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diff --git a/41694-0.txt b/41694-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9dca3f9 --- /dev/null +++ b/41694-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1251 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41694 *** + + Transcriber's Note: + + Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as + possible, including non-standard spelling and punctuation. Some + changes of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are + listed at the end of the text. + + Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. + + + + + MASTERPIECES + IN COLOUR + EDITED BY - - + T. LEMAN HARE + + + + +TURNER + +1775-1851 + + + + +"MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR" SERIES + + + ARTIST. AUTHOR. + + VELAZQUEZ. S. L. BENSUSAN. + REYNOLDS. S. L. BENSUSAN. + TURNER. C. LEWIS HIND. + ROMNEY. C. LEWIS HIND. + GREUZE. ALYS EYRE MACKLIN. + BOTTICELLI. HENRY B. BINNS. + ROSSETTI. LUCIEN PISSARRO. + BELLINI. GEORGE HAY. + FRA ANGELICO. JAMES MASON. + REMBRANDT. JOSEF ISRAELS. + LEIGHTON. A. LYS BALDRY. + RAPHAEL. PAUL G. KONODY. + HOLMAN HUNT. MARY E. COLERIDGE. + TITIAN. S. L. BENSUSAN. + MILLAIS. A. LYS BALDRY. + CARLO DOLCI. GEORGE HAY. + GAINSBOROUGH. MAX ROTHSCHILD. + TINTORETTO. S. L. BENSUSAN. + LUINI. JAMES MASON. + FRANZ HALS. EDGCUMBE STALEY. + VAN DYCK. PERCY M. TURNER. + LEONARDO DA VINCI. M. W. BROCKWELL. + RUBENS. S. L. BENSUSAN. + WHISTLER. T. MARTIN WOOD. + HOLBEIN. S. L. BENSUSAN. + BURNE-JONES. A. LYS BALDRY. + VIGÉE LE BRUN. C. HALDANE MACFALL. + CHARDIN. PAUL G. KONODY. + FRAGONARD. C. HALDANE MACFALL. + MEMLINC. W. H. J. & J. C. WEALE. + CONSTABLE. C. LEWIS HIND. + RAEBURN. JAMES L. CAW. + JOHN S. SARGENT. T. MARTIN WOOD. + LAWRENCE. S. L. BENSUSAN. + DÜRER. H. E. A. FURST. + MILLET. PERCY M. TURNER. + WATTEAU. C. LEWIS HIND. + HOGARTH. C. LEWIS HIND. + MURILLO. S. L. BENSUSAN. + WATTS. W. LOFTUS HARE. + INGRES. A. J. FINBERG. + COROT. SIDNEY ALLNUTT. + DELACROIX. PAUL G. KONODY. + + _Others in Preparation._ + +[Illustration: PLATE I.--A SHIP AGROUND. From the oil painting by Turner +in the Tate Gallery. (Frontispiece) + +This beautiful sea piece is essentially Turner--the result of his +personal observation. It was painted after he had freed himself from the +desire to rival and outvie his predecessors, and before he became +obsessed by the passion to paint pure sunlight. "A Ship Aground" is a +pendant to "The Old Chain Pier, Brighton," which also hangs in the Tate +Gallery.] + + + + + TURNER + + FIVE LETTERS AND A POSTSCRIPT + + BY C. LEWIS HIND + + ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT + REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR + + [Illustration: IN SEMPITERNUM.] + + LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK + NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + LETTER I + Page + Explanatory 11 + + + LETTER II + + His Life: An Impression 26 + + + LETTER III + + His Art: The Furnace Doors Open 41 + + + LETTER IV + + The Flame Ascends 48 + + + LETTER V + + The Flame Leaps, Expands, and Expires 62 + + + POSTSCRIPT + + Turner and Two Others 72 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + Plate + + I. A Ship Aground Frontispiece + + From the Oil Painting by Turner in the Tate Gallery + + Page + II. Hastings 14 + + From the Oil Painting by Turner in the Tate Gallery + + + III. Norham Castle 24 + + From the Oil Painting by Turner in the Tate Gallery + + + IV. The Fighting Téméraire 34 + + From the Oil Painting by Turner in the National Gallery + + + V. Venice: Grand Canal (Sunset) 40 + + From the Water-Colour by Turner in the National Gallery + + + VI. Arth from the Lake of Zug 50 + + From the Water-Colour by Turner in the National Gallery + + + VII. Lausanne 60 + + From the Water-Colour by Turner in the National Gallery + + + VIII. Tivoli 70 + + From the Oil Painting by Turner in the Tate Gallery + + + + +[Illustration: Drawing of Turner] + +LETTER I + +EXPLANATORY + + +Yes: I remember that morning at Exeter when I surprised you making a +drawing of the west porch of the cathedral. Timidly were the unrestored +figures of angels, apostles, prophets, kings and warriors--very old, +very battered--taking form in your sketch-book: timidly, for even then +you were beginning to be troubled by the blur that rose, after an hour's +work, between your eyes and the carven kings and saints. + +Your sister passed into the cathedral to her devotions carrying white +flowers for the altar: we stayed in the sunlight. I cannot remember how +Turner became the subject of our talk; but I think it was my mention of +his drawing of the west front of Salisbury Cathedral done when he was +twenty-three--one of the set exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1799, +which hastened his election to an Associateship of the Royal Academy. +Those were the days of the tinted architectural drawings, but in that +magnificent Salisbury, the details indicated, yet not insistent, the old +stones yellow in the sunshine, grey-blue in the shadow, Turner was +already on the track of Light, the goal of his art life. He had not yet +formulated any principle, that was not Turner's way; but those small, +bright eyes of his had already perceived that there is light in shade as +in shine. Girtin, that marvellous boy, his friend and fellow-student, +was still alive; but art was in a poor state in England, in 1799, +and we can well believe that this drawing of Salisbury made Turner a +marked man. I could dispense with the lamp-post boys playing with hoops, +as indeed with every figure in every picture by Turner. But he needed +such strong foreground notes, and he, like the older landscape painters, +troubled little about figures. Claude used to say, with a laugh, that he +made no charge for them. Their use was to throw back the middle +distance. + +[Illustration: PLATE II.--HASTINGS. (From the oil painting by Turner in +the Tate Gallery) + +One of the so-called "unfinished" pictures that, after half a century of +seclusion in the cellars of the National Gallery, were removed to the +Tate Gallery, and opened to public inspection early in February 1906. +This great "find," as it was called, of twenty-one Turners was the +sensation of the year in art circles. Hastings was a favourite subject +with Turner.] + +Then we talked of Turner's water-colours. Had he never composed the +"Liber Studiorum"; never produced gorgeous dreams of glowing colour in +his oil pictures; never with veils of luminous paint flashed sunrise +upon white canvases; never done a moonlight, or white sails billowing +over a wet sea, he would, in his water-colours, have earned the title of +father of modern landscape and of Impressionism. + +You, who had seen nothing of Turner's work except the plates, good in +their way, but far from being the real thing, in Mr. Stopford Brooke's +edition of the "Liber Studiorum," hinted that you found the master +old-fashioned. Corot, Monet, and Harpignies were your idols in +landscape. That was not strange when I consider that your childhood was +spent in Jersey, and your youth at Moret and in Paris, and that on your +twentieth birthday, a few months ago, you were articled to an architect +of Exeter, your France-loving father's native place. So the Master +seemed old-fashioned, did he? And you were a little sceptical of my +enthusiasm. + +"Ah," I said, "if you could see a range of Turner's water-colours from +the first boyish drawing of Lambeth Palace exhibited at the Royal +Academy when he was fifteen, through the plodding period of his +development, cumbered with ungainly figures, but set in the Turnerian +air and against infinite distances, as in the winding Thames from +Richmond Hill, ever moving towards the light, on to his later visions +when buildings, hills, and clouds shimmer in iridescent vapour! Then the +figures of men and women disappear, and after fifty years of observation +of Nature those old eyes see only the chromatic glories of the +reflections and refractions