Turner's Golden Visions

Many of us have happy, very happy, memories of days spent among the Turner water-colours in the National Gallery, where they seemed more at home in those little rooms on the ground floor than in their august abode at Millbank. It was an experience to turn (with 'Calais Pier' and the other dark pictures fresh in the mind) to such lyrical moments as the four sketches of 'Evening at Petworth Park,' to such wonders as 'Ehrenbreitstein,' 'Bellinzona,' 'The Bridge on Moselle at Coblenz,' and the 'Rigi from Lucerne.' But I am again anticipating.

In The Harbours of England, the handling is still a little hard, and he does not always escape from the thrall of convention; but there is beauty in the white towers of 'Dover Castle,' rising up from the golden sward; in the rainbow arching over 'The Medway'; in the splendid theatricality of 'North Shields,' with a huge white moon riding in an excited blue sky, and in the golden loveliness of 'Scarborough Castle.'

In 'Totnes on the Dart,' in The Rivers of England, he has almost discarded the foreground muddle and allows himself merely one boat, and a group of water birds. Magnificent, overpowering, is the rainbow cutting the picture in 'Arundel Castle.' What a glory of space he shows in 'Arundel Park,' and what a tumult of distant rain in 'More Park.' The ruins of 'Kirkstall Abbey' have a foreground of red, brown and white cattle, as decorative as a Brueghel. One of the simplest and the most beautiful of them all is 'Brougham Castle': the ruin rises from the meadow against a threatening grey-blue sky, cut at the left by a rainbow; the trees are well observed and simply stated, and very attractive is the foreground water with the streaming red and yellow reflections of the castle.

At Cooke's Gallery, he exhibited a water-colour of Hastings, showing the fish-market on the beach. Perhaps this formal 'Hastings' was the parent of that most lovely Hastings, one of the 'unfinished' oils, the Hastings with the red sail, and the flecks of gold and red in the sky.

CHAPTER XXXI

1825: AGED FIFTY

A SOMEWHAT BARREN YEAR COMMENTED ON IN A BITTER LAMENT BY RUSKIN

A somewhat barren year for Turner as regards exhibited work. One picture only was shown, 'The Harbour of Dieppe,' which the present generation saw at the Old Masters Exhibition of 1910, a flayed and not very interesting picture.

The 'Thames' Sketch-Book of 1825 opens with some calculations as to 'the House, Taxes, etc.,' and later there is a water-colour of a Barge with the following in his handwriting: 'Tarpaulin in the light green.' In the 'Mortlake and Pulborough' Sketch-Book on a drawing of Three Views of a River are these notes:—

'Children yoked to twig cart,' 'Sheep,' 'River,' 'Park Monsel' (or 'Mount,') 'Stoten or Storton.'

In the 'Holland' Sketch-Book are eleven successive drawings of Cliffs, twenty-five of Scenes on Coast, thirty-five of Shipping, and twenty of Views on the River. This Book also contains a sketch of Terburg's 'Visit of Parents' with this comment: 'Green drapery, beautiful Satin,' and the following against a drawing of a Bridge: 'The whole of the Bridge in shadow, Water, Blue-grey. 10 o'clock—at five sunrise.' Here, finally, is a scene that he may have intended to use as a foreground written on a drawing of a Market-place:—

'Mountebank selling Eau-de-Cologne, beating a drum,' 'Man trying on Boots, all on the ground,' 'Bird Cages,' 'Pots,' 'Pans,' etc.

In this year his friend and patron Mr. Fawkes of Farnley died. Turner was much affected and would never visit the house again. His friendship with the son, Hawkesworth Fawkes, continued to the end of his life, to January 31st, 1851, under which date there is a letter to 'dear Hawkesworth' extant.

Ruskin considered that about 1825 a grievous metamorphosis took place in Turner, that his work became 'partly satirical, partly reckless, and partly—and in its greatest and noblest features—tragic'—a bitter lament.

Well, he was yet to produce such a sane and magnificent work as 'The Burial of Wilkie,' the antithesis of satire, recklessness, and tragedy; he was yet to awaken to the vision of 'Rain, Steam, and Speed' which Mallarmé seeing, said, 'Turner is the greatest painter that has ever lived.' He was yet to will the later water-colours.

