Turner's Golden Visions

The next Sketch-Book is short, and devoted to Farnley. The idea of the 'Snowstorm, Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps,' came to Turner through a storm he saw at Farnley.

One wild day Turner called loudly from the doorway:—

'Hawkey! Hawkey! come here! Look at this thunderstorm—isn't it wonderful? Isn't it sublime?'

And while he talked he was making notes of its form and colour on the back of a letter. Young Mr. Hawkes proposed a drawing block but Turner said the letter did very well. He was absorbed, entranced, while the storm rolled and swept, and the lightning flashed over the Yorkshire hills. When the storm had passed Turner returned to the room and said:—

'There, Hawkey. In two years you will see this again, and call it "Hannibal Crossing the Alps."'

We look at this tumultuous picture to-day and think of that thunderstorm at Farnley as we watch the lurid sun through the storm of snow that threatens to overwhelm the muddled, huddled, Carthaginian army. Yes: it is wonderful as was the thunderstorm to Turner. This picture, in a category between his classical works and his sunlight visions, was accompanied by nine halting, unpoetical lines from the Fallacies of Hope, this being the first time that a quotation from that poem was attached to the R. A. catalogues. The title was modified, probably, from Campbell's Pleasures of Hope.

'Craft, treachery, and fraud—Salassian force—
Hung on the fainting rear; then plunder seized
The victor and the captive,—Saguntum's spoil
Alike became their prey; still the chief advanc'd,
Looked on the sun with hope; low, broad, and wan
While the fierce archer of the downward year
Stains Italy's blanched barrier with storms.
In vain each pass, ensanguined deep with dead
Or rocky fragments, wide destruction roll'd.'

And the eyes fall upon two lines that mean something, that aptly express the thought of the dumb poet, the lines which I quoted in Chapter III.,—'Still the chief advanced, Looked on the sun with hope'—Turner's fitting epitaph, and life-long aspiration. He added to the Fallacies of Hope off and on for forty years, and it dealt with almost every conceivable subject from the Deluge to Napoleon.

This year his town address is given as Queen Anne Street West, but, as I have already explained, this did not mean a change of domicile, as the three houses, two in Harley Street and one in Queen Anne Street, were the same dwelling with a communication at the back.

Turner, Thornbury tells us, almost entirely rebuilt his house in Queen Anne Street, and while all the houses round it from time to time smartened themselves up, this alone remained unchanged. The Gallery in later years, as we know, became most dilapidated:—

The oiled paper of the skylight hung down in black, sooty, furred slips. The damp here and there had free access; and it is certain that while many of the pictures ripened and improved, others were cracked, warped, chilled, and seriously injured. Both the "Hero and Leander," and "The Building of Carthage," suffered. Mr. E. Godall tells me that in one picture particularly, a great white button of paint that had stood for the sun had dropped off.

'"I think some one has picked it off intentionally," he could not help saying.

'"I think he has," replied Turner, quite unmoved.'

Turner was 'quite unmoved.' As he grew older he cared less and less for the things that most people deem so important. His golden visions did not depend upon material accessories. May we not find a hint of his almost inarticulate inner life in that little red book unearthed by Thornbury from his studio, where, amid notes about chemistry, memoranda as to colours, and prophylactics against the Maltese plague, are certain scraps of verse, something about 'Anna's Kiss,' 'A Look Back,' 'A Toilsome Dream,' 'Human Joy, Ecstasy, and Hope'?

But I am anticipating. We are still in the year 1812 and Turner is preparing 'A Frosty Morning' for exhibition, and considering one of his earliest series of book illustrations,—The Southern Coast of England, which was probably begun about 1812, although the first seven plates, including 'St. Michael's Mount,' 'Poole,' and 'Land's End,' were not published until 1814. The last issue was in 1826. De Wint, Clennell and Prout were also contributors to The Southern Coast. Turner was to receive seven and a half guineas apiece for the drawings, which was increased later to ten and twelve guineas. But in spite of that advance he became dissatisfied and broke with W. B. Cooke, the line engraver and publisher of The Southern Coast. Business relations with Turner were not easy.

CHAPTER XX

1813: AGED THIRTY-EIGHT

HOAR FROST AT SUNRISE THAT HAS VANISHED FROM 'A FROSTY MORNING'

Turner was anxious about his health this year, if we may judge from an entry in the 'Chemistry and Apuleia' Sketch-Book detailing the symptoms of the Maltese plague, and the cure. A 'receipt for covering Linen to make it impenetrable to water, etc.,' follows, then 'Study of Sky,' 'River with Hills on Either Side,' notes as to varnishes and sketches of nymphs dancing, showing that his anxiety about the symptoms of the Maltese plague had passed away.