of imponderable sun-rays. The lovely colours +linger so delicately on odds and ends of paper that it seems as if a +breath must blow them away. If you could see the sapphire, opal and +amethyst tenderness of his 'Study on the Rhine,' the misty hills +rainbow-tinted, the sun flushing the steep castle rock and making a +golden pathway over the sea, you would feel that this barber's son, +morose, mean, in whose muddled brain moved until his last day +magnificent ideas, has given to the world the whole history of +water-colour, from the tinted drawing, to the flame of an effect seen +and caught in a moment of ecstasy." + +You were still sceptical! I acknowledge that there were others in +Turner's day who also broke new paths--Cozens, and of course Girtin, of +whom Turner is reported to have said, "Had Tom Girtin lived I should +have starved." As an old man he would mumble of "Poor Tom's golden +drawings." I acknowledge that since Turner's day the channel that he +flooded has broadened and gushed forth into many tributaries; but he was +the first, modelling himself on Claude, to start in pursuit of the sun, +to break the rays, and flush the land. + +I quoted a Frenchman, M. le Sizeranne: "All the torches which have shed +a flood of new light upon Art--that of Delacroix in 1825, those of the +Impressionists in 1870--have in turn been lit at his flame." + +I quoted Constable--generous Constable--"I believe it would be difficult +to say that there is a bit of landscape now done that does not emanate +from that source." + +I quoted Pisarro, telling how during the war of 1870 he and Monet came +to London, studied Turner at the National Gallery, and found in Turner +and Constable "practical certitude in matters of technique which they +had but vaguely suspected and discussed at the Café Guerbois." What +would they have said had they known that Ruskin, the champion of Turner, +the foe of Impressionism, when, in 1856, he sifted the nineteen thousand +Turner water-colours, drawings, studies, and the "unfinished" paintings, +had condemned the sunshine and atmosphere canvases now in the Tate +Gallery to half a century of obscurity, because in his opinion they were +"unfinished." Turner purposely left them unfinished and elusive as +sunrise itself, momentary impressions of the glory of the world. The sun +is new each day, ever uncompleted: so are these records of the flame of +Turner. + +"They are golden visions," said Constable, speaking of the Venice +pictures, "only visions, but still one would like to live and die with +such pictures." + +Turner, to whom the world of men and women was a place to escape from, +brooded on scenes that open a pathway to tired eyes leading away +somewhere west of the sun and east of the moon; he loved distances, +lakes that feel their way round hills to infinity, and sunsets that are +a world in themselves. Even in his dark "Calais Pier" he must open the +inky clouds to a blue sky swaying above the bituminous sea. In the +"unfinished" "Chichester Canal" you may sail over that happy waterway, +beyond the spire, on and on whithersoever your fancy leads; in the +"unfinished" "Petworth Park" you may tramp away with the hunter and the +hounds past the sentinel trees to that vast sky flaming and beckoning; +in the "unfinished" "Norham Castle Sunrise" the poet-artist dreamed the +mystery of dawn, and as he saw the miracle unfolding, he told his dream +to you and to me; he saw the blue mists parting before the sun-rays +rising behind the castle; saw the opalescent sky reflected in the +water; saw, perhaps, in the mind's eye, the strong red note that the +picture needed, and quickly set that cow standing knee-deep in the +shallows. Turner gave all of himself to the making of this lovely +impression, for Norham Castle, which he drew and painted so often, was +his mascot. Sketching on the Tweed with Cadell, the Edinburgh +bookseller, as they passed Norham Castle, Turner suddenly swept off his +hat to the ruins. "I made a drawing of Norham several years ago," he +explained. "It took; and from that day to this I have had as much to do +as my hands could execute." + +There, I remember, I paused, noting that you were again passing your +hands about your eyes. Troubled, you said that the blur had returned, +and that you must work no more that day. So we walked towards the river. + +On the way we saw Italian workmen in blue trousers paving a road from +cauldrons of molten asphalt. We watched the little flames leaping from +the bubbling mass, and I drew from the sight an image of the art life of +Turner: how he stoked his furnace with Poussin, Vandevelde, and de +Loutherbourg, and so brought to life his dark early works such as "The +Shipwreck" and "Calais Pier"; how as he fed his fire with Claude, Crome, +and Wilson the furnace glowed, and the world saw the ardour of "Ulysses +Deriding Polyphemus," and the splendour of "Dido Building Carthage"; +then when the flames leapt towards the sky there was pure Turner, the +Turner of the "Téméraire" and the Venice dreams, a "Hastings" that has +lost all earthly form; a dream boat passing between Headlands at +Sunrise, and the later water-colours--the red Rigi, the blue Rigi, the +blue and gold "Arth from the Lake of Zug," the moonlight Venice, and the +atmospheric magic of the Lake of Uri. + +When we regained the Cathedral close we met your sister returning from +her devotions. She said: "What have you been discussing this summer +morning?" + +"I have been discoursing on The Flame of Turner," said I. + +"Ah!" said she, "there's a Turner in the Museum here." + +We went to the Museum and stood before "Buttermere Lake, with a part of +Cromach Water, Cumberland--a Shower." You were silent. What a +catastrophe--after my dithyrambs about the flame of Turner and his slow +soar to light, that I should show you, as your first Turner, that work +of his early stoking period, painted at twenty-two, before he learned +the method of oil painting and the ways of the sun. The lake has almost +gone, the trees have blackened, only the rainbow dimly lingers. The +flame of Turner? The chrysalis husk of Turner! + +That poor "Buttermere Lake" is still the only picture by Turner that you +have ever seen. And now that you are far from here, walking and digging +in Sparta, and sailing in insecure little crafts to the Islands, I hold +it a duty to write you in detachments this interminable letter +explaining as well as I can what I mean by the Flame of Turner. Your +sister will read the letters to you, ill-starred student, who, at the +beginning of your art career, must not use your eyes for twelve months +on penalty of blindness. + +When, after the last visit to the oculist, you hurried from the lawyer's +office in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where I witnessed your Will, I did not +tell you that a few yards away rests a glorious Turner, "Van Tromp's +Barge entering the Texel" and sailing in golden pomp eternally through +the Soane Museum. I saw it on my way to your lawyer's office. The +picture is alone and I was alone with what Turner loved--a sportive sea, +an arching sky, gold overhead, gold on the water, and a ship sailing +home golden-hulled beneath golden sails, with flags flying at the mast, +and a cunning wraith of indigo cloud sweeping down the sky to give the +glamour value. You did not see the golden Van Tromp. I had not the heart +to show it to you. + +[Illustration: PLATE III.