CHAPTER XXXII

1826: AGED FIFTY-ONE

ANOTHER UNIMPORTANT YEAR, IN WHICH HE LEAVES TWICKENHAM

Another unimportant year as regards the exhibition of pictures. It would almost seem as if Turner were reserving himself, pondering over his Italian experiences; or it may have been that his time was broken into by the trouble of leaving Twickenham.

He had taken Sandycombe for 'Dad'; he gave it up for the sake of 'Dad,' who was always catching cold while working in the garden. 'Without,' says Monkhouse, 'the pleasant and wholesome neighbourhood of the Trimmers, with no home but the gloomy, dirty, disreputable Queen Anne Street, he became more solitary, more self-absorbed or absorbed in his art (much the same thing with him), and lived only to follow unrestrained wherever his wayward genius led him, and to amass money for which he could find no use.'

About this time, too, he added to his troubles by another quarrel with Cooke the engraver, which prevented a proposed continuation of The Southern Coast series begun in 1814. Cooke's long letter is extant, and Turner's most ardent admirers must admit that he shows badly in the dispute. To set against his treatment of Cooke there is his gruff kindness to Lawrence à propos of his picture of this year called 'Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat, Evening.' This sea-piece, which had a brilliant sky, was hung between two portraits by Lawrence. Being painted in a low key, they suffered from the juxtaposition. 'Sir Thomas was in despair,' whereupon Turner took some water-colour lamp black and went all over his sky: 'Why, Turner, what have you done to your picture?' asked a friend, who had seen it before the coat of lamp-black. 'Oh! it's all right,' said Turner, 'it will all wash off after the close of the exhibition.'

The Inventory shows that Turner was abroad this year wandering mainly by the Meuse, Moselle, and Rhine. On one of the pages containing 'Various Views' Ruskin has the following note: 'It has seven subjects from Andernach on the Rhine, showing stormy sunsets and drifts of cloud all completely designed; the best, that on the left in the second row from the bottom, only measures one inch and a half in length by three-quarters of an inch in height.'

A 'View of Dieppe Harbour' in the 'Meuse-Moselle' Sketch-Book is one of twenty coloured sketches found in a parcel with the following endorsement in Ruskin's handwriting:—

'There are one or two in this parcel that some people might like; I consider them all done in some careless or sickly state of mind, and have therefore put all aside, except one.'

Poor Turner! It is hard to have the work of one's bad days as well as of one's good days passed before the critical eyes of a temperamental genius who also had his bad and his good days. Ruskin was always either hot or cold—never tepid. I dip at random into his pages and find this:—

'In the modern French School, all the colour is taken out of Nature, and only the mud left. By Turner, all the mud is taken out of Nature, and only the colour left.'

Great praise for Turner, but grossly unfair to the 'modern French School.'

CHAPTER XXXIII

1827: AGED FIFTY-TWO

HE PAINTS THE SEA IN THE OPEN, AND SOME THAMES-SIDE PICTURES

In this year Turner is magnificently himself again. His works show an extraordinary variety, ranging from the peaceful and unambitious twin pictures of 'Mortlake Terrace,' one on a Summer Morning, the other on a Summer Evening, to the ambitious and extravagant 'Rembrandt's Daughter,' wherein the painter pitted himself against the great Dutchman; but the most welcome work of Turner at this period, and probably that which gave him the greatest pleasure, arose from his sojourn at East Cowes Castle with J. Nash, the architect of the Quadrant, Regent Street, for whom he painted two yachting pictures with East Cowes Castle in the background.