In this year he exhibited the attractive and popular 'A Frosty Morning: Sunrise,' with a quotation from Thomson's Seasons: 'The rigid hoar-frost melts before his beam'; also 'The Deluge' with some lines from Paradise Lost:—

'... down rush'd the rain
Impetuous, and continued till the earth
No more was seen.'

These subjects indicate Turner's versatility and determination to impress the public with one thing, if not with another. 'A Frosty Morning: Sunrise' is infinitely nearer to the real Turner than 'The Deluge.' It is a pleasant picture, simple and direct, a true transcript of nature; but where is the hoar-frost which made such a sensation when the picture was exhibited? It is gone like the bloom on the Impressionist pictures in the Caillebotte Collection in the Luxembourg Gallery. The form of 'A Frosty Morning' remains, and it still suggests the chill of a winter sunrise, but gone is the sparkling hoar-frost.

Archdeacon Fisher writing to Constable about one of his landscapes said: 'I have heard your great picture spoken of here by no inferior judge as one of the best in the Exhibition. I only like one better and that is a picture of pictures, the 'Frost' by Turner. But then you need not repine at this decision of mine; you are a great man and, like Bonaparte, are only to be beaten by a frost.'

That is something; to have one's Academy contribution described as 'a picture of pictures,' and by one whose allegiance was given whole-heartedly to a rival painter. It would be interesting to know what Constable thought of Turner's 'Frosty Morning: Sunrise.' Already you perceive that Turner is forsaking his rivalries, and 'finding himself' with nothing between his vision and a Sunrise. There is a personal note in this picture. The horses were studied from the friendly steed 'Crop-ear,' somewhat stiff in the fore-legs, which Turner used to drive about the country when he was staying at Sandycombe. The young Trimmers said that Turner painted faster than he drove, and Thornbury remarked that he could never draw a horse; but I am sure that he could paint a hoar-frost at sunrise. And if this picture had been happily rolled up and kept in the cellars of the National Gallery with the other sunrise pictures, we might to-day still be enjoying Turner's sparkling vision of hoar-frost.

CHAPTER XXI

1814. AGED THIRTY-NINE

HE PAINTS MORE CLASSICAL PICTURES, TURNS AUTHOR, AND IS HAPPY AT SANDYCOMBE

More classical pictures with the annoying foregrounds, the dream buildings reflected in the still water, and the beauty of the Turnerian distance. You can take your choice between 'Dido and Æneas leaving Carthage on the Morning of the Chase,' and 'Apuleia in search of Apuleius,' which won the premium at the British Institution for the best landscape of the year. Unblushingly Turner founded it on one of Claude's sketches in his Liber Veritatis. Although he set himself to rival Claude before all the world, sure of his own victory, he had not the slightest hesitation in basing his prize picture on a sketch by Claude.

But there is nothing classical or imitative about his 'Review at Portsmouth' Sketch-Book of this year with its innumerable sketches of shipping, and its usual stumbling scraps of verse such as—

'The floating bulwark lies
Above (?) the holy cross unfurled (?)
Blowing ... shows the saviour of the world
Hence gloomy evil infamy's.'

In 1814, as I have said in Chapter XIX., the first seven parts of The Southern Coast were published, and in this year Turner appears as an author with ill-success. He had attempted to describe 'St. Michael's Mount' for The Southern Coast, and Combe, the editor to whom Turner's description had been sent, writes thus to Cooke, the publisher:—

Friday afternoon.

My Dear Sir,—I am really concerned to be obliged to say that Mr. T——'s account is the most extraordinary composition I have ever read. It is impossible for me to correct it, for in some parts I do not understand it. The punctuation is everywhere defective, and here I have done what I could, and have sent the proof to Mr. Bulmer. I think the revise should be sent to Mr. T——, to request his attention to the whole, and particularly the part that I have marked as unintelligible. In my private opinion, it is scarcely an admissible article in its present state; but as he has signed his name to it, he will be liable to the sole blame for its imperfections.—Your faithful humble servant,

w. c.'

Cooke suppressed Turner's composition; but Combe, evidently knowing his man, told Cooke that unless he wished to drive Turner 'stark staring mad' he must be sure to send him corrected sheets of the suppressed article. The end was that Turner's contribution was cancelled. In 1827 all connection between Cooke and Turner was broken off. Turner was clearly in the wrong. How could anybody work with this genius? 'His mind,' says Hamerton, 'was subject to confused changes and irregularities about all transactions, owing to its want of method and clearness.' The Freemasons' Hall affair between Turner and Cooke must have been amusing to some, painful to others. 'It was,' says Thornbury, 'a dispute about the return of some drawings (I think of the Annual Tour) that both claimed. Turner's red face grew white with the depth of his rage, Cooke grew hot and red, and "must," "shan't," "shall," "rogue" flew about.'

