equally ignorant as to the amount of intimacy between him and Dr. -Monro, for though the latter did not die till 1833, there is nothing to -show that they ever met after Turner's student days were over. - -It may, however, be fairly assumed that we should have known more about -his intimacy with his Achates and his Maecenas if it had been great and -continuous. The absence of documents or rumours on the subject are all -in favour of his having kept himself to himself, of his absorption in -his art from an early date, neglecting the social advantages that were -open to him, neglecting intellectual intercourse with his artistic -peers, neglecting everything except the pursuit of his art, and the road -to wealth and fame. This self-absorption, this concentration of all his -time and power to this one but triple object, the trinity of his desire, -may have arisen from a natural cause, the strength of impelling genius -over which he had no control; it may have arisen from secretiveness, -suspicion, selfishness, and ambition, which he could have controlled but -would not; but whatever its cause, there is no doubt that it existed, -and that with every external facility for becoming a social and -cultivated being, he took the solitary path which led him to greatness -(not perhaps greater than he might have otherwise attained), but a -greatness accompanied with mental isolation and ignorance of all but -what he could gather from unaided observation, and an uncultivated -intellect. - -The education of Turner may be summed up as follows: he learnt reading -from his father, writing and probably little else at his schools at -Brentford and Margate, perspective (imperfectly) from T. Malton, -architecture (imperfectly and classical only) from Mr. Hardwick, -water-colour drawing from Dr. Monro, and perhaps some hints as to -painting in oils from Sir Joshua Reynolds, in whose house he studied for -a while. The rest of his power he cultivated himself, being much helped -by the early companionship of Girtin. Nearly all, if not all, this -education except that mentioned in the last paragraph was over in 1789, -when Sir Joshua laid down his brush, conscious of failing sight, and -young Turner became a student of the Royal Academy. - -[Illustration: NANTES. - -_From "Rivers of France."_] - -These were his principal living instructors, but he learnt more from the -dead--from Claude and Vandevelde, from Titian and Canaletto, from Cuyp -and Wilson. He learnt most of all from nature, but in the beginning of -his career his studies from art are more apparent in his works. There is -scarcely one of his predecessors or contemporaries of any character in -water-colour painting that he did not copy, whose style and method he -did not study, and in part adopt. We have within the last few years only -been able to study at ease the works of the early water-colour painters -of England, and the result of the interesting collections now at South -Kensington and the British Museum, bequests of Mr. and Mrs. Ellison, Mr. -Towshend, Mr. William Smith, and Mr. Henderson, has been on the one hand -to increase our opinion of their merit, and on the other to show how far -Turner outstripped them. We can now see how true and delicate were the -lightly-washed monochrome water scenes of Hearne; how robust the studies -of Sandby; that Daniell and Dayes could not only draw architecture well, -but could warm their buildings with sun, and surround them with space -and air; that Cozens could conceive a landscape-poem, and execute it in -delicate harmonies of green and silver; that Girtin could invest the -simplest study with the feeling of the pathos of ruin and solemnity of -evening; the first of water-colour painters to feel and paint the soft -penetrative influence of sunlight, subduing all things with its golden -charm. In looking at one of his drawings now at South Kensington, a -_View of the Wharfe_, and comparing it with the works around, one cannot -help being struck with this difference, that it is complete as far as -it goes, the realization of one thought, the perfect rendering of an -impression, harmonious to a touch. Broad and almost rough as it is, it -is yet finished in the true sense as no English work of the kind ever -was before. There are more elaborate drawings around, plenty of struggle -after effects of brighter colour, much cleverness, much skill, but -nowhere a picture so completely at peace with itself. In looking at it -we can realize what Turner meant when he said that he could never make -drawings like Girtin. Equal harmony of tone, far greater and more -splendid harmonies of colour, miracles of delicate drawing, triumphs -over the most difficult effects, dreams of ineffable loveliness, very -many things unattempted by Girtin he could achieve, but never this -simple sweet gravity, never this perfection of spiritual peace. - -But in spite of this, the great fact in comparing Turner with the other -water-colour painters of his own time--and we are speaking now of his -early works--is this, that whereas each of the best of the others is -remarkable for one or two special beauties of style or effect, he is -remarkable for all. He could reach near, if not quite, to the golden -simplicity of Girtin, to the silver sweetness of Cozens; he could draw -trees with the delicate dexterity of Edridge, and equal the beautiful -distances of Glover; he could use the poor body-colours of the day, or -the simple wash of sepia, with equal cleverness. He was not only -technically the equal, if not master of them all, but he comprehended -them, almost without exception. - -Such mastery was not attained without extraordinary diligence in the -study of pictures. At Dr. Monro's he could study all the best modern -men, including Gainsborough, Morland, Wilson, and De Loutherbourg, and -he could also study Salvator Rosa, Rembrandt, Claude, and Vandevelde. -One day looking over some prints with Mr. Trimmer,[15] he took up a -Vandevelde and said, "That made me a painter." And Dayes (Girtin's -master) wrote in 1804:--"The way he acquired his professional powers was -by borrowing where he could a drawing or a picture to copy from, or _by -making a sketch of any one in the Exhibition[16] early in the morning, -and finishing it at home_." The character of his early works is -sufficient of itself to prove the extent of his study of pictures, and -we are inclined to think that most of his early practice was from works -of art, and not from nature. The spirit of rivalry commenced in him very -early; it was the only test of his powers, and he seems to have pitted -himself in the beginning of his career against all his contemporaries, -from Mr. Henderson to Girtin, and many of the old masters, and never to -have entirely relinquished the habit. When we think of the number of -years he spent in doing little but topographical drawings, a castle -here, a town there, an abbey there, with appropriate figures in the -foreground, using only sober browns and blues for colours, his progress -seems to have been very slow; but when we see most of the artists of his -time doing exactly the same, and that the old landscape painters whom he -principally studied were almost as limited in the colours they employed, -especially in their drawings, we do not see how he could well have -progressed more quickly; and when we further consider the enormous -distance which he travelled--from the very bottom to the very height of -his art--that he should have accomplished it all in one short life -appears miraculous. The milestones of his journey are not shown plainly -in his early work, that is all. - -That there was much conscious restraint on his part in the use of -colours, that he of wise purpose devoted himself to perfection of his -technical power before he endeavoured to show his strength to the world, -we see no reason to believe. He could not well have done otherwise, and -for such an original mind one marvels to observe how throughout his -career he was led in the chains of circumstance. The poet-painter, the -dumb-poet, as he has well been called, shows little eccentricity of -genius in his youth. There was the strong inclination to draw, but no -strong inclination to draw anything in particular, or anything very -beautiful. On the contrary, he drew the most uninteresting and prosaic -of things, copied bad topographical prints and ugly buildings. When it -was proposed to make him an architect he did not rebel; when it was -afterwards proposed to make him a portrait-painter he did not murmur. It -was Mr. Hardwick, not himself, that insisted on his going to the Royal -Academy. His first essay in oils was due to another's instigation. -Whatever work came to him, he did; that which he could do best, that -which he had special genius for, the painting of pure landscape, he -scarcely attempted at all for years. Almost every artist of that day -went about England drawing abbeys, seats, and castles for topographical -works. What others did, he did. What others did not do, he did not do. -No doubt it was the only profitable employment he could get, and he very -properly took it, and worked hard at it; he was borne along the stream -of circumstance as everybody else is, but he, unlike most men of strong -genius, seems never to have attempted to stem its tide, or get out of -its way. His genius was a growth to which every event and accident of -his life added its contribution of nourishment. Though stirred with -unusual power, he was probably almost as unconscious as to what it -tended as a seed in the ground; he had a dim perception of a light -towards which he was growing; he was conscious that he put forth leaves, -and that he should some day flower, but when, and with what special -bloom he was destined to surprise the world, we doubt if he had any -prophetic glimpse. His development was extraordinary, and could only -have been produced by special careful training, but this training was -mainly due to circumstances over which he had no control. Nature came to -his assistance in a thousand different ways, and in nothing more than -giving him a quiet temperament, like that of Coleridge's child, "that -always finds, and never seeks." He was not fastidious, except with -regard to his own work, and about that, more as to the arrangement and -finish of it than the subject. He had an excellent constitution, early -inured to rough it, and his comforts were very simple and easily -obtained. He was not particular, even about his materials and tools; any -scrap of paper would do for a sketch on an emergency. He was always able -to work, and to work swiftly and well. No fidgeting about for hours and -days because he was not in the mood; no sacrifice of sketch after sketch -because they did not please him; none of that nervous restlessness which -so often attends imaginative workers; and his work was imaginative from -the first--if not in conception, in execution. Solitude seems to have -been the only necessary condition for the free exercise of his powers, -which were as happily employed in "making a picture" of one thing as of -another, and when he wanted something to put in it to get it "right," -he never had much trouble in finding it. He said, "If when out sketching -you felt a loss, you have only to turn round, or walk a few paces -further, and you had what you wanted before you." His physical powers -were also great, and his mind was active in receiving impressions. Mr. -Lovell Reeve, as quoted by Mr. Alaric Watts, says:--"His religious study -of nature was such that he would walk through portions of England, -twenty to twenty-five miles a day, with his little modicum of baggage at -the end of a stick, sketching rapidly on his way all striking pieces of -composition, and marking effects with a power that daguerreotyped them -in his mind. There were few moving phenomena in clouds and shadows that -he did not fix indelibly in his memory, though he might not call them -into requisition for years afterwards." He was not tied to any -particular method, or bound to any particular habit; when he found that -his way of sketching was too minute and slow to enable him to make his -drawings pay their expenses, he changed his style to a broader, swifter -one. So, without going quite to the length of Mr. Hamerton, who appears -to think that everything in Turner's youth (including ugliness and bandy -legs) happened for the best in the best of possible worlds, we may -safely affirm that he could scarcely have been gifted with a temperament -better suited for steady progress, or one which was more calculated to -make him happy, for it enabled him to exercise his body and mind at the -same time, to earn his living and to lay up stores of pictorial beauty -in his memory, to do whatever task was set him, and yet get artistic -pleasure out of even the most commonplace study by embellishing it with -his imagination. - -In 1789 he became a student of the Royal Academy, and in the year after -he exhibited a _View of the Archbishop's Palace at Lambeth_. In 1791, 2, -and 3 he exhibited several topographical drawings, but down to this time -he seems to have made no sketching tours of any length. He drew in the -neighbourhood of London, and his journeys to stay with friends at -Margate and Bristol will account for his drawings of Malmesbury, -Canterbury, and Bristol. But about 1792 he received a commission from -Mr. J. Walker, the engraver (who also afterwards employed Girtin), to -make drawings for his "Copper-plate Magazine." This was the beginning of -the long series of engravings from his works, and it may have been one -of the reasons which decided him to set up a studio for himself, which -he did in Hand Court, Maiden Lane, close to his father, where he -remained till he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1800, -when he removed to 64, Harley Street. A year or so after his employment -by Walker he got similar commissions from Mr. Harrison for his "Pocket -Magazine." These commissions sent him on his travels over England -referred to by Mr. Lovell Reeve. The copper-plates of the sketches for -Walker, including some after Girtin, were found about sixty years -afterwards by Mr. T. Miller, who republished them in 1854, in a volume -called "Turner and Girtin's Picturesque Views, sixty years since." These -drawings mark his first tour to Wales, on which he set forth on a pony -lent by Mr. Narraway. The first public results of this tour were the -drawing of _Chepstow_ in "Walker's Magazine" for November, 1794, and -three drawings in the Royal Academy for that year. By the next year's -engravings and pictures we trace him to "Nottingham," "Bridgnorth," -"Matlock," "Birmingham," "Cambridge," "Lincoln," "Wrexham," -"Peterborough," and "Shrewsbury," and by those of 1796 and 1797 to -"Chester," "Neath," "Tunbridge," "Bath," "Staines," "Wallingford," -"Windsor," "Ely," "Flint," "Hampton Court, Herefordshire," "Salisbury," -"Wolverhampton," "Llandilo," "The Isle of Wight," "Llandaff," "Waltham," -and "Ewenny (Glamorgan)," not including drawings of places he had been -to before. - -His furthest point north was Lincoln, his farthest west (in England) -Bristol. The only parts in which he reached the coast were in Wales and -the Isle of Wight. Lancashire and the Lakes, Yorkshire and its -waterfalls, were yet to come, and nearly all coast scenery, except that -of Kent. - -The drawings for the Magazines were not remarkable for any poetry or -originality of treatment perceptible in the engravings, the cathedrals -being generally taken from an unpicturesque point of view, more with the -object of showing their length and size than their beauty, to which he -appears to have been somewhat insensible always; they show a great love -of bridges and anglers--there is scarcely one without a bridge, and some -have two; a desire to tell as much about the place as possible by the -introduction of figures; they show his habit of taking his scenes from a -distance, generally from very high ground, and his delight in putting as -much in a small space as possible, and his power of drawing masses of -houses, as in the _Birmingham_ and the _Chester_. - -The result of these tours may be said to have been the perfection of his -technical skill, the partial displacement of traditional notions of -composition, and the storing of his memory with infinite effects of -nature. It was as good and thorough discipline in the study of nature, -as his former life had been in the study of art, and though his visit to -Yorkshire in the next year (1797) seemed necessary to bring thoroughly -to the surface all the knowledge and power he had acquired, it was not -without present fruit. Rather of necessity than choice, we may observe, -he confined his powers mainly to the drawing of views of places supposed -to be of interest to the subscribers of the Magazines, but his -individual inclinations in the choice of subject, and his tendency to -purer landscape and sea-view, showed themselves now and then. First in -his drawing of _The Pantheon, the Morning after the Fire_, exhibited in -1792; next in 1793, in his _View on the River Avon, near St. Vincent's -Rocks, Bristol_, and the _Rising Squall, Hot Wells_,[17] from the same -place; then in 1794, _Second Fall of the River Monach, Devil's Bridge_; -in 1795, _View near the Devil's Bridge, Cardiganshire, with the River -Ryddol_; in 1796, _Fishermen at Sea_; and in 1797, _Fishermen coming -Ashore at Sunset, previous to a Gale_, and _Moonlight: a study in -Milbank_,[18] now in the National Gallery. - -That his genius was perceptible even in these early days is evident from -the notice taken in a contemporary review of his drawings in 1794, when -he was nineteen. - - "388. _Christchurch Gate, Canterbury._ W. Turner. This deserving - picture, with Nos. 333 and 336, are amongst the best in the present - exhibition. They are the productions of a very young artist, and - give strong indications of first-rate ability; the character of - Gothic architecture is most happily preserved, and its profusion of - minute parts massed with judgment and tinctured with truth and - fidelity. This young artist should beware of contemporary - imitations. His present effort evinces an eye for nature, which - should scorn to look to any other source." - -Again in 1796, the "Companion to the Exhibition," with regard to his -first sea-piece contains this paradoxical sentence, attempting to -express his peculiar power of giving a distinct impression of -ill-defined objects, which was apparently evident even in this early -work. - - "Colouring natural, figures masterly, not too distinct--obscure - perception of the objects distinctly seen--through the obscurity of - the night--partially illumined." - -Again in 1797, we have this testimony as to the extraordinary (for that -time) character of his work, from an entry in the diary of Thomas -Greene, of Ipswich, about the _Fishermen_ of 1797. - - "June 2, 1797. Visited the Royal Academy Exhibition. Particularly - struck with a sea-view by Turner; fishing vessels coming in, with a - heavy swell, in apprehension of tempest gathering in the distance, - and casting, as it advances, a night of shade, while a parting glow - is spread with fine effect upon the shore. The whole composition - bold in design and masterly in execution. I am entirely - unacquainted with the artist; but if he proceeds as he has begun, - he cannot fail to become the first in his department." - -Here, then, before Turner's visit to Yorkshire, we have evidence that -not only was the superiority of his work apparent, but that one or two -of the special qualities which were to mark it in the future were -already perceived, and publicly praised. - -After looking carefully at all the ascertainable facts of Turner's -youth, we can only come to the conclusion that it was not the fault of -nature or mankind that he grew into a solitary and disappointed man. - -Secretiveness on his own part and want of trust in his fellow-creatures -seem to have been bred in him, and to have resisted all the many proofs -which the friends of his youth, and we may say of his life, afforded, -that there were kind and unselfish persons in the world whom he could -trust, and who would trust him. There is no proof that he ever had -confidential relations with any human being, not even Girtin. That he -should have willingly cut himself adrift from human fellowship we are -loath to believe, in spite of the many facts which seem to support it. -It seems more natural, and on the whole (sad as even this is) more -pleasant, to believe that he met with a severe blow to his confidence; -that, though naturally suspicious, the many kindnesses he received were -not without a gracious effect, but that his budding trust was killed by -a sudden unexpected frost. For these reasons we are inclined to believe -in the story of his early love; although it, as told by Mr. Thornbury, -is not without inconsistencies. - -Turner is said to have plighted vows with the sister of his school -friend at Margate; he left on a tour, giving her his portrait, the -letters between them were intercepted, and after waiting two years she -accepted another. When he reappeared she was on the eve of her marriage, -and thinking her honour involved, refused to return to her old love. - -Such in short is the story which we wish to believe, and as it came to -Mr. Thornbury from one who heard it from relatives of the lady, to whom -she told it, there is probably some truth in it. It is, however, almost -impossible to believe that Turner, whose tours never extended to two -years, and whose power of locomotion was extraordinary, should allow -that time to elapse without going to see one whom he really loved. If -he did not get any letters he would have been desperate; if he did get -letters they would have shown him that she had not received his, which -would have made him, if possible, more desperate still. As the name of -the lady is not given, it is next to impossible to find out the truth. -Our faith, however, as a balance of probability, still remains that -Turner was jilted, and that the effect of it was to confirm for ever his -want of confidence in his fellow-creatures. - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -YORKSHIRE AND THE YOUNG ACADEMICIAN. - -1797 TO 1807. - - -From the facts of the foregoing chapter it may be fairly presumed that -although Turner's election as Associate in 1799 followed quickly after -his fine display of pictures from the northern counties in 1798, he was -before this a marked man, whose superiority over all then living -landscape painters was visible to critics and lovers of art, and could -not have been disguised from the eyes of the artists of the Royal -Academy. It did not require a genius like that of Turner to distance -competitors on the Academy walls in those days. England was almost at -its lowest point both in literature and art. The great men of the -earlier part of the eighteenth century, Pope, Thomson, Gray, Collins, -Swift, Fielding, Sterne and Richardson, had long been dead, and of the -later brilliant, but small circle of artists and men of letters of which -Dr. Johnson was the centre (Goldsmith and Burke, Garrick and Reynolds, -Hume and Gibbon), Reynolds only was left, and he was moribund. Of other -artists with any title to fame there was none left but De Loutherbourg -and Morland; Hogarth had died in 1764, Wilson in 1782, Gainsborough in -1788. The new generation of men of genius were born; some were growing -up, some in their cradles. A few had already shown signs. Wordsworth and -Coleridge had just put forth their "Lyrical Ballads" at Bristol, Burns -was famous in Scotland, Charles Lamb had written "Rosamund Gray," but -Scott the "Great Unknown," was as yet "unknown" only, though five years -older than Turner; Byron had not gone to Harrow, and the united ages of -Keats and Shelley did not amount to ten years; the only living poets of -deserved repute were Cowper and Crabbe. Della Crusca in poetry, and West -in art, were the bright particular stars of this gloomy period. The -landscape painters who were Academicians were such men as Sir William -Beechey, Sir Francis Bourgeois, Garvey, Farington, and Paul Sandby, and -among the Associates, Turner had no more important rival than Philip -Reinagle. Girtin and De Loutherbourg alone of all the then exhibitors -were anything like a match for him, and Girtin spoilt (till 1801) any -chance he might otherwise have had of Academic honours by not exhibiting -pictures in oil; he died in 1802, leaving Turner undisputed master of -the field. It is not greatly therefore to be wondered at that Turner was -elected Associate in 1799, and a full Academician in 1802. It was, -however, much to the credit of the Academy that they recognized his -talent so soon and welcomed him as an honour to their body, instead of -keeping him out from jealous motives. Turner never forgot what he owed -to the Academy, and whether it taught him nothing, as Mr. Ruskin says, -or a great deal, as Mr. Hamerton thinks, does not much matter--it taught -him all it knew, and gave him ungrudgingly every honour in its gift. But -its claims on his gratitude did not stop here, for it was his school in -more than one branch of learning; from