--NORHAM CASTLE. (From the oil painting by +Turner in the Tate Gallery) + +One of the most beautiful of the impressionistic Turners that were +removed from the cellars of the National Gallery early in 1906, cleaned, +and hung in the Turner Room at Millbank. Once, when passing Norham +Castle, Turner took off his hat to the ruins. His companion inquired the +reason. "I made a drawing or painting of Norham Castle several years +since," answered Turner. "It took; and from that day to this I have had +as much to do as my hands could execute."] + +Now you are far from Turner. I can follow your track to Olympia, and +along the path by the wood, above the excavations, to a rough sign-post, +where I stood two years ago and read the words "To Arcadia!" Somewhere +beyond Arcadia you are, and some day these letters will fall, one by +one, into your hands. + + + + +LETTER II + +HIS LIFE: AN IMPRESSION + + +Once in our walk from Exeter Cathedral to the river you paused and asked +what kind of a man was this amalgam of poet-artist and suspicious +tradesman. And I, who had been so long studying his works, and dipping +into the lives of him by Thornbury, Hamerton, Cosmo Monkhouse, Sir +Walter Armstrong, Mr. W. L. Wyllie, and others, tried to give an +impression of the man Turner--a blur of his sayings, letters, habits, +and the comments of his biographers. Some of them have bewailed that his +was not a pattern life, such as would edify a Y.M.C.A. audience. Nature +produces such useful lives by the hundred thousand: she makes but one +Turner. The Church had blessed neither his union with Mrs. Danby, nor +with Mrs. Booth, and, in his later days, he preferred rum and water with +sea-faring men in Wapping or Rotherhithe to dreary dinner-parties in +dreary houses in the West End of London, which does not seem to me +strange. We must take him as he was and be grateful. It was Nature's +whim to link this great artist-soul to the starved soul of a petty +tradesman. As an artist he is with the immortals: as a man he was true +son of the covetous, kindly barber of Maiden Lane, Strand, keen on +halfpennies, a driver of hard bargains. The father haggled with his +customers, the son with engravers and picture buyers. Secretive, +suspicious, ambitious, sometimes mean, yet capable of great kindnesses +and sacrifices, was this little hook-nosed man in an ill-cut brown coat, +and enormous frilled shirt, with feet and hands notably small. Kind? +Yes. Did he not in the Academy of 1826 cover his glowing picture of +"Cologne--The Arrival of a Packet Boat--Evening" with a wash of +lamp-black, because it "killed" two portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence +hanging alongside. "Poor Lawrence was so unhappy," said Turner. "The +lamp-black will all wash off after the Exhibition." But Turner's moods +were capricious. Like all blessed or cursed with the artistic +temperament, the mood of the moment usually governed his actions. Six +years after the lamp-black incident he had a grey picture hanging beside +Constable's "Opening of Waterloo Bridge," and Turner (you may imagine +the fury in his bright eyes) watched his brother artist heightening with +vermilion and lake the decorations and flags of his City barges. +Presently, when Constable had gone away, Turner put a round daub of red +lead upon his grey picture, which he afterwards shaped into a buoy. +Constable said when he returned, "Turner has been here and fired a gun." +Turner liked a joke, and if it was sometimes at the expense of another, +that was but the way of his class. + +From first to last he loved but one thing with heart and soul--his art. +His affection for his father, and for Mr. Fawkes of Farnley Hall, were +but interludes in his passion to interpret Nature, to make her conform +to his visions, and to excel his predecessors and contemporaries. +Certainly, in his way, he loved his "old dad," who lived with him until +his death, looking after the picture gallery of unsold works in Queen +Anne Street, and helping in the preparation of his canvases. Of his +father he was wont to chuckle, "Dad taught me nothing except to save +halfpence." The death of the old man was a great blow. + +The love affair which Thornbury relates amounts to nothing--no human +thing ever really interfered with his art. His schooling at Brentford +and Margate was infinitesimal--but for a landscape and sea painter, what +education could have been better than the river and the boats at +Brentford and the sea and ships at Margate. He remained illiterate to +the end. When he wrote a description of St. Michael's Mount for the +publication called "Coast Scenery," Coombes complained that "Mr. T----'s +account is the most extraordinary composition I have ever read; in parts +it is absolutely unintelligible." As Professor of Perspective at the +Royal Academy he was unable to express his ideas, but, says Thornbury, +"he took great pains to prepare the most learned diagrams." + +Throughout his life he extended and amended that amazing poem called +"Fallacies of Hope," portions of which he tagged to his pictures in the +Royal Academy Catalogue. It is doggerel with occasional glints of the +beauty, pomp, and wonder of the world that showered when he used his +rightful methods of self-expression--eye and hand. The romance of the +ancient world of myth and architecture tingled in this secretive, +slovenly, Jewy man; but when he essayed to learn Greek, in the happy +days at Sandycombe, the attempt had to be abandoned. The slow brain +could not master the verbs. + +Ambition was strong within him. No toil was too long or too severe. He +travelled England and Europe, sketched everything, stored the forms of +buildings and effects of light and colour; and could recall what he had +garnered at an instant's notice. In painting he pitted himself against +the dead, against his contemporaries, against twenty miles of country, +against the very glory of the sun, wrestling with each in turn, and +chuckling as they succumbed. + +He saved his money and in later years hoarded his pictures. He refused +to pass potential purchasers to his studio, but Gillott, the pen-maker, +bearded the lion in Queen Anne Street, pushed past Mrs. Danby, joked +with the old man when he growled, "Don't want to sell!" and carried off +in his cab some five thousand pounds worth of pictures. + +Turner re-bought his canvases when they came up for sale at Christie's, +worked without cessation, practised all manner of petty economies, and +finally left his pictures to the nation and his fortune of one hundred +and forty thousand pounds to found a home for "decayed male artists of +English parents and of lawful issue, with an instruction for a Turner +medal at the Royal Academy, and a monument to himself in St. Paul's +Cathedral." + +The will with its four codicils was a bewildering document. For years it +was wrangled over in the courts, and in the end a compromise was +effected. The fortune went to the next of kin, the pictures and drawings +to the nation, and twenty thousand pounds to the Royal Academy. Ruskin +summed up the compromise thus: "The nation buried, with threefold +honour, Turner's body in St. Paul's, his pictures at Charing Cross, and +his purposes in Chancery." + +If Turner, as he eyes the landscape of the Elysian Fields, retains aught +of earth-life frailty, he must look angrily down upon the Turner +section of the National Gallery, upon the rooms beneath, reached by a +winding staircase, where some of his water-colours are crowded, upon the +sunlight canvases at the Tate Gallery; and at certain provincial +exhibitions whither some of his works have overflowed from the National +Gallery. For he stated explicitly in his will that the pictures should +be kept together in a room or rooms to be added to the National Gallery, +to be called Turner's Gallery, and to be built within ten years of his +demise. + +I still hope that the Turner Gallery may be built. Perhaps the hope will +become a reality. What a sight Turner's pictures chronologically +arranged would be, from the dim experimental pieces and the "Moonlight: +A Study at Millbank," to those four works, splendid failures, now at the +Tate Gallery, that he painted the year before he died, when the mind of +the old man, having flamed from the embers to express the opalescent +loveliness of Venice, the grey tumult of the sea in the Whaling series, +the glory of the sun flashed in stains of luminous colour upon white +canvases, harked back, in the shadow of death, to the old legends he had +always loved, and painted them as of yore, but now blurred and +tumbling, mighty ruins rising from blue lakes by great rivers and +arching pines, with an impossible Æneas relating his story to an +unrealised Dido, or being admonished by a Noah's-Ark Mercury. The +imagination remains gorgeous if chaotic; at seventy-five he still +reaches towards the unattainable, still seeks in visions a way of escape +from the materialism and stupidity of the world. + +[Illustration: PLATE IV.