In this year Turner bought Solus Lodge, later called Sandycombe Lodge, on the road between Twickenham and Isleworth. There his old father used to dig in the garden, and look after the household, and there Turner spent probably some of the happiest days of his life. He was friendly with the Trimmer family of Heston, four miles off, and the Vicar, the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, tried to teach Turner Greek in return for lessons in painting, but he could never overcome the difficulty of the verbs, and finally had to renounce the attempt. 'I fear I must give it up, Trimmer,' he said; 'you get on better with your painting than I with my Greek.' The young Trimmers, who were living when Thornbury wrote his Life of Turner, describe him as a slovenly old man (he was still far off fifty), very sociable and wont to make them laugh. The days must have passed pleasantly at Sandycombe, sketching in oils on a large canvas in a boat, painting in the summer-house of the garden which ran down to the Thames, fishing, and driving old 'Crop-ear' about the country. The young Trimmers give a much pleasanter picture of Turner than most of his friends and contemporaries, but then they loved him. They describe Queen Anne Street as homely, and say that when they visited him they were always welcome to what he had, and that he would offer them cake and wine, and stuff the cake into their pockets. And they show Turner in modest mood before the work of other painters, telling how he spoke with rapture of a picture probably by Poussin, 'Jonah cast on Shore,' describing it as wonderful; and how he was enthusiastic about Gainsborough's execution, and Wilson's tone. And how, one day, looking at a Van de Velde, Turner said, 'I can't paint like him.'

But he could. Van de Velde is to-day in the trough of his own dark seas, and Turner is on the crest of his own opalescent waves beneath a sky flushed with his dreams of colour.

CHAPTER XXII

1815: AGED FORTY

'A WONDERFUL YEAR' AND A TURNERIAN LOVE-LETTER

Eighteen hundred and fifteen was a wonderful year in the history of Europe, and it has also been called a wonderful year in the art history of Turner. He sent eight pictures to the Royal Academy, and among them were 'Crossing the Brook,' 'Dido Building Carthage, or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire,' and 'Bligh Sand near Sheerness.' Some consider 'Crossing the Brook' as the finest Turner, others regard it as rather old-fashioned with its conventional trees and domestic foreground, but all like its English character, the cool beauty of the colour, the white clouds that curl in the grey-blue sky, the wooded hills that rise from the Tamar, dividing Devon and Cornwall, and the miles of faint, fair, distant country. 'Crossing the Brook' was a favourite of Turner's, and so was the magnificent 'Dido Building Carthage.' This classical triumph, a shout of colour, with 'The Sun Rising Through Vapour' flank the two Claudes in the National Gallery, Turner's message of rivalry from the grave. In life he would not part with 'Dido Building Carthage.' Chantrey tried to buy the picture more than once, but found the price rose higher each time.

'Why, what in the world, Turner, are you going to do with the picture?' he asked.

'Be buried in it, to be sure,' growled Turner.

This year, too, we have the record of what has been described as Turner's second attempt at marriage, which I do not think amounts to much more than his first love-affair. At the end of the following letter will be found the offer of marriage; the lady in question was a relation of the Trimmers:—

Queen Anne Street, Tuesday, August 1st, 1815.

'My Dear Sir,—I lament that all hope of the pleasure of seeing you or getting to Heston must for the present probably vanish. My father told me on Saturday last when I was as usual compelled to return to town the same day, that you and Mrs. Trimmer would leave Heston for Suffolk as to-morrow, Wednesday. In the first place I am glad to hear that her health is so far established as to be equal to the journey, and to give me your utmost hope for her benefiting by the sea air being fully realised, 'twill give me great pleasure to hear, and the earlier the better.

'After next Tuesday, if you have a moment's time to spare, a line will reach me at Farnley Hall, near Otley, Yorkshire, and for some time, as Mr. Fawkes talks of keeping me in the north by a trip to the Lakes, and until November; therefore I suspect I am not to see Sandycombe. Sandycombe sounds just now in my ears as an act of folly when I reflect how little I have been able to be there this year and less chance perhaps for the next. In looking forward to a continental excursion, and poor Daddy seems as much plagued with weeds as I am with disappointment—that if Miss——would but waive bashfulness, or in other words make an offer instead of expecting one, the same might change occupiers; but not to trouble you further allow me with most sincere respect to Mrs. Trimmer and family, to consider myself.—Yours most truly obliged,

'J. M. W. Turner.'

The reference to Miss——does not suggest the heart of a burning lover: no, Turner's heart was in his work, and also, just now, in the prospect of a 'continental excursion.'

CHAPTER XXIII

1816: AGED FORTY-ONE

SKIES! SKIES! SKIES!