its catalogues he derived the -subjects of most of his pictures, they directed him to the poems which -set flame to his imagination, and helped (unfortunately), with their -queer spelling and grammar and truncated quotations, to form what -literary style he had; but the greatest boon which the Academy afforded -was the opportunity of fame, a field for that ambition which was one of -the ruling powers of his nature. - -But his tour in the North in 1797 was before his days of Academic -rivalries and glories. He was only two-and-twenty, and seems to have -been actuated by no motive but to paint as well and truly as he could -the beautiful scenery through which he passed. The effect upon him of -the fells and vales of Yorkshire and Cumberland seems to have been much -the same as that of Scotland upon Landseer; it braced all his powers, -developed manhood of art, turned him from a toilsome student into a -triumphant master. Mr. Ruskin writes more eloquently than truly about -this first visit. "For the first time the silence of nature around him, -her freedom sealed to him, her glory opened to him. Peace at last, and -freedom at last, and loveliness at last; it is here then, among the -deserted vales--not among men; those pale, poverty-struck, or cruel -faces--that multitudinous marred humanity--are not the only things which -God has made." These are fine words, but what a picture, if true! Can -this young man who has travelled through all these many counties in -England and Wales, which we have already enumerated, never have known -the "silence of nature," or "freedom," or "peace," or "loveliness?" Can -his experience of mankind, of Dr. Monro, of Girtin, of Mr. Hardwick, of -Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Mr. Henderson, have left upon him such an -impression of the failure of God's handiwork in making men, that a -mountain seems to him in comparison as a revelation of unexpected -success? If Turner had been cooped in a garret of the foulest alley in -London since his birth, and had only escaped now and then from the -hardest drudgery to read the works of Mr. Carlyle, this picture might be -near the truth, but we doubt even then if it could escape the charge of -being over-coloured. - -Whether Turner had any special object in this journey to the North in -1797 is not clear, but it is at least probable that Girtin's success at -the Exhibition of this year with his drawings from Yorkshire and -Scotland may have influenced him, and that he may have already received -a commission from Dr. Whitaker to make drawings for the "Parish of -Whalley," published three years afterwards. He must at all events have -had much leisure from other employment in order to produce the important -pictures in oil and water-colour which he exhibited the next year. Of -these we only know _Morning on the Coniston Fells_ and _Buttermere -Lake_, now in the National Gallery. Another, whether water or oils we do -not know, was _Norham Castle on the Tweed--Summer's Morn_, the first of -several pictures of the same subject, which was a favourite of his for a -good reason. Many years after (probably about 1824 or 1825), when making -sketches for "Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of -Scotland, with descriptive illustrations by Sir Walter Scott, 1826," he -took off his hat to Norham Castle, and Cadell the publisher, who was -with him, expressed surprise. "Oh," was the reply, "I made a drawing or -painting of Norham several years since. It took; and from that day to -this I have had as much to do as my hands could execute." If the Castle -was treated in the same way in this first as in the subsequent pictures -of Norham, with the hill and ruin in the middle distance set against a -brightly illumined sky, the effect was sufficiently new and striking to -make the reputation of any painter in those days. It was an effect which -as far as we know had never been attempted before, this casting of the -whole shadow of hill and castle straight at the spectator, so that, in -spite of the bright reflections in the watery foreground, he seems to be -within it, and to see through the soft shadowy air, the solemn bulk of -mound and ruin, with their outlines blurred with light, grand and -indistinct against the burning sky. - -[Illustration: NORHAM CASTLE, ON THE TWEED.] - -The pictures of 1797-99 confirmed beyond any doubt that a great artist -had arisen, who was not only a painter but a poet--a poet, not so much -of the pathos of ruin, though so many of his pictures had ruins in them, -nor of the chequered fate of mankind, though there is something of the -"Fallacies of Hope" indicated in the quotations to his pictures--as of -the mystery and beauty of light, of the power of nature, her -inexhaustible variety and energy, her infinite complexity and fulness. -No one can look upon his splendid drawing of _Warkworth Castle_, -exhibited in 1799, and now at South Kensington, with its rich glow of -sunset and transparent shadow, and its wonderful masses of clouds, -without feeling that such work as this was a revelation in those days. -Sparing and not very pleasant in colour, it is yet in this respect a -great advance upon the former work of others and of his own; such colour -as there is penetrates the shade and is complete in harmony and tone, -while the sky has no blank space and is part of the picture, the -vivifying uniting power of the composition, with more interest and -feeling in one roll of its truly-studied masses of cloud-form than could -be found in the whole of any sky of his contemporaries. - -Altogether it is difficult to over-estimate the influence of this first -journey to the North upon Turner's mind and art, although he had almost -perfected his skill and shown unmistakable signs of genius before. But -these tours had other gifts not less important, though in a different -way, for his introductions to Dr. Whitaker, the local historian, to Mr. -Basire, the engraver, to Mr. Fawkes of Farnley, to Lord Harewood, and to -Sir John Leicester (afterwards (1826) Lord de Tabley), through Mr. -Lister-Parker of Browsholme Hall, his guardian, may all be said to have -resulted from this tour. - -Dr. Whitaker was the vicar of the parish of Whalley, and was writing a -book upon it in the manner of those days, giving descriptions of the -local antiquities, the churches, the ruins, the crosses, and an account -of the county families, with their pedigrees and engravings of their -ancestral seats. Not only each county, but almost every parish had such -a historian in those days, and although the spirit of these works is -archaeological rather than artistic, engaged with genealogy rather than -history, and with pride of family and county rather than of the people -and nation, they did a great deal of valuable work. Dr. Whitaker's work -is no exception to this rule, and he was in many ways a typical writer -of the kind, for he himself, though he "chose" the Church as his -profession, was a man of property and county importance. Valuable as -artists were in those days to the writers of these works, they were yet -considered of very secondary rank. They were indeed not called "artists" -but "draftsmen," and notwithstanding that Dr. Whitaker recognized -Turner's genius, he did not think it necessary in this "Parish of -Whalley" to mention in the preface the existence of such a person, -although the names of all the gentlemen of the county who had furnished -him with drawings or information are carefully acknowledged therein; but -nothing will show better the relations between the two men than an -extract from a letter from the reverend bookmaker to one of his county -friends, Mr. Wilson, of Clitheroe, dated Feb. 8th, 1800. - - "I have just had a ludicrous dispute to settle between Mr. Townley" - (Charles Townley, Esq. of Townley), "myself and Turner, the - draftsman. Mr. Townley it seems has found out an old and very bad - painting of Gawthorpe at Mr. Shuttleworth's house in London, as it - stood in the last century, with all its contemporary accompaniments - of clipped yews, parterres, &c.: this he insisted would be more - characteristic than Turner's own sketch, which he desired him to - lay aside, and copy the other. Turner, abhorring the landscape and - contemning the execution of it, refused to comply, and wrote to me - very tragically on the subject. Next arrived a letter from Mr. - Townley, recommending it to me to allow Turner to take his own way, - but while he wrote, his mind (which is not unfrequent) veered - about, and he concluded with desiring me to urge Turner to the - performance of his requisition, as from myself. I have, however, - attempted something of a compromise, which I fear will not succeed, - as Turner has all the irritability of youthful genius."[19] - -The "compromise" was handing over the task of drawing from the -objectionable picture to Mr. J. Basire the engraver. - -We should like to see Turner's "tragical" letter, and also his rejected -drawing; we should also like to have seen Dr. Whitaker's face if he had -been told that not many years after a book would have been published of -drawings by Turner, the draftsman, with "descriptions by the Rev. Dr. -Whitaker." - -Of Mr. Fawkes, of whose hall at Farnley Turner made a drawing for the -"Parish of Whalley," but with whom he is said by Thornbury to have -become acquainted about 1802, it may be said that he was one of Turner's -longest and staunchest friends. The number of drawings (still at -Farnley) which he made when visiting Mr. Fawkes between 1803 and 1820 -(including as they do studies of birds shot while he was there, of the -outhouses, porches, and gateways on the property, of the old places in -the vicinity, and of the rooms in Farnley Hall) attest the frequency of -his visits and his affection for the place and its occupants, while the -splendid series of drawings in England, Switzerland, Italy, and on the -Rhine, and the few precious oil pictures purchased by Mr. Fawkes, show -him to have been not only a true friend, but a warm and sympathizing -admirer of his genius. He indeed was a friend such as few are permitted -to know--one of a goodly number who in Turner's youth and manhood should -have made the world to him specially pleasant and sociable, frank and -healthy. If he could not or would not have it so, it was not from -insensibility, for his feeling was deep and his heart was sound. "He -could not make up his mind to visit Farnley after his old friend's -death," and he could not speak of the shore of the Wharfe (on which -Farnley Hall looks down) "but his voice faltered." Dayes wrote of him in -1804, "This man must be loved for his works, for his person is not -striking, nor his conversation brilliant." At Farnley, as at Mr. Wells' -cottage, Turner was made at home, but that he did not escape -good-humoured ridicule even at Farnley is plain from a caricature by Mr. -Fawkes, "which is thought by old friends to be very like. It shows us a -little Jewish-nosed man in an ill-cut brown tail coat, striped -waistcoat, and enormous frilled shirt, with feet and hands notably -small, sketching on a small piece of paper, held down almost level with -his waist."[20] It is evident that at this time, in spite of his clear -little blue eyes, and his small hands and feet, his appearance was not -one likely to prepossess women, or to inspire consideration among men, -and that one of the ills from which his painting room afforded a refuge -may have often been a wounded vanity. There can be nothing more -constantly galling to a sensitive man of genius than to feel that his -appearance does not inspire the respect he feels due to him. If he has -eloquence sufficient to command attention, this will not matter so much; -but if he has not even that (and Turner had not), his natural refuge is -solitude, his one absorbing occupation is his art, his only worldly -ambition is to show what is in him, and to compel respect to his genius -through his works. - -From the time that Turner became an Associate his struggles, if he can -ever be said to have had any, were over, and many changes took place in -his life and art. He ceased almost entirely from making topographical -drawings for the engravers, limiting his efforts to a heading to the -"Oxford Almanack," and a few drawings for "Britannia Depicta," "Mawman's -Tour," and some other books, until the commencement of the "Southern -Coast" in 1814. He had in effect emancipated himself from "hackwork," -and could turn his attention to more congenial and ambitious labour. The -"draftsman" had become the artist, and he showed the improvement in his -position by moving from Hand Court, Maiden Lane, to 64, Harley Street. - -In future his exhibited pictures show very few "castles" or "abbeys," -unless they are the seats of his distinguished patrons, Mr. Beckford of -Fonthill (for whom in 1799 he painted several views of that ill-fated -tower, which might have formed a subject for a canto of Turner's -"Fallacies of Hope"), Sir J. L. Leicester, and others. His other -castles, Carnarvon, 1800, Pembroke, 1801 and 1806, St. Donat's, 1801, -and Kilchurn, 1802, were all probably compositions in which local -fidelity was cared for little in comparison with effects of light and -pictorial beauty. How completely he disregarded local fact in the case -of Kilchurn has been very completely shown by Mr. Hamerton, and Mr. -Ruskin says, "Observe generally, Turner never, after this time, 1800, -drew from nature without _composing_. His lightest pencil sketch was the -plan of a picture, his completest study on the spot a part of one." - -Of this period, 1800-1810, Mr. Ruskin says, "His manner is stern, -reserved, quiet, grave in colour, forceful in hand. His mind tranquil; -fixed in physical study, on mountain subject; in moral study, on the -Mythology of Homer, and the Law of the Old Testament." We wish he had -given his reasons for this last astonishing statement. For those who -only know the working of Turner's mind through his pictures, it is -bewildering in the extreme, for in these there is no trace that he ever -at any time studied the Law of the Old Testament, and the only classical -pictures of this period, including the plates in the "Liber," were -_Jason_ and _Narcissus and Echo_. If we include the pictures of 1811, we -get one Homeric subject, _Chryses_, but that has nothing to do with -mythology. - -The evidence of Turner's pictures shows little tranquillity of mind -during this period, but, on the contrary, all the restlessness of -unsatisfied ambition. As he had already pitted himself against, and -beaten all the water-colourists, he now commenced a course of rivalry -against all the oil painters past and present, who came anywhere within -the reach of his art, which he endeavoured to extend far beyond -landscape limits. - -His first tilt was probably against De Loutherbourg in 1799 with his -_Battle of the Nile, at ten o'clock, when the l'Orient blew up, from the -station of the gunboats between the battery and Castle of Aboukir_; and -his _Fifth Plague of Egypt_ (1800), his _Army of the Medes destroyed in -the Desert by a Whirlwind_, and _The Tenth plague of AEgypt_ (1802), -probably owed more to De Loutherbourg's grand but theatrical pictures -and _Eidophusicon_, than to any meditation on the "Law of the Old -Testament."[21] Of Wilson, though dead, and neglected even when alive, -he continued in active rivalry as late as 1822, when he proposed to Mr. -J. Robinson, of the firm of Hurst and Robinson, to have four of his -pictures (three of which were to be painted expressly for the venture) -engraved in rivalry with Wilson and Woollett. "Whether we can in the -present day," he writes, "contend with such powerful antagonists as -Wilson and Woollett would be at least tried by size, security against -risk, and some remuneration for the time of painting. The pictures of -ultimate sale I shall be content with; to succeed would perhaps form -another epoch in the English school; and if we fall, we fall by -contending with giant strength." It is difficult to make out the meaning -of even this short extract from this illiterate composition, but it is -quite plain that the open rivalry with Wilson, which commenced about -1800, had not ceased in 1822. - -But he did not confine his rivalries to English painters, or to the -field of landscape art. His long rivalry with Claude commenced with the -"Liber Studiorum" in 1807, that with Vandevelde earlier. His famous -_Shipwreck_ (painted 1805) now in the National Gallery, his perhaps -finer _Wreck of the Minotaur_, painted for Lord Yarborough, and his -_Fishing Boats in a Squall_, painted for the Marquis of Stafford, and -now in the Ellesmere Gallery, besides a fine sea-piece, painted for the -Earl of Egremont, are examples of the latter. The Ellesmere picture was -painted in direct rivalry with one of Vandevelde's on the same subject, -and both hang together in the Ellesmere Gallery. Of them John Burnet -wrote:-- - - "The figures (in the Vandevelde) are made out and coloured without - reference to the situation they are in; the sea is beautifully - painted, and the foamy tops of the waves blown off by the wind with - great observation of nature; nevertheless, the whole work looks - little and defined compared with its great competitor. Turner's - boat is advancing towards the spectator with all sails set, and a - similarity in both pictures is that the sails are prevented from - being too cutting and harsh from their melting into and being - softened by other sails of a similar shape and colour. A small boat - is brought in contact in Turner's, stowing away fish, which forms - the principal light, if it may be so called, for there is no strong - light in the picture; the lights are of a subdued grey tone even in - the yeasty waves; the shape of the mass of light on the water is - broad, and of a beautiful form; in Vandervelde's (_sic_) picture it - is spotty and devoid of union with the vessel. In Turner we see an - obscure outlined form in everything, for though the warm tints of - the masses of clouds serve to break down and diffuse the colour of - the sails, their form is disturbed by the handling of his brush. In - comparing the two pictures as works of art, Vandervelde's must - have the preference as far as priority of composition is concerned; - but Turner has had the boldness to tell the same story, clothing it - with all the grandeur and sublimity of natural representation. The - light and shade is very excellent; the mass of dark sky, brought in - contact with the sail of the advancing boat, is broad in the - extreme." - -[Illustration: THE SHIPWRECK.] - -Of his other rivalries at this period, those with the Poussins and -Titian are the most notable. The one produced the famous, and, in spite -of its poorness of colour and conventionality, the magnificent, _Goddess -of Discord choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of -Hesperides_, exhibited at the British Institution in 1806, and now in -the National Gallery; the other, the _Venus and Adonis_, still more -wonderful by reason of the beauty of its colour, its composition, and -the audacity of the attempt. This was bought by Mr. Munro of Novar, and -was lately sold at Christie's, on the dispersion of the Novar -collection, for L1,942. It is, as far as we know, the only picture in -which he attempted with success to draw the human form on a large scale, -and is certainly one of the best efforts of the English school to rival -the "old masters;" the figures, the dogs, and the glorious vine-clad -bower in which they are set are all worthy of the subject, and make a -picture which reminds one of Titian, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Etty in -about equal proportions. - -It is strange that the great sea-pieces we have mentioned were not -exhibited (except perhaps that at Petworth), but the occupation of his -time by these magnificent works of emulation accounts for his doing so -little for the engravers in these years, for they were all probably, -except the _Wreck of the Minotaur_, painted before 1807, when he turned -his attention to his greatest, and perhaps most successful work of the -kind, the "Liber Studiorum." And here we may remark, that emulation with -Turner, though it may have been a mark of jealousy, was always a token -of respect. Feelings crossed each other in Turner's mind as colours did -in his works; it is often difficult to know whether his feeling is to be -called noble or base, and the same complexity may be noticed in his -"artistic" motives. When imitating other masters he brought his -knowledge of nature to bear strongly on his work to make it more -natural; when painting a natural scene, he employed all his traditional -study to make it more "artistic." - -By this time, however, he had learnt nearly all that was to be learnt -from art, ancient or modern, in the landscape way, but it was different -with nature. That was a book which he could not exhaust, though he was -never tired of turning over fresh pages. It was almost his only book, -and he began a new chapter about 1801 or 1802, when he made his first -tour on the Continent. Previous to this he must have paid a visit to -Scotland, for the Exhibition of 1802 contained three Scotch views, one -of which was the _Kilchurn_ already mentioned. In 1803 he exhibited no -less than six foreign subjects, of which one was the _Calais Pier_, now -in the National Gallery, another the _Festival upon the opening of the -Vintage of Macon_, in the possession of Lord Yarborough; the others were -_Bonneville, Savoy, with Mont Blanc_; _Chateaux de Michael, Bonneville, -Savoy_; _St. Hugh denouncing vengeance on the Shepherd of Courmayeur in -the Valley of d'Aoust_; and _Glacier and Source of the Arveron going up -to the Mer de Glace, in the Valley of the Chamouni_.[22] After this -burst of foreign subjects he did not exhibit another scene from abroad -for twelve years, except the _Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen_ (1806), -and content this time with simpler, safer, English, a _View of the -Castle of St. Michael, near Bonneville, Savoy_ (1812). During the next -few years the most important picture, and one of the most beautiful he -ever painted, was the famous _Sun Rising through vapour: Fishermen -cleaning and selling Fish_, exchanged with Sir J. F. Leicester for _The -Shipwreck_, and now in the National Gallery, together with _The -Shipwreck_ and _Spithead: Boat's Crew recovering an Anchor_, another -fine picture of the Vandevelde class. - -In all these years, during which he kept up this constant rivalry with -so many artists, living and dead--and we have not exhausted the list of -them--he was continuing his unresting severe study of nature. For many -more years this was to continue, this double artistic life, the strife -for fame by grand pictures, of which emulation was the motive, the -patient development of his knowledge and power by the close study of -nature. Few who watched his pictures from year to year could have -guessed what a store of beautiful studies of the Alps, about Chamouni, -Grenoble, and the Grande Chartreuse he had lying in his portfolios; few -could imagine that with materials for landscapes of a truthfulness and -an original power never before known, he should prefer to paint pictures -in rivalry with the fames of dead men. Possibly he thought that it was -the nearest way to fame to show the public that he could beat -Vandevelde, Poussin, and the rest of them on their own ground; possibly -he may have been diffident of his power to dispense with their aid in -composition. However this may have been, he chose to ground his fame so. -Even in his "Liber," he in three years gave only three foreign subjects -out of twenty plates: _Basle_, _Mount St. Gothard_, and the _Lake of -Thun_. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -THE LIBER STUDIORUM--HIS POETRY AND DRAGONS. - - -In 1807 Turner commenced his most serious rivalry, "The Liber -Studiorum," a rivalry which not only exceeded in force but differed in -quality from his others. Previously he had pitted his skill only against -that of the artist rivalled, adopting the style of his rival, but in -these engravings he pitted not only his skill, but also his style and -range of art against Claude's. There are indeed only a few of the -"Liber" prints which are in Claude's style, and most of the best are in -his own. Lovely as are _Woman Playing Tambourine_, and _Hindoo -Devotions_, they seem to us far lower in value than _Mount St. Gothard_ -and _Hind Head Hill_. There is the usual mixture of feeling in the -motives with which Turner undertook this work, the same dependence on -others for the starting impulse which we see throughout his art-life, -the same originality, industry, and confusion of thought in carrying out -his design. The idea of the "Liber" did not originate with him, but with -his friend Mr. W. F. Wells. The idea was noble in so far as it attempted -to extend the bounds of landscape art beyond previous limits, to break -down the Claude worship which blinded the eyes of the public to the -merit that existed in contemporary work, and prevented them, and artists -also, from looking to nature as the source of landscape art. It is -scarcely too much to say that in those days Claude stood between nature -and the artist, and that he was as much the standard of landscape art as -Pheidias of sculpture. To try to clear away this barrier of progress, as -Hogarth had striven years before to abolish the "black masters," was no -ignoble effort, and it was done in a nobler spirit than that of Hogarth, -for he did not attempt to depreciate his rival. Yet the nobility of the -attempt was not unmixed, for if he did not disparage Claude, he -attempted to make himself famous at Claude's expense. He did not indeed -say, as Hogarth would have done, "Claude is bad, I am good;" but he -said, "Claude is good, but I am better." His own experience even from -very early days should have told him that, despite the cant of -connoisseurs and the strength of old traditions, no purely original work -of his had passed unnoticed, and that the truest and noblest way of -educating the public taste was by following the bent of his original -genius, and leaving the public to draw their own comparisons. - -[Illustration: THE DEVIL'S BRIDGE. - -_From the "Liber Studiorum."