We can see the beginnings of his magnificent series of yachting pictures in the Sketch-Books of this year, particularly in those labelled 'East Cowes Castle' and 'Yachts.' These studies resulted in the two pictures of East Cowes Castle, exhibited in 1828, one of which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum—gold in the sky, gold in the foreground, and the golden sun in the centre of the picture. I for one prefer the studies to the pictures—brisk, impulsive atmospheric works, a delight to the eye. These nine studies, which include the vivid and amusing 'Between Decks,' are now in the Turner Gallery at Millbank. They were among the 'unfinished' works exhibited for the first time in 1906. A note to the official catalogue states that—

'These nine pictures were painted on two pieces of canvas measuring 3 feet by 4 feet. Nos. 1993, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001 on one piece, and Nos. 1994, 1997, 1998, 1999 on the other. Mr. Finberg has communicated a copy of the following letter, which probably refers to these two canvases; it is in the possession of C. Mallord Turner, Esq., who has kindly consented to allow it to be published.

'"Sunday.

'"I wrote yesterday to Mr. Newman to get a canvas ready—6 feet by 4 feet. I wish you to call and ask if he has it by him and if he gets it done by Middleton in St. Martin's Lane, or at home. If by Middleton, then let two be sent; if he does it at home, then he will be some time about it, and then tell him if he has by him a whole length canvas to send it instead of preparing the 6 feet 4 canvas. If he has not then go to Middleton, and if he has one, a whole length canvas, let him send it me immediately. I want the canvas only I don't want the stretching-frame made in town if Middleton or Newman has the canvas ready done, and if a whole length, let either send it down to me
at J. Nash, Esq.
East Cowes Castle,
Isle of Wight.

If they are both ready send them together rolled up on a small roller and put the linen things I wrote for on the outside.

"I want some scarlet lake and Dark Lake and Burnt Umber in powder from Newman's, one ounce each.

1 ounce of mastic.
To Mr. Turner,
Queen Anne Street,
Cavendish Square."'

Turner is now painting the sea in the open air, not in a studio as in the 'Calais Pier' days. The boats in the two pictures of 'Yacht Racing in the Solent' are sailing in broken water, their canvases lit and flecked by sunlight. In No. 2 may be seen the guard-ship moored under the cliffs upon which East Cowes Castle stands. Each of these fresh and direct impressions of nature is a small picture, one measuring 1 foot 5 1/2 inches by 2 feet 4 1/2 inches, the other 1 foot 6 inches by 2 feet. In 'Shipping at Cowes' No. 1, he has chosen a still moment. It is the morning of the Regatta; the sun is in the position where Turner loved to place it, in the centre of the sky; the boats are at their moorings and we see only a few sailors preparing for the day's work. This small picture was probably a sketch for the 'Regatta at Cowes,' exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1828.

Turner was always careless with the figure. The red and gold sailors and their sweethearts are little more than suggestions of colour. The eye sees what it wants to see and he saw this vivid scene on the mess deck in the mass. There is more detail in 'Rembrandt's Daughter,' which was lent from Farnley Hall to the 'Fair Women Exhibition' of 1910. How Turner would have chuckled if he could have known that this work would be chosen to adorn a gallery devoted to types of Fair Women. He cared little about making Rembrandt's daughter fair. The idea in his mind was how he could best adapt and improve Rembrandt's 'Potiphar's Wife' and beat the Dutchman in the undertaking.

And how he would have chuckled if he could have foreseen that his 'Mortlake Summer Morning,' which he painted in 1826, would be sold in 1908 for twelve thousand six hundred guineas. The companion picture' Mortlake Terrace Summer Evening' was exhibited in 1827. It is said that Turner, thinking that a dark object was needed in the foreground, cut out a dog in black paper and pasted it on to try the effect. Another version of the story states that the black dog was affixed to the canvas by a jocular friend in Turner's absence. The dog remains to this day a dominant note. Those who saw the 'Mortlake Terrace Summer Morning' in London before it was sold wondered that Turner did not oftener confine himself to rendering simply and sympathetically what his eyes saw and what his heart felt. Burger, the great French critic, considered that these unaffected, straightforward, atmospheric riverside pictures deserved a place amongst the finest things in art. 'Ce qu'on voit des arbres et des pierres est enveloppé et dévoré par la lumière; tout semble être la lumière même et jeter aussi des rayons et des étincelles. Claude le suprême illuminateur n'a jamais rien fait d'aussi prodigieux.'

