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Title: Turner's Sketches and Drawings
Author: Finberg, A. J. (Alexander Joseph)
Language: English
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TURNER’S SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS
[Illustration: THE PASS OF FAÏDO, ST. GOTHARD
WATER COLOUR, 1844.]
TURNER’S SKETCHES
AND DRAWINGS
By
A. J. FINBERG
WITH 100 ILLUSTRATIONS
SECOND EDITION
METHUEN & CO. LTD
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published . . . July 21st 1910_
_Second Edition . . . 1911_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
CONTENTS
PAGE
LIST OF PLATES, ix
INTRODUCTORY, 1
The nature of our subject-matter, 1
The raw material of art, 2
The character of our subject-matter, as embryonic forms of artistic
expression, prescribes our method of study, 2
Our difficulties of description and analysis, 3
The separation of Art-criticism from Aesthetic, 3
Eight aspects of Turner’s genius, 4
CHAPTER
I. SEVEN YEARS’ APPRENTICESHIP--1787-1793, 6
Turner’s first drawings, 6
‘St. Vincent’s Tower,’ 6
Copies and imitations, 8
His debt to art, 10
Work with Mr. Hardwick, 10
Oxford sketches, 11
‘Radley Hall,’ 12
Working from the Antique, 14
The Bristol sketch-book, 14
End of the apprenticeship, 16
II. THE TOPOGRAPHICAL DRAUGHTSMAN--1793-1796, 17
Welsh tour of 1793, 17
‘St. Anselm’s Chapel,’ 18
Turner’s topographical rivals, 18
Midland tour of 1794, 20
Limitations of topographical and antiquarian art, 22
‘Interior of a Cottage,’ 23
Light and Shade as a means of expression, 24
The sketch-books of 1795 and their contents, 25
‘High Force of Tees’ or ‘Fall of Melincourt’? 27
III. THE SUBLIME--1797-1802, 29
Change from pure outline to light and shade, 29
‘Ewenny Priory,’ 30
Contrast between ‘Ewenny’ (1797) and ‘Llandaff Cathedral’ (1796), 30
Transition from Objectivity to Subjectivity, 31
Growth of taste for the Sublime, 31
There are no sublime objects, but only objects of sublime feeling, 32
Therefore no guidance but from Art, 32
The Wilson tradition, 33
The two currents in Turner’s work at this period--
(_a_) Study of Nature;
(_b_) Study of the Wilson tradition, 33
In the 1797 sketches these two currents are kept distinct, 34
The North of England tour (1797) and its record, 34
‘Studies for Pictures: Copies of Wilson,’ 36
The two currents begin to coalesce, 37
The origin of ‘Jason,’ 38
Scotch tour (1801), 38
Swiss tour (1802), 39
IV. THE SEA PAINTER--1802-1809, 41
Contrast between Marine painting and the Sublime, 41
Turner’s first sea-pieces, 42
The ‘Bridgewater Sea-piece,’ 42
‘Meeting of the Thames and Medway,’ 46
‘Our landing at Calais--nearly swampt,’ 48
‘Fishermen upon a Lee Shore,’ 48
The Dunbar and Guisborough Shore sketch-book, 48
‘The Shipwreck,’ 49
The mouth of the Thames, 51
‘Sheerness’ and the ‘Death of Nelson,’ 53
V. ‘SIMPLE NATURE’--1808-1813, 55
The works of this period an important yet generally neglected
aspect of Turner’s art, 55
Turner’s classification of ‘Pastoral’ as distinguished from ‘Elegant
Pastoral,’ 56
The Arcadian idyll of the mid-eighteenth century, 57
The first ‘Pastoral’ subjects in ‘Liber,’ 57
The ‘Windmill and Lock,’ 57
Events connected with the development of Turner’s deeper and
more solemn conception of the poetry of rural life, 58
An attempt to define the mood of pictures like the ‘Frosty
Morning,’ 64
The work of art is nothing less than its full significance, 67
Distinction between mood and character, 68
VI. THE ‘LIBER STUDIORUM,’ 72
Object of this chapter, 72
The first ‘Liber’ drawings were made at W. F. Wells’s cottage
at Knockholt, Kent, 73
‘Bridge and Cows,’ 73
Development of the so-called ‘Flint Castle,’ 75
‘Basle,’ 78
‘Little Devil’s Bridge, 80
‘London from Greenwich,’ 80
‘Kirkstall Crypt,’ 81
Etchings of the so-called ‘Raglan Castle’ and ‘Source of the
Arveron,’ 82
Suggestion for the better exhibition of the ‘Liber Studiorum’
drawings, 83
VII. THE SPLENDOUR OF SUCCESS, OR ‘WHAT YOU WILL’--1813-1830, 84
Survey of the ground we have covered, 84
The training of Turner’s sympathies by the Poets, 85
The limits of artistic beauty, 86
The predominantly sensuous bent of Turner’s genius, 86
The parting of the ways, 87
The influence of the Academy and society, 88
Turner’s first visit to Italy, 89
The Naturalistic fallacy, 95
Turner’s work for the engraver, 97
VIII. MENTAL AND PHYSICAL DECAY, AND THE ORIGIN OF
IMPRESSIONISM--1830-1845, 116
Mental Characteristics of the 1815-1830 period, 116
Their influence on form and colour, 117
Colour enrichment a general characteristic of Romantic art, 118
What further development is required to give the transition to
Impressionism? 118
Turner’s first Impressionistic work, 119
Vagueness as a means of expression, 119
Two ways of painting one’s impressions. Turner’s earlier way
contrasted with the modern Impressionistic way, 119
The change after 1830 is it a change in terms of sight or of
thought--visual or mental? 120
The content of Turner’s later work, 120
Relation of Turner’s later work to Impressionism defined, 121
The historical development of Turner’s later manner, 126
The Petworth sketches, 126
Discovery of the artistic value of the Indeterminate, 128
‘Rivers of France,’ 129
Venetian sketches, 131
Swiss and Rhine sketches, 134
The end, 135
IX. CONCLUSION, 136
The distinction between Art-criticism and Aesthetic, 136
The aim of this chapter, 137
Art and physical fact, 137
The ‘common-sense’ conception of landscape art as evidence of fact, 137
Mr. Ruskin’s treatment of the relation of Art and Nature, 138
His confusion of Nature and Mind, 140
Art as a form of communication implies that the dualism of Nature
and Mind is overcome, 143
What does Art represent? 144
An individualised psychical content present to the mind of the
artist, 145
Classification of Turner’s sketches and studies from the point of
view of their logical content, 146
The assertions in a work of art do not directly qualify the
ordinary real world, but an imaginary world specially constructed
for the artist’s purpose, 150
The ideal of complete definition, 151
Yet the content must determine the form, 151
Plea for a dynamic study of Artistic form, 153
INDEX, 155
LIST OF PLATES
All the Drawings are in the National Gallery, unless otherwise
specified.
(The numbers, etc., in brackets refer to the position of the Drawings in
the Official Inventory.)
The Pass of Faïdo, St. Gothard,....._Frontispiece_
Water Colour. 1844. (CCCLXIV. 209.)
PLATE.....PAGES
I. St. Vincent’s Tower, Naples,....._Between_ 6-7
Water-Colour. About 1787. (I.E.)
II. Central Portion of an Aquatint by Paul Sandby, after
Fabris, entitled ‘Part of Naples, with the Ruin’d Tower of
St. Vincent.’ Published 1st Jan. 1778,....._Between_ 6-7
III. Radley Hall: South Front, ....._Facing_ 11
Water-Colour. About 1789. (III. D).
IV. View on the Avon, from Cook’s Folly,....._Facing_ 14
Water-Colour and Ink. About 1791. (VI. 24).
V. Lincoln Cathedral,....._Between_ 20-21
Water Colour, exhibited at Royal Academy, 1795.
In Print Room, British Museum.
VI. Lincoln Cathedral, from the South-west,....._Between_ 20-21
Pencil. 1794. (XXI. 0).
VII. Pony and Wheelbarrow,....._Facing_ 23
Pencil. 1794. (XXI. 27a).
VIII. Melincourt Fall, Vale of Neath,....._Facing_ 26
Pencil, part in Water-Colour. 1795. (XXVI. 8).
IX. Interior of Ripon Cathedral: North Transept,....._Facing_ 28
Pencil. 1797. (XXXV. 6).
X. Conway Falls, near Bettws-y-Coed,....._Facing_ 30
Water-Colour. About 1798. (XXXVIII. 71.)
XI. Conway Castle,....._Facing_ 32
Pencil. About 1798. (XXXVIII. 50a).
XII. Ruined Castle on Hill,....._Facing_ 34
Water-Colour. About 1798. (L. K.).
XIII. Study of Fallen Trees,....._Facing_ 36
Water-Colour. About 1798. (XLII. 18-19.)
XIV. Caernarvon Castle,....._Facing_ 37
Pencil. 1799. (XLVI. 51.)
XV. Cassiobury: North-west View,....._Facing_ 38
Pencil. About 1800. (XLVII. 41.)
XVI. Blair’s Hut on the Montanvert and Mer de Glace.
Sketch for the Water-Colour in the Farnley Collection,....._Facing_ 39
Water-Colour. 1802. (LXXV. 22.)
XVII. Study for the ‘Bridgewater Sea-piece,’....._Facing_ 42
Pen and ink, wash, and white chalk on blue paper. About 1801.
(LXXXI. 122-123.)
XVIII. Study of a Barge with Sails Set,....._Facing_ 43
Pen and ink, wash, and white chalk on blue paper. About 1802.
(LXXXI. 138-139.)
XIX. Fishermen launching Boat in a rough Sea,....._Facing_ 44
Pen and ink and wash. About 1802. (LXVIII. 3.)
XX. Study for ‘Sun rising through Vapour,’....._Facing_ 45
Black and white chalk on blue paper. About 1804. (LXXXI. 40.)
XXI. Study for ‘The Shipwreck,’....._Facing_ 47
Pen and ink and wash. About 1805. (LXXXVII. 16.)
XXII. Men-of-War’s Boats fetching Provisions (1),....._Facing_ 49
Pencil. About 1808. (XCIX. 18.)
XXIII. Men-of-War’s Boats fetching Provisions (2),....._Facing_ 50
Pencil. About 1808. (XCIX. 22.)
XXIV. ‘The Inscrutable,’....._Facing_ 52
Pencil. About 1808. (CI. 18.)
XXV. Sketch for ‘Hedging and Ditching,’....._Between_ 56-57
Pencil. About 1807. (C. 47.)
XXVI. ‘Hedging and Ditching,’....._Between_ 56-57
Wash drawing in Sepia for ‘Liber Studiorum.’ About
1808. (CXVII. W.)
XXVII. (_a_) Mill on the Grand Junction Canal, near Hanwell, _Facing_ 61
Pencil. About 1809. (CXIV. 72a-73)......_Facing_ 61
....._Facing_ 61
(_b_) ‘Windmill and Lock,’....._Facing_ 61
Engraving published in ‘Liber Studiorum,’ 1st June, 1811......_Facing_ 61
(R. 27)......_Facing_ 61
XXVIII. Whalley Bridge and Village,....._Facing_ 62
Pencil. About 1808. (CIII. 8).
XXIX. Whalley Bridge. Sketch for the Picture exhibited at
the Royal Academy. 1811. (Now in Lady Wantage’s
Collection),....._Facing_ 63
Pencil. About 1808. (CIII. 6.)
XXX. London, from Greenwich Park,....._Facing_ 64
Pencil. About 1809. (CXX. H.)
XXXI. Petworth House, from the Lake,....._Facing_ 65
Pencil. About 1809. (CIX. 4.)
XXXII. Petworth House, from the Park,....._Facing_ 66
Pencil. About 1809. (CIX. 5.)
XXXIII. Cockermouth Castle,....._Facing_ 67
Pencil. About 1809. (CIX. 15.)
XXXIV. Landscape near Plymouth,....._Facing_ 68
Pencil. About 1812. (CXXXI. 96.)
XXXV. (_a_) Sandycombe Lodge and Grounds,....._Facing_ 69
Pen and Ink. About 1811. (CXIV. 73a-74.)....._Facing_ 69
(_b_) Plan of Garden: Sandycombe Lodge,....._Facing_ 69
Pen and Ink. About 1812. (CXXVII. 21a.)....._Facing_ 69
XXXVI. Scene on the French Coast,....._Between_ 74-75
Sepia. About 1806. (CXVI. C.)
XXXVII. Scene on the French Coast. Generally known as ‘Flint
Castle: Smugglers,’....._Between_ 74-75
Print of etching, washed with Sepia. About 1807. (CXVI. D.)
XXXVIII. Juvenile Tricks,....._Facing_ 78
Sepia. About 1808. (CXVI. Z.)
XXXIX. Berry Pomeroy Castle. Generally known as ‘Raglan
Castle,’....._Facing_ 79
Sepia. About 1813. (CXVIII. E.)
XL. The Alcove, Isleworth. Generally known as ‘Twickenham--Pope’s
Villa,’ etc.,....._Facing_ 8O
Sepia. About 1816. (CXVIII. I.)
XLI. Sheep-Washing, Windsor,....._Facing_ 81
Sepia. About 1818. (CXVIII. Q.)
XLII. View of a River, from a Terrace. Sometimes called
‘Macon,’....._Facing_ 82
Sepia. About 1818. (CXVIII. Y.)
XLIII. Crowhurst, Sussex,....._Facing_ 83
Sepia. About 1818. (CXVIII. R.)
XLIV. Kirkby Lonsdale Bridge,....._Facing_ 84
Pencil. About 1816. (CXLVIII. 4c-5.)
XLV. Raby Castle,....._Facing_ 85
Pencil. About 1817. (CLVI. 16a-17.)
XLVI. Raby Castle,....._Facing_ 86
Pencil. About 1817. (CLVI. 19a-20.)
XLVII. Raby Castle,....._Facing_ 87
Pencil. About 1817. (CLVI. 18a-19.)
XLVIII. Looking up the Grand Canal, Venice, from near the
Accademia di Belle Arti,....._Facing_ 90
Pencil. 1819. (CLXXV. 70a-71.)
XLIX. St. Mark’s, Venice, with part of the Ducal Palace,....._Facing_ 91
Pencil. 1819. (CLXXV. 45.)
L. The Piazzetta, Venice, looking towards Isola di S. Giorgio
Maggiore,....._Facing_ 92
Pencil. 1819. (CLXXV. 46a.)
LI. Rome, from Monte Mario,....._Facing_ 93
Pencil and Water-Colour. 1819. (CLXXXIX. 33.)
LII. Rome, from the Vatican,....._Facing_ 94
Pen and ink and Chinese white on grey. 1819. (CLXXXIX. 41.)
LIII. Trajan’s Column, in the Forum of Trajan,....._Facing_ 95
Pencil. 1819. (CLXXXVIII. 48.)
LIV. Study of Plants, Weeds, etc.,....._Facing_ 96
Pencil. About 1823. (CCV. 1a.)
LV. (_a_) Watchet, Somersetshire, }
Pencil. About 1811. (CXXIII. 170a.) }
(_b_) Watchet, Somersetshire, }....._Facing_ 100
Engraving published in ‘The Southern Coast’, 1st April, }
1820. }
LVI. (_a_) Boscastle, Cornwall, }
Pencil. About 1811. (CXXIII. 182.) }
(_b_) Boscastle, Cornwall, } _Facing_ 101
Engraving published in ‘The Southern Coast,’ 10th March, }
1825. }
LVII. Hornby Castle, from Tatham Church,....._Between_ 102-103
Pencil. About 1816. (CXLVII. 41a-42.)
LVIII. Hornby Castle, from Tatham Church,....._Between_ 102-103
Engraving, from the Water-Colour in the Victoria and Albert
Museum, published in Whitaker’s ‘Richmondshire,’ June, 1822.
LIX. (_a_) Heysham, with Black Combe, Coniston Old Man, }
Helvellyn, etc., in the distance, }
}
Pencil. About 1816. (CXLVII. 40a-41). }
} _Facing_ 104
(_b_) Heysham and Cumberland Mountains, }
}
Engraving published in Whitaker’s ‘Richmondshire,’ 22nd }
August, 1822. }
LX. (_a_) Edinburgh, from Calton Hill, }
}
Pencil. 1818. (CLXVII. 39a.) }
}
(_b_) Edinburgh, from the Calton Hill, }
}
Engraving published in Scott’s ‘Provincial Antiquities }
of Scotland,’ 1st November, 1820. } _Between_
} 106-107
(_c_) Edinburgh, from Calton Hill, }
}
Pencil. 1818. (CLXVII. 40.) }
}
(_d_) Figures on Calton Hill, }
}
Pencil. 1818. (CLXVII. 40a.) }
LXI. (_a_) Borthwick Castle, }
}
Pencil. 1818. (CLXVII. 76.) }
}
(_b_) Borthwick Castle, } _Facing_ 107
}
Engraving published in Scott’s ‘Provincial Antiquities of }
Scotland,’ 2nd April, 1819. }
LXII. (_a_) Rochester, }
}
Pencil. About 1821. (CXCIX. 18.) }
} _Between_
(_b_) Rochester, } 108-109
}
Pencil. About 1821. (CXCIX. 21.) }
LXIII. Rochester on the River Medway,....._Between_ 108-109
Water-Colour. About 1822. (CCVIII. W.)
LXIV. Bolton Abbey,....._Between_ 110-111
Pencil. About 1815. (CXXXIV. 81-82.)
LXV. Bolton Abbey,....._Between_ 110-111
Engraving published in ‘Picturesque Views in England and
Wales,’ 1827.
LXVI. (_a_) Colchester, }
}
Pencil. About 1824. (CCIX. 6a.) }
} _Between_
(_b_) Colchester, } 110-111
}
Pencil. About 1824. (CCIX. 7a.) }
LXVII. Colchester, Essex,....._Between_ 110-111
Engraving, published in ‘Picturesque Views in England and
Wales,’ 1827.
LXVIII. Stamford, Lincolnshire,....._Between_ 112-113
Pencil. 1797. (XXXIV. 86.)
LXIX. Stamford, Lincolnshire,....._Between_ 112-113
Engraving published in ‘Picturesque Views in England and
Wales,’ 1830.
LXX. (_a_) Tynemouth Priory, }
}
Pencil, with part in Water-Colour, 1797. (XXXIV. 35.) }
}
(_b_) Tynemouth, Northumberland, } _Facing_ 113
}
Engraving, published in ‘Picturesque Views in England }
and Wales,’ 1831. }
LXXI. Bemerside Tower,....._Between_ 118-119
Pencil. About 1831. (CCLXVII. 82a.)
LXXII. Bemerside Tower,....._Between_ 111-118
Engraving published in Scott’s ‘Poetical Works’ (Cadell),
1834.
LXXIII. Men chatting round Fireplace: Petworth House,....._Facing_ 122
Water-Colour. About 1830. (CCXLIV. 82.)
LXXIV. Teasing the Donkey: Petworth,....._Facing_ 123
Water-Colour. About 1830. (CCXLIV. 97.)
LXXV. Honfleur,....._Facing_ 126
Water-Colour. About 1830. (CCLIX. 15.)
LXXVI. Country Town on Stream,....._Facing_ 127
Water-Colour. About 1830. (CCLIX. 16.)
LXXVII. Sheep in the Trench,....._Facing_ 128
Water-Colour. About 1830. (CCLIX. 17.)
LXXVIII. Shipping on the Riva degli Schiavone,....._Facing_ 129
Water-Colour. About 1839. (CCCXVI. 20.)
LXXIX. The Approach to Venice: Sunset,....._Facing_ 132
Water-Colour. About 1839. (CCCXVI. 16.)
LXXX. Riva degli Schiavone, from near the Public Gardens,....._Facing_ 133
Water-Colour. About 1839. (CCCXVI. 21.)
LXXXI. Freiburg: The Descent from the Hôtel de Ville,....._Facing_ 134
Water-Colour. About 1841. (CCCXXXV. 14.)
LXXXII. Ruined Castle on Rock,....._Facing_ 135
Water-Colour. About 1841. (CCCXXXIX. 5.)
LXXXIII. Village and Castle on the Rhine,....._Facing_ 140
Water-Colour. About 1844. (CCCXLIX. 22.)
LXXXIV. The Via Mala,....._Facing_ 141
Water-Colour. About 1844. (CCCLXIV. 362.)
LXXXV. On the Rhine,....._Facing_ 148
Water-Colour. 1844. (CCCXLIX. 20.)
LXXXVI. Baden, looking North,....._Facing_ 149
Water-Colour. 1844. (CCCXLIX. 14.)
LXXXVII. Lucerne: Evening,....._Facing_ 152
Water-Colour. 1844. (CCCXLIV. 324.)
TURNER’S SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS
INTRODUCTORY
The nature of our subject-matter--The difference between sketches
and finished works--The character of our subject-matter, as
embryonic forms of artistic expression, prescribes the method of
study we must adopt--Our method is broadly chronological--But to
follow Turner’s work year by year in detail would carry us beyond
the limits of our present undertaking--I have, therefore, broken up
Turner’s career into eight stages or phases of development.
The object of the following pages is to re-study the character of
Turner’s art in the light of his sketch-books and drawings from nature.
During Turner’s lifetime his rooted objection to part with any of his
sketches, studies, or notes often formed the subject of ill-natured
comment. Yet we owe it to this peculiarity that the drawings and
sketches included in the Turner Bequest at the National Gallery comprise
practically the whole of the great landscape painter’s work done direct
from nature. The collection is, therefore, of very great psychological
interest. It shows clearly upon what basis of immediately presentative
elements the airy splendour of Turner’s richly imaginative art was
built: and amongst the twenty odd thousand sheets of drawings in all
stages of elaboration, the embryonic forms of most of the painter’s
masterpieces can be easily traced.
A careful examination of the drawings shows that Turner’s objection to
part with his sketches and notes was not the outcome of a blind and
deeply ingrained passion for accumulation, but that it was the
necessary result of the painter’s clearly defined conception of the
radical difference between the raw material of the painter’s art, and
its fully articulated products--the difference between mere sketches and
studies and fugitive memoranda, and the fully elaborated works of art to
which such preliminaries are subservient, but with which they should
never be confused. From Turner’s point of view the properly finished
pictures were all that the public had a right to see or possess; the
notes and studies were meant only for his own eye. Even in his later
years, when he consented to exhibit what he expressly called a ‘record’
of a scene he had witnessed, he grumbled when it was admired and treated
as a picture, although in this case the ‘record’ was not a hurried
memorandum, but a fully elaborated attempt ‘to show what such a scene
was like.’[1]
The method of our study must be determined by the general character of
our subject-matter. Our main business is with fragmentary records,
hurried memoranda, half-formed thoughts, and tentative designs. We must
not and cannot treat these dependent and embryonic fragments as
independent entities; we cannot pick and choose amongst them, or love or
dislike them entirely for their own sakes, as we can with complete works
of art which contain within themselves the grounds of their own
justification or insufficiency. To grasp the significance of our
sketches and studies we must study the goal towards which they are
striving. We must not be content to admire even the most beautiful of
these sketches entirely for its own sake, but must study them for the
sake of their connection with the works which they were instrumental in
producing.
These considerations have also weighed with me in the selection of the
numerous illustrations with which the publishers have generously
enriched this volume. On the whole I have chosen the illustrations
rather for the light they throw on Turner’s conception of art and
methods of work than for their own individual attractiveness; but the
glamour of execution is so invariably present in all that came from
Turner’s hand, that few of these drawings will be found which do not
possess a very powerful aesthetic appeal of their own.
In dealing with Turner’s work from the point of view I have indicated,
we are forced to touch upon problems which the prudent art critic is apt
to avoid. In studying the relation between the preliminary sketches and
studies and the finished works into which they were developed, we find
ourselves plunged into the midst of some of the most baffling
difficulties of psychology and aesthetic. In attempting even to describe
the relation between the more rudimentary and the more fully articulated
processes of artistic expression, we are forced, whether we like it or
not, to face the problems of the relation between form and content,
between treatment and subject, between portrayal and portrayed; and we
cannot go far without finding ourselves obliged to reconsider the
common-sense ideas of Truth, Nature, and Art. We cannot avoid such
problems if we would. If I face them, therefore, instead of emulating
the discretion of my elders, it is, I am sure, from no ingrained love of
abstractions, but rather from an overpowering interest in all the
concrete forms of pictorial art.
The separation of aesthetic from art-criticism which is so much favoured
at present, though it eases the labour of thought both to the art-critic
and to his readers, seems to me otherwise inexcusable and fraught with
serious artistic and intellectual dangers. Art-criticism cut adrift from
general principles cannot help degenerating into a blatant form of
self-assertion or an immoral form of practical casuistry--a finding of
good reasons for anything you have a mind to; and aesthetic, divorced
from all living contact with the concrete phenomena of art, is one of
the dullest as well as the most useless of studies. But this is not the
place to set forth in detail or defend my conception of the function and
methods of art-criticism. I will merely say that I regard it as a form
of rational investigation of the phenomena of pictorial art; it has no
immediate practical aim; and it does not propose to prolong or intensify
the enjoyment which works of art provide.
We find then that we cannot study Turner’s sketches in isolation from
his finished works. But to follow his completed work year by year in
detail would obviously carry us beyond the limits of our present
undertaking. I have, therefore, broken up Turner’s career into eight
facets or aspects. In the first chapter I deal with his seven years’
apprenticeship, from 1787 to 1793, using his sketches to throw light on
his youthful aims and methods. The second chapter, covering the years
1793 to 1797, deals with the work of the topographical draughtsman. I
then study the gloomy and romantic side of Turner’s art, when he was
mainly under the influence of Richard Wilson and of the churchyard and
charnel-house sentiment of Edward Young and Joseph Warton. The fourth
chapter is devoted to Turner’s early sea-pieces, and the next to his
work as a painter of what his contemporaries called ‘Simple Nature.’
This phase of Turner’s art is difficult to describe in a few words. One
way would be to call it a phase of Wordsworthian naturalism, but it must
be remembered that it was not an echo or a by-product of Wordsworth’s
poetry, but an independent and simultaneous embodiment in another form
of art of sentiments common both to Wordsworth and to Turner. Pictures
like Turner’s ‘Frosty Morning’ and ‘Windsor’ were as new, as
unprecedented, as Wordsworth’s most characteristic poems. This side of
Turner’s art shows him as the founder of a genuinely national school of
homely realism, as the head of the Norwich school and the master of
David Cox, De Wint, Callcott, and the rest.
The sixth chapter deals with the designs engraved in the _Liber
Studiorum_, and the sketches on which they were based. The seventh is
devoted mainly to the work engraved in the _Southern Coast_,
_Richmondshire_, Scott’s _Antiquities_, the _Rivers_ and _Ports_, and
the _England and Wales_ series, the work by which the artist is perhaps
best known. My eighth chapter treats of the period when signs of mental
decay began to be apparent. These years saw the production of what have
been called the first Impressionistic pictures. Then, by way of bringing
to a head some of the observations on the nature of artistic expression
which our investigations have forced upon our notice, I have added a
final chapter dealing mainly with the relation between Art and Nature.
The subject-matter of this chapter is not so attractive as that of the
others, but I do not think it right to omit it.
This selection of the facets of Turner’s dazzling and complex genius is
necessarily arbitrary and incomplete. The aspects I have chosen to
throw into relief can make no pretence to be exhaustive. They must be
taken as a poor but necessary device for the introduction of a kind of
superficial order into our present task--as a concession to the weakness
and limitations of the powers of the student, rather than as a
successful summary of the multifarious forms into which one of the most
prolific and many-sided creative activities of modern art has poured
itself. And the threads of this living activity which I have sought to
isolate, never existed in isolation. Turner was not at one period of his
life a romantic and at another a pseudo-classic or Academic painter, a
sea-painter at one time, and a painter of ‘simple Nature’ at another.
Turner was always a sea-painter and a topographer, a romantic, a
pseudo-classic, and an impressionist, as well as a master of homely
realism. While he was painting ‘Hannibal Crossing the Alps’ he had the
‘View of High Street, Oxford’ on his easel; the ‘Abingdon’ and the
‘Apollo’ were painted at the same time as were the ‘Frosty Morning’ and
the ‘Dido and Aeneas.’ He could paint a huge dull empty canvas like
‘Thomson’s Lyre’ when his muse was putting forth its lustiest and most
vigorous shoots; he could give us ‘The Fighting Téméraire’ when his
powers seemed stifled amid the fumes of early Victorian sentimentality.
His genius is hot and cold like Love itself, a fine and subtle spirit
that eludes the snares of our plodding faculties. But unless we desire
merely to bedazzle and intoxicate our senses, we cannot afford to
dispense with the poor crutches upon which our pedestrian intellect must
stumble.
CHAPTER I
SEVEN YEARS’ APPRENTICESHIP--1787-1793
Turner’s first drawings--‘St. Vincent’s Tower’--Turner’s copies and
imitations--His debt to Art--Work with Mr. Hardwick--Oxford
sketches--‘Radley Hall’--Drawings from the Antique--The Bristol
sketch-book--End of the apprenticeship.
The legend runs that Turner’s first drawings were exhibited in his
father’s shop-window, ticketed for sale at prices ranging from one to
three shillings.
There is nothing improbable in this story, though the drawings referred
to by Thornbury,[2] as having been bought by a Mr. Crowle under these
conditions, do not happen to have been made by Turner. I have not,
indeed, been able to discover any drawing which can confidently be said
to have been purchased from the barber’s shop in Maiden Lane, but there
are some in the National Gallery which show us exactly what kind of work
Turner was capable of producing at the time when he might have resorted
to this rough and ready method of attracting patronage.
A typical drawing of this kind is the brightly-coloured view of St.
Vincent’s Tower, Naples, reproduced on Plate I. of the present volume.
It is oval in shape, measuring about 8 × 10 inches, and has evidently
been cut out without mechanical assistance, as the curves of the oval
are somewhat erratic. As the youthful artist had not visited Italy at
this period, I thought it probable that this drawing was based upon the
work of some other artist, and I was fortunate enough to be able to
trace it to
[Illustration: _PLATE I_
ST. VINCENT’S TOWER, NAPLES
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1787]
[Illustration: _PLATE II_
CENTRAL PORTION OF AN AQUATINT BY PAUL SANDBY, AFTER FABRIS
PUBLISHED 1 JAN., 1778]
its source. It is copied and adapted from an aquatint by Paul Sandby,
after Fabris, published on 1st January 1778, entitled ‘Part of Naples,
with the Ruin’d Tower of St. Vincent.’ Sandby’s engraving is a large one
(about 13¼ × 20 inches), and comprises an extensive view of the harbour
and bay of Naples, with the Castel dell’ Uovo in the middle distance,
and St. Elmo crowning the buildings on the right. Turner has picked out
as it were the pictorial plum of this mass of topographical information.
He has set the ruined tower boldly in the centre of his design, and has
used only just so much of the surrounding buildings and scenery as was
necessary to make an appropriate background or setting for it. He has
reduced the Castle of the Egg to insignificance, and closed up his
distance with appropriate but imaginary mountains. In the engraving a
passing boat with figures divides our interest with the tower. Turner
has suppressed it. He has also reduced the size of the quay upon which
the tower stands, thus increasing the apparent height of the tower. The
few meagre weeds clinging to the battlements in the engraving have
developed luxuriantly in Turner’s drawing, thus adding considerably to
its picturesqueness. The foreground figures seem to have been adapted
from those in the engraving.
It is probable that these slight differences between the engraving and
the water-colour were made involuntarily, for it is evident that Turner
did not have the engraving under his eyes while he was making the
drawing. He had probably seen the engraving in some shop-window, and had
made a hasty pencil sketch of the part that interested him. That he was
working from a somewhat perfunctory sketch and not direct from the
original is proved by the fact that he has introduced three arches into
the building on the quay immediately at the foot of the tower, instead
of the two in Sandby’s engraving. But in the engraving there is a small
rounded turret on the battlements of the quay which comes just in front
of the place where Turner has introduced his third arch. It is clear
that he mistook the indication of this turret in his rough sketch for a
third arch in the building beyond.
It would, of course, be imprudent to suppose that Turner chose to work
in this way partly from memory, with the deliberate intention of giving
his imagination freer play; he was probably forced to do so by the
material exigencies of his position. But certainly this way of working
was admirably calculated to strengthen his memory and call into play his
innate powers of arrangement and adaptation.
The colour scheme, which is probably the artist’s own invention, is
light and pleasing. The golden rays of the setting (? rising) sun are
painted with evident enjoyment. The warm yellow light of the sun is
transfused over the whole of the sky, turning the distant clouds into
crimson. The keynote of the colour is thus orange yellow, passing
through pink to burnt sienna. In spite of the lightness of the colour
the drawing was worked over a black and white foundation, light washes
of Indian ink having been used to establish the broad divisions of light
and shade in the design. These washes afterwards formed the ground-work
of the greys and cooler colours, being warmed in parts (as in the tower)
with washes or touches of pink and burnt sienna, or worked up into more
positive hues by subsequent washes of blue and yellow.
The handling of the drawing--the sharp decided touches, the neatness and
dexterity of its washes, and the rapid march of the whole work--shows
what a hold the idea of a unified work of art had already obtained over
Turner’s mind. The clear, determined workmanship shows that he must have
been thinking of the whole from the beginning, and not of the
representation of a number of separate natural objects.
This childish effort seems to me of great interest as marking with
extraordinary clearness the point of departure of Turner’s art. From the
beginning he sees things pictorially, as elements in a conceptual whole,
not as isolated and independent objects. His sense of design--both as
the faculty of expression as well as of formal arrangement--is thus
developed, while the merely representative qualities of art are ignored
or at least subordinated. This early grasp of the idea of pictorial
unity is obviously the result of Turner’s study of works of art, and not
of his study of nature. Since Mr. Ruskin’s labours it will not be
possible for any student to overlook the enormous profit which Turner
derived in his subsequent work from his unwearied observation of the
phenomena of nature; it is well, therefore, to be careful not to
overlook the prior debt which Turner had contracted to art, and the
extraordinary advantage his early grasp of pictorial unity gave him in
appropriating the multifarious variety of natural shapes and colours.
The other drawings of this period in the National Gallery only serve to
emphasise Turner’s indebtedness to art. Some of these are plain
straightforward copies. The most elaborate of these is the copy of
‘Folly Bridge and Bacon’s Tower’ which has long been exhibited in the
Turner Water Colour rooms (No. 613, N.G.). This is copied from an
engraving by J. Basire published in the _Oxford Almanack_ for the year
1780. The colouring, however, is original. This copy is signed and
dated, ‘W. Turner, 1787.’ Among the other copies is a pencil outline of
the Old Kitchen, Stanton Harcourt, from the engraving in Grose’s
_Antiquities_. There is also a coloured drawing, somewhat similar in
size and shape to that of St. Vincent’s Tower, of Dacre Castle,
Cumberland. I am unable to say from what engraving this is copied or
adapted.[3] It may have been a slightly earlier effort than the
Neapolitan subject, as the Indian ink underpainting is less skilfully
done and the general effect is heavier and more monotonous.
These drawings, made, I believe, between Turner’s twelfth and fourteenth
years, show the youthful artist in the act of acquiring the rudiments of
that pictorial language which he was to use in after years with such
mastery and ease. We see him acquiring this language by intercourse with
his fellows who use it, not, as is the modern way, through the course of
a random study of nature. He is learning from tradition, and the thought
of the artistic community as expressed in the current pictorial language
is gradually forming and moulding his ideas. He is imitating those
around him, as a child imitates the words of its nurse and mother.
On the present occasion, I need do no more than call attention in
passing to the immense advantage Turner enjoyed in being initiated thus
early and in this easy and natural way into the sphere of art. He was
thus saved from those years of futile and heart-breaking experiment to
which the modern system of nature study dooms all those students whose
native powers are not entirely deadened by its influence. The habit thus
early forced upon him of regarding himself as an actual producer, _i.e._
as a maker of articles with a definite market value, must also have been
beneficial to him. The existence of a class of real patrons, whose
tastes had to be consulted and whose pockets contained actually
exchangeable coin of the realm, must have placed some insistence upon
the social aspect of art, and have helped to prevent the boy from making
the mistake which so many subsequent artists have made, of considering
their work merely as a means of self-expression, instead of as a means
of super-individual or universal communication. Another important result
of these early employments was the facility and mastery in the use of
his material which they gave him. Between the water-colours of different
periods of Turner’s career there are the most astonishing contrasts of
subject-matter and sentiment, but in all of them one finds the same
inimitable grace, strength, and dexterity of workmanship, the same
unequalled technical mastery over the medium; and this purely executive
address--this ‘genius of mechanical excellence,’ to use Reynolds’s
expression--could have been attained only as the result of an early
familiarity with this particular form of artistic expression.
About his fourteenth year (1789) Turner was placed with an architect,
Mr. P. Hardwick. It seems to me doubtful whether he was regularly
apprenticed, or was intended to take up the study of architecture from a
practical point of view. The evidence upon this point is extremely
limited, but what little there is points to his employment upon purely
pictorial tasks, such as the dressing out of projects or views of
buildings with a plausible arrangement of light and shade and a pleasing
setting of landscape background. We know that Mr. Hardwick built the New
Church at Wanstead,[4] and that Turner made for his master a
water-colour drawing both of the old church which was pulled down and
the new one that took its place. I have not been fortunate enough to
trace the
[Illustration: _PLATE III_
RADLEY HALL: SOUTH FRONT
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1789]
present owner of these drawings, but the water-colour of the old church
was exhibited at the Old Masters (R.A.) in 1887. There is, however, in
the National Gallery a pencil outline of the new church, squared for
enlargement, which shows no signs of training in the practical work of
the architect’s profession.
The earliest of Turner’s sketch-books now in the National Gallery was in
use during the period of this connection with Mr. Hardwick. A pencil
sketch of a church by the river, easily recognisable as Isleworth Old
Church, with barges moored beside the bank, is probably the note from
which the water-colour was made which Mr. Hardwick’s grandson lent to
the Old Masters in 1887. Most of the other drawings, however, appear to
have been made during a stay near Oxford. There are sketches of Clifton
Nuneham (then Nuneham Courtenay), near Abingdon; of Radley Hall, between
Abingdon and Oxford; of a distant view of Oxford; a sketch of a ruined
tower which may represent Pope’s Tower in the ruins of the Harcourts’
house at Stanton Harcourt, and two drawings of Sunningwell Church, a
village about two miles from Radley and three from Abingdon. As Turner’s
uncle, Joseph Mallord William Marshall, his mother’s elder brother,
after whom he was named, was then living at Sunningwell, it is probable
that these drawings were the result of a summer holiday spent with his
relative.
These drawings represent Turner’s first attempts to draw from nature.
They are characterised by an absence of blundering and a sense of
pictorial logic and requirements which could only belong to a beginner
whose eye and hand had already been disciplined in the production of
works of art. One cannot but feel that the mould into which the
immediate experiences of the artist were to be cast had already been
firmly set before his pencil was placed upon the paper, nay, before the
particular sights in question were actually seen. In other words, the
pictorial formula into which the material gathered from nature was to be
worked up had been clearly determined before the artist set out to
gather such material for himself. Turner’s confidence in the unbounded
felicity of immediate contact with nature was not commensurate with that
of modern artistic theorists. He does indeed entrust himself to the open
fields, but it is not until he has armed himself with a stout though
flexible panoply of artistic convention.
But though the draughtsmanship is conventional, I do not think it can
fairly be called mannered. The actual statements made are made with the
utmost simplicity and directness. In the drawings of Sunningwell Church
(on p. 12 of the sketch-book), of Radley Hall (pp. 9 and 14), and of
Isleworth Old Church (p. 22), the general proportions and main facts of
the buildings are noted with deliberate and methodical care. The artist
knows what facts he will want when he comes to make his finished
water-colours, and he takes those facts and calmly ignores all the
particular effects of light and shade, colour and accident which his
experience of other artists’ work had shown him would not be useful to
him. Thus there is a strongly marked selective activity at work, which
gives what I think can be more correctly described as style than as
manner. Yet I should not be surprised to find the term mannerism applied
to the curiously monotonous calligraphic scribbles which stand for trees
and clouds in these drawings. That they are conventional and singularly
indefinite I readily admit, yet they are not deliberately learnt ‘ways
of doing trees’ like those, for instance, which a student of J. D.
Harding’s teaching might adopt. They are as they are because their
immediate function is clearly determined by their ultimate purpose. In
making his finished water-colour drawing at home the trees and clouds,
as well as the whole system of light and shade, were merely the docile
instruments of pictorial effectiveness. The exact shape of each tree and
cloud in his drawing, and even their exact positions, were determined as
the work progressed by purely pictorial requirements. A detailed
statement of the exact shape of any particular tree or cloud in the
actual scene from which the sketch was made would therefore have been
not only of no use to the artist, but a positive hindrance, as it would
have complicated the problem of formal arrangement before the artist,
even if it did not actively hinder its solution. In these sketches from
nature Turner therefore takes his skies and foliage for granted as much
as possible, merely hinting at their general existence in a loose and
tentative way.
But if the charge of mannerism cannot be fairly brought against the
sketches made face to face with nature, it is otherwise with the
water-colours which were afterwards elaborated from them. Drawings like
the view of ‘Radley Hall,’ reproduced on Plate III., and the ‘View of
the City of Oxford’ might almost be said to consist of little else than
mannerisms. The manner of doing trees and skies and of arranging the
planes of the scene is taken over directly from Paul Sandby, as are also
the method of working in transparent washes and the gamut of colours
used. The ‘View of Oxford’ is indeed nothing but a feeble echo of some
of Sandby’s fine drawings; it tells us little of Turner himself, beyond
an indication of a certain liking for scenes of this kind. Perhaps the
most noteworthy point in the drawing is the demonstration it affords of
the superior development of his sense of tone to his sense of form; the
buildings sway to and fro in the wind, the foliage is childish and
ridiculous, but the difference between the broad expanses of ground and
sky is clearly marked, and the limpid sky gives an undeniable charm to
it all.
There is perhaps a little more of himself in the view of ‘Radley Hall.’
The way the tree-trunks seem to blow themselves out, and toss themselves
this way and that, while their branches explode in the wildest and most
fantastic contortions,--all this is given with such keen and frank
enjoyment, that it points to something more than a mere passive
reproduction of a purely technical recipe. The trees in those drawings
of Sandby which Turner had studied do indeed behave in this way, but
Turner identifies himself so closely with the inner meaning of these
forms that they become his own legitimate property. The sense of
exuberant freedom in the trees is intensified by contrast with the rigid
restraint of the building in the middle distance. It is as though the
boy’s imagination was glad to get away from the realm of necessity and
disport itself in aimless gambols through space, free from the
encumbrance of inert matter and of the laws of gravitation. It is this
habit of getting at the inner emotional content of the pictorial
conventions he adopts, that stamps Turner’s whole career of imitation
and appropriation with its peculiar character, making him invariably
richer for all his borrowings, and more original for all his imitations.