_] - -Mr. Wells's daughter states that not only did the "Liber Studiorum" -entirely owe its existence to her father's persuasion, but the divisions -into "Pastoral," "Elegant Pastoral," "Marine," &c., were also suggested -by him. Turner determined to print and publish and sell the "Liber" -himself, but to employ an engraver. His first choice fell on "Mr. F. C. -Lewis, the best aquatint engraver of the day, who at the very time was -at work on facsimiles of Claude's drawings."[23] With him he soon -quarrelled. The terms were, that Turner was to etch and Lewis to -aquatint at five guineas a plate. The first plate, _Bridge and Goats_, -was finished and accepted by Turner, though not published till April, -1812; but the second plate Turner gave Lewis the option of etching as -well as aquatinting, and he etched it accordingly, and sent a proof to -Turner, raising his charge from five guineas to eight, in consideration -of the extra work. Turner praised it, but declined to have the plate -engraved, on the ground that Lewis had raised his charges. This ended -Mr. Lewis's connection with the "Liber," and Turner next employed Mr. -Charles Turner, the mezzotint engraver, but he had to pay him eight -guineas a plate. Charles Turner agreed to engrave fifty plates at this -price, but after he had finished twenty, he wished to raise his charge -to ten guineas, which led to a quarrel. With reference to these quarrels -of Turner with his engravers, Mr. Thornbury says, "The painter who had -never had quarter given to him when he was struggling, now in his turn, -I grieve to say, gave no quarter," and "inflexibly exacting as he was, -Turner could not understand how an engraver who had contracted to do -fifty engravings should try to get off his bargain at the twenty-first." -This, like most of Thornbury's statements, is utterly untrustworthy. -There is no evidence to show that a hard bargain was ever driven with -him when he was struggling, there is no word of any dispute with -engravers till he began to employ them himself, and as to his "not being -able to understand" how any man should endeavour to obtain more than the -price contracted for, it was exactly what he tried to do himself, when -afterwards employed by Cooke. - -[Illustration: THE ALPS AT DAYBREAK. - -_From Rogers's "Poems."_] - -The fact is that in all business arrangements Turner's worse nature, the -mean, grasping spirit of the little tradesman, was brought into -prominence. In the case of Lewis he was evidently in the wrong, in the -case of Charles Turner he was only hard; but in all business -transactions he was as a rule ungenerous, and sometimes dishonest. His -action towards the public with regard to the "Liber" can be called by no -other name. His prices at first were fifteen shillings for prints, and -twenty-five shillings for proofs. When the plates got worn (and -mezzotint plates are subject to rapid deterioration in the light parts), -Turner used to alter them, sometimes changing the effect greatly, as in -the _Mer de Glace_, where he transformed the smooth, snow-covered -glacier into spiky ridges of ice, or in the _AEsacus_ and _Hesperie_, -where the effect of sunbeams through the wood was effaced, and the -direction in which the head of Hesperie was looking was changed, and the -face afterwards concealed. The changes were not always for the worse; -the very wear of the plate in some cases, as in that of the _Calm_, -improved the effect, and what we have called his confusion of thought, -and what Thornbury has called his "distorted logic," may have led him to -believe that he was not wrong in selling as he did these worn and -altered plates as proofs. A kind casuistry may lend us a word less -disagreeable than dishonest to such transactions, but when we know that -he habitually from the first made no distinction between proofs and -prints--that he sold the same things under different names at different -prices--every plea breaks down, and we are forced to the conclusion that -when he thought he could cheat safely "the pack of geese,"[24] as he -thought the public, he did so. - -Nor can we acquit Turner of unfairness in issuing the "Liber Studiorum" -in competition with the French painter's "Liber Veritatis," a book -well-known to the public and to him, as the third edition of its plates, -engraved by Earlom, was just issued, when the "Liber Studiorum" was -begun. He must have known what the public did not probably know--that -Claude's rough sketches were mere memoranda of the effects of his -pictures taken by him to identify them, and never meant for publication; -whereas his were carefully-finished compositions, into which he threw -his whole power. Not only was the publication unfair as regards Claude, -but it was misleading to the public as regards himself. The title, -"Liber Studiorum," applies only to some of the prints. A few of the -poorer plates, especially the architectural ones, and such simple -designs as the _Hedging and Ditching_, might properly perhaps have been -called studies, but even upon these he bestowed a care and a finish that -would entitle them to be called pictures, monochrome as they are. - -The want of a well-considered plan, and the capricious way in which they -were published, contributed to the ill-success of the work; and though -we are accustomed to look upon its failure as a severe judgment on the -taste of the time, we are not at all sure that it would have succeeded -if published in the present day, unless Mr. Ruskin had written the -advertisement. - - "The meaning of the entire book," according to that eloquent - writer, "was symbolized in the frontispiece,[25] which he engraved - with his own hand:[26] Tyre at Sunset, with the Rape of Europa, - indicating the symbolism of the decay of Europe by that of Tyre, - its beauty passing away into terror and judgment (Europa being the - Mother of Minos and Rhadamanthus)." - -Turner's advertisement thus describes the intention of the work:-- - - "Intended as an illustration of Landscape Composition, classed as - follows: Historical, Mountainous, Pastoral, Marine, and - Architectural." - -We think Turner's description the more correct, and that the intention -of his frontispiece was to give all the "classes" in one composition, -and we are extremely doubtful whether Turner knew or cared anything -about either Minos or Rhadamanthus. - -The most obvious intention of the work was to show his own power, and -there never was, and perhaps never will be again, such an exhibition of -genius in the same direction. No rhetoric can say for it as much as it -says for itself in those ninety plates, twenty of which were never -published. If he did not exhaust art or nature, he may be fairly said to -have exhausted all that was then known of landscape art, and to have -gone further than any one else in the interpretation of nature. -Notwithstanding, the merit of the plates is very unequal, some, as -_Solway Moss_ and the _Little Devil's Bridge_, being more valuable as -works of art than many of his large pictures; others, especially the -architectural subjects, the _Interior of a Church_, and _Pembury Mill_, -being almost devoid of interest. As to any one thought running through -the series, we can see none, except desire to show the whole range of -his power; and as to sentiment, it seems to us to be thoroughly -impersonal, impartial, and artistic. He turns on the pastoral or -historical stop as easily as if he were playing the organ, and his only -concern with his figures is that they shall perform their parts -adequately, which is as much as some of them do. - -We have spoken of the book as an attack on Claude, and of the -"intention" of the work, but we are not sure that we are not using too -definite ideas to express the variety of impulses in Turner's mind that -tended to the commencement of the "Liber." We have seen that the first -notion of it, and its divisions, were suggested by Mr. Wells, and the -plates are nothing more nor less than a selection from his sketches and -pictures, arranged under these heads. His early topographical drawings -and studies in England provided him with the architectural and pastoral -subjects, his studies of Claude and the Poussins and Wilson, with the -elegant pastoral, Vandevelde and nature with the marine, and his one or -two visits to the Continent with the mountainous. The frontispiece, the -first attempt to give a coherent signification to the whole, was not -published till 1812, and it was not till 1816 that the advertisement to -which we have called attention appeared when, after four years' -intermission, the issue of the "Liber" was recommenced; even then it is -only described as "an illustration of Landscape Composition;" and it is -quite probable that the desire to make money, to display his art, to -rival Claude, and to educate the public, contributed to the production -of the work, without any very vivid consciousness on his part as to his -motives of action. It has, like all Turner's work, the characteristics -of a gradual growth rather than of the carrying out of a well-defined -conception. - -[Illustration: FALLS IN VALOMBRE. - -_From Rogers's "Jacqueline."_] - -There is one way in which the title of the book may be considered as -appropriate, and that is to take "studia" to mean "studies," in the -usual general sense of the word, for it is an index to his whole course -of study (including books and excepting colour), down to the time of -its publication. With the exception of his Venetian pictures and his -later extravagances, it may be said to be an epitome of his art without -colour. Poets and painters may change their style, and may develop their -powers in after-life in an unexpected manner; but after the age at which -Turner had arrived when he commenced to publish the "Liber," viz., -thirty-two, there are few, if any, mental germs which have not at least -sprouted. Turner, though he never left off acquiring knowledge, or -developing his style, is no exception to this rule, and this makes the -"Liber" valuable, not only as a collection of works of art, but as a -nearly complete summary of the great artist's work and mind. Amongst his -more obvious claims to the first place among landscape artists, are his -power of rendering atmospherical effects, and the structure and growth -of things. He not only knew how a tree looked, but he showed how it -grew. Others may have drawn foliage with more habitual fidelity, but -none ever drew trunks and branches with such knowledge of their inner -life; if you look at the trunks in the drawing of _Hornby Castle_ for -instance (which we mention because it is easily seen at the South -Kensington Museum), and compare them with any others in the same room, -the superior indication of texture of bark, of truly varied swelling, of -consistency, and all essential differences between living wood and other -things, cannot fail to be apparent to the least observant. Although the -trees of the "Liber" are not of equal merit (Mr. Ruskin says the firs -are not good), this quality may be observed in many of the plates. -Others have drawn the appearance of clouds, but Turner knew how they -formed. Others have drawn rocks, but he could give their structure, -consistency, and quality of surface, with a few deft lines and a wash; -others could hide things in a mist, but he could reveal things through -mist. Others could make something like a rainbow, but he, almost alone, -and without colour, could show it standing out, a bow of light arrested -by vapour in mid-air, not flat upon a mountain, or printed on a cloud. -If all his power over atmospheric effects and all his knowledge of -structure are not contained in the "Liber," there is sufficient proof of -them scattered through its plates to do as much justice to them as black -and white will allow. If we want to know the result of his studies of -architecture we see it here also, little knowledge or care of buildings -for their own sakes, but perfect sense of their value pictorially for -breaking of lights and casting of shadows; for contrast with the -undefined beauty of natural forms, and for masses in composition; for -the sentiment that ruins lend, and for the names which they give to -pictures. If we seek the books from which his imagination took fire, we -have the Bible and Ovid, the first of small, the latter of great and -almost solitary power. Jason daring the huge glittering serpent, Syrinx -fleeing from Pan, Cephalus and Procris, AEsacus and Hesperie, Glaucus and -Scylla, Narcissus and Echo; if we want to know the artists he most -admired and imitated, or the places to which he had been, we shall find -easily nearly all the former, and sufficient of the latter to show the -wide range of his travel. In a word, one who has carefully studied the -"Liber" had indeed little to learn of the range and power of Turner's -art and mind, except his colour and his fatalism. - -The first quotation from the "Fallacies of Hope," nevertheless, was -published in the catalogue of 1812, as the motto of his picture of -_Snowstorm--Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps_, and it is -probable that the ill-success of the "Liber" contributed not a little to -the gloomy habit of mind which breathes through the fragments of this -unfinished composition. These were the lines appended to that grand -picture:-- - - "Craft, treachery, and fraud--Salassian force - Hung on the fainting rear! then Plunder seiz'd - The victor and the captive--Saguntum's spoil, - Alike became their prey; still the chief advanc'd, - Look'd on the sun with hope;--low, broad, and wan. - While the fierce archer of the downward year - Stains Italy's blanch'd barrier with storms. - In vain each pass, ensanguin'd deep with dead, - Or rocky fragments, wide destruction roll'd. - Still on Campania's fertile plains--he thought - But the loud breeze sob'd, Capua's joys beware." - -This is nearer to poetry than Turner ever got again. The picture is -well-known, and was suggested partly by a storm observed at Farnley, -partly by a picture by J. Cozens,[27] of the same subject, from which -Turner is reported to have said that he learnt more than from any other. - -Turner's love of poetry was shown from the first possible moment. The -first pictures to which he appended poetical mottoes were those of 1798, -but he could not have used them before, as quotations were never -published in the Academy Catalogue prior to that year. When his first -original verses were published we cannot tell, but there is little doubt -that the lines to his _Apollo and the Python_, in the Catalogue of -1811, were of his own fabrication. They are not from Callimachus, as -asserted in the catalogue, but a jumble of the descriptions of two of -Ovid's dragons, the Python, and Cadmus's tremendous worm, and are just -the peculiar mixture of Ovid, Milton, Thomson, Pope, and the quotations -in Royal Academy Catalogues, out of which he formed his poetical style. -The Turneresque style of poetry is in fact formed very much in the same -way as the Turneresque style of landscape, but the result is not so -satisfactory. It required a totally different kind of brain machinery -from that which Turner possessed. He may have had a good ear for the -music of tones, for he used to play the flute, but he had none for the -music of words. Coleridge was an instance of how distinct these two -faculties are, as he, whose verses exceed almost all other English -verses in beauty of sound, could not tell one note of music from -another. Turner lived in a world of light and colour, and beautiful -changeful indefinite forms; his thought had visions in place of words; -his mind communed with itself in sights and symbols; the procession of -his ideas was a panorama. So, where a poet would jot down lines and -thoughts, he would print off the impressions on his mental retina; his -true poetry was drawn not written--the poetry of instant act, not of -laboured thought. How sensible he himself was of the difference, is -shown in his clumsy lines:-- - - "Perception, reasoning, _action's slow ally_, - Thoughts that in the mind awakened lie-- - Kindly expand the monumental stone - And as the ... continue power." - -This is Mr. Thornbury's reading of part of the longest piece of poetry -by Turner yet published, which he has printed without any care, making -greater nonsense than even Turner ever wrote, which is saying a great -deal. "Awakened" for instance is probably "unwakened," and "monumental -stone" is probably "mental store" with another word at the commencement, -the word "power" is possibly "pours," as the next line goes on, "a -steady current, nor with headlong force," &c. We quite agree with Mr. W. -M. Rossetti, that these extracts are not made the best of, though it is -doubtful whether the result of more careful editing would be worth the -trouble. - -There is no picture which better shows the greatness of Turner's power -of pictorial imagination than the _Apollo and Python_. We have said that -nature was almost Turner's only book. The only written book which there -is evidence that he really studied--read through, probably, again and -again--is Ovid's "Metamorphoses." That he was fond of poetry there is no -doubt, but the sparks that lit his imagination for nearly all his best -classical compositions came from this book. This is the only poem which -he really _illustrated_, and an edition of Ovid, with engravings from -all the scenes which he drew from this source, would make one of the -best illustrated books in the world. It would contain _Jason_, -_Narcissus and Echo_, _Mercury and Herse_, _Apollo and Python_, _Apuleia -in search of Apuleius_ (which is really the story of Appulus, who was -turned into a wild olive-tree, Apuleia being a characteristic mistake of -Turner's for Apulia. He is sometimes called "a shepherd of Apulia," in -notes and translations, and Turner evidently took the name of the -country for the name of a woman), _Apollo and the Sibyl_, _The Vision of -Medea_, _The Golden Bough_, _Mercury and Argus_, _Pluto and Proserpine_, -_Glaucus and Scylla_, _Pan and Syrinx_, _Ulysses and Polyphemus_. Of -all these pictures and designs we have no doubt that, though he referred -to other poets in the catalogues and got the idea of some part of the -composition from other poets, the original germs are to be found in no -other book than Ovid's "Metamorphoses." We have not exhausted the list -of his debts to this poet, for it is probable that the first ideas of -his Carthage pictures, and all that deal with the history of AEneas, came -from the same source, assisted by references to Vergil. - -[Illustration: ALLEGORY. - -_From Rogers's "Voyage of Columbus."_] - -Of all these, excepting the _Ulysses and Polyphemus_, there is none -greater than the _Apollo and Python_. Although the figure of Apollo is -not satisfactory, it gives an adequate impression of the small size of -the boy-god, the radiating glory of his presence, the keen enjoyment of -his struggle with the monster, and the triumph of "mind over matter." Of -the landscape and the dragon it is difficult to exaggerate the grandeur -of the conception; the rocks and trees convulsed with the dying -struggles of the gigantic worm, the agony of the brute himself, -expressed in the distorted jaws and the twisted tail, the awful dark -pool of blood below, the seams in its terrible riven side, studded with -a thousand little shafts from Apollo's bow, and the fragments of rock -flying in the air above the griffin-like head and noisome steam of -breath, make a picture without any rival of its kind in ancient or -modern art. It is, as we have said, taken from two dragons of Ovid. -Turner seems to have been of the same opinion about books as about -nature, and if he wanted anything to complete his picture, went on a few -pages and found it. The idea of the god and his bow and arrows is taken -from the account of the combat in the first book of the "Metamorphoses," -and the idea of the huge dragon with his "poyson-paunch," comes from -the same place; but the ruin of the woodland, the flying stones, and the -earth blackened with the dragon's gore, come from the description of the -combat of Cadmus and his dragon in the third. The larger stone is too -huge indeed to be that which Cadmus flung, it has been either, as Mr. -Ruskin thinks, lashed into the air by his tail, or, as we think, torn -off the rock and vomited into the air; but there is the tree, which the -"serpent's weight" did make to bend, and which was "grieved his body of -the serpent's tail thus scourged for to be," there is "the stinking -breath that goth out from his black and hellish mouth," there is the -blood which "did die the green grass black," an idea not in Callimachus -nor in Ovid's description of the Python, but which occurs both in the -lines appended to the picture and in Ovid's description of Cadmus's -serpent. If there were any doubt left as to the influence of this dragon -on the picture, there is still another piece of evidence, viz., -something very like a javelin, Cadmus's weapon, which is sticking in the -dragon, and has reappeared after being painted out, so that it is -possible that Turner meant the hero of the picture, in the first -instance, to be Cadmus and not Apollo. - -The two great dragons of Turner, that which guards the Garden of the -Hesperides, and the Python, are specially interesting as the greatest -efforts made by Turner's imagination in the creation of living forms, -excepting, perhaps, the cloud figure of Polyphemus. They are perhaps the -only monsters of the kind created by an artist's fancy, which are -credible even for a moment. They will not stand analysis any more than -any other painters' monsters, but you can enjoy the pictures without -being disturbed by palpable impossibilities. The distance at which we -see Ladon helps the illusion; with his fiery eyes and smoking jaws, his -spiny back and terrible tail, no one could wish for a more probable -reptile. The only objection that has been made to him is that his jaws -are too thin and brittle, while Mr. Buskin is extravagant in his praise. -It is wonderful to him-- - - "This anticipation, by Turner, of the grandest reaches of recent - inquiry into the form of the dragons of the old earth ... this - saurian of Turner's is very nearly an exact counterpart of the - model of the iguanodon, now the guardian of the Hesperian Garden of - the Crystal Palace, wings only excepted, which are, here, almost - accurately, those of the pterodactyle. The instinctive grasp which - a healthy imagination takes of _possible_ truth, even in its - wildest flights, was never more marvellously demonstrated." - -Mr. Ruskin then goes on to call attention to-- - - "The mighty articulations of his body, rolling in great iron waves, - a cataract of coiling strength and crashing armour, down amongst - the mountain rents. Fancy him moving, and the roaring of the ground - under his rings; the grinding down of the rocks by his toothed - whorls; the skeleton glacier of him in thunderous march, and the - ashes of the hills rising round him like smoke, and encompassing - him like a curtain." - -The description, fine as it is, seems to us to destroy all belief in -Turner's dragon. The wings of a pterodactyle would never lift the body -of an iguanodon, and Turner's dragon could not even walk, his -comparatively puny body could never even move his miles of tail, let -alone lift them. It is far better to leave him where he is; the fact -that he is at the top of that rock is sufficient evidence that he got -there somehow; how he got there, and how he will get down again, are -questions which we had better not ask if we wish to keep our faith in -him. Nor can anything be more confused than the notion of a "saurian" -with "coiling strength and crashing armour," making the ground "roar -under his rings." This might be well enough of a fabulous monster made -of iron, but quite inappropriate when applied to a saurian, like the -alligator, for instance, with its soft, slow movements, and its bony, -skin-padded, noiseless armour. - -The Python will stand still less an attempt to define in