These canvases, representing the Thames-side seat of William Moffatt, used to be known as 'Mortlake Summer Morning' and 'Barnes Terrace Summer Evening.' It is a matter of regret that they are not in the Turner Gallery.

The 'Launceston' belonging to Mr. Schwann is certainly an imposing vision of height and grandeur; all the more imposing by reason of the tiny figure on horseback in the foreground. I who know Launceston well have never seen the castle rising sky-high as Turner saw it so magnificently in his mind's eye. Neither shall I ever see 'Barnard Castle' as seen by Turner, looking up the Tees towards the castle, in the sketch he made for the England and Wales water-colour, a poet's vision of opalescent colour floating in atmosphere.

CHAPTER XXXIV

1828: AGED FIFTY-THREE

THE YEAR WHEN CONSTABLE DESCRIBED TURNER'S VISIONS AS 'GOLDEN, GLORIOUS, AND BEAUTIFUL'

In 1828 Turner was again in Rome. 'The foreign artists,' says Thornbury, 'who went to see his pictures could make nothing of them. Turner's economy and ingenuity were apparent in his mode of framing those pictures. He nailed a rope round the edges of each and painted it with yellow ochre in tempera.'

The Inventory shows his travels of this year and the next—'Orléans to Marseilles'; 'Lyons to Marseilles'; 'Marseilles to Genoa'; 'Coast of Genoa'; 'Genoa and Florence '; and then the 'Roman and French' Sketch-Book. On page 26 of the 'Florence to Orvieto' Sketch-Book he wrote this as if the event had significance: 'Thursday Orvieto.'

One day he made Turnerian poetry:—

'Farewell a second time the Land of all bliss
That cradled liberty could wish and hope
Ere the fell Saxon and Norman band
Flouted her ... on the shore
Why go then? No gentle traveller
Cross thy path save the ...
The yellow, winding Tiber,' etc.

From Rome he wrote several letters. Here is the beginning of one to George Jones, R.A., showing the manner of Turner's correspondence:—

'Rome, October 3th, 1828.

'Dear Jones,—Two months nearly in getting to this terra pictura and at work; but the length of time is my own fault. I must see the South of France, which almost knocked me up, the heat was so intense, particularly at Nismes and Avignon; and until I got a plunge into the sea at Marseilles I felt so weak that nothing but the change of scene kept me onwards to my distant point. Genoa and all the sea-coast from Nice to Spezzia is remarkably rugged and fine; so is Massa. Tell that fat fellow Chantrey that I did think of him then (but not the first or the last time), of the thousands he had made out of those marble craigs which only afforded me a sour bottle of wine and a sketch; but he deserves everything which is good though he did give me a fit of the spleen at Carrara.'

And here is the beginning of a letter to Chantrey:—

'No. 12 Piazza Mignanelli, Rome, NOV. 6th, 1828.

'My Dear Chantrey,—I intended long before this (but you will say "Fudge!") to have written; but even now very little information have I to give you in matters of Art, for I have confined myself to the painting department at Corso; and having finished one am about the second, and getting on with Lord E.'s, which I began the very first touch at Rome; but as the folk here talked that I would show them not, I finished a small 3 feet four inches to stop their gabbling. So now to business....'

The small 3 feet by 4 was the 'View of Orvieto' exhibited in 1830, referred to with much affection in the opening chapters of this book.

The pictures shown by Turner at the Royal Academy this year evoked from Constable the generous and beautiful appreciation that I have already quoted. It bears repetition: 'Turner has some golden visions, glorious and beautiful. They are only visions, but still they are art, and one could live and die with such pictures.' What were the works that called forth this tribute of admiration from his great contemporary? They were:—

'Dido Directing the Equipment of the Fleet, or the Morning of the Carthaginian Empire.'

'East Cowes Castle, the seat of J. Nash, Esq. The Regatta beating to windward.'

'East Cowes Castle, the seat of J. Nash, Esq. The Regatta Starting for their Moorings.'

'Boccaccio relating the Tale of the Bird-cage.'