--THE FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE. + +(From the oil painting by Turner in the National Gallery) + +Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1839. In the previous year a party of +friends, including Turner, were bound for Greenwich by water. They +passed a steam-tug towing a superannuated battleship. "That's a fine +subject for you, Turner." said Stanfield. The painter took the hint, and +produced "The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken +up."] + +What a triumph to see the range of oil pictures with the water-colours +stepping daintily through the stages of his development to those latter +dreams of the Rhine and Swiss lakes, fairy scenes that live, as by a +miracle, on pieces of mere paper; also the proofs of the "Liber," with +Mr. Frank Short's interpretations of the drawings that were never +engraved, bringing the number up to a round hundred; also the tall +books, one cold, beautiful steel engraving on a page, such as "Château +Gaillard" in the volume called "Turner's Annual Tour, 1834," a view +which charms the eyes dulled by grey London and makes the feet impatient +to be off to Richard Coeur-de-Lion's castle on the bend of the Seine. +The portraits, sketches and caricatures, too, of Turner of Maiden Lane, +Hand's Court, Hammersmith, Twickenham, Queen Anne and Harley Streets, +Chelsea, and of all the world--they should hang near his life-work. + +You will see him, when the good time of the Turner Gallery comes, as a +pretty youth, painted by himself, no doubt a flattering likeness, which +hangs in the National Gallery. It is a bust portrait, full-face, with +large estimating eyes, somewhat amazed, a heavy nose, and a dropping +under-lip. An attractive boy; but you must remember that Turner the +idealist painted it, and that he had worked for a time in the studio of +Sir Joshua Reynolds. + +Nearer to the Turner that one visualises is the sturdy middle-aged man +seated under a tree, cross-legged, pencil in hand, in the painting by +Charles Turner. The brickdust face is clean-shaven, the nose +unmistakably Semitic; the hair is long, and the whiskers straggle to the +collar. A drawing rests upon his knee; he looks forth with an eye like a +sword, considering how he shall change the landscape. The sketch by +Maclise is a delight. Turner sits on a stool up in the clouds, +painting; the tail of his coat flaps over towards the earth, his boot is +crooked into the support of the easel, and beneath him rises the sun +with the word "Turner" blazoned amid the rays. But the best of the +series, because it has that touch of caricature which often approaches +nearer to life than a reasoned drawing, is the portrait by William +Parrott made on Varnishing Day at the Royal Academy in 1846, when he was +seventy-one. Turner is painting furiously upon his picture. The frame +stands on the floor. The top is but an inch shorter than the battered +beaver hat crushed over upon his big head. His Mrs. Gamp umbrella leans +against a chair. His fellow-Academicians stare at his picture and at his +colour-box, puzzled. "How does he do it?" they whisper. + +In those days the members of the Academy were allowed four varnishing +days. In his latter years Turner would send his pictures merely laid in +with white and grey and complete them on the varnishing days. There was +brown sherry at luncheon, and Wilkie Collins describes the old man as +"sitting on the top of a flight of steps, or a box, like a shabby +Bacchus nodding at his picture." But he could paint a "Rain, Steam, and +Speed" and "The Sun of Venice going to Sea" in spite of the brown +sherry, and his lonely bachelor life. + +But brown sherry or no brown sherry, to his dying day he never lost +interest in the love of his life, light. At seventy years of age, when +he is described as stooping, looking down and muttering to himself, he +would pump Brewster as to all he knew on the subject of light. Those +were the days of the infancy of photography, and Mr. Mayall, who was +experimenting with daguerreotypes, tells how the old man, whose eyes +were then weak and bloodshot, would sit in his studio day after day +asking questions. He pretended that he was a Master in Chancery. + +[Illustration: PLATE V.--VENICE: GRAND CANAL (SUNSET) + +(From the water-colour by Turner in the National Gallery) + +This twilight impression of the Grand Canal is one of the twenty Venice +water-colours catalogued and described by Ruskin, and arranged by him +for exhibition in the rooms on the ground floor of the National Gallery. +"Turner's entirely final manner" he calls it "A noble sketch; injured by +some change which has taken place in the coarse dark touches on the +extreme left."] + + + + +LETTER III + +HIS ART: THE FURNACE DOORS OPEN + + +There is a small, neglected room in the National Gallery where certain +beginnings and failures in art are entombed. If you were to stroll into +that sepulchre on a dark day, I fear you would exclaim that "Buttermere +Lake" is bright compared with those other early Turners "Morning on +Coniston Fells" and "Moonlight: a Study at Millbank." Even on early +March afternoons, when the sun strikes through the tall windows and +falls upon "Moonlight at Millbank," little is visible on the small, +sooty canvas except the full moon, looking like a discoloured white +wafer stuck upon the dim sky. Turner developed slowly. This veritable +nocturne, and the pictures that followed it shows how slow and difficult +was his mastery of oil as a medium. + +In the early nineteenth century Claude, the Poussins, Salvator Rosa, and +Cuyp were the idols of landscape art, which was still regarded as a +sort of interloper in the realm swayed by religious and mythological +pictures, portraits, genre works, and "Dutch drolleries." The academic +pioneers in landscape had imposed themselves upon Nature and upon the +English gentry who were the patrons of art. Landscape might be +classically beautiful according to Claude, classically sublime according +to Salvator, homely and mildly sunny according to Cuyp, conventionally +maritime according to Vandevelde. Turner as a youth was not the man to +break tradition. The cunning tradesman in him preferred the well-beaten +path. It was his destiny to compete against the popular idols in turn, +to sweep past them to Nature herself, and so onwards and upwards to the +sun, the source of all light and colour. "Looked on the sun with hope" +is one of the few simple and suggestive lines in his "Fallacies of +Hope." + +Averse in his beginnings, like Velazquez, to experimentalising, he was +content to bide his time, to plough the furrows of other men, with the +indwelling determination to plough them better. He admired with +generosity; he never depreciated. "Vandevelde made me a painter," he +said, years later, and of a golden-brown Cuyp he exclaimed, "I would +give a thousand pounds to have painted that." + +If ever, exiled student, we visit the National Gallery together on the +Turner quest, I shall take you first to that room where, from the grave, +he challenges Claude of Lorraine. Turner bequeathed "The Sun Rising in a +Mist," painted when he was thirty-two, and "Dido Building Carthage," +painted when he was forty, to the nation, on condition that they should +hang for ever "between the two pictures painted by Claude, the 'Seaport' +and the 'Mill.'" There you have a glimpse into the mind of Turner, his +fine envy of others, his confidence in his own power. A Frenchman, M. +Viardot, incensed at the idea that any one should approach the throne of +the Lorrainer, suggests that such