words what -Turner has purposely left mysterious. Not even Mr. Ruskin, we fancy, -would dare to pull him out straight from amongst his rocks and trees, -and put his griffin's head and talons on to that marvellous body, half -worm, half caterpillar. But he is grand, and believable as he is. More -simple than either of the other monsters is the single wave of Jason's -dragon in his den. This is a mere magnified coil of a simple snake; but -its size, its glitter, its incompleteness, the terrible energy of it, -its peculiar serpentine wiriness, that elasticity combined with -stiffness which is so horrible to see and to feel, make it more awful -even than the Python. - -We do not believe in Turner's power to evolve even as imperfect a -saurian as his Ladon out of his imagination, however "healthy;" and have -no doubt that he had seen the fossil remains of an ichthyosaurus. We -have the testimony of Mrs. Wheeler that he was much interested in -geology,[28] and think it more than probable that the thinness of the -monster's jaws and, we may add, the emptiness of his eye socket are due -to his drawing them from a fossil, which his knowledge was not great -enough to pad with flesh. - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -HARLEY STREET, DEVONSHIRE, HAMMERSMITH, AND TWICKENHAM. - -1800 TO 1820. - - -During the first ten years of this period we have very little -intelligence respecting Turner's life. He moved from Hand Court, Maiden -Lane, to 64, Harley Street, in 1799 or 1800, and it is not improbable -that he bought the house, as No. 64 and the house next to it in Harley -Street, and the house in Queen Anne Street, all belonged to him at the -time of his death. There was communication between the three houses at -the back, although the corner house fronting both streets did not belong -to him. In 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1804, his address in the Royal Academy -Catalogue is 75, Norton Street, Portland Road; but in 1804 it is again -64, Harley Street. In 1808[29] it is 64, Harley Street, and West End, -Upper Mall, Hammersmith; and this double address is given till 1811, -when it is West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, only. In and after 1812 it -is always Queen Anne Street West, with the addition, from 1814 to 1826, -of his house at Twickenham, called Solus Lodge in 1814, and Sandycombe -Lodge from 1815 to 1826. It is remarkable that in the Catalogue of the -British Institution for 1814 his address is given as Harley Street, -Cavendish Square, showing that he had not then given up his house in -this street, and this is good evidence that it belonged to him. - -The war which broke out with Bonaparte in 1803,[30] and was not finally -closed till 1815, prevented him from pursuing his studies of Continental -scenery, and he seems during this time to have devoted himself -principally to the composition of his great rival pictures, and the -"Liber Studiorum," about which we have already written: he stayed -occasionally with his friends, Mr. Fawkes at Farnley, where he studied -the storm for _Hannibal Crossing the Alps_, and Lord Egremont at -Petworth, where he painted _Apuleia and Apuleius_. Almost the only -glimpse that we get of his house in Harley Street, though it is very -doubtful to what period it belongs, was sent to Mr. Thornbury by Mr. -Rose of Jersey:-- - - "Two ladies, Mrs. R---- and Mrs. H---- once paid him a visit in - Harley Street, an extremely rare (in fact, if not the only) - occasion of such an occurrence, for it must be known he was not - fond of parties prying, as he fancied, into the secrets of his - _menage_. On sending in their names, after having ascertained that - he was at home, they were politely requested to walk in, and were - shown into a large sitting room without a fire. This was in the - depth of winter; and lying about in various places were several - cats without tails. In a short time our talented friend made his - appearance, asking the ladies if they felt cold. The youngest - replied in the negative; her companion, more curious, wished she - had stated otherwise, as she hoped they might have been shown into - his sanctum or studio. After a little conversation he offered them - wine and biscuits, which they partook of for the novelty, such an - event being almost unprecedented in his house. One of the ladies - bestowing some notice upon the cats, he was induced to remark that - he had seven, and that they came from the Isle of Man."[31] - -Whatever is the proper date of this story, it is to be feared that he -had good reason for not wishing persons to pry into the secrets of his -_menage_. We ourselves have no wish to pry into those secrets; but the -fact that Turner had for the greater part of his life a home of which he -was ashamed, is sufficient to explain a great deal of his want of -hospitality, his churlishness to visitors, and his confirmed habits of -secrecy and seclusion. - -There is no doubt that he habitually lived with a mistress. Hannah -Danby, who entered his service, a girl of sixteen, in the year 1801, and -was his housekeeper in Queen Anne Street at his death, is generally -considered to have been one; and Sophia Caroline Booth, with whom he -spent his last years in an obscure lodging in Chelsea, another. There -are many who have lived more immoral lives, and have done more harm to -others by their immorality; but he chose a kind of illegal connection -which was particularly destructive to himself. He made his home the -scene of his irregularities, and, by entering into ultimate relations -with uneducated women, cut himself off from healthy social influences -which would have given daily employment to his naturally warm heart, and -prevented him from growing into a selfish, solitary man. Not to be able -to enjoy habitually the society of pure educated women, not to be able -to welcome your friend to your hearth, could not have been good for a -man's character, or his art, or his intellect. - -His uninterrupted privacy possibly enabled him to produce more, and to -develop his genius farther in one direction; but we could have well -spared many of his pictures for a few works graced with a wider culture -and a healthier sentiment. He could paint, and paint, perhaps, better -for his isolation-- - - "The light that never was on sea or land, - The consecration and the Poet's dream." - -But it would have been better for him, and, we think, for his art also, -if he could have said:-- - - "Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone - Housed in a dream, at distance from the kind! - Such happiness, wherever it be known, - Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind."[32] - -It was not from any scorn of the conventions of society that he -disregarded them, for there is no trace of any feeling of this sort in -his pictures or his reported conversations, and in his will he required -that the "Poor and Decayed Male Artists," for whom he intended to found -a charitable institution ("Turner's Gift"), should be "of _lawful -issue_." One reason why he never married may have been his shyness and -consciousness of his want of address and personal attraction. Mr. Cyrus -Redding, from whom we have one of the brightest and best glimpses of -Turner as a man, says:-- - - "He was aware that he could not hope to gain credit in the world - out of his profession. I believe that his own ordinary person was, - in his clear-mindedness, somewhat considered in estimating his - career in life. He was once at a party where there were several - beautiful women. One of them struck him much with her charms and - captivating appearance; and he said to a friend, in a moment of - unguarded admiration, 'If she would marry me, I would give her a - hundred thousand.'" - -This, and the increasing absorption in his art of all of himself that -could be so absorbed; his desire to economize both his time and his -money; his innate hatred of interference with his liberty; his aversion -from undertaking any obligation, the consequences of which he could not -calculate--all tended to keep him from matrimony, and to make him -content with the most unromantic amours. - -That he in 1811 or thereabouts could be hospitable and a good companion -away from home, is shown by Mr. Redding in his pleasant volume, from -which we have just quoted. He met Turner on what appears to have been -his first visit to the county to which his family belonged--Devonshire. -He met him first, Mr. Redding thinks, at the house of Mr. Collier (the -father of Sir Robert Collier), an eminent merchant of Plymouth, and -accompanied him on many excursions. On one of these Turner actually gave -a picnic "in excellent taste" at a seat on the summit of the hill, -overlooking the Sound and Cawsand Bay. - - "Cold meats, shell fish, and good wines were provided on that - delightful and unrivalled spot. Our host was agreeable, but terse, - blunt, and almost epigrammatic at times. Never given to waste his - words, nor remarkably choice in their arrangement, they were always - in their right place, and admirably effective."[33] - -This last sentence sounds somewhat paradoxical, but for that reason is -probably all the more accurately descriptive of Turner's art in words. -Further on, when defending the great painter, we get a portrait of him -as a "plain figure" with "somewhat bandy legs," and "dingy complexion." -On another excursion, Redding spent a night at a small country inn with -Turner, about three miles from Tavistock, as the artist had a great -desire to see the country round at sunrise. The rest of the party, Mr. -Collier and two friends, who had spent the day with them on the shores -of the Tamar with a scanty supply of provisions, preferred to pass the -night at Tavistock. - - "Turner was content with bread and cheese and beer, tolerably good, - for dinner and supper in one. I contrived to feast somewhat less - simply on bacon and eggs, through an afterthought inspiration. In - the little sanded room we conversed by the light of an attenuated - candle, and some aid from the moon, until nearly midnight, when - Turner laid his head upon the table, and was soon sound asleep. I - placed two or three chairs in a line, and followed his example at - full recumbency. In this way three or four hours' rest were (_sic_) - obtained, and we were both fresh enough to go out, as soon as the - sun was up, to explore the scenery in the neighbourhood, and get a - humble breakfast, before our friends rejoined us from Tavistock. It - was in that early morning Turner made a sketch of the picture - (_Crossing the Brook_)to which I have alluded, and which he invited - me to his gallery to see." - -Another of these excursions was to Burr or Borough Island, in Bigbury -Bay, "To eat hot lobsters fresh from the sea." - - "The morning was squally, and the sea rolled boisterously into the - Sound. As we ran out, the sea continued to rise, and off Stake's - point became stormy. Our Dutch boat rode bravely over the furrows, - which in that low part of the Channel roll grandly in unbroken - ridges from the Atlantic." - -[Illustration: IVY BRIDGE. - -_Water-colour in National Gallery._] - -Two of the party were ill; one, an officer in the army, wanted to throw -himself overboard, and they "were obliged to keep him down among the -rusty iron ballast, with a spar across him." - - "Turner was all the while quiet, watching the troubled scene, and - it was not unworthy his notice. The island, the solitary hut upon - it, the bay in the bight of which it lay, and the long gloomy Bolt - Head to sea-ward, against which the waves broke with fury, seemed - to absorb the entire notice of the artist, who scarcely spoke a - syllable. While the fish were getting ready, Turner mounted nearly - to the highest point of the island rock, _and seemed writing rather - than drawing_. The wind was almost too violent for either purpose; - what he particularly noted he did not say." - -These reminiscences of Mr. Redding contain the most graphic picture of -Turner we possess. His carelessness of comfort, his devotion to his art, -his power of continuous observation in despite of tumult and discomfort, -his love of the sun and the sea, his habit of sketching from a high -point of view, his ability to take "pictorial memoranda" in a violent -wind, are all striking and essential peculiarities. - -It is interesting to learn also from Mr. Redding, that "early in the -morning before the rest were up, Turner and myself walked to Dodbrooke, -hard by the town, to see the house that had belonged to Dr. Walcot -(_sic_), Peter Pindar, and where he was born. Walcot sold it, and there -had been a house erected there since; of this the artist took a sketch." -Turner probably appreciated Peter's "Advice to Landscape Painters." - -One piece of Turner's conversation is also worthy of record, if only on -account of its rarity. - - "He was looking at a seventy-four gun ship, which lay in the shadow - under Saltash. The ship seemed one dark mass. - - "'I told you that would be the effect,' said Turner, referring to - some previous conversation. 'Now, as you observe, it is all shade.' - - "'Yes, I perceive it; and yet the ports are there.' - - "'We can only take what is visible--no matter what may be there. - There are people in the ship; we don't see them through the - planks.'" - -This reads like a speech of Dr. Johnson. - -We have another account of this same visit to Devonshire from Sir -Charles Eastlake, which bears testimony to the hospitality which he -received. Miss Pearce, an aunt of Sir Charles, appears to have been his -hostess, and her cottage at Calstock the centre of his excursions. A -landscape painter, Mr. Ambrose Johns, of great merit, according to Sir -Charles, fitted up a small portable painting box, which was of much use -to Turner in affording him ready appliances for sketching in oil. - - "Turner seemed pleased when the rapidity with which these sketches - were done was talked of; for departing from his habitual reserve in - the instance of his pencil sketches, he made no difficulty in - 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 inquiring what had become of these sketches, - Turner replied that they were worthless, in consequence, as he - supposed, of some defects 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."[34] - -Mr. Johns's devotion was not rewarded till long afterwards, when the -great painter sent him a small oil sketch in a letter. Mr. Redding -obtained at the time a rough sketch, and these seem to have been the -only returns he made for the kindness that was shown to him at Plymouth, -though many years afterwards he spoke to Mr. Redding "of the reception -he met with on this tour, in a strain that exhibited his possession of a -mind not unsusceptible or forgetful of kindness." - -The date of this tour is given by Mr. Redding as probably 1811, and by -Eastlake 1813 or 1814. The principal pictorial results of it were -_Crossing the Brook_ (exhibited in 1815), and various drawings for -Cooke's _Southern Coast_, which commenced in 1814. It seems probable -that his engagement on this work determined his visit to Cornwall and -Devonshire, but this is uncertain, as is also whether he paid more than -one visit to the locality. - -This tour is also interesting from its being the only occasion on which -Turner is known to have visited his kinsfolk. We are enabled to state on -the authority of one of his family that he went to Barnstaple and called -upon his relations there, and a gentleman, late of the Chancery Bar, has -kindly supplied us with the following extract of a memorandum made by -him in 1853, from facts sworn to in suits instituted to administer -Turner's estate. - - "Price Turner, an uncle of the painter's, having some idea of - educating his son, Thomas Price Turner (now (1853) living at North - Street, in the parish of St. Kerrian, Exeter, Professor of Music) - as a painter, T. P. T. made, at the request of William Turner, the - great artist's father, two drawings as specimens of his ability, - one a view of the city of Exeter, taken from the south side, and - the other a view of Rougemont Castle, and sent them by Wm. Turner - to his son. Shortly after, he (T. P. T.) received a number of water - colour drawings, sketches, &c. Some of these were afterwards sent - for again, one of which, a water colour view of Redcliffe Church, - Bristol, Thomas Price Turner previously copied, which copy, - together with the residue of Turner's drawings, are still in his - cousin's possession. - - "J. M. W. Turner called at Price Turner's house at Exeter about - forty years ago (about 1813), and, saying that he called at his - father's request, had a conversation with Price Turner and his son - and daughter. Thomas Price Turner went to London in 1834 to attend - the Royal Musical Festival in commemoration of Handel, in which he - was engaged as a chorus singer. He called three times on his - cousin, and the third time saw him, but though he (J. M. W. T.) - immediately recognized him, the painter gave him a cool reception, - never so much as asking him to sit down." - -It is probable that Turner's father removed with him to Harley Street in -1800. The powder tax of 1795 is said to have destroyed his trade, and he -lived with his son till he died in 1830. He used to strain his son's -canvasses and varnish his pictures, "which made Turner say that his -father began and finished his pictures for him." As early as 1809, -Turner "was in the habit of privately exhibiting such pictures as he did -not sell, and the small accumulation he had at Harley Street in 1809 was -already dignified with the name of the "Turner Gallery."[35] This -gallery Turner's father attended to, showing in visitors &c., and when -they stayed at Twickenham he came up to town every morning to open it. -Thornbury says that the cost of this weighed upon his spirits until he -made friends with a market-gardener, who for a glass of gin a-day, -brought him up in his cart on the top of the vegetables. This is said to -have been after Turner removed from Harley Street, and was very well off -if not rich, for he had built his house in Queen Anne Street and his -lodge at Twickenham,[36] both of which belonged to him, as well as the -land at Twickenham, and (probably) the house in Harley Street. Turner's -father made great exertions to add to his son's estate at Sandycombe, by -running out little earthworks in the road and then fencing them round. -At one time there was a regular row of these fortifications, which used -to be called "Turner's Cribs." One day, however, they were ruthlessly -swept away by some local authority. If, however, both father and son -were very "saving" and eccentric in their ways, they were devoted to -one another from the beginning to the end, to an extent very touching -and beautiful, however strange in its manifestation. - -Of Turner's life at West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, we have only the -following glimpse in a communication to Thornbury by "a friend." - - "The garden, which ran down to the river, terminated in a - summer-house; and here, out in the open air, were painted some of - his best pictures. It was there that my father, who then resided at - Kew, became first acquainted with him; and expressing his surprise - that Turner could paint under such circumstances, he remarked that - lights and room were absurdities, and that a picture could be - painted anywhere. His eyes were remarkably strong. He would throw - down his water-colour drawings on the floor of the summer-house, - requesting my father not to touch them, as he could see them there, - and they would be drying at the same time." - -It may have been when at Hammersmith that he became acquainted with Mr. -Trimmer, for in a letter to Mr. Wyatt of Oxford respecting two pictures -of that city, which is dated "West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, Feb. 4, -1810," he says, "Pray tell me likewise of a gentleman of the name of -Trimmer, who has written to you to be a subscriber for the print." This -gentleman was the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, Vicar of Heston, who was one -of Turner's best and most intimate friends till his death. It is said -that he first went to Hammersmith to be near De Loutherbourg, and it is -probable that one of his reasons for building on his free--hold at -Twickenham was to be nearer Mr. Trimmer. De Loutherbourg died in 1812. - -Sandycombe Lodge, first called Solus Lodge, is on the road from -Twickenham to Isleworth, and is built on low lying ground and damp. The -original structure has been added to, but the additions being built of -brick, it is easy to see how it looked in Turner's time--a small -semi-Italian villa covered with plaster and decorated with iron -balustrades and steps. It is within walking distance (4 miles) of -Heston. We are able by the kindness of Mr. F. E. Trimmer, the youngest -son of Turner's friend, to correct some false impressions conveyed by -Thornbury's garbled account of what he was told by the eldest son. - -The Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, the son of the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer, -and father of the Rev. Henry Syer Trimmer, who gave Thornbury his -information, was about the same age as Turner, and very much interested -in art. As an amateur painter he attained considerable skill, having a -wonderful faculty for catching the manner of other artists. His great -knowledge of pictures, and his continual experiments in the way of -mediums, colours, and devices for obtaining effects, made his -acquaintance specially interesting and valuable to Turner, and Turner's -to him. No better proof of his ability can be found than the two -following stories:-- - -There is a picture at Heston before which Turner would frequently stand -studying. It is a sea-piece with the sun behind a mist, and with a -golden hazy effect not unlike Turner's famous _Sun rising in a Mist_, -but the sea washes up to the frame. One day Turner said to Mr. Trimmer, -"I like that picture; there's a good deal in it. Where did you get it?" -(Or words to this effect.) "I painted it," was the reply; upon which the -artist turned away without a word, and never looked at the picture -again. - -The true story of the picture, supposed to be by Sir Joshua Reynolds, to -which Mr. Trimmer added a background, is this.[37] He purchased it in an -unfinished condition of a dealer in Holborn, and finished it himself, -and it remained in his possession till his death, when his son (Mr. F. -E. Trimmer), knowing its history, kept it out of the sale at Christie's -of his father's fine collection, and sold it, among other less valuable -and genuine productions, at Heston. The dealer who bought it (for L6) -thought he had made a great catch, and inquired of Mr. Trimmer's son the -history of the picture, which he considered a splendid Sir Joshua, -speaking especially of the background as being a proof of its -authenticity. When Mr. Trimmer told him that his father had bought it in -his own shop and had finished it himself, he would not believe it for a -long time. - -Of the other stories of Turner's connection with Heston, and of his -power to assist others in the composition of their pictures, the -following is perhaps the most interesting:--[38] - -Once when Howard (R.A.) was staying at the vicarage, painting a portrait -of Mr. Trimmer's second son, the Rev. Barrington James Trimmer, Turner -was always finding fault with the work in progress. It was a full-size -and full-length portrait of a boy of three years old, dressed in a white -frock and red morocco shoes. One day Howard, annoyed at Turner's -frequent objections, told him that he had better do it himself, on which -Turner said, "This is what I should do," and taking up the cat he -wrapped its body in his red pocket handkerchief, and put it under the -boy's arm. The effect of this, as may still be seen in the picture at -the house of Mr. Trimmer's son at Heston, was excellent. The cat gave an -interest to the figure which it wanted, the red morocco shoes were no -longer isolated patches of bright colour at the bottom of the picture, -the blank expanse of white frock was varied and lightened up by the red -handkerchief and pussy's tabby face, and the work, which was on the -brink of failure, was a decided success. Parts of the cat, handkerchief, -and landscape were put in by Turner. - -Sketching with oils on a large canvas in a boat, driving out on little -sketching excursions in his gig with his ill-tempered nag Crop Ear, said -to have been immortalized in his picture of the _Frosty Morning_ (which -was, however, painted before he went to Twickenham), fishing for trout -in the Old Brent, or for roach in the Thames, with Mr. Trimmer's sons, -digging his pond in his garden and planting it round with weeping -willows and alders, the picture of Turner's life at Twickenham is a -pleasant and healthy one. At Heston he drew his _Interior of a Church_ -for the "Liber," and actually gave away two of his drawings to Mrs. -Trimmer, one of a Gainsborough, which they had seen together on an -excursion to Osterley House, and one of a woman gathering watercresses, -whom they had met on their way. But these gifts were asked for by the -lady, and Turner would not let them go without making _replicas_. He -once stood with a long rod two whole days in a pouring rain under an -umbrella fishing in a small pond in the vicarage garden, without even a -nibble. - -In connection with the Trimmers we get other instances of his rare and -bare hospitality, which showed that he never altered his manner of -living after he left Maiden Lane. We must refer the reader to Mr. -Thornbury's life for the remainder of these varied, interesting, and on -the whole pleasant reminiscences. - -Space, however, we must spare for a letter, very incorrectly given by -Thornbury, the only record of his second attachment, the object of -which was the sister of the Rev. H. Scott Trimmer, who was at that time -being courted by her future husband:-- - - "_Tuesday. Aug. 1. 