These two drawings were made in 1789, during the artist’s fourteenth
year. About the beginning of 1790 he joined the schools of the Royal
Academy, acting, it is said, upon the advice of Mr. Hardwick. During
part of 1790 and for the next two or three years he worked in what was
then called the ‘Plaister Academy,’ _i.e._ from casts taken from the
antique. Laborious chalk and stump drawings of the Apollo and Antinoüs
of the Belvedere, the Venus de’ Medici, and the Vatican Meleager, as
well as of the more robust forms of the Diskobolos and Dying Gaul, are
still in existence to demonstrate the diligence with which he pursued
these uncongenial studies. Such work must have given his masters a
singularly poor and misleading opinion of his talents. In June, 1792, he
was admitted to the Life Class, while still continuing to attend the
Antique. This academic training, however, must have been useful as an
antidote, or at least as a supplement, to the topographical work to
which all his spare time was devoted.
He seems to have spent his holidays in 1791 partly with his uncle at
Sunningwell and partly with some friends of the family, the Narraways,
at Bristol. The sketch-book in use at this time is now in the National
Gallery. The volume was never a handsome one,--it was probably stitched
and bound by the artist himself--but its present appearance is
deplorable; the cardboard covers are broken, the rough and ready backing
is almost undone, a number of the leaves have been cut or torn out, and
the remainder are in a generally dirty and dilapidated condition. In
spite of these disadvantages it gives us a valuable glimpse of Turner’s
interests and acquirements at the age of sixteen.
Our first impression is that his year’s work drawing from the cast has
produced hardly any perceptible effect. The drawings of buildings are in
some cases even more perfunctory than those in the ‘Oxford’ Sketch-Book.
The sketch of Bath Abbey Church (on page 14 of the book), for example,
is not a very creditable performance for an ambitious Royal Academy
student. Its carelessness, however, may have been due to limited
opportunities, but we must remember that this hasty scrawl, with the
assistance of a few written notes and diagrams, was sufficient to enable
the artist to produce afterwards an elaborate water-colour of the
subject. A still more elaborately wrought and
[Illustration: _PLATE IV_
VIEW ON THE AVON, FROM COOK’S FOLLY
WATER COLOUR AND INK. ABOUT 1791]
carefully considered water-colour was the result of another sketch (on
the reverse of page 16) in this book, a view of ‘Stoke, near Bristol,
the seat of Sir H. Lippencote,’ now in the possession of Mrs. Thomas.
This pencil sketch is quite as perfunctory as that of Bath Abbey. It is
evident that nature ‘put him out’ or that the artist’s youthful
impatience induced him to hurry over the first stages of his work. These
sketches from nature were merely means to an end, and so long as they
contained sufficient hints to set his subsequent work going he was
perfectly satisfied. However, in some of the drawings where the first
sketch from nature has been worked over subsequently (as in the
water-colour of Captain Fowler’s seat on Durdham Downs [on pp. 17a and
18]), we can trace an increased delicacy of hand, an added capacity for
dealing with complex and irregular forms, and greater knowledge of the
natural forms of trees.
But it is evident that the wild and romantic scenery of the Avon gorge
made a deeper impression on the young artist’s imagination than the
spick and span seats of the gentry. The ruins of Malmesbury Abbey are
sketched from every available point of view, and there are hurried and
clumsy sketches of ‘The Ruins of a Chapel standing on an Island in the
Severn,’ ‘A View of the Welsh Coast from Cook’s Folly,’ and others of
‘Blaze Castle and the Deney and Welsh Coast,’[5] and the ‘Old Passage.’
The drawing described as a ‘View from Cook’s Folley (_sic_), looking up
the River Avon with Wallis Wall and the Hot Wells’ (reproduced on Plate
IV.), shows clearly the bent of Turner’s mind towards the wildness and
freedom of nature, as well as his strong love of ships.
If it were our intention to follow Turner’s work year by year, we should
have to study in detail the drawings of Oxford, Windsor, Hereford and
Worcester, and especially the Welsh and Monmouthshire sketches which
belong to the years 1792 and 1793. As it is, it is sufficient for our
purpose to notice that the work of these two years shows a gradual
increase of power in making sketches from nature. The young artist
slowly gathers confidence in himself. Nature ceases to ‘put him out,’ to
fluster him with her multitudinous details and ever-varying effects. He
begins to treat nature as a conquered enemy, and there is just a
suspicion of youthful impertinence in the cool and methodical way in
which he gathers up the kind of facts he wants, and ignores everything
that does not come within the scope of his pictorial formulas. But by
this time it is evident that his period of apprenticeship is at an end,
and that we must turn our attention to the work of the brilliant young
topographical draughtsman.
CHAPTER II
THE TOPOGRAPHICAL DRAUGHTSMAN--1793-1796
Welsh tour of 1793--‘St. Anselm’s Chapel’--Turner’s topographical
rivals--Midland tour of 1794--Topographical and antiquarian
draughtsmanship--Its main interest is not embodied in the work--The
marvellous _petit-maítre_--The ‘Cottage Interior’--Light and shade
as a means of expression--The sketch-books of 1795 and their
contents--‘High Force of Tees’ or ‘Fall of Melincourt’?
Among the five drawings by which Turner was represented in the
exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1794, one was a view of the Devil’s
Bridge, Cardiganshire. This was doubtless one of the first results of
the sketching tour in Wales made in 1793. We can readily believe that
Turner’s imagination was powerfully impressed by the wild and gloomy
scenery of the country and its romantic ruins, but his efforts to embody
his impressions were not at first very successful. For the moment his
powers as an architectural draughtsman were more in evidence than his
powers of expressing grand and gloomy ideas. The romantic turn of his
mind had to be more fully developed before it could command public
support, and for the time being this phase of his art seemed swamped in
the flood of topographical employment which the immediate success of his
less ambitious drawings in the 1794 exhibition brought him.
In a contemporary press notice, preserved among the Anderdon collection
of catalogues in the Print Room of the British Museum, Turner’s drawings
of ‘Christchurch Gate, Canterbury,’ and the ‘Porch of Great Malvern
Abbey, Worcestershire,’ are said to be ‘amongst the best in the present
exhibition. They are the productions,’ the writer continues, ‘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.’
The first of the drawings which called forth this praise is now in the
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Ruskin Bequest), the other is probably
the ‘Malvern’ now in the Manchester Whitworth Institute (No. 73). The
critic’s remark about the danger of ‘contemporary imitations,’ which I
take to mean the danger of Turner imitating the works of contemporary
artists, may probably account for his neglect to mention another drawing
exhibited at the same time, which strikes the present-day observer as a
more accomplished and remarkable effort than either the ‘Malvern’ or
‘Christchurch Gate.’ I allude to the drawing described in the R.A.
catalogue as ‘St. Anselm’s Chapel with part of Thomas à Becket’s
Crown--Canterbury Cathedral,’ which I take to be the drawing now in the
Manchester Whitworth Institute (No. 272). This is a work of infinite
patience and wary skill, a remarkable combination of far-sighted
knowledge of ultimate effects united with the utmost delicacy, firmness,
and patience of execution. These qualities do not seem to me so clearly
marked either in the Christchurch Gate or Malvern drawings, but very
likely to the contemporary observer, especially to one avid of
originality, the drawing of ‘St. Anselm’s Chapel’ may have appeared more
ordinary or conventional.[6]
The success of these drawings established Turner’s position as one of
the foremost architectural and topographical draughtsmen of the day. But
we must not make the mistake of supposing that Turner’s success was the
result of an absence of serious rivals. De Loutherbourg, Dayes, Hearne,
Wheatley, Sandby and Rooker were by no means unworthy rivals. Nor must
we jump to the conclusion that Turner, at the age of nineteen, had
outstripped such competitors in any but the purely topographical
branches of their profession. The best of the older men were artists of
wide sympathies and ambitions, who could not rest satisfied within the
narrow limits of purely topographical work. They looked upon such work
as a kind of necessary drudgery, useful from a pecuniary point of view,
but not calling for the whole-hearted exercise of all their talents and
enthusiasm. Dayes, to whom Girtin was apprenticed, and from whom Turner
had learnt a great deal, seems to have detested topographical work, in
spite of the skill and delicate charm with which he treated it. All his
enthusiasm was reserved for figure subjects in the grand manner, for
which there was no market. In this 1794 exhibition he had four
illustrations for Dr. Aitken’s _Environs of Manchester_, which have the
perfunctory look of work done against the grain, and a ‘View of Keswick
Lake,’ which may possibly have been the slight and charming drawing of
this subject now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, too small and
fragile a thing to attract much attention. The versatile and brilliant
De Loutherbourg did not exhibit this year; Hearne also was absent.
Rooker had five of his delicately-accomplished but rather prosaic
drawings. Paul Sandby had two views of Rochester Castle, and ‘A View of
Vintners at Boxley, Kent, with Mr. Whatman’s Turkey Paper Mills,’ where
the excellent paper upon which almost all Turner’s drawings were made
was manufactured. Wheatley sent no landscapes this year, and Girtin,
Turner’s senior and rival, had a single exhibit, a ‘View of Ely
Minster,’ the first drawing he had had accepted by the Academy. The
result of this state of things was that Turner’s architectural and
topographical work was pitted against only the perfunctory or tired work
of his older rivals. For the moment all his indefatigable patience and
amazing energy and skill were concentrated on this one point of attack,
with immediately decisive results.
Turner had now achieved an honourable footing in his profession. Dr.
Monro bought his ‘Anselm’s Chapel’ and gave him commissions for many
other drawings. Booksellers found his name an attraction. With
publishers ready to buy his drawings, though at prices that would merely
excite the derision of a modern artist, and with patrons like Dr. Monro
ready to encourage his more ambitious efforts, his opportunities of
travel were greatly enlarged.
Turner spent the summer of 1794 making a tour of the midland counties of
England. Northampton, Birmingham, Lichfield, Shrewsbury, Wrexham,
Chester, Matlock, Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, Peterborough, Cambridge
and Waltham were among the places he visited. The views published in the
_Copper Plate Magazine_ during the next three years of Nottingham,
Bridgenorth, Matlock, Birmingham, Chester, Peterborough and Flint were
made from sketches taken on this journey, as were also those of King’s
College, Cambridge, Flint, and Northampton, published in the _Pocket
Magazine_ during 1795. But these were the least important results of the
tour. The work into which Turner threw all his enthusiasm and ambition
was sent to the exhibition of the Royal Academy of 1795, which contained
no less than eight of his important and highly-finished drawings. The
best known of these are the ‘Peterborough Cathedral; West Entrance,’
which was included in Messrs. Agnews’ 1908 annual exhibition of
water-colours--it had suffered somewhat from the light and had been
restored, but was still an impressive work; the ‘Welsh Bridge,
Shrewsbury,’ now No. 276 in the Manchester Whitworth Institute, a
carefully wrought and exquisitely accomplished drawing; and the
‘Cathedral Church at Lincoln’ (Plate V.) now in the Print Room. This
elaborately finished drawing, I am inclined to think, played an
important part in Turner’s development. It is almost the only drawing I
know from his hand which has a papery and unconvincing general effect,
which is monotonous and insensitive in its textures, and hard and
metallic in its details. For once in a way Turner seems to have deferred
to the ideals of elaboration of the ordinary connoisseur, who likes to
see every detail in every part of a work pushed to its highest point of
finish. For these reasons the drawing must have been very generally
admired when it was first exhibited, but Turner could not have been
satisfied at all with his own work, for he promptly abandoned the style.
This is the most ‘mappy’ of all Turner’s drawings, and we know that for
the rest of his life he had the greatest horror of this quality.
When we examine the pencil drawings made from nature on this tour we
find them all severely governed by the ends they were intended to serve.
The sketches for the publishers’ work
[Illustration: _PLATE V_
LINCOLN CATHEDRAL
WATER COLOUR EXHIBITED AT ROYAL ACADEMY, 1795
(_Print Room, British Museum_)]
[Illustration: _PLATE VI_
LINCOLN CATHEDRAL, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST
PENCIL. 1794]
are generally made in a small note-book (about 4½ × 6¾ inches in size).
They are invariably in pure outline, without the slightest suggestion of
light and shade--nothing but the scaffolding of the more important
shapes upon which the final designs were to be elaborated. On such a
small scale the ease and grace of Turner’s touch are not much in
evidence. The sketches are severely business-like, and done as quickly
and with as little effort as possible. There is more effort and feeling
in the casual studies with which the leaves of this sketch-book are
interspersed. The accompanying sketch (Plate VII.) of a pony standing
ready saddled gives a good idea of the mature wisdom of Turner’s style
of sketching at this period, its determination to grasp the larger
truths of form and structure, as well as the quickness, readiness, and
versatility of his powers of perception.
The drawings for the more ambitious subjects are generally made on
larger and separate pieces of paper about 8 × 10½ inches in size. On
this scale the delicate play of the artist’s wrist becomes appreciable.
The dominant impression left by a glance through these drawings is one
of excessive orderliness and methodical neatness. There is no hurry, no
scamped or perfunctory work, still less are there any signs of
dilatoriness or even slowness. The artist’s respect for relevant fact is
equalled by his appreciation of the value of time. His calm objective
outlook, his steady, unwavering grasp of general principles enable him
at every point to economise his labours, to store up the record of the
greatest possible amount of material facts (i.e. of facts material to
his purpose) with the utmost celerity, clearness, and the least possible
expenditure of manual effort. This is particularly noticeable in the
treatment of the towers in the Lincoln Cathedral drawing (Plate VI.),
where every advantage has been taken of the repetition of forms. A
possible, though not a very satisfactory, way of doing justice to the
predominance of conceptual over purely visual elements in this work,
would be to say that the artist has here drawn with his head rather than
his eye, that he puts down not so much what he sees as what he
understands.
I am tempted to linger for a moment over the placid and self-contained
air of this phase of Turner’s work, because we shall so soon get into
an altogether different atmosphere, and because we shall understand
Turner’s after work all the better the more clearly we grasp the
character of the work we are now examining. The self-contained air to
which I allude is connected in my mind with the character and
limitations of topographical work. Now the essential character of
topographical and purely antiquarian work is that it does not aim
primarily at expressing the imaginative or emotional effects of the
objects it represents. It takes these imaginative or emotional interests
for granted, relying indeed on them for the ultimate justification of
its work; but the work, as topographical and antiquarian, aims directly
only at an adequate representation of the particular scenes or buildings
with which it is concerned. There is, as it were, a tacit division of
labour; the artist being called upon to record accurately and vividly a
certain scene or building, merely as a scene or building, while the
spectator is expected to supply the requisite mental associations and
emotional colouring. The artist draws a castle, we will say, as a mere
object of sight, while the spectator is supposed to remember that the
castle was built by such and such a king, and that certain moving events
took place in it or near it. This division of labour simplifies the work
of the topographical artist, reducing his business to a clear-cut affair
of definite visual facts. Hence the Oriental stolidity of Turner’s
topographical work, its Oriental patience, neatness, and precision. In a
drawing like the ‘Lincoln Cathedral’ Turner is as wholly immersed in the
succession of particular material facts as a Japanese or Chinese artist.
As with the Japanese and Chinese artists the material facts are not
there entirely for their own sakes; in Turner’s case they imply an
antiquarian interest, as the Eastern artists’ work implies an added
religious or poetical significance. But the point to which I desire to
draw attention is, that this added significance is not embodied in the
work itself. It is something extraneous and fortuitous, and the work
itself falls apart into something dependent. It is in fact an accessory,
a work of mere illustration, not an independent work of art.
We shall have to return to this subject in our next chapter, when we
find Turner wrenching himself free from the trammels of topography and
antiquarianism to soar into the regions of
[Illustration: _PLATE VII_
PONY AND WHEELBARROW
PENCIL. 1794]
artistic freedom. In the meantime we will turn our attention to the
topographical drawings which Turner sent to the exhibition of 1796.
Of the eleven drawings by which Turner was represented at the Royal
Academy this year, nine were apparently of a topographical character. I
have only been able to examine two of these recently--the ‘Transept and
Choir of Ely Minster,’ in the late Mr. R. F. Holt’s collection, and the
‘Llandaff Cathedral,’ in the National Gallery (Exhibited Drawings No.
795). If we may judge from the rather cold impression these two drawings
make upon us, it is probable that they owe their existence rather to the
artist’s professional diligence than to any overmastering impulse
towards artistic expression. But the work, if not particularly
enthusiastic, is distinguished by its thoroughness and workman-like
spirit. Every mechanical difficulty is fairly faced and mastered with
imperturbable coolness, patience, and dexterity. So palpably is the
artist’s attention fixed upon the executive side of his art, especially
in the ‘Llandaff Cathedral,’ that a contemporary prophet might well have
been excused if he had seen in it only the promise of the making of a
marvellous _petit-maître_, and had declared that its author could not be
possessed of a spark of native genius.
Perhaps if we could see either of the two other drawings which, to judge
from their titles, were neither topographical nor antiquarian in
subject, we might find evidence which would induce us to modify this
dominant impression of intellectual coldness and unruffled placidity. In
particular, the title ‘Fishermen at Sea’ seems to suggest possibilities
of romantic expressiveness, especially when we know that the subject was
treated by the same hand that was to give us in a few years’ time the
‘Calais Pier,’ Lord Iveagh’s ‘Fishermen on a Lee-Shore,’ and the
‘Shipwreck.’ But this drawing has not been traced, and the second
drawing, the ‘Internal (or interior) of a Cottage,’ has apparently
shared the same fate.
There is, however, a slight possibility that the latter subject may be
correctly identified with the small drawing in the National Gallery,
exhibited under the title of ‘Cottage Interior’ (406 N.G.). This drawing
has been, somewhat rashly, supposed to represent the underground
kitchen beneath the barber’s shop in Maiden Lane. There are absolutely
no grounds for such an assumption, and a moderately careful examination
of the drawing shows that it does not represent an underground kitchen
or room of any kind. It is clearly a room on the ground-floor, but the
lower part of the window has been curtained off, with the object of
getting a picturesque arrangement of light and shade, and this fact may
have lent some plausibility to the suggestion that the light was falling
through a grating above. If I am right in identifying this drawing with
the 1796 exhibit the study was made at Ely, as the catalogue informs us.
But whether this drawing was exhibited at the Academy or not, it clearly
belongs from internal evidence to the latter part of 1795 or the
beginning of 1796. It therefore offers us an interesting connecting link
in the development of Turner’s art, showing the line of study which
turned the youthful topographer into the romantic artist.
Yet there is little of the romantic spirit on the face of this drawing.
A poor interior bathed in gloom, with a narrow stream of light falling
on an old woman sitting beside a copper and surrounded by an array of
pots and pans. But it is significant, because it bears witness to the
direction of Turner’s mind to the study of light and shade as a separate
vehicle of expression. In the topographical drawings proper, light and
shade is not used for its emotional effect, but simply as a means of
representation, that is to say, to bring out the shapes and details. In
the ‘Interior’ we see Turner beginning to isolate the system of light
and shade, to study and grasp its possibilities as a separate factor of
artistic expressiveness.
But if we turn to the sketch-books containing the record of Turner’s
summer wanderings in 1795, we find no lack of evidence of the
essentially artistic cast of his mind, and of his wide sympathies with
nature. His journeys this year were mainly confined to portions of the
coast-line, to the Isle of Wight, and the south coast of Wales from
Chepstow to Pembroke Bay. It was not by any means the first time he had
seen the sea, but he was then able to study it more closely than before,
and under its wilder aspects and conditions.
The outward appearance of the two principal sketch-books used this year
bears clear indication of bright professional prospects. These handsome
calf-bound volumes, each with four brass clasps, put forward solid
claims to respect--claims which a young artist standing alone without a
backing of influential patrons would shrink from advancing. Opening the
book devoted to the Isle of Wight subjects, we find the first page
headed in ink with the words ‘Order’d Drawings,’ and underneath a record
of subjects and sizes of drawings to be made for Sir Richard Colt Hoare
and Mr. Charles Landseer, the engraver. In the South Wales book we find
the record of further commissions from these two patrons, and others
from Viscount Maiden, Dr. Mathews, Mr. Laurie, Mr. Lambert, Mr. Mitchell
and Mr. Kershaw. These indications suggest that the drawings in these
volumes were not made entirely for the artist’s own use and enjoyment.
They are certainly for use, as their neat and careful array of details
proves, but they were also destined to bear the scrutiny of possible
patrons, and excite, if possible, a desire in their breasts to see them
carried out in a more elaborate medium. This may account for a certain
smugness or primness in much of the work itself, for its faint
suggestion of youthful conceit and a priggish air of conscious
rectitude.
The sketching tour opens at Winchester, and we can follow the artist to
Salisbury and Southampton. We then find him suddenly at Newport, in the
Isle of Wight. The remainder of the book is devoted to this island. At
Newport Turner was chiefly interested in Carisbrook Castle. We can then
trace his footsteps southward to Ventnor and along the South-West coast
to the Needles; thence back to Newport, with a visit to Brading, where
he made a delightful drawing, partly finished in water-colour, of
Bembridge Mill.
The workmanship throughout is admirably deft, graceful and accomplished.
It is not, however, till the artist gets to the open sea round the
Needles that his imagination seems stirred at all. In the centre of the
drawing on page 39 stands the blunt face of the chalk cliffs; on the
left, the incoming waves play round a few broken stumps of rock. Between
the cliffs and the spectator there is a small bay in which some
fishermen’s boats ride on the rising tide. The waves play prettily with
the boats, but these are carefully tethered fore and aft, thus showing
that their owners have learnt to mistrust the gracefully advancing
waters. In the distance the cold dark volume of sea seems to justify
these suspicions. Gradually a sense of the sternness of the eternal
conflict between the sea and the dry land impresses itself on our minds.
The whole coast seems in the clutch of a ruthless and never-resting foe.
In some scenes the high cliffs seem to stand proudly and defiantly in
the water; here they are in full retreat, the havoc of the foreground
proving that the soft chalk is crumbling at the touch of its pitiless
enemy.
And now we can see the usefulness of the discipline and training of
topographical draughtsmanship. Confronted with a scene like this, which
powerfully stirs his emotions, the artist is not forced to remain dumb;
he has an organ of expression ready to his hand. The supple pencil-point
hurries its suggestive outlines over the paper. There is yet time to add
some record of the more delicate passages of modelling, and to suggest
something of the colour of the water and cliffs. The artist’s brush is
as docile as his pencil. There is no experimental blotting and
splashing; every touch is expressive, and the pressure of haste only
adds greater certainty to the swift touches. The artist has to stop
before he has tinted half his paper, but he has torn out the heart of
his subject.
Leaving the Isle of Wight, Turner made his way to South Wales, passing
through Wells. The scenery of South Wales is of a wilder description
than that of the Isle of Wight, and it must have touched his imagination
profoundly. But thanks to his ready science, his hand never falters; all
the ruined castles and abbeys, the water-mills and water-falls, the
details of the rocky coast-line, the white-crested waves and tangled
forests, are bundled with celerity into neat little outlines and stored
ready for future use. Among the subjects are the castles of Kidwelly,
Carew, Laugharne, Llanstephen and Goodrich, and they are drawn as they
had never before been drawn or will be again. One of the views of Carew
Castle will serve the artist thirty years later when he comes to treat
this subject for his ‘England and Wales’ series. But to me the most
significant drawing in
[Illustration: _PLATE VIII_
MELINCOURT FALL, VALE OF NEATH
PENCIL, PART IX WATER COLOUR, 1793]
the book is the waterfall on page 8. The whole subject is drawn in with
the pencil as usual, and then just the most important part is finished
in water-colour. This piece of water-colour work is an admirable example
of Turner’s sensitiveness to impressions, his quickness and readiness,
and the adaptability of his methods. The rocks and the crystalline
facets of the water at the top of the fall are painted in with sharp
staccato touches, while the skilful dragging of the dry brush suggests
the dissolving of the water into spray with extraordinary vivacity.
This drawing forms our eighth illustration, though no reproduction can
do justice to it. Mr. Ruskin admired the work warmly, and it formed part
of the selection he made for the Oxford Loan Collection. He named the
drawing the ‘High Force of Tees,’ but I believe this description to be
incorrect. In the sketch-book the leaf on which the drawing is made
follows immediately a drawing of the water-mill at Aberdulâs, and a note
made on the fly-leaf of the book, written by Turner for his own guidance
on the tour, mentions that the ‘Rocks and Water-fall’ near Aberdulâs
were ‘well worth attention.’ The nearest waterfall to Aberdulâs is the
cascade formed by the river Clydach, known as the Fall of Melincourt. I
have therefore ventured to substitute this title for Mr. Ruskin’s ‘High
Force of Tees.’
An artist so sensitive to the subtlety and mystery of natural scenery,
as these sketch-books show Turner to have been, and one so unusually
gifted to express these qualities, could not long be confined within the
prosaic limits of topographical and antiquarian work.
CHAPTER III
THE SUBLIME--1797-1802
Change from pure form to light and shade--‘Millbank’ and ‘Ewenny
Priory’--Contrast between ‘Ewenny’ and ‘Llandaff’--The transition
from objectivity to subjectivity--The growth of taste for the
Sublime--There are no sublime objects, but only objects of sublime
feeling--No guidance but from art--The Wilson tradition--The two
elements in the sketches and studies of this period, (1) The study
of Nature, and (2) The assimilation of the Wilson tradition--In the
1797 sketches these two operations are kept distinct--The North of
England tour and its record--‘Studies for Pictures: Copies of
Wilson’--The two operations begin to coalesce in the 1798 and 1799
sketches--The origin of ‘Jason’--The Scotch (1801) and Swiss (1802)
tours.
There is an evident connection between such a study of light and shade
as the ‘Interior of a Cottage’ (406 National Gallery) and at least two
of the exhibits in the exhibition of 1797. One of these, the ‘Moonlight,
a study at Millbank,’ was probably Turner’s first exhibited oil
painting; the other, ‘Transept of Ewenny Priory, Glamorganshire,’ I am
inclined to regard as the first drawing in which the budding genius of
the young artist was authoritatively announced. It is impossible to be
sure whether the direction of Turner’s attention to the subtler problems
of light and shade led him to turn to oil painting as a more suitable
medium for the expression of such effects, or whether his resolution to
explore the resources of the more complex medium had the effect of
directing his attention to the expressional qualities of light and
shade. The ‘Millbank’ bears on its face the evidence of Dutch influence
(Van der Neer, Van Goyen, etc.) as well as of inexperience of the
technical requirements of the new medium. This inexperience renders the
work
[Illustration: _PLATE IX_
INTERIOR OF RIPON CATHEDRAL: NORTH TRANSEPT
PENCIL. 1797]
insignificant with regard to the development of the artist’s
personality, but the bent of his mind towards the mystery and
expressiveness of darkness is notable.
In the water-colour of ‘Ewenny Priory’--now one of the chief treasures
of the Cardiff Art Gallery (Pyke-Thompson Bequest)--Turner’s genius is
less hampered by technical difficulties. If this be indeed the drawing
that was exhibited in 1797[7] it shows an amazingly rapid development in
the artist’s powers, especially when we compare it with the ‘Llandaff
Cathedral’ (790, National Gallery), which was exhibited only twelve
months earlier. The ‘Llandaff’ is merely the work of a clever and
skilful topographical draughtsman, the ‘Ewenny’ is the work of a
powerful imaginative artist. The gloomy interior of the Norman ruin is
no longer an object to be measured, dated, classified and labelled. It
is no longer an ‘interesting specimen’ that we have set before us. The
artist has now broken with the ordinary, every-day world of
sense-experience, and we plunge with him into the world of the
imagination, where objects are no longer separated from and held over
against the self; they now throb and tingle with our own emotional life.
This change of aim--we may speak of it for the sake of brevity as the
change from objectivity to subjectivity--is accompanied by a change of
method in the workmanship of the two drawings. In the ‘Llandaff’ (as in
the ‘Lincoln’) the forms of all the objects are made out with the
greatest possible clearness. When the artist has told us as clearly and
precisely as possible the exact shape of every object from his chosen
point of view, we feel that he has done all that he set out to do, and
all that we can reasonably demand from him. Then these objects are left
standing side by side in relative independence of each other and of us;
they have no necessary connection one with the other, like the parts of
a piece of music, or the points of an argument. Their only bond of union
is the abstract one of space. The whole effect is of something severed
from direct experience; the objects represented have an unreal air of
permanence and immutability, with something of the intellectual coldness
and aloofness of a diagram or mathematical symbol.
In the ‘Ewenny’ drawing we are brought into contact with objects which
have not yet been severed from the emotional colouring of immediate
experience. Instead of a series of abstract spatial determinations,
appealing only to the abstract understanding, we now have a presentation
fraught with the infinite suggestiveness of living, sensible experience.
Each object represented is now no longer held over against the self as
something alien, something indifferent to and independent of humanity,
like the laws of the physical sciences; each object has now become
merely a moment in the affective life of an individual. It therefore
touches our own feelings, challenges our hopes and fears, appeals
intimately to our sympathies with the contagion of the emotions of an
actual companion. We cannot remain indifferent to such an appeal if we
would. Unless our nerves tingle as the eye plunges from the familiar
objects of the foreground into the gloom beyond, the picture has not
begun to exist for us. But immediately it touches our inner life into
responsive activity the picture becomes transformed from so much
indifferent paper and pigment into an aspect of our own affective life.
We have caught the contagion of the artist’s emotional experience, in
which the objects of his representation were submerged.
I am far from wishing to suggest that the distinction between the two
kinds of art which I have endeavoured to indicate is either very obvious
or easy to grasp. But it is, I am convinced, a very real and a very
weighty distinction, and as such is worthy of the most careful study.
But, however carefully we study the matter, and however profoundly
convinced we may be that the distinction is firmly grounded in the
essential nature of art itself, yet we can never hope to describe it in
the precise terms of the exact sciences. We can never hope to understand
the exact nature of the ties which bind the expressive symbols of
Romantic art to the echoes they awaken with mathematical certainty in
the breast of each individual. The problem of the relation between
thought and feeling still agitates the rival schools of philosophy, and
this is not the place to discuss such matters. What is immediately
important
[Illustration: _PLATE X_
CONWAY FALLS, NEAR BETTWYS-Y-COED
WATER COLOUR, ABOUT 1798]
for us is to see that Turner’s art has passed from one stage of growth
to another, and to realise for ourselves as best we can the nature of
this progression. To me it seems clear that the line of Turner’s
personal development is following roughly the line upon which the
artistic faculty of mankind has developed; that the transition from
topography to the stage we have now entered upon coincides in part with
the movement from Classic to Romantic art, from the art which is in
bondage to the world of external reality, to the art which moves and has
its being in the inner world of our ideas and feelings. The ‘Llandaff’
and ‘Lincoln’ belong to the classic (or the pseudo-classic, if you will)
art of the eighteenth century, while the ‘Ewenny’ inaugurates the
Romantic art of the nineteenth century. On its technical side the change
is from form to tone, from a system of predominantly unemotional
space-determinations to a medium which is more immediately in contact
with the inward feeling of all self-conscious beings.
In moving from the Augustan point of view towards the Romantic, Turner
was but walking in an already well-beaten track. During the last
half-century the influence of Milton had been growing, the taste for the
gloomy, the mysterious and the picturesque had found expression in
Young’s _Night Thoughts_, in Gray’s _Elegy_, in Walpole’s _Castle of
Otranto_, and had found critical exponents in Warton’s _History of
English Poetry_, and in Burke’s Essay _On the Sublime and Beautiful_,
(1756). Dr. Percy’s _Reliques_ had found many readers and admirers, and
Macpherson’s _Ossian_ had stirred the enthusiasm of Europe. In painting
Richard Wilson and De Loutherbourg had struck the same note of gloomy
grandeur.
Now the essence of this kind of art--the Sublime--is not merely to
strike the spectator dumb with amazement or terror, but also to make him
feel that man’s moral freedom is superior to the most terrible forces of
Nature.[8] The mere representation of the fearful and terrible sights of
inorganic nature is therefore not by itself enough to evoke a feeling of
the sublime; before he can do this the artist must also excite in the
spectator the consciousness of his power to overcome or resist such
objects. It is therefore a purely subjective feeling that the artist
has to represent, though this feeling is directed towards or centred
round a certain definite series of objects. But these objects as
coloured with the strength and resolution of the heroic mood--the mood
of Kant’s _animi strenui_[9]--cannot properly be said to exist as
natural objects. The real subject of the artist’s work is therefore,
strictly speaking, the invisible and the intangible, a mere mood of the
soul, an attitude of our own mind towards certain objects of thought.
Of course we should all have been justified before the feat had been
accomplished, in declaring that it was impossible for pictorial art to
paint the invisible, but now that it has been accomplished we have no
alternative but to recognise the fact. Common-sense says the thing is
impossible, and experience proves to us that common-sense is wrong. The
careful student of modern criticism will know how splendidly Mr. Ruskin
fought against experience in this matter and how he was worsted. I am
really sorry for common-sense. To paint the invisible and intangible--it
is a hard nut to crack. But I protest we have no choice in the matter.
The thing is there before us. It is a pity it is not quite so simple and
easy as we should like it to be, but it is best, I think, to face the
difficulties honestly.
Turner’s problem, then, as a painter of the sublime, was one in which
the mere study of natural objects could not help him. He might search
out the most fearful sights in nature, watch the loftiest waterfall of
the mightiest river, volcanoes in all their violence of destruction,
hurricanes, lightning flashes and storms, but these objects alone,
though they might stimulate his feeling of moral freedom, could not show
him how to express this faculty of moral resistance which ‘gives us,’ as
Kant says, ‘the courage to measure ourselves against the apparent
almightiness of nature.’[10] There was no help for Turner in this task
but in the works of those artists who had succeeded in expressing such
emotions, and it was to Wilson and De Loutherbourg that Turner went, not
to learn how to represent natural objects as such, but to learn how to
use such objects as the media of inward perceptions and ideas. De
Loutherbourg’s influence was mainly in the direction of rhodomontade and
melodrama, but Wilson’s, though not
[Illustration: _PLATE XI_
CONWAY CASTLE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1798]
devoid of danger, led Turner safely into the enchanted regions of
romance.
The three chief expressive--as distinguished from
representative--factors in Wilson’s work are darkness of tone, the
scheme of colour, and the quality of the paint. I am inclined to think
that the general darkness of Wilson’s pictures is the necessary result
of the kind of subjects he treated. The darkness is necessary to tune
the mind of the spectator to gloomy and tragic thoughts,--to spread over
his mind what Johnson calls ‘a general obscurity of sacred horror, that
oppresses distinction, and disdains expression.’ In his worst pictures
this darkness of key readily passes into emptiness and blackness; but in
his best pictures this darkness ranges through a gamut of subdued and
glowing colour, which relieves the gloom and comforts us as it were in
our distress. The tone and colour are thus to some extent determined by
the character of the objects represented; the tone by their general
emotional effect, and the colour scheme as conditioned by the tone,
though controlled within rather wide limits by the natural colours of
the objects represented. But the third element, the quality of the
paint, seems altogether independent of the objects represented. It seems
to reveal only the artist’s attitude towards these objects. It is as
thoroughly subjective as the emotional vibration in the voice of an
excited speaker. Under this term, the quality of the paint, I include
all the immediate presentative elements of painting, the thickness or
thinness of the impasto, the way the paint is put on, the signs of the
brushwork, everything, in short, that tells us how the artist felt
towards the objects he was representing.
The main object of Turner’s study during the period we are dealing with
was the assimilation of the Wilson tradition, his study of the facts of
Nature, simply as facts, falling into the second place. For a time the
two lines of study are kept distinct. On the one hand, the work of neat
and systematic note-taking face to face with nature is continued, and on
the other hand, a number of studies aiming at the embodiment of the
artist’s subjective attitude make their appearance. The final synthesis
of the two factors, the without and the within, is of course only
arrived at in the finished work of art, but the contents of the
sketch-books of this period fall easily apart, according as they lean
either in the direction of the particular facts or in the direction of
the emotional synthesis.
The drawings made during the tour in the north of England, which Turner
made in the summer of 1797, belong almost entirely to the first kind. In
one sketch-book we find most of the more important ruined abbeys and
castles of Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland drawn with the most
delightful ease, accuracy, and charm. Here we have Kirkstall Abbey drawn
from every available point of view, Ripon Cathedral, studied both
without and within, Barnard and Richmond Castles, Dunstanborough,
Bamborough, Durham Castle and Cathedral, Warkworth, Lindisfarne and
Norham. The drawing of the interior of Ripon Cathedral, reproduced as
Plate IX., is merely an average example of the kind of work that Turner
now seemed to produce without the slightest effort. The most complicated
structure and detail now presented no difficulties to his well-trained
eye and hand. The ease with which he mastered all the material forms
that met his eye may have left his mind at leisure to enjoy the moral
atmosphere of the buildings, may have left his imagination free to range
backward over its past history; but there is no trace of emotion or
imagination in the graceful play of these clear-cut, accurate, and
methodical outlines.
Melrose Abbey formed the highest point north in this journey. Leaving
Melrose, Turner struck across to Cumberland, no doubt passing through
Carlisle to Keswick. After the bustle and noise of much of the northward
half of his journey, the peace and quiet of the English lakes must have
been noticeable. In looking through the hundred or more pencil sketches
made at Keswick, Buttermere, Ullswater, Patterdale, Windermere,
Coniston, etc., one is struck by the absence of the conventional note of
Romantic horror. There is no trace of what used to be called the bold
and appalling singularities of nature.[11] There is indeed a marked
absence of human activity in these drawings. We are alone with
[Illustration: _PLATE XII_
RUINED CASTLE ON HILL
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1798]
nature, but nature’s aspect is generally peaceful and friendly. The
mountains are high, but we enjoy climbing them and the fine views we get
there. Their shapes above all interest us immensely. They do not strike
us at all as appalling singularities, but as replete with an infinite
grace and variety, under which we feel a fundamental reasonableness, an
intuitive sense of intelligible design. And then there are not only the
bare shapes, but their wonderful clothing of light and shade; the play
of the gleams of sunlight and the long shadows across the deep bosoms of
the hills, and the games the wreaths of mist and cloud play with the
distant mountain-tops, and the wild races of the mountain-torrents over
their favourite tracks. Occasionally there is time for more than the
regulation pencil outline. Then the brush and a few colours come out,
and a stretch of the distance wakes from its cold abstraction into life.
Such sketches as ‘The Head of Derwentwater, with Lodore Falls and the
entrance to Borrowdale,’ the ‘Hills of Glaramara,’ and ‘Buttermere Lake’
(Exhibited Drawings, No. 696), were produced in this way. In these we
see beautiful effects of mist, with the sun playing through them, noted
with subtle sympathy and accuracy, but the general effect is not at all
gloomy; it is rather one of peace, serenity, and gladness.
This is the raw material out of which Turner set to work in the autumn
and winter of 1797 to manufacture some important oil pictures full of
gloom and wrath. The young artist reminds me of Johnson’s acquaintance
who had resolved to be a philosopher, but found his native cheerfulness
always breaking through. Turner’s unaffected delight in Nature certainly
stood in the way of his aspiration towards the sublime. But he was not a
man to be easily thwarted. We can trace in the pictures exhibited in
1798 the conflict between the elements given in perception and the
subjective requirements of the artist, but by sheer diligence and
strength of will he succeeded in moulding his cheerful perceptions into
concepts full of gloom and horror. The picture of ‘Buttermere’ (N.G., at
present on loan to the Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter) is based on a
pale and delicately-charming water-colour drawing (696, N.G.), but
little of the charm or delicacy of the original sketch survives in the
oil painting, which is ruthlessly swamped in more than Wilsonian
blackness. He succeeded best where the record of his perceptions was
slightest. There are several sketches of Norham Castle, but they are all
in pencil and very slight. For some reason or other the artist was
evidently in a hurry. Perhaps partly because of this insufficient
note-taking, here was a favourable subject round which his imagination
was free to play, unhampered by any very clearly determined immediate
perceptions. The picture of Norham Castle, exhibited at Somerset House
in 1798, was Turner’s first distinct success in this kind of work, and
he repeated the subject several times.
A small green-covered pocket-book, which still bears Turner’s label,
‘Studies for Pictures: Copies of Wilson,’ gives us a glimpse of the
processes by which the sights of nature were converted into works of
art. Here we see the subjective impulses of the artist struggling into
expression; the artist’s love of gorgeous colour and dramatic effect
nourishing itself and forging a material form for its own support. Among
the designs in this interesting little book are several marine and coast
subjects, a shipwreck, an interior of a forge with men busy casting an
anchor, some river scenes, a rainbow standing over a dark city, several
church interiors, and some studies of turbulent skies. It is difficult
to distinguish Turner’s studies for his own pictures from his copies of
Wilson, but one of the drawings is probably a copy of Wilson’s
‘Morning,’ and another, of his ‘Bridge of Augustus at Rimini.’ I have
not been able to see either of these original pictures, so as to compare
them with Turner’s copy, but a comparison of the copy with the engraving
by Joseph Farington, published by Boydell, shows some important
discrepancies in the arrangement of the light and shade. The character
of these discrepancies leads one to suppose that they were not made
intentionally by Turner, but were the result of his attempt to reproduce
the general effect of the picture from memory. He may have made a slight
pencil sketch of the picture in some gallery, and washed in the general
effect afterwards from memory.
This is, of course, only a supposition, but it is somewhat strengthened
by examination of a larger and more elaborate copy of Wilson’s
‘Landscape with Figures,’ a picture now in the National Gallery (No.
1290). That Turner’s water-colour is intended to be a copy is proved by
the endorsement on its back--‘Study from Wilson,’
[Illustration: _PLATE XIII_
STUDY OF FALLEN TREES
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1798]
[Illustration: _PLATE XIV_
CAERNARVON CASTLE.
PENCIL. 1799]
but when we compare it with the original we find that the various
discrepancies in the copy can only be accounted for by supposing that
Turner was working to a considerable extent from memory. I admit the
evidence is not conclusive, but I do not think we shall be far wrong if
we take it that Turner did not at this time make any elaborate copies of
Wilson’s pictures, but that he studied them closely and
enthusiastically, and relied more upon his memory than his notes.
In the sketches made during the following years we find that these two
separate operations show a tendency to coalesce. Turner has evidently
taken a dislike to his earlier map-making style, and tries hard to see
nature like Wilson. His sketches from nature become slighter and more
hurried. In his efforts towards breadth he comes very near emptiness,
and in his attempts to get away from his neat bit-by-bit style of work
he often comes near downright clumsiness and carelessness.