o'ervaulting pride was a proof of +Turner's insanity. I will not answer such foolishness, but British +candour compels me to say that I do not think Claude suffers by the +comparison. Turner became great when he became himself, not when he was +trying to outvie others--Titian, Morland, Gainsborough, Crome--to name +but four. In the year that he painted "The Sun Rising in a Mist" he was +trying in his "Country Blacksmith" to trip Wilkie, and in "The Sun +Rising in a Mist," as Mr. Wyllie shows, the figures are taken almost +exactly from Teniers, and the snub-nosed, high-pooped ships from +Vandevelde. His time was not yet. He was learning furiously, brooding +upon and correlating his impressions of Nature, storing them for future +use, shredding the permanent from the trivial. I think of him on that +tossing trip to Bur Island in a half-decked boat with Cyrus Redding, +silently watching the sea, absorbed in contemplation, climbing to the +summit of the island in a hurricane of wind, where he "seemed writing +rather than drawing." Not yet could he say to a companion, looking at a +black cow against the sun, "It's purple, not black as it is painted"; +not yet had the sun begun to flood his drawings; not yet were the "brown +tree school" angry because forms lost their details in the blinding +light of his pictures. But in "Dido building Carthage," painted in 1815, +the same year as the popular "Crossing the Brook," of which he thought +so highly that he talked in his ironic, humorous way of being wrapped +up in it as a winding-sheet, there are signs that he was feeling the +fascination of colour. + +Some day you will stand at the entrance of the great Turner Room in the +National Gallery and rest your eyes on the six huge dark pictures on the +left wall. The dull and uninspiring "Waterloo" is later than the others; +but to me it is just as unattractive as its companions--as I think it +will be, light lover, to you. "The Tenth Plague" and "The Deluge" I +never look at except when I wish to be reminded that from the chrysalis +rises the butterfly, from the black furnace the loveliness of the flame. +The "Death of Nelson" is dark and decorative, "Calais Pier" and "The +Shipwreck" are dark and tremendous. "Nobody is wet," said Ruskin, and +nobody feels that he is looking on the real Calais, or on a real +shipwreck, yet what power they have. These funereal wild waves were made +in Harley Street; light, to the slow-developing Turner, was still a +studio convention. But nobody else could have made those seas. They are +by Turner, but not by the true Turner, who strove through the veiled +sun to the source of light itself. + +In "Crossing the Brook," which faces the entrance doorway, painted when +he was forty, Turner has marched onward. The gates have opened to the +far horizon, and he now gives us the Turnerian fifty miles or so of +country outstretching to infinity on a few feet of canvas. If you were +with me, I would whisper in your ear my division of "Crossing the Brook" +into pleasing and unpleasing passages--the pleasing being the fleecy +clouds in the blue sky, the faint miles of Devonshire, the wooded hills +rising from the river, and the bridge that spans the water: the +unpleasing passages are the worried foreground, the ugly rocks, the +figures, and the black mouth of the tunnel. Yet it is a picture of which +one becomes fond. Who can but be entranced by the distance, Turner's +sign mark, the open gate that lures us away from the troubled foreground +of the world. + +I turn from the sanity of "Crossing the Brook" to the right wall, and +straightway I am elated, it is always so, at the sight of one of the +magnificent dreams that the old Wizard forced oil paint and brushes to +portray. In the centre of the wall hangs "Ulysses and Polyphemus." + +The furnace doors are open, from them stream a fury of glow, and in the +fire are the dazzling shapes of Turnerian romance. + + + + +LETTER IV + +THE FLAME ASCENDS + + +When we visit the National Gallery I will place you with your back to +the dark "Calais Pier" and "Shipwreck" wall, and waving my hand across +to that glorious trio, the "Ulysses," the "Bay of Baiæ," and the +"Carthage," I will say but one word--"Turner!" + +Here indeed is the magician weaving his spells, breaking the laws of +light and shade, toying with history, caring nothing so long as he can +picture the dreams of the pomp and beauty of the world of imagination +that dazzled a sullen man, pottering about in a dingy London studio. +"Ulysses deriding Polyphemus" has been called operatic and melodramatic; +it has been remarked that the galley of Ulysses, far from the influence +of the sun, is in full light, and that the dark shadows thrown by the +stone-pines in the "Bay of Baiæ" are unnatural. Turner needed those +deep blacks in the foreground; he wanted the galley of Ulysses to be +in the light: so the old rascal forced truth to suit his vision. His +success is his expiation. He never copied Nature or followed history. +His way was to use Nature and history to suit his conception, the right +way for a genius; but not for Brown, Smith, and Jones. Anachronisms +abound in his works; he elongated steeples, rebuilt towers and towns, +changed the courses of rivers (he in paint, as Leonardo with the +pencil); but he caught the spirit of place. To me the "Ulysses deriding +Polyphemus" is the very heart of romance. Unlike life, yes; all the best +things are unlike life. I withdraw my remark that there is not a figure +in a picture by Turner which I would not rather have erased, withdraw it +in favour of the vast, impotent Polyphemus writhing on the cliff. When +Turner painted the figures of gods and goddesses in the likeness of men +and women he was bored; when he painted a giant monster like this +Polyphemus his imagination inspired him. Asked where he found his +subject, he invented two silly lines of doggerel and said they came from +Tom Dibdin. His lonely visions were not for the chatter of a dinner +party. They may be tracked in that little red book found by Thornbury in +his studio, where, amid notes about chemistry, memoranda as to colours, +and prophylactics against the Maltese plague, are certain scraps of +verse, something about, "Anna's kiss," "a look back," "a toilsome +dream," "human joy, ecstasy, and hope." + +[Illustration: PLATE VI.--ARTH FROM THE LAKE OF ZUG. + +(From the water-colour by Turner in the National Gallery) + +"Elaborate and lovely," wrote Ruskin. "We sleep at Arth, and are up, and +out on the lake, early in the morning; to good purpose. The sun rises +behind the Mythens, and we see such an effect of lake and light, as we +shall not forget soon."] + +Here I pause to ask myself how I can possibly give you, who have never +seen it, an idea of the Turner room at the National Gallery. I close my +eyes and visualise the route. I ascend the stairs, and am detained by +two Turners that have, against his will, overflowed into an outer +room--the beautiful heat-hazy Abingdon, and distant London, seen from +Greenwich. Almost reluctantly I walk into the large gallery, and pass +from the glorious sunrise in Ulysses to the glorious sunset in "The +Fighting Téméraire," painted just ten years later. Claude and the others +have been left far behind. Here is Turner the visionary, alone with the +sun and the sea, untroubled by the necessity of painting the puny figure +of man, but glorying in the symbols of man's power, the new tug dragging +the stately old battleship to her last berth, a theme near to his +heart--the end of a period in man's history flickering out in the +ageless glory of Nature. + +Pages, chapters, have been written about the untruth of this picture. +"His light and shade," says Mr. Wyllie, "is very seldom correct. His +tones are almost always wrong. The place where the sun is setting in the +'Téméraire' is the darkest part of the picture." But what does it +matter? This is his vision, of the absolute end of man's work in this +daily death of Nature. Who would have one