The Sketch-Books of the period are full of Yorkshire and Farnley subjects, and one of them contains a fragment of a letter from Mr. Walter Fawkes concluding: 'Everybody is delighted with your "Mill." I sit for a long time before it every day.' The 'Mill' which delighted Mr. Fawkes may be the 'View of Otley Mills with the River Wharfe and Mill Weir,' sold at Christie's in 1890.

I do not suppose that anybody has ever sat for a long time every day, or any day, before Turner's two contributions to the Academy of this year, 'The Temple of Jupiter Panellenius Restored,' and the 'View of the Temple of Jupiter Panellenius.' I turn from them to the Sketch-Book labelled simply 'Skies.' Inside one of the covers there is a sketch in pencil of a sky with the following in Turner's handwriting: 'Yellow Light. Blue Shadows. Red Crimson Light.' Following this there are sixty leaves and on each leaf is a study of a sky. How far they seem removed from the Temple of Jupiter Panellenius. Skies! Skies! Skies! And on the last leaf of this sketch-book is a pencil drawing showing 'An Interior with open doors leading to a garden,' as if, in this year of sky watching, he must, even when within doors, be looking out towards the light.

CHAPTER XXIV

1817: AGED FORTY-TWO

HE SELLS FIFTY WATER-COLOURS TO MR. FAWKES OF FARNLEY HALL

The 'Rhine Tour' Sketch-Book of 1817 suggests that Turner was in the mood to be careful about his material necessities, one can hardly call them comforts. Written inside the covers are the words:—

'Boots, Pouch, Fever Medicine, Bark, Pencils, Colours,' followed by, 'Vier ist myn Simmer—Where is my chamber?' On a later page I find the following list:—

'3 Shirts, 1 Night ditto, A Razor, a Ferrell for Umbrella, a Pair of Stockings, a waistcoat, 1/2 dozen of Pencils, 6 Cravats, 1 large ditto, 1 Box of Colours'—and then, on the next leaf, the inevitable 'Study of a Sky.'

On a page of the 'Dort' Sketch-Book is this note of a 'thing seen' that he may have thought of painting:—

'Float of Timber—1000 feet long at least, lashed into two pieces and guided by the cross piece of timber which hauls either part of the float or buoy in two lines—and drawn by 3 Horses down the Canal.'

During this three weeks' tour in the Rhine district Turner produced no fewer than fifty drawings at the rate of about three a day. He first, says Mr. Rawlinson, stained the paper a uniform bluish-grey, which, although itself sombre in tone, effectively shows up the body-colour work, and must have effected an immense economy of time as compared with ordinary transparent colour. Returning to England he took the roll of drawings straight to Farnley Hall, and Mr. Fawkes bought them for five hundred pounds. For a long time they remained in a portfolio, but a few years ago some of them were sold at Christie's. Mr. Rawlinson possesses one of them, the delicate and romantic 'Goarhausen and Katz Castle.'

Other drawings of this period are the rich and forceful 'Bonneville, Savoy' in the Salting collection at the British Museum, a majestic water-colour; that vision of yellow foliage, blue water, and outstretched yellowy-blue country, 'The Lake of Nemi,' and the more academic 'Turin from the Church of the Superga,' the foreground with its artless groups not very attractive, but the distant glimpse of the snow mountains, and the white fleecy clouds seen against the blue sky, as lovely as Turner could make them,' and that is saying much.

Probably in this year he began the glorious illustrations to Dr. Whitaker's History of Richmondshire, which contains some of his finest water-colours. The first plate was published in 1819, the last in 1822. Turner was paid twenty-five guineas a drawing, and the magnificent enterprise cost the publishers, Messrs Longman, ten thousand pounds. 'The Crook of the Lune' is one of the finest of the series. 'You can find at least twenty different walks in it—yet all this wealth of exquisite detail is perfectly subordinated to the unity and harmony of the composition as a whole.' Another of the Richmondshire drawings is the 'Hornby Castle' in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which, through constant exposure to light, is a wreck of its former beauty.

His chief Royal Academy picture of 1817 was 'The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire.' It has disappeared from the National Gallery, loaned, I suppose, to some provincial museum, where a Turner, even a bad Turner, is a Turner. I will quote from the catalogue of 1817 its full title, and tag of verse by Turner, and say no more about 'The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire.'

'EXHIBITION XLIX 1817

'J. M. W. Turner, R.A. Professor of Perspective, Sandycombe Lodge, Twickenham, and Queen Anne Street West.

'The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire. Rome, being determined on the overthrow of her hated rival, demanded from her such terms as might either force her into war, or ruin her by compliance; the enervated Carthaginians, in their anxiety for peace, consented to give up even their arms and their children.

"At Hope's delusive smile,
The Chieftain's safety and the mother's pride,
Were to the insidious conqueror's grasp resign'd;
While o'er the western wave th' ensanguined sun,
In gathering haze, a stormy signal spread,
And set portentous."'