The summers of 1798 and 1799 were largely spent in North Wales. Here he
found exactly the material that chimed in with the mood of sternness and
gloom he wished to express: steep, convulsive mountains, wild valleys
and broken passes, the bare skeletonlike ribs of broken ships aground on
lonely estuaries, massive ruins of huge castles perched on inaccessible
crags, gnawed to the bone as it were by the wind and rain and
remorseless Time.
His mental grasp has clearly broadened. He no longer sees buildings as
isolated objects, but they now fall into their places as incidents in
the wide panorama of the country. Nothing is now drawn for itself; the
trees are emanations from the ground, the dry land and the waters are
kinsmen, the stones in the foreground are parts of the distant
mountains, and the mountains huge elder brothers of the pebbles by the
river-side. The bubbling waters are but clouds made captive, the clouds
the freed souls of the brooks, the trees the organ of their
transformation; and castles like Conway, standing with their roots
plunged deep into their rocky foundations, seem but rocks raised to a
higher power. The distinction between human art and physical nature is
everywhere broken down. The spirit of life in nature is identified with
the volitions and passions of the artist’s own soul: he has become
sensible ‘to the moods of time and season, to the moral power, the
affections and the spirit of the place.’[12]
This state of mind is closely akin to the mood in which the myths of the
Old World had taken shape. Small wonder, then, if the broken and
withered branches of a stricken tree writhing among vigorously shooting
brushwood should suggest to Turner’s mobile fancy the idea of snakes and
dragons. The sketch here reproduced (Plate XIII.) strikes me as probably
the origin of the picture of ‘Jason’ which was exhibited in 1802.
In 1800 or 1801 Turner made a tour through the Highlands of Scotland.
The immediate results were slightly disappointing, but the experience
gained undoubtedly contributed to the effectiveness of the work done
during the first visit to Switzerland, made in 1802. In the Scotch
sketches Turner had hit upon a method of working that enabled him to
cover a great deal of ground in a short space of time, and which had the
additional advantage of exercising his memory, and of making his
sketches from nature more like the first draughts of his finished
pictures than like so many unfused notes or memoranda. All the more
promising scenes he met with were sketched slightly in chalk upon large
sheets of paper prepared with a wash of light brown. These sketches were
seldom carried far before the actual scenes, but as soon after as was
convenient--possibly at the inn in the evening--these skeletons were
filled up from the artist’s retentive memory and ever-ready invention.
In this way he was able to fortify himself against the multiplicity of
nature’s irrelevant facts, and to find a ready form of expression for
the reaction of his own mind upon the sights of nature.
Colour was very little used in the Scotch sketches, all the larger
drawings--numbering, I think, between forty and fifty--being worked
entirely in black and white. But a considerable number of the Swiss
drawings are coloured, though, I believe, none of them directly from
nature. Turner’s procedure in the case of these drawings appears to have
been practically the same as with the Scotch series, but after the
skeleton sketch from nature had been elaborated with pencil and white
and black chalk, colour was sometimes resorted to, less as a record of
facts
[Illustration: _PLATE XV_
CASSIOBURY: NORTH WEST VIEW
FRENCH. ABOUT 1800.]
[Illustration: _PLATE XVI_
BLAIR’S HUT ON THE MONTANVERT AND MER DE GLACE
WATER COLOUR. 1802]
of local colour, than as an additional instrument of expression of the
subjective mood. Among the drawings elaborated in this way are the
sketches upon which several of the Farnley drawings (the large ‘Mer de
Glace, Chamounix,’ ‘Falls of the Reichenbach,’ ‘Pass of St. Gothard,’
‘Blair’s Hut, Mer de Glace,’[13] etc.), were based. In some cases the
finished works are less impressive than the first sketches, which are
almost overpowering in their concentrated vehemence and gloomy majesty.
But we must beware of regarding these as simple sketches from nature.
They are more strictly studies for pictures than sketches from nature,
and it is hardly too much to say that they owe more of their energetic
emotional appeal to the Wilson tradition, which Turner had by this time
thoroughly assimilated, than to the immediate inspiration of nature.
CHAPTER IV
THE SEA-PAINTER--1802-1809
Connection between marine painting and the sublime--Turner’s first
marine subjects--The ‘Bridgewater sea-piece’--‘Meeting of the
Thames and Medway’--‘Our landing at Calais’ and ‘Calais
Pier’--‘Fishermen upon a Lee Shore’--‘Guisborough Shore’ and
‘Dunbar’ sketch-books--‘The Shipwreck’--‘At the Mouth of the
Thames’--‘The Nore,’ ‘Sheerness,’ etc.--‘Death of Nelson.’
We have studied in the preceding chapter the first phase of Turner’s
genuinely creative work. We have seen the artist tear himself free from
the trammels of the prosaic understanding, with its clear-cut
distinctions between external nature and subjective thought and feeling,
and plunge whole-heartedly into the concrete world of the poetic
imagination. The accomplished draughtsman of the visible has developed
into the perfervid poet of the invisible. Objective reality, as such, is
shattered and trampled ruthlessly underfoot.
‘Woe! woe!
Thou hast destroy’d
The beautiful world
With violent blow
’Tis shiver’d! ’tis shatter’d!
The fragments abroad by a demigod scatter’d!
Now we sweep
The wrecks into nothingness!
Fondly we weep
The beauty that’s gone!
Thou, ’mongst the sons of earth,
Lofty and mighty one,
Build it once more!
In thine own bosom the lost world restore!’
The distinction between percipient and object is brushed aside, and the
external world becomes the medium and the means of manifestation of
inward perceptions and ideas. How far the external world can be built up
again in the bosom of the self-conscious subject depends largely upon
the opportunities and genius of the individual.
In pictures like the ‘Kilgarran Castle,’ ‘Norham Castle,’ and ‘The
Trossachs’--to take perhaps the three most successful works of the kind
of art we have been studying--the mind only partially coalesces with its
objects. Such art only deals with a limited range of subject-matter, and
it treats its objects rather as foils to the contemplative mind than as
having significance and worth in themselves. The terrors of inorganic
nature are not represented for their own sake, but are paraded to mark
the triumph of the moral freedom that rises superior to them. The artist
is therefore forced to do violence to external nature, to subdue it and
degrade it into a symbol of what is antagonistic in his own conscious
experience. Yet by sheer force of artistic treatment all this hostile
and negative matter is brought within the realm of art, and made into an
object in which the self-scrutinising spirit of man finds itself
mirrored.
But the sublime lies only on the threshold of beauty. It succeeds, in so
far as it does attain its effect, only by making extreme demands upon
the acquired culture and reasoning powers of the spectator. The sublime
cannot be adequately represented by any sensuous object, but the very
inadequacy of these objects can stir up and evoke this feeling in the
properly prepared spectator.
There are ampler possibilities of beauty in the realm of the sea
painter. At first sight it may seem that the change is merely a change
from one region of inorganic nature to another, from rocks, torrents and
glaciers, to the stormy and impetuous sea. But if we examine the
substance of Turner’s marine pictures carefully, we find that they
contain elements which lend themselves more readily to a systematic
unity in sensuous form. In his mountainous pieces Turner found room for
very little immediate human interest. Man and his everyday occupations
are banished from the steep and rocky places he chooses to represent, as
incompatible with the gloomy, awe-struck feeling he wishes to evoke. The
only immediate link with the feelings and interests of those for whom
he worked which these pictures contained, was the shattered masonry of a
castle built in the recesses of the past by men long since dead, but
whose purposes and fate still awoke echoes in the historical imagination
of the present. In his marine subjects Turner entered more closely into
relation with the substantive interests of his time. During the
Napoleonic wars the sea had come to be recognised as the chief safeguard
of the nation. The dangers of the sea, the courage and skill of her
sailors, were England’s only bulwarks against the invincible legions of
Napoleon. The gathering of the French armies of invasion along the
shores of Brittany, the flotillas of gun-boats and flat-bottomed boats
safely moored at Boulogne and Ambleteuse, focussed the attention of the
nation upon a point outside the limited and varying interests of the
individual citizen, and united them all in the same community of hopes
and fears. The existence and welfare of the nation were at stake, the
need of self-sacrifice was felt, and the individual became animated with
the common sentiments of the nation. The stress of circumstance woke up
what I may call the merely physical and material nation into a
self-conscious spiritual unity, thinking the same thoughts and throbbing
with the same emotions.
At such a moment the poet’s and the artist’s task is made comparatively
easy. Their individual experiences are charged with a universal import;
their art rises to the dignity of a public function. They have only to
be true to their own impulses to realise the absolute beauty of eternal
life. And it was happily at such a moment in the life of the English
nation that Turner wearied of his ruined castles and terrifying
mountains--of the picturesque in general--and devoted himself to marine
painting.
The list of Turner’s exhibited works shows that he was early drawn to
the sea and sailors. In 1796 he exhibited a drawing called ‘Fishermen at
Sea,’ the next year another entitled ‘Fishermen coming Ashore at Sunset,
previous to a Gale,’ and in 1799 there were two oil pictures, one of
‘The Battle of the Nile,’ and the other of ‘Fishermen Becalmed previous
to a Storm--Twilight.’ I have not, unfortunately, been able to see any
of these works, but some studies and drawings in the National Gallery
made about 1796 show that Turner began his career as a marine painter
under
[Illustration: _PLATE XVII_
STUDY FOR THE “BRIDGEWATER SEA PIECE” PEN AND INK, WASH, AND WHITE CHALK
ON BLUE PAPER. ABOUT 1801]
[Illustration: _PLATE XVIII_
STUDY OF A BARGE WITH SAILS SET
PEN AND INK, WASH, AND WHITE CHALK ON BLUE PAPER. ABOUT 1802]
the marked influence of Rowlandson, George Morland and De Loutherbourg.
There is one animated little drawing with brown ink outlines of sailors
getting some obstreperous pigs on board a small coasting vessel in a
strong gale of wind. Apparently the cart has been driven into the sea
beside the vessel, an impossible feat in such a sea; the sea must also
be too deep for the wheels of the cart to rest on the ground, and if the
wheels touch the bottom there is not enough water for the two boats. But
in spite of these minor defects the subject provides scope for a fine
animated group of men in the cart struggling with the pigs, who have
determined to precipitate themselves into the water rather than go where
they are wanted.
That Turner was not altogether satisfied with his design is proved by
the existence of two other versions of the same subject. In one of these
the motive of the cart in the sea has been abandoned. The cart is now
placed in the foreground on the beach, and the rearing horses and
struggling and shouting men are clearly inspired by Rowlandson’s and De
Loutherbourg’s treatment of similar themes. These drawings are in pencil
outline only, but there is also a rather elaborate water-colour of a
shipwrecked sailor clinging to the rocks, with huge glassy-coloured
waves in the manner of De Loutherbourg.
Turner’s unfamiliarity with the sea no doubt accounted to some extent
for its attraction. His imagination was here free to disport itself
untrammelled by the bonds of experience, and safe from the irksome yoke
of the familiar. When we come to study Turner’s first important
sea-piece, the fine picture in the Bridgewater House collection of
‘Dutch Boats in a Gale: Fishermen endeavouring to put their Fish on
Board’--first exhibited in 1801, we can see how little art is bound to
depend upon the individual artist’s personal experience. Turner had
painted landscapes before he knew the country, and buildings before he
had seen them, so now he paints sea-pieces before he has been to sea.
There is no evidence to show that he had ventured out of sight of land
before 1802, and then it was only to cross the Channel from Dover to
Calais. But before this he had exhibited not only the Bridgewater
picture to which I have referred, but a large ‘Battle of the Nile’
(1799), Lord Iveagh’s superb ‘Fishermen upon a Lee Shore’ (1802), and
the almost equally fine ‘Ships bearing up for Anchorage’ (1802), in the
Petworth gallery.
It is true that he had used to the uttermost the few opportunities which
had fallen in his way of observing the sea from the shore, and that he
had some little experience of ships and sailors in rivers and on the
coast. (See, for example, the series of sketches of boats’ crews towing
men-of-war in the River Usk, in the ‘Cyfarthfa’ Sketch-Book of 1798.)
What direct knowledge of this kind he possessed he naturally used, but
there can be no doubt that the main body of his knowledge as well as
inspiration was derived not at first-hand, but indirectly, at first,
through the pictures of English painters like De Loutherbourg, and
later, through the pictures and drawings of the Dutch sea-painters. The
point is worth the attention of those who treat the close connection
between art and nature which happens to exist just at present as an
inherent characteristic of pictorial art, and make much of this supposed
characteristic in opposition to the freedom of music. When we cease to
keep our attention riveted on the naturalistic art of the present, we
soon find indications that the essential forms of pictorial art are as
much independent constructions of the creative mind as the forms of
music.
In the group of studies for pictures of the sea which are related to the
Duke of Bridgewater’s picture, we see Turner playing with pictorial
forms with as much freedom as a musician plays with his notes. The
horizontal line of the sea, the heaving waves, the masses of light and
dark in the sky, the stolid forms of the big ships, the instability of
the smaller boats,--these are notes which Turner never seems wearied of
evoking, and weaving into ever fresh combinations. The demands of mere
representation count for almost nothing in these entrancing drawings.
The artist draws simply because he loves his artistic symbols, loves
weaving them into designs, and because his gift of melodic invention is
inexhaustible.
The group of drawings to which I refer seems to have been made
originally in a small book, solidly bound in calf. On one of the covers
Turner has printed boldly in ink ‘Studies P,’ and ‘Shipping,’ which
means, doubtless, Studies for Pictures of Shipping. The paper is blue
with a coarse surface, similar to
[Illustration: _PLATE XIX_
FISHERMEN LAUNCHING A BOAT IN A ROUGH SEA
PEN AND INK AND WASH. ABOUT 1802]
[Illustration: _PLATE XX_
STUDY FOR “SUN RISING THROUGH VAPOUR”
BLACK AND WHITE CHALK ON BLUE PAPER. ABOUT 1804]
that commonly used by students in the French ateliers, and known as
Michallet paper. The designs were generally roughly pencilled in, and
were then carried further in pen and ink, with bold washes of Indian
ink. White chalk was also freely used. The book was in use before 1799,
as it contains a number of studies for the painter’s diploma picture of
Dolbadarn Castle. These studies are made in coloured chalks, most of
them still very effective, although they have wasted a good deal of
their force upon the pages that have been pressed down over them. This
is, I believe, one of the few occasions on which Turner has been known
to work in pastel. Doubtless many of the shipping designs were never
carried out, but among them there are studies for the large water-colour
of Carnarvon Castle exhibited in 1800, and for the two water-colours of
Pembroke Castle, one (now belonging to Mrs. Pitt Miller), exhibited in
1801, and the other (the glorious one now belonging to Mr. Ralph
Brocklebank), exhibited in 1806.
But the actual studies for the ‘Bridgewater Sea-piece’ were made in a
much larger book, a book which seems to have been devoted at first to
the purpose of making life studies at the Academy classes. But it
contains only about half a dozen drawings of this kind, while about
sixty pages are devoted to studies of pictures, some historical, like
the ‘Deluge,’ etc., but most of them sea-pieces. The paper is coarse
blue, like the smaller book, the size of the leaves being 17 × 10½
inches, and most of the studies are continued over the two open pages.
Throughout the book one recognises a certain sense of pride and
exaltation in the mere size of the paper, and in the unchecked freedom
with which the artist’s hand and imagination could disport themselves.
One of the earliest studies for the ‘Bridgewater Sea-piece’ represents
simply a straight line of sea with two ships on it in the distance, one
foreshortened, the other in profile. In the extreme distance is a line
of white chalk suggesting a strip of sunlight on a distant coast. The
idea is so bald and empty and so unlike the final result that one would
not connect the study with the picture did it not bear Turner’s
inscription, ‘Duke’s Picture,’ in the margin.
The next study shows that Turner’s mind is occupied with the idea of
filling up the emptiness of the middle distance and foreground. On the
left we have two fishing-boats pitching to the right in shadow, while
the two frigates ride at anchor in the distance, very much as in the
first sketch. The two groups are united simply by the cast shadow on the
water thrown by the fishing-boats in the direction of the frigates
(Plate XVII.).
The next study shows the artist trying to find a more interesting way of
uniting the two groups. Here the two motives are tied together as it
were by a small rowing-boat with men in it half hidden in the trough of
the waves. The group of fishing-boats is also slightly altered, their
sails accentuating their common swaying motion. In this drawing the
various objects are no longer juxtaposed in a seemingly casual or
arbitrary way. A subtle bond of union has sprung up between them. The
rowing-boat rocks the reverse way to that of the large group of sailing
vessels. The two rocking motions reinforce and explain one another. The
movement of each gains in vividness, and they both increase the
intensity of our perception of the steadiness and weight of the boat
riding at anchor out there on the right. In this way the sea comes to
life in its effects, and the design is ready to be transferred to the
canvas and for further elaboration.
This playing with our feelings of equilibrium and movement constitutes
one of the prime factors of Turner’s enjoyment in his earlier
sea-pieces. He is taking possession of his new realm, getting his
sea-legs as it were. We see this plainly in the beautiful little picture
of ‘The Meeting of the Thames and Medway’ in the National Gallery. (This
is a small version of the larger picture now in America. There is also
another equally fine small version in the University Galleries, Oxford.)
The strong heaving wave on which the buoy dances in the foreground sets
the main motive of the picture--the play of wind and waves--clearly
forward. The small boat with the four men in it is flung sideways and
upward. We feel it as the light plaything of the heavy waves. In the
middle distance there are two groups of heavier craft with sails set,
one group, on the left, coming straight towards us, the other group
scudding straight across the picture plane, just about to disappear out
of the frame on the right. The dancing buoy and the light rowing-boat in
the foreground make us feel at once the
[Illustration: _PLATE XXI_
STUDY FOR “THE SHIPWRECK”
PEN AND INK AND WASH. ABOUT 1805]
weight and bulk of these sailing hoys. We feel them settling down in the
mettlesome sea, gripping it tight as a rider grips his horse with his
knees, while they fling out their sails to the wind. They are like
living, panting, quivering animals. In the far distance rides a large
frigate at anchor, and the firm base line of the horizon might stand as
a symbol of the self-possession, strength of will, and unity of the
conscious self, which delights in differences, while never entirely
losing itself in the multifarious maze of experience.
In our sketch-book there are some of the undeveloped germs of this
picture. In these sketches parts of the design have been firmly grasped,
but the whole movement has not yet come to light. In the fine drawing
running across pages 90 and 91, for example, the action of the two
scurrying hoys on the right, together with the rocking boat in the
foreground, is clearly marked. But there is nothing to counterbalance
the swift rush of these boats. If we look at this study with the
remembrance of the final design in our minds we feel there is something
missing. We want the heavy waddling hoys on the left coming towards us,
with their hulls jammed deep in the waves; we want something to give us
a sense of solidity, something, as it were, to hold on to, to steady
ourselves in the sway and rush.
All these trial sketches, this laborious piecing together of the
designs, suggest that Turner was not trying to realise something that he
had actually seen. No doubt this was the case, yet we must not hastily
conclude that he was simply making it all up out of his head, as the
common saying runs. His smaller sketch-books show that he had constantly
watched such scenes. The object of his trial sketches was therefore to
find an adequately expressive form which would do justice to the wealth
of his experience. He was not trying simply to make an abstractly
beautiful composition. His task was rather to knit together into
conceptual unity his wide range of experience, and then to body this
forth in a carefully selected and articulated sequence of sensuous
signs.
But some of the pages of the book in which the sketches referred to
above occur, prove that the well-known picture of ‘Calais Pier’ is in
the main an attempt to realise a scene that Turner had actually
witnessed. On pages 58 and 59 there is a vigorous drawing in black and
white chalk inscribed ‘Our landing at Calais--nearly swampt.’ The packet
boat had evidently had a rough crossing, and now the passengers are
being landed in boats with considerable difficulty. In this sketch the
boat seems to have stuck on the harbour bar, and, beyond, the packet
which the passengers have just left is lowering its mainsail. Another
sketch shows the small boat flung finally on the shore with the
passengers struggling among the surf. The picture is no doubt an attempt
to realise the scene which presented itself immediately on the arrival
of the packet boat, before the passengers began to land. This was
Turner’s general idea, but the composition had to be invented and
appropriate details found to sustain and reinforce the main idea.
This incident occurred in 1802, and we have to go back to the previous
year to find what seem to me the materials used in the construction of
Lord Iveagh’s superb ‘Fishermen upon a Lee-Shore in Squally Weather,’ a
picture that will be fresh in the public mind, as it formed one of the
chief attractions at the exhibition of English pictures at the
Franco-British Exhibition held in London last year (1908). Two little
pocket-books, used during Turner’s journey to the Scotch lakes, are
filled with drawings of the heavy billows of the North Sea thundering on
a lee shore. The first book was used on the Yorkshire coast, the other
on the wild coast between Berwick and Edinburgh. The Yorkshire book
bears Turner’s label, ‘Guisborough Shore,’ on the back. It consists of a
small number of pages of coarse blue paper. These pages are filled with
magnificent impressions of waves dashing against rocks, and of dark,
heavy fishing-boats silhouetted against the foaming white sea. The
‘Liber’ design of the ‘Coast of Yorkshire near Whitby’ (R. 24) was
doubtless suggested on this occasion.
The other book, the ‘Dunbar’ sketch-book as Turner named it, consists of
leaves of stout Whatman coated with washes of a murky pinkish brown. The
advantage of using white paper prepared in this way is, that the artist
can get his lights by simply using his knife to scratch away the
preparation. This book contains sketches of the ruins of Roslin Castle,
the Bass Rock, Tantallon and Dunbar Castles. The wild and disconsolate
scenes
[Illustration: _PLATE XXII_
MEN-OF-WAR’S BOATS FETCHING PROVISIONS (1)
PENCIL ABOUT 1808]
between St. Abb’s Head and Dunbar seem to have deeply impressed Turner’s
imagination. As we turn over the leaves of this book we seem to hear
‘the sombrous and heavy sound of the billows successively dashing
against the rocky beach’ that Scott speaks of in his description of Fast
Castle in the _Bride of Lammermoor_. The artist seems too excited to
draw in his old static fashion. The stretches of sullen sea are sketched
again and again, the white crests of the incoming waves being dug out
furiously with the knife. But only the large masses of light and dark
are indicated. Here we have a stretch of cold light in the sky with the
dark sea and cliffs looming against it, the whole vague and fragmentary,
but irresistibly impressive. But perhaps the most eloquent pages in the
book contain two glorious studies of storm-tossed waves. We are looking
out from the shore, with the waves breaking at our feet. Even in his
more elaborate work Turner has never suggested the tremendous weight and
power of the sea-waves so vividly as in these hurried and tiny sketches.
The furious work with the knife on both sides of the paper has reduced
it almost to a rag; but the rag is eloquent, and such studies as these
help us to understand how it was that Turner could paint the sea so very
much better than any artist either before his time or since.
‘The Shipwreck,’ one of the most successful of Turner’s early
sea-pieces, was painted in 1805. The picture is doubtless a
‘composition’ in which Turner has endeavoured to sum up his knowledge of
the sea, but, as was usual with him, it contains a nucleus of directly
observed fact. These two sides of his art, tireless and the most
searching observation, and the subsequent artistic manipulation of what
he had seen and felt, are clearly displayed for us in two little ragged
paper-covered note-books labelled by the artist ‘Shipwreck’ and
‘Shipwreck 2.’ The first contains the succinct record of an actual
shipwreck, the second the series of trial compositions which he made
before the final design of the picture was fixed.
Eight of the pages of the first book--it only contains sixteen pages in
all--have long been exhibited among the Turner water-colours in the
National Gallery. They are framed together, and numbered 535. They
represent so many different views of a barque going to pieces on the
shore. There can be no doubt of the veracity of these bold, masterly pen
sketches; as Mr. Ruskin says of them, ‘I believe even those who have
not seen a shipwreck, must recognise, by the instinct of awe, the truth
of these records of a vessel’s ruin’ (_Ruskin on Pictures_, p. 221). In
the margin of one of the drawings Turner has scribbled ‘Pepper (?) bargh
Vessel. Hemp. O. Iron bundles like Hoop.’ The scenery vaguely suggests
the coast of Kent to me,--possibly Gravesend.
These sketches are so impressive that one would have thought that Turner
would have been satisfied to take any one of them as a basis for a
picture. But his mind seemed unsatisfied until he had exalted actuality
into something of epic grandeur. The second little book shows how he set
to work to make his pictures express a clearer intention and a wider
mental outlook than any single incident could.
The first sketch shows us a large ship settling down at the bows, with a
single rowing-boat in the foreground. We are far away from the shore.
The tragedy is intensified by taking place on the high seas, but the
presentment is evidently too bare and matter-of-fact for the artist. In
the next sketch the ship is turning over towards us, though slightly to
the right, so that we see its decks plainly, with the masts
foreshortened towards us. Somewhat nearer to us is a welter of boats and
figures, with a fishing-boat with sails set on the right, all placed low
down in the trough of the sea. On page 13, the vessel is turned half
over towards us, but to the left. The fishing-boat in the foreground
sailing into the picture also has its mast and sails sloping violently
to the left. This swing in the same direction of the two most prominent
objects in the design strikes us as monotonous, and doubtless for this
reason excited Turner’s disapproval. On page 16, the vessel is brought
nearer and made a more prominent object in the design. It is now turned
over away from us and slightly to the left. The welter of boats and
figures is placed beyond the vessel, instead of in the foreground. In
another sketch the ship lies on its side helpless on the right of the
design, its masts and rigging in the water stretching right across the
picture. Another of the sketches has been reproduced as Plate XXI. This
is, perhaps, a little more fully realised than some of the others. It
seems to have been drawn straight off in pen and ink, then the stormy
sky and waves were indicated with an impetuous wash of
[Illustration: _PLATE XXIII_
MEN-OF-WAR’S BOAT FETCHING PROVISIONS (2)
PENCIL. ABOUT 1808]
Indian ink, which was then thumbed, dabbed, and coaxed to give the
requisite modelling. The sweep of the waves, their vicious choppy spurts
and explosions of spray, are given with a directness and simplicity of
means that I believe would have excited the admiration of Korin himself.
I need not continue to describe all the pages in detail. The point of
interest is that Turner tried successively every possible movement in
the sinking of a big ship and looked at them from every possible point
of view. Then he finally decided that his second sketch was the most
suggestive and striking, so he took it up again, and after considerable
modification in the details, developed it into the completed work.
Between 1805 and 1809 Turner must have spent a good deal of his time
sailing up and down the lower reaches and the mouth of the Thames. The
contents of several sketch-books prove this. In one there is a view of
the Dutch coast with Flushing in the distance, evidently drawn from the
sea. But the subjects as a rule are nearer home. In the book labelled
‘River and Margate’ the subjects range from the Fishmarket at Hastings
to Cobham and Walton Bridges. These include sketches near London Bridge,
at Purfleet, Greenwich, Gravesend, Southend, Herne Bay, and Margate. But
these are only treated as backgrounds to the ships and boats. We have
pages and pages of wherries and Thames barges bundling along with all
sails set past massive ships of the line at anchor, all drawn as swiftly
as they seem to move. These are almost too slight for reproduction, but
the two animated scenes of men-of-war’s boats victualling, reproduced as
Plates XXII. and XXIII., give an excellent idea of the spirit in which
Turner worked on these occasions. Looking out to sea we see a number of
ships of the line riding at anchor. Round the landing-stages in the
foreground are the ships’ boats taking in stores of bread, hay and
straw, sheep and fish. The day is fine, but there is evidently a wind
blowing; the sea is choppy; there is plenty of spray about, and the
pennants stand out taut from the masts of the big ships in the offing.
It is all drawn with a few hurried, nervous pencil outlines, nothing is
described in detail, yet the whole scene is brought as vividly before us
as the most elaborate oil-painting could bring it.
Another little book, labelled ‘Boats. Ice,’ shows that Turner was no
mere fair weather sailor. The sketches were evidently made during a
severe winter. The book starts off with several lurid sunsets. On page 9
we see some boatmen on their barges, a church, probably Gravesend
Church, in the distance. The sun has disappeared behind a bank of
clouds. These have the word ‘grey’ scribbled over them. Over a few
hurried lines of pencil radiating from a centre behind these clouds are
the suggestive words ‘Fire and Blood.’ On page 12, we have a stretch of
river with a distant group of trees on the left looming through the fog.
The river is strewn with fragments of ice. On the right a single boat is
visible, its tall mast and stays standing out boldly against the sky.
Above, the upper part of the sun’s face is just appearing through the
clouds. This slight, sensitive sketch is helped out for the
artist--though for the imaginative spectator it hardly needs such help,
so eloquent is it--by scribbled notes of colour; ‘Boat ... yellow,’ the
water in the foreground, ‘Greenish Black in Shadows. Ice white and
grey.’
On the next page we find two barges with brittle fragments of ice
hanging round them. On page 16, there is a barge moored beside what
seems to be a huge iceberg, with two figures on it, though it may only
be a rocky shore distorted by snow and ice into its fantastic
appearance. But the sketch on the next page looks emphatically like an
iceberg. The following sketch is here reproduced (Plate XXIV.), so the
reader may judge for himself what it is. To me it looks like floating
icebergs, the foremost one containing a wrecked vessel embedded in its
surface. This page was cut out by Mr. Ruskin and exhibited at Oxford
with the title, ‘The Inscrutable.’
Turner has summed up these experiences of his in a group of absolutely
unrivalled sea-pieces. Pictures like Mr. F. H. Fawkes’s ‘Pilot hailing a
Whitstable Hoy,’ Mr. G. J. Gould’s ‘The Nore,’ Mr. P. A. B. Widener’s
‘Meeting of the Thames and Medway,’ and Lady Wantage’s ‘Sheerness,’ seem
to me beyond all question the most glorious pictures of the sea ever
painted. The finest Dutch pictures of this kind, with all their
admirable qualities, do not seem ever to get beyond a certain prosaic
outlook. This matter-of-fact effect is enhanced by--if it is not
altogether due to
[Illustration: _PLATE XXIV_
‘THE INSCRUTABLE”
PENCIL. ABOUT 1808]
it--the ruthless display the artists make of their special knowledge of
the construction and rigging of their vessels. I believe Turner’s
knowledge of this kind was almost as exhaustive as theirs, but whether
as full or more limited, he made a better use of what he did know. His
objects are never there simply for themselves. They are always
subordinated to a genuinely imaginative conception. His pictures,
therefore, are not the work of a man with a professional speciality.
They are real epics of the sea. From their own imaginative point of view
their workmanship is almost perfect. Their style is sonorous and
weighty. They are as solemn and majestic in conception as they are manly
in feeling. They have something of that ‘beauty which, as Milton sings,
hath terror in it.’ Together ‘they move in perfect phalanx to the Dorian
mood’--the noblest sequence of poems ever dedicated to the majesty of
the sea.
When we compare such pictures as these with a subject like ‘The Death of
Nelson,’ in the National Gallery,--a subject dealing directly with a
particular historical incident--we cannot but feel that they owe
something of their loftiness and grandeur to their exaltation above all
merely limited feelings of patriotism. I suppose a Frenchman could
hardly be expected to look at the ‘Nelson’ with quite the same feelings
as an Englishman; or a Dane to regard the ‘Spithead; Boat’s crew
recovering an anchor’--which actually represents the return of the
English fleet with the Danish ships captured at Copenhagen--in the way
this event was hailed in England. The feeling of patriotism is no doubt
an admirable and useful one in real life; but in so far as art is tied
down to the service of a particular kind of patriotism, it is limited to
this definite end, and is not entirely free in and for itself. And art
which is not entirely free from all finite ends cannot rise to the full
height of its own destiny.
Yet in the very greatest art there is no opposition to all that is
essentially noble and heroic in patriotism. A masterpiece like Lady
Wantage’s ‘Sheerness,’ for example, is as full of all the essential
virtues of patriotism as a picture like the ‘Death of Nelson.’ The
difference is only in the degrees of emphasis placed on certain aspects
of the whole conception. In the ‘Sheerness’ the interest is concentrated
on the guardship at the Nore, and all that is implied in this aspect of
a nation’s discipline, hardihood, watchfulness, and self-sacrifice. And
on this idea of military (or naval) service for the Fatherland the
possibility of actual struggle and, if need be, death at the hands of
any national enemy is clearly involved. The ‘Death of Nelson,’
therefore, only makes explicit a single moment held in solution in the
other picture. Hence the question is not between the value of patriotic
feeling and a shallow, empty form of cosmopolitanism as artistic
motives, but merely under which aspect the virtues of patriotism are to
be contemplated. Which aspect does fullest justice to the whole
conception of personal devotion and sacrifice to the commonweal? My own
feeling is that the point of view which raises itself above the
particular interests of one nation, and treats the hardships and dangers
of national defence as an inevitable condition of human life, is more in
accord with the freedom and universality of the highest art. The
question, I repeat, is only one of degree, and these remarks will be
entirely misunderstood if they are taken to imply that I should have
wished that either the ‘Nelson’ or the ‘Spithead’ had not been painted.
In the ‘Spithead,’ as a matter of fact, the connection with the
particular historical incident which called it into existence has long
dropped out of sight, whilst the ‘Nelson’ has always caused a certain
feeling of dissatisfaction even among the most ardent and exclusive of
patriots. This vague feeling is possibly at the root of the adverse
technical criticisms to which it has been subjected by sailors and naval
experts. These criticisms are generally in themselves entirely
wrongheaded and sometimes fatuous, for the picture is certainly a grand
and impressive one, and by far the most adequate representation in
pictorial art of an event of the greatest national importance. But the
intuitive sense of the nation has always thought more highly of such a
picture as ‘The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth,’ than of
the ‘Death of Nelson.’ In ‘The Fighting Téméraire,’ as in the earlier
masterpieces to which I have referred, there is no touch of chauvinism
or vainglory, yet it is generously and passionately patriotic: but it is
magnanimous patriotism, which honours its foe and looks beyond and above
the present momentary noise and strife.
CHAPTER V
‘SIMPLE NATURE’--1808-1813
The works of this period an important yet generally neglected
aspect of Turner’s art--Turner’s classification of ‘Pastoral’ as
opposed to ‘Elegant Pastoral’--The Arcadian idyll of the
mid-eighteenth century--The first ‘Pastoral’ subjects in
‘Liber’--‘Windmill and Lock’--The capture of the Danish Fleet in
1807--Turner’s visit to Portsmouth--His return journey--‘Hedging
and Ditching’--An attempt to define the mood of pictures like ‘The
Frosty Morning,’ ‘Windsor,’ etc.--Distinction between mood and
character.
The phase of Turner’s work which we are now to consider seems to me one
to which the critics have hardly done justice. The supreme beauty of two
of the pictures of this group has certainly been recognised--I allude to
the ‘Trout Stream’ and Lady Wantage’s ‘Walton Bridges,’ but these works
have been treated mainly on their individual merits, instead of in their
connection with a clearly-marked and most significant aspect of the
artist’s genius. Chronologically, this period ranges from about the year
1808 to 1813, and it includes, in addition to the two works just
mentioned, the ‘Windsor,’ ‘Abingdon,’ ‘Kingston Bank,’ ‘Frosty Morning,’
‘Union of the Thames and Isis’ and ‘Sandbank with Gipsies,’ all in the
National Gallery, as well as Sir Frederick Cook’s ‘Windmill and Lock’
and Mr. Orrock’s ‘Walton Bridges.’ These works all strike me as
characterised by a certain mood or standpoint which possesses the
profoundest significance for modern art,--a mood, moreover, which has
not yet, to my knowledge, been satisfactorily analysed, and which Turner
could never afterwards recall in all its essential beauty, though he
frequently made the attempt.
I must confess that in spite of all my efforts I am quite unable to find
a term that will adequately characterise this phase of Turner’s art.
Turner’s own classification of such subjects as those mentioned above is
‘Pastoral,’ as distinguished from the ‘Elegant Pastoral.’ But this
description is inadequate, because it seems to refer simply to the
objects contained in the works, while it is exactly the mood or
emotional standpoint from which the subject-matter is treated that seems
to me all-important. The contemporary term for this kind of work, and
one which Turner sometimes used himself, was ‘Simple Nature,’ and this
description, though inadequate enough, is perhaps as good as any other
we might hit upon. It indicated, at least, an antagonism to any
artificial way of treating natural scenes, and suggested a certain
unsophisticated plainness and directness of approach, and these
qualities are certainly contained in the complex and subtle conception
we are in search of. It is, then, as a painter of ‘Simple Nature’ that
we have now to consider our subject.
In externals, this phase of Turner’s art is occupied with scenes of
ordinary rural life; it deals with the country as the home and
working-place of the peasantry. This gives us the distinction between
the ‘Pastoral’ and the ‘Elegant Pastoral’ subjects in the ‘Liber,’ the
elegant pastorals dealing with the country as the imaginative home and
background of the stock figures of conventionally imaginative art. The
elegant pastoral subjects are generally peopled with nymphs, classical
shepherds and shepherdesses, goddesses and peacocks, while the pastoral
subjects which are not elegant are peopled with real labouring men and
women and unideal-looking children.
But the external subject-matter of a work of art tells us very little by
itself. The important point is the universal which binds these objects
together or organises them into an individual conception. We must think
of our group of pictures as falling within the larger class of strictly
pastoral subjects, but characterised by a special method of treatment
and conception. One way of approaching this special conception will be
to mark off a few of the pastoral subjects in the ‘Liber’ which do not
fall within it. And this is all the easier because Turner’s first
pastoral subject in the ‘Liber’ is conventional and empty, and he only
gradually worked himself into a conception of the full possibilities of
the category. That is to say, he first took up this form of art in a
[Illustration: _PLATE XXV_
SKETCH FOR “HEDGING AND DITCHING”
PENCIL. ABOUT 1807]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXVI_
“HEDGING AND DITCHING”
WASH DRAWING IN SEPIA FOR “LIBER STUDIORUM.” ABOUT 1808]
casual and external way, and then gradually took possession of it and
mastered it.
The first three plates in the ‘Liber’ are classified as ‘Pastoral,’
‘Elegant Pastoral,’ and ‘Marine.’ When we compare the marine subject
(the so-called ‘Flint Castle,’ which we now know to have been a scene on
the French coast[14]) with the two pastoral subjects, we cannot but be
struck with the disparity between the two classes of subjects. The
marine subject is vigorous and veracious, the pastoral subjects unreal
and conventionally poetical. This point of view is in keeping with the
conception of the elegant pastoral, but ‘The Bridge and Cows’ (R.
2)--the pastoral subject--is as gentle and pretty as a picture in an
idyll of Gessner or Thomson. This, indeed, represents Turner’s point of
departure as a painter of rural subjects--the standpoint of the
sentimental, affected, and unconvincing Arcadian idyll of the middle of
the eighteenth century.
The ‘Straw-yard,’ the second pastoral subject in the ‘Liber,’ strikes me
as a cross between a Gainsborough and a Teniers. Gainsborough’s
influence is noticeable in the landscape, while the ungainly horses, the
awkward men and clumsy farm implements are in the spirit of Dutch
realism. These hints of the plainness and toughness of the marine
subjects suggest what Turner will do when he feels equally at home in
rural subjects, but at present we have merely two incompatible points of
view in arbitrary juxtaposition. ‘Pembury Mill,’ the third pastoral, is
rather more homogeneous in intention. It is a scene of cheerful industry
and plenty, the noise of the millstone mingling with the cooing of
pigeons, and lush leaves growing beside the water-wheel. It is a pretty
subject, while no conscious attempts have been made to prettify or blink
the actual facts of the case. The ‘Farm-Yard with the Cock’ (R. 17)
still belongs to the eighteenth-century idyll. It is a pleasing
combination of Gainsborough and Morland, or perhaps an echo of Wheatley.
In the ‘Juvenile Tricks’ (R. 22)[15] Turner’s bent towards homely
realism is clearly marked, but we do not get definitively away from the
eighteenth century till we come to the ‘Windmill and Lock’ (R. 27).[16]
Here we are in an entirely different world from that of Arcadian poetry.
We have now put away childish things, and are face to face with the big
real world in which man earns his bread with the sweat of his brow; in
which men and women labour and sin, sorrow and repent. It is indeed the
real world, the world of common perception and common experience, yet
transfigured with the solemn glow of the truest and profoundest poetry.
The engraving of the ‘Windmill and Lock’ was published in June, 1811,
but the picture and drawing were made some time before this date. In the
part of the ‘Liber’ published immediately before the one which contained
this plate, there was a plate of ‘Hind Head Hill’ (R. 25), which bears
the date of 1st January, 1811. This subject was sketched in November
1807. It is therefore probable that the two drawings were made soon
afterwards, let us say in 1808.
The period of the inception of ‘Hind Head Hill,’ then, marks the
commencement of the era of Turner’s deeper and more solemn conception of
the poetry of rural life. This subject itself, though classified in the
‘Liber’ as ‘mountainous,’ belongs to all intents and purposes to the
phase of art which we are now studying. The bare hills dotted with
sheep, with the murderer’s corpse creaking upon the distant gibbet, are
quite in harmony with the mood of Wordsworth’s _Lyrical Ballads_. In the
same sketch-book are also the first ideas of no less than three other
‘Liber’ subjects, all conceived in the same mood of spiritual
exaltation, and all sketched during the same journey from Portsmouth to
London.
The events connected with this journey were of a nature calculated to
throw Turner’s mind out of its ordinary habits and thoughts, to carry
him ‘out of himself,’ and to prepare him for seeing the familiar scenes
of everyday life in a fresh light. These events have therefore a special
interest for us in this connection.
In May 1807 the Prince Regent of Portugal warned the Prince of Wales
that Napoleon was on the point of invading England with the Portuguese
and Danish fleets, and that the Emperor of Russia had bound himself by
secret articles in the Treaty of Tilsit to support him in this measure.
The ministry were informed of the plot, and Canning lost no time in
dealing with the situation. An envoy was sent to the Crown Prince of
Denmark at Kiel, with the demand that the Danish navy should be
delivered over to England, to be taken care of in British ports, and
restored at the end of the war. The demand was, of course, indignantly
refused. But the situation was so serious that the ministry felt
compelled to order the seizing of the Danish fleet, if it was not lent
quietly. Denmark held the keys of the Baltic. Napoleon’s troops were
ready to overrun it at a moment’s notice, and seize the fleet and all
the naval stores, all that he wanted, in fact, for his attack on
England. In securing the Danish fleet, the English then were simply
taking it from Napoleon, and were merely acting for the purpose of
self-preservation. By the 1st of September the French had occupied
Stralsund. Copenhagen was immediately bombarded, and on the 8th the
British entered the city, and the navy and arsenal were surrendered.