inch changed? About this, as +about almost all the pictures, there is a story. The Téméraire "killed" +a portrait by Geddes hanging above it, whereupon Geddes began to lay in +a vivid Turkey carpet on his canvas. "Ho! ho!" cried Turner, who loved a +fight; and the unfortunate Geddes watched him loading on orange, +scarlet, and yellow with his palette knife. + +I close my eyes to the splendour of the "Téméraire" and see "The Burial +of Wilkie," a silvery blue sky and sea shimmering with delicate +reflections, the mourning, black-sailed vessel severed by the flare of +the torches, their brilliancy and the black of the sails forming vast +tracks of light and gloom on the water. On Varnishing Day Stanfield +urged that the sails were untrue. Turner grunted--"Wish I had any colour +to make 'em blacker." + +Then I see the "Snowstorm--Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth making +Signals in Shallow Water and going by the lead," which _Punch_ called "A +Typhoon bursting in a Simoon over the Whirlpool of Maelstrom, Norway, +with a ship on fire, an eclipse, and the effect of a lunar rainbow." +Turner is now sixty-seven. He is prepared to push paint to its ultimate +limit so that he can achieve the impossible. To study the effect of this +hubbub of snowstorm and gale he put to sea in the tempest, and made the +sailors lash him to the mast for four hours. It was the hostile +reception of this picture following the attacks on others in previous +years, the jeers of _Punch_, the shafts of _Blackwood_, that inspired +Ruskin to compose "Modern Painters." The first volume was published the +following year, 1843, but that colossal work had its beginnings in a +letter Ruskin wrote in 1836 defending Turner's picture of Venice called +"Juliet and her Nurse." + +Turner was famous long before "Modern Painters" was published, and +although that pæan of appreciation has carried his fame to the ends of +the English-speaking world, the riot of its praise has tipped the pens +of some critics with gall. The "Slave Ship" exalted so eloquently by +Ruskin, and now in Boston, was described by George Inness, the American +artist, as "the most infernal piece of clap-trap ever painted." + +The aged Turner suffered from the criticisms of the "Snowstorm." Ruskin +tells how he heard the old man one evening muttering to himself +"Soapsuds and Whitewash." On the "Graduate of Oxford" attempting to +soothe him, he burst out--"What would they have? I wonder what they +think the sea's like? I wish they'd been in it!" + +Beneath the "Snowstorm" at the National Gallery hang two pictures, +shining with a radiance not of the earth, "The Sun of Venice going to +Sea," and "The Approach to Venice," wrecks perhaps of what they were, +but still lovely, in one all the pomp of Venice, in the other all her +haunting and elusive beauty. A little further along the wall in the +direction of the "Ulysses" is the parent picture of Impressionism, that +incomparable presentment of movement, mist, and moisture, aptly named +"Rain, Steam, and Speed." The fools called this a phantom picture, +complained that the locomotive has not the appearance of metal. Turner +was not painting the fact of an engine; but the effect of an engine +rushing through rain and mist. "My business," he once said to Cyrus +Redding, "is to draw what I see: not what I know is there." + +In the years 1845 and 1846, when his sense of form began to fail, but +not his sense of colour, he re-saw the sea and the sun, to the exclusion +of other aspects of Nature. Of the thirteen pictures painted in those +two years, all but three were of Venice or of Whalers. + +I wish, after our visit to the National Gallery, I could have taken you +to the Old Masters Exhibition, and there bid you look at his "Mercury +and Hersé," painted in 1811, when he saw with the eyes of Claude. +Pleasant are the blue lakes, the distances and the veiled horizon, the +faint hills and the arching sky; but they are derivative as the +drawing-master trees and the wooden foreground with its score of dummy +figures, its posed Mercury, its unrealised Hersé, and its architectural +litter. When you had absorbed this "Mercury and Hersé" of 1811, I would +have turned your gaze to the "Burning of the Houses of Parliament" of +1835, the real Turner, seeing with his own eyes the fury of burning +buildings, an orgy of flames roaring up to the star-sown sky. The far +end of the stone bridge, a nocturne in the palest blues and yellows, +drops into the fire, half the sky is aglow, half is a night blue, and +the gold and sapphire are reflected in the water, where dim boats push +out from the shade into the dazzle, and thousands of figures, mere +suggestions of forms, watch the two towers, molten silver, standing +solitary and self-contained like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego in the +flames. + +It was such spade-work as the "Liber Studiorum" that enabled him to +triumph in such an impossible subject as "The Burning of the Houses of +Parliament." Imagine what this series of drawings meant! Claude's "Liber +Veritatis," to rival which the "Liber Studiorum" was designed, was a +mere record of his pictures. Turner's "Liber Studiorum" was a survey of +Nature, classified under six heads,--architectural, pastoral, elegant or +epic-pastoral, marine, mountainous, and historical or heroic. These +divisions were suggested by "Dad." "Well, Gaffer," said Turner, "I see +there will be no peace till I comply; so give me a piece of paper." He +made each drawing in sepia; he etched the essential lines, and he +trained a school of engravers (not without quarrelling) to engrave them. + +Men have loved the "Liber." Connoisseurs, like Mr. Rawlinson, have +specialised in it. I know an enthusiast who spends hours in the course +of the year, smoking his pipe, gazing at (a poor impression, but his +own) No. VII., "The Straw Yard," that hangs on his study-wall against a +reproduction of Girtin's "White House at Chelsea," and he wonders which +he would save first if the house caught fire. I have been a quarter of +an hour late for an appointment through returning twice to a certain +house to enjoy again Mr. Frank Short's engravings of two of the +unpublished drawings--the "Crowhurst" and the "Stonehenge." But I never +knew what the "Liber" really was until I saw Mr. Rawlinson's +collection, the depth and velvety richness of a very early state of the +"Raglan Castle," and the large and still simplicity of the "Junction of +Severn and Wye." Some day it may be your privilege to see them; but +first we will descend to the ground floor of the National Gallery and +please ourselves by making a choice among the seventy and more sepia +drawings for the "Liber" that hang on the wall of the first room. + +But I doubt if you will have patience to go through all, for around, and +in little rooms beyond, are the water-colours. + +[Illustration: PLATE VII.