Behold a mystery! The eyes that saw and the hand that produced the simple splendour of 'Richmond Castle,' and the spacious beauty of 'The Crook of the Lune' could also see in fancy and produce in reality 'The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire.'

CHAPTER XXV

1818: AGED FORTY-THREE

'THE ABBOTSFORD TURNERS,' AND AN AUCTION PRICE OF A TURNER WATER-COLOUR

'The Field of Waterloo,' exhibited in 1818, with its obvious quotation from Byron, is as dead as rider and horse, friend and foe piled in the foreground. It now hangs on the outer stair-case of the new Turner Gallery, as if in disgrace.

Turner journeyed north this year to make drawings for the Provincial Antiquities of Scotland, for which Sir Walter Scott was gratuitously writing the letterpress. He did not meet Scott on this occasion, but the artist and author met in 1831, when Turner was illustrating Cadell's edition of Scott's Poetical and Prose Works. The Provincial Antiquities drawings, which include the important 'Edinburgh from the Calton Hill,' were afterwards presented by the publishers to Sir Walter in recognition of his aid in the production of the book. For a long time they hung at Abbotsford, and the group was known by the honoured name of the 'Abbotsford Turners.' They are now scattered.

It would take a lifetime to follow the vicissitudes of all Turner's water-colours, when they were painted, and where they are to-day. The 'Heysham' of this year, with the elaborate lovely sky, is in the Salting Collection at the British Museum. To the 'Heysham' Ruskin devoted half a dozen pages in his Elements of Drawing.

Turner's water-colours are constantly changing hands. The gleaming eyes of the wizard, that some called covetous, would indeed have looked covetous could he have known that, in the twentieth century, a fine water-colour of his best period, for which he received a few guineas, may realise two thousand pounds.

'What do you think the Turner "Lake of Lucerne" will fetch?' said a Turner collector to me the day before an auction in June 1910. 'Oh, two thousand pounds,' I answered.

'Absurd!' he cried. It brought one thousand nine hundred and ninety-five pounds. I believe that there are certain men who would rather possess a fine Turner water-colour than any other work of art.

CHAPTER XXVI

1819: AGED FORTY-FOUR

TURNER'S FIRST VISIT TO ITALY, AND AN EXHIBITION IN GROSVENOR PLACE

The route of Turner's memorable first visit to Italy may be followed in detail in the Sketch-Books, between No. CLXXI., called the 'Route to Rome,' and No. CXCII., devoted to the 'Return from Italy.' His divagations and pauses are recorded on innumerable pages of sketches, studies, comments, and criticisms of pictures. Here are his cursory notes on a copy he made of a sea-piece by Claude:—

'Date 1631 or 81 Roma—he died at 82. Raf. 1512.'

'Wonderful grey green,' 'arm in light,' 'The mast Red—all painted at once with the colour.'

We find him at Venice, Rimini, Ancona, Naples, Paestum, Pompeii and Sorrento—anywhere, everywhere. Turn the pages. Here he is in the Vatican with a Sketch-Book labelled 'Vatican Fragments' containing such comments as 'Christ by Guercino beautifully color'd,' 'A Hare by Albert Dürer,' and 'Annunciation. The Angel very elegant.' On the way from Ancona to Rome his hand tries to transcribe what his watchful eyes note:—

'Loretto to Recanata. Colour of the hills Wilson Claude, the olives the light ..., when the sun shone green, the ground reddish green grey and apt to Purple, the Sea quite Blue, under the Sun a warm vapour, from the Sun Blue relieving (?) the shadow of the olive Trees dark, while the foliage light on the whole when in the shadow a quiet grey. Beautiful dark green yet warm, the middle Trees, yet Bluish in parts, the distance; the aqueduct reddish, the foreground light grey in shadow.'

But that visit to Italy, the magic and colour of it, the pictures he saw, the sunrises and the sunsets he studied, appear to have affected his art unfavourably for a time, to have disturbed him with florid and fantastic fancies. It was as if he became intoxicated with the art and aspect of Italy.

There is no hint of Italy in the works he exhibited this year. I can stand for a long time before 'The Meuse, Orange Merchant-men going to Pieces on the Bar,' lost in admiration of the wonderful sky, trying to avoid looking at the foolish fishermen, and remembering a phrase I have read somewhere that 'with this picture he gave the coup de grâce to Van de Velde.'

Another work of 1819 was the huge, neat and amusing view of 'England, Richmond Hill on the Prince Regent's Birthday,' now hanging in a place of honour in the new Turner Gallery. It dominates the wall, whereas in its old place above the line in the National Gallery one hardly noticed the Prince Regent's Birthday, with its quotation from Thomson:—

'Which way, Amanda, shall we bend our course?
The choice perplexes.'