Hardly the finest examples of Turner's golden visions; but Constable found them glorious and beautiful. What did Constable think of the Turner exhibited next year, that magnificent riot of the imagination, 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus'?

It was probably during his second visit to Italy that he made the slight and lovely 'Sketch of an Italian Town,' now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This, like the 'Orvieto,' is essential Italy. Rarely has the feeling of an Italian hill town been given with such intimacy of observation, just as it looks, a moment snatched and recorded, artlessly, but with great art.

CHAPTER XXXV

1829: AGED FIFTY-FOUR

THE YEAR OF 'ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS'

Of all Turner's pictures, 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus' makes the strongest appeal to the popular imagination. Call it scenic, call it theatrical; say that it is like the transformation scene at a pantomime; admit that it is all wrong, artistically; that it is lighted from anywhere and everywhere; concede all its impossibilities and incongruities, and the 'Ulysses' still remains a magnificent effort of the imagination, a glory to behold, from the figure of Phœbus, rising with his horses from the sea, to the vast Polyphemus, who, not being a mortal and bearing no resemblance to nineteenth—century man, is the most convincing figure that Turner ever painted. How often I visited the old Turner room at the National Gallery to study this picture or that, but always finding myself, sooner or later, drawn to this supreme effort of his imagination.

And now that he had emptied himself of all he knew and all he had dreamed, of wonder and splendour, came the reaction, and his humorous contempt of the chatter about this masterpiece, the wonder of the 1829 exhibition. (Yet nobody bought it.)

Thornbury recounts that at a dinner party at which Turner was present, a lady (she exists to-day, and is still making similar observations) who had seen the 'Ulysses' said to her neighbour, Mr. Judkins, 'the clerical artist,'—'Don't you now think it is a sweet picture?'

'Turner, glum and shy, opposite, is watching all this. He sees where the lady's eyes fall after she addresses her whispers to Mr. Judkins. His little beads of eyes roll and twinkle with fun and slyness. Across the table he growls:—

'"I know what you two are talking about, Judkins—about my picture."

'Mr. Judkins suavely waves his glass and acknowledges that it was. The lady smiled on the great man.

'"And I bet you don't know where I took the subject from; come now—bet you don't."

'Judkins blandly replied:—

"Oh, from the old poet, of course, Turner; from the Odyssey of course."

'"No," grunted Turner, bursting into a chuckle; "Odyssey; not a bit of it. I took it from Tom Dibdin. Don't you know the lines:—

'He ate his mutton, drank his wine.
And then he poked his eye out.'"'

To this year also belongs 'Chichester Canal,' unfinished, a scene of peace and quiet beauty, and was it this year or the next that he painted 'The Evening Star,' perhaps in its way one of the most appealing of the 'unfinished' Turners? How beautiful, how perfectly satisfying it would be if only the figure of the Shrimper and the dancing dog had been omitted. Truly a contrast to the splendour of the 'Ulysses.' There the sun was rising in fiery magnificence with the horses of Phoebus dancing up from the waves, and all that mythical world aglow with colour: here the sun is setting over the darkening sea, and in the mystical afterglow gleams the evening star reflected in the water that ripples gently to that lonely beach.

The authority for ascribing 'The Evening Star' to this period is to be found in some verses on page 70 of the 'Worcester and Shrewsbury' Sketch-Book, dated 1829-30, among which the following fragments have been deciphered:—

'Where is the star which shone at ... Eve'—'
The gleaming star of Ever ... '—
The first pale Star of Eve ere Twilight comes
Struggles with ... '

These broken lines may be a reference to 'The Evening Star,' which Mr. Finberg believes was painted about this time. The Official Catalogue of the Tate Gallery, however, suggests that 'The Evening Star' may be of the same date as 'The New Moon' exhibited in 1840.