--LAUSANNE. (From the water-colour by Turner in +the National Gallery) + +It may be Lausanne: it may be Berne, or merely a Turnerian Swiss dream +of flushed spires, and a dim foreground where anything may be happening. +This is one of the water-colours permanently on view at the National +Gallery. The others are preserved in two large cabinets in an inner +room, and shown in detachments at intervals of three months.] + + + + +LETTER V + +THE FLAME LEAPS, EXPANDS, AND EXPIRES + + +When I think of Turner it is the later water-colours that flash before +me. The oils are magnificent, tremendous, wrought in rivalry and for +fame: the water-colours, lyrical impressions, moods of elation inspired +by beauty, are himself. We will go straight to the six studies that hung +on the wall by the fireplace, essential effects selected with unerring +instinct from the unessential, called "Running Wave in a Cross-tide: +Evening;" "Twilight on the Sea;" "Sunshine on the Sea on a Stormy +Evening;" "Breaking Wave on Beach;" "Sunset on the Sea;" and "Coasting +Vessels." The very titles are lyrics. Yet they are not more beautiful +than other interpretations, pushed into the region where feeling and +vision merge into ecstasy--those I have already mentioned, and some, my +particular favourites, hanging on the wall to the left of Ruskin's +bust--the "Pilatus," the careful alchemy of "Carnarvon," and the +atmospheric veils that part above the "Lake of Uri." Year by year other +of his water-colours shine out momentarily at exhibitions, such as at +the last Old Masters, when we saw the blue and gold "Lake of Thun," and +the visionary "Lake of Zug" about which Ruskin wrote so enthusiastically +in "Modern Painters"; and the "apocalyptic splendour" of the "Zurich" at +Messrs. Agnew's. + +But one never reaches the end of his achievement in the National Gallery +collection. A selection of the four hundred is permanently on view, but +a greater number are stored in cabinets in an inner room, whence once in +three months an assortment is withdrawn for exhibition. Apart from these +there are the thousands of drawings and studies disinterred from the tin +boxes which have been arranged chronologically by Mr. A. J. Finberg, in +a hundred vast drawers, preparatory to his long labour on the _Catalogue +Raisonné_. + +Mark their range and you will realise that the whole world was his +province. Think of the books he illustrated--the Rivers, Harbours, and +Southern Coast Scenery of England, the Rivers of France, to name but +four--travelling often on foot, with his luggage in a handkerchief tied +to the end of a stick, flushing in the inn at night transparent washes +of colour on paper, flowing tint into tint, knowing exactly what to do, +sponging, scraping, using knife and finger, anything to force the +material to express his vision. Once after a Rhine tour he appeared at +Farnley Hall with a roll of fifty-three water-colours, painted at the +rate of three a day. + +I must show you the map of England and Scotland compiled by Mr. Huish, +showing Turner's tours. It is covered with the lines of his tracks; you +may see where he trudged or coached, and note the fourteen cathedrals, +twenty-seven abbeys, and sixty-six castles which he drew. Similar maps +might be made of France, Italy, and Switzerland. + +Thinking of his wanderings, I look from the window of one of the Turner +water-colour rooms near to the bust of Ruskin, who arranged and +catalogued them; I look from the window and see a line of the new, +dandy, taximeter cabs, and plan a little journey through London we two +would take, if you were here. We would visit Van Tromp at the Soane, +and then drive straight to the South Kensington Museum, where there are +golden dreams by Turner such as the "Royal Yacht Squadron, Cowes"; but +we would not tarry with the oils, for I should be impatient to show you +the wall of water-colours, some behind protecting blinds,--the early +"Wrexham," ageing houses and grey-blue tower; the perfect suggestion of +the spirit of place called "Sketch of an Italian Town," and the +fairy-like blue, gold, and purple "Lake of Brienz," pure flame of +Turner. + +Then we would speed to Millbank, enter the Tate Gallery, and stand in +Room VII. where the recovered sunshine Turners hang in radiant array. +Ruskin, you will remember, after Turner's death, separated the "finished +from the unfinished." The "finished" are in the National Gallery; the +"unfinished" are among the forty-four at Millbank. Fifty years ago they +were deposited, hidden from public gaze, in the National Gallery; early +in 1905 they were examined by order of the trustees, cleaned, restored, +and found to be brilliant and fresh, as on the day when the greatest +landscape painter the world has known, painted them. + +These forty-four pictures should be sorted. Some show but the tumbling +splendour of his decline when he fumbled with his visions, and produced +such chaotic failures as the two Deluges, the "Burning Fiery Furnace," +"The Angel standing in the Sun," "Undine," and "The Exile and the Rock +Limpet." The holiday crowd, when I was last at the Tate Gallery, laughed +as their forerunners laughed when the pictures were first exhibited. +Their laughter enabled me to understand why Turner was secretive and +boorish in old age, when his imagination outsoared his dwindling power +to express his dreams in paint. Many visitors giggled and made flippant +comments, just as _Punch_ did when the old lion's eyes began to fail and +his hand to tremble. Had Turner ceased painting when he was nearing +seventy he might have been spared much, but he could not stop. His +inward eye still saw gorgeous scenes, and amid the grime of his dingy +house in Queen Anne Street he struggled with such unearthly themes as +this Deluge in the evening and the morning, and Napoleon in the sunset +of his exile. These are the pictures of his magnificent decline at +which the crowd laughed, and at that riot of forms, so glorious in +colour, called "Interior at Petworth." But they did not laugh at the +"Norham Castle, Sunrise," a flush of the prismatic varieties of light +against the blue mists of dawn, or at "The Evening Star," a nocturne +thrown off long before Whistler popularised the word, done at the period +when, the crepuscular hour of bats and owls obsessing Turner, he +produced those small moonlight mezzotints, wonderful, dim, silver +things, that were found in his house after he was dead. They did not +laugh at the "Hastings," delicate blues and golden greys, with splendour +in the upper sky, and the whole canvas aflame with the orange sail of +the boat drawn up on the beach; or at the Yacht racing, an impression of +sails against a tumbling sea, or at "A Ship Aground," the ground-swell +rolling by the helpless vessel, and the sun setting angrily behind a +bank of cloud; or at the Tivoli, an imaginative classical landscape +probably painted as a pendant to the "Arch of Constantine." The setting +suggests the scenery of Tivoli; but when Turner's imagination was fired, +he cared little about topographical accuracy. + +That day I waited until closing time, loth to leave these visions, +noting with what art he had piled the chrome on the white ground in +"Sunrise, with a Boat between Headlands," the delicacy of the faint +hues, the gold in the sky, the gold on the cliff, splashed yonder with +blue, and the golden boat sailing ever on. + +The hour drew near five. The attendant appeared, drew the curtains one +by one over the sunshine pictures, hiding them with red hangings, all +but the four large valedictory scenes from classical mythology, and the +other splendid failures which have no curtains. + +When I left the Gallery and stood upon the terrace overlooking the +Thames and thence towards Chelsea, I saw, in the mind's eye, the print +published after Turner's death that I had picked years ago from a +twopenny portfolio in the Brompton Road, showing the little house by +Cremorne Pier where he died, under the assumed name of Booth. The sun +shines upon the building. The Thames flows in front of it. It is said +that as long as strength held he would rise at daybreak, and wrapped in +a blanket, stand upon the roof watching the colour flush the eastern +sky. + +[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--TIVOLI. (From the oil painting by Turner in +the Tate Gallery) + +An imaginative classical landscape probably painted as a pendant to the +"Arch of Constantine, Rome," which also hangs in the Tate Gallery. It +has been suggested that the phantom figures are Tobit and the Angel. The +setting suggests the scenery of Tivoli; but when Turner's imagination +was fired, he cared little about topographical or historical +accuracy.] + +The Chelsea hiding-place was discovered, but he was sinking when a +friend found him. He died on December 18, 1851, at the window, looking +upon the river, propped upon his couch. A full, and, I think, with +occasional lapses--the lot of all--a happy life, for his work never +ceased to be less than absorbing. He died in the light, having run his +race to the goal. + +The account of that