'Richmond,' and 'Rome from the Vatican,' exhibited the following year, are the largest pictures Turner painted.

In May and June, presumably after his return from Italy, Mr. Fawkes of Farnley opened an exhibition of all the water-colours he possessed at his house in Grosvenor Place. The first two rooms contained drawings by Havell, Robson, Hedphy, Hills, Prout, Varley, Fielding, de Wint and others; the third room was reserved to Turner. The exhibition was a great success, and we are told that the public had an opportunity of seeing Turner 'moving about the rooms, the principal figure in his own triumph.' A contemporary critic seems, however, to have made up his mind that Turner's visit, to Italy had done him temporarily no good. In the Annals of the Fine Arts, of the year 1820, appeared the following criticism of Turner's works in the exhibition held at Mr. Fawkes's house in Grosvenor Place, which must have included some of the Italian drawings:—

'Turner appears here in his original splendour and to his greatest advantage. Those who only know the artist of late and from his academical works will hardly believe the grandeur, simplicity and beauty that pervade his best works in this collection.... The earlier works of Turner before he visited Rome and those he has done since for this collection are like works of a different artist. The former, natural, simple and effective; the latter, artificial, glaring and affected.'

CHAPTER XXVII

1820: AGED FORTY-FIVE

RETURN FROM ITALY: HE BEGINS TO SIGHT HIS MYSTICAL VISIONS

Visitors to the Royal Academy of 1820 saw that the great man had been in Rome. How like Turner it was to call a picture 'Rome from the Vatican: Raeffaelle, accompanied by La Fornarina, preparing his pictures for the Decoration of the Loggia.' He loved to introduce a painter whom he admired into a picture—Raphael, Rembrandt, Ruysdael, Van Goyen, Watteau and the rest. This Raphael-Roman picture was one of Turner's failures, and like other failures it is no longer exhibited in the National Collection. What a contrast it is to such an essential Turner as the atmospheric 'Lancaster Sands' in the Farnley Hall collection, produced about this time. Another, a later version now in the Salting Collection at the British Museum, showing the sun setting behind the Cumberland Hills, and the stage coach, carts and figures hurrying to escape the rising tide, was engraved for the England and Wales series and published in 1828.

Here we stand at a halting-place in Turner's career. He has trained himself; he has fought his rivals, and, perhaps with the exception of Claude, has beaten them all on their own ground. He has expressed himself in the luminous atmosphere of 'The Sun Rising Through Vapour'; in the hoar-frost sparkle of 'The Frosty Morning'; in the cool blues and greys of 'Crossing the Brook,' and in the splendour of 'Dido Building Carthage.' In water-colour he has advanced from the formalism of the early tinted drawings to the restrained beauty of the Southern Coast and the accomplishment of the Richmondshire series. And he has been to Italy: his eyes are dazzled. Colour is to be his master, but after a few years he is to become almost impatient of local colour and form, and to lose form and local colour in the radiance of suffused light. He is to paint the aspect, not the object. I turn once more to the Inventory and under the rubric 1820 dealing with 'Colour Beginnings,' find this comment by Mr. Finberg:—

'As a rule these studies are of a highly abstract character, i.e., they deal only with the composition of fundamental colour masses—the ground tones, as it were, of a picture, which in the final result are largely concealed under the subsequent embroidery of secondary incidents and motives.'

In these 'Colour Beginnings' 'projects for designs which may or may not have been carried out,' Turner seems to be beginning to sight his mystical visions. The very titles of some are eloquent 'Moonlight Among Ruins,' 'Hulks on Tamar, Twilight,' 'The Rainbow,' 'Lighthouse against a Stormy Sky.' Eloquent, too, are three slight water-colours, showing only faint indications of the difference between sky and land.

PART FIVE

1821-1829

FROM 'THE BAY OF BAIÆ TO 'ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS'

CHAPTER XXVIII

1822: AGED FORTY-SEVEN

HE THROWS OFF ANOTHER 'NORHAM CASTLE' AND PREPARES TO STARTLE THE WORLD WITH 'THE BAY OF BAIÆ'

Turner sent nothing to the Royal Academy of 1821, and in 1822 he exhibited only the unimportant 'What you Will,' a mere nothing, a memory of some other painter. 'What you Will' was probably forgotten except by its owner and students of Turner; but in 1910 it appeared at Christie's and was described by an influential daily paper as a fine early Turner 'depicting a party of ladies and gentlemen in a garden near some groups of statuary.' It realised £1,176, an enormous rise on the price, one hundred and fifty guineas, which Chantrey gave for 'What you Will.' He wrote the price on the back of the picture, so that there might be no mistake. Turner would have been amazed to learn what the twentieth century thought of this experiment of his in 'figured landscape.' Perhaps the price it fetched answers a caustic comment of Hazlitt's: 'Mr. Turner's pictures have not like Claude's become a sentiment in the heart of Europe; his fame has not been stamped and rendered sacred by the hand of time. Perhaps it never will.'