1815._ - - "QUEEN ANNE ST. - - "MY DEAR SIR, - - "I lament that all hope of the pleasure of seeing you or getting to - Heston--must for the present wholly vanish. My father told me on - Saturday last when I was as usual compelled to return to town the - same day, that you and Mrs. Trimmer would leave Heston for Suffolk - as tomorrow Wednesday, in the first place, I am glad to hear that - her health is so far established as to be equal to the journey, and - believe me your utmost hope, for her benefitting by the sea air - being fully realized will give me great pleasure to hear, and the - earlier the better. - - "After next Tuesday--if you have a moments time to spare, a line - will reach me at Farnley Hall, near Otley Yorkshire, and for some - time, as Mr. Fawkes talks of keeping me in the north by a trip to - the Lakes &c. until November therefore I suspect I am not to see - Sandycombe. Sandycombe sounds just now in my ears as an act of - folly, when I reflect how little I have been able to be there this - year, and less chance (perhaps) for the next in looking forward to - a Continental excursion, & poor Daddy seems as much plagued with - weeds as I am with disapointments, that if Miss ---- would but wave - bashfulness, or--in other words--make an offer instead of expecting - one--the same might change occupiers--but not to teaze you further, - allow with most sincere respects to Mrs. Trimmer and family, to - consider myself - - "Your most truly (or sincerely) obliged - - "J. M. TURNER." - -But for the assurance of the present Mr. Trimmer, of Heston, that this -attachment of Turner to Miss Trimmer was undoubted, and that this letter -has always been considered in the family as a declaration thereof, we -should have thought that the offer he wanted was one for Sandycombe -Lodge and not for his hand. It is, however, past doubt that Turner was -violently smitten, and though forty years old, felt it much. - -The above letter was the only one known to have been written by Turner -to his friend the Vicar of Heston, and it is quite untrue, as asserted -by Thornbury, that the Vicar's letters were burnt in sackfuls by his -son. His large correspondence was patiently gone through--a task which -took some years. Thornbury was probably thinking of the destruction of -the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer's correspondence by her daughter, in which -it is true that sackfuls of interesting letters perished. - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -ITALY AND FRANCE. - -1820 TO 1840. - - -The life of Turner the man, that is, what we know of it, during these -twenty years, may be written almost in a page--the history of his art -might be made to fill many volumes. During this period he exhibited -nearly eighty pictures at the Royal Academy, and about five hundred -engravings were published from his drawings. If he had been famous -before, he was something else, if not something more than famous now; he -was "the fashion." It was on this ground that Sir Walter Scott, who -would have preferred Thomson of Duddingstone to illustrate his -'Provincial Antiquities' (published in 1826), agreed to the employment -of Turner, who afterwards (in 1834) furnished a beautiful series of -sixty-five vignettes for Cadell's edition of Sir Walter's prose and -poetical works. - -In 1819 Turner paid his first visit to Italy, which had a marked -influence on his style. From this time forward his works become -remarkable for their colour. Down to this time he had painted -principally in browns, blues, and greys, employing red and yellow very -sparingly, but he had been gradually warming his scale almost from the -beginning. From the wash of sepia and Prussian blue, he had slowly -proceeded in the direction of golden and reddish brown, and had produced -both drawings and pictures with wonderful effects of mist and sunlight, -but he had scarcely gone beyond the sober colouring of Vandevelde and -Ruysdael till he began his great pictures in rivalry with Claude. In -them may be seen perhaps the dawn of the new power in his art. In the -Exhibition of 1815 were two prophecies of his new style, in which he was -to transcend all former efforts in the painting of distance and in -colour. These were _Crossing the Brook_, with its magical distance, and -_Dido building Carthage_, with its blazing sky and brilliant feathery -clouds. The first is the purest and most beautiful of all his oil -pictures of the loveliness of English scenery, the most simple in its -motive, the most tranquil in its sentiment, the perfect expression of -his enjoyment of the exquisite scenery in the neighbourhood of Plymouth. -The latter with all its faults was the finest of the kind he ever -painted, and his greatest effect in the way of colour before his visit -to Italy. In his other Carthage picture of this period, _The Decline_ -(exhibited 1817), the "brown demon," as Mr. Ruskin calls it, was in full -force, and his pictures of _Dido and AEneas_ (1814), _The Temple of -Jupiter_ (1817), and _Apuleia and Apuleius_, are cold and heavy in -comparison. Indeed, from 1815 to 1823 his power, judged by his exhibited -pictures, seemed to be flagging. Whether his second disappointment in -love had anything to do with this we have no means of judging, but if it -disturbed for a time his power of painting for fame, it certainly had no -ill effect either as to the quantity or quality of his water-colours -for the engravers. - -His most worthy and beautiful work of these years is to be found not in -his oil pictures but in his drawings for Dr. Whitaker's 'History of -Richmondshire' (published 1823) and the 'Rivers of England' (1824). Both -series were engraved in line in a manner worthy of the artist. One of -the former, the _Hornby Castle_, a little faded perhaps, but still -exquisite in its harmonies of blue and amber, is to be seen at South -Kensington. Three more were lately exhibited by Mr. Ruskin--_Heysham -Village_, _Egglestone Abbey_, and _Richmond_. Of this series Mr. Ruskin -says, "The foliage is rich and marvellous in composition, the effects of -mist more varied and true" (than in the _Hakewill_ drawings), "the rock -and hill drawing insuperable, the skies exquisite in complex form." The -engravings probably owed much to Turner's own supervision, and many of -them, such as _Egglestone Abbey_, by T. Higham, and _Wycliffe_, by John -Pye, Middiman's _Moss Dale Fall_, and Radcliffe's _Hornby Castle_, were -perfect translations of the originals, showing an advance in the art of -engraving as great as that which Turner had made in water-colour -drawing. Except in the heightened scale of colour there is little in -this series to show the influence of Italy, their temper is that of -_Crossing the Brook_, and the foliage and scenery that of England. Nor -do we find anything but England in the 'Rivers.' Nothing can be more -purely English than the exquisite drawing of _Totnes on the Dart_ (of -which we give a woodcut). The original is one of the treasures of the -National Gallery, and is marvellous for the minuteness of its finish and -the breadth and truth of its effect. The tiny group of poplars in the -middle distance are painted with such dexterity that the impression of -multitudinous leafage is perfectly conveyed, and the stillness of clear -smooth water filled with innumerable variegated reflections, the -beautiful distance with castle, church, and town, and the group of gulls -in the foreground, make a picture of placid beauty in which there is no -straining for effect, no mannerism, nothing to remind you of the artist. -It is only in the touches of red in the fore of the river (touches -unaccounted for by anything in the drawing) that you discern him at -last, and find that you are looking not at nature but "a Turner." If you -are inclined to be angry with these touches, cover them with the hand -and find out how much of the charm is lost. - -[Illustration: TOTNES ON THE DART. - -_From "Rivers of England."_] - -After the 'Rivers of England,' Turner produced work more magnificent in -colour, more transcendent in imagination, indeed _the_ work which -singles him out individually from all landscape artists, in which the -essences of the material world were revealed in a manner which was not -only unrealized but unconceived before; but for perfect balance of -power, for the mirroring of nature as it appears to ninety-nine out of -every hundred, for fidelity of colour of both sky and earth, and form -(especially of trees), for carefulness and accuracy of drawing, for work -that neither startles you by its eccentricity nor puzzles you as to its -meaning, which satisfies without cloying, and leaves no doubt as to the -truth of its illusion, there is none to compare with these drawings of -his of England after his first visit to Italy--and especially (though -perhaps it is because we know them best that we say so) the drawings for -the 'Rivers of England.' We are certain at least of this, that no one -has a right to form an opinion about Turner's power generally, either to -go into ecstasies over or to deride his later work, till he has seen -some of these matchless drawings. They form the true centre of his -artistic life, the point at which his desire for the simple truth and -the imperious demands of his imagination were most nearly balanced. - -In 1821 and 1824 Turner exhibited no pictures at the Royal Academy, and -it would have been no loss to his fame if his pictures of 1820 and 1822, -_Rome, from the Vatican_, and _What you will_, had never left his -studio; but in 1823 he astonished the world with the first of those -magnificent dreams of landscape loveliness with which his name will -always be specially associated;--_The Say of Baiae with Apollo and the -Sibyl_ (1823). The three supreme works of this class, _The Bay of Baiae_, -_Caligula's Palace and Bridge_ (1831), and _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_ -(1832), are too well known to need description, and have been too much -written about to need much comment. They were the realization of his -impressions of Italy, with its sunny skies, its stone-pines, its ruins, -its luxuriance of vegetation, its heritage of romance. How little the -names given to these pictures really influence their effect, is shown by -the frequency with which one of them is confused with another. What -verses of what poet, what episode of history may have been in the -artist's mind is of little consequence, when the thought is expressed in -the same terms of infinite sunny distance, crumbling ruin and towering -tree. The artist may have meant to embody the whole of Byron's mind in -the _Childe Harold_, the history of Italy in _Caligula's Palace and -Bridge_, the folly of life in _Apollo and the Sibyl_, but it does not -matter now, the things are "Turners," neither more nor less; we doubt -very much whether Turner cared greatly for the particular stories -attached to many of his pictures. Some of them remind us of a title of -a picture in the Academy of 1808, _A Temple and Portico, with the -drowning of Aristobulus, vide Josephus, book 15, chap. 3_. In some it -was no doubt his ardent desire to proclaim his thoughts on history and -fate, but the result is much the same, for the medium in which he -attempted to convey them was that least suited for his purpose. It was, -however, his only means of expression, and there is something very sad -in the idea of a mind struggling in vain to give its most serious -thoughts didactic force. If these thoughts had been profound, and the -mind that of a prophet, the failure would have been tragical. The -language employed was the highest of its kind, but it was as inadequate -for its purpose as music. It has, however, like fine music, the power of -starting vibrations of sentiment full of suggestion, giving birth to -endless dreams of beauty and pleasure, of sadness and foreboding, -according to the personality and humour of those who are sensitive to -its charm. - -In 1825 were published his first illustrations to a modern poet--Byron; -he contributed some more to the editions of 1833 and 1834, most of them -being views of places which he had never seen, and therefore -compositions from the sketches of others, like his drawings for -Hakewill's "Picturesque Tour of Italy" and Finden's "Illustrations of -the Bible." No doubt the experience of his youth in improving the -sketches of amateurs and the liberty which such work gave to his -imagination, made it easy and congenial to him. These drawings show the -variety of his artistic power and the perfection of his technical skill. -The _Hakewill_ series is marvellous for minute accuracy (being taken -from camera sketches) and for beautiful tree drawing, and the Bible -series for imagination. They are, however, of less interest in a -biography than those which were based upon his own impressions of the -scenes depicted, such as his illustrations to Rogers and Scott. - -[Illustration] - -In 1825 he exhibited only one picture, _Harbour of Dieppe_, and in 1826, -the year when the publication of the "Southern Coast" terminated, three, -of one of which there is told a story of unselfish generosity, which -deserves special record. The picture was called _Cologne--the arrival of -a Packet-boat--Evening_. Of this Mr. Hamerton writes: "There were such -unity and serenity in the work, and such a glow of light and colour, -that it seemed like a window opened upon the land of the ideal, where -the harmonies of things are more perfect than they have ever been in the -common world." The picture was hung between two of Sir Thomas Lawrence's -portraits, and Turner covered its glowing glory with a wash of -lampblack, so as not to spoil their effect. "Poor Lawrence was so -unhappy," he said. "It will all wash off after the Exhibition." As Mr. -Hamerton truly observes, "It is not as if Turner had been indifferent to -fame." - -There are many stories of apparently contrary action on Turner's part, -namely, of heightening the colour of his pictures to "kill" those of his -neighbours at the Academy, but they do not spoil this story. During -those merry "varnishing days" which Turner enjoyed so much, attempts to -outcolour one another were ordinary jokes--give-and-take sallies of -skill, made in good humour. No one entered into such contests with more -zest than Turner, and he was not always the victor. This story seems to -us to prove that when Turner saw that any one was really hurt, his -tenderness was greater than his spirit of emulation and jest. - -Leslie tells the best of the "counter stories." - - "In 1832, when Constable exhibited his _Opening of Waterloo - Bridge_,[39] it was placed in the School of Painting--one of the - small rooms at Somerset House. A sea piece,[40] by Turner, was next - to it--a grey picture, beautiful and true, but with no positive - colour in any part of it--Constable's _Waterloo_ seemed as if - painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times - into the room while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the - decorations and flags of the City barges. Turner stood behind him, - looking from the _Waterloo_ to his own picture, and at last brought - his palette from the great room, where he was touching another - picture, and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than - a shilling, on his grey sea, went away without saying a word. The - intensity of the red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of the - picture, caused even the vermilion and lake of Constable to look - weak. I came into the room just as Turner left it. 'He has been - here,' said Constable, 'and fired a gun.'" - - On the opposite wall was a picture, by Jones, of Shadrach, Meshach, - and Abednego in the furnace.[41] "A coal," said Cooper, "has - bounced across the room from Jones's picture, and set fire to - Turner's sea." The great man did not come into the room for a day - and a half; and then in the last moments that were allowed for - painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his picture, and - shaped it into a buoy."[42] - -This daub of red lead was rather defensive than offensive, and there is -no story of Turner which shows any malice in his nature. To his brother -artists he was always friendly and just; he never spoke in their -disparagement, and often helped young artists with a kind word or a -practical suggestion. Even Constable--between whom and Turner not much -love was lost, according to Thornbury--he helped on one occasion by -striking in a ripple in the foreground of his picture--the "something" -just wanted to make the composition satisfactory. We think, then, that -we may enjoy the beautiful story of self-sacrifice for Lawrence's sake, -without any disagreeable reflection that it is spoilt by others showing -a contrary spirit towards his brother artists. - -The year 1826 was his last at Sandycombe. As he had taken it for the -sake of his father, so he gave it up, for "Dad" was always working in -the garden and catching cold. He took this step much to his own sorrow, -we believe, and much to our and his loss. Without the pleasant and -wholesome neighbourhood of the Trimmers, with no home but the gloomy, -dirty, disreputable Queen Anne Street, he became more solitary, more -self-absorbed, or absorbed in his art (much the same thing with him), -and lived only to follow unrestrained wherever his wayward genius led -him, and to amass money for which he could find no use. How he still -loved to grasp it, however, and how unscrupulous he was in doing so, is -painfully shown in his dispute with Cooke about this time (1827), which -prevented a proposed continuation of the "Southern Coast." Mr. Cooke's -letter relating to it, though long, is too important to omit, and, -though it may be said to be _ex parte_, carries sad conviction of its -truth:-- - - "_January 1, 1827._ - - "DEAR SIR, - - "I cannot help regretting that you persist in demanding twenty-five - sets of India proofs before the letters of the continuation of the - work of the 'Coast,' besides being paid for the drawings. It is - like a film before your eyes, to prevent your obtaining upwards of - two thousand pounds in a commission for drawings for that work. - - "Upon mature reflection you must see I have done all in my power to - satisfy you of the total impossibility of acquiescing in such a - demand; it would be unjust both to my subscribers and to myself. - - "The 'Coast' being my own original plan, which cost me some anxiety - before I could bring it to maturity, and an immense expense before - I applied to you, when I gave a commission for drawings to upwards - of L400, _at my own entire risk_, in which the shareholders were - not willing to take any part, I did all I could to persuade you to - have one share, and which I did from a firm conviction that it - would afford some remuneration for your exertions on the drawings, - in addition to the amount of the contract. The share was, as it - were, forced upon you by myself, with the best feelings in the - world; and was, as you well know, repeatedly refused, under the - idea that there was a possibility of losing money by it. You cannot - deny the result: a constant dividend of profit has been made to you - at various times, and will be so for some time to come. - - "On Saturday last, to my utter astonishment, you declared in my - print-rooms, before three persons, who distinctly heard it, as - follows: 'I will have my terms, or I will oppose the work by doing - another "Coast!"' These were the words you used, and every one must - allow them to be a _threat_. - - "And this morning (Monday), you show me a note of my own - handwriting, with these words (or words to this immediate effect): - 'The drawings for the future "Coast" shall be paid twelve guineas - and a half each.' - - "Now, in the name of common honesty, how can you apply the above - note to any drawings for the first division of the work called the - 'Southern Coast,' and tell me I owe you two guineas on each of - those drawings? Did you not agree to make the whole of the 'South - Coast' drawings at L7 10_s._ each? and did I not continue to pay - you that sum for the first four numbers? When a meeting of the - partners took place, to take into consideration the great exertions - that myself and my brother had made on the plates, to testify their - entire satisfaction, and considering the difficulties I had placed - myself in by such an agreement as I had made (dictated by my - enthusiasm for the welfare of a work which had been planned and - executed with so much zeal, and of my being paid the small sum only - of twenty-five guineas for each plate, including the loan of the - drawings, for which I received no return or consideration whatever - on the part of the shareholders), they unanimously (excepting on - your part) and very liberally increased the price of each plate to - L40; and I agreed, on my part, to pay you ten guineas for each - drawing after the fourth number. And have I not kept this - agreement? Yes; you have received from me, and from Messrs. Arch on - my account, the whole sum so agreed upon, and for which you have - given me and them receipts. The work has now been finished upwards - of six months, when you show me a note of my own handwriting, and - which was written to you in reply to a part of your letter, where - you say, 'Do you imagine I shall go to John O'Groat's House for the - same sum I receive for the Southern part?' Is this _fair_ conduct - between man and man--to apply the note (so explicit in itself) to - the former work, and to endeavour to make me believe I still owe - you two guineas and a-half on each drawing? Why, let me ask you, - should I promise you such a sum? What possible motive could I have - in heaping gold into your pockets, when you have always taken such - especial care of your interests, even in the case of _Neptune's - Trident_, which I can declare you _presented_ to me; and, in the - spirit of _this_ understanding, I presented it again to Mrs. Cooke. - You may recollect afterwards charging me two guineas for the loan - of it, and requesting me at the same time to return it to you, - which has been done. - - "The ungracious remarks I experienced this morning at your house, - where I pointed out to you the meaning of my former note--that it - referred to the future part of the work, and not to the 'Southern - Coast'--were such as to convince me that you maintain a mistaken - and most unaccountable idea of profit and advantage in the new work - of the 'Coast,' and that no estimate or calculation will convince - you to the contrary. - - "Ask yourself if Hakewill's 'Italy,' 'Scottish Scenery,' or - 'Yorkshire' works have either of them succeeded in the return of - the capital laid out on them. - - "These works have had in them as much of your individual talent as - the 'Southern Coast,' being modelled on the principle of it; and - although they have answered your purpose, by the commissions for - drawings, yet there is considerable doubt remaining whether the - shareholders and proprietors will ever be reinstated in the money - laid out on them. So much for the profit of works. I assure you I - must turn over an entirely new leaf to make them ever return their - expenses. - - "To conclude, I regret exceedingly the time I have bestowed in - endeavouring to convince you in a calm and patient manner of a - number of calculations made for _your_ satisfaction; and I have met - in return such hostile treatment that I am positively disgusted at - the mere thought of the trouble I have given myself on such a - useless occasion. - - "I remain, - - "Your obedient servant, - - "W. B. COOKE." - -When we realize that this was the same man that closed his connection -with Mr. Lewis, because he would not both etch and aquatint the plates -of the Liber for the same terms as those agreed upon for aquatinting -alone, we are able to understand why he was characterized as a "great -Jew," in a letter of introduction, which he brought from a publisher in -London to one in Yorkshire, when he went to that county to illustrate -Dr. Whitaker's _History of Richmondshire_. Mrs. Whitaker, who was his -hostess at the time, hearing of this took the phrase literally, and, -says Mr. Hamerton, "treated him as an Israelite indeed, possibly with -reference to church attendance and the consumption of ham." - -In 1827 was published the first part of his largest