dinner at David Roberts' house, not long before his +death, when he tried to propose his host's health, "ran short of words +and breath, and dropped down in his chair, with a hearty laugh, starting +again, and finishing with a 'hip, hip, hurrah!'" shows that the power to +enjoy, and the sense of fun, had not withdrawn from the solitary genius, +the "very moral of a master carpenter, with lobster red face, large +fluffy hat and enormous umbrella," who wrestled with the sun, read Ovid, +and Young's "Night Thoughts," tramped Europe in pursuit of beauty, and +who was seen on the old Margate steamer studying the movement of the +water, and the boiling foam in the wake of the "Magnet," and making his +luncheon off shrimps strewn over an immense red handkerchief spread +across his knee--Turner. + + + + +POSTSCRIPT + +TURNER AND TWO OTHERS + + +Climbing the stairs to the flat, I passed a girl who was toiling +upwards. + +Pressing the button of the electric bell I watched her ascend the last +flight. She paused. I inferred that our destination was the same, noted +that she carried a satchel, a thick notebook, and a paper-covered +sixpenny reprint. Mildly curious as to the title of the novel, I +dissembled, and read "Endeavours after the Christian Life," by James +Martineau. Therewith the stone staircase faded away, the stone walls +opened to the past, and I saw my youth, and the figure of my father +returning one night to the old home, his face illumined, his eyes +shining; heard again the earnest words between him and my mother; how he +had been at Martineau's valedictory address, how with the teacher's +communication telling of deep things of the spirit moving within him he +had avoided friends, unable to return suddenly to earth, and how he had +walked home as if with wings. Those were the days when the "Endeavours" +was a costly, exclusive, and somewhat revolutionary book. A few quick +years, and lo! it becomes one of Allenson's sixpenny series, bought by +the hundred thousand. + +The door of the flat opened, Martineau slept again with his forefathers, +the saints of all time, and the girl and I passed into the modest room +dedicated to one who was no saint. Yet I do not know. If a saint be he +who by his life makes this world for others more wonderful, more +beautiful and better worth living in, then Joseph Mallord William Turner +was a saint. Which is strange. + +I did not speak of saints to our hostess, for Turner is her god, and a +god is greater than a half-god. There is one severe note in her +room--the bust of Cæsar on a pedestal; all the rest is beauty--sheer +beauty. I wonder what a far-horizon Colonial, who had never seen +Turner's later water-colours, would feel in this room; walls covered +with sensitive copies of those flushes of radiant colour, waning blue +dawns, purple mysteries of eve, sunlighted Swiss lakes, dream buildings, +rainbow reaches of the Rhine, opalescent distances stretching past +headlands into infinity. + +The head of Cæsar, from his tall pedestal, surveyed these lyrics in +colour, as strange to him as would have been the "Endeavours after the +Christian Life," that paper book, tightly clutched, hidden from view, in +a girl's hand. Then twilight came, the lamp was lighted, and I went away +to carry out an idea that had just shaped itself. + +I had never seen the house in Queen Anne Street where Turner lived with +Mrs. Danby and the cats. Should I find the house changed--houses rather, +for he owned three, two in Harley Street, and one in Queen Anne Street, +communicating mysteriously at the back, and leaving the corner building +in other hands. + +As I walked through the Bloomsbury Squares I thought not of Turner, but +of another, a man, very old, very frail, bent almost double, with the +face of a spirit and the eye of a seer, whom years ago I had met on this +very spot, creeping round the railings which encircle the grass and +trees--James Martineau, still lingering in the world which his spirit +had long outsoared. I saw, in the mind's eye, that shrivelled +octogenarian figure, and I asked at three shops for the "Endeavours +after the Christian Life," found it in the fourth, and under lamp-post +and by lighted windows, turned the familiar pages and read fragments. + +The chapter headings stirred old thoughts, and there was one passage in +the discourse on "Immortality" that seemed the voice of the dead +murmuring as I went westward through the dark squares, saying that we +see here only the partial operation of a higher law, that we witness no +extinction, but simply migrations of the mind, which survives to fulfil +its high offices elsewhere, and find perhaps in seeming death its true +nativity. + +As I walked that voice stilled the tumult of the traffic, companioned me +through unfamiliar streets, until I knew by the brass plates on the +doors, and the lighted rooms shining through holland blinds in upper +stories, that I was in Harley Street, and near to Turner's house. Which +was it? + +A frock-coated, shining-hatted, prosperous personage, carrying a small +black bag, was inserting a latch-key in one of the brass plate doors. As +I advanced, his black bag swung up to cover his watch-chain. + +"Which was Turner's house?" said I. + +"Turner! What Turner? Was he a medical man?" + +"No! the great Turner, I mean the Painter." + +He collected himself, reflected, and said: "Ah! I do remember something! +Yes, there is a tablet on the house yonder." + +I peered up at the dwelling and saw, half way to the roof, a medallion, +and the lamplight shining upon the first letters of the name Turner. +This was the house of him who interpreted the feel of Nature, the +movement of sea and wind, the glory of the sun, the mystery of its +veiled face, the pomp of the world, the magic influence of light so +transcendently that we say: "Yes! this magician was initiate! This queer +Englishman was near to the eternal dream of his Maker." + +As I stood in the dark street and looked up at Turner's house, the +Shades gathered about me. A wizard in words joined this son of a London +barber, and that saint whose works have gone into a sixpenny edition. + +This was the house that Ruskin knew. Behind these walls, were stored the +pictures and water-colours in praise of which the most eloquent, the +most inspiring, the most wilful and bewildering book that has ever been +written upon art, was composed. Book? A library! The index alone of +"Modern Painters" fills one volume. On the doorstep of this house Turner +once stood and said to his disciple, who was about to start forth on a +foreign tour--"Don't make your parents anxious. They'll be in such a +fidge about you." He did not understand literary enthusiasm, and I doubt +if he ever read a page of the copy of "The Stones of Venice" that Ruskin +presented to him. + +Three ghosts in a walk through London! Three great figures that trailed +through the nineteenth century--a wizard in paint, a wizard in words, a +wizard in holiness. Which is the greatest? Ruskin and Martineau +explained, taught, chided, interpreted, and uplifted. Turner just acted, +was content merely to express himself, to state his wonder at the wonder +of the world. Is not his influence the most enduring? A man of few words +and those mostly incoherent, who taught nothing, believed nothing, gazed +on the sun with hope, and did superhuman things. His prayers were his +pictures. + + + The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., Derby and London + The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh + + + + + Transcriber's notes: + + The following is a list of changes made to the original. + The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. + + depreciated. "Vandevelde made me a painter" + depreciated. "Vandevelde made me a painter," + + painter the world has known, painted them + painter the world has known, painted them. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Turner, by C. Lewis Hind + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41694 *** |