A Sketch-Book of this year is called 'King's Visit to Scotland.' On leaf 58, à propos of the reception of George IV., is this note in Turner's handwriting: 'Custom House Key. The Authorities in Blue and White Gowns. Red Flags and Gold.' According to Ruskin's endorsement on the wrapper Turner went to Edinburgh by sea.

In the 'Medway' Sketch-Book of the previous year on a drawing of 'Scenes on Medway' are these notes on Clouds in his own handwriting:—'Cold,' 'Warm,' 'Yellow Clouds,' 'Rain with ... Colour along its edge,' 'Rain in Shade.'

No labour either with pen or pencil was too arduous to hinder him from noting down his impressions of the effects of nature from hour to hour and day to day. And always every year there is some work that starts out and affects us by its beauty. With this year I associate the imposing 'Norham Castle' in the National Collection engraved for River Scenery in 1824. The tyranny of the foreground still holds him—cows, boats, shed, outbuildings; but this foreground is less insistent than usual. How beautiful is the blue-grey ruin rising up against the pale sunset sky; how limpid is the water, with its reflection of castle and sail rippling on the quiet surface.

This 'Norham Castle' is one of his 'delight pictures,' but the more arduous work of the Wizard in 1822 was meditating upon and painting the 'Bay of Baiæ,' with which he proposed to startle the world at the next Royal Academy exhibition.

CHAPTER XXIX

1823: AGED FORTY-EIGHT

'THE BAY OF BAIÆ': A CRITIC IS CRITICAL, AND A PAINTER IS ENTHUSIASTIC

'Waft me to sunny Baiæ's shore' wrote Turner in the Fallacies of Hope, one of the simple lines, a line that it was quite permissible to print in the catalogue of the Academy of 1823 against his much discussed, much criticised, and much loved 'Bay of Baiæ.' The picture indeed wafts us to Baiæ, one of the most beautiful spots in Italy, and we are content with its beauty if we neglect the pines, their heavy shadows, and the figures of Apollo and the Cumæan Sibyl posing in the shade. But could anything be lovelier than the blue sea rippling on the yellow sand, the subtle hills and the fairy building, a kind of Claude 'Enchanted Castle' that has passed into a golden dream.

Turner, as I have said before, has his admirers and detractors, and those who adore part of his achievement and are critical of the rest; few, if any, admire him all in all. Let me here quote two authorities on 'The Bay of Baiæ'—Mr. Finberg, a critic who has devoted years of his life to Turner, and Mr. Wyllie, a painter who has written an admirable book on the master. The reader can decide which form of criticism or commentary he prefers: the cold objectivity of the critic or the glowing subjectivity of the painter. Here is Mr. Finberg on 'The Bay of Baiæ,' extracted from the admirable Extra Number of The Studio on the 'Water Colours of Turner':—

'It is conceded on all hands that Turner's artistic work went all to pieces as a result of his Italian experiences. "The Bay of Baiæ" contains faults altogether new in his completed works. Even the feeblest of his earlier works had been animated by some central idea or emotion to which all the parts were subordinated, and which infused into them whatever of life or significance they possessed. In "The Bay of Baiæ" the artist has an unusual quantity of material on his hands, but he can neither find nor invent a pictorial idea to give coherence to his disconnected observations. The picture is made up of bits of visual experiences elaborately dovetailed into one another but which absolutely refuse to combine into any kind of conceptional unity.'

And here is Mr. Wyllie on 'that wonderful work' 'The Bay of Baiæ':—

'Only eight years before, the "Crossing the Brook" was painted in little more than black, brown, and palest blue, and now Turner has thrown aside the inky shadows as cold, grey skies and has burst out a perfect blaze of splendid colour. Years ago when I was a student at the old Academy schools in Trafalgar Square I used to stroll out at the luncheon hour or after closing time, to have a look at the Old Masters in the National Gallery next door. Somehow my feet always seemed to carry me to this my favourite picture at that time.

'I think the blue sea breaking gently on the sandy shore is one of the most perfect of Turner's visions of Italy. The little jetty, the fishing boats, the castle, and the volcanic hill thickly wooded and piled ridge beyond ridge as they pale into the haze are all most splendidly painted; the ruins half hidden in vines and long trailing creepers are well done and take their places in the scheme. There are thin rich glazes and strong yellows in the foreground and two very conventional stone pines, which throw a mos unnatural dark shadow right across the foreground. The Sibyl holding up the cryptic handful of sand to Apollo as a request for many years of life is painted quite carelessly; indeed one would almost fancy that the whole of the near objects were formed up in that rich, juicy fashion merely to drive back the delicate middle distance and enhance its beauty. There is no doubt that it does produce that effect, for if you shut out that part of the composition with your hand the rest of the picture suffers though the foreground is nothing by itself.'