series of prints, -the "England and Wales," which were engraved with matchless skill by -that trained band of engravers who brought, with the artist's -assistance, the art of engraving landscapes in line to a point never -before attained. The history of Turner and his engravers has yet to be -fully written; the number of them from first to last is extraordinary, -probably nearly one hundred. Of these, twenty, and nearly all the best, -were employed on this work--Goodall, Wallis, Willmore, W. Miller, -Brandard, Radcliffe, Jeavons, W. R. Smith, and others. Never before was -so great an artist surrounded by such a skilled body of interpreters in -black and white. The drawings were unequal in merit, but nearly all of -them wonderful for power of colour and daring effect, with ever -lessening regard for local accuracy. The artist threw aside all -traditions and conventions, and proclaimed himself as "Turner," the -great composer of chromatic harmonies in forms of sea and sky, hills and -plains, sunshine and storm, towns and shipping, castles and cathedrals. -He could not do this without sacrificing much of truth, and much of -what was essential truth in a work whose aim was professedly -topographical. Imaginative art of all kinds has a code analogous to, but -not identical with, the moral code: beauty takes the seat of virtue and -harmony of truth, and when the work is purely imaginative, there is no -conflict between fancy and fact which can make the strictest shake his -head. But when known facts are dealt with by the imagination, the -conflict arises immediately, and it would scarcely be possible to find a -case in which it was more obvious than in Turner's "England and Wales," -in which he made the familiar scenes of his own country conform to the -authoritative conception of his pictorial fancy. Whether he was right or -wrong in raising the cliffs of England to Alpine dignity, in saturating -her verdant fields with yellow sun, in exaggerating this, in ignoring -that, has been argued often, and will be argued over and over again; but -all art is a compromise, and the precise justice of the compromise will -ever be a matter of opinion. Art _v._ Nature is a cause which will last -longer than any Chancery suit. Even artists cannot agree as to the -amount of licence which it is proper to take, but they are all conscious -that they at least keep on the right side; one thing only, all, or -nearly all, are agreed upon, and that is that licence must be taken, or -art becomes handicraft. About Turner almost the only thing which can be -said with certainty is that he stretched his liberty to the extreme -limits. - -Yet to the pictorial code of morals he was the most faithful of artists, -he almost always reached beauty, his harmonies were almost always -perfect, and he strove after his own peculiar generalization of fact, -and his own peculiar extract of truth with the greatest ardour. This -extract was his impression of a place, made up generally (at least in -his foreign scenes) of two or three sketches taken from different points -of view, and he was very careful to study not only the principal -features of the country, but the costume and employment of the -inhabitants, and the description of local vehicle, on wheels or keel. -From these studies would arise the conception of one scene, combining -all that his mind retained as essential--a growth which, however false -it might appear when compared with the actual facts of the place from -one point of view, contained nothing but what had a germ of truth, and -of local truth. That this applies to all his drawings we do not say, but -we are confident that it does to most. Many of his drawings for the -"England and Wales" were probably taken from sketches that had lain in -his portfolios for years, and were dressed up by him when wanted, with -such accessories of storm and rainbow as occurred to his fancy, or to -his memory and feelings as connected with the spot. There is, we think, -no doubt that Turner strove to be conscientious; but his conscience was -a "pictorial" conscience, and no man can judge him. We can only take his -works as they are, and be thankful that all the strange confusions of -his mind, and mingled accidents of his life, have produced so unique and -beautiful a result as the "England and Wales." It is no use now -regretting that his vast powers in their prime were used wastefully in -what will appear to many as the falsification of English landscape; it -is far better to rejoice that the genius and knowledge of the man were -so transcendent that, in spite of all the worst that can be said, each -separate drawing is precious in itself as a record of natural phenomena, -and a masterly arrangement of indefinite forms and beautiful colour. - -Mr. Ruskin affirms that, "howsoever it came to pass, a strange, and in -many respects grievous metamorphosis takes place upon him about the year -1825. Thenceforth he shows clearly the sense of a terrific wrongness, -and sadness, mingled in the beautiful order of the earth; his work -becomes partly satirical, partly reckless, partly--and in its greatest -and noblest features--tragic." We are not prepared to assent to this -entirely, especially as Mr. Ruskin states immediately afterwards that -one at least of the manifestations of "this new phase of temper" can be -traced unmistakably in the "Liber," which was concluded six years -before; but there is no doubt that his work for some of these years was -distinguished by recklessness and caprice in an unusual degree, and we -have little doubt that his removal from Sandycombe, and the consequent -loss of healthy companionship, had something to do with it. During three -years he exhibited no pictures of special interest, except the _Cologne_ -of 1826, and the _Ulysses deriding Polyphemus_ of 1829. This latter -picture we take to be a sure sign of recovery, as it shows perhaps the -most complete balance of power of any of his large works, being not less -wonderful for happy choice of subject than for grandeur of conception -and splendour of colour--the first picture in which, since the _Apollo -and Python_ of 1811, the union between the literary subject and the -landscape, or (if we must use that horrid word) seascape, was perfect. -This picture was no _Temple and Portico, with the drowning of -Aristobulus_. The grand indefinite figure of the agonized giant, the -crowded ship of Ulysses, the water-nymphs and the dying sun, are all -parts of one conception, and show what Turner could do when his -imagination was thoroughly inflamed. Whence the inspiration was derived -it is difficult to say. Like most of his inspirations, it probably had -more than one source. Homer's Odyssey is the source given in the -catalogue; but it is probable, as we before have hinted, that the figure -of Polyphemus was suggested by the splendid description in the -fourteenth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Many years had lapsed since he -had shown the full force of his imagination under the influence of -classical story, and he was never to do so again. Subjects of the kind -suited to his peculiar genius were difficult to find, and he had no such -habitual intercourse with his intellectual peers as enabled him to -gather suggestions for his works. He was thrown entirely on his own -uneducated resources, and the result was, with his imperfect knowledge -of his own strength and the limits of his art, partial failure of most, -and total failure of many of his most strenuous efforts. This is one of -the saddest facts of his art-life, the frequent waste, or partial waste, -of unique power. - -His increasing isolation of mind was mitigated no doubt by constant -visits to Petworth, Farnley, and other houses of his friends and -patrons, by the chaff of "varnishing days," by social meetings of the -Academy Club, and by frequent travel; but it increased notwithstanding. -Not Mr. Trimmer, nor Lord Egremont, nor even his friends and fellow -Academicians, Chantrey and Jones, could break through his barrier of -reserve and see the man Turner face to face. From the beginning he had -his secrets, and he kept them to the end. He could be merry and social -in a gathering where the talk never became confidential, and with -children (whom he could not distrust); but his living-rooms in Queen -Anne Street, his painting-room wherever he was, and his heart, were, -with scarcely an exception, opened to none. At Petworth, Lord Egremont -indeed was allowed to enter his studio; but he had to give a peculiar -knock agreed upon between them before he would open the door. - -In 1828 he was at Rome again, from which place he wrote the following -letters[43] to Chantrey and Jones of unusual length and interest. - - "TO GEORGE JONES, R.A. - - "ROME, - - "_Oct. 13, 1828._ - - "DEAR JONES, - - "Two months nearly in getting to this terra pictura, _and at work_; - but the length of time is my own fault. I must see the South of - France, which almost knocked me up, the heat was so intense, - particularly at Nismes and Avignon; and until I got a plunge into - the sea at Marseilles, I felt so weak that nothing but the change - of scene kept me onwards to my distant point. Genoa, and all the - sea-coast from Nice to Spezzia, is remarkably rugged and fine; so - is Massa. Tell that fat fellow Chantrey that I did think of him, - _then_ (but not the first or the last time) of the thousands he had - made out of those marble craigs which only afforded me a sour - bottle of wine and a sketch; but he deserves everything which is - good, though he did give me a fit of the spleen at Carrara. - - "Sorry to hear your friend, Sir Henry Bunbury, has lost his lady. - How did you know this? You will answer, of Captain Napier, at - _Siena_. The letter announcing the sad event arrived the next day - after I got there. They were on the wing--Mrs. W. Light to Leghorn, - to meet Colonel Light, and Captain and Mrs. Napier for Naples; so, - all things considered, I determined to quit instanter, instead of - adding to the trouble. - - "Hope that you have been better than usual, and that the pictures - go on well. If you should be passing Queen Anne Street, just say I - am well, and in Rome, for I fear young Hakewell has written to his - father of my being unwell: and may I trouble you to drop a line - into the two-penny post to Mr. C. Heath, 6, Seymour Place, New - Pancras Church, or send my people to tell him that, if he has - anything to send me, to put it up in a letter (it is the most sure - way of its reaching me), directed for me, No. 12, Piazza - Mignanelli, Rome, and to which place I hope you will send me a - line? Excuse my troubling you with my requests of business. - Remember me to all friends. So God bless you. Adieu. - - "J. M. TURNER." - - "TO FRANCIS CHANTREY, R.A. - - "NO. 12, PIAZZA MIGNANELLI, ROME, - - "_Nov. 6, 1828_. - - "MY DEAR CHANTREY, - - "I intended long before this (but you will say, 'Fudge!') to have - written; but even now very little information have I to give you in - matters of Art, for I have confined myself to the painting - department at Corso; and having finished _one_, am about the - second, and getting on with Lord E.'s, which I began the very first - touch at Rome; but as the folk here talked that I would show them - _not_, I finished a small three feet four to stop their gabbling. - So now to business. Sculpture, of course, first; for it carries - away all the patronage, so it is said, in Rome; but all seem to - share in the good-will of the patrons of the day. Gott's studio is - full. Wyatt and Rennie, Ewing, Buxton, all employed. Gibson has two - groups in hand, _Venus and Cupid_; and _The Rape of Hylas_, three - figures, very forward, though I doubt much if it will be in time - (taking the long voyage into the scale) for the Exhibition, though - it is for England. Its style is something like _The Psyche_, being - two standing figures of nymphs leaning, enamoured, over the - youthful Hylas, with his pitcher. The Venus is a sitting figure, - with the Cupid in attendance; and if it had wings like a dove, to - flee away and be at rest, the rest would not be the worse for the - change. Thorwaldsten is closely engaged on the late Pope's (Pius - VII.) monument. Portraits of the superior animal, man, is to be - found in all. In some, the inferior--viz. greyhounds and poodles, - cats and monkeys, &c., &c. - - "Pray give my remembrances to Jones and Stokes, and tell _him_ I - have not seen a bit of coal stratum for months. My love to Mrs. - Chantrey, and take the same and good wishes of - - "Yours most truly, - - "J. M. TURNER." - -This method of communicating with "his people" is peculiar, and shows -that he was not in the habit of corresponding with them when away on his -numerous visits and tours. Perhaps they could not read, perhaps he -wished to save postage--whatever hypothesis we may adopt, the fact is -singular. The pictures of _The Banks of the Loire_; _The Loretto -Necklace_; _Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy (par la -Diligence) in a snowdrift upon Mount Tarra, 22nd of January, 1829_--all -exhibited in 1829--were the results of this tour, besides some of the -pictures of 1830, one of which, _View of Orvieto_, is, according to Mr. -Hamerton, the identical "small three feet four" which he painted to -"stop the gabbling" of the folk at Rome. - -In this year (1830, he being then fifty-five years old) died Sir Thomas -Lawrence, whose loss he probably felt much, and of whose funeral he -painted a picture (from memory); but the year had a greater sorrow for -him than this--the loss of his "poor old Dad." The removal from -Twickenham did not avail to preserve the old man's life for long. We -have the testimony of the Trimmers, with whom after the event he stayed -for a few days for change of scene, that "he was fearfully out of -spirits, and felt his loss, he said, like that of an only child," and -that he "never appeared the same man after his father's death." To men -like Turner, who are not accustomed to express their feelings much, or -even to realize them, such blows come with all their natural violence -unchecked, unforeseen, unprovided against. It had probably never -occurred to him how much his father was to him, how blank a space his -loss would make in his narrow garden of human affection. From this time -he was to know many losses of old friends, each of which fell heavily -upon him, leaving him more lonely than ever. His friends were few, and -they dropped one by one, nor is there any evidence to show that their -loss was ever lightened by any hope of meeting them again; the lights of -his life went out one by one, and left him alone and in the dark. In -1833 Dr. Monro died, in 1836 Mr. Wells, in 1837 Lord Egremont, in 1841 -Chantrey, and he was to feel the loss of Mr. Fawkes and Wilkie, and many -more before his own time came. - -In February, 1830, he wrote to Jones:-- - - "DEAR JONES--I delayed answering yours until the chance of this - finding you in Rome, to give you some account of the dismal - prospect of Academic affairs, and of the last sad ceremonies paid - yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourn from whence no - traveller returns. Alas! only two short months Sir Thomas followed - the coffin of Dawe to the same place. We then were his - pall-bearers. Who will do the like for me, or when, God only knows - how soon! However, it is something to feel that gifted talent can - be acknowledged by the many who yesterday waded up to their knees - in snow and muck to see the funeral pomp swelled up by carriages of - the great, _without the persons themselves_." - -No doubt these deaths set him thinking of his own, and the disposition -of his wealth so useless to him, and he probably brooded long over the -will that he signed on the 10th of June in the next year (1831). Many -excuses have been made for his niggardly habits on the score of the -nobleness of mind shown in this document; he screwed and denied himself -(we are told) when living, to make old artists comfortable after his -death. We are afraid that there is no ground for this charitable view, -nor any evidence that he ever denied himself anything that he preferred -to hard cash, or that he ever thought of giving it, or any farthing of -it, away to anybody, till he had more than he could spend, and was -brought by the deaths of his friends to realize that he could not take -it with him when he died. Then indeed he disposed of it; but where was -the bulk to go? Not to his nearest of kin, whom he had neglected all his -life--fifty pounds was enough for uncles, and twenty-five for their -eldest sons; not to his mistress or mistresses, who had been devoted to -him all his life, or to his children--annuities of ten and fifty pounds -were enough for them; but for the perpetuation of his name and fame, as -the founder of "Turner's Gift" and the eclipser of Claude.[44] - -We do not know when Turner became acquainted with Samuel Rogers; but -probably some years before this, as he is named as one of the executors -in the will, and the famous illustrated edition of "Italy" was published -in 1830, followed by the Poems in 1834. These contain the most exquisite -of all the engravings from Turner's vignettes. Exquisite also are most -of the drawings, but some of them are spoilt by the capriciousness of -their colour, which seems in many cases to have been employed as an -indication to the engraver rather than for the purpose of imitating the -hues of nature. The most beautiful perhaps of all, _Tornaro's misty -brow_, seems to us far too blue, and the yellow of the sky in others is -too strong to be probable or even in harmony with the rest of the -drawing. It would, however, be difficult to find in the whole range of -his works two really greater (though so small in size) than the _Alps at -Daybreak_, and _Datur hora quieti_, of which we give woodcuts, losing of -course much of the light refinement of the steel plates, but wonderfully -true in general effect. The former is as perfect an illustration as -possible of the sentiment of Rogers's pretty verses, but it far -transcends them in beauty and imagination; the latter is not in -illustration of any of the poet's verses, but is a more beautiful poem -than ever Rogers wrote. - -The illustration from "Jacqueline" which we give, though not so -transcendent in imagination, is a scene of extraordinary beauty of rock -and torrent, and castle-crowned steep, such as no hand but Turner's -could have drawn, while the _Vision_ from "The Voyage of Columbus" is -equally characteristic, showing how he could make an impressive picture -out of the vaguest notions by his extraordinary mastery of light and -shade. - -In 1833 Turner exhibited his first pictures of Venice, the last home of -his imagination. The date of his first visit to the "floating city" is -uncertain. There are two series of Venetian sketches in the National -Gallery, which mark two distinct impressions. In the first the colour is -comparatively sober; the sky is noted as, before all things, a -marvellously blue sky; the interest of the painter is in the watery -streets, the picturesqueness of corners here and there, in narrow canals -and the different-coloured marbles of the buildings; he takes the city -in bits from the inside in broad daylight, and they are studies as -realistic as he could make them at the time. In the other series the -interest of the painter is COLOUR, not of the buildings, but of the -sunsets and sunrises, the clouds of crimson and yellow, the water of -green, in which the sapphire and the emerald and the beryl seem to blend -their hues. The substantial marble, the solid blue sky, the strong light -and sharp shadows have melted into visions of ethereal palaces and -gemlike colour, like those in the Apocalypse. As he began painting the -sea from Vandevelde and nature, so he began painting Venice from -Canaletti and nature; but the transition from the studious beginning -to the imaginative end was very swift in the latter case. Venice soon -became to him the paradise of colour, and he rose to heights of -chromatic daring which exceeded anything which even he had scaled -before. - -[Illustration: LIGHT-TOWERS OF THE HEVE. - -_From "Rivers of France."_] - -The time at which we have now arrived was that of his earlier sketches, -and he could turn away from Venice and draw with unabated zest the -quieter but still lovely scenery of the Seine and the Loire. To 1833-4 -and 1835 belong his beautiful series called _The Rivers of France_. -Opinions are divided, as usual, as to the truthfulness of his art to the -spirit of French scenery, and a comparison between _The Light-towers of -the Heve_ in our woodcut, and the drawing which he made on the spot (now -in the National Gallery) will show how greatly his imagination altered -the literal facts of a scene. One who has patiently followed his -footsteps in many parts of England and on the Continent testifies to the -puzzling effects of Turner's imaginative records. He seeks in vain on -the face of the earth the original of Turner's later drawings, but he -can never see these drawings without finding all that he has seen. -Indeed, to understand them rightly, they must be considered as poems in -colour suggested by pictorial recollections of certain scenes on the -rivers of France. Most of them are arrangements of blue, red, and -yellow, some of yellow and grey, all exquisitely beautiful in -arrangement of line and atmospheric effect. Nor has he in any other -drawings introduced figures and animals with more skill and beauty of -suggestion. The whole series palpitates with living light, although the -pigments employed are opaque, and each view charms the sense of -colour-harmony, although the colours are crude and disagreeable. It has -always appeared wonderful to us that, with his power over water-colours -and delight in clear tones, he should have been content to work with -such chalky material and impure tints; it is as though he preferred to -combat difficulties; but they were drawn to be engraved, and as long as -he got his harmonies and his light and shade true we suppose he was -content. The great skill with which he could utilize the grey paper on -which these drawings were made, leaving it uncovered in the sky and -other places where it would serve his purpose, conduced to swiftness of -work, and may have been one of his motives. The drawing of Jumieges, of -which we give a woodcut, is one of the loveliest of the series, with its -mouldering ruin standing out for a moment like a skeleton against the -steely cloud, before the fierce storm covers it with gloom. - -In these yearly visits to France, Turner was accompanied by Mr. Leitch -Ritchie, who supplied the work with some description of the places. They -travelled, however, very little together; their tastes in everything but -art being exceedingly dissimilar. "I was curious," says his companion, -"in observing what he made of the objects he selected for his sketches, -and was frequently surprised to find what a forcible idea he conveyed of -a place with scarcely a correct detail. His exaggerations, when it -suited his purpose to exaggerate, were wonderful--lifting up, for -instance, by two or three stories, the steeple, or rather, stunted cone, -of a village church--and when I returned to London I never failed to -roast him on this habit. He took my remarks in good part, sometimes, -indeed, in great glee, never attempting to defend himself otherwise than -by rolling back the war into the enemy's camp. In my account of the -famous Gilles de Retz, I had attempted to identify that prototype of -'Blue Beard' with the hero of the nursery story, by absurdly insisting -that his beard was so intensely black that it seemed to have a shade of -blue. This tickled the great painter hugely, and his only reply to my -bantering was--his little sharp eyes glistening the while--'Blue Beard! -Blue Beard! Black Beard!'" - -[Illustration: JUMIEGES. - -_From "Rivers of France."