How this blow affected Napoleon is shown from a passage in Fouché’s
_Memoirs_, published in 1824. ‘About that time it was,’ says Fouché,
‘that we learned the success of the attack upon Copenhagen by the
English, which was the first derangement of the secret stipulations of
Tilsit, by virtue of which the Danish fleet was to be placed at the
disposal of France. Since the death of Paul I., I never saw Napoleon
give himself up to such violent transports of passion. That which
astounded him most in that vigorous enterprise was the promptitude with
which the English ministry took their resolution.’ (Quoted in Miss
Martineau’s _History of England_, 1800-1815, p. 283). At the time the
mind of the public was profoundly stirred by this event. But the victors
had almost brought the Danish ships within sight of England before the
news of the frustration of Napoleon’s plans was made public. Turner must
have been as excited as any one, for he set off immediately to
Portsmouth, to see the victors sail into the harbour with their prizes
and to celebrate the occasion in his own way.
When Turner left London his sketch-books as a rule bear witness of the
fact. In the ‘Spithead’ sketch-book there is no record of the journey
down from London. The first thirty pages are taken up with sketches of
the movements of vessels in Portsmouth harbour, on one of them being a
sketch of a boat’s crew recovering an anchor. In the following May,
Turner included in his one-man show at his studio in Queen Anne Street
West, an unfinished picture ‘of the Danish ships which were seized at
Copenhagen, entering Portsmouth Harbour’ (_Review of Publications of
Art_, No. 2, June 1, 1808, p. 167). In the foreground a ‘packet with
soldiers on board’ is mentioned, and ‘two boats toward the left hand
corner of the picture, one of which is heaving or letting go an anchor.’
The whole description, and these details in particular, prove beyond a
doubt that this was the picture which, when finished, was exhibited in
the following year (1809), at the Royal Academy, under the title of
‘Spithead: Boat’s Crew recovering an Anchor,’ and which hangs now in the
National Gallery under this name. The change of title was most probably
due to prudential considerations, as, after the first revulsion of
popular feeling, the ministry had to endure considerable obloquy on
account of this action, Napoleon’s intention of invading the country as
well as the existence of the secret articles of the Treaty of Tilsit
being stoutly denied, and the government being pledged not to reveal the
source of the information on which they had acted.
Our immediate interest in this event is with the effect produced on
Turner’s mind by the scenes which he had witnessed in and around
Portsmouth. The sight of the united English and Danish fleets was one
calculated to stir Turner’s imagination profoundly. The artist’s
sensitive nature must also have been deeply affected by contact with the
excited and jubilant populace, and with the sailors and fighting men
upon whose individual exertions the safety of the country depended.
Such moments of national excitement tend inevitably to dwarf the petty
and merely particular interests and prejudices of the individual. The
substantive interests of the community, the universal forces that move
men and hold them together, then present themselves in all their stark
reality and overwhelming importance to every heart and mind. In such a
mood, with a mind humbled and humanised, Turner set out to return to
London.
As we turn over the leaves of the ‘Spithead’ sketch-book we can see
clearly that the sights of the common round of rural life which greeted
the artist after he had left Portsmouth behind, had gained a new
interest and significance for him, by contrast with the stirring scenes
he had just witnessed. He is no sooner clear
[Illustration: _PLATE XXVII_
MILL ON THE GRAND JUNCTION CANAL, NEAR HANWELL
PENCIL. ABOUT 1809
“WINDMILL AND LOCK”
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN “LIBER STUDIORUM,” 1 JUNE, 1811]
of the town than the groups of trees and the peaceful stretch of fields
make their tranquillising influence felt. Several pages of sketches
remind me forcibly of the scenery of ‘The Frosty Morning.’ Then we find
groups of farm hands resting from their labour, some carts and horses,
ploughing scenes, a study of horses and pigs, and then the hurried
scribble reproduced in Plate XXV., the germ from which the beautiful
‘Hedging and Ditching’ design in the ‘Liber’ was developed. Then come
several Hind Head sketches, and before the hill is out of sight, comes
the original sketch of another ‘Liber’ subject, the solemn and tender
‘Water Mill’ (R. 37). After this we stop to watch the blacksmith at
work, and peep into some cottages, barns, etc. To eke out his hasty
hieroglyphs Turner frequently adds a few explanatory words. On the
margin of one sketch we read ‘Woman frying. Boy looking. Children at
Tub, a girl beating the barrel, etc.’; and on another ‘W.’ (short for
woman) ‘cutting Turnips. Interior of a Barn. Cows eating at the
Entrance, etc.’ And before we get quite to the end of the book come four
sketches of St. Catherine’s Hill, near Guildford, one of which went to
the making of another ‘Liber’ subject (R. 33).
The two sketches here reproduced, of the ‘Windmill and Lock’ and
‘Hedging and Ditching’ subjects (Plates XXVII. and XXV.), illustrate
admirably Turner’s attitude towards nature at this period. Such sketches
are nothing more nor less than memoranda for the artist’s own use. Taken
by themselves they are all but meaningless. Even to the artist himself
their significance, as memoranda of real scenes, must have been of the
slightest. The focus or real nucleus of their meaning is rather the
subjective feelings which the scenes and their whole context evoked in
the artist, than the particular objects or scenes themselves. This
sentiment, the total emotional impression, is, of course, not expressed
in the sketches themselves, though now that the completed designs have
told us what this is we can hardly help reading some of it into the
sketches. But to the artist himself these sketches were useful as
preliminary statements, as tentative objectifications of his meaning.
The work of ‘carrying out’ these sketches (or ‘working them out’) was
simply the process of the further specification of this meaning. And to
describe this work as an attempt to realise or reproduce the actual
scenes in nature which Turner had sketched, is only in a very limited
sense correct. The point of interest is the complex of subjective
feeling aroused on a particular occasion by a chance conjunction of
objects and circumstances, and in the final design the artist’s aim is
to find a particular conjunction of pictorial signs which shall
permanently objectify this emotional complex. Hence the actual objects
and the particular form of their conjunction in the real scene lose all
the importance which they possess as real objects, and become degraded,
or at least subordinated, to a purpose which falls entirely outside
their own existence. They are now nothing but pawns or counters in the
artist’s game of pictorial expression, and as such the artist has
absolute power over them, altering them, and annihilating them, as best
suits his purpose. The artist is also entirely within his rights when he
introduces fresh elements from other and different scenes to enforce and
make clear his meaning. That Turner used these privileges to the utmost
in the case of both these subjects is evident when we compare the
sketches with the finished designs. These points seem to me worth
insisting upon, because the real nature of artistic idealisation is so
little understood and so generally misrepresented, and the opportunities
of studying it genetically are of rare occurrence.
But the very fact that during the period of which we are now treating,
the stress in Turner’s work is nearly always upon the subjective
sentiment, and that the objective scenes and objects are relegated to a
position of subordination detracts very largely from the immediate
interest in the sketches from nature which Turner made during this time.
Taken by themselves these sketches are in the highest degree vague and
incomplete. They are valuable to us mainly for the purposes of
comparison with the completed designs, and as illustrations of Turner’s
methods of work. And for these purposes I think the two examples we have
just studied are sufficient. I have not, therefore, deemed it advisable
to illustrate this chapter with any other sketches of the same class.
The three further illustrations I have chosen are of a different
character. When Turner was called upon to treat subjects of a definite
topographical character he was necessarily
[Illustration: _PLATE XXVIII_
WHALLEY BRIDGE AND VILLAGE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1808]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXIX_
WHALLEY BRIDGE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1808]
restricted in the liberties he could take. In such cases his field of
selection was confined within the possible points of view from which his
subject could be regarded. In the two drawings of Whalley Bridge here
reproduced (Plates XXVIII. and XXIX.) we see him searching for that
aspect of the place which shall fit in or harmonise with the mood which
was predominant in his own mind at this time. It is only from the point
of view of such a subjective emotional attitude that the first drawing
(Plate XXVIII.) could have been rejected in favour of the second (Plate
XXIX.). As a representation of the actual place, the first drawing is
much more adequate than the second. But it is evidently just this
topographical and objective adequacy which constituted the defect of
this fine drawing from Turner’s point of view. In the other drawing
there is far less to occupy the attention. Here the interest is
concentrated on a few simple forms. The mind is, therefore, thrown back
on itself, and forced as it were to call up its own resources to amplify
and fill out the painter’s forms. And this is the mood of poetic
contemplation or meditation expressed in the beautiful picture of this
subject which Turner exhibited in 1811, and which is now in Lady
Wantage’s collection.
The third drawing to which I referred is the study for the picture of
‘London from Greenwich Park,’ now in the National Gallery. There is no
trace of the emotional setting of the finished picture in the sketch
(Plate XXX.). It is merely a record of the facts. But the artist has
already grasped in his own mind the significance of these facts with
such clearness that the bare facts even in this memorandum have become
eloquent.
The full scope of Turner’s work at this period, then, can only be
gathered from his completed works. And as I have said, I do not think
this aspect of Turner’s genius has so far had full justice done to it. I
will therefore make an attempt to indicate in a few words what I regard
as the distinctive qualities of this group of works; and to simplify my
task I will centre my remarks round two pictures, both in the National
Gallery, and therefore easily accessible to every one, viz., ‘A Frosty
Morning’ and the ‘Windsor,’ which seem to me to typify the qualities and
merits of the whole group.
After what has gone before I do not think I need say much to combat the
opinion that these pictures are simply reproductions of actual scenes.
Their relation to the actual sights of nature is exactly the same as
that between the two ‘Liber’ designs we have just examined and the
sketches upon which they were based. In the designs, and in these
pictures, there is indeed a wealth of subtle and penetrating observation
of natural forms, habits, and colours, but this material is never there
simply for its own sake. These colours and forms of natural beauty are
the elements of which the artist’s language is compounded, the pictorial
equivalent of the names of natural objects in the verse of a great poet.
To fix one’s attention on these factors in the whole complex structure
of such works as ‘A Frosty Morning’ and ‘Windsor,’ and to say that these
fragments of meaning are all that they contain, seems to me as
inexcusable as it would be to isolate the nouns in a poem, and to insist
that we must ignore that play of thought and feeling around this common
basis in which the real value of even the simplest poem consists. We
can, of course, always stop short in our understanding of any statement,
and the temptation is very great to stop short at some superficial
characteristic in such a highly complex individuality as a work of
modern art. In the case of the two pictures with which we are now
concerned, these characteristics happen to be not only superficial and
obvious, but they happen also to be easily nameable, whereas the
complete ideational and emotional structure of the whole work is very
far from being easily named or described. Yet it is just this particular
and special emotional and ideational whole which constitutes the very
being of the work of art, and which alone gives it value. It is because
modern art criticism has seized with such avidity upon the primitive
sense-factor in pictorial language, and has insisted with so much energy
that the art cannot or ought not to attempt any kind of ideational
articulation, that it has failed to do justice to this phase of Turner’s
art.
To call these pictures, then, imitations or reproductions of natural
scenes is not altogether inaccurate. They are this, but at the same time
they are so much more. The forms and colours of nature are there, but
they are superseded and sublimated in exactly the way that the
particular events described in Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal are
superseded and sublimated in the poems
[Illustration: _PLATE XXX_
LONDON, FROM GREENWICH PARK
PENCIL. ABOUT 1809]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXI_
PETWORTH HOUSE, FROM THE LAKE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1809]
which her brother founded upon these events. ‘The array of act and
circumstance, and visible form’ becomes exactly what the poet’s or
artist’s ‘passion makes them.’[17] In other words, the matter of sense
intuition is taken up into the world of intelligence. This matter, which
in the first place was something immediate or given, now loses its
natural and positive attributes, loses its authority as fact, but gains
a wider scope and ampler authority by being taken up into the world of
mind and used as a sign. And here again an opportunity presents itself
for shallow and wrongheaded criticism. Those who are under the dominion
of the theory that art should only represent sensuous facts in their
immediacy resent the transformation which the data of sense must undergo
before they can take their place in the organised world of meaning. To
them, therefore, such pictures as these are defective; the colouring is
not sufficiently natural, not bright enough, nor are the contrasts
sufficiently strong. These pictures are not painted in ‘the key of
nature.’ In a word, they are old-fashioned, because the artist has done
something more in them than the theories of impressionism can
consecrate.
We have then to avoid two mistaken ways of regarding these works. We
must not look upon them (1) as attempts to reproduce the actual
brilliancy and colour of natural lighting, nor must we treat them (2) as
prosaic and literal imitations of actuality devoid of all the higher
poetry of art. That these works are open to--nay, have almost invariably
fallen victims to--these two opposite forms of depreciation, is a
striking proof of the success with which they have avoided those fatal
extremes in which so much of the art of the present lies engulfed.
But it is not enough simply to avoid the dangers which modern theorising
throws in the way of the interpreter. A really concrete and fruitful
criticism will not stop short till it has made the attempt to grasp,
however imperfectly, by thought the full and special significance of
each work. And again, when we have made it clear to ourselves that
‘the array
Of act and circumstance, and visible form,
Is mainly to the pleasure of the mind
What passion makes them,’--
when we have agreed that Turner has used the sights of nature as a means
to express the emotions or the mood which they aroused in him,--when all
this is granted we are still merely at the threshold of the works
themselves. A mood, an emotion, a state of feeling, these are all vague
and general terms. There is nothing necessarily admirable or beautiful
in a mood or a state of feeling, Feeling and emotion may be pleasant or
unpleasant, harmonious or jarring, depressing or invigorating. And if
the main value and beauty of these pictures resides in the particular
and definite mood or state of feeling which they induce, this mood must
have distinguishable contents, and it is the business of art criticism
to do what it can to define these contents.
In Wordsworth’s ‘Lines, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey,’ he
contrasts his present state of feeling towards nature with that of his
youthful days. In the days of his thoughtless youth, he says, the forms
and colours of the landscape had haunted him like a passion. He had
loved them for themselves. But now, he says, Nature is no longer ‘all in
all’ to him. It has now gained a remoter charm supplied by thought, an
interest ‘unborrowed from the eye.’ He now hears
‘the still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.’
Before the sights of nature he now feels the presence of elevated
thoughts, a sense of something ‘more deeply interfused,’ a sense of
something discernible only with the inner eye; a sense of the Divine
that animates both nature and humanity, both what the eye sees and what
the heart and mind create,--the spirit ‘whose dwelling is the light of
setting suns,’ the spirit
‘that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.’
It is in this mood, it seems to me, that Turner contemplates the scenes
and incidents of rural life which he represents in these pictures, and
it is this mood which these pictures embody. The ‘Frosty Morning’ is
therefore very much more than a representation of a country road, with a
little hedging and ditching going on
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXII_
PETWORTH HOUSE, FROM THE PARK
PENCIL. ABOUT 1809]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIII_
COCKERMOUTH CASTLE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1809]
on one side, an ordinary stage-coach in the distance, and a little
sparkling hoar-frost on the ground. The ‘Windsor’ is also much more than
a representation of some drovers with their cattle in one of the meadows
near Windsor Castle on a summer (or spring) morning. Not only are these
bare facts represented, but the mood in which we must contemplate them
is also stated. We have not read these pictures aright, we have not
really brought them into contact with our own life, until we contemplate
the bare external facts in the light of the mood which the artist has
prescribed for them. It is, I know, commonly taken for granted that
pictorial art is impotent to achieve this kind of determination; that
the artist is at the mercy of any chance mood which the spectator may
bring to his work; that the artist can only represent objects and
spatial relations, and that he can lay no constraint on the spectator to
think and feel about these objects in any particular way. And no doubt a
large proportion of modern art productions actually do no more than
this, and attempt no more. But these are merely the failures of modern
art. All the great works of modern art--such as those of Rembrandt and
Jean François Millet--not only represent objects and scenes, but lay
down the related thoughts and feelings which they are to inspire. Yet it
is of course always possible for the spectator to stop short at the bare
recognition of the pictorial signs, in the same way that it is possible
for the reader of a poem to recognise the meaning of a few prominent
words and ignore the context in which they occur.[18] But the point
which I cannot hesitate to press home--because I see clearly that the
whole question of the value and place of art in modern civilisation
depends upon it--is this, that the work of art is nothing less than its
full significance. It is only in so far as we master or appropriate this
wealth of inner significance that the work of art can be said to exist
for us; we must not only read the words of a poem, but we must
understand them, and in the same way we must not merely look at such
pictures as these of Turner, but we must translate the artist’s signs
into their appropriate ideas and feelings.
It is only when we succeed in getting clear of that shallow materialism
which clings to the letter, while it ignores the power behind it, that
the full scope of pictorial art can dawn upon us. But when we once
realise that the mood expressed in such pictures as the ‘Frosty Morning’
and ‘Windsor’ is an essential part--nay, is the very essence of the
works themselves, we shall begin to understand how nearly related great
art is to religion; how insensibly the one passes into the other. In
such pictures as these--and I do not hesitate to rank them among the
truest and highest that Christianity has yet produced--in pictures like
these the ordinary scenes of rural life and labour are impressed with
the quietness and beauty of the best part of the artist’s own nature,
and fed with the lofty thoughts that only poets dare utter in words.
Such pictures are indeed in the old monkish sense an act of worship. The
mood they call up and sustain is a blessed mood in which the mystery and
the weight of this unintelligible world are lightened. Such pictures as
these are literally an imitation or reminiscence of the great moments of
life, and possess life and food for future years.
* * * * *
I will conclude this chapter by answering some objections that I believe
are likely to be made to the interpretation I have offered of this group
of Turner’s works. These objections would be based on arguments drawn
from the commonly received idea of Turner’s personal character. The mood
expressed in this group of pictures is, it might be urged, the habitual
mood or way of feeling of the perfectly good man; it is only in the
perfectly good and religious life that we find this reconciliation of
inner Freedom and external Necessity, and Turner, we have reason to
suppose, was not a perfectly good and religious man. This objection I
admit has force, but I think it is fully met by pointing to the
distinction between a mood, a passing state of feeling, and a permanent
habit of mind or settled character. It may not have been Turner’s
happiness to mature this mood of reconciliation into the master light of
his whole life, yet the mood itself is one that few, if any, human
hearts are entirely unfamiliar with. It is a mood that sits about us all
in our earlier days. The feelings of love and reverence may well be one
of the primary facts of human nature.
It may be that Turner, if we examine the whole of his life,
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIV_
LANDSCAPE NEAR PLYMOUTH
PENCIL. ABOUT 1812]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXV_
DESIGN FOR SANDYCOMBE LODGE AND GROUNDS
PEN AND INK. ABOUT 1811
PLAN OF GARDEN: SANDYCOMBE LODGE
PEN AND INK. ABOUT 1812]
cannot be regarded as a perfectly good and religious man, yet at this
particular period of his life his works prove beyond all shadow of doubt
that he was capable of feeling towards nature and man in the way that is
habitual with the perfectly good man. As an artist these works of his
show that at this time he was able to raise himself in the point of
feeling to the level of a good and complete man. But this is a very
different thing from the demand that the artist shall himself be at that
time and for the remainder of his life the kind of man whose momentary
state of feeling he represents. The actual behaviour of the artist as an
individual has only an indirect bearing on the question of the moral
worth of his work. What is important is, that the content of the moral
idea shall be present in the state of feeling expressed in his work. He
may not have laid firm hold of the good will; he may not have made it a
permanent part of his own life. All that is necessary for his immediate
purpose is that he shall have grasped it in idea,--a much easier task,
and one that constant reading of the poets is quite sufficient to
accomplish.
That Turner was always a great lover and reader of poetry is already
well known. After he broke away from strictly topographical work, he
seldom exhibited a picture without the accompaniment of some poetical
quotation. To judge from these quotations Thomson’s _Seasons_ was a
favourite book with him, and we also find Milton, Ossian, Akenside, Dr.
Langhorne, and Mallet laid under contribution. But the clearest evidence
of the place poetry occupied in his mind at this time is afforded by his
sketch-books, which contain on the whole even more poetry than drawings.
On almost every sheet we find transcriptions or reminiscences of verses
that had caught his fancy, or attempts of his own to express himself in
metre. These attempts, it must be confessed, are seldom far from
failure, for the artist’s command of words was not instinctive, like his
power over pictorial signs. Yet the quantity of these attempts and the
patient persistence with which he ground out indifferent verse, prove
that the art of poetry was one that held at least as high a place in his
affections as his own art.
As Turner’s verses were on the whole so unsuccessful, I will only offer
the reader one example, and that a short one. It was written in one of
his sketch-books about the year 1809. He had gone to Purley on the
Thames, near Pangbourne, to indulge himself with a few days’
fishing--his sole form of recreation. But the rain had kept him in all
day, and to while away the time he betook himself to poetry. He begins
by apostrophising the fair leaves of his sketch-book which ‘Delusion’
tempts him to violate with his pen. The rain seems to have continued,
for on the next page he begins again:--
‘Alas, another day is gone
As useless as it was begun.
The crimson’d streak of early morn
Checks the sweet lark that o’er the corn
Fluttered her wings at twilight grey;
Expectant eyed the moving ray,
Twitter’d her song in saddening mood
To {calm} her clamorous callow brood
{hush}
In hope of less inclement skies.
The hapless fisher----
No fly can tempt the finny brood
When the wash’d bank gives up its mud.
Beneath some tree he takes his stand
---- in doubtful shelter
* * * * *
Anxious to fancy every streak a ray.
Not so the cotter’s children at the door,
Rich in content, tho’ Nature made them poor,
Standing on threshold emulous to catch
The pendant drop from off the dripping latch.
The daring boy--thus Briton’s early race
{To feel the heaviest drop upon his face}
{Foremost, must feel the drops upon his face,}
Or heedless of the storm or his abode
Launches his paper boat across the road--
Where the deep gullies which his father’s cart
Made in their progress to the mart
Full to the brim, deluged by the rain,
They prove to him a channel to the main.
Guiding his vessel down the stream
Even the pangs of hunger vanish like a dream.’
As poetry these lines have little to recommend them, but they give us a
glimpse of the man himself, and they prove that he had something of the
poet’s comprehensive sympathies; that he was ‘a man pleased with his own
passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the
spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar
volitions and passions in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually
impelled to create them where he does not find them.’
CHAPTER VI
THE ‘LIBER STUDIORUM’
The object of this chapter--The first ‘Liber’ drawings were made at
W. F. Wells’s cottage at Knockholt, Kent--‘Bridge and
Cows’--Development of the so-called ‘Flint Castle’--Mrs.
Wells--View of ‘Basle’--‘Little Devil’s Bridge’ and ‘London from
Greenwich’--‘Martello Towers, Bexhill,’ and ‘Kirkstall
Crypt’--Scene at Isleworth--The etching of the ‘Raglan Castle’ and
‘Source of the Arveron’ plates--Suggestion for the better
exhibition of the ‘Liber’ drawings.
The _Liber Studiorum_ is an important aspect of Turner’s genius--so
important that it seems to deserve a chapter to itself, even in so
summary an investigation as the present. Yet from the point of view of
its subject-matter, it is evident that the ‘Liber’ does not throw into
relief any side of Turner’s art not amply illustrated in his paintings.
What light the sequence of ‘Pastoral’ subjects throws upon the gradual
development of his conception of realistic art, has already been touched
upon in the previous chapter. But there remains one point of view from
which it seems to me the ‘Liber’ possesses a special interest for our
present study. In these designs we can study the formal elements of
Turner’s art freed from the disturbing influence of colour. Each plate
is primarily an arrangement in line and light and shade, and the
requirements of what I may call melodic invention are considered before
those of mere representation; that is to say, the emphasis is always on
the subjective and constructive side of art, as opposed to its power of
reproduction of the elements immediately given in ordinary perception.
Especially important from this point of view are those subjects,
generally amongst the earlier plates, in which considerable alterations
were made during the course of execution. An examination of a few of the
cases in which there are important differences between the first
preliminary drawing and the completed engraving is certainly well within
the limits of our present inquiry; and such comparisons are worth making
for their own sake, as they bring out very clearly certain
characteristics of all pictorial art, and especially of Turner’s, which
are not easily grasped when our observations are complicated by the
presence of colour.
The first drawings executed for the work were made in October 1806, when
Turner was on a visit to Mr. Wells, at Knockholt, in Kent. One of Mr.
Wells’s daughters has told us that it was mainly on her father’s advice
that Turner decided to undertake the work. But he required ‘much and
long continued spurring’ before he could be induced to make a beginning.
‘At last,’ we are told, ‘after he had been well goaded, one morning,
half in a pet he said, “Zounds, Gaffer, there will be no peace with you
till I begin--well, give me a sheet of paper there, rule the size for
me, tell me what I shall take.” The lady adds, ‘I sat by Turner laughing
and playing whilst he made the drawings,’ ‘and before he left us the
first five subjects which form the first number were completed and
arranged for publication greatly to my dear Father’s delight.’ (The
letter is given _in extenso_ in Mr. Rawlinson’s _Liber Studiorum_, 2nd
edition, pp. xii and xiii.)
One of the subjects executed at Knockholt was almost certainly the faded
sepia drawing which hangs at present in the National Gallery, under the
title of ‘Bridge and Cows’ (No. 504, N. G.); the engraving made from it
was published (without a title) as the first ‘Pastoral’ subject in the
first part of _Liber_.
This drawing is slightly faded, but the fading does not altogether
account for its feeble and commonplace look. The design itself is
feeble, the draughtsmanship petty, and the character of the figures and
trees weak and amiable. These objects are not actually ‘out of
drawing’--that is to say, incorrect from a physiological or botanical
point of view, but they are sadly lacking in intention. They have a
listless air, and seem to take very little interest either in themselves
or in each other. They seem, indeed, to be mildly wondering why they are
there at all. In a word, it is just the sort of drawing that an artist
would make when external circumstances induced him to sit down to ‘do
something,’ while no strongly-felt subject-matter within him was
urgently demanding expression.
This drawing (it is in reverse of the engraving) was traced on to the
copper, and the etching was made from it by Turner himself. The etching
is practically an accurate copy of the drawing: the objects represented
are the same in each, and neither the actions nor positions of any of
the figures have been altered. Yet in the etching there is a perceptible
briskening-up of everything. It all hangs together better than in the
drawing. In some way the whole now seems to have come to life in the
artist’s imagination. In the drawing we can see him laboriously bringing
the parts together: in the etching he has infused the breath of life
into them.
The change is due entirely to the execution. The line which defines the
contours of the chief objects has lost its listlessness. It is now
instinct with intention. Everywhere it hurries along, building up the
design as a whole while defining the parts. The compulsion of the whole
makes itself felt in every detail. It is certainly difficult to put into
words the difference between the two versions, but I believe every one
who will take the trouble to compare them carefully will be sure to feel
it. In the two works there is an actual difference in the quality of the
artist’s stream of consciousness, and the difference makes itself felt
in the workmanship, though, in all probability, he himself was quite
unaware of the difference in his frame of mind, and regarded the etching
as simply a mechanical process of transference from one medium to
another. Yet from a psychological point of view, the impulsion of his
mind was in each case in a contrary direction. In the drawing the scene
as a whole was being laboriously invoked piecemeal, a collection of
objects was being formed into a sum total; in the etching the subject as
a whole is a real and living thing, guiding the artist’s hand and
moulding all the details into kinship with itself.
The whole now feels that certain of its parts require adjustment, _i.e._
demand to be brought into more intimate cohesion with the general
purpose. The contrast between the rigidity of the dead branches of the
willow on the right, and the springiness of the living branches nearer
the foreground, calls out for clearer and
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVI_
SCENE ON THE FRENCH COAST
SEPIA. ABOUT 1806]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVII_
SCENE ON THE FRENCH COAST
GENERALLY KNOWN AS “FLINT CASTLE: SMUGGLERS”
ETCHING, WASHED WITH SEPIA. ABOUT 1807]
more emphatic statement. The dance and sweep of the foliage, the bending
bridge, the falling bank, require steadying by a bolder assertion of the
straight horizontal line of the distant hills. The soft and rounded
undulations of the tree-tops, running right across the upper part of the
drawing, give a somewhat featureless though amiable character to it; in
the etching, greater prominence is given to the harsher lines of the
rigid white wall of the distant cottage and its sloping roof, as well as
to the supports and planks of the rustic bridge. In this way, without
altering the position of a single part of the design, or introducing any
new matter, the whole is transformed; instead of a mere collection of
parts, related to each other by a kind of chance or indifferent
contiguity, we have now a definite whole, fused through and through into
conceptual and emotional unity. The objects before our eyes have ceased
to be merely indifferent and external facts; they have now become
elements or members of a richly coloured whole of thought and feeling.
The careful and rather timid-looking drawing described as ‘Flint Castle’
(Plate XXXVI.), is certainly another of the designs made at the cheerful
Knockholt cottage. On the margin of this drawing the artist has
scribbled some verses, which I suppose one of the merry party had
discovered in a book or magazine,[19] and which they were all delighted
with. Probably the discoverer was Mrs. Wells, for the young ladies were
too young to care much for books, and the only scrap of information we
possess about their mother seems to suggest that she was something of a
bluestocking, and what is now sometimes called a ‘féministe.’ Among the
sketches in one of Turner’s pocket-books there is the following
jotting:--‘There is not a quality or endowment, faculty or ability which
is not in a superior degree possest by women.--_Vide_ Mrs. Wells,
Knockholt, Oct.’ The poem itself is not strictly germane to our present
study, but as there lingers about it a faint echo of those scenes of
‘fun and merriment’ which one of Turner’s young playmates recalled in
after years, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of transcribing it.
‘A Row of Poplars in disgrace
Because they would not stop their pace
Or grew unnecessarily tall,
Their Master came and topped them all.
Some neighbourly poplars stood hard by
Beheld their growth with jealous eye,
Now saw--exulting--cried
“How near is pride to earth allied.”
“Friends,” said the poplars in disgrace,
“You see the fault of making haste,
Ambition’s greatness caused our woe.
Ambition shun, mind how you grow,
For while you run you are bare below.”’
The drawing, like the poem, is not a remarkable one. As a design it
differs little from the average work of accomplished landscape
draughtsmen like Westall, Arnald, Daniell, etc. But from a comparative
point of view it is of singular interest, as the differences between
this preliminary drawing and the published engraving are greater than
those in any other _Liber_ subject. It starts as a rather jejune and
drawing-masterlike composition, and comes out finally as one of the most
vigorous and impressive marine designs in the whole series.
The etching was made by Turner himself. As the spacing and arrangement
of the etching differ considerably from those of the drawing, it is most
likely that an intermediate study was made. The changes, however, might
very well have been made on the tracing-paper used to transfer the
original design to the copper, and this would naturally have been
destroyed as soon as it had been used. When the design had been drawn on
the copper and bitten in, a few proofs were taken of the etching, and
over one of these Turner set to work again with washes of sepia to guide
Charles Turner, the engraver, who was to mezzotint the plate. This
second design is now in the National Gallery (No. 522) and has been
reproduced here as Plate XXXVII.
Of course we cannot hope to grasp the whole difference that has taken
place in this second version of the design. But here are two drawings
made by the same hand, within a short space of time of each other, of
the same size and the same subject, yet one is obviously a work of
genius, and the other is as tame and lifeless as its companion is vivid,
energetic, and full-blooded. The comparison is worth making, not,
indeed, that there is the slightest hope that any of us may learn from
it how to work such miracles, but because it will help to impress upon
us the importance of the form or ‘style’ of a work of art, as opposed to
the objects it represents,--the importance of ‘mere technique’; it will
also give us some insight into the real nature of artistic
expression,--will show us how far removed the whole process is from that
pious and passive reproduction of what is ‘given’ in sense-perception
which plays such a large and dangerous part in current practice. Let us
see therefore what we can discover.
In the first place it is evident that in the second version of the
subject the design has been what artists call ‘pulled together.’ The
foreground boat on the left (it is of course on the right in the plate)
has been made, if not actually bigger, yet more important as a mass, by
the addition of the sails of a second boat immediately behind it. The
apparent height of the boat has been increased by dropping the height of
the man standing in the cart in the water beside it, and by making the
horses, carts and men relatively smaller. The castle in the distance has
been shifted nearer to the boat, the height of the two masts of the boat
in the middle distance which abut on to the castle have been reduced, so
that the masts and sails of its neighbour on the right seem higher and
bigger. More has been made of the men, boats, etc., at the foot of the
low hills which appear on the right of the drawing, and the foreground
group of men and horses has been shoved nearer to the figure of the man
just entering the water, and, to make the connection firmer, the cask
and grappling irons on the ground have been carefully added.
But it is useless merely cataloguing these changes, if we cannot
discover the reasons for them. Is all this shuffling and rearrangement
for the sake of balance and visual harmony? No doubt to some extent it
is. But notice in the remodelled design the effect of that firm straight
line of the distant sea in the centre, and the way the distant castle
rises out of it. That is the nerve of the whole design. See how all the
other lines and shapes fret the eye with their sharp and jagged forms,
and yet lead it inevitably back to that one untroubled space. All this
artfully calculated playing with lights and shadows, this complicated
conspiracy of lines and forms, is assuredly something more than an
aimless trifling with appearances. In that untroubled stretch of water
we cannot but feel the steady, never-resting, inexorable march of the
real powers of nature. It brings the whole mighty background of human
life into the drawing; and this real spiritual presence sets the daily
toil and hardship of everyday life in a new light, solemnising it,
dwarfing it, yet not crushing it. It is as though we had heard the
rustle of the wings of eternity in the passing moment. To do this, to
produce this effect unerringly and with logical certainty upon every
normally constituted Englishman who looks carefully at the drawing,
cannot exactly be the chance result of a diligent shuffling and
reshuffling of mere shapes and shadows. There is something of divinity
in it. The shapes and shadows have meaning, and this timeless and
spaceless meaning is the life-blood that animates and transfigures these
bald signs and symbols. If art deals only with appearances, we must
remember that appearance is also a form of reality, and that form and
content can be so closely interwoven that the distinctions of our
meddling understanding may become idle and misleading.
It is only from some such point of view as this that we can hope to
grasp the full importance of what clever people call ‘mere technique.’
Let us turn now to the ‘Basle’ design. Although this engraving was
published in the first part of _Liber_, I am inclined to doubt whether
the preliminary drawing was made in the Wells’s cottage. This design is
based upon a sketch made at Basle in 1802, and it is hardly likely that
Turner would have had this sketch-book with him when he went to spend a
few days with his friends in Kent. Moreover, the first sepia drawing is
not with the others in the National Gallery. Mr. Rawlinson believes that
it passed into the hands of an American collector ‘many years ago’
(_Liber Studiorum_, p. 19). But we have Turner’s etching of the subject,
and if we compare this with the drawing made from nature, which
certainly formed the ground-work of the subject, we see clearly what a
great difference there really is between two processes which modern
uncritical thought persistently confounds--between the process of
‘drawing what you see’ and ‘copying nature faithfully,’ and the process
of artistic construction and invention.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVIII_
JUVENILE TRICKS
SEPIA. ABOUT 1808]
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIX_
BERRY POMEROY CASTLE
GENERALLY KNOWN AS RAGLAN “CASTLE”
SEPIA. ABOUT 1813]
Generally, with the really creative artists the two processes go on
simultaneously or are fused into one, but here for once we find them
separated. The pencil drawing was made as a simple record of facts; the
etching was made some five or six years later, and it is curious to see
what liberties Turner felt it was necessary and justifiable to take with
his original record, before his notion of the requirements of a work of
art could be satisfied.
In the drawing from nature the width of the river seems to dwarf the
height of the buildings; in the engraving Turner seems to have felt that
the height of the buildings ought to form the keynote of the whole
design. First, therefore, the two towers of the Cathedral are carried
well up above the house by the bridge, the gable of this building being
reduced in size, so that it shall not compete in importance with the
Cathedral towers. In the drawing, the buildings recede gradually and
gently from the bridge, while in the etching, they are pushed into
square step-shaped masses, thus emphasising the idea of weight and
height. These impressions are further strengthened by deliberately
making the supports of the bridge smaller and more fragile than they
were in the drawing; in the engraving the straddling supports of the
slender wooden bridge give it an air of weakness which makes the
buildings at its side seem all the more firmly set by contrast.
These are only a few of the more obvious points of difference, but if
the comparison were pursued further, we should find that every sweep of
line and silhouette of the original material has been reconsidered and
recast before it was allowed to form part of the new construction. I
will not pretend that I regard the result obtained in this case as one
of the great achievements of the series, but our observations are
useful, I think, as showing the habitual thoroughness and earnestness
which Turner brought to all his work. His attitude towards the matter in
hand is always active and creative. His alterations are not always for
the better--indeed, it is open to argument whether some of the changes
made in this Basle subject were quite advantageous, but the fact remains
that whatever he took up he threw himself heart and soul into, that he
felt bound to recreate it from within, and that a mere cold and passive
reproduction of the given would have seemed to him a cowardly shrinking
from his artistic mission. He feels that he is responsible for the
effect the shapes and arrangement of his subject make upon the
spectator’s imagination, and that to attempt to apologise for a tame and
uninteresting subject by saying, ‘It was so,’--‘It is quite
true,’--would have seemed to him an unworthy evasion of his work.
How incapable Turner was of copying even one of his own drawings
accurately is clearly shown by the etching of the ‘Little Devil’s
Bridge’ (R. 19). When we compare this with the original drawing (No.
476, N. G.) we find that almost every form in the design has been
recast, not always to its individual advantage from the point of view of
realisation, but with an invariable gain in the direction of greater
general cohesion. Note, for example, how the straight tree trunk nearest
the bridge in the drawing gets bent slightly to the left, just to make
you feel the toughness and obstinacy of the tree itself. The fir-trees
on the left, too, are more realistic in the drawing, but they are more
forcible and dramatic in the engraving.
As we have been able to reproduce Turner’s original pencil study from
nature for the ‘London from Greenwich’ plate, the reader will be able to
make his own comparison with the published design. The preliminary sepia
drawing for the engraving (No. 493, N. G.) forms an intermediate step
between the two, a stage, as it were, in the process by which Turner’s
mind took complete possession of the subject. In the sepia drawing, the
artist has not yet fully realised the exact rôle the main building has
to play in the whole arrangement. When we turn to the engraving we find
that the whole character of the mass formed by the hospital has been
changed. In the drawing it forms a straggling mass, somewhat like a
chance medley of wharves and warehouses, in the engraving this mass has
been patted together into a solid and definite structure. The distant
parts of the building have been raised, and they now tell as a rigid
horizontal line. The gain to the hospital in dignity and in
individuality is extraordinary, and its stiff straight lines are exactly
what was wanted to throw emphasis on the subtlety and delicacy of the
slow sweep of the distant river.
The drawing for the ‘Martello Towers, Bexhill,’ plate is a very tame
affair, and the finished plate is only saved from comparative
[Illustration: _PLATE XL_
THE ALCOVE, ISLEWORTH
GENERALLY KNOWN AS “TWICKENHAM--POPE’S VILLA,” ETC.
SEPIA. ABOUT 1816]
[Illustration: _PLATE XLI_
SHEEP-WASHING, WINDSOR
SEPIA. ABOUT 1818]
failure by its fine sky. Yet it is worth comparing the two to trace out
the subtle differences which spring up under Turner’s hand in the
etching. All the objects are forced into shapes that act more powerfully
on the imagination, everywhere the tendency of the line is towards
emphasis and distinctness.
In the ‘Kirkstall Crypt’ (R. 39), the design is also recast in the
etching. The group of cows is altered, the foreground pillar is made
thinner, the space between the two columns in the centre is widened out,
and the aperture in the wall above the cows on the left is made light,
instead of dark. These changes are all for the better. A careful study
of these seemingly trivial alterations is valuable as an instance of the
subtleties of design upon which all really fine art depends.
As these remarks indicate, I am in agreement with the general opinion
that the engravings represent Turner’s intentions more fully than his
preliminary drawings. But though this is generally the case, there are
exceptions, and the most notable is, I think, that of the plate
sometimes known as ‘Twickenham--Pope’s Villa,’ and sometimes as
‘Garrick’s Temple and Hampton Court,’ but which really represents a
scene at Isleworth. In this case the drawing (Plate XL.) is much finer
than the plate, although Turner etched the subject himself. But somehow
the spacing of the whole is much less felicitous in the engraving than
in the drawing. The rendering of the trees, too, is more conventional,
but this is a characteristic of nearly all the plates, and is due to the
difficulties of the medium, it being impossible to get the same subtlety
of tone and delicacy of form in etching and mezzotint that can be got
with a pen and wash on paper.
This question of the comparative conventionality of the foliage in the
engravings induces me to say a few words about one of the loveliest
renderings of woodland scenery in the whole series--the so-called
‘Raglan Castle’ (R. 58).[20] This is one of the plates that Turner
mezzotinted himself, yet because the etched lines are not so free and
supple as those of the preliminary drawing (No. 865, N.G.), it has been
assumed that Turner left the etching to be done by one of his engravers,
probably Dawe. This assumption is one that I cannot accept. The
lettering on the plate, ‘Drawn and Engraved by J. M. W. Turner, etc.,’
points to the conclusion that Turner was responsible both for the
etching and the mezzotinting. And when we compare the etching with the
drawing, a number of slight but successful differences emerge, which no
engraver would either have attempted to make or could have made if he
had desired to do so.
‘The Source of the Arveron’ (R. 60), another of the plates ‘drawn and
engraved’ by Turner, has also had its etching condemned and attributed
to Dawe. If the plate is really so fine as all the critics of this kind
insist, it is curious that the etching can be so poor as they say and
yet not affect the excellence of the whole. This is inconsistent with
the proper appreciation of the important role the etched lines play in
all these mezzotints. That Turner regarded the etching as far more
important than the scraping is shown by the simple fact that he
undertook (nominally at least) to do it all himself, but he had no
hesitation in handing the scraping over to the engravers.
These general considerations are further strengthened when we compare
the finished plate (I am speaking only of the etching in the published
states, and not of the rare ‘first state’ of the etching in the late Mr.
J. E. Taylor’s collection) with the preliminary study made for it, now
in the National Gallery (No. 879). The size and proportions of the plate
differ from those of the drawing, so the etching could not have been
traced from it, while the etching nowhere follows the drawing with the
accuracy one would expect if it were merely an engraver’s copy. There is
no authority in this drawing for the shapes given to the crests of the
distant mountains in the centre, nor for the shapes of the upper
portions of the nearer mountains on the left. The lower parts of the
design are also modified from the forms in the drawing in exactly the
way Turner habitually recast all the drawings he etched. It is also hard
to suppose that Dawe or anybody but Turner could have recast the vague
shapes of the disappearing ridge of the glacier on the left in the
masterly way this has been done in the etching, or that anybody but
Turner could have invented, on the strength of the loose indications in
the drawing, the masterly lines that give definition to the stretch of
valley against which the ice of the glacier is relieved. The shapes of
the
[Illustration: _PLATE XLII_
VIEW OF A RIVER, FROM A TERRACE
SOMETIMES CALLED “MACON”
SEPIA. ABOUT 1818]
[Illustration: _PLATE XLIII_
CROWHURST, SUSSEX
SEPIA. ABOUT 1818]
first two upright pines near the centre have also been recast by the
mind and hand of the master, not copied by another hand from the
indications given in the drawing. Alterations have also been introduced
in the character of the stems and their branches which a professional
engraver would not dare to make in an ostensible copy; the same remark
applies also to the tops of the pines on the right. For these reasons, I
think, those critics are mistaken who deny that the workmanship of the
whole plate is Turner’s. And the mistake has arisen to a large extent, I
feel inclined to add, through attaching too much importance to _a
priori_ notions of technical mastery. As the late Mr. Arthur Strong very
justly said, we are inclined to start with an idea that masters are
always masterly and classical, and we often end by finding that they
have left nothing behind them quite worthy of our preconceived ideas of
what they ought to have done.