Two of the other 'unfinished' oils first exhibited in 1906 may have been painted about this date. Each is similar in composition to sepia drawings for the Liber Studiorum, the 'Rocky Bay with Figures' to the 'Glaucus and Scylla,' which was never published, and the 'Sunrise, a Castle on a Bay,' to the 'Solitude.' Turner, of course, gave no title to these suggestions of colour and atmosphere, and he did not exhibit them. It is only literary pictures that require titles or descriptions. In one, the sun has risen behind a mist-shrouded castle on a bay; in the other, sunrays gleam through a natural arch and light the deep green sea. Greek galleys are moored in the bay and drawn up on the shore. A man with outstretched arms may be dimly seen haranguing a group of sailors. We shall never know when or where he painted these 'delight pictures.' They call up the spirit of Turner the poet as the Sketch-Books call up the spirit of Turner the wanderer.

My eyes fall on the following words in his own handwriting, and for the moment he seems to be present, noting nature, ready to record some sudden beauty.

Visions were then passing through the mind of the dumb poet who once 'confessed that he knew much more of his art than he could explain.'

PART SIX

1830-1834

FROM THE 'INTERIOR AT PETWORTH' TO THE PERIOD OF THE 'UNFINISHED' OILS

CHAPTER XXXVI

1830: AGED FIFTY-FIVE

HE PAINTS THE 'INTERIOR AT PETWORTH' AND MOURNS THE DEATH OF HIS FATHER, AND OF SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE

Two events mark this year: one sad, the death of his father which affected his whole after life; the other, an epoch in his development as artist, the painting of the 'Interior at Petworth.' But first a few words about other matters.

As I have remarked before, critics are occasionally hard upon Turner, and sometimes they disagree as to what is fine, and what is poor in his work. Ruskin labelled a parcel of vignette beginnings as 'worthless.' Mr. Rawlinson, referring to the numerous small drawings for vignette illustrations, such as Rogers's Italy of 1830, and the Poems of 1834, while calling them 'marvels of execution,' also sees in them 'an unpleasant note,' often a strangely forced and extravagant colour. Monkhouse considered that it would be difficult to find in the whole range of his works two really greater (though so small in size) than the vignettes of 'Alps at Daybreak,' and 'Datur hora quieti.' Personally, I must confess to a feeling of lukewarmness in regard to the vignettes. 'The Burning of the Houses of Parliament' in Sir Edward Tennant's collection is tight and harsh in colour compared with the loose luxuriance of the oil picture.

Some one has said that Turner must on the whole have been an agreeable person to have in a house—if the house were big enough. His visits to Lord Egremont at Petworth were on much the same footing of intimacy as his visits to Walter Fawkes at Farnley. Turner had his own private studio at Petworth, and nobody but Lord Egremont was allowed admission. Even he, who has been described as 'the rough, cunning, honest old noble-man,' had to give a peculiar knock on the door before entering. It is said that Chantrey, when staying at Petworth, imitated Lord Egremont's peculiar knock, and to Turner's anger entered the room and saw him at work. This pair of eccentrics, Turner and Egremont, foregathered happily, and the friendship was severed only in 1837 by Lord Egremont's death.

The Inventory shows that Turner was at Petworth in 1830. One of the books contains a sketch for that quaint, attractive 'View in Petworth Park with Tillington Church in the Distance,' of which an unfinished version is in the National Collection. The finished oil is in the possession of Lord Leconfield. Most of the Petworth sketches are in brilliant tints of opaque colour on grey-blue paper: they resulted one merry day in that startling, delightful oil picture in the National Collection called 'Interior at Petworth.' Here is Turner working entirely for his own pleasure, absolutely indifferent to the forms of things, seeing the havoc through a mist of sunlight with brilliant rays shining down into the octagonal sculpture gallery beyond, and reflected through the Venetian blinds of a window in an alcove to the right. How the room came to be in this state we do not know. The pugs and spaniels are evidently enjoying the upturned table and the disarranged furniture: they caper delightedly over a lady's orange cloak and feathered bonnet.