_] - -We do not know when Turner became first acquainted with Mr. Munro of -Novar, one of the greatest admirers of the artist and collectors of his -later works, but it was in 1836 that we first hear of them as travelling -together, when, it is said, "a serious depression of spirits having -fallen on Mr. Munro," Turner proposed to divert his mind into fresh -channels by travel. They went to Switzerland and Italy, and Mr. Munro -found that Turner enjoyed himself in his way--a "sort of honest Diogenes -way"--and that it was easy to get on very pleasantly with him "if you -bore with his way," a description which, meant to be kind, does not say -much for his sociability at this period. - -Indeed, he had been all his life, and especially, we expect, since he -left Twickenham, developing as an artist and shrivelling as a man, and -after this year (1836), though he still developed in power of colour and -painted some of his finest and most distinctive works, the signs of -change, if not of decline, were also visible. He was also getting out of -the favour of the public, who could not see any beauty in such works as -the _Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons_, of 1835, or _Juliet -and her Nurse_, of 1836. - -[Illustration: FIGHTING TEMERAIRE. - -_Exhibited in 1839. National Gallery._] - -His fame began to oscillate, tottering with one picture and set upright -by another. As long, however, as he could paint such pictures as -_Mercury and Argus_, 1836, and the _Fighting Temeraire_, of 1839, it was -in a measure safe. He was still a great genius to whom eccentricities -were natural, but the _Fighting Temeraire_ was the last picture of his -at which no stone was thrown. This is in many ways the finest of all -his pictures. Light and brilliant yet solemn in colour; penetrated with -a sentiment which finds an echo in every heart; appealing to national -feeling and to that larger sympathy with the fate of all created things; -symbolic, by its contrast between the old three-decker and the little -steam-tug, of the "old order," which "changeth, yielding place to -new"--the picture was and always will be as popular as it deserves. It -is characteristic of Turner that the idea of the picture did not -originate with him, but with Stanfield. Would that Turner had always had -some friend at his elbow to hold the torch to his imagination. - -[Illustration: decoration] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. - -LIGHT AND DARKNESS. - -1840 TO 1851. - - -Turner was now sixty-five years old, and his decline as an artist was to -be expected from failing health and stress of years. For little less -than half a century he had worked harder and produced more than any -other artist of whom we have any record. Nor would he rest now, although -his failing powers of body and mind required stimulants to support their -energy. - -Mr. Wilkie Collins informed Mr. Thornbury that, when a boy-- - - "He used to attend his father on varnishing days, and remembers - seeing Turner (not the more perfect in his balance for the brown - sherry at the Academy lunch) seated on the top of a flight of - steps, astride a box. There he sat, a shabby Bacchus, nodding like - a Mandarin at his picture, which he, with a pendulum motion, now - touched with his brush and now receded from. Yet, in spite of - sherry, precarious seat, and old age, he went on shaping in some - wonderful dream of colour; every touch meaning something, every - pin's head of colour being a note in the chromatic scale." - -We have spoken of Turner as declining as an artist, but we are not sure -that he did so till about 1845, when, Mr. Ruskin says, "his health, and -with it in great degree his mind, failed suddenly." Down to this time -his decay seems to us to have been more physical than artistic, but with -the physical weakness there had been, we think, for some time a -deterioration of the non-artistic part of his mind. His decay, though so -unlike the decay of others, appears to us to have nothing inexplicable -about it if we consider him as a man who had never had any sympathy with -the current opinions and culture of his fellows, and who, by some -strange defect in his organization, was unable to think without the use -of his eyes. That his eyesight failed there is no doubt, but that it did -not fail in the one most essential point for a painter, viz., perception -of colour, is, we think, proved by his latest sketches in water-colour, -which show none of that apparently morbid love of yellow which appears -in his later oil pictures, and testify to that perfect perception of the -relations and harmonies of different hues which can only belong to a -healthy sight. Instead of declining, this faculty of colour seems to -have increased in perfection almost to the last. If we compare the -sketch in the National Gallery of a scene on the Lake of Zug, done -between 1840 and 1845, with one of the 'Rivers of England' _Dartmouth_, -two drawings wonderfully alike in composition and in general scheme of -colour, no difference in this faculty can be observed; the later drawing -is only a few notes higher in the scale. As Mr. Ruskin says, "The work -of the first five years of this decade is in many respects supremely and -with _reviving_ power, beautiful." - -But still the decline of his non-artistic mind, never very powerful, had -been going on for years, or at least such reasoning power as he -possessed had exercised less and less control over the imperious will of -his genius, which impelled him to pursue his efforts to paint the -unpaintable. He had begun by imitation, he had gone on by rivalry, he -had achieved a style of his own by which he had upset all preconceived -notions of landscape painting, and had triumphed in establishing the -superiority of pictures painted in a light key, but he was not content. -His progress had always been towards light even from the earliest days, -when he worked in monochrome. Sunlight was his discovery, he had found -its presence in shadow, he had studied its complicated reflections, -before he commenced to work in colour. From monochrome he had adopted -the low scale of the old masters, but into it he carried his light; the -brown clouds, and shadows, and mists, had the sun behind them as it were -in veiled splendour. Then it came out and flooded his drawings and his -canvasses with a glory unseen before in art. But he must go on--refine -upon this--having eclipsed all others, he must now eclipse himself. His -gold must turn to yellow, and yellow almost into white, before his -genius could be satisfied with its efforts to express pure sunlight. - -So he went on to his goal, becoming less "understanded of the people" -each year, painting pictures more near to the truth of nature in sun and -clouds, and less true in everything else. But it was about the -everything else that the people most cared. They did not care for -sunlight which blinded them, and to which the truth of figure, and sea, -and grass, and stone, had to be sacrificed. They liked pictures which -could give them calm enjoyment, records of what they had seen or could -imagine, not of what Turner only had seen, and what seemed to them -extravagant falsity. - -Such, roughly put, was the condition of things when a champion arose to -scatter Turner's enemies to the four winds. He, Mr. Ruskin (1836), an -undergraduate at Oxford, of the age of seventeen, was one not of "the -people," but of those comparatively few lovers of art and colour who saw -and appreciated the artistic motives of Turner, and who reverenced, as a -revelation of hitherto unrecorded, if not undiscovered, beauties of -nature, those pictures at which the world scoffed. We cannot here enter -further into the discussion involved, but the attitude of the two -parties, the one represented by "Blackwood's Magazine," and the other by -"Modern Painters," can be judged by the following extracts. The noble -enthusiasm aroused by the treatment of _Juliet and her Nurse_ by the -critics, had suggested a letter in 1836, which gradually increased into -a volume, not published till 1843, and in the meantime the undergraduate -had gained the Newdegate, and earned the right to call himself "A -Graduate of Oxford" on his title-page. - -This is what Maga said in August, 1835, of Turner's picture of _Venice, -from the porch of Madonna della Salute_, a picture in his earlier -Venetian style:-- - - "Venice, well I have seen Venice. Venice the magnificent, glorious, - queenly, even in her decay--with her rich coloured buildings, - speaking of days gone by, reflected in the _green_ water. What is - Venice in this picture? A flimsy, whitewashed meagre assemblage of - architecture, starting off ghostlike into unnatural perspective, as - if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the - only attempt at richness in the picture). Not Venice, but the boat - is the attractive object, and what is to make this rich? Nothing - but some green and red, and yellow tinsel, which is so flimsy that - it is now cracking..... The greater part of the picture is white, - disagreeable white, without light or transparency, and the boats, - with their red worsted masts, are as gewgaw as a child's toy, which - he may have cracked to see what it was made of. As to Venice, - nothing can be more unlike its character." - -[Illustration: VENICE. THE DOGANA. - -_In the National Gallery._] - -This is what the Graduate of Oxford says, after stating his -dissatisfaction with the Venices of Canaletti, Prout, and Stanfield:-- - - "But let us take with Turner, the last and greatest step of - all--thank Heaven we are in sunshine again--and what sunshine! Not - the lurid, gloomy, plaguelike oppression of Canaletti, but white - flushing fulness of dazzling light, which the waves drink and the - clouds breathe, bounding and burning in intensity of joy. That - sky--it is a very visible infinity--liquid, measureless, - unfathomable, panting and melting through the chasms in the long - fields of snow-white flaked, slow-moving vapour, that guide the eye - along the multitudinous waves down to the islanded rest of the - Euganean hills. Do we dream, or does the white forked sail drift - nearer, and nearer yet, diminishing the blue sea between us with - the fulness of its wings? It pauses now; but the quivering of its - bright reflection troubles the shadows of the sea, those azure - fathomless depths of crystal mystery, on which the swiftness of the - poised gondola floats double, its black beak lifted like the crest - of a dark ocean bird, its scarlet draperies flashed back from the - kindling surface, and its bent oar breaking the radiant water into - a dust of gold. Dreamlike and dim, but glorious, the unnumbered - palaces lift their shafts out of the hollow sea--pale ranks of - motionless flame--their mighty towers sent up to heaven like - tongues of more eager fire--their grey domes looming vast and dark, - like eclipsed worlds--their sculptured arabesques and purple marble - fading farther and fainter, league beyond league, lost in the light - of distance. Detail after detail, thought beyond thought, you find - and feel them through the radiant mystery, inexhaustible as - indistinct, beautiful, but never all revealed; secret in fulness, - confused in symmetry, as nature herself is to the bewildered and - foiled glance, giving out of that indistinctness, and through that - confusion, the perpetual newness of the infinite and the beautiful. - - "Yes, Mr. Turner, we are in Venice now." - -Unfortunately the brave young champion was too late, the eloquent voice -that could translate into such glowing words the dumb poetry of Turner's -pictures had scarcely made the air of England thrill with its musical -enthusiasm when black night fell upon the artist. The sudden snapping of -some vital chord, of which that same Graduate of Oxford only last year -pathetically wrote, took place, and the glorious sun of his genius -disappeared without any twilight; he was dead as an artist, and dying as -a man. Neither his work nor his life could be defended any more. But the -voice that was raised so late in his honour did not die, its vibrations -have lasted from that day to this; and if the champion himself seems to -be in some need of a defender now, if mouths that once were full of his -praise are silent or raised only for the most part to depreciate, it is -only what came to Turner and what comes to all who use their imagination -too freely to enforce their convictions. A time must come when the -spirit of analysis will eat into the most brilliant rhetoric; the false -and true, which combine to make the most beautiful fabric of words, -cannot wear equally well. To us it is always painful to differ from Mr. -Ruskin, to whom we owe the grasp of so many noble truths, the memories -of so many delightful hours; and if a time has come when our faith in -his dogmas is not absolute, and we feel that he has misled us and others -now and again, we cannot close reference to him and his works in this -little book without testifying to the great and noble spirit which -pervades his work, and recording our admiration of a life devoted to the -service of art and man and God with a passionate purity as rare as it is -beautiful. - -[Illustration: VENICE, FROM THE CANAL OF THE GIUDECEA. - -_Exhibited in 1840. South Kensington Museum._] - -But before night fell, in the interval between 1840 and 1845, Turner -painted a few pictures of remarkable beauty both in colour and -sentiment--pictures which no other artist could have painted, and which -we doubt if he could himself have painted before--pictures generally -attempting to realize his later ideal of Venice, which even now, in -their wrecked beauty, fascinate all who have patience to look at them, -and watch the apparent chaos of yellow and white and purple and grey -gradually clear into a vision of ghost-like palaces rising like a dream, -from the golden sea. Besides these he painted at least three others of -unique power: one a record of what few other men could have had the -courage to study or the power to paint; one showing the passion of -despair at the loss of an old comrade; and another the boldest attempt -to represent abstract ideas in landscape that was ever made. We allude -to the _Snowstorm_; _Peace, Burial at Sea_; and _Rain, Steam, and -Speed_. - -Mr. Hamerton says, in connection with the first of these:-- - - "Let it not be supposed that these works of Turner's decline, - however they may have exercised the wit of critics, and excited the - amusement of visitors to the Exhibition, were ever anything less - than serious performances for him. The _Snowstorm_, for example - (1842), afforded the critics a precious opportunity for the - exercise of their art. They called it soapsuds and whitewash, the - real subject being a steamer in a storm off a harbour's mouth - making signals, and going by the lead. In this instance, nothing - could be more serious than Turner's intention, which was to render - a storm as he had himself seen it one night when the 'Ariel' left - Harwich. Like Joseph Vernet, who, when in a tempest off the island - of Sardinia, had himself fastened to the mast to watch the effects, - Turner on this occasion, 'got the sailors to lash himself to the - mast to observe it,' and remained in that position for four hours. - He did not expect to escape, but had a curious sort of - conscientious feeling, that it was his duty to record his - impression if he survived."[45] - -Of the second, which was painted to commemorate Wilkie's funeral, it is -related that Stanfield complained of the blackness of the sails, and -that Turner answered, "If I could find anything blacker than black I'd -use it."[46] - -The history of his late Swiss sketches and the drawings he made from -them has been recently told by Mr. Ruskin in his valuable and -interesting notes to his collection of Turner's drawings exhibited last -year (1878), and these notes and the almost equally interesting notes of -the Rev. W. Kingsley, contained between the same covers, testify not -only to the supreme beauty of his later work, but also to the nobler -motive which inspired its production, viz. the desire to "record" as far -as he could what he had seen after "fifty years' observation." The days -of strife and emulation were over, and a humbler, sweeter spirit made -him "put forth his full strength to depict nature as he saw it with all -his knowledge and experience." Characteristically, as all through his -life, this better spirit showed itself rather in his water-colours made -for private persons, than in those oils which he exhibited for the -judgment of the public. - -We wish we had space here for Mr. Ruskin's splendid description of -Turner's picture of _Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying_--a -work which seems to us to illustrate what we have said of his manner of -decline in a remarkable way. There is no doubt about its splendour of -colour, the grandeur of its sea, and the force with which its sentiment -of horror and wrong and death is conveyed; but it shows a childishness, -a want of mental faculties of the simplest kind, which is all the more -extraordinary when brought in contrast with such gigantic pictorial -power. The sharks are quite unnecessary, the bodies in the water are too -many, the absurdity of the chains appearing above it is too gross; the -horror is overdone and melodramatic, or, in a word, one of his finest -pictorial conceptions is spoilt for want of a little common sense, of a -little power to place himself in relation to his fellows and see how it -would appear to them. Again, we cannot help wishing that he had had a -friend at his elbow like Stanfield, who would have saved him from the -laughter of small critics. He was not fit to manage such a work on such -a subject by himself. - -In his picture of _War--the Exile and the Rock-limpet_, with its extract -from the "Fallacies of Hope"-- - - "Ah! thy tent-formed shell is like - A soldier's nightly bivouac, alone - Amidst a sea of blood ... - ...But can you join your comrades?" - -we see the same mental helplessness. It verges on the sublime, it verges -on the ridiculous. We should be sorry to call it either; but it is -childish--not with the grand simplicity of Blake, but with the confused -complicity of Turner. Mr. Ruskin says that Turner tried in vain to make -him understand the full meaning of this work, and we are not surprised. - -Such pictures as these had occurred now and then all through his -career--pictures in which the means employed were utterly inadequate to -express the sentiment duly, such as the _Waterloo_,--pictures in which -the accumulation of ideas was confused and excessive, as the _Phryne -going to the Bath as Venus, Demosthenes taunted by AEschines_; and he had -shown some hazy symbolism in connection with shell-fish in these -verses:-- - - "Roused from his long contented cot he went - Where oft he laboured, and the ... bent, - To form the snares for lobsters armed in mail; - But men, more cunning, over this prevail, - -[Illustration: THE SLAVE SHIP. - -_In the possession of Miss Alice Hooper, of Boston, U.S._] - - Lured by a few sea-snail and whelks, a prey - That they could gather on their watery way, - Caught in a wicker cage not two feet wide, - While the whole ocean's open to their pride." - -But now these "failures," for failures they were, however fine the art -qualities they possessed, became chronic, and the rule rather than the -exception; and this is to us the greatest tragedy in the whole of his -career--the spectacle of a great painter, the very slave of his genius, -compelled to paint this and paint that at its bidding without being able -to distinguish between what was great and what was little, what sublime -and what ridiculous, almost as mighty as Milton and Shelley one moment, -and as poor as Blackmore or Robert Montgomery the next. He appears to us -in these last days like a great ship, rudderless, but still grand and -with all sails set, at the mercy of the wind, which played with it a -little while and then cast it on the rocks. - -Rudderless, masterless, was he also as a man. We are very loth to -believe the terrible picture of moral degradation supplied by the "best -authority" to Mr. Thornbury, and quoted in the first chapter of this -volume; but there is no doubt that he lived by no means a reputable life -in his old age. As to how he met with Mrs. Booth, at whose little house -by the side of the Thames, near Cremorne, he lived for some time before -his death, we have not cared to inquire, nor do we intend to repeat the -usual stories about it; nor will we venture an opinion as to how often -he took too much to drink or what was his favourite stimulant, or what -other excesses he committed. His whole faculties had been absorbed in -his art; and when this failed him--when he became broken in health and -failing in sight--he had no store of wise reflection to employ his -mind, no harmless pursuits to follow, no refined tastes to amuse him, -nor, as far as we know, had he any hope of any future rectification of -the unevennesses of this world. Some of his friends he had lost by -death, many were still living and ready to cheer his last years if he -would have had them, but he would not. His secretiveness and love of -solitude clung to him to the last. - -He did not, however, lose his love of art and his desire of acquiring -knowledge relating to it. It was in these last years, 1847-49, that he -paid several visits to the studio of Mr. Mayall, the celebrated -photographic artist, passing himself off as a Master in Chancery, and -taking very great interest in the development of the new process which -had not then got beyond the daguerreotype. To the interesting account of -these visits printed by Mr. Thornbury,[47] we are enabled by Mr. -Mayall's kindness to add that at a time when his finances were at a very -low ebb in consequence of litigation about patent rights, Turner -unasked, brought him a roll of bank-notes, to the amount of L300, and -gave it him on the understanding that he was to repay him if he could. -This, Mr. Mayall was able to do very soon, but that does not lessen the -generosity of Turner's act. - -Notwithstanding, however, such bright glimpses as this, his last years -must have been sad and dull, and his greatest source of happiness was -probably the knowledge that whatever critics might say of his later -works, there were a few men like Mr. Munro, Mr. Griffiths, the Ruskins, -father and son, who appreciated them, and that his earlier pictures not -only kept up their fame but rose in price. Though in decline, his fame -was as great as almost he could have wished. Two offers of L100,000 he -is said to have refused for the contents of Queen Anne Street; L5,000 -for his two _Carthages_. The greatest of all his triumphs was perhaps -when he was waited upon by Mr. Griffiths, with an offer from a -distinguished Committee, among whom were Sir Robert Peel, Lord Hardinge, -and others, to buy these pictures for the nation. This is the greatest -instance of his self-sacrifice, which is well attested; for he refused -to part with them because he had willed them to the nation. He might -have got the money and his wish also, but he refused. The recollection -of this, though it occurred some years before he died, should have -afforded him some pleasant reflections. - -It had been long known that Turner had another home than that in Queen -Anne Street, and he had shown considerable ingenuity in concealing it, -for he used to go out of an evening to dinner with his friends when he -so willed, and met them at the Academy and other places. Almost to the -last he could be merry and sociable at such gatherings, and there is a -very pleasant account of a dinner in 1850 at David Roberts' house, given -in a note to Ballantyne's life of that artist, at which Turner was. It -is a memorandum by an artist from the country, and describes Turner's -manner as-- - - "Very agreeable, his quick bright eye sparkled, and his whole - countenance showed a desire to please. He was constantly making or - trying to make jokes; his dress, though rather old-fashioned, was - far from being shabby." Turner's health was proposed by an Irish - gentleman who had attended his lectures on perspective, on which he - complimented the artist. "Turner made a short reply in a jocular - way, and concluded by saying, rather sarcastically, that he was - glad this honourable gentleman had profited so much by his lectures - as thoroughly to understand perspective, for it was more than he - did." Turner afterwards, in Roberts' absence, took the chair, and, - at Stanfield's request, proposed Roberts' health, which he did, - speaking hurriedly, "but soon ran short of words and breath, and - dropped down on his chair with a hearty laugh, starting up again - and finishing with a 'hip, hip, hurrah!'