These are a few of the points suggested by a comparison of the
preliminary designs for the _Liber_ plates with the finished engravings.
But to get any good out of it every student must take the trouble to
make these comparisons for himself. Should my remarks succeed in
inducing even a few adventurous spirits to make such an experiment, I
shall feel satisfied that I have done something towards spreading an
intelligent interest in the marvellous process of artistic creation.
Perhaps, too, some day in the future, the authorities of the National
Gallery may see their way towards the display of these drawings so that
such a process of intelligent study may be performed without the
inconvenience which the present arrangement entails. It is probably not
necessary to have the whole series of drawings on exhibition at the same
time, but if those that are exhibited could be accompanied by the
finished engravings, and, where possible, by one or two proofs of the
unfinished states, I believe the gain to the public would be
considerable.
CHAPTER VII
THE SPLENDOUR OF SUCCESS, OR ‘WHAT YOU WILL’--1813-1830
A survey of the ground we have covered--The training of Turner’s
sympathies by the poets--The limits of artistic beauty--and of a
merely ‘musical’ education--Turner unlike Wordsworth--the
predominantly sensuous bent of his genius--The parting of the
ways--The dependence of art upon society--Turner ‘the fashion’--The
influence of the Academy--The Italian visit in 1819--Turner’s
Italian sketches--Their beauty and uselessness--The Naturalistic
fallacy--Turner’s work for the engravers--The _Southern Coast_
series--‘Watchet’ and ‘Boscastle’--Whitaker’s _History of
Richmondshire_--‘Hornby Castle’ and ‘Heysham’--Scott’s _Provincial
Antiquities_--‘Edinburgh, from the Calton Hill’--‘Rochester,’ in
the _Rivers of England_ series--_England and Wales_--‘Bolton Abbey’
and ‘Colchester’--‘Stamford’--‘Tynemouth.’
We have now followed the development of Turner’s mind from boyhood to
youth and well into manhood. We have watched the architectural and
topographical draughtsman develop into an artist under the guidance of
his admiration for Wilson. Then the mind of the painter of the sublime,
of the picturesque in general, struck its unseen roots deeper into the
interests and sympathies of the people amongst whom he lived. In the
hour of national danger his heart beat high with courage and
determination. His pictures of the sea are like war songs; they strike
the Dorian note, they represent the tone of mind of a brave man who
faces wounds and death and all contingencies with unflinching endurance.
Then the mind of the laureate of a nation in arms takes a still wider
sweep. It embraces humanity and animate and inanimate nature in one
glance, and finds the soul of good in all things. The Dorian harmonies
give place to the Phrygian.
In all this Turner’s attitude seems entirely passive or receptive.
[Illustration: _PLATE XLIV_
KIRKBY LONSDALE BRIDGE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1816]
[Illustration: _PLATE XLV_
RABY CASTLE AND CO. DURHAM
PENCIL. ABOUT 1817]
His amazingly rapid growth seems to be merely an effortless assimilation
of the moral atmosphere of his time. All that was fairest and of good
repute in the common spiritual heritage of the people seems to have
passed insensibly into his thoughts and feelings. His art is a social or
national phenomenon, so impersonal (or superpersonal) that it is
difficult to point to traces of the mere individual in his work. The
individual is lost in his universal function. The man himself is nothing
but the voice or thought of what Hume has called ‘a man in general.’ Yet
his work is as far removed as any work can be from the vagueness and
coldness of the abstract universal. Behind every touch of his hand and
every thought or idea in his mind beats the pulse of a full-blooded and
passionate personality. Only, by some miracle, this man happens to be
free from the local prejudices and limitations that deflect the judgment
and sympathies of most men from the one true standard.
This education of Turner’s sympathies and feelings was the work, we have
seen reasons for concluding, of the poets and artists whom he loved and
admired. In the light and warmth of their ideal creations his own high
instincts were quickened into life and activity. Under their influence
he had entered into the common spiritual world, and they had given the
direction to his impulses and ideas regarding things human and divine.
But education must be a lifelong process, and there comes a time in the
growth of each individual when the need of something more clear-cut and
permanent than his own impulses and desires, however wholesome they may
be, declares itself. As Plato pointed out long ago, to secure the
happiest results of the best ‘musical’ education, something more than a
merely ‘musical’ education is needed. We have now reached that period in
Turner’s life when the lover of beautiful sights and thoughts and
feelings must make a determined effort to unify these manifold beauties
by an explicit principle, to exchange opinion for knowledge, if he is to
preserve the advantages he has already won. In life there is no standing
still, no resting upon our gains. We must go forward to higher
victories, or find our arms tarnish and our gains dissipate themselves.
But it may well be doubted whether art is capable of reaching a higher
point of beauty than that which Turner had already reached. Forced to
its extreme limits beauty insensibly passes into something which is at
once more and less than beauty. Such pictures as the ‘Frosty Morning,’
‘Windsor,’ and ‘The Trout Stream’ are, perhaps, the most beautiful that
art is capable of producing. And the example of Wordsworth, who did
strive upward to ‘an intelligence which has greatness and the vision of
all time and of all being,’ is not on all points reassuring. His poetry,
simply as poetry, did suffer from his philosophic studies. There may be
something in the very nature of the human soul which sets bounds to the
creation or expression of beauty.
But Turner was not like Wordsworth. He was for good and ill essentially
and solely an artist. The play of shapes and colours was probably dearer
to him than food or raiment. Having by sheer good fortune carried his
art to its highest attainable pitch of beauty before he had reached his
fortieth year, he was placed in an embarrassing position. The
dialectical movement of beauty would now carry him outside his art, into
regions where the individual man might reap rich gains, but where the
artist could reap only sorrow and disappointment. The artist in Turner
was stronger than the man. He loved the sensuous medium of art more than
the spiritual beauty into which the current of traditional wisdom had
carried him. The remainder of his life is therefore dedicated to the
passionate and audacious development of the material beauties of his
art.
We have now to trace in his works the gradual encroachments of the
purely sensuous side of his art. For a time all seems well, perhaps more
than well, for the gain in all the lower elements of his art is very
striking. During the next twenty years his works gain constantly in the
sensuous attractiveness of colour and in the formal beauties of rhythm
and design. The loss of beauty is compensated by deep draughts of
pleasantness. Yet amid the feverish intoxication of sensuous beauty a
wild unrest and despair make themselves increasingly felt. The man has
sacrificed himself to his art, and the starved human soul turns in
bitterness from the ardently desired rewards of the most brilliantly
triumphant artistic career that modern times have witnessed.
It is usual in treating mainly of Turner’s oil paintings to fix upon the
year 1815 as the great turning-point in his career. After
[Illustration: _PLATE XLVI_
RABY CASTLE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1807]
[Illustration: _PLATE XLVII_
RABY CASTLE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1817]
1815 there is a marked change in the aims and character of Turner’s art,
and it is convenient to date this change from the year that saw the end
of the Napoleonic wars, and inaugurated a new era in the social and
political condition of this country. From this date, too, the conditions
of artistic production changed. The rapid development of industrial
concerns brought a new class of patrons upon the scene. Before 1815,
Turner’s patrons had been mainly the landed aristocracy; after 1815, his
chief patrons were the successful merchants of the great towns. From
that time the men of commerce and the manufacturers ousted the
aristocracy from the leading position which they had held in the
councils of the country. With the change of men a change took place in
the ideals, manners and taste of the country; and Turner, with his
extraordinary sensibility, his ready powers of intuition and rapid
assimilation, seemed bound to reflect the change in his work.
Yet if we look closer into Turner’s career, we find that 1815 was rather
the year that saw the brilliant public inauguration of the new era, than
the actual beginning of the change. The ‘Crossing the Brook,’ exhibited
in 1815, is often regarded as the impressive close of Turner’s early
manner, yet this beautiful picture already bears the impress of that
_folie des grandeurs_ to which we owe most of the excesses of the new
manner. The ‘Frosty Morning’ of 1813 is really the last work in which
the inspiration rings true throughout, in which the form and content are
absolutely indissoluble. ‘Dido and Æneas,’ the only picture exhibited in
1814, is a frigid pseudo-classical pomposity, the due development of the
strain of baser metal in Turner’s genius, which had already betrayed
itself in the ‘Macon’ of 1803, the ‘Narcissus and Echo’ of 1804, and the
‘Schaffhausen’ of 1806. In glancing rapidly over Turner’s career we have
been able to ignore these works; in the rush and splendour of his
general development such pictures fall into insignificance, as casual
indications that a busy professional man’s industry may outrun his
inspiration.
After 1813 it is impossible to ignore this side of Turner’s production.
It was just this regrettable side of his work that appealed most
strongly to the middle-class public for whom he had now to cater. ‘Dido
Building Carthage’ (1815) is a picture exactly to the taste of the
admirers of the first instalment of _Childe Harold_, _The Bride of
Abydos_, _The Corsair_, and _Lara_. It has the historical remoteness,
the vague and empty grandeur, the mysterious dreaminess, the warm,
voluptuous atmosphere and intoxicating lyrical movement of the
contemporary phase of Romantic poetry. In ‘The Decline of the
Carthaginian Empire’ (1817), ‘The Field of Waterloo’ (1818), ‘Richmond
Hill, on the Prince Regent’s Birthday’ (1819) and ‘Rome from the
Vatican’ (1820), we recognise the contemporary and fellow-worker of
Byron, Moore, Southey, Chateaubriand and Lamartine. In 1822 Turner’s
only picture at the Royal Academy was entitled ‘What you Will’!--an
ominous but significant title. It seems to put into words the ruling
motive of this new phase of his art; to show that Turner is fully
conscious that he is trimming his barque to catch the breath of popular
applause. ‘The Bay of Baiae’ (1823), the two ‘Mortlakes’ (1826-27),
‘Dido directing the Equipment of the Fleet’ (1828) and ‘Ulysses’ (1829)
indicate clearly the predominant bent of the artist’s mind towards the
grosser pleasures of his art.
These works brought and kept Turner prominently before the public eye.
They made him the pride and glory of the Royal Academy, and put him on a
level of celebrity with Sir Thomas Lawrence. They made him, in short, in
Sir Walter Scott’s words, ‘the fashion,’ yet it is these works that
Turner’s admirers of the present day regard with only moderate
enthusiasm.
Compared with the work of the previous decade, such pictures cannot but
strike us as unworthy of the artist’s genius. Yet we have a tendency
nowadays, I think, to overrate the independence of the artist. The
modern artist, in so far as he is dependent upon the support of the
society in which he works, is not an entirely free agent. The society
that applauded them and for whose pleasure they were produced must
therefore accept perhaps the main responsibility for the middle-class
ideals stamped upon these pictures. In tracing the reaction of society
upon art and art upon society, it is an extremely difficult matter to
decide which factor is the more powerful, but I am inclined to think it
is not art. But however this may be, it is certainly the duty of the
individual to fortify himself as best he can against the contagion to
which he is exposed. And it must be confessed that Turner was but
ill-provided within himself with the means to resist the deadening
influences of the atmosphere of bad taste into which he was now
launched. It is true that Turner was not exactly what is called a
‘society-man,’ and he might therefore have more easily escaped the
contagion of those drawing-room ideals to which men like Tom Moore
succumbed. But Turner was a member of the Royal Academy. It was the
recognised organisation of his profession, and he valued highly the
honours it had to confer. His lack of general education made him an easy
victim to the pretensions of officialism; like all uneducated people, he
had a ridiculous reverence for the trappings and mummery of the learned
world, for degrees, diplomas, titles. He was inordinately proud of the
right to write ‘R.A.,’ ‘P.P.,’ after his name, and to alter these
letters to _P._R.A. was the height of his ambition. Under these
circumstances he could not but identify himself with the immediate
practical aims of the Royal Academy. Now this ill-starred institution is
so unwisely and so unfortunately constituted, that its very existence,
and all its powers of activity as a professional benevolent society, are
made to depend almost entirely upon its popularity as an exhibition
society. The Academy throve then as it thrives now, in proportion as it
succeeds in catering for the taste of the fashionable and moneyed
public; it could only lose ground if it made the slightest attempts to
guide or educate the public sense of beauty. In this way it had become
in Turner’s time nothing more nor less than an organisation for stamping
the ideals of the drawing-room upon English art.
In 1819 Turner made his first visit to Italy, the material for the
pseudo-classical pictures painted before this having been derived from
other artists’ pictures and engravings. It is curious that he should
have waited till his forty-fifth year before making this journey. The
Continent, it is true, had to a great extent been closed to English
travellers since the outbreak of the French Revolution; but in spite of
political and other difficulties Turner had managed to see a good deal
of France, Belgium, Savoy and Switzerland, and he had been down the
Rhine. If he had been equally keen to see Italy he could certainly have
gone there also, especially as Italy was more generally accessible to an
Englishman than any of the other countries he had visited. This curious
shrinking from Italy may very likely have been due to the promptings of
his own nature. When we examine his art as a whole we clearly see that
he found more delight in the wildness, irregularity and caprice of
Switzerland and the Rhine valleys than in the more regular scenery of
Italy. Even Mr. Ruskin admits that Turner got no good from Italian
scenery; Naples, Rome and Florence only put him out and bewildered him;
Venice is the only Italian city that lent itself at all gracefully to
his genius, and Venice is the most northern in character of all the
Italian cities.
But the requirements of his patrons and the peculiar Academic
misunderstanding of the principles of landscape art conspired to send
Turner to Italy. There the scenery is more beautiful in itself and
richer in historical associations than elsewhere in Europe, therefore it
is the duty of the ambitious landscape painter who happens to have had
the misfortune to be born somewhere out of Italy to stop painting the
mere scenes of his own country as soon as possible, and to set out at
once for such spots as Tivoli, Narni and Lago Maggiore, the spots
approved, stamped and consecrated by generations of the prosperous
travellers of all the chief countries of Europe. The theoretical error
at the root of this dangerous prejudice is the confusion of the
materially pretty, agreeable, and pleasant, with artistic beauty, which
is something essentially different from any of these things. But this
confusion of the pleasant and the beautiful was a doctrine which the
Academy of Turner’s time was bent on inculcating by its teaching and
exemplifying in its practice.
It happened that Sir Thomas Lawrence, one of the most brilliant
exponents of the gospel of the pretty and pleasant, was spending the
summer of 1819 in Rome. In the intervals of his labours and relaxations
with the great and beautiful of society, he found time to notice the
grandeur and beauties of the scenery around him. During this time ‘his
letters to England were full of entreaties addressed to their common
friends to urge upon Turner the importance of visiting Rome while “his
genius was in the flower.” “It is injustice to his fame and his
country,” he writes on another occasion, “to let the finest period of
his genius pass away ... without visiting these scenes.”’[21] Whether
these
[Illustration: _PLATE XLVIII_
LOOKING UP THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE, FROM NEAR THE ACCADEMIA DI BELLE
ARTI
PENCIL. 1819]
[Illustration: _PLATE XLIX_
ST. MARK’S, VENICE, WITH PART OF THE DUCAL PALACE
PENCIL. 1819]
appeals had any special weight with Turner we do not know, but he set
out for Italy within a month or two of the writing of these letters.
He went from Calais to Paris, followed the usual coach-route to Turin,
explored the Lakes of Como, Lugano and Maggiore, and reached Venice by
way of Milan, Brescia and Desenzano. He must have spent some time at
Venice to judge from the number of drawings made there, then went to
Bologna, Cesena and Rimini, and continued along the coast of the
Adriatic to Ancona. At Ancona he turned inland to Loreto and, following
the high post road through Recanati and Macerata, entered the Via
Flaminia at Foligno, and passing through Narni and Orticoli entered Rome
by the Porta del Popolo, probably sometime in October. From Rome he
explored Frascati, Tivoli and Albano, and made a tour to Naples, Baiae,
Pozzuoli, Pompeii, Amalfi, Sorrento and Herculaneum. He was back in Rome
by the 2nd December, then visited Florence, and, recrossing the Alps on
the 24th January 1820, returned through Piedmont and France. On the 12th
February we find him dining at Grosvenor Place, London, with his friends
the Fawkeses.
To judge from the number of sketch-books filled on this journey Turner
must have had the pencil in his hands practically the whole time he was
away. Before starting he had ‘got up’ the subject carefully from books
and engravings, and he knew exactly what buildings, antiquities and
views he ought to look for at each place he went to. In this way he lost
no time mooning about, like a modern artist, looking for unexpected
beauties. He just went straight from one guide-book point of interest to
another, sketched each methodically from every possible point of view
and hurried on to the next. The sketch-books he used were generally
about 7½ by 4½ inches in size, composed of ordinary white paper. His
favourite medium was a hard-pointed pencil. His sketches are always made
with a view to information, never for effect. In this way about a dozen
books were filled, each of about a hundred pages, and most are drawn on
on both sides of the pages. Our reproductions of the sketches of the
Grand Canal, the Piazzetta at Venice, and Trajan’s Column (Plates
XLVIII., L., and LIII.) may stand as examples of the main body of work
done by Turner during this visit.
In addition to these small sketch-books he also used some of larger
size, with the paper prepared with a wash of grey. He used one of these
books at Tivoli, and another at Rome and Naples. The grey tint was of
such a nature that it lifted quite easily when rubbed with bread or
india-rubber. In this way he was able to indicate the chiaroscuro of his
sketches with ease and celerity. The more elaborate drawings of Rome
were made in this way, among them those exquisite views from Monte
Mario, which have long been among the most admired of the drawings
exhibited in the Turner Water-Colour Rooms at the National Gallery.
Where the subject was an interesting one he occasionally worked over it,
or over parts of it, with water-colour, as in the ‘View of Rome from
Monte Mario’ (No. 592) here reproduced (Plate LI.), and ‘The Colosseum’
(No. 596) among the exhibited drawings. But the number of drawings in
which Turner had recourse to colour is extremely limited, quite
nineteen-twentieths of them being simply in pencil.
The drawings made during this visit are, in Mr. Ruskin’s opinion, the
best Turner ever made from nature. ‘All the artist’s powers,’ he wrote,
‘were at this period in perfection; none of his faults had developed
themselves; and his energies were taxed to the utmost to seize, both in
immediate admiration, and for future service, the loveliest features of
some of the most historically interesting scenery in the world.’[22] And
again, ‘They are, in all respects, the most true and the most beautiful
ever made by the painter.’[23] And assuredly it would be difficult to
praise these superb drawings too highly or too enthusiastically; for
sheer grace of pencilling, for skilful composition, for loving,
unwearied rendering of architecture and natural scenery they are
absolutely unrivalled.
But it is only as drawings, as works that contain their end within
themselves, that they can be praised so highly. They are probably the
most beautiful topographical drawings that have ever been made, but
Turner did not regard himself as a topographical draughtsman, and from
his point of view the results of this journey cannot have been
completely satisfactory. If he had valued himself at all on his capacity
for making beautiful topographical
[Illustration: _PLATE L_
THE PIAZZETTA, VENICE, LOOKING TOWARDS ISOLA DI S. GIORGIO MAGGIORE
PENCIL. 1819]
[Illustration: _PLATE LI_
ROME, FROM MONTE MARIO
PENCIL AND WATER COLOUR. 1819]
drawings, he would surely have taken some steps to bring these
achievements to the notice of the public.[24] He did nothing of the
kind. We have seen that it was his settled habit to regard his sketches
and drawings from nature as merely the preliminary stages of his
pictures. As Mr. Ruskin has pointed out, Turner, after his few years of
apprenticeship, never drew from nature without altering and arranging
what he saw. He never accepted the given momentary facts in a passive
spirit. It is on record that once he said to the companion of one of his
sketching tours who had got into a muddle with the drawing he was
making, ‘What are you in search of?’ And this active spirit had been one
of the chief characteristics of all the drawing from nature he had done
before his visit to Italy: he had always been in search of something, he
had always had a very clear and exact idea of what he wanted, and he had
almost invariably managed to grasp just what he wanted, while
encumbering himself with very little else.
This clearness of intention is absent from the Italian drawings. The
scenery, the buildings, the people, the shipping and the effects of
light are all new to him, and delightfully interesting. The novelty of
his surroundings carries him out of himself. He becomes for a time a
mere common tourist with a kind of accidental knack of making rapid and
wonderfully beautiful pictorial memoranda. It is as though the creative
artist had said to his familiar daemon, ‘We are now in fair Italy. Sleep
thou, and take a well-earned rest. The business of note-taking will go
on automatically without thee; and when we are once more back in dreary
London thou shalt awake as a giant refreshed with slumber, and shalt
knead with renewed vigour the material that has been accumulated.’ But
the results achieved were not as satisfactory as Turner might have
expected. The best that could be made of these wonderful sketches was
two or three charming water-colours for Mr. Fawkes, a weak and empty
‘Forum Romanum’ for Mr. Soane’s Museum, and a large ‘Bay of Baiae,’
which, as Mr. Ruskin confesses, ‘is encumbered with material; it
contains ten times as much as is necessary to a good picture, and yet is
so crude in colour as to look unfinished.’[25]
It therefore depends very much upon what _we_ are in search of, what
conclusions we shall come to about these Italian drawings. If we are
evangelists with a mission to preach the Gospel of Naturalism, we may
accept them as the finest works of art Turner ever produced, in spite of
the fact that he found them useless and worse than useless for his
artistic purposes. From such a point of view it would be Turner’s fault
if these beautiful things threw him out and led him astray; or, as Mr.
Ruskin puts it, ‘the effect of Italy upon his [Turner’s] mind is very
puzzling ... he seems never to have entered thoroughly into the spirit
of Italy, and the materials he obtained there were afterwards but
awkwardly introduced into his large compositions.’[26]
But if the processes of artistic creation are worth studying, we shall
go on to ask ourselves how it is that the most elaborate, painstaking
and thoroughly delightful drawings Turner ever made from nature were
actually the least useful to him as a maker of pictures; and how it is
that exquisitely deliberate and dainty drawings like those in the Roman
and Neapolitan sketch-books lead actually to the production of frigid,
hybrid, pseudo-classical pictures, while hurried and scarcely
intelligible scribbles like those reproduced in Plates XXVII. and XXV.
had been the means of bringing into existence such noble and impressive
pictures as the ‘Windmill and Lock,’ and designs like the ‘Hedging and
Ditching’?
The answer to these questions is not far to seek. The state of mind
necessary for the production of the two kinds of drawings is essentially
different, and the one, which produces the exhaustive and accurate
drawing, is antagonistic to the state of mind in which a strongly
imaginative work of art is conceived, while the other, which produces a
less immediately satisfying record, is actually the state of mind in
which a passionately felt work of art comes to birth. In the drawing
which we admire so much the emotional element is in abeyance, the
cognitive or sense-perceptive is predominant; in the other the emotional
element is predominant. But in the first case, while the immediate
result, considered simply in itself, is more delightful, there has been
[Illustration: _PLATE LII_
ROME, FROM THE VATICAN
PEN AND INK AND CHINESE WHITE ON GREY. 1819]
[Illustration: _PLATE LIII_
TRAJAN’S COLUMN, IN THE FORUM OF TRAJAN
PENCIL. 1819]
no real quickening of the artist’s spirit; in the second case, while the
immediate result is deplorable for us, it is eloquent and glorious for
the artist himself as the first stirring of his newborn spiritual
progeny.
The object of these remarks is not to attempt to convince us that these
charming Italian drawings are at all less charming than they seem; it is
rather to combat the false deductions which Naturalism has succeeded in
drawing from the fact that they are so genuinely delightful and so
self-satisfying. It is inevitable that an artist shall constantly be
making studies from nature, sharpening and exercising his powers of
observation, and storing his note-books and memory with facts of natural
appearances. But it does not follow that this business of observing and
recording visual facts is the essential or even most important part of
the artist’s function. Naturalism assumes that it is. It therefore
treats the power to copy natural objects faithfully and without
alteration as the exact equivalent of the power of pictorial
expression.[27] And so far as the system of art education pursued in
this country has any rational foundation, it is based upon this doctrine
of Naturalism. Hence the only kind of training that is provided for
English art students is training in this capacity of reproducing objects
of sight accurately. This has come to be the beginning and the end of
modern art education, with what results we have only to walk into any
summer exhibition of the Royal Academy to see. Under these
circumstances, I think it is important that we should give its due
weight to any evidence that tends to invalidate these generally received
opinions. Of course the evidence of the practice and line of development
of one artist, even an artist as great as Turner, is not by itself
sufficient to settle such a question; but still, I submit, this evidence
has a distinct bearing on the subject and should receive its due
attention.
If the doctrine of Naturalism possessed the universal validity it is
assumed to possess, the pictures based upon the truest and most
elaborate drawings Turner ever made from nature--and that too of the
most beautiful and the most historically interesting scenery in the
world--should have been the best he had so far produced. They are
admittedly among the worst. If the training acquired by making such
drawings is essential to the development of the artist’s powers of
pictorial expression, how comes it that in Turner’s case this training
came after the production of his most perfect pictures,--these Italian
drawings being made in 1819, the ‘Sheerness,’ ‘Windsor,’ ‘Abingdon,’ and
‘Frosty Morning’ having been painted between 1809 and 1813, and he had
never worked from nature like this before? This is the evidence. I can
only beg the candid reader to give it the earnest consideration it seems
to me to deserve.
Turner’s oil paintings produced between 1815 and 1830 cannot but strike
us as disappointing, especially when we compare them with the output of
the years immediately preceding this period. It is only as a sea-painter
that Turner reminds us of his former mastery, and with the exception of
the ‘Dort’ (1818) ‘Entrance of the Meuse’ (1819), the Greenwich ‘Battle
of Trafalgar’ (1823) and ‘Now for the Painter’ (1827), it would do
Turner’s reputation little harm if all his oil pictures produced during
these years were destroyed. His real greatness is only shown in this
period by the water-colours produced mainly for the engravers. In the
work done for the _Southern Coast_, Scott’s _Provincial Antiquities_,
the _Rivers_ and _Ports of England_, and the _England and Wales_ series,
Turner displayed all the genuine nobleness and sweetness of his nature.
I propose therefore to occupy the remainder of this chapter with a rapid
survey of these undertakings, singling out from each one or two
representative designs for closer examination.
We have now seen what was the character of Turner’s pictures which
gained him most applause and favour in Academic circles and with the
public of the Academy. It is no doubt regrettable that a man of his
talents should have to waste his time--as it seems to us--in the
manufacture of puerile and pretentious specimens of Academic ‘high art,’
but we can easily make too much of the matter. There is something
altogether incommensurable about such a man; he is like some great
natural force, copious, abundant and unwearying. He must have drawn and
painted with as little effort as ordinary mortals exert when they play
cards or write letters to their friends. I have no doubt that
[Illustration: _PLATE LIV_
STUDY OF PLANTS, WEEDS, ETC.
PENCIL. ABOUT 1823]
the ‘high art’ concoctions bothered him much more than his better works,
for it was all ratiocinative, conscious, all spun out of the
understanding without any deep-struck roots in the unconscious life of
his affections. But no doubt he felt prouder of the results, simply
because he was more conscious of the efforts. We have no grounds for
supposing that he did not enjoy the work, and in return it certainly
gave him comparative independence, and encouraged him to produce.
Printsellers and publishers were anxious to get the celebrated
Academician to work for them, and the big middle-class public were eager
to possess themselves of engravings from the great man’s designs. It was
certainly a clear gain that the designer of the _Southern Coast_, the
_Richmondshire_ drawings, Scott’s _Provincial Antiquities_, the _Rivers_
and _Ports of England_, and the _England and Wales_ series could afford
to keep publishers and editors at arm’s length, that he was so strong in
public favour that his work was influenced by none but artistic
considerations.
It hardly comes within the scope of the present essay to study the
drawings in detail which form the originals of Turner’s engraved work,
important as these drawings are as examples of the artist’s genius. Each
drawing is a perfect work of art in itself, the fact that an engraving
was to be made from it counting practically as nothing with the artist.
If the subject did not lend itself quite satisfactorily to the
engraver’s requirements, Turner introduced various modifications into
the engraver’s proofs, but he did not alter the drawings. In this way
the original drawings were kept as independent creations. Into them the
artist was free to pour all that spontaneous native side of his talent
which could find no outlet in his ambitious ‘high art’ productions. As
water-colours the originals of the engravings that were issued between
1814 and 1830 are among the most remarkable and consummate achievements
of the medium. With hardly an exception they are worked entirely in
transparent colour, and for sheer range of invention, variety of effect,
and loveliness of colour they have no equals. But their place is among
the artist’s completed works, and as our immediate business is with the
sketches and studies, we can only touch upon these exquisitely beautiful
water-colours incidentally; _i.e._ only in so far as they help us to
grasp the significance of the sketches and preliminary drawings which
went to their production.
It is a curious sign how little conscious Turner was of the nature and
limitations of his own capacities, that the plan of the _Southern Coast_
series of engravings, as it first took form in his mind, included a long
narrative poem from his own hand describing the history and local
peculiarities of the places he proposed to illustrate. It is hardly
probable that an individual with less capacity for verbal expression
ever sat down to write a long poem. Yet it is easy to see how it was
that Turner came to think himself competent to undertake such a task.
The stamp of his mind was genuinely poetic. He had, and knew that he
had, in a high measure ‘the vision and the faculty divine.’ The
inspiration of his best works had been drawn from the poets, from
Thomson, Akenside, and Milton. His pictures, so far as it is possible to
distinguish content from form, are real poems. And the technical
accomplishment of pictorial art had come to him so easily and naturally
that it may well have seemed to flow inevitably from the innate strength
of his emotions and the vivid hue of his imagination. He probably
thought that he had only to take a pen in his hand to find the
accomplishment of verse following with the same ease and inevitability.
The verses Turner did succeed in writing are pathetic failures; the mind
so intimately versed in the subtleties of visible melody and harmony was
dead to the witchery of verbal sound. It is true that his failure is not
quite so abject as the extracts Thornbury has printed from the attempted
_Southern Coast_ epic would lead one to expect, but, when all due
allowance is made for Thornbury’s blunders of transcription, the result
is still quite hopeless. But it is otherwise when we turn to the designs
made from the same subject-matter, and, in spite of Lessing and a host
of modern theorists, I must insist that in their heart and essence they
are indeed poems.
The first number of the _Southern Coast_ was published in January 1814,
and the last number was not issued till May 1826, but with only one or
two exceptions the whole of the Dorsetshire, Devon, Cornwall and
Somersetshire subjects (and these form about three-quarters of the whole
work) were made from sketches taken during a single journey in the
summer of 1811. These sketches are the kind of notes that a poet would
take; from the point of view of the historian or topographer they are
singularly incomplete. Occasionally we come across a tolerably elaborate
drawing of a ruined castle or stretch of rocky coast, but even these are
summary and hurried in comparison with the Italian drawings, and Turner
seldom chose such sketches as the bases of his finished pictures. He
certainly found them useful as the means of making a methodical analysis
of the pictorial constituents of what he saw, and as storing his memory
and giving matter and fulness to his own conceptions of natural
phenomena. But there their usefulness ended. The actual embryo of the
pictures he painted is generally a hurried scrawl about two square
inches in size, made with a blunt pencil.
Among the _Southern Coast_ sketch-books is a fat little volume bound in
brown calf, having a brass clasp and lettered on the back, _British
Itenary (sic)_. The title page runs as follows:--_The British Itinerary_
| or | Travellers Pocket Companion | throughout | Great Britain |
Exhibiting | the Direct Route to Every | Borough and Commercial Town |
in the Kingdom | with the principal Cross Roads | Compiled from Actual
Measurement | and the best Surveys and Authorities | By | Nathanl.
Coltman; | Surveyor. | Employed by the Post Office in Measuring the
Roads of | Great Britain | London. | Printed and Published, by Wm.
Dickie, No. 120 Strand; and N. Coltman, Green Walk; Black Friars Road. |
Price 3s. Sewed.’ It contains two hundred and fifty leaves, the printed
matter only occupying about a third of the total number, the remainder
having been left blank for notes. These are now filled with Turner’s
notes of expenses incurred, the draft of the poem he attempted to write,
and a number of minute sketches. Among these it is possible to recognise
the originals of several of the _Southern Coast_ designs, including
those of Combe Martin, Watchet, Boscastle and Clovelly, the ‘Dartmouth’
and ‘Dartmouth Castle’ of the _Rivers of England_ series, and the sketch
upon which the superb ‘Stonehenge at Daybreak’ (R. 81), in the
unpublished ‘Liber,’ was probably founded. Two of these sketches have
been reproduced on Plates LV. and LVI., together with the engravings of
the completed designs. That the finished drawings could have been made
from such slender material can hardly appear less than astonishing to
those familiar with the methods of artists of the present day; but to
the best of my belief, Turner had no other sketches or drawings of these
places to assist him in his work, and it can only add to our amazement
when we notice that in all probability the finished drawings were made,
one nearly eight years, and the other nearly fourteen years, after the
sketches were taken; the ‘Watchet’ plate having been published in April
1820, and the ‘Boscastle’ in March 1825.
When we examine carefully the sketch of Watchet we find that it gives us
very little more than the general idea of a small fishing village, with
a curved breakwater and a stretch of rocky coast running off into the
distance. This general idea must have been all that the artist retained
of his experiences of the place, _i.e._, he cannot possibly have
retained any bare unattached visual sensations of any of the particular
objects comprised in the scene. The details of the construction of the
breakwater in the engraving may, for all I know (I have never visited
the place), be exactly like those of the actual one which Turner saw
there, but what little I know of his ordinary methods of work inclines
me to doubt it. It is probably true enough to the general facts of the
case, but all those little local accidents of form which the
conscientious realist of to-day would linger over so lovingly are
certainly ignored. No doubt when Turner was on the spot he looked at the
breakwater, as at everything, with keen and vigilant eyes, and his
impression of the structure would have contributed to the building up in
his mind of a definite and concrete idea of the laws and customs of
breakwaters in general. And when he set to work to elaborate his sketch
it was doubtless this general idea which came into play, and which
turned those half-dozen rudely scratched lines in the sketch into a
sharply defined mental picture, as vivid to Turner’s imagination as a
real scene, and infinitely more useful for his immediate purpose, for
the task of selection and rejection was already done. In this way the
whole subject came to life; the sketch, a fixed point in present
perception, beckoning forth the stored essential riches of the artist’s
mind. Those three upright lines inside the breakwater turn into
[Illustration: _PLATE LV_
WATCHET, SOMERSETSHIRE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1811]
[Illustration: WATCHET, SOMERSETSHIRE
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN “THE SOUTHERN COAST,” 1 APRIL, 1820]
[Illustration: _PLATE LVI_
BOSCASTLE, CORNWALL
PENCIL, ABOUT 1811]
[Illustration: BOSCASTLE, CORNWALL
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN “THE SOUTHERN COAST,” 10 MARCH, 1824]
an array of fishing boats, the sea ripples into the harbour and creeps
up the shore, the village straightens itself out and grows into a
collection of habitable houses, with gardens and parting walls, the
women come out of the houses to spread their washing on the grass to
dry, others gossip in the roadway, the men have a little business
loading or unloading one of the boats, or else see to the nets, or
stroll idly along the jetty, and a couple set off on important business
along the road that leads over the hill and far away. The whole process,
of course, is absurdly easy and familiar. Even the least imaginative of
us is capable of some kind of success in this line of imaginative
interpretation. The only point of difference between the least of us and
the greatest in this kind of exercise is in the quality of the
subjective filling-out with which we clothe our meagre data, in the
wealth of experience stored and refined by thought, its coherence, and
above all, its clear-cut precision and definition. The power to force
all the floating imagery thus called up to what I think Blake called
‘the seeing point’--to make the mental imagery as clear-cut and vivid as
an actual object of sight, and then to use it as the material for the
construction of a picture, these are exceptional capacities; but we can
hardly doubt that the psychological processes which connect sketch and
imaginative amplification, even in the mind of the most gifted artist,
are the same as those which connect sign and interpretation in the minds
of all normally constituted individuals.
To an artist trained in modern methods of literal transcription, it is
curious to notice the liberties Turner allows himself to take with his
own sketch. In it the main shapes of the mass of rock in the middle
distance are pretty clearly marked, but instead of carefully retaining
these and amplifying them, his busy mind sets to work and builds the
whole structure up afresh. In the end it comes out very different from
the sketch, but it is so well and truly put together, it is so
thoroughly steeped in the profound knowledge garnered in years of the
sharpest observation and study, that we accept it more gladly than an
unintelligent transcript of any particular rock formation. Nay more,
even if we had forced Turner himself to stay there on the spot, and
elaborate his representation with the scene in front of his eyes, there
would have been no gain to the drawing, for the result could not
possibly have been more thoroughly penetrated with the laws of human
thought and observation.
We notice the same freedom in dealing with the ‘Boscastle’ sketch. The
general character only of the rocks on the right is there indicated, but
in the engraving the whole mass is recreated from the stores of the
artist’s knowledge. In the sketch, too, there is no authority for the
solid masonry on the rock to the left, immediately below the gang of men
assisting the vessel into harbour. Note also the alteration in the
profile of this rock, which slopes less abruptly in the sketch than in
the engraving.
It is true that these two plates can hardly be ranked as among the
finest of the _Southern Coast_ subjects; the ‘Watchet’ is, I think,
rather a poor design, and though the ‘Boscastle’ is finer, it can hardly
be classed with such consummate achievements as the ‘Plymouth Dock, from
Mount Edgecumbe,’ ‘Poole,’ or ‘The Land’s End.’ In these designs the
subjective synthesis has a more distinctly emotional setting, but there
can be no doubt that the processes of imaginative construction are on
exactly the same lines as those we have just indicated. In every case
the active motive force is something within the artist’s own soul; it is
not given from without.
The next important publication with which Turner was connected after the
commencement of the _Southern Coast_, was Whitaker’s _History of
Richmondshire_, to which he furnished a series of twenty illustrations.
This set of drawings, often spoken of as ‘the Yorkshire series,’ has
always been regarded with peculiar affection by all lovers of Turner’s
water-colour work. The originals are nearly all in private collections
(where I hope they will be carefully guarded from the light, as the
blues in them are of a fugitive nature), but there are two permanently
accessible to the public in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge--thanks to
Mr. Ruskin’s generosity--and a third is in London, in the Victoria and
Albert Museum. The Cambridge drawings, the ‘Richmond, Yorks,’ and the
‘Mossdale Fall,’ are already somewhat faded, especially the latter one,
but the London drawing, of ‘Hornby Castle,’ thanks to Mr. Vaughan’s
wise
[Illustration: _PLATE LVII_
HORNBY CASTLE, FROM TATHAM CHURCH
PENCIL. ABOUT 1816]
[Illustration: _PLATE LVIII_
HORNBY CASTLE, FROM TATHAM CHURCH
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN WHITAKER’S “RICHMONDSHIRE,” JUNE, 1822]
stipulation that it shall always be protected by a curtain when not
being looked at, is still in fairly good condition. The engravings from
the whole series were published between the years 1819 and 1823, but the
sketches on which the drawings were based were all made during a tour in
the summer of 1816.
So far as I know, Turner did not make a single colour sketch from nature
during the whole of this tour. All the sketches are in pencil and the
water-colours were all painted in the studio entirely from these pencil
memoranda. The sketches are very similar to those made for the _Southern
Coast_ subjects, but they contain evidence that the artist was in a
softer and gentler frame of mind. The conquering Napoleonic insolence
has passed into an attitude of human and affectionate solicitude. The
touch of the pencil point is everywhere light and graceful, yet it is as
swift as ever, never lingering for a moment over details or particular
facts. This is especially noticeable in the treatment of foliage; the
pencil seeming always to caress the general idea of foliage, while
holding the particular shapes and even positions of trees and bushes as
of only slight importance. The work, one cannot but feel, is that of a
happy and contented man, at peace with himself and pleased with his
surroundings. When we remember the close proximity of Farnley Hall to
these scenes, and that Mr. and Mrs. Fawkes and their family actually
accompanied the artist over part of the ground, we can hardly be
surprised at the sunniness of temper evinced by these sketches.
In nearly all the designs human figures and cattle play a prominent
part. This is noticeably the case with the two subjects I have chosen
for illustration. In the ‘Hornby Castle’ the incident of the broken jug,
the weeping maiden, the sympathetic bystanders, the picturesque
passer-by on his donkey, the busy milk-maid, and above all the cat,
triumphantly lapping up the spilt milk, all this is at least as
important an element in the picture as the Castle and view itself. In
the ‘Heysham’ the reapers, cattle, milkmaid, and passing waggon seem to
form the keynote of the whole design. Yet there are no sketches or even
the slightest indications of any of these things in the sketch-books.
They were evolved, I firmly believe, entirely by the artists’ creative
imagination as each scene came to life under his hands in the studio. To
some extent, no doubt, the decorative or mechanical requirements of the
subject solicited their existence. In the ‘Heysham,’ for example, lines
are wanted in the foreground to repeat with variations the horizontal
undulations of the mountains in the distance and middle-distance; the
cast shadows do this, and hence we have the presence of the cows and
figures as pretexts for these shadows. And then we may as well make
these objects useful in themselves; hence the turn of the foreground
cow’s neck placed just where it seems to complete the curve of the
descending hills, and the sharp silhouette of the head catches the eye
while the cast shadow swings it away in a new and happy direction.
Exactly why the eye should find such exquisite enjoyment in the plunge
down from the hill’s profile to the head of the calf, rubbing her nose
against the back of the seated white cow, and then on to the foreground
beast, and then in springing off again at a sharp angle to the bottom of
the large foreground stone in the corner just above the
signature,--exactly why we take pleasure in this kind of visual melody,
I do not know, but I know that the tracks laid for visible flights of
this kind, crossing each other and interweaving in all directions, form
a very large part of the enjoyment which Turner’s drawings provide.