Turner's contemporaries made the usual remark that the real locality had been rather freely treated, or, as Thornbury puts it, half the scene was sheer invention. As a matter of fact 'Baiæ' is more accurate, from a topographical point of view, than most of Turner's pictures. Jones wrote across the frame with a piece of chalk the words 'Splendide Mendaæ.' Turner laughed; he did not even take the trouble to rub out the chalk. For years the marks remained on the frame.

Here is a pen picture of Turner at this time. David Roberts, who became one of Turner's most intimate friends, decribes how he first met him at a meeting of the Artists' Benevolent Fund, one of Turner's pet schemes which he helped to found and to carry out. It was characteristic of Turner that he was in favour of hoarding its funds and distributing but a small sum each year in charity.

Of this meeting of the Artists's Benevolent Fund at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, Roberts wrote:—

'Being seated round a table covered with green baize—of course with the exception of my friend whom I accompainied, John Wilson, all to me were strangers—a little square built man came in, to whom all paid respect; the business having begun, he joined in the conversation, and made some weak attempts at wit—at least I thought so, for no one seemed to laugh at his jokes but himself! So I asked who this very facetious little man was, and my astonishment on being told that it was the 'Great Turner' almost, without meaning a pun, turned my head.'

Turner was not the first great man, and he will not be the last little man, at whose jokes no one laughs but himself.

CHAPTER XXX

1824: AGED FORTY-NINE

A GLANCE AT SOME OF 'THE RIVERS OF ENGLAND' AND 'HARBOURS OF ENGLAND' WATER-COLOURS

In 1824 the British National Gallery was founded, and it was decided by the Committee, which included Sir Robert Peel and Lord Harding, to buy two of Turner's pictures, for presentation to the Gallery. The works chosen were 'Dido Building Carthage' and' The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire.' Five thousand pounds were to be offered for the two. A memorial was drawn up, and Griffiths, Turner's old friend, was instructed to present it to the painter.

Turner, we are told by Thornbury,

'was deeply moved, even to tears, for he was capable of intense feeling. He expressed his pride and delight at such a noble offer from such men. But his eye caught the word "Carthage" in the memorial, and he exclaimed sternly: "No, no, they shall not have it"; and upon Griffiths turning to go, he called out after him: "Oh, Griffiths! make my compliments to the memorialists, and tell them 'Carthage' may some day become the property of the nation."'

After this interview, it is said that he went about muttering to himself—'A great triumph! A great triumph!'

In this year he is apparently fumbling towards lithography. In the 'Brighton and Arundel' Sketch-Book is the following note in his own handwriting in pencil:—

'Lithography—the soap is ... dissolved by the aqua fortis, being saturated to the utmost by pieces of Lith stone, then diluted with water.

'Silicated potash makes gum a white flakey insoluable process (?).'

He had not forgotten his old rivals and masters, as on another page, written against 'Views on Coast,' are these two words followed by a note of interrogation—'Claude Morning (?).'

On the 'Academy Auditing' Sketch-Book, Ruskin has made this curious endorsement: 'Kept as evidence of the failure of mind only.' This Sketch-Book is devoted mainly to figures, probably Academy finance; but Turner soon tires of sums, and turns to matters more congenial—to sketches of a Sleeping Figure, a Running Figure, Nymph with Children, Satyrs at Play, and A Falling Figure, against which he has scrawled the words—'Fall of Satan?' On the wrapper of the 'Paris, Seine and Dieppe' Sketch-Book, Ruskin wrote, 'Containing studies for, I believe, his own house and furniture.' Having done his duty by these domestic details, Turner treats himself to a sketch of a Vessel Sailing, to a design for a Classical Composition, to a Boat with Figures, Cows, etc. And on a later page is this information, written upon a sketch of the back view of a man with a fishing-rod:—

'Provide yourself with plenty of gentles in the ... corner of your jacket pocket. If the aforesaid be old, so much the better because they [the maggots] will work through the same cleaning themselves the while. Wade up to an inclination [?] of 45 or thereabouts in the stream and you are sure to have fish before and behind.'

Turner was never particularly careful about his attire, but to allow maggots to clean themselves by working through the jacket pocket is more than most fishermen would allow.

Turner did not exhibit at the Royal Academy this year. He was busy with The Rivers of England, also called River Scenery and its companion, The Ports of England, afterwards re-published as The Harbours of England, all of which were engraved in mezzotint. These beautiful water-colours have suffered from exposure through many years at the National Gallery. The Rivers of England were published between 1823 and 1827, and the Ports between 1826 and 1828. The latter series ended abruptly: some of them were never issued.