I must find room for an extract from a curious and interesting article upon 'Turner's Path from Nature to Art,' by Professor Josef Strzygowski, that appeared in the Burlington Magazine. The learned professor devotes his pen to 'The Frosty Morning' and the 'Interior at Petworth,' which he considers represent the two poles: Nature and Art. After remarking that in the days when the 'Interior at Petworth' was painted no sketch was regarded as a picture, and so Turner never exhibited the Petworth 'Interior' which 'looks almost like an actual palette, and a palette, moreover, on which the colours have been thoroughly daubed together, dashes of colour from the paint-brush and the palette-knife left as they are, without the least intention of hiding the technique'—Professor Strzygowski proceeds:—

'We do not know what is represented; it seems as if the picture might just as well hang upside down. And when we have realised that we are looking upon an interior, where are the separate shapes expressed? We recognise a large sofa on the right, statues on the left, in front a little dog. But these three shapes, and all the others, are so confused, that no one can define their appearance. But what, then, does the picture really mean? asks the layman. That is the real discovery of modern times. Sketches in which an artist gives nothing more than his momentary impression, i.e., lets himself go subjectively, leaving the object, both as regards its meaning and its appearance, quite in the background, are now admitted to be finished works of art. The "Interior at Petworth" is not in Mr. Bell's catalogue. Turner, as we now know, reserved this work, with so many others, as a private confession of faith. ... For him the shape no longer exists; he sees only light and colour, and even those transform themselves in a peculiar way. He does not see a fragment of nature through the medium of his temperament; but gives us rather, on the contrary, his own temperament seen through a fragment of nature. Nature is wholly subordinated to his impetuous need for self-expression.... The representation, the "Interior" in itself, has no value for him, except in so far as its space can be exhibited as the recipient of tone and colour: the pictorial symbol, as the medium of his need for expression, is everything to him; the object, the thing and its shape, are nothing. Thus the cautious painter of "The Frosty Morning" becomes an artist; thus the thing he paints is transformed into spiritual significance, its shape becomes pictorial symbol; and the technique, which before was carefully veiled, changes to the boldest impressionism. ... Art like this is for epicures.'

In the 'Dieppe and Rouen and Paris' Sketch-Book, we find sketches of three pictures, probably Claudes or Poussins, with long descriptions in Turner's handwriting, of which the following are samples:—

'The trees are grey and dull green and the whole foreground cold, the earth particularly cold with a few touches of warm red, but the ground in the picture never protrudes itself or through the Colours' ... 'The sky is very blue at the top with some small white clouds with grey shadows, but at the Hor. [horizon] yellow, so that the distant mountains are relieved and Blue.'

In another Sketch-Book are a number of water-colours on blue paper, probably connected with The Rivers of France series, published between 1833 and 1835.

Turner suffered a great blow this year in the death of his father, for whom he had a deep affection. 'Dad' had been of great use to his famous son, helping in the preparation of his canvases, attending to the gallery of unsold pictures, and so forth. When they were staying at Twickenham, he would travel to town every morning to open the gallery, riding with the market gardeners, who conveyed him to London for a glass of gin a day (his own arrangement). 'Dad' was as careful of money as was his son, who was wont to chuckle, 'Dad taught me nothing except to save halfpence.'

Turner was never again the same man after the death of his father. In this year Sir Thomas Lawrence also died. The Turner Collection at Millbank contains a sketch of the funeral, looking like a double-page in an illustrated weekly. The following letter shows how the death of Lawrence affected him:—

CHAPTER XXXVII

1831: AGED FIFTY-SIX

HE TURNS HIS 'MAGIC LIMELIGHT' ON 'CALIGULA'S PALACE AND BRIDGE'; VISITS SIR WALTER SCOTT, AND MAKES HIS WILL

The Wizard makes a great effort this year, sending no fewer than six pictures to the Royal Academy, and among them was the famous 'Caligula's Palace and Bridge, Bay of Baiæ,' with this quotation from the Fallacies of Hope:—

'What now remains of all the mighty bridge
Which made the Lucrine lake an inner pool,
Caligula, but massy fragments left
As monuments of doubt and ruined hopes
Yet gleaming in the morning's ray, that tell
How Baiæ's shore was loved in times gone by.'

In this return to classicism Turner is even more wilful than usual with nature. Undoubtedly there are two suns present, as Mr. Wyllie points out, one of them shining straight through the rents in the palace wall, the other illuminating the boy and girl sitting on an unsubstantial yellow rock. In fact, 'Turner has turned his magic limelight on where his fancy prompted him, and has given us only as much nature as he thought good for us.'