The pencil sketch of Heysham (Plate LIX. (_a_)) thus formed, as it were,
the leading motive of the water-colour drawing, or rather it provided a
series of shapes which could not be varied beyond certain limits, and
these shapes formed the starting-point of the elaborate visual movement
which Turner proceeded to invent and weave round it. I called just now
this side of the work ‘decorative or mechanical,’ because I wished to
distinguish it from a different but related aspect. This unmeaning and
abstract play of lines is like the rhyme, assonance and rhythm of a
poem; a part, but an unconscious, and as it were dependent, part, of the
whole effect. No sane person would read a poem expressly for the jingle
of the sounds, unless for the purposes of analysis, and in the same way,
no sane lover of pictures would look at this drawing of Heysham merely
for the visible play of the lines and masses. Neither can the artist or
poet abandon themselves to the
[Illustration: _PLATE LIX_
HEYSHAM, WITH BLACK COMBE, CONISTON OLD MAN, HELVELLYN, ETC., IN
DISTANCE
PENCIL. ABOUT 1816]
[Illustration: HEYSHAM AND CUMBERLAND MOUNTAINS
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN WHITAKER’S “RICHMONDSHIRE,” 22 AUGUST, 1822]
mere unmeaning play of sounds or lines in the process of composition.
These external requirements must be subordinated to the requirements of
the meaning. And so, though I said just now that these mechanical
requirements may have had some share in calling the figures and
incidents represented into being, we must be careful not to forget that
that share is only of slight and subordinate importance. What is
important is the essential congruity of the figures and incidents with
the landscape itself; they must appear not as something arbitrarily
added, but as a mere development or further determination of the meaning
already implicit in the landscape. In the present case so intimate is
what I may call the logical identity between the bare view, as
represented by the initial sketch, and as a topographical fact, and the
whole living and moving scene as represented by the finished design,
that the development of the one from the other seems as inevitable as
the march of the seasons or the processes of growth and decay to which
we ourselves are subject.
From this point of view I think it is easy to see that such a result is
attainable in no other way than that which Turner has followed. No
actual scene could ever possess quite the same close-knit logical
coherence, the same absolute absence of irrelevance, as we find in
Turner’s finished drawing; so that the most faithful and loving and
skilful reproduction of the most carefully selected aspect of actuality
would never give us the same kind of outer and inner unity that Turner
has achieved by his method of amplifying, modifying, and interpreting
his slight pencil sketches. Only in this way can the active forces of
interpretation or assimilation, by which the artist as well as the
meanest of us fills out the incoming suggestions of the given, achieve
adequate expression. A psychologist might perhaps describe the
difference between a faithful transcription of an actual scene and such
an effort of the creative imagination as we have just been studying, by
saying that the one is a representation of the incoming or given ideas
or sensations, while Turner’s picture represents these same ideas or
sensations after they have been thoroughly ‘apperceived’ by the masses
of ideas stored in the artist’s mind. If we adopt such a description, we
must not forget to add that Turner has used his knowledge of the
mechanism of the pictorial language to set out his total idea for us in
the clearest and pleasantest way.
As with the Heysham sketch, so with the Hornby.[28] I need perhaps
hardly call attention to the deliberate heightening of Hornby Castle,
and to the way the back of the nearer hill in front of it has been
humped in the finished design. This deliberate falsification (as it must
seem to the literalist) is paralleled by the treatment of the foreground
tree, whose individuality is destroyed, and whose place is taken by a
mere alien grown in the fertile climate of the artist’s imagination. I
have no doubt that if Turner could have got the same effect without
making these alterations he would not have made them. But it is obvious
that he could not. From his point of view such alterations are merely
grammatical devices by which he throws the required emphasis on
qualities which hills and trees do undeniably possess, but which were
somewhat slurred over in nature’s momentary presentment of the case. And
if we think about the matter calmly, we see that we cannot expect any
object to enter into new relations without undergoing some kind of
modification; I mean that we cannot expect physical facts to be taken up
into the intelligible world and used as factors in the expression of
ideas and emotions without requiring some kind of modification.
While Turner was producing these exquisite drawings for Whitaker’s
_History of Richmondshire_, he also executed a series of ten or eleven
slightly smaller drawings to illustrate Sir Walter Scott’s _Provincial
Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland_. Eight of these
drawings were presented by the publishers to Scott, who had them framed
from an oak felled on the Abbotsford estate during Turner’s visit there
in 1818. The effect of this frame on the drawings, it must be confessed,
is atrocious. It might be guaranteed to kill the effect of any
water-colour drawings but the radiantly immortal ones for which it was
made. No doubt even these would look better out of it, but such as it is
it hung in the breakfast-room at Abbotsford till after Scott’s death,
and as it then hung, so it hangs now in Mr. Thomas Brocklebank’s
hospitable mansion at Heswall, Chester.
When we draw the curtain, which has kept Turner’s beautiful
[Illustration: _PLATE LX_
DINBURGH, FROM CALTON HILL
PENCIL. 1818]
[Illustration: EDINBURGH FROM CALTON HILL
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN SCOTT’S “PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES OF SCOTLAND,” 1
NOVEMBER, 1820]
[Illustration: _PLATE LX_
EDINBURGH FROM CALTON HILL
PENCIL. 1818]
[Illustration: FIGURES ON CALTON HILL
PENCIL. 1818]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXI_
BORTHWICK CASTLE
PENCIL. 1818]
[Illustration: BORTHWICK CASTLE
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN SCOTT’S “PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES OF SCOTLAND,” 2
APRIL, 1819]
work as fresh as when it was first executed, and look at these drawings,
it is difficult to single out any one of them for special attention. But
after looking through the engravings made from them in Scott’s book, the
marvellous view of ‘Edinburgh from the Calton Hill’ leaves perhaps the
most powerful impression on the imagination. I have, therefore, selected
the drawing made from nature upon which this design was based as the
subject of one of our illustrations (Plate LX.).
In this case we find that Turner has followed his sketch with great
care, yet the whole material has been hammered this way and that by his
powerful hand. We can see that the artist felt impatient with nature’s
calm and unhurried chronicle of facts, and was determined at all costs
to make a more immediate and concentrated attack on the spectator’s
powers of perception. Instead of stretching out calmly and indifferently
on both hands, as in the sketch, the city in the finished design seems
to soar upwards from the depths beneath our feet. The jail on our left
has been squeezed together, making the line from the porch to the
central turret much more oblique than it was. The perspective of nearly
all the buildings has been modified, yet the artist has taken great care
to preserve the character of the silhouettes of the leading planes. But
it is in the invention of the play of light which animates the whole,
and throws into such strong relief all the telling points of the design,
that we find the clearest evidence of the artist’s active intervention.
A curious instance of Turner’s habit of using his notes rather as hints
to his imagination than as providing ready-made material waiting for
immediate incorporation, is afforded by the sketches of some figures
made while he was standing on the Calton Hill. On the back of one of the
pages on which our view of Edinburgh is drawn, there is a rough sketch
of the brow of the hill with groups of figures on it. Among these
figures are three girls attending to the drying of the clothes they have
washed. One of these is standing shaking out a cloth in the wind. But
though Turner has introduced this incident into the foreground of his
picture, the figure there is not a repetition of the graceful figure in
the sketch. In the picture the action has been changed, and the figure
presented in a different point of view. It is designed altogether
afresh. In the same way none of the other figures is repeated in the
finished drawing. The figures in the drawing are indeed the same sort of
people as in the sketch, but each is designed specially for its place,
and with reference to the movement of the whole picture. All this is
eminently characteristic of the cast of Turner’s mind, which seems to
store scenes and incidents in complete independence of their momentary
and particular appearance; he is thus able to set these invisible
essences in motion before his mind’s eye, and to wait till they arrange
themselves to his complete satisfaction, and he has then no difficulty
in clothing them with the attributes of time and space.
We will turn now to a sketch of a different kind. In the ‘Edinburgh,’
‘Heysham’ and ‘Hornby’ sketches, as in most of those we have examined,
we have seen Turner making a note of what we may call the chief items of
the topographical data, leaving the problem of their arrangement,
modification and amplification for future solution. In the two sketches
of Rochester (Plates LXII. (_a_) and (_b_)) which I have had reproduced,
we see the artist’s mind moving on a different track. A few pages
earlier in the sketch-book from which these two leaves are taken, he has
indeed made his usual record of the facts about the church, bridge,
etc., at Rochester, but apparently, as time did not press, he remained
in his boat watching the scene and criticising, as one who understood
such things, nature’s own methods of design. His sketches now become not
topographical records but swift and eloquent designs for pictures. The
concrete particularity of the castle, church, bridge, etc., becomes
abrogated or submerged. These objects are now taken up into a new kind
of systematic unity, in which their relationship to the whole and to
each other is of much more importance than their discrete individuality.
Now, the important point is just how the Castle and the other
topographical items drop into place with regard to the shipping on the
river,--the kind of groups they all make, the way the one item affects
the other, half hiding it or setting it off to advantage. In the sketch
on page 18 of the sketch-book (Plate LXII. (_a_)) the exact position of
the mast of the foreground vessel is the dominant factor,--the way it
unites the lines described by the silhouette of the castle and the trees
sloping down to the bridge, bringing the
[Illustration: _PLATE LXII_
ROCHESTER
PENCIL. ABOUT 1821]
[Illustration: ROCHESTER
PENCIL. ABOUT 1821]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXIII_
ROCHESTER. ON THE RIVER MEDWAY
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1822]
curves to a focus, as it were, and providing a rigid base for them to
spring from again. In the other sketch (Plate LXII. (_b_)) Turner is
trying a different arrangement of the material, or, to put it more
accurately, nature is trying another effect, and Turner is watching and
making notes of the experiment.
In this way, before Turner shut up his book he had made over a dozen
skeleton designs, which he had only to clothe in colour and light and
shade to develop into beautiful pictures. But when he got home and
actually set to work to make the drawing of Rochester for the _Rivers of
England_ series, he deliberately ignored every one of nature’s pregnant
suggestions, and began to build up his own design in his own way.
Perhaps he thought nature’s designs wanted more space than he had at his
command in a plate that was to be only a few inches square; perhaps it
was the sheer delight in the exercise of his creative powers that was
the main motive force, for though his sketch-books teem with designs
caught in this way on the wing, yet he never once, so far as I can
discover, adopted one of them in his own pictures, without so modifying
and recasting it as to make it into a quite new and independent
construction.
I am not at all sure of the exact date when the sketch of Bolton Abbey
(Plate LXIV.) was made. It is the sketch upon which the water-colour
engraved in the _England and Wales_ series was based. The engraving was
published in 1827, so the water-colour must have been made a year or two
earlier, but as the sketch occurs in a book which contains a number of
the _Devonshire Rivers_ subjects, it probably belongs to about the time
of Turner’s second visit to Devonshire. This visit took place in either
1812 or 1813, and the Wharfedale sketches, of which the ‘Bolton’ is one,
cannot have been later than 1815. So it is probable that at least ten
years elapsed between the making of the sketch and the water-colour
drawing in which the sketch was elaborated.
The drawing itself is one of the most universally admired of all the
_England and Wales_ subjects. Mr. Ruskin alludes to it again and again
in the various volumes of _Modern Painters_. In the fourth volume
(chapter xvi.) he gives an admirable analysis of the imaginative
conception, and in volume three (chapter ix.) he dwells with his usual
eloquence on the knowledge displayed in the treatment of the foreground
trees. With the general tenor of these remarks I am in entire agreement,
and if the passages were not so long I should like to introduce them
here, but unless the reader is very careful, I am inclined to think that
Mr. Ruskin’s constant appeal to ‘the facts’ is likely to mislead him
into the belief that all the details of the design, and especially those
of the foreground trees, are elaborately studied and accurately
reproduced from the actual scene. Turner’s sketch proves that this was
not the case. Each individual tree, every curve in its trunk, the
texture of its bark, the stains and hollows and flickering lights and
shadows upon it, and the intricate play of the trees’ upper branches,
all these have been, not painstakingly studied from nature, but invented
by the artist in his studio, and each detail has been invented not
entirely for its own sake, but as a note, a chord, in the whole complex
of visible harmony.
I do not think any more wonderful example could be given of the intense
activity of creative genius than that which is furnished by a careful
comparison of this drawing with the sketch upon which it was based. We
look at the sketch, and all the subject seems there; as a synopsis of
the finished picture it seems tolerably complete. Yet in the drawing we
find almost every detail has been altered. Notice the way the foreground
trees have been pushed nearer to each other. In the sketch one has to
search for the abbey, and then one’s eyes begin to wander about
aimlessly. But in the drawing everything is brought into connection with
everything else; it is all welded together. The abbey is the first thing
one sees, then the eye goes easily and inevitably to the second couple
of foreground trees, the seated angler and the distant river-bank. In
passing from one object to the other the eye feels something of the same
kind of pleasure that the ear takes in the rhythm of verse, so that
one’s gaze travels over the drawing not vagrantly and with effort, but
gladly, and to the spectator all this visible melody and delight seem
like the unconscious expression of the secret joy with which the
artist’s mind played round the scene, an echo of the mysterious music of
his happy memories.
The effect of the ‘Bolton’ drawing is that of a bright summer’s
[Illustration: _PLATE LXIV_
BOLTON ABBEY
PENCIL. ABOUT 1815]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXV_
BOLTON ABBEY
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN “PICTURESQUE VIEWS IN ENGLAND AND WALES,” 1827]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXVI_
COLCHESTER
PENCIL. ABOUT 1824]
[Illustration: COLCHESTER
PENCIL. ABOUT 1824]
[Illustration: _PLATE. LXVII_
COLCHESTER, ESSEX
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN “PICTURESQUE VIEWS IN ENGLAND AND WALES,” 1827]
afternoon, an effect that does not change very rapidly; the slightness
of Turner’s sketch was not, therefore, a necessary outcome of the
transitory nature of his subject-matter. Had he been so minded he could
easily have painted the whole subject out-of-doors. But with the
‘Colchester’ drawing, another of the _England and Wales_ subjects,
published about the same time as the ‘Bolton,’ the case was different.
There the effect is a momentary one. It is evening, the shades of
twilight have gathered, and the sun is on the point of disappearing.
There was only time for a few hasty memoranda; but while the modern
artist would almost invariably make his memoranda in colour, Turner is
quite satisfied with his usual hurried pencil notes. In the sketches
here reproduced (Plate LXVI.) we have a kind of abstract of the whole
scene. There is the miller’s house beside the river at the foot of the
hill, while the hill is crowned by a row of trees through which the
abbey building and the roofs of the distant town can be seen. The
position of the sun and of its reflection in the river are marked.
The general idea of the whole is certainly there in the sketches, but in
a rudimentary or indeterminate condition. Note how deliberately vague
and undefined the idea of the trees on the brow of the hill has been
kept. A distant abbey-building set in the delicate tracery of gracefully
branching trees, the whole framed in masses of feathery foliage, that
was the general idea of this part of the design, and Turner knew that he
was familiar enough with the nature and ways of trees to be able to
carry out this idea with all the requisite wealth of detail whenever he
should set himself seriously to the task. The exact shapes of the trees
actually growing there on the hillside on the day and at the moment when
he made this sketch were, apart from their general idea, a matter of
indifference to him. If he had cared very much about them he could
easily have gone there the next morning and drawn them carefully; they
would hardly have altered much in the night. But these shapes would have
surely wanted revision, alteration and suppression, before they could
have taken their places as a perfectly articulated limb in Turner’s
living, organic design. The result could not have been more satisfactory
than the one reached without this labour.
As with the row of trees, so with the miller’s house, the cottages
creeping up the hillside and the distant town. The pencil hieroglyphs
are enough to suggest the general idea of these objects, their
appropriate particularities will unroll themselves from the stored
treasures of Turner’s mind so soon as he takes his pencil in hand again
to carry forward his work; not the actual details of the cottages, etc.,
existing down there in Essex, but the details appropriate to the picture
as an expression of an emotional experience.
The drawings in the _England and Wales_ series produced in this way, in
which a definite particular experience of the artist is enshrined as it
were in a wealth of appropriate and beautifully arranged shapes and
colours, are among the best of the series. But the pressure of
professional engagements did not always permit the artist to wait for
this kind of inspiration. On such occasions he appears to have fallen
back on the material stored in his early sketch-books, and his
rhetorical mastery of the elements of design was taxed to the uttermost
to provide it with suitable clothing and ornament. An excellent example
of this kind of work is provided by the drawing of Stamford, published
in 1830. This was founded on one of the sketches made during Turner’s
first tour in the North of England, in 1797. This sketch (Plate LXVIII.)
is no doubt a fairly accurate record of the place, its humdrum streets
and houses, with its three triumphant bursts of idealism in the shape of
its three unimaginative church towers.
In taking up this sketch thirty years after it was made, Turner seems to
have asked himself, ‘What am I to do to make this dull affair into
something universally interesting?’ that is to say, into something
interesting and even amusing to those who care nothing for Stamford
merely for its own sake. Of course the first thing for him to do was
obviously to seize upon the three towers and make the most of them,
setting them up against a gorgeous sky filled with rain and thunder and
the darting rays of the thwarted sun, which, however, must so far
triumph in its contest as to flood the towers with its light and
transfigure them with its splendour. The street below remains dull and
untractable, but yet something may be made of it. We can gain one point
by insisting on the smallness and homeliness of the houses, intensifying
their
[Illustration: _PLATE LXVIII_
STAMFORD, LINCOLNSHIRE
PENCIL. 1797]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXIX_
STAMFORD, LINCOLNSHIRE
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN “PICTURESQUE VIEWS IN ENGLAND AND WALES,” 1830]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXX_
TYNEMOUTH PRIORY
PENCIL, WITH PART IN WATER COLOUR. 1797.]
[Illustration: TYNEMOUTH, NORTHUMBERLAND
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN “PICTURESQUE VIEWS IN ENGLAND AND WALES,” 1831]
unimaginative character into something approaching the grotesque. Better
the actively ugly, for that at least makes our dullest and largest
church tower look almost beautiful by contrast, than the passively
commonplace. And then, lest our modest efforts remain of small avail, we
invent a couple of quaint old travellers hurrying across the road to
their inn, accompanied by the barks and gambols of a lively little white
dog; by good luck and our own skilful management they come just in front
of our dull row of houses, so that what with one thing and another we
find our eyes and thoughts very pleasantly diverted. As for the houses
on the left we can shut off a great part of them by simply drawing up a
lumbering stage-coach on that side of the road and heaping it with ample
females in swelling draperies, with burgeoning umbrellas and bounteous
baggage. And having got so far, we can now see exactly what it is we
want to make our foreground and distance more immediately effective. In
the sketch there is a hint that the road dips just a trifle down from
the foreground to the church; we increase this slight inequality till we
get a dip of something like forty or fifty feet between us and the
church, a drop that gives uncommon height and dignity to our humble
towers. And now, having got our street laid out to our liking, we want
to make the most of its possibilities, so we set another stage-coach
down at the foot of our little hill, load it with passengers impatient
to be out of their wet clothes, and give it a couple of rearing,
prancing, steaming horses to gallop it in hot haste up the declivity, so
that now, as we look at the engraving, we can almost hear the ring of
the horses’ hooves on the stones and feel the rush of wind made by the
coach as it dashes past us; all this merely by way of amplifying the
artist’s statement about his imaginary hill, and to drive the idea of
his well-invented fiction home into the consciousness of even the
dullest of his audience.
The ‘Tynemouth’ design, published in 1831, is on a higher plane of
imaginative creation than the ‘Stamford’ subject, yet it was built up in
just the same way from a sketch made at the same time on another leaf of
the same sketch-book. The ‘Stamford’ design shows Turner struggling
valiantly against the absence of any very pressing inspiration, and
emerging with credit from the ordeal; the ‘Tynemouth’ drawing, on the
other hand, shows that his youthful and thirty-year old topographical
sketch had served to set his imagination aflame with all the urgency of
a recent personal experience. The vision conjured up by what I can only
call the potential or possible associations of a rocky coast had so much
completeness, so much innate driving force, that Turner had no need to
resort to the purely external and arbitrary tricks of composition which
had proved such valuable auxiliaries in the ‘Stamford’ drawing. In the
case of the ‘Stamford’ subject, we might almost say that the pictorial
equivalent of the rhyme and metre had suggested the sense; in the case
of the ‘Tynemouth’ drawing the idea itself is so vivid that it creates
its own lilt and harmony.
In looking through a number of Turner’s drawings the hasty
observer--especially should he be a professional student eager to pick
up useful knowledge--is inclined to jump to the conclusion that the
important thing about rocks and mountains is to be high, and that when
the height of the most prominent buildings, especially if they happen to
be in ruins, has been increased three or fourfold, all the duties of the
imaginative designer have been attended to. In the ‘Tynemouth’ drawing
we see how free Turner is from the constraint of any such ready-made and
purely external rules of design. He has here deliberately lowered the
apparent height of his buildings and cliffs, and, if we examine the
matter carefully, we see that he has done this not at the dictates of a
passing whim or fancy, but because the heart of the matter--the
so-called ‘subject,’ that vague, intangible, elusive something which
seems to sit in the centre of the dynamical idea and pump blood and life
into every outlying portion of the organism, and tyrannises so
beneficently over the structure and function of each part of the
design--because this heart of the matter would clearly have it so.
In the sketch we have an item of brute fact waiting, as it were,
pathetically to be taken up into the world of thought and feeling,
asking, so to speak, to be made significant and human. The artist has
granted the request in his finished design by making the physical facts
the mere passive spectators of man’s sorrow and suffering. In the
sketch, the tall cliffs and ruined walls of the priory tower above the
small fishing-boat struggling into port; in the picture, the tall masts
of the wrecked schooner dwarf the priory and the cliffs and drive them
into subordination. The real centre of interest is the active, restless
power of the sea for ill. The baneful little leaps of the waves that
fill nearly all the lower part of the design tell their story of storm
and wreck plainly enough. The wrecked barques under the cliffs are in a
sad plight, but the pieces of floating mast and broken plank in the
foreground tell of worse things. On the shore we have the thrifty
gatherers of flotsam and jetsam, and a crowd of willing helpers. On all
this moving scene the wreck of the priory looks down not without
sympathy; it too, it seems to say, is a part of man’s activity and
ambition, it suffers also from the taint of mortality and from the
merciless power of the wind and rain.
CHAPTER VIII
MENTAL AND PHYSICAL DECAY, AND THE ORIGIN OF IMPRESSIONISM--1830-1845
Mental characteristics of 1815-1830 period--Their influence on
form--and colour--Colour enrichment a general characteristic of
Romantic Art--What further development is required to give us the
transition to Impressionism?--The first of Turner’s so-called
Impressionistic works--Vagueness or indistinctness as a means of
expression--Two ways of painting one’s impressions--Turner’s
earlier way--contrasted with the modern Impressionistic way--The
change, after 1830, is it a change in terms of sight or of
thought--visual or mental?--The content of Turner’s later work--The
relation of Turner’s later work to Impressionism defined--The
gradual development of Turner’s later manner--The Petworth sketches
(1830)--The discovery of the artistic value of the
indeterminate--The Vignettes-‘Rivers of France’--Venetian sketches
(1834-1840)--Swiss and Rhine sketches (1841-1844)--The end.
When we try to make clear to ourselves the inner characteristics of the
period studied in the last chapter, we notice at once a change from the
gloom, sternness and patient endurance of the earlier decade to a
brighter and more cheerful frame of mind. Turner’s predominant frame of
mind is proud and happy. He seems to rejoice in the splendour of the
world and exult over the richness and variety of its material. His
attitude towards humanity is not so easily defined. In the best of his
oil paintings, as in the ‘Pas de Calais’ (‘Now for the Painter’), and in
his water colours, there is an abundance of close and sympathetic
observation of the labours and sorrow of mankind. But in spite of the
graces of a naturally kind heart Turner’s attitude towards these labours
and sufferings is not entirely free from traces of hardness and
selfishness. His instinct for the picturesque side of this kind of
subject-matter is so keen, and his insistence on this picturesqueness is
so constant and so emphatic, that it is hard to resist the suspicion
that his interest is rather professional than personal. He does not seem
to feel himself an actor and a fellow-sufferer. He was on the other side
of the fence; he was the artist, and labouring, suffering mankind his
material. And so far as he himself was concerned he had every reason for
exultation. The nature that could endow a humbly born youth with such
gifts as he possessed, and the society that had rewarded these talents
so generously, might be said to have fairly earned the young painter’s
gratitude. He gave it effusively, with none of the ulterior reserves an
educated Greek would have felt in the presence of a great happiness or
pre-eminent success.
Let us now turn to the outward and visible results of this exultant and
somewhat heartless and selfish enjoyment. The movement of the design,
the quality of the tone and colour, and the spirit of the handling of
the pictures in which such a frame of mind is expressed, could not
possibly be the same as in Turner’s earlier pictures. The sober and
restrained colouring of pictures like the ‘Windsor,’ the ‘Frosty
Morning’ and ‘The Nore,’ is in perfect harmony with the patient strength
and sternness of the emotional colouring of their inspiration. The same
mood could not be expressed in any other scheme of lighting and colour.
But to treat what, for want of a better word, I may call a pictorial
metre, as though it were equally admirable as a means of expression for
all kinds and shades of emotion, would argue an extraordinary dulness or
sheer absence of artistic capacity; and Turner’s shortcomings, if he had
any, were moral rather than artistic.
Given then the mood of exultant enjoyment of the physical amenities of
the world, a lighter and brighter colour scheme than that of Turner’s
earlier pictures was bound to be forthcoming, if that mood was to be
fully expressed by pictorial art. And as a matter of history Turner was
the first modern artist in the range of landscape art to give adequate
expression to this sentiment of unrestrained enjoyment of the physical
delights of nature, though we see the same swelling sense of the pride
of life finding a similar form of expression in the works of
contemporary figure-painters like Sir Thomas Lawrence, Shee and Hayter
in England, and Delacroix, Isabey, and others in France.
In the present chapter I propose to deal with the closing phase of
Turner’s art. In the works of this period Turner has been said to have
initiated a new kind of art, or at least to have invented or introduced
certain important innovations in the region of colour and tone, which
have had the effect of developing new possibilities in the art of
landscape-painting. It is from this point of view, and with reference to
this aspect of Turner’s work, that he has been hailed as the father of
Impressionism. Before discussing the value of the innovations Turner
introduced and their influence on subsequent developments of the art, it
is important to study the immediate causes which brought them into
existence. In other words, we must study this new phase of Turner’s art
in relation to its immediate antecedents; in the first place, to see how
far it can be regarded as a necessary development of what had gone
before, and in the second place, to discover exactly what is new in it.
The two most striking characteristics of Turner’s later work are the
brightness and extended range of his colour schemes. But this formal
characteristic is clearly taken over bodily from the previous period,
and we have just seen that it was but the necessary outward expression
of the spiritual content with which Turner was then preoccupied. In a
picture like ‘Ulysses deriding Polyphemus’ (1829), for example, we have
a colour scheme as bright and as extended as that of any of the later
works, and yet it is emphatically a work of the Romantic period. It is
all ablaze with the light and flame of human pride. Its gorgeous array
of blues, its burnished gold and glowing crimson and scarlet and white
are but the triumphant expression of the mood of unrestrained sensuous
enjoyment which formed the key-note of the work we have just been
examining.
But if the lightening of the colour scheme was simply an inheritance
from the Romantic phase of art, what are we to regard as the special
contribution of the later manner? A comparison of a few of Turner’s
later works with the ‘Ulysses’ will show us at once. The earliest
example of Turner’s later and so-called Impressionistic manner with
which I am familiar is the ‘Calais Sands, low water--Poissards
collecting bait,’ which was exhibited in 1830, and is now in the Bury
Art Gallery. Its colour
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXI_
BEMERSIDE TOWER
PENCIL. ABOUT 1831]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXII_
BEMERSIDE TOWER
ENGRAVING PUBLISHED IN SCOTT’S “POETICAL WORKS” (CADELL), 1834]
scheme is actually more subdued than the ‘Ulysses,’ but the whole effect
is more vaporous and the figures are less distinct. So far as I am able
to judge, this is the chief _differentia_ of Turner’s later manner, and
of all Impressionistic work on its formal side. As a second
characteristic we may add the fact that it deals with a scene of
contemporary life, something that Turner had actually seen with his
eyes, not something that he had read about and imagined, as in the
‘Ulysses.’
If we examine ‘The Evening Star’ and ‘At Petworth’ (both at the Tate
Gallery), the ‘Snowstorm’ of 1842, the late Venetian pictures, and the
‘Rain, Storm, Speed’ of 1844, we find these works are all similarly
distinguished by their general vagueness of definition and by the fact
that they all represent scenes which had come within the range of the
artist’s own experience.
Yet it is evident that these two characteristics are not of equal
importance. The vagueness of definition was a general characteristic of
all Turner’s later work, but a considerable number of these works were
purely imaginary compositions, as for example the ‘Agrippina landing
with the Ashes of Germanicus’ (1839), ‘The Exile and the rock limpet’
(1842), ‘The Evening of the Deluge’ (1843), ‘Queen Mab’s Cave’ (1846),
and the various ‘Whaler’ pictures (1845 and 1846). There is obviously,
then, no necessary connection between Turner’s vagueness of execution
(his distinctively Impressionist manner) and his choice of subject of
which he had been actually an eye-witness.
Besides, we must remember that Turner did not wait till his later years
before beginning to paint his own impressions. He had been busy painting
them ever since he had come to artistic maturity. His ‘Calais Pier’
(1803), the ‘Spithead’ (1809), ‘Petworth--Dewy Morning’ (1810),
‘Teignmouth’ and ‘Hulks on the Tamar’ (1811 and 1812), and ‘Frosty
Morning’ (1813),--to name only a few--were certainly works of this kind;
as were the ‘Hedging and Ditching’ of the _Liber_ and the ‘Colchester’
of the _England and Wales_ series. But there is no lack of determination
in the execution of these works. The difference between Turner’s later
attempts to paint his impressions and his earlier must therefore be
found in his attitude towards these impressions--the principle of
selection, of suppression and adjustment upon which he dealt with the
data of sense-perception; and this brings us to the consideration of the
_rationale_ of that vagueness of execution which we have agreed to
regard as the chief characteristic of Turner’s later work.
An ingenious and at first somewhat plausible attempt has been made to
explain the peculiarities of Turner’s later style, on the ground that
old age and failing health had brought about an actual organic change in
the artist’s powers of sight. But it seems to me that Dr. Liebreich’s
arguments[29] and conclusions are vitiated by his failure to
discriminate between Turner’s manner of expression and the action of his
eyesight. These are two clearly distinct operations. Between the act of
seeing and an artist’s fully organised manner of expression, a whole
host of considerations--among them the limitations and capacities of the
material--interpose themselves. These considerations must all receive
their due weight. I know several very short-sighted artists whose
pictures are remarkable for their elaborate and sharply defined details,
and there are others with strong and good eyesight, whose pictures are
confused and indistinct. An artist puts into his pictures only what he
chooses to put there. And when we work out in detail the reasons why
Turner chose to make his drawings indistinct, we find that such
considerations are quite sufficient by themselves to account for his
change of style, without having recourse to any hypothetical alteration
in his organs of sight.
The clue, then, to the nature of Turner’s later manner of expression is
to be found in the character not of his optical sensations but of his
thought, or in other words, upon the mode in which his intelligent self
reacted upon the immediate data of sense-perception. By the time he had
reached the period with which we are now concerned, he had lost much of
his interest in the material world. He cared no longer for the strength
and weight, the toughness and tang of material; that delight in the
solidity of real objects which gives such a manly gusto to his early
sea-pieces, is now altogether absent from his work. He cares no longer
for the company of men, or for their avocations or joys and sorrows. He
is now a lonely old man, with his thoughts mainly centred upon himself,
upon his artistic genius, his artistic fame, and the visions of future
pictures by which his genius was to continue to manifest itself, and by
which his fame was to be increased or sustained.
We have then to think of Turner as a solitary dreamer of dreams, with a
professional interest in the capacity of these dreams to startle a
rather stupid public. If we want to enter intimately into the spiritual
and emotional content of his dreams we have only to turn to the
contemporary works of the poets. In pictures like ‘The Fountain of
Indolence,’ the ‘Agrippina’ and those I have mentioned above, we see how
deeply impressed his mind had become with the ideals of current Romantic
poetry; the true Byronic disgust with himself and vague emotions of the
infinite, the desire to
‘steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express.’
There is no doubt that these obscure emotions and vague reveries can
only be adequately expressed in one particular way. They defy embodiment
in clear-cut determinate forms. They demand a style as indeterminate, as
vaguely suggestive, as inarticulate as the loose-knit dreams which are
calling for embodiment.
This, then, I take to be the proper explanation of the vagueness of
Turner’s later manner: It is not that he saw the world indistinctly, but
that his ideas were incapable of definition; it is not that his eyes
were newly opened to the vapours and mists of the physical world, but
that his own thoughts were confused and his emotions, in spite of their
strength, were incoherent and inarticulate.
* * * * *
We are now in a position to define the relation in which Turner’s later
works stand to modern Impressionism. The exact connotation of this term
is not by any means easy to grasp, but so far as Impressionism has
distinctive aims I think we are justified in describing them as the
attempt to eliminate all those elements in art which are due to the
reaction of the intelligent self upon the immediate data of
sense-perception. The aim of Impressionism is to get rid of what one
eminent psychologist has called the noëtic fringe in a state of
consciousness, to abstract from memory and see objects as simple visual
elements. The Impressionist wishes to see objects as though he was
looking at them for the first time, as though they had no meaning for
him. The theoretic justification of this procedure is that, in stripping
off the formative and organising action of intelligence we isolate the
pure element of objective reality; that pictures painted upon this
principle give the real truth of nature and are free from all those
errors and distortions which the action of thought is supposed to
introduce into the irrefragably trustworthy elements of the given. These
assumptions are, I need hardly add, untenable, but this is not the place
to criticise them.
Now if Impressionism aims at getting rid of all the cognitive elements
in concrete perception (recognition, classing, naming, etc.) as well as
the later processes of interpretation and associative reflection, and
would express only the bare sensational element of impression, it is
clear that Turner cannot be properly described as an Impressionist.
Turner’s artistic aim was consistently lyrical, _i.e._ strongly
subjective and emotional, while the chief aim of Impressionism is to
eliminate all the merely subjective colouring from perception, with the
single purpose of isolating and reproducing what is regarded as the
objective element. So far, then, as Impressionism has adopted Turner’s
results, it seems open to the charge of having done so without
understanding their real nature or significance.
Yet this result, however helpful it may prove to the student of
present-day art, cannot be wholly satisfactory from another point of
view. From the point of view of Turner’s work our result is largely
negative. We have endeavoured to make it clear that to regard his later
work as a new and triumphant attempt to represent what is called the
‘truths of nature’ is pure misunderstanding; that Turner’s aim is not to
represent either truths of atmosphere, of lighting or of natural colour,
or any kind or class of physical fact; that he is busied mainly with his
own emotions and fancies, and that he is concerned with the objective
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXIII_
MEN CHATTING ROUND FIREPLACE: PETWORTH HOUSE
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1830]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXIV_
TEASING THE DONKEY: PETWORTH
WATER COLOUR; ON BLUE. ABOUT 1830]
world only indirectly and only in so far as it furnishes or suggests the
stuff out of which his pictorial symbols are woven. But we have still to
search for the secret power of attraction which these symbols do
unquestionably possess. Why is it, we must ask, that these signs and
symbols have such power to move men, to delight and intoxicate some, to
soothe and cheer others?
The answers to these questions may be conveniently grouped under two
heads. In the first place we may consider what are the attractions which
Turner’s work shares with the Romantic poets whose works express the
same kind of subject-matter, and in the second place we may attempt to
indicate what are the qualities which are more intimately connected with
his own individuality.
In the first place then, when we consider Turner as a fellow-worker with
Byron, Shelley, and Lamartine, we see that like them he appeals
constantly and unerringly to that illusion of the romantic temperament
which lends a mysterious charm to all that is indefinite and
indefinable. In a singularly acute analysis of this temperament Mr.
George Santayana has traced one of the chief causes of the delight which
this kind of art and poetry awakens to what he calls ‘the illusion of
infinite perfection.’ There is, he says, a loose and helpless state of
mind to which we all of us approximate when in a state of fatigue. In
this state of mind we are not capable of concentrated and serious
attention to one thing at a time, so we are apt to ‘flounder in the
vague, but at the same time we are full of yearnings, of half-thoughts
and semi-visions, and the upward tendency and exaltation of our mood is
emphatic and overpowering in proportion to our incapacity to think,
speak, or imagine. The sum of our incoherencies has, however, an
imposing volume and even, perhaps, a vague, general direction. We feel
ourselves laden with an infinite burden; and what delights us most and
seems to us to come nearest to the ideal, is not what embodies any one
possible form, but that which, by embodying none, suggests many, and
stirs the mass of our inarticulate imagination with a pervasive
thrill.... That infinite perfection which cannot be realised, because it
is self-contradictory, may be thus suggested, and on account of this
suggestion an indeterminate effect may be regarded as higher, more
significant, and more beautiful than any determinate one.’[30] These
remarks help us to understand the positive qualities of Turner’s
indeterminate style; its power of evoking a fallacious sense of
profundity and significance, just because of its indeterminateness, its
power of suggesting and stimulating emotion, just because it is
incoherent and variously interpretable.
Yet when we have pressed these considerations to their extreme limit, we
have only drawn attention to certain qualities which Turner’s later work
shares with that of many indifferent artists and poets, and, far from
exhausting the real and permanent elements of value in that work, they
may be justly regarded as a searching and pitiless exposure of its
weaknesses and defects. But we are on firmer ground when we turn to the
purely personal qualities in this work, to the artist’s delicacy of hand
and fineness of sight. It matters not what instrument Turner is working
with, whether with the pencil, the pen, or the brush, or whether he is
working hurriedly or at leisure, the movement of his hand is always
graceful and delightful. His powers of sight also seem to me to have
been quite extraordinary; I do not mean that he had merely the power of
seeing distant objects distinctly, not mere long-sightedness, though he
seems to have had this faculty in an abundant measure, but a quite
unusual power of discriminating between minute shades of light and
colour. As the born musician is distinguished from other men by his
capacity for detecting differences of sound which to others seem the
same, so the evidence of Turner’s work--and all who have attempted to
copy even the slightest of his sketches will, I am sure, bear me out in
this--shows that he possessed an abnormal power of visual
discrimination. No doubt his early training and especially the influence
of Dayes had something to do with the development of this capacity, but
the capacity itself was largely innate. In addition to these two natural
gifts, an abnormal delicacy of hand and eye, Turner had the priceless
advantage of being passionately and unfalteringly in love with his art.
Some of the greatest artists give me the impression of loving their art
less for its own sake than for the sake of the content which it enables
them to express,--Rembrandt and Jean François Millet, for example, give
me this impression, and I do not think that their greatness is
imperilled in the least by it--but Turner seems to me to have loved his
art, especially in his later years, entirely for its own sake. This
strong and deep affection threw a glamour over every detail of his work.
Nothing was too high or too low for him. He brought the same
inexhaustible patience and alertness of attention to the working out of
a complicated problem of perspective as to the finishing of his most
ambitious pictures. Like Wordsworth’s ‘happy warrior’ in the midst of
danger, he had only to take a pencil into his hand to become ‘attired
with sudden brightness, like a Man inspired.’ This concentration, this
master-bias, throws a fervour and an inimitable charm over what it seems
almost ironical to speak of as the mechanical execution of his works.
It is difficult to define the exact relationship of Turner’s love for
his art, with his passionate and unwearying study of natural phenomena.
My own impression is that his love of nature was at best to some extent
subordinate to his love of art; that he loved nature partly at least as
a means to artistic expression, and not altogether for itself. But
however this may be, the extent of his knowledge of, and intimate
familiarity with, nature’s ways counts for much in the attractions of
his pictures. The evidence of his keen though intermittent study of
natural phenomena is writ large in the collection of his sketch-books.
The very extent of his knowledge, no doubt, led at times to a certain
overcrowding of his works, but it forms the secret of his supple and
ample style, and the inexhaustible fecundity of his invention.
It is then to the magic of his style that Turner’s later works owe a
great deal of their strange power of compelling attention and extorting
a sometimes unwilling admiration. He had in a quite pre-eminent degree
what Reynolds has called the genius of mechanical execution. And this
power is as remarkable in his earlier works as in his later. But in his
earlier works this power was used to give definite embodiment to a range
of worthy and significant ideas and emotions, and the sheer beauty of
their content is apt to divert our attention from the consummate skill
implied in this rarest and highest artistic achievement. But in the
later work the very weakness and poverty of the content has the effect
of keeping our attention fixed upon the suggestiveness and visual beauty
of the material elements of expression. In the poetry of the French
Symbolists we see a somewhat similar effect consciously aimed at. The
poverty of thought is used as a foil to throw the greatest possible
emphasis on the beauty of sounds and the faint suggestions of individual
words. In this way the attenuation of significance in Turner’s later
works throws into startling prominence all the innate and intrinsic
splendours of the painter’s palette.
We shall have occasion to amplify and illustrate these observations as
we trace the gradual development of Turner’s later manner, the task to
which we have now to address ourselves.
* * * * *
I have alluded above to what I regard as the first oil painting in which
the change that took place in Turner’s artistic aims about the year 1830
was clearly indicated. This was the ‘Calais Sands, low water,’ exhibited
at the Royal Academy in May, 1830. But before painting this picture
Turner had been experimenting in his new manner in a series of
water-colour sketches. These sketches were made at Petworth, where
Turner went to stay for a few weeks with Lord Egremont, probably in
1829, after his return from his second journey to Italy.
The two oil paintings of Petworth Park, still in the Petworth
collection, as well as the brilliant unfinished sketch of ‘Petworth
Park’ in the National Gallery (No. 559), were probably painted in the
house during this visit; at any rate, the sketches in water-colour upon
which these canvases were based were made at this time. But when Turner
was not busy at his easel or sketching in the park and neighbourhood, he
seems to have felt the time hang heavily on his hands, so, to save
himself from the ennui of small-talk and idleness, he began making
colour sketches, first of the various rooms, then of the furniture and
bric-à-brac, and finally of the people staying in the house. These
sketches, which number about a hundred, indicate clearly a distinct
change in Turner’s outlook upon nature. Up to this time he had
invariably employed form as the basis of his work. In these studies we
see him turning his attention directly to colour as the chief element
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXV_
HONFLEUR
BODY COLOUR ON BLUE. ABOUT 1830]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXVI_
COUNTRY TOWN ON STREAM
BODY COLOUR ON BLUE. ABOUT 1830]
of representation. The difference is no doubt largely a matter of
degree, for both elements are indispensable. Yet we have only to
compare, say, a drawing like that of ‘Rochester,’ in the _Rivers of
England_ series, with any one of the _Rivers of France_ subjects to see
that the change of emphasis, upon colour instead of form, was fraught
with important technical results. From a psychological point of view the
change is also significant. It shows that Turner was dissatisfied with
the language of form, which had served him so well all his life; the
vague unrest and conflicting emotions which now surged in his bosom
demanded a less static, a more fluent and elusive medium of expression.