.... Turner was the last - who left, and Roberts accompanied him along the street to hail a - cab.... At this time Turner was indulging in the singular freak of - living, under the name of Mr. Booth, in a small lodging on the - banks of the Thames.... This, though now cleared up, was a mystery - to his friends then, and Roberts was anxious to unravel it. When - the cab drove up he assisted Turner to his seat, shut the door, and - asked where he should tell cabby to take him; but Turner was not to - be caught, and, with a knowing wink, replied, 'Tell him to drive to - Oxford Street, and then I'll direct him where to go.'" - -Turner not only kept his secret from his friends, but from Mrs. Danby, -who, says Mr. Thornbury-- - - "One day, as she was brushing an old coat of Turner's, in turning - out a pocket, she found and pounced on a letter directed to him, - and written by a friend who lived at Chelsea. Mrs. Danby, it - appears, came to the conclusion that Turner himself was probably at - Chelsea, and went there to seek for him, in company with another - infirm old woman. From inquiries in a place by the river-side, - where gingerbread was sold, they came to the conclusion that Turner - was living in a certain small house close by, and informed a Mr. - Harpur,[48] whom she and Turner knew. He went to the place and - found the painter sinking. This was on the 18th of December, 1851, - and on the following day Turner died." - -So died the great solitary genius, Turner, the first of all men to -endeavour to paint the full power of the sun, the greatest imagination -that ever sought expression in landscape, the greatest pictorial -interpreter of the elemental forces of nature, that ever lived. His -life, and character, and art, complex as they were in their -manifestation, were as simple in motive as those of the most ordinary -man. Art, fame, and money were what he strived for from the beginning -to the end of his days, and those days were embittered at the end by -fallacies of hope with regard to all three. Critics laughed at him, he -was given no social honour, (neither knighted nor made President of the -Royal Academy), and his money was useless. For the meanness and -isolation of his existence he had no one to thank but himself, but this -was also, as we hope we have shown in the course of these pages, the -natural result of the motives of his life. - -[Illustration: THE ROOM IN WHICH TURNER DIED.] - -The nobleness of his life consisted in his devotion to landscape art, -and this should cover many sins. He found it sunk very low: he left it -raised to a height which it had never attained before. That he could -have done this by painting falsely is absurd. The falsity of his works -is just of that kind which comes from almost infinite knowledge of -truth. He knew little else but art and nature, and he knew these by -heart. He could make nature, and this confidence in his creative power -led him sometimes into strange errors, which no one else could have -made, such as putting the sun and moon in impossible positions in the -same picture, and making boats sail in opposite directions before the -wind; but how much more truth of natural phenomena has he not given even -in such pictures than can be found in any literal transcript of nature! -His colour appears to many to be untrue; but this is greatly due to his -clinging from first to last to one central truth--the sun. It was that -which gave the pitch to his light, and his colour too, as in nature. To -that great light all must be subservient; it is not the local colour of -an object in the foreground, or the strength of shade of a particular -cave, that controls the chiaroscuro and colouring of nature, but the -sun. So all things were sacrificed to this; the green must go from the -grass, and the shadows must become scarlet, rather than this truth -should be lost. His preference for harmonies of blue, red, and yellow, -to the exclusion of green, never giving, as Mr. Leslie pointed out, the -"verdure" of England, is remarkable; he is the only artist we know who, -instead of the usual "bit of red," to correct the green of a landscape, -introduces a bit of "green" (generally harsh crude green), to correct -its too great redness. (See, for instance, the apron of the woman in the -left-hand corner of his drawing of Rouen Cathedral for the "Rivers of -France.") His constant fault, and, as we think, an inexcusable one, is -the careless drawing of his figures. It is not an excuse to say that -they must not be painted so as to draw attention from the landscape; -first, because Turner in his earlier pictures showed that he could -introduce well-finished figures without doing this; and secondly, -because Turner's figures in his later pictures do this by their badness. -This carelessness gradually grew on him, because he would not take pains -with them. He could draw very small figures very well, giving more -spirit and essence than any other artist, in a touch. He could indicate -a shamble, a strut, a march, lassitude, confidence, any physical or -mental quality of a figure as easily as he could a bough or a cloud; but -when he had to draw a figure to which time must be given, to perfect a -definite, complex, organized form, he scamped it. His indication of the -spirit of animals is often wonderful, as in the deer in _Arundel Park_, -and the dogs in _Troyes_. - -Of Turner's mind and character apart from his art not much can be said -in praise. The former we have already said so much about that we need -only say here that although not of a very high order, except in -sensibility and perception, he showed now and then capacities which -might have been turned to good account by more generous training. -Although his jokes were mainly practical, or of that kind which is -understood by the term "waggery;" a few good things which he said have -been reported, such for instance as that "indistinctness was his forte;" -and though his poetry is generally miserable, it here and there contains -a fine expression. It is remarkable, however, how both his wit, and what -is good in his poetry, are connected with his art. He never said a thing -worth recording about anything else, and the few good bits in his poetry -are all reflections of a pictorial image. The utter helplessness of his -mind, when he tried to put his reasoning into words, is shown by Mr. -Hamerton, in one wonderful extract. (See his "Life of Turner," p. 143.) -We do not wonder that his attempts at teaching (though he is said at one -time in his youth to have got as much as a guinea a lesson) and his -lectures as a professor of perspective were failures. - -As to his character, it was mainly negative, on all points except art -and money. The best part of it was the tenderness of his heart; but -though we have no doubt about this fact, or that he could occasionally -in his later years be generous even in money,[49] this does not raise -our opinion of him much, for he had more than he wished to spend. If he -was remarkable for kind and generous impulses, he was still more -remarkable for the success with which he, in general, controlled them. -We cannot dispute Mr. Ruskin's assertion that he never "failed in an -undertaken trust," but we have yet to learn that he ever undertook one. - -If it be really true that, unasked and without any question of -repayment, he gave a sum of many thousand pounds on more than one -occasion to the son of one of his friends and patrons, such an act -deserves more accurate record and complete proof. The money was repaid -in both cases, it is said. - -He showed his best disposition in his kindness to children and animals, -and his fellow-artists. Of the last he always spoke kindly, and to young -or old was ever just and kind and patient. Poor Haydon said that he "did -him justice;" he assisted many a young man with a useful hint, and once -took down one of his pictures at the Academy to find a place for one of -an unknown man. He took great interest in the founding of the Artists' -Benevolent Fund, and meant his accumulated wealth to be spent in a home -for decayed artists. - -There is no doubt that long before he died he felt the uselessness of -wealth and a desire to dispose of his own in a good way. The only proof -we have of his notions of a good way is his will, and that, as we have -already said, is not an unselfish document, and the codicils which he -added to it from 1831 to 1849 do not show any increase of unselfishness. -On the contrary, he revoked his legacies to his uncles and cousins, and -left his finished pictures to form a Turner Gallery, and money to found -a Turner medal and a monument to himself in St. Paul's Cathedral. - -The will and its codicils were so confused that all the legal ability of -England was unable to decide what Turner really wanted to be done with -his money, and after years of miserable litigation, during which a large -portion of it was wasted in legal expenses, a compromise was effected, -in which the wishes of the parties to the suits and others concerned, -including the nation and the Royal Academy, were consulted rather than -the wishes of the testator: his desire to found a charity for decayed -artists, the only thing upon which his mind seems to have been fixed -from first to last in these puzzled documents, was over--thrown, and his -next of kin, the only persons mentioned in his will whom he certainly -did not mean to get a farthing, got the bulk of the property (excepting -the pictures). We have no doubt it was quite right; we are very glad the -nation got all the pictures and drawings, finished and unfinished, and -the Royal Academy L20,000; that there are a Turner medal and a Turner -Gallery, and we think that the next of kin should have had a great deal -of his money: but surely the greatest fallacy of all Turner's hope was -that his will would be construed according to his intentions. - -Two of his wishes with regard to himself were, however, fully carried -out--his desire to be buried in St. Paul's and the expenditure of L1,000 -on his monument. His funeral was conducted with considerable pomp and -ceremony, his "gifted talents," to use his own words, "acknowledged by -the many," and many of his fellow-artists and admirers followed him to -the grave; nor amongst the crowd were wanting a few old friends who in -their hearts still cherished him as "dear old Turner." - -[Illustration: "DATUR BORA QUIETI."] - -[Illustration: decorative bar] - - - - -INDEX. - -(_The Names of Paintings and Drawings are printed in Italics._) - - - Page - -Academy, Royal, School of, 15 - -Academy Club, 108 - -Academy, in St. Martin's Lane, 13 - -Academy, in Soho, 15 - -Almanacks, drawings for, 47 - -_Alps at Daybreak_, 113 - -_Apollo and Python_, 67, 107 - -_Apuleia and Apuleius_, 69, 76, 93 - -_Army of the Medes_, 49 - -Artists' Benevolent Fund, 139 - -_Arundel Park_, 137 - - -_Banks of the Loire_, 111 - -Basire, 44 - -_Battle of the Nile_, 49 - -_Bay of Baiae_, 97 - -Bible, Illustrations of, Finden's, 98, 99 - -_Birmingham_, 33 - -"Blackwood's Magazine", 124 - -_Bonneville_, 53 - -Booth, Mrs., 131 - -Boswell's "Antiquities", 14 - -"Britannia Depicta", 47 - -Britton, John, 22 - -Burnet, John, 50 - -_Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons_, 118 - -Bushey, 18, 23 - -_Buttermere, Lake_, 41 - -Byron, Illustrations to, 98 - - -_Calais Pier_, 53 - -_Caligula's Palace and Bridge_, 97 - -Canaletti, 114 - -_Carthage_, 70 - -_Carthage, Decline of_, 93 - -_Carthage, Dido building_, 93, 113 - -Chantrey, 108, 109, 110, 112 - -_Chateau de St. Michel_, 53, 54 - -_Chester_, 33 - -_Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_, 97 - -_Chryses_, 48 - -Claude Lorrain, 50, 61, 63, 113 - -Collins, Wilkie--Description of Turner, 121 - -_Cologne_, 99, 107 - -Composition, Turner's method, 105, 106 - -Constable's _Opening of Waterloo Bridge_, 100 - -Constable's _Whitehall Stairs_, 100 - -Continent, Second Tour on the, 76 - -Cooke, Dispute with, 58, 101 - Letter from, 101, &c. - -"Copper-plate Magazine," drawings for, 32 - -Cozens, J., 21, 26, 27, 67 - -_Crossing the Brook_, 80, 84, 93, 94 - -Crowle, Mr., early patron of Turner, 14, 16 - - -Danby, Mrs., 134 - -Daniell, 26 - -_Dartmouth_, 122 - -_Datur hora quieti_, 113 - -Dayes, 26, 28 - -De Loutherbourg, 27, 38, 39, 49, 86 - -Devonshire, Tour in, 79 - -_Dido and AEneas_, 93 - -Dragons, 70-74 - - -Eastlake, Sir Charles, 83 - -Edridge, 15, 23, 27 - -_Egglestone Abbey_, 94 - -Egremont, Lord, 76, 108, 109, 110 - -"England and Wales", 104 - -Engravings coloured at Brentford, 14 - -Exeter, Turner's visit to, 84 - - -_Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen_, 53 - -"Fallacies of Hope", 130 - -_Falls in Valombre_--Illustration of "Jacqueline", 114 - -Farnley, 45, 46, 108 - -Fawkes, 44, 45, 76, 112 - -_Festival of the Vintage of Macon_, 53 - -_Fifth Plague_, 49 - -Finden's Illustrations of the Bible, 98, 99 - -_Fishermen at Sea_, 34 - -_Fishermen Coming Ashore_, 34, 35 - -_Fishing Boats in a Squall_, 50 - -Fonthill, drawings of, 48 - -_Frosty Morning_, 89 - -_Funeral of Sir Thomas Lawrence_, 111 - - -Gainsborough, 23, 24, 27, 38 - -_Gawthorpe_, drawing of, 45 - -Girtin, 15, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28 - -_Glacier and Source of the Arveron_, 53 - -Glover, 27 - -_Goddess of Discord_, 52, 72 - -Greene, Thomas (extract from Diary), 35 - -Griffiths, 132, 133 - - -Hakewills, The, 109 - -Hakewill's "Picturesque Tour"--Illustrations to, 98, 99, 103 - -Hamerton, 31, 39, 48, 104, 128 - -Hammersmith, Turner's life at, 86 - -Hand Court, Turner's Studio in, 32 - -_Hannibal Crossing the Alps_, 66, 76 - -_Harbour of Dieppe_, 99 - -Hardinge, Lord, 133 - -Hardwick, Architect, 15, 25 - -Harpur, Henry, executor, 8 - -Harpur, Mrs. Turner's aunt, 8 - -Harrison, employed by, 32 - -Haydon, 139 - -Hearne, 15, 23, 26 - -Heath, C., 109 - -_Helvoetsluys_, 100 - -Henderson, Mr., 16, 26, 28 - -_Heysham Village_, 94 - -Higham, T., 94 - -_Hornby Castle_, 64, 94 - -Howard (R.A.), Portrait by, at Heston, 88 - -Hunt, W., 15 - - -Italy, First Visit to, 92 - -Italy, Picturesque Tour of, Hakewill's, 98, 99, 103 - - -_Jason_, 48, 74 - -Johns, Ambrose, 83 - -Jones, 108 - Letter to, 109, 112 - -_Juliet and her Nurse_, 118, 124 - -_Jumieges_, 116 - - -Kingsley, Rev. W., Notes of, 129 - - -_Lambeth, Archbishop's Palace at_, 32 - -Lawrence, Sir Thomas, Turner's generosity to, 99 - -Lawrence, Sir Thomas, death of, 111 - -Lectures on perspective, 133, 138 - -Leslie's Autobiographical Recollections, 100 - -Lewis, Engraver, quarrel with Turner, 57 - -"Liber Studiorum", 52, 55, 66, 89, 107 - -_Light-towers of the Heve_, 115 - -_Little Devil's Bridge_, 62 - -_Loretto Necklace_, 111 - -Lowson, Newby, 22 - - -Maiden Lane, 10 - -Malton, Thoma, 15, 20, 25 - -_Margate Church_, early drawing of, 13 - -Margate, School at, 15 - -Marlow, 23 - -Marshall, Mother's maiden name, 6 - -Marshall, Uncle, 8, 13 - -"Mawman's Tour", 47 - -Mayall, Mr., 132 - -_Mercury and Argus_, 118 - -_Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy_, 111 - -Miller, T., 23 - -"Modern Painters", 124 - -Monro, Dr., 15, 18, 23, 24, 25, 27, 112 - -_Moonlight_, 34 - -Morland, 27, 38 - -_Morning on the Coniston Fells_, 41 - -Munro of Novar, 118, 132 - - -_Narcissus and Echo_, 48 - -Narraway, 18, 32 - -National Gallery, Drawing in, 94 - -_Neptune's Trident_, 103 - -_Norham Castle_, 41 - - -_Orvieto_, 110, 111 - -Ovid's "Metamorphoses", 66, 68, 69, 108 - -_Oxford_, Pictures of, 86 - -_Oxford, Scene near_, early drawing, 14 - - -Palice, Mr., Drawing Master, 15 - -_Pantheon, After Fire_, 34 - -_Peace, Burial at Sea_, 128 - -Pearce, Miss, 83 - -Peel, Sir Robert, 133 - -_Pembury Mill_, 62 - -Perspective, Professor of, 75 - -Petworth, 76, 108, 109 - -_Phryne_, 130 - -Pindar, Peter, 82 - -Pine, 23 - -"Pocket Magazine," drawings for, 32 - -Poetry, Turner's, 67, 68 - -Porden, 15, 16 - -Poussin, Nicolas, 63 - -"Provincial Antiquities," Illustrations to, 92 - -Pye, John, 94 - - -Radcliffe, Engraver, 94 - -_Rain, Steam, and Speed_, 128 - -Rawlinson's "Turner's Liber Studiorum", 60 - -_Redcliffe Church, Bristol_, 84 - -Redding, Cyrus, 78, 82 - -Reeve, Lovell, description of Turner when young, 31 - -Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 25 - -_Richmond_, 94 - -"Richmondshire, Dr. Whitaker's History of", 94 - -_Rising Squall_, 34 - -Ritchie, Leitch, 116 - -"Rivers of England", 94, 96 - -"Rivers of France", 115, 116 - -Roberts, David, 23, 133 - -Rogers, Illustrations to, 99, 113, 114 - -Rome, 109, 110 - -_Rome, from the Vatican_, 97 - -Rooker, 23 - -_Rouen Cathedral_, 137 - -Ruskin, J., 39, 40, 48, 61, 73, 121, 122, 124, 132 - -Ruskin, J., his Collection of Turner's Drawings, 94, 129 - - -Sandycombe Lodge, 85, 86, 101 - -_St. Vincent's Rocks, Bristol, View near_, 34 - -Sandby, Paul, 23 - -Sandby, Tom, 23 - -School, First, at New Brentford, 13 - -Scott, Sir Walter, 92, 99 - -Shaw, Dr., 8 - -_Shipwreck, The_, 50, 54 - -_Slave Ship, The_, 129 - -Smith, John Raphael, 15, 23 - -_Snowstorm_, 128 - -Society of Artists, 13 - -Solus Lodge, 86 - -_Solway Moss_, 62 - -"Southern Coast", 47, 84, 99 - -_Spithead_, 54 - -Stanfield, 120, 128 - -_Sun rising through Vapour_, 54, 113 - -Switzerland, Sketches in, 54 - - -_Temeraire, The Fighting_, 118 - -_Temple of Jupiter_, 93 - -_Tenth Plague_, 49 - -Thomson, of Duddingstone, 92 - -Tomkison, 13, 16 - -_Tornaro_, 113 - -_Totnes_, 94 - -Townley, 45 - -Trimmer (Vicar of Heston), 86, 87, 88, 91, 101, 108, 111 - -Trimmer, Miss, attachment of Turner to, 89, 90 - -_Troyes_, 137 - -"Turner's Cribs", 85 - -"Turner Gallery" in Harley Street and Queen Anne Street, 85 - -"Turner and Girtin's Picturesque Views", 32 - -Turner's Gift, 78, 112 - -Turner, Charles, engraver, quarrel with Turner, 58 - -Turner, Price, uncle, 84 - -Turner, Thomas Price, first cousin, 84 - - -_Ulysses and Polyphemus_, 70, 107 - - -Vandevelde, 28, 50 - -Varley, 23, 24 - -Varnishing days, 99, 108 - -Venice, First pictures of, 114 - Sketches in National Gallery, 114 - -_Venice from Madonna della Salute_, 124 - -Venice, later pictures of, 126 - -_Venus and Adonis_, 52 - -Vergil, 70 - -Vignettes, 113 - -_Vision_, from "Voyage of Columbus", 114 - - -Wales, First Tour in, 32 - -Walker, J., 32 - -_War, the Exile and the Rock Limpet_, 130 - -_Warkworth Castle_, 43 - -_Waterloo_, 130 - -Watts, Alaric, 23, 31 - -Wedmore's "Essay on Girtin", 24 - -Wells, W. F., 18, 55, 112 - -_Westminster Abbey_, early drawing of, 14 - -"Whalley, Parish of," drawings for, 41 - -_What you Will_, 97 - -Wheeler, Mrs., 18 - -Whitaker, Dr., 41, 44 - -Wilkie, Sir D., 112, 128 - -Will, Turner's, 112, 139, 140 - -Wilson, 23, 27, 38, 49 - -Wolcot, Dr., 82 - -_Wreck of the Minotaur_, 50 - -Wyatt, Print Publisher, of Oxford, 86 - -_Wycliffe_, 94 - - -Yorkshire, Tour in, 34, 40 - - - - -CHRONOLOGY OF TURNER'S LIFE. - - - - Date. Page - - 1775. Born, 23rd April 6 - 1784. Drawing of Margate Church 13 - 1785. Goes to School at Brentford 15 - 1789. Student of Royal Academy 32 - 1791. First exhibits at Royal Academy 32 - 1792. First Tour in Wales 32 - 1792. Studio in Hand Court 32 - 1794. First engraving from Turner published 32 - 1793 or 1797. First exhibits in oil 34 - 1794. Noticed by the Press 34 - 1797. Tour in the North of England 40 - 1799. Elected A.R.A. 39 - 1799. Removes to Harley Street 75 - 1800. Visits Scotland 53 - 1801 or 1802. First Tour on Continent 53 - 1802. Elected R.A. 39 - 1804. Second Tour on Continent 76 - 1805. Paints _The Shipwreck_ 50 - 1807. Commences "Liber Studiorum" 55 - 1808. Professor of Perspective--Takes House at Hammersmith 75 - 1811. Exhibits _Apollo and the Python_ 67 - 1811 or 1812. Visits Devonshire 79 - 1812. Town address changed to Queen Anne Street 75 - 1814. Goes to Twickenham 75 - 1814. Commences _Southern Coast_ 84 - 1815. Exhibits _Crossing the Brook_ and _Dido Building Carthage_ 93 - 1819. First visit to Italy 92 - 1823. "History of Richmondshire" published 94 - 1824. "Rivers of England" published 94 - 1823. Exhibits _Bay of Baiae_ 97 - 1826. Leaves Twickenham 101 - 1827. Quarrels with Cooke 101 - 1827. "England and Wales" commenced 104 - 1828. Visits Rome 109 - 1829. Exhibits _Ulysses deriding Polyphemus_ 107 - 1830. Death of his Father 111 - 1830. Illustrations to Rogers's "Italy" published 113 - 1831. Makes his Will 112 - 1833. Exhibits first Venetian Picture 114 - 1833. "Rivers of France" commenced 115 - 1839. Exhibits _Fighting Temeraire_ 118 - 1843. Publication of "Modern Painters" 124 - 1851. Death 134 - -[Illustration: decoration] - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -The Fighting Temeraire=> The Fighting Temeraire {pg 1} - -Similiar stories could=> Similar stories could {pg 22} - -Glacier and Source of the Arveron=> Glacier and Source of the Arveron -{pg 53} - -Yours must truly,=> Yours most truly, {pg 110} - - * * * * * - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] "Absalom and Achitophel." - -[2] Mr. Cyrus Redding met him there in 1812, and Sir Charles Eastlake -then or after then. There is no engraved drawing by him from Devonshire -till the _Southern Coast_, which began in 1814, or picture, till the -_Crossing of the Brook_, exhibited in 1815. - -[3] Mr. Thornbury treats this as an absurd tradition, but it is -supported by an account given by Dr. Shaw of an interview between him -and the artist, and printed by Mr. T. pp. 318, 319. "May I ask you if -you are the Mr. Turner who visited at Shelford Manor, in the county of -Nottingham, in your youth?" "I am," he answered. On being further -questioned as to whether his mother's name was Marshall, he grew very -angry, and accused his visitor of taking "an unwarrantable liberty," but -was pacified by an apology, and invited Dr. Shaw to give him "the favour -of a visit" whenever he came to town. - -[4] He was called "William" at home. - -[5] See "Notes and Queries," 2nd series, v. 475, for the true version of -this story. - -[6] Wornum. - -[7] Dr. Thomas Monro, of Bushey and Adelphi Terrace, physician of -Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals, a well-known lover of art and patron -of Edridge, Girtin, Turner, W. Hunt, and other young artists. He erected -monuments at Bushey Church to Edridge and Hearne. - -[8] This gentleman is described by Mr. Thornbury as Mr. _H_arraway, a -_fish_monger in Broad_way_. - -[9] This took place in 1836. - -[10] Mr. John Britton, publisher, and author of "Beauties of Wiltshire," -&c., &c. - -[11] Perhaps the Earl of Essex. - -[12] See Memoir prefixed to "Liber Fluviorum." - -[13] "Turner and Girtin's Picturesque Views," London, 1854. - -[14] See also Mr. Wedmore's interesting essay on Girtin for a story -about Turner and Girtin's drawing of the _White House at Chelsea_. - -[15] Whether father or son does not appear. - -[16] Down to 1851 the Exhibition, in common parlance, always meant the -Exhibition of the Royal Academy. - -[17] His first exhibited oil picture, according to Mr. S. Redgrave. See -"Dictionary of Artists of the English School." - -[18] According to most accounts his first exhibited oil picture. - -[19] See Whitaker's "Parish of Whalley," vol. ii. p. 183. - -[20] See also Willis's "Current Notes" for Jan. 1852. - -[21] In a letter from Andrew Caldwell to Bishop Percy, dated 14th June, -1802, printed by Nicholls in his "Illustrations of the Literary History -of the Eighteenth Century," vol. viii. p. 43, Turner is spoken of as -beating "Loutherbourg and every other artist all to nothing." "A painter -of my acquaintance, and a good judge, declares his pencil is magic; that -it is worth every landscape-painter's while to make a pilgrimage to see -and study his works. Loutherbourg, he used to think of so highly, -appears now mediocre." - -[22] The names of these pictures are given as printed in the Catalogue. - -[23] Rawlinson. - -[24] See saying of Turner's reported by Mr. Halstead, and printed in -note in Mr. Rawlinson's "Turner's Liber Studiorum, Macmillan and Co., -1878," from which excellent work most of the above information is -derived. - -[25] Not issued till the 10th part, or over five years from the -publication of the first. - -[26] Only a portion of it, the picture. - -[27] The only picture exhibited at the Academy by this artist. It was -called _A Landscape, with Hannibal in his March over the Alps, showing -to his Army the Fertile Plains of Italy_. As its year of exhibition was -1776, it would be interesting to learn where Turner saw this picture. -Where is it now? Our information on the subject is derived from -Redgrave's "Century of Painters." - -[28] Thornbury, p. 236. - -[29] He became Professor of Perspective to the Royal Academy in this -year. - -[30] Turner seems to have paid a visit to the Continent in 1804, as Mr. -Thornbury refers to some powerful water-colour Swiss scenes of 1804 at -Farnley, p. 240. - -[31] There is no record of a visit by Turner to the Isle of Man. - -[32] Wordsworth's "Elegiac Stanzas," suggested by a picture of 'Peele -Castle in a storm,' painted by Sir George Beaumont. - -[33] "Past Celebrities," by Cyrus Redding, vol. i. - -[34] Thornbury, p. 152. - -[35] See Wornum, "Turner Gallery," p. xv., for a Catalogue of Turner's -Gallery in 1809. - -[36] He is said to have been his own architect for both houses. - -[37] See Thornbury, p. 224. - -[38] See Thornbury, p. 223. - -[39] Called in the Catalogue _Whitehall Stairs, June 18th, 1817_. - -[40] _Helvoetsluys_: _the City of Utrecht, 64, going to sea_. - -[41] Turner had a picture of the same subject in another room. The two -artists had agreed together that each should paint it. - -[42] Leslie's "Autobiographical Recollections," vol. i. pp. 202, 203. - -[43] They are printed as given by Thornbury. - -[44] In his first will he only leaves two pictures to the Nation, the -_Sun Rising through Mist_ and the _Carthage_, and on condition that they -were to be hung side by side with the great Claudes. - -[45] Hamerton, pp. 286-87. - -[46] Ibid., p. 292. - -[47] Thornbury, pp. 349-51. - -[48] Mr. Harpur, the grandson of the sister of his mother, one of his -executors. - -[49] We are informed by Mr. J. Beavington Atkinson, to whom we are -indebted for other interesting facts in connection with Turner, that he -was not ungrateful to his early friends, the Narraways of Bristol, but -supplied them from time to time with sums of money, and that at his -death there was a sum owing by one of the family who wished to repay it, -but was informed by the executors that Turner had left no record of any -such debt. - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Turner, by William Cosmo Monkhouse - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURNER *** - -***** This file should be named 40878.txt or 40878.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/8/7/40878/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images available at The Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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