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Title: Turner
Author: Monkhouse, William Cosmo, 1840-1901
Language: English
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_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.
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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
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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.
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