Let us examine one of these Petworth subjects, a sketch of people
‘Waiting for Dinner.’ The scene takes place in a large drawing-room. The
fireplace comes in the centre of the design, and before it a corpulent
and dignified figure in evening dress stands facing us. On either side
there are groups of figures, also in evening dress, the white of the
ladies’ muslin frocks relieved with the yellow and black of an effulgent
matron and the black suits and scarlet uniforms of the men. Examined in
detail, the drawing of the figures is childish, but viewed at a proper
distance, so that the eye can range freely over it all without bringing
any one point into sharp focus, the effect is extraordinary. It is like
catching a glimpse of the actual scene. The whole goes together, the
room is filled with atmosphere, the sharp staccato touches sprinkled
with such amazing cunning among the floating wreaths of colour give
exactly that sense of relief which the eye experiences as it wanders
over an actual scene,--the sense of angles and sharp points of
resistance which artists speak of as the ‘lost and found’ of nature. The
very slightness of the execution of the drawing and the reckless
carelessness of the handling add to the feeling of immediate contact
with reality, for the lack of definition is indissolubly associated in
our minds with the experience of movement and change, and the figures
whose precise forms elude us seem only to be moving before our eyes. Yet
this effect would certainly not be produced were it not for the
wonderful accuracy and subtlety with which the relative values of the
masses of tone have been observed,--the relation, for instance, between
the exact shade of grey of the shirt-front of the noble lord with his
back to the fire and the exact tint of the firelight itself seen through
his legs, or, in short, between every touch of colour and the whole
which they constitute.
Yet when we compare this drawing with any of the more elaborately worked
ones, we cannot but realise the enormous importance of slightness of
definition as a means of expression. In the ‘Spinnet Player,’ for
example, we find the same skill in the observation and rendering of
tones as in ‘Waiting for Dinner,’ and the same extraordinary science of
colour declension; yet the effect it produces is one of static
unreality.
In this drawing a lady dressed in blue is seated in the foreground at a
spinnet; on the left, there is another lady in white on a couch, and on
the right, in the middle distance, a group of figures are seated round a
table apparently playing cards, while a figure in a light-coloured dress
stands behind the chair of one of the players. The objects on the wall
of the room, the near furniture and figures are all considerably more
defined than any of the objects in ‘Waiting for Dinner,’ but the
definition of these parts sets up a standard which condemns the drawing
as a whole. We feel disappointed, after getting so much definition, that
we do not get more. The middle-distance figures are so well drawn, or
rather are so vivaciously observed and full of individuality, that we
cannot help complaining that the foreground lady’s neck and shoulders
are impossible, and that the lady on the couch is so much like a wooden
doll. These observations suggest that each drawing sets up its own
standard of definition. The comparative failure of such a drawing could
not but help to impress on Turner the immense value for his purposes of
a wise and consistent vagueness of statement.
In the vignettes made to illustrate the works of Rogers, Scott, Byron
and Campbell we see the lesson of the Petworth experiments driven home.
Though these drawings were made expressly with the object of being
engraved in black and white, they are conceived entirely upon a colour
basis, while their lack of definition must have made quite unwarrantable
demands upon the skill and resources of the engravers. But it is evident
that Turner had now firmly grasped the fact that the glamour and
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXVII_
SHEEP IN THE TRENCH
BODY COLOUR ON BLUE. ABOUT 1830]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXVIII_
SHIPPING ON THE RIVA DEGLI SCHIAVONI. VENICE
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1839]
intoxication of colour had become the dominant and essential factor in
his art, and that the vagueness of his ideas could only be adequately
expressed by allusion and suggestion. These vignettes and the engravings
made from them vary widely in value. One or two of them are worthy of
the artist, for example the ‘Datur hora quieti,’ ‘The Alps at Daybreak’
and the ‘Melrose,’ but for the most part they owe the very great popular
success they have enjoyed to the skill with which the artist has entered
into the spirit of the second-and third-rate poetry he was called upon
to illustrate, and to the admirable way in which his suggestions were
engraved.
The designs for the _Rivers of France_ are conceived in a somewhat
similar strain of lyrical abandonment to the sensuous charm of colour.
Translated into mere black and white they leave us but half convinced.
It is rather like a prose translation into a foreign language of the
poetry of Victor Hugo, Swinburne or Shelley. To feel their full effect
we must turn to the original water-colours, with all their ravishing
intoxication of colour. It is as though our reason must needs be lulled
asleep by the dominant flood of purely sensuous delight, before we can
feel about these drawings as the artist would have us feel.
We have seen, in the case of the ‘Stamford’ design in the _England and
Wales_ series, that Turner’s interest in a place was specifically
different from that of a resident or an historian. He cares little or
nothing for local facts, merely as facts; his main concern is to skim
off from the surface of observation a few telling points, a few heads of
discourse as we might call them, which serve as a point of departure to
his own abundant pictorial improvisation. The result may be more or less
like the locality which furnishes the title of the drawing, but it is
never in any strict sense of the word an accurate representation of the
place. Yet the gulf that yawns between local fact and Turner’s lyrical
inspiration is never of quite the same character in the English drawings
as in the French. In both the gulf is wide, but in the English subjects
the artist’s intimate knowledge of the general characteristics of the
scenery gives such an air of plausibility to his improvisations that one
might be tempted to explain his poetical licences as the result of an
ardent striving after general and specific truth.[31] With the French
drawings it is impossible to make such a mistake. Turner was not at all
intimate with French scenery. He got up the subject in a most
perfunctory manner in a few short and hurried tours. He merely paid a
flying visit to the chief places mentioned in his guide-book and,
instead of studying what he saw with a moderate degree of attention, was
quite satisfied to look for mere hints of Turnerian phantasies; he did
not want facts, but suggestions for pictorial inventions. So that in
spite of his voluminous note-taking we find scarcely an accurate detail
in the whole of the sixty engravings. The twin towers of Tancarville
Castle are certainly the result of a misunderstanding of the hurried
sketch made on the spot, and I have no doubt that the ‘errors’ and
‘inaccuracies’ so relentlessly ferreted out by Mr. Hamerton, in the
representations of the Castle of Amboise, the towers of Notre Dame and
St. Jacques de la Boucherie, the old Hôtel de Ville and the Pump, were
caused in the same way. From the point of view of the topographer there
can be no doubt that Hamerton’s statement[32] that the engravings of
this series contain only ‘a sort of muddled reminiscence’ of the objects
and places Turner had seen is in the main correct.
The object of these remarks is far from that of suggesting that the
presence of ‘errors’ and ‘inaccuracies’ of this kind interferes in any
way with the purely artistic value of these drawings. It is rather to
emphasise the fact that it is only when we judge them from a totally
irrelevant point of view, that we can begin to talk of errors and
inaccuracies. Rightly understood these so-called errors and inaccuracies
are not only the justifiable licences of the artist, but the absolutely
inevitable and proper and solely right means of expression which the
artist had at his disposal. His aim is to produce a state of
consciousness in which feeling looms large, and thought-determination is
reduced almost to the vanishing point. One might say, without
exaggeration or unfairness, that mental confusion formed an important
part of his artistic aim. He had then to represent the objects he
depicted not as they appear to a cool, level-headed, and accurate
observer, but as they appear to a highly sensitive subject in a state of
morbid excitement.
If we look at Turner’s French drawings from this point of view, we
cannot but admit that they are almost all highly successful. They are
stamped with the impress of the genuinely romantic fervour, the lyrical
movement of unbridled feeling. In them the joy of artistic creation has
become triumphant, almost insolent. They are deep draughts of artistic
intoxication, exultant with the rush of man’s undying passion for
pleasure, and of the resistless energy that moulds the world of matter
into forms more harmonious with our own distinctly human cravings and
aspirations; Chateaux Gaillards or ‘Saucy Castles’ of the imagination
one might almost call them.
It was characteristic of Turner--I might almost say it was a necessity
of his position as a landscape painter--that he felt compelled to search
far and wide for material out of which to spin his web of visible
phantasy. The need of novel shapes, glowing colours, striking and
elaborate combinations was constantly felt. The rivers Meuse, Moselle
and Rhine were diligently and repeatedly explored. The East--for his
Bible illustrations--he was content to take at second-hand, through the
medium of other men’s sketches, but he sailed down the Danube, as far as
Vienna (or Buda-Pesth perhaps?), ransacked Germany, Italy, Switzerland,
France, Holland and Belgium and part of Austria. But as the years moved
on, his mental grip of the real world became always looser. His mind
played only with the fugitive shades on the surface of appearances; but
not with the elasticity, the free disinterestedness of youth and of the
young-hearted. The professional bias became ever more pronounced, the
point of view ever more abstract and one-sided.
One of his richest mines of pictorial imagery was Venice; not so much
the actual city of the Adriatic, as the fragmentary ideas of an ideal
Venice as they floated in the imagination of the ordinary
Englishman,--the unconscious crystallisation of the desires of the
average middle-class tourist for Southern warmth, freedom, colour,
variety, and bodily pleasure. With all the uncanny certainty of genius
he gathered up the threads of these incoherent and fugitive desires and
fixed them in the forms of immortality.
Let us look carefully at the two Venetian sketches here reproduced. In
‘Shipping on the Riva degli Schiavone’ (No. 55, N.G.) we see the
Campanile and Ducal Palace on the right, a blaze of warm, palpitating
light. In the centre there is a stretch of limpid green water, with a
tangle of boats on it leading the eye to the opalescent Madonna della
Salute in the extreme distance. There is a secondary group of shipping
on the left, among whose masts the tower of San Giorgio Maggiore can be
seen. No words can describe the intense blaze of light, the brilliance
of the colours and their perfect harmony. The execution is breathlessly
hurried and seemingly reckless, yet always perfectly under control; the
artist’s hand is so audaciously swift because the full value of his
colours can only be got in this way. Human skill can go no further in
this direction, and no reproduction can do anything like justice to the
wonderful original.
We find the same qualities in ‘The Approach to Venice: Sunset’ (51,
N.G.), and ‘Riva degli Schiavone, from near the Public Gardens’ (56,
N.G.).
In all these drawings Turner seems to be playing with his material
medium, fondling and caressing his colours and the intrinsic beauties of
water-colour. Yet it is not mere colour as colour that he gives us, not
the cheap and arbitrary and mechanical splendour of merely decorative
art. The colour is delicate and subtle, full of surprises, and as varied
as nature herself; it is controlled and marshalled by the authority of
the tone scheme; it is nature grasped by human intelligence, and made
obedient to its organising power. And a large part of the attractiveness
of these drawings is due to the ease and grace with which the reign of
purpose and intelligence is maintained.
After all it is the marvellous technical skill which they display which
is the essence of the charm of these works. The subject-matter counts
for less than the execution, the objects portrayed are less eloquent
than the sense of freedom, mastery and real happiness evident in the
artist’s work. He wanted nothing beyond this; the work to him was not a
symbol of something higher,--it did not point beyond itself. It was at
once means and end, process and fulfilment, work and reward, the toil of
life and its consummated bliss.
The intrinsic poverty of the subject-matter no doubt serves to
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXIX_
APPROACH TO VENICE: SUNSET
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1839]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXX_
RIVA DEGLI SCHIAVONI, FROM NEAR THE PUBLIC GARDENS
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1839]
intensify what I may call the material beauty of the workmanship. Yet we
must beware of ranking this subject-matter too low. It is not mere
sensuous feeling, it is not entirely devoid of the element of thought.
The conscious action of thought is probably entirely absent. The scenes
float before us in all the bareness of immediate sensation. They give us
nothing more than a moment of immediate experience caught, as it were,
on the wing, and pinned down all quivering with life. But the momentary
experience is that of a man whose visual sensations have been organised
by a life-time of strenuous intellectual control. The brain and the
senses are but the organs of one function. There is not a single
definite thought present, the artist has sunk himself in the flow of the
merely animal life, yet his naked sentience is conditioned through and
through and characterised by the pervasive activity of the mind.
To transfix a fleeting moment of immediate living experience is a very
different thing from the deliberate analysis of the process of
perception and the wilful abstraction of one of its elements. In other
words, this work of Turner is essentially different in kind from the
work of the modern Impressionists. The Impressionist adopts the methods
of science. He operates on his perceptions, and cuts away this element
and that, and in the end presents you with a dead and potted
psychological abstraction, a diagram of the ‘pure’ visual sensation,
which delights us with its ingenuity and neatness, but which no one
would take for a fragment of the living flow of thought and emotion
which all concrete experience is. Impressionism is cold and heartless;
it is merely intellectual and ratiocinative, and therefore essentially
inartistic. But the so-called impressionistic work of Turner, in spite
of its other defects and shortcomings, remains ever in the flood of
concrete living experience. It is never abstract; it never loses its
emotional contagion, though its emotional suggestiveness is somewhat
vague and indefinite. Its power of evoking emotion is very strongly
pronounced, but the emotions it calls up are sadly lacking in
definition, and seem to lie very much at the mercy of chance
associations.
The cause of this vagueness and emptiness is no doubt closely connected
with Turner’s triumphant grasp of the fleeting momentary experience.
His work is almost, though not quite, as empty and indeterminate as an
isolated fragment of immediate sensation. A single steady look by a cool
observer would grasp more of the character of a given scene than we find
in these sketches. But the time occupied in a steady look at a scene is
too long for Turner; though the look should last but half a minute the
mind has time to grasp and organise the sensuous data. Turner’s object
is to catch these data of sense in their least organised condition. To
do this, he must reduce the time of contact between the scene and his
senses to its shortest possible extent. Some of the later Impressionists
have found that merely to open and shut the eyes gives their senses and
intelligence too long an exposure; they have therefore devised a
mechanical instrument which they hold in front of their eyes, and which
operates very much like a shutter used for taking instantaneous
photographs. In this way they obtain a glimpse of a scene of shorter
duration than the most rapid opening and shutting of the eyes can give.
We have no reason for suspecting that Turner had recourse to any such
mechanical aids, but he achieved similar results. He gives us the
momentary bedazzlement of the sunlight, and, within this impression, a
confused and fragmentary perception of objects. The objects seen are
hardly recognisable, their attributes are reduced to a minimum, and the
blur of living emotion which forms part of such rudimentary perception
is reduced to its lowest terms. The control such sketches exercise over
the thoughts and feelings of the spectator is therefore small and
possesses very little individuality.
But even Venice soon palled upon Turner’s imagination. He seemed
desirous of getting away as far as possible from the disturbing
influences of human association. Only among the lonely valleys and
mountain tops of Switzerland could his perturbed and wearied spirit find
something like the peace he sought so feverishly. Even here he shrank
from the common light of ordinary day. He loved the solemn stillness of
night, and would wait to surprise the first rosy hues of dawn upon Mount
Pilatus or the Rigi. His sympathies are all with the silent and primary
things of nature.
It is as though he were seeking to strip himself of the attributes
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXI_
FREIBURG: THE DESCENT FROM THE HOTEL DE VILLE
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1841]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXII_
RUINED CASTLE ON ROCK
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1841]
of humanity, to sink into the unconscious vegetative life of nature.
Even when roused to activity his mind seems curiously dehumanised. When
he draws for us the towers and churches of a place like Freiburg we seem
to be looking at the work of a disembodied spirit. The city is divested
of all its human associations. His eye seems now to classify and arrange
what it sees in terms of space and motion, much as we should imagine an
eagle to look down upon the welter and turmoil of our lives. I get the
same impression from the ‘Village and Castle on the Rhine’ (82, N.G.),
and ‘The Via Mala’ (73, N.G.).
In all this, in this gradual impoverishment of mind and feeling, it is
difficult to discover anything more than the silent and inevitable
ravages of old age. But it is not their poverty of content that makes
these later drawings of Turner so remarkable. It is the virile and
glorious artistic skill which only flames the brighter amid the decay of
all Turner’s other faculties. The man was dead before the incomparable
master of tone and colour was exhausted. It is this curious combination
of an unexhausted special aptitude with a moribund mentality that gives
this later work of Turner its uniqueness, its lurid and uncanny
fascination. In the whole history of pictorial art we have never had
before quite the same display of senile apathy gilded and transfigured
by the dying shafts of an incommensurable natural capacity.
* * * * *
By the time Turner was seventy years of age his bodily infirmities
prevented him from visiting Switzerland. For a year or two we find him
haunting the coast of Normandy, about Dieppe, Eu and Ambleteuse. Then he
is unable to cross the Channel. For a short season he flits about Sussex
and Kent--at Folkestone, Margate, Deal, and Sandwich--and then there is
silence.
CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION
The distinction between Art Criticism and Aesthetic--The aim of
this chapter--Art and physical fact--The ‘common-sense’ conception
of landscape art as evidence of fact--The relation of Art and
Nature--Mr. Ruskin’s treatment of this subject--He distinguishes
(a) physical fact and (b) the artist’s thoughts and feelings about
these facts, yet maintains that the representation of (a) is
equivalent to the expression of (b)--His confusion of Nature and
Mind exemplified in his remarks on the ‘Pass of Faïdo’--Art as the
organ of Beauty implies that the dualism of Nature and Mind is
transcended--Nature is neither given nor immediate--Art therefore
cannot copy nature--What does art represent?--An individualised
psychical content present to the mind of the artist--Classification
of Turner’s sketches and studies from the point of view of their
logical content--The difference between (1) Studies of particular
objects, (2) Drawings from nature, and (3) Works of art proper--The
logical reference of a work of art--The assertions in a work of art
do not directly qualify the ordinary world of reality, but an
imaginary world specially constructed for the artist’s purpose--The
ideal of complete definition--Yet the content must determine the
form--Plea for a dynamic or physiological study of artistic forms.
We have been engaged thus far upon a genuinely inductive investigation,
upon a voyage of discovery, and not upon a dogmatic exposition of
ultimate aesthetic principles. Our general aim has been to study the
processes of artistic expression, but to study them as we find them in
definite concrete instances. Moreover, the nature of our subject-matter
rendered it necessary to keep faithful to the point of view of art
criticism. We were dealing with particular works of art, and to leave
them while we plunged into general questions of aesthetic would hardly
have been polite. But, as I have ventured to observe before, though art
criticism and general aesthetic can be distinguished they cannot be
rigidly separated. Aesthetic without close conversance with the
concrete subject-matter of art criticism is necessarily loose and empty,
while art criticism without a firm grasp of the broad principles of
beauty easily degenerates into casuistry or a useless and rather
despicable form of self-assertion. And however much we try to keep
questions of principle apart from our estimation and study of particular
works of art, we are bound inevitably to fail. We can begin as it were
at either end of the scale, we can busy ourselves with the one or with
the many, but before we have gone very far we are bound to realise that
we are concerned with exactly the same problems. The distinction of art
criticism from aesthetic is merely one of convenience and degree.
In all that has gone before we have been concerned with the fundamental
problems of aesthetic, though we have not treated them directly. In all
that we have written a more or less definite and consistent answer to
these problems has been implied. In this final chapter, therefore, I
propose to draw out as well as I can some of the more general results of
our observations and analyses, or rather to endeavour to state in a more
general form the laws of artistic expression and action which we have
discovered. The ultimate aim of art criticism, as I understand it, is to
grasp and render intelligible the whole region of artistic activity, and
I cannot but think that it will facilitate our grasp of the wider laws
of artistic phenomena, as well as help to consolidate or disprove the
results of our detailed observations, if I make an attempt to render
explicit what has only been implied in our remarks upon particular
concrete instances.
I will begin by calling attention to a fact that has been repeatedly
forced upon our notice. Though our attention has been mainly fixed upon
Turner’s studies and sketches from nature, we have never come into
direct contact with the plain physical reality which, according to the
invariable usage of common-sense, it is the mission of art to represent.
Common-sense tells us that the ‘subject’ of every landscape painting is
a group of physical realities--the fields, rivers, mountains, trees,
houses, etc., in such and such a place, together with their invariable
physical accompaniments, the air and any particular effect of light and
weather that the artist may choose to select. Our analysis has
invariably shown us that the slightest sketch--much more then a fully
organised work of art!--is something more than and something radically
different from a mere representation of such physical constituents. The
physical objects are indeed portrayed, but when we have recognised this
touch of colour or that shape as the representation of this or that
natural fact, we have not exhausted the meaning of the artist’s work.
This recognition is nothing more than what I may call the plain
dictionary meaning of the words the artist has chosen to employ. It is
not till we have gone on to grasp the special significance of the order
in which these elements have been grouped, that we really begin to come
into contact with the work of art itself. As we cannot interpret the
meaning of the simplest sentence unless we give due weight to its
grammatical construction, so with a picture we must take into
consideration what I can only call the grammatical construction and
distinctions proper to pictorial expression. When we penetrate in this
way to the real significance of any of Turner’s works we find we have
been brought into contact with the artist’s thoughts and emotions. We
start, as it were, with trees and rocks and physical details, which, as
such, are independent of man and indifferent if not actually hostile to
human hopes and fears, joys and sorrows; and we end by finding that our
so-called physical facts are but elements in a definitely organised
whole of thought and feeling. We seem to start with natural facts, and
they change under our hands into the symbols of mere ideas and emotions.
Our whole conception of the scope and possibilities of art turns upon
the view we take of the artist’s means of expression. Are we to regard
pictorial art as a medium for imaging and recording the visible facts of
the physical world, or as symbols of states of consciousness? And if we
take the latter view, what is the exact relation of these symbols to the
visible world, to the world of common perception?
So far as I know, only one English art critic has attempted anything
like an adequate discussion of these questions. It will help us, I
think, if we glance for a moment at Mr. Ruskin’s treatment of these
subjects. In the first volume of _Modern Painters_ we are told that the
two great ends of landscape painting are (1) to induce in the
spectator’s mind the faithful conception of any natural object
whatsoever, and (2) to inform him of the thoughts and feelings with
which these’ (_i.e._ the natural objects) ‘were regarded by the artist
himself (_Modern Painters_, Part II., Sec. 1, Ch. i. p. 44).
In attaining the first end, Mr. Ruskin adds, ‘the painter only places
the spectator where he stands himself; he sets him before the landscape
and leaves him.... But he [the spectator] has nothing of thought given
to him, no new ideas, no unknown feelings, forced on his attention or
his heart.’
‘But in attaining the second end, the artist not only _places_ the
spectator, but--makes him a sharer in his own strong feelings and quick
thoughts;--and leaves him ... ennobled and instructed, under the sense
of having not only beheld a new scene, but of having held communion with
a new mind, and having been endowed for a time with the keen perception
and the impetuous emotions of a nobler and more penetrating
intelligence.’
It may seem at first sight that Mr. Ruskin is simply distinguishing two
kinds of landscape painting, such as the simply topographical from the
more imaginative kind. And he does say that ‘it is possible to reach
what I have stated to be the first end of art, the representation of
facts, without reaching the second, the representation of thoughts.’ But
the point he is chiefly concerned to emphasise is the complete
dependence of the second of these aims upon the representation of facts.
An artist can give us physical facts, he says, without expressing his
thoughts and feelings, but no artist can express thoughts and feelings
without the accurate representation of facts. This is the point, he
says, that he wishes at present ‘especially to insist upon,’ and this
dependence of thought upon fact, or ‘truth’ as he generally prefers to
call it, forms, as I understand it, the theoretical basis upon which a
large part of Mr. Ruskin’s art teaching rests.
All great art, he admits, gives us ‘the thoughts and feelings of the
artist,’ but we have no standard by which we can test the value of mere
thoughts and feelings; but as there is a ‘constant relation’ between an
artist’s thoughts and feelings and his ‘faithfulness in representing
nature,’ we have only to examine ‘the botanical or geological details’
in a landscape to ‘form a right estimate as to the respective powers and
attainments’ of the artist. It is from this point of view that he calls
‘the representation of facts’ ‘the foundation of all art,’ and in the
preface to _The Elements of Drawing_, the power ‘to copy’ natural
objects ‘faithfully, and without alteration,’ is treated as equivalent
to the power ‘of pictorial expression of thought.’
Now there is a point of view from which these statements could be
defended, and I will endeavour a little later to indicate that point of
view, but as Mr. Ruskin expresses and applies these ideas, I think they
lead to confusion. Much of the welter of confusion into which the reader
of _Modern Painters_ finds himself plunged seems to me caused by the
author’s persistent refusal to discriminate between physical reality and
mind, between external nature and ideas. The mountains, trees, and
clouds become human thoughts and feelings, not in a metaphysical sense,
but as a matter of ordinary observation, and the artist is bidden to go
out into the fields and draw, with the patience and precision of a
geologist or land-surveyor, the visible shapes and hues of these
materialised emotions and ideas.
Yet Mr. Ruskin is far too fearless and candid a thinker to attempt
deliberately to falsify his evidence. He admits, when the point presents
itself to him, that Turner ‘never draws accurately on the spot’; and in
the wonderful analysis of Turner’s ‘Pass of Faïdo,’ in the fourth volume
of _Modern Painters_, we are clearly shown that the artist’s
representation contains hardly a single accurate and faithful statement
of the physical features of the place. Yet we are assured that in some
inexplicable way the picture is truer to the facts of the place than the
place itself.
The artist, we are told, made ‘a few pencil scratches on a bit of thin
paper’ during a momentary stoppage of the diligence in the pass.
Afterwards he put a few blots of colour to these pencil scratches,
possibly ‘at Bellinzona the same evening’ but ‘certainly _not_ upon the
spot.’ In the course of a few months he showed this sketch to Mr.
Ruskin, who commissioned the artist to make a finished water-colour from
it. (The sketch is reproduced as the frontispiece of the present volume,
so the curious reader may compare it at his leisure with the
reproduction of the completed drawing and Mr. Ruskin’s topographical
drawing made on the spot in _Modern Painters_.)
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXIII_
VILLAGE AND CASTLE ON THE RHINE
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1844]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXIV_
THE VIA MALA
WATER COLOUR. ABOUT 1844]
The first sketch is certainly sufficiently inaccurate as a
representation of the physical facts of the scene, but in the finished
drawing Turner permitted himself further liberties. In it ‘the whole
place is altered in scale.’ The rocks on the left which should be four
or five hundred feet high are made to look ‘about a thousand feet.’
‘Next, he raises, in a still greater degree, all the mountains beyond,
putting three or four ranges instead of one.’ In this way all the parts
of the scene are modified, important features are eliminated at will,
and facts that the artist had seen elsewhere are freely introduced. This
is what we find Mr. Ruskin means when he talks about receiving ‘a true
impression from the place itself, and the accurate and faithful
representation of physical facts’ (_Modern Painters_, vol iv. p. 21.)
Now I am far from denying that Turner’s procedure was thoroughly
justified, but from the ordinary standpoint of common-sense it does
stand in need of justification, and it seems to me that it is not a
proper way to justify it by passionately declaring that the imaginative
vision of the artist does indeed give us ‘the real facts of the world’s
outside aspect,’ or a faithful and unaltered copy of a portion of
physical reality. Indeed I feel very strongly that this playing fast and
loose with Nature and Mind (with physical fact and mental
interpretation) is no gain to the cause Mr. Ruskin has at heart. In
spite of all his passionate eloquence and transparent earnestness and
good faith, the ordinary reader continues to regard nature as the
hypostatised world of the physical sciences and as that part of the
world which falls outside of mind. And when we regard nature in this way
as a mechanical and external system, and declare that it is ‘God’s
work,’ we can go on, as Mr. Ruskin does, to attack ‘idealisation,’ and
heap contumely on such painters as Claude and Poussin, for daring to
modify God’s works and for casting the shadow of their puny selves on
the works of their Creator (_Modern Painters_, vol. i. Preface to second
ed. p. xxvi.). But if we do this we must at least go on to admit that
Turner and all the other great artists sinned in exactly the same way.
There is only one way, I am convinced, of working our way to a firmer
and more consistent point of view, and that is to get above this naïve
dualism of human and physical nature. I may even say that before we can
understand the nucleus of truth in Mr. Ruskin’s own work, we must get
above the unreflective realism in which the theoretical parts of his
writings are steeped. Again and again, in passages of the noblest wisdom
and insight, he transcends the limitations of his own thought and
language, but always to sink back into the confusion inevitable to all
adherents of the psychological philosophy when they come to deal with
mental and moral questions.
The influence of Locke and Hume upon the form of Mr. Ruskin’s theories
is obvious and avowed. He believes that ‘fact,’ ‘nature,’ and ‘truth’
are only given in sense-perception, and that therefore sensation gives
us the truest and fullest knowledge of reality; his distrust of ideas is
due to the belief that they distort and obscure the revelations of this
unerring mirror of reality. But these assumptions do justice neither to
the real independence of the physical world, nor to the claims of the
mind to discover and possess absolutely reliable knowledge. And when we
are dealing with such a concrete reality as pictorial art we cannot
afford to do less than the fullest justice to both nature and mind. We
cannot, like the practical man or the students of the physical sciences,
rule out the unseen world of human feeling as irrelevant to our
immediate purposes, any more than we can neglect the concrete course of
phenomena, like the student of the _a priori_ forms of knowledge. In art
we have to do with nature and mind in active co-operation. We are
therefore bound to treat them as two factors in a common process. We
cannot have two aims in art, and we cannot separate (_a_) physical
objects from (_b_) an artist’s thoughts and feelings; if we make the
attempt we are inevitably driven, as we have seen Mr. Ruskin driven, to
maintain that (_a_) is (_b_), and (_b_) (_a_), and then the point of our
distinction seems lost. In art criticism the problem is not to separate
mind from nature, but to unite them--to bring out the permanent and
universal relation which binds them together. And the only way to do
this is to treat them both as elements or members in the formed world of
the self-conscious subject.
It is not the special business of art criticism to show that the
conception of nature as what is ‘given’ in sense-perception, and as
‘God’s work’ as distinguished from the action of human intelligence, is
contradictory and untenable. The work is already done. The theory of
the perceptive judgment, upon which all modern philosophies, realist as
well as idealist, are based, is too firmly established to render
necessary any further discussion of Locke’s and Hume’s imperfect
analysis of perception. All that art criticism has to do is to realise
that its own point of view is essentially identical with the point of
view of logic and metaphysic, and to adopt and use any of the
established truths of these sciences which are relevant to its purposes.
In insisting that the philosophical point of view is the only possible
platform from which the facts which art criticism deals with can be
adequately correlated, I am aware that I am advancing a somewhat novel
proposition. It is also one which I do not think it advisable to defend
in detail on the present occasion. The present volume is the outcome of
an attempt to apply this point of view. So far as all that has gone
before is in harmony with my intentions, it is an exemplification of the
practical usefulness of such a working hypothesis, but the subject seems
to me to call for full and free discussion, and I hope on a suitable
occasion to revert to it. At present I hope it will be sufficient if I
say that art criticism, if it is to be regarded as a form of knowledge,
can have only one consistent aim, and that is intellectual satisfaction.
And the subject-matter of art criticism is essentially a form of
communication, and therefore is concerned only with certain aspects of
the formed world of human experience. And in dealing with any aspects of
the ‘world of discourse’ with a view to the satisfaction of our
intellectual requirements of coherency and consistency of thought, the
terms and ideas used in our non-systematised everyday thought and
language are certainly inadequate, and those in use in all the special
sciences, though valid enough when confined within the limits prescribed
by their initial assumptions, are no less unsatisfactory for our
purpose.
For the artist to regard nature as anything but an existing reality
independent of individual experience and given ready-made in immediate
perception must, no doubt, be exceedingly difficult. Both the original
bent of his mind and the whole course of his professional training and
practice have tended to consolidate his spatial intuitions into
something apparently primary and instinctive. But an artist, as an
artist, is not called upon to undertake the business of art criticism.
The difficulty, however, remains nearly as great for the art critic, for
he also is necessarily one whose visual faculties have received early
and special development. When even an art critic looks at the familiar
objects with which he is surrounded and notices their sharply defined
forms and colours, he finds it hard to believe that the very
distinctness of these perceptions is the result of a long process of
education which his own faculties have undergone. The clearness seems so
unmistakably to belong to the objects. Yet however difficult the step,
it must be taken. We are bound to admit that animals and infants cannot
have the same ordered visual image of space definitely stretching away
all round them which we are apt to regard as one of the primary and
fixed constituents of the external world. But if the spatial system into
which objects of perception fall so easily has to be constructed in some
way by each human being for himself, it follows that pictorial art,
which as a means of expression and communication is based entirely upon
that system, cannot by any possibility present us with bare physical
fact, with a nucleus of solid, ready-made reality--of ‘God’s work,’ in
Mr. Ruskin’s sense of these terms. So that when we talk of art as
representing nature, it is evident that we must be careful to
distinguish exactly what we mean by such an expression. If we take it to
mean that art does or can or ought to give us a copy of the given actual
world as it exists apart from what Mr. Ruskin calls the meddling action
of man’s intelligence, then it is obvious that we have fallen into a
very serious error. Apart from the action of his intellect, an artist
could not possibly make the external world an object of his thought; he
could not, therefore, represent it on paper or canvas; and even if we
suppose these difficulties overcome, and the copy of bare unadulterated
reality fixed on the canvas, nobody could possibly recognise it or know
that it was there.
If this is so, I think it is clear that art cannot portray or represent
or imitate or copy nature, at least in the sense in which nature is
taken at the unreflective level of thought. What art portrays must be
some part of the ideal construction present to the mind of the artist.
Perhaps the simplest way of putting this is to say that the artist can
operate only with ideas, and not with any directly given elements of
reality; with idea, in short, in the sense of ‘meaning,’ ‘significance,’
or ‘logical content,’ and not with idea as physical fact or immediate
experience. But as ideas in this sense--which we must be careful to
remember includes emotion--are not gifted with the property of
visibility, it seems on the whole better not to say that a work of art
imitates or portrays them. Strictly speaking, a work of art is a symbol,
and a symbol is not a copy or imitation of the meaning it stands for.
The meaning of pictorial art is then always some connected circle of
psychical states with their presentative and emotional contents. These
contents may refer to the common physical world of ordinary experience,
or they may refer to a dream-world that has no existence except as an
element of human consciousness; and this reference is determined in each
case by the nature of the contents themselves.
In reducing nature in this way to an element within the consciousness of
the artist and spectator, I may seem to have destroyed at a blow all the
pure unsullied beauty of the external world as it exists in apparent
independence of human experience. I have done nothing of the kind. I
have insisted that nature, as an existent independent of individual
experience, is an unreal abstraction; that the very fulness and reality
and splendour of nature exist for each of us nowhere but in the world of
our own consciousness, and that within that world of consciousness
nature does exist as a system of objects acting and reacting on one
another, and is therefore independent of the presence or absence of the
consciousness which presents them.
Such a conception of nature seems to me an inevitable corollary from the
general conception of the purpose and mode of action of art forced upon
us by our previous investigations. From this point of view I will define
a work of pictorial art as an arrangement of spatial symbols embodying
an individualised psychical content present to the mind of the artist,
and intended to call up always the same ideas and emotions in the minds
of others. I will make no attempt to conceal my opinion that such a
theory is valid of all pictorial art, and I will add that I am also
disposed to think that such a point of view is a peculiarly fruitful one
from which the whole field of art criticism could be reconstituted. And
as criticism, as at present understood and practised, is declared on all
hands--even by its most accomplished exponents--to be bankrupt,[33] I
might urge that the revolutionary character of any general theory was a
strong argument in its favour. But the present occasion is not a
suitable one for dwelling upon the general and far-reaching character of
this theory. Here I am only justified in insisting upon its validity as
a working hypothesis for the proper understanding of our immediate
subject-matter. Only on such an hypothesis, it seems to me, can we give
an intelligible explanation of the essential character of Turner’s
studies and sketches and drawings from nature, and of their connection
with his completed works.
Whether this assertion is justified at all, and if so how far, depends,
of course, upon the whole of the foregoing study of Turner’s works, but
I will add a few cursory remarks, partly of a recapitulatory nature, but
treating our subject-matter from the point of view of its logical
content or meaning. In these remarks I will try to deal with some of the
difficulties that stand in the way of such a treatment.
We will deal first with Turner’s studies of separate objects, such as
those of an arm-chair (No. 563, N. G.), of fishes (373, 374, N. G.) and
birds (375, 415, N. G.) among the exhibited drawings.[34] Here the
artist works directly from an external object, and seems to be aiming
not at the expression or representation of his own ideas, but at the
reproduction of the attributes or qualities _given_ in sense perception
and belonging to an independent reality. The object was there before the
artist began to draw it, and the artist’s drawing only reproduces the
visible qualities (form and colour) of the object itself. But the object
is much more than its visible qualities, and even its visible qualities
are far from exhausted by the one aspect of them which is all that the
artist can represent. He therefore takes one aspect of an object and
uses that as a sign or symbol of all the other possible aspects and
sense qualities which we may suppose the object to possess. So that even
if we insist on regarding the image on the paper as a particular image,
it is clear that it must be used as a universal sign, if it is to be
understood. The profile view of a face, for instance, means or implies
not only the whole head, but also the whole concrete individuality of
the person to whom the profile belongs.
So far, then, as a particular visual image is used as a rallying point
for calling up the whole range of ideas which constitute the thing as an
object of thought, so far have we to do with a logical idea, with an
element in our world of knowledge, with what is strictly an universal or
an identity. A sharply defined sensuous image of a thing forms, no
doubt, a more easily and generally recognisable vehicle of reference
than a name, but its function as a means of communication is the same.
And as in speaking and writing it is not a matter of indifference what
words we use to designate the objects about which we are thinking, so in
pictorial communication, the particular sensuous image employed has
considerable importance in directing attention to certain constituents
of the total idea called up. In this way pictorial signs certainly have
a general tendency to focus attention upon the corporeity of objects,
but it is, I believe, a grave error of principle not to acknowledge that
all the properly associated elements of the subject referred to are more
or less involved. Some elements are kept more in the background of
consciousness than others, but they are very far from being
non-existent.
It is important, certainly, to think of pictorial signs as endlessly
supple and fluid. Even the rigidity of the meanings of words has been
absurdly overstated. Poetry is only possible because the powers of
evocation possessed by words are much less limited and defined than
certain theorists would have us believe. But pictorial signs are more
delicate agents than words. They vary in ways that words cannot. They
are made _de novo_ on every occasion of their use, and therefore they
can adapt themselves more adroitly to each new context. And every shade
of variation in the constitution of the sign has its influence in
determining the constitution of the mental presentation which it calls
up.
But even when we make all due allowance for the artist’s power of
emphasis and discrimination with regard to the elements which make up
the total thought-content of his object, we must confess that the range
of expression centred round any single material object is limited. A
study of such an object points to the object it was made from--it
assures us that this particular object was bodily present to the eyes of
the artist when he made the study, but it does not tell us in what ideal
context we are to take the object. A study as such is not a work of art,
or perhaps it would be better to say that it is a mere fragment of a
possible work of art. A study is simply a pictorial name, and a name has
meaning only in a sentence or by suggesting a sentence.[35] If we look
at a study from the same point of view from which we regard a work of
art, we should go on to ask ourselves, ‘Well, what of it, what is the
artist’s purpose in painting or drawing this?’ It would start us upon an
objectless and endless intellectual exercise, in which we should miss
the purpose which every work of art implies.
This indeterminateness and incompleteness of meaning forms, I believe,
the essential characteristic of a study, as distinguished from a work of
art. One result, then, of our insistence upon the content of pictorial
art is the re-emergence of an old traditional usage or term which recent
theorising has done its best to discard. Apart from the question of
content, I believe there is nothing to distinguish a study or a sketch
from a complete picture.
Let us now turn from the elaborate studies of individual objects to the
pure outline drawings of places and buildings which Turner made at the
beginning of his career. The drawings of ‘Ripon’ and ‘Lincoln Cathedral’
here reproduced may stand as typical of this class of work. Such
drawings are defective in the same way as the studies. Their meaning is
incomplete. We do not know exactly how to take them. They are very much
on the footing of perceptive judgments, that is to say, they are not cut
loose from the artist’s personal focus of presentation. This is what he
saw at a certain moment; but why did he draw it? As a mere record of
fact, or as material which would or might be useful in a subsequent
imaginative construction? The drawings themselves do not answer these
questions, but their defects of meaning point beyond themselves.
Such drawings are also defective in another way. Being
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXV_
ON THE RHINE
WATER COLOUR. 1844]
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXVI_
BADEN, LOOKING NORTH
WATER COLOUR. 1844]
entirely in outline they make abstraction of the tone, colour, and light
and shade. If we are to take them as topographical illustrations they
demand further visual determination, if, as having an imaginative
purpose, the emotional setting of the facts calls for specification.
So far, then, we have been dealing with operations preliminary or
subservient to the genuine processes of artistic expression. In studies
and sketches made in the presence of the object or model the personal
focus of presentation, and therefore time reference, remains clearly in
evidence. It is not, I am inclined to think, till the drawing or
painting cuts itself loose from the demonstrative of immediate
perception that we find ourselves on the threshold of free artistic
expression.
Such a sketch as that of the ‘Hedging and Ditching’ subject (Plate XXV.)
may serve as a connecting link between the two categories. Like the
drawings of Lincoln and Ripon Cathedrals, it is probably only a record
of a scene actually witnessed, and as a record of the objects
constituting such a scene and their relations to one another it is
considerably less complete than they are. But somehow I find it hard to
take it simply as a record of fact, perhaps simply because of its very
incompleteness. As a symbol of a determinate complex of feeling present
to the mind of the artist, it demands to be placed in a different
category from those drawings which only aim at the accumulation of the
raw material of artistic invention; and this in spite of its defects and
insufficiencies which make it, it must be admitted, quite unintelligible
as such a symbol to everybody but the artist himself. Yet here, it seems
to me, we have crossed the threshold which divides a study from a work
of art proper. The reference to reality is no longer direct. The artist
is no longer giving evidence about matters of fact. He has cut himself
free from the demonstrative of immediate perception and is groping his
way towards a definitory judgment.[36] We have here an operative
identity cut loose from its context, though in a singularly inarticulate
form. But if so, the sketch must be taken as an incipient work of art,
which possesses the capacity of growth or development.
In the sepia drawing of this subject, reproduced in Plate XXVI., we come
to a later stage of this development. Here the whole subject has become
defined, not indeed to the point of realisation that would satisfy a
modern artist, but sufficiently to evoke and control the ideas and
emotions present to the mind of the artist. We can say if we like that
such a drawing is or may be a more or less accurate realisation of an
actual scene, and though such an assertion would require qualification,
I do not think we could reject it altogether. But if we said that it was
nothing more than such a realisation we should certainly be wrong. It is
a great deal more. The connection between any fact or series of facts
and the emotional standpoint from which we regard them is at times a
matter of chance. But in Turner’s design the connection between
subjective feeling and the objects upon which our attention is focussed
is not left to the caprice of chance or to the accidents of individual
initiative; the connection is necessary, and objective and universal.
Indeed if we examine the matter carefully we find that the whole _raison
d’être_ of the drawing turns upon its power of evoking and qualifying
ideally a definite range of emotion. The objects selected and the manner
of their presentation are such that a normal mind, so far as it
understands the artist’s symbols, is bound to feel about the presented
scene in exactly the way that the artist felt.
Now, so long as the scene which the artist evokes exists only for the
sake of suggesting and limiting a certain range of emotion, the relation
of this scene to fact is entirely irrelevant. The artist is not bearing
witness to what he has seen, he is defining a definite complex of
thought and emotion; and as an artist, his work is complete when he has
worked out this definition. When he has done this his work is complete
within itself, and all direct reference to a particular time and place
in the world of fact is wiped out. What we have before us is a
hypothetical connection of ideal and universal meanings. We are now in
the region of the hypothetical judgment. The hypothetical form is
adopted not because there is any uncertainty in the matter, but because
the artist wishes to concentrate attention on the attributes themselves,
and not on any particular embodiment of them. The subject is taken, not
given, and taken not for its own sake but for the sake of that which is
to follow from it,--in this case, the whole emotional complex which is
to be called up.
We might, if our space were not limited, attempt to work this out more
in detail. We might exhibit others of Turner’s studies and designs as
steps or stages in the process which aims at the complete analysis or
definition of its content. But the main conception will, I hope, have
been made evident. If the work of art as operative is nothing but a
connection of content, it can rely upon no other driving force than that
of systematic rationality. The assertions made in a work of art are made
on the strength of rational grounds, and not on the strength of
testimony. If the artist uses fact, he does not use it as fact, and the
most outrageous fiction may be truer than fact within the four walls of
his special construction. In interpreting pictures, as in following
fiction, we are engaged in an act of comprehensive abstraction; the
conjunction of objects or events is all within a judgment that we are
dealing with abstractions used for a certain purpose. Colonel Newcome
and Turner’s trees and mountains are as much abstractions and as unreal
as the abstractions of the physical sciences, as matter, force, atoms,
etc.,--as unreal, but also quite as real, and probably in the same way.
They are provisional conceptions employed for certain purposes. And all
the details and secondary judgments used in interpreting a picture must
be recognised as _transformed_ by the system to which they belong.[37]
But each work of art though rational is nevertheless a unique
individual, and though all works of art as forms of communication must
necessarily aspire to the ideal of complete definition, yet it does not
follow that some of the stages short of absolute determination may not
very well possess considerable aesthetic interest of their own.
Conversation among people who understand each other tends to become
elliptical. A hint of one’s meaning is generally sufficient for a
friend; indeed, when we are thoroughly assured of the good will of our
auditor, a hint often conveys our meaning better than a more laboured
form of expression. It is the same in pictorial art. To those who
understand the language and are on terms of intimacy with the artist’s
usual modes of expression and habitual range of thought and feeling, a
few hurried scribbles or washes are as delightfully suggestive and full
of significance as a completed painting; and at the same time, from the
very fact that we have gone more than half-way to meet the artist, we
enjoy the additional pleasure of intimate intercourse. The sympathetic
and imaginative and well-informed spectator is therefore apt to resent
the suggestion that such delightfully eloquent sketches as the ‘Pass of
Faïdo,’ ‘Lucerne,’ ‘Zurich,’ and a hundred others equally eloquent and
suggestive, are in any way short of perfection. And no doubt from the
strictly aesthetic point of view they are right. ‘The best of this kind
are but shadows, and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them.’
But I think it is clear that considerable experience of the completed
works of an artist is necessary before even the privileged spectators
can feel perfect confidence in their own interpretation of the artist’s
slighter work. When dealing, for example, with some of the sketches and
studies for marine subjects, as ‘Fishermen launching a Boat in a rough
Sea’ (Plate XIX.), or with the marine and pastoral subjects in the
_Liber_, we can interpret them with perfect confidence because, in
pictures like ‘The Guard Ship at the Nore,’ ‘Windsor,’ and ‘Frosty
Morning,’ the artist has shown us exactly the kind of completion his
sketches point to. But with the latest sketches (Faïdo, Lucerne, etc.),
we are on a different footing. A few only of these sketches were carried
farther, and I believe I am right in saying that according to the
consensus of educated opinion the subjects lost rather than gained by
elaboration. I believe this opinion to be correct, and I would suggest
that the explanation is not entirely to be found in the waning powers of
the artist. Some mental and emotional contents are incapable of definite
embodiment. The vague yearning and enigmatical unrest which form the
most prominent elements in these designs are probably of that kind.
Contents of such a nature that they are only partially amenable to
artistic treatment are therefore more adequately treated in the less
explicit forms of art. Such cases as these impress on us the importance
of not confusing that mechanical kind of realisation which is known in
artistic circles as ‘finishing’ or ‘high finishing’ with the demands for
ideal determination. The ideal towards which all works of art
[Illustration: _PLATE LXXXVII_
LUCERNE: EVENING
WATER COLOUR. 1844]
aspire is that of making the connection universally valid between the
sign and the state of consciousness which is its meaning, _i.e._ to
exclude all kinds of accidental and not strictly necessary emotional
effects. But this demand is only a formal one. Where a certain ambiguity
of interpretation forms a necessary factor in the meaning of the work,
the demand for definition is obviously limited. The form, on a final
analysis, must be determined by the content, and not _vice versâ_.
* * * * *
In conclusion, I will only say that I am well aware of the inadequacy of
these remarks, but that I cannot regard this as the proper place to
amplify or develop them. I have said enough, I hope, to draw attention
to the point of view which the novel character of our subject-matter has
forced upon us. In dealing with the completed work of art, as art
criticism mainly does, it is comparatively easy to rest satisfied with a
mere analysis of external shape, or a simple description of the
machinery or anatomy of pictorial art; to treat works of art, in short,
as the dried specimens of the botanist’s herbarium. But when we come to
study the rudimentary forms of artistic expression,--an artist’s
sketches and studies--we begin to discover the shortcomings of the
merely statical or morphological point of view. Works of art, we find,
are something more than the fossil remains or dead bodies of artistic
activity. They are factors in the living process by which the artist’s
thought and emotion are kindled afresh in the bosom of the spectator.
Instead, therefore, of merely describing the anatomy of the dead
specimen, we have had to address ourselves to the much harder task of
attempting to comprehend the living activity of art. The old static or
morphological point of view had to give place to a dynamic or
physiological system of interpretation. The emphasis was placed on
function rather than on structure. The new ideal of art criticism which
has thus been forced upon me is a synthetic view of function and form,
the interpretation of function in relation to structure. Art criticism
would thus become a science which treats of the mode of action of works
of art and of the function of their parts. It would be concerned
entirely with the positive facts of art as an active method
of communication, and it would seek only for verifiable
generalisations--for a classified and unified account of the phenomena
of artistic activity.
The present volume, with all its shortcomings and defects, is, I hope,
at least a feeble and hesitating step in this direction.
INDEX
The names of Turner’s oil-paintings and water-colours are printed in
italics. Oil-paintings in the National Gallery have the gallery numbers
immediately after the names, thus (N.G. 523); water-colours and drawings
in the National Gallery have their reference numbers in the official
Inventory of the Turner Bequest, thus (T.B. CCLXXX. 184). Where I have
been able to do so I have added references to the books where
reproductions of the painting’s, etc., have been published. These are
placed at the end of the entries, in square brackets, thus [Turner
Gallery, Pl. 4].
_List of Volumes referred to_
‘The Turner Gallery.’ With Memoir, etc., by R. N. Wornum.
London: James S. Virtue,
_Referred to as_ Turner Gallery
‘Turner and Ruskin.’ Edited by Fredk. Wedmore.
London: George Allen, 1900, “ Turner and Ruskin
‘Turner.’ By Sir Walter Armstrong. London: T.
Agnew and Sons, 1902, “ Armstrong
‘The Genius of J. M. W. Turner, R.A. Edited by
Charles Holme. Offices of ‘The Studio,’ 1903, “ Genius
‘Hidden Treasures at the National Gallery.’ ‘Pall
Mall’ Press. Holborn, 1905, “ Hidden Treasures
‘The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A.’ By P. G.
Hamerton. London: Seeley and Co., Ltd., 1895, “ Hamerton
‘J. M. W. Turner, R.A.’ By W. L. Wyllie, A.R.A.
London: G. Bell & Sons, 1905, “ Wyllie
‘The Water-Colours of J. M. W. Turner.’ Offices
of ‘The Studio,’ 1909, “ Water-Colours of Turner
‘J. M. W. Turner, R.A.’ By Robert Chignell.
London: Walter Scott Publishing Co., 1902, “ Chignell
‘Ruskin on Pictures.’ Edited by E. T. Cook,
London: George Allen, 1902, “ Ruskin on Pictures
‘James Orrock, R.I. Painter, etc.’ By Byron Webber.
London, 1903, “ Byron Webber
Abbotsford, 106.
Aberdulâs, Mill at, 27.
Abingdon, 11.
_Abingdon, Berkshire, with a View of the Thames: Morning_
(N.G. 485), 5, 55, 96.
[Turner Gallery, Pl. 12; Ruskin on Pictures, p. 24; Chignell, p. 24.]
‘Aesthetic, History of’ (B. Bosanquet’s), 31.
Agnew, Messrs., 20.
_Agrippina landing with the Ashes of Germanicus. Ancient Rome_
(N.G. 523), 119, 121.
[Genius, 0-17.]
Aitken, Dr., 19.
Akenside, M., 69, 98.
Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, 35.
_Alps at Daybreak, The_ (T.B. CCLXXX. 184), 129.
Ambleteuse, 42, 135.
_Anchorage, Ships bearing up for_ (Petworth House Collection), 44.
Anderdon Catalogues (Print Room, B.M.), 17.
_Anselm’s Chapel, with part of Thomas à Becket’s Crown,
St._ (Whitworth Institute), 18, 19.
Antinoüs, The Belvedere, 14.
Antique Class, R. A. Schools, 14.
_Apollo and Python_ (N.G. 121), 5.
[Turner and Ruskin, vol. i. p. 42.]
Apollo, The Belvedere, 14.
_Arm Chair, Study of an_ (T.B. XCV. (_a_) F.), 146.
Arnald, G., 76.
Art Criticism and Aesthetic, separation of, 3, 136.
_Arveron, Source of the_ (Farnley Hall Collection), 82.
[Study for, Genius, MW-10.]
Avon, R., 15.
_Baiae, Bay of, with Apollo and the Sibyl_ (N.G. 505), 88, 93.
[Genius, 0-11; Wyllie, p. 68; Chignell, p. 64.]
Bamborough Castle, 34.
Barnard Castle, 34.
Basire, J., 9.
_Basle_ (R. 5), 78, 79.
Bass Rock, the, 48.
_Bath Abbey from the North-East_ (T.B. VII. F.), 14, 15.
Bell, Mr. C. F., 90.
Bellinzona, 140.
_Bembridge Mill_ (T.B. XXIV. 49), 25.
Bernard, Dr. J. H., 32.
_Berry Pomeroy Castle_ (R. 58), 81.
Berwick, 48.
_Birds, Studies of_ (T.B. CCLXIII. 340 and 341), 146.
[Genius, W-7.]
‘Birmingham,’ 20.
_Blair’s Hut, Mer de Glace_ (Farnley Hall Collection), 39.
[Turner and Ruskin, vol. ii. p. 198.]
_Blaze Castle_ (T.B. VI. 20 _a_), 15.
‘Bolton Abbey,’ 109, 110, 111.
Borrowdale, 34.
Bosanquet, Dr. B., ‘Essentials of Logic,’ 148, 149.
---- ‘History of Aesthetic,’ 31.
---- ‘Knowledge and Reality,’ 151.
---- ‘Logic,’ 149.
_Boscastle_, 99, 100, 102.
Boulogne, 42.
Boydell, John, 36.
Brading, Isle of Wight, 25.
_Bridge and Cows_ (R. 2), 57, 73.
_Bridgenorth_, 20.
_Bridgewater Sea Piece, The_, 43, 44, 45, 46.
[Turner Gallery, Pl. 2.]
Bristol, 14, 15.
‘British Itinerary, The,’ 99.
Brocklebank, Mr. Ralph, 45.
---- Mr. Thomas, 106.
Burke, Edmund, 31.
Bury Art Gallery, 118.
Buttermere, 34.
_Buttermere Lake_ (T.B. XXXV. 84), 35.
_Buttermere Lake, with part of Cromack-water,
Cumberland; a Shower_ (N.G. 460), 35.
Byronism, 121, 123.
Byron, Lord, 128.
Byron’s ‘Childe Harold,’ 88.
_Caernarvon Castle, North Wales_ (T.B. LXX. M), 45.
Calais, 43.
_Calais, Pas de._ See _Now for the Painter_.
_Calais Pier, with French Poissards preparing for
Sea: an English Packet arriving_ (N.G. 472), 23, 47, 119.
[Hamerton, p. 92; Turner Gallery, Pl. 3.]
_Calais Sands, Low Water: Poissards collecting Bait_
(Bury Art Gallery), 118, 126.
[Illus. Cat. Bury Art Gallery, p. 72.]
Callcott, Sir A. W., 4.
Cambridge, 20.
Campbell, T., 128.
Canning, 58.
_Canterbury Cathedral, St. Anselm’s Chapel, with part
of Thomas à Becket’s Crown_ (Whitworth Inst.), 18, 19.
Cardiff Art Gallery, 29.
Carew Castle, 26.
Carisbrook Castle, 25.
Carlisle, 34.
_Carthaginian Empire, Decline of the_ (N.G. 499), 88.
[Turner Gallery, Pl. 21.]
‘Castle of Otranto’ (Walpole’s), 31.
_Chamounix, Mer de Glace_ (Farnley Hall Collection), 39.
[Genius, MW-24; Turner and Ruskin, vol. ii. 196.]
Chateaubriand, 88.
Chepstow, 24.
_Chester_, 20.
Chinese Art, 22.
_Christchurch Gate, Canterbury_, 17.
Clifton Nuneham, 11.
Clydach, R., 27.
_Clovelly_, 99.
Cobham, 51.
_Colchester_, 111, 119.
Coltman, N., 99.
_Combe Martin_, 99.
Coniston, 34.
Content, Form and, 3.
Conway Castle, 37.
Cook’s Folly, Bristol, 15.
Cook, Sir Frederick, 55.
Copper Plate Magazine, 20.
_Cottage, Interior of a_ (T.B. XXIX. X.), 23, 24, 28.
[Genius, MW-5.]
Cox, David, 4.
_Crossing the Brook_ (N.G. 497), 87.
[Turner Gallery, Pl. 18; Armstrong, Pl. 58; Genius, 0-10; Wyllie, p. 60.]
Crowle, Mr., 6.
Cumberland, 34.
Cyfarthfa Sketch Book (T.B. XLI.), 44.
_Dacre Castle, Cumberland_ (T.B. I. D.), 9.
Daniell, Thomas, 76.
_Danish Ships seized at Copenhagen entering Portsmouth
Harbour._ See _Spithead_; _Boat’s Crew_, _etc._
_Dartmouth_, 99.
_Dartmouth Castle_, 99.
_Datur hora Quieti_, 129.
Dawe, H., 81, 82.
Dayes, E., 18, 19, 124.
Deal, 135.
_Decline of the Carthaginian Empire_ (N.G. 499), 88.
[Turner Gallery, Pl. 21.]
Delacroix, 117.
De Loutherbourg, 18, 19, 31, 32, 43.
_Deluge, The_ (N.G. 493), 45.
Derby, 20.
Derwentwater, 34.
_Derwentwater, The Head of_ (T.B. XXXV. 82), 35.
_Devil’s Bridge, Cardiganshire_, 17.
_Devil’s Bridge, The Little_ (R. 19), 80.
‘Devonshire Rivers, The,’ 109.
Dewick, Rev. E. S., 29.
De Wint, P., 4.
_Dido and Aeneas_ (N.G. 494), 5, 87.
[Turner Gallery, Pl. 16.]
---- _building Carthage_ (N.G. 498), 87.
[Genius, 0-9; Wyllie, p. 62; Turner Gallery, Pl. 19.]
---- _directing the Equipment of the Fleet_ (N.G. 506), 88.
[Hamerton, p. 216.]
Diskobolos, The, 14.
_Dolbadern Castle_ (Diploma Gallery, R.A.), 45.
[Genius 0-1.]
_Dort_ (Farnley Hall Collection), 96.
[Mag. of Art, July, 1887, p. 300.]
Dover, 43.
Dunbar Castle, 48.
Dunbar Sketch Book (T.B. LIV.), 48.
Dunstanborough Castle, 34.
Durdham Downs, Bristol, 15.
Durham, 34.
Durham Castle, 34.
Durham Cathedral, 34.
_Dutch Boats in a Gale_ (The Bridgewater Sea-piece), 43.
[Turner Gallery, Pl. 2.]
Dying Gaul, the, 14.
Edinburgh, 48.
_Edinburgh from the Galton Hill_ (T.B. LX. H.), 107, 108.
Egremont, Lord, 126.
‘Elegy,’ Gray’s, 31.
_Ely Minster, Transept and Choir of_, 23.
‘Ely Minster, View of’ (Girtin’s), 19.
‘England and Wales’ Series, 4, 26, 96, 97, 109, 111, 112, 119, 129.
‘Environs of Manchester,’ Dr. Aitken’s, 19.
_Evening of the Deluge, The_ (N.G. 531), 119.
_Evening Star, The_ (N.G. 1991), 119.
[Cassell’s Illustrated Catalogue, N.G. of B. Art., p. 33.]
_Ewenny Priory, Transept of_, 28, 29, 30, 31.
_Exile and the Rock Limpet, The_ (N.G. 529), 119.
[Cassell’s Cat., p. 136.]
Fabris, 7.
_Faïdo, Pass of_ (T.B. CCCLXIV. 209), 140, 152.
[See ‘Mod. Painters,’ 1st ed. vol. iv. pl. 20; Turner
and Ruskin, vol. ii. p. 168.]
Farington, Joseph, 36
_Farm Yard with the Cock_ (R. 17), 57.
Farnley Hall Collection, The, 39, 52.
Fast Castle, 49.
Fawkes, Mr. F. H., 52.
Fawkes, Walter, 91, 93, 103.
_Fishermen at Sea_, 23, 42.
---- _becalmed previous to a Storm--Twilight_, 42.
---- _coming Ashore at Sunset_, 42.
---- _launching a Boat_, etc. (LXVIII. 3), 152.
---- _upon a Lee-shore_ (Lord Iveagh), 23, 43, 48.
[Armstrong, p. 50.]
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 18, 102.
_Flint_, 20.
_Flint Castle._ See _French Coast, Scene on the_.
Flushing, 51.
Folkestone, 135.
_Folly Bridge and Bacon’s Tower_ (T.B. I. A.), 9.
[Genius, MW-1].
Form and Content, 3.
_Forum Romanum_ (N.G. 504), 93.
Fouché’s ‘Memoirs,’ 59.
Fowler, Captain, 15.
Franco-British Exhibition, The, 48.
Freedom and Necessity, Reconciliation of, 68.
_French Coast, Scene on the_ (R. 4), 57, 75-78.
_Frosty Morning, A_ (N.G. 492), 4, 5, 55, 61, 63, 64,
66, 68, 86, 87, 96, 117, 119, 152.
[Hamerton, p. 148; Wyllie, p. 56; Armstrong, p. 112].
Gainsborough, T., 57.
_Garrick’s Temple and Hampton Court_ (R. 63). See _Isleworth, Scene at_.
‘Genius of mechanical excellence,’ 10.
Gessner, 57.
Gilpin’s ‘Northern Tour,’ 9.
Girtin, Thomas, 19.
_Glaramara, Hills of_ (T.B. XXXV. 83), 35.
Goodrich Castle, 26.
Gould, Mr. G. J., 52.
Goyen, Van, 28.
Gravesend, 50, 51.
Gray’s ‘Elegy,’ 31.
Greenwich, 51.
_Greenwich Park, London from_ (N.G. 483) 63, 80.
[Genius, 0-14.]
Grose’s ‘Antiquities,’ 9.
Guisborough Shore Sketch Book (T.B. LII.) 48.
Hamerton’s ‘Turner,’ 130.
_Hannibal Crossing the Alps_ (N.G. 490), 5.
[Turner Gallery, Pl. XIV.].
Harding, J. D., 12.
Hardwick, P. C., 10, 11, 14.
Hastings, 51.
Hayter, G., 117.
Hearne, Thomas, 18, 19.
_Hedging and Ditching_ (R. 47), 61, 94, 119, 149.
Hereford, 15.
Herne Bay, 51.
_Heysham_, 103-106, 108.
_High Force of Tees_, 27.
_Hind Head Hill_ (R. 25), 58, 61.
Hoare, Sir R. C., 25.
Holmes, Mr. C. J., 146.
Holt, Collection of the late Mr. R. F., 23.
_Hornby Castle_, 102, 103, 106, 108.
Hotwells, Bristol, The, 15.
Hugo, Victor, 129.
_Hulks on the Tamar_ (Petworth House), 119.
[Armstrong, p. 74.]
Hume, David, 85, 142, 143.
_Indolence, The Fountain of_, 121.
_Interior of a Cottage_ (T.B. XXIX. X.), 23, 24, 28.
[Genius, MW-5.]
Isabey, 117.
Isle of Wight, 24, 25, 26.
Isleworth Old Church, 11, 12.
_Isleworth, Scene at_ (R. 63), 81.
Italy, 6.
Iveagh, Lord, 23, 43, 48.
Japanese Art, 22.
_Jason_ (N.G. 471), 38.
Jeffrey, F., 67.
Johnson, Dr., 33, 35.
‘Judgement, Kritik of’ (Kant), 31, 32.
_Juvenile Tricks_ (R. 22), 57.
Kant’s ‘Kritik of Judgement,’ 31, 32.
Kershaw, Mr., 25.
Keswick, 34.
‘---- Lake, View of’ (Dayes), 19.
Kidwelly Castle, 26.
_Kilgarran Castle_, 41.
[Armstrong, p. 40.]
_King’s College, Cambridge_, 20.
_Kingston Bank_ (N.G. 491), 55.
Kirkstall Abbey, 34.
_Kirkstall Crypt_ (Soane Museum), 91.
Korin, 51.
Lamartine, 88, 123.
Lambert, Mr., 25.
‘Landscape with Bathers’ (R. Wilson), 36.
Landseer, Mr. C., 25.
_Land’s End_, 102.
Langhorne, Dr., 69.
Laugharne Castle, 26.
Laurie, Mr., 25.
Lawrence, Sir T., 88, 90, 117.
_Lee-Shore, Fishermen on a_ (Lord Iveagh), 23, 43, 48.
[Armstrong, p. 50.]
Liebreich, Dr., 120.
Lessing, 98.
‘Liber Studiorum,’ 4, 48, 56, 57, 58, 61, 64, 72-83, 99, 119.
Lichfield, 20.
Life Class, R.A. Schools, 14.
Lincoln, 20.
_Lincoln, Cathedral Church at_ (Print Room, B.M.), 20,
21, 22, 29, 31, 148, 149.
[Genius, MW-4].
Lindisfarne, 34.
Lippincott, Sir H., 15.
_Llandaff Cathedral_ (T.B. XXVIII. A), 23, 29, 31.
Llanstephen Castle, 26.
Locke, 142, 143.
_London from Greenwich Park_ (N.G. 483), 63, 80.
[Genius, 0-14.]
Loutherbourg, De, 18, 19, 31, 32, 43.
_Lucerne_ (T.B. CCCLXIV. 324), 152.
Lysons’ ‘Environs of London,’ 10.
_Macon_ (Lord Yarborough), 87.
Macpherson, James, 31.
Maiden Lane, 6.
Maiden, Viscount, 25.
Mallet, David, 69.
Malmesbury Abbey, 15.
_Malvern Abbey, Porch of Great_ (Man. Whitworth Inst.) 17, 18.
Manchester, Whitworth Institute, 18, 20.
Margate, 51, 135.
Marshall, J. M. W., 11, 14.
_Martello Towers, Bexhill_ (R. 34), 80.
Martineau, H., 59.
Matthews, Dr., 25.
_Matlock_, 20.
‘Mechanical Excellence, Genius of,’ 10, 125.
Meleager, the Vatican, 14.
_Melincourt, Fall of_ (T.B. XXXVI. 8), 27.
_Melrose_, 129.
Melrose Abbey, 34.
_Mer de Glace, Chamounix_ (Farnley Hall), 39.
[Turner and Ruskin, vol. ii. 196; Genius, MW-24.]
_Meuse, Entrance of the_ (N.G. 501), 96.
[Armstrong, p. 84; Hamerton, p. 170.]
_Millbank, Study at_ (N.G. 459), 28.
Miller, Mrs. Pitt, 45.
Millet, J. F., 67.
Milton, 31, 53, 69, 98.
Mitchell, Mr., 25.
‘Modern Painters’ (Ruskin), 2.
Monmouthshire, 15.
Monro, Dr. 19.
_Moonlight Study at Millbank_ (N.G. 459), 28.
Moore, T., 88, 89.
Morland George, 43, 57.
‘Morning’ (Wilson), 36.
_Mortlake, Early (Summer’s) Morning_, 88.
[Armstrong, p. 118.]
---- _Terrace: Summer’s Evening_, 88.
[Armstrong, p. 120.]
_Mossdale Fall_, 102.
‘Musical’ Education, Defects of, 85.
Naples, Part of, with the Ruin’d Tower of St. Vincent, 7.
Napoleon, 42, 58, 59.
_Narcissus and Echo_ (Petworth House), 87.
Narraways, The, 14.
Naturalism, Wordsworthian, 4.
Nature and Art, 3, 4, 8, 11, 15.
Needles, The, 25.
Neer, Van der, 28.
_Nelson, The Death of_ (N.G. 480), 53, 54.
[Genius, 0-5; Turner Gallery, Pl. 9.]
Newcome, Col. 151.
Newport, Isle of Wight, 25.
‘Night Thoughts’ (Young), 31.
_Nile, The Battle of the_, 42, 43.
_Nore, Guardship at the._ See _Sheerness_.
Norham Castle, 34.
_Norham Castle on the Tweed, Summer’s Morn_, 36, 41.
[Armstrong, p. 34.]
_Northampton_, 20.
Northumberland, 34.
Norwich School, the, 4.
_Nottingham_, 20.
_Now for the Painter_ (J. M. Naylor), 96, 116.
[Turner Gallery, Pl. 27.]
Nuneham Courtenay, 11.
Orrock, Mr. J., 55.
‘Ossian,’ 31, 69.
Oxford, 11, 15.
‘---- Almanack,’ 9.
---- Loan Collection, 27.
---- Sketch Book, The (T.B. II.), 14.
---- University Galleries, 46.
_Oxford, View of High Street_ (Wantage Coll.), 5.
[Illus. Cat. of Wantage Coll.]
_Oxford, View of the City of_ (T.B. III. B), 13.
‘Pastoral’ and ‘Elegant Pastoral,’ 56.
Paterson’s ‘Road Book,’ 34.
Patterdale, 34.
Pembroke Bay, 24.
_Pembroke Castle: Clearing up of a Thunderstorm_ (R. Brocklebank), 45.
[Turner and Ruskin, vol. ii. p. 158; Armstrong, p. 50.]
_Pembroke Castle: Thunderstorm approaching_ (Mrs. W. Pitt Miller), 45.
[Genius, W-1.]
_Pembury Mill_ (R. 12), 57.
Percy’s ‘Reliques,’ 31.
_Peterborough_, 20.
---- _Cathedral: West Entrance_, 20.
_Petworth, Interior at_ (N.G. 1988), 119.
---- _Dewy Morning_ (Petworth House Coll.), 119.
---- House Collection, 44, 126.
---- _Park_ (Petworth House Coll.), 126.
_Petworth Park_ (N.G. 559), 126.
[Wyllie, p. 48.]
_Pilot hailing a Whitstable Hoy_ (Farnley Coll.), 52.
[Turner and Ruskin, vol. i. p. 132; Genius, 0-7.]
Plato, 85.
Pleasant and Beautiful, The, 90.
_Plymouth Dock, from Mount Edgecumbe_, 102.
‘Pocket Magazine,’ 20.
‘Poetry, History of English’ (Warton), 31.
Poetry, Turner’s, 69, 70.
_Poole_, 102.
Pope’s Tower, Stanton Harcourt, 11.
Portrayal and Portrayed, Problem of, 3.
‘Ports of England’ Series, 4, 96, 97.
Portugal, Prince Regent of, 58.
‘Prelude, The’ (Wordsworth), 65.
Print Room, British Museum, 6, 17, 20.
‘Provincial Antiquities,’ Scott’s, 4, 96, 97, 106.
Purfleet, 54.
Purley, nr. Pangbourne, 70.
Pyke-Thompson Bequest, 29.
_Queen Mab’s Cave_ (N.G. 548), 119.
Radley Hall, near Abingdon, 11, 12, 13.
_Raglan Castle._ See _Berry Pomeroy Castle_.
_Rain, Storm, and Speed_, (N.G. 538), 119.
[Turner and Ruskin, vol. ii. p. 270; Genius, 0-23; Wyllie, p. 132.]
Raleigh’s (Professor), ‘Wordsworth,’ 67.
Rawlinson’s ‘Liber Studiorum,’ 73, 78.
_Reichenbach, Falls of the_ (Farnley Hall Collection), 39.
[Genius, M.W.--19.]
‘Reliques,’ Percy’s, 31.
Rembrandt, 67, 125.
‘Review of Publications of Art,’ 60.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 10, 125.
Richmond Castle, Yorkshire, 34.
_Richmond Hill on the Prince Regent’s Birthday_ (N.G. 502), 88.
‘Richmondshire, The History of,’ 4, 97, 102, 106.
_Richmond, Yorks_, 102.
‘Rimini, Bridge of Augustus at’ (Wilson), 36.
_Ripon Cathedral_ (T.B. XXXV. 6), 34, 148, 149.
‘Rivers of England’ Series, 4, 96, 97, 99, 109, 127.
‘Rivers of France’ Series, 127, 129.
‘Rochester Castle’ (Sandby), 19.
_Rochester on the Medway_ (T.B. CCVIII. W.), 109, 127.
Rogers, Samuel, 128.
Romantic Art, Inauguration of, 31.
_Rome, from Monte Mario_ (T.B. CLXXXIX. 33), 92.
_Rome from the Vatican_ (T.B. CLXXXIX. 41), 88.
Rooker, M. A., 18, 19.
Roslin Castle, 48.
Rowlandson, T., 43.
Royal Academy Schools, 14.
Royal Academy, Winter Exhibition, 11.
Ruskin Bequest, Cambridge, 102.
Ruskin, Mr. John, 8, 27, 49, 90, 92, 93, 94, 110, 130.
‘Ruskin on Pictures,’ 50.
Ruskin’s ‘Elements of Drawing,’ 95, 140.
---- ‘Modern Painters,’ 109, 138 _sq._
St. Abb’s Head, 49.
_St. Anselm’s Chapel, etc.--‘Canterbury Cathedral’_
(Man. Whit. Inst.), 18, 19.
_St. Catherine’s Hill, near Guildford_ (R. 33), 61.
_St. Gothard, Pass of_ (Farnley Hall Collection), 39.
_St. Vincent’s Tower, Naples_ (T.B. I. E.), 6, 9.
Salisbury, 25.
_Sandbank with Gipsies_ (N.G. 467), 55.
Sandby, Paul, 7, 13, 18.
Sandwich, 135.
Santayana, Mr. George, 123, 124.
_Schaffhausen, Fall of the Rhine at_ (Tabley House), 87.
Scott, Sir Walter, 49, 88, 106, 128.
Scott’s ‘Provincial Antiquities,’ 4.
Shee, Sir Martin A., 117.
_Sheerness_ (Wantage Collection), 52, 53, 54, 96, 117, 152.
[Armstrong, p. 52; and Illus. Cat., Wantage Collection.]
Shelley, P. B., 123, 129.
_Ships bearing up for Anchorage_ (Petworth House Collection), 44.
Shipwreck, Studies of a (T.B. LXXXVIII. 1-8), 49.
[Wyllie, pp. 19-22.]
_Shipwreck, The_ (N.G. 476), 23, 49, 50.
[Genius, 0-3; Monkhouse, p. 50; Wyllie, p. 36.]
Shrewsbury, 20.
‘Simple Nature,’ 4, 5.
_Snowstorm, The_ (N.G. 530), 119.
[Wyllie, p. 126; Turner and Ruskin, vol. ii. p. 220.]
Soane Museum, The, 93.
Southampton, 25.
Southend, 51.
‘Southern Coast, The,’ 4, 96-102, 103.
Southey, R., 88.
_Spinnet Player, The_ (T.B. CCXLIV. 37), 128.
_Spithead: Boat’s Crew recovering an Anchor_ (N.G. 481), 53, 54, 60, 119.
[Armstrong, p. 66; Turner and Ruskin, vol. i. p. 154.]
Spithead Sketch Book (T.B. C.), 59, 60.
_Stamford, Linc._, 112, 113, 114, 129.
Stanton Harcourt, 11.
‘Stanton Harcourt, The Old Kitchen at,’ 9.
_Stoke, near Bristol_ (Mrs. A. Thomas), 15.
_Stonehenge at Daybreak_ (R. 81), 99.
_Straw Yard, The_ (R. 7), 57.
Strong, The late Mr. Arthur, 83.
Subject and Treatment, 3.
‘Sublime and Beautiful, Essay on the’ (Burke), 31.
Sunningwell, 14.
---- Church, 11, 12.
Symbolists, The French, 126.
Swinburne, A. C., 129.
Tantallon Castle, 48.
Taylor, The late Mr. J. E., 82.
_Tees, High Force of_, 27.
_Teignmouth_, 119.
_Téméraire, The Fighting_ (N.G. 524), 5, 54.
[Armstrong, p. 116; Genius, 0-19; Hamerton, p. 282; Wyllie, p. 118.]
Teniers, 57.
_Thames and Medway, The Meeting of the_ (N.G. 813), 46.
[Wyllie, p. 142.]
---- ---- ---- (Mr. Widener’s), 52.
[Armstrong, p. 54.]
Thomas, Mrs., 15.
Thomson, 57, 98.
_Thomson’s Lyre_ (Basildon House), 5.
Thornbury, Walter, 6.
Tilsit, Treaty of, 58.
_Tintern Abbey_ (V. and A. Museum), 18 [Genius, MW-3].
Topographical Art, limitations of, 22.
_Trafalgar, Battle of_, (Greenwich Hospital), 96
[Turner and Ruskin, vol. i. p. 4; ‘Hidden Treasures,’ p. 91.]
Treatment and Subject, 3.
_Trossachs, The_, 41.
_Trout Stream, The_, 55, 86. [Armstrong, p. 58.]
Truth, 3.
Turner, Charles, 76.
_Twickenham--Pope’s Villa._ See _Isleworth, Scene at_.
_Tynemouth_, 113-115.
Ullswater, 34.
_Ulysses deriding Polyphemus_ (N.G. 508), 88, 118, 119. [Armstrong, p. 114;
Turner and Ruskin, vol. i. p. 54; Genius, 0-12;
Hamerton, p. 224; Wyllie, p. 80.]
_Union of the Thames and Isis_ (N.G. 487), 55.
Usk, R., 44.
Van der Neer, 28.
Van Goyen, 28.
Vatican Meleager, The, 14.
Vaughan Bequest, 102.
_Venice, Riva degli Schiavone, from near the Public
Gardens_ (T.B. CCCXVI. 21), 132.
_Venice, Shipping on the Riva degli Schiavone_ (T.B. CCCXVI. 20), 132.
_Venice, The Approach to_ (T.B. CCCXVI. 16), 132.
Ventnor, 25.
Venus de’ Medici, 14.
_Via Mala, The_ (T.B. CCCLXIV. 362), 135.
Victoria and Albert Museum, 18, 19, 102.
_Village and Castle on the Rhine_ (T.B. CCCLXIX. 22), 135.
_Waiting for Dinner_ (T.B. CCCXLIV. 31), 127, 128.
Wallis Wall, Bristol, 15.
Walpole, Horace, 31.
Walton Bridges, 51.
_Walton Bridges_ (Wantage Collection), 55. [Armstrong, p. 58.]
---- ---- (Mr. J. Orrock), 55. [Byron Webber, vol. i. 94].
Wanstead, New Church at, 10.
Wantage, The Lady, 52, 55, 63.
Warkworth Castle, 34.
Warton, Joseph, 4, 31.
_Watchet_, 99, 100, 101, 102.
_Waterloo, Field of_ (N.G. 500), 88.
_Water Mill, The_ (R. 37), 61.
Wells, 26.
Wells, Mrs., 75.
---- W. F., 73.
_Welsh Bridge, Shrewsbury_ (Man. Whit. Inst.), 20.
‘_Welsh Coast, A View of the, from Cook’s Folly_,’ (T.B. VI. 9), 15.
Westall, William, 76.
_Whalers_ (N.G. 546, 547), 119.
_Whalley Bridge and Abbey_ (Wantage Collection),
63. [Illus. Cat. Wantage Collection.]
‘Whatman’s Turkey Mills,’ View of (Sandby), 19.
_What You Will_, 88.
Wheatley, F., 18, 19, 57.
Wheeler, Mrs., 75.
_Whitstable Hoy, Pilot hailing a_ (Farnley Hall Collection),
52. [Turner and Ruskin, vol. i. p. 132; Genius, 0-7.]
Widener, Mr. P. A. B., 52.
Wight, Isle of, 24, 25, 26.
Wilson, R., 4, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 39, 84.
Winchester, 25.
Windermere, 34.
_Windmill and Lock_ (R. 27), 57, 58, 61, 94.
---- ---- (Sir Frederick Cook), 55 [Genius 0-8].
Windsor, 15.
_Windsor_ (N.G. 486), 4, 55, 63, 64, 67, 68, 86, 96, 117, 152.
Wint, De, 4.
Worcester, 15.
Wordsworth, 4, 65, 86, 125.
---- Dorothy, 64.
‘Wordsworth’ (Prof. Raleigh), 67.
Wordsworthian Naturalism, 4.
Wordsworth’s ‘Excursion,’ 67.
Wordsworth’s ‘Lines, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey,’ 66.
---- ‘Lyrical Ballads,’ 58.
---- ‘Prelude,’ 65.
Wrexham, 20.
Yorkshire, 34.
_Yorkshire, Coast of, near Whitby_ (R. 24), 48.
‘Yorkshire Series, The.’ See ‘Richmondshire, History of.’
Young, Edward, 4, 31.
_Zurich_ (T.B. CCCLXIV. 289), 152.
[Water-Colours of Turner, Pl. XXVII.]
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See _Modern Painters_, vol. v. p. 342 _note_.
[2] _The Life of Turner_, by Walter Thornbury, 1897 edition, p. 27. The
drawings referred to are now in the Print Room, British Museum.
[3] Since these lines were written I have been lucky enough to discover
its source. It is based on an engraving in Gilpin’s _Northern Tour_,
vol. ii., facing p. 85. Turner has followed the engraving fairly
carefully, but has introduced two figures of his own in the foreground.
[4] It was finished in 1790 and consecrated on the 24th June. See
Lysons’s _Environs of London_, vol. ii. p. 237.
[5] These titles are written on the backs of the drawings by the artist
himself--an excellent practice which he very soon abandoned.
[6] The fourth architectural subject in the exhibition is described as
a view of the ‘Inside of Tintern Abbey.’ If this was the drawing now in
the Victoria and Albert Museum, as the evidence seems to indicate, the
critic’s preferences seem even more incomprehensible. On the whole this
is, I think, a finer work even than the ‘St. Anselm’s Chapel.’
[7] For it appears that there is some doubt about the matter. The
Rev. E. S. Dewick possesses another version of this subject, similar
in size and design, but very inferior in workmanship. The clumsiness
and woodenness of the workmanship have been taken as evidence that
the drawing was an earlier one than that at Cardiff. But it may also
indicate that it is merely the work of an unskilful copyist.
[8] Cf. Bosanquet’s _History of Æsthetic_, p. 277; also Kant’s _Kritik
of Judgment_, sections 28 and 29.
[9] _Op. cit._ (Dr. Bernard’s translation), p. 141.
[10] _Op. cit._ p. 125.
[11] The conventional eighteenth-century attitude towards these scenes
seems well expressed by a description in Paterson’s _Road Book_. ‘To
the south of the Derwentwater,’ the passage runs, ‘is the rocky chasm
of Borrowdale, a tremendous pass, at the entrance of which dark caverns
yawn terrific as the wildness of a maniac, etc.,’ page 435.
[12] Wordsworth, _Prelude_, Bk. xii. 118-120.
[13] See Plate XVI. for the study for the Farnley
picture.
[14] See Plate XXXVII.
[15] Plate XXXVIII.
[16] Plate XXVII (_b_).
[17] _The Prelude_, Bk. xiii. l. 287 _sq._
[18] See, for example, Jeffrey’s account of the Sixth Book of the
_Excursion_, quoted in Professor Raleigh’s _Wordsworth_, pp. 8 and 9.
[19] It is, of course, possible that the verses were composed by Turner
himself.
[20] Plate XXXIX.
[21] Bell, Article on ‘Turner and his Engravers,’ in _The Genius of
Turner_ (Studio Extra), pp. 142-143.
[22] _Turner Catalogue_, written in 1881. National Gallery edition,
1899, p. 37.
[23] _Ibid._
[24] It is also worth remarking that the value of these drawings from
a topographical point of view, _i.e._ as giving information pure and
simple, is probably diminished by the fact that the material they
contain is so skilfully selected and arranged.
[25] _Modern Painters_, vol. i. p. 132.
[26] _Ibid._ p. 130.
[27] _Elements of Drawing_, Preface, p. X.
[28] Plate LVII.
[29] ‘Turner and Mulready.--On the Effect of certain Faults of Vision,
etc.’ By R. Liebreich. _Macmillan’s Magazine_, April 1872.
[30] _The Sense of Beauty_, by George Santayana. A. & C. Black, 1896,
p. 149.
[31] This, I need hardly add, is Mr. Ruskin’s explanation.
[32] Hamerton’s _Turner_, p. 244.
[33] See, for example, Professor C. J. Holmes’s _Notes on the Science
of Picture-Making_. Introduction.
[34] Two of these studies are reproduced in _The Genius of Turner_.
[35] See Dr. Bosanquet’s _Essentials of Logic_, p. 91 _sq._
[36] The transition is from the singular to the universal judgment. See
Dr. Bosanquet’s _Logic_, vol. i. chap. v.; and _Essentials of Logic_,
p. 64 _sq._
[37] The best discussion of these points with which I am acquainted is
contained in Dr. Bosanquet’s _Knowledge and Reality_, pp. 140-155.
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