Fanciful and unrealised is 'Watteau Painting,' with the following quotation from Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting.

'White, when it shines with unstained lustre clear,
May bear an object back, or bring it near.'

Turner was greatly interested in the theory of colour. He read and annotated Goethe's Theory of Colour, his copy of which is among the 'Relics' at the Tate Gallery.

The 'Watteau Painting' panel shows that artist, standing in the centre of the room, making a drawing of a lady and a gentleman reclining upon a divan. We have a glimpse of Turner's fun in the sketch he made at Petworth of himself, in the place of Watteau, painting in a room surrounded by some of the ladies of the household. I have nothing to say in favour of 'Lord Percy under Attainder,' except to remark that the dame in yellow is taken from a picture by Van Dyck at Petworth.

To this year belongs the golden 'Admiral Van Tromp's Barge at the Entrance of the Texel,' in the Soane Museum. Turner painted three or four Van Tromp pictures at different periods: one is in Sir Edward Tennant's collection, another is loaned by the nation to Sheffield, and a fourth, painted as late as 1844, is in the Royal Holloway College. All bear slightly different titles, and all are breezy and golden. Another picture of 1831, a fine, wild sea-piece, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The title is an apt description: 'Life Boat and Manby Apparatus going off to a Stranded Vessel making Signals (Blue Lights) of Distress.' The 'Sketch of Cochem on the Moselle' needs no description. It is a mere impression of light and movement, a quick record, unfinished if you like, yet quite finished in its statement of essential beauty.

Turner made a special journey to Scotland this year to make illustrations for Sir Walter's Scott Poetical and Prose Works. Turner was the guest of Sir Walter, and together they visited the most interesting spots on the Tweed and the Border, and in one of the plates—the Melrose—he, Scott and Cadell, small figures, are shown together, picnicking on a height overlooking the river and the Abbey.

On the 10th of June he signed his will, to be followed later by codicils, the vast, complicated will that he brooded over so long, that produced interminable litigation, with the result that almost all of his behests were disregarded. The Turner Gallery at Millbank is a magnificent, if tardy, reparation.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

1832: AGED FIFTY-SEVEN

HE PAINTS 'CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE' AND IS JOCULAR ON VARNISHING DAY

'... and now, fair Italy!
Thou art the garden of the world,
Even in thy desert what is like to thee?'

This, the beginning of an extract from Byron, accompanied his 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'—that late golden afternoon, Italy basking in the heat haze. The stone pine has been mercilessly criticised; but although that useful tree and the foreground pictures are carelessly painted, how beautiful is the horse-shoe bend of the placid river, and the suffused light on ruin, convent, walled town, and distant hills, illumined from the sun sinking behind the mountains.

There is a story connected with two of his other pictures of this year, 'Helvoetsluys—the City of Utrecht, 64 Going to Sea,' and that impossible work with the unwieldy title illustrating Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego coming forth from the burning fiery furnace. Turner asked George Jones, R.A., what he intended to paint for the ensuing exhibition. 'Oh!' said Jones, 'the Fiery Furnace, with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.' 'A good subject,' said Turner, 'I'll do it also.'

In the exhibition Jones's picture of 'The Fiery Furnace' was placed opposite to Turner's grey 'Helvoetsluys,' and next to Constable's 'The Opening of Waterloo Bridge.' Turner, who had been watching Constable brightening the flags and decorations of his city barges with vermilion and lake, realised that the flutter of colour was making his own grey picture look insignificant. Suddenly he put a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey sea, and departed without a word. The intensity of the red lead caused even the vermilion and lake of Constable to look weak.

When Constable saw the red lead he said—'Turner has been here and fired off a gun.' 'A coal,' cried Cooper, 'has bounced across the room from Jones's "Fiery Furnace," and set fire to Turner's sea.' The great man did not visit the room for a day and a half; then, in the last moments that were allowed for painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his picture, and shaped it into a buoy.

Constable, according to Thornbury, was secretly very severe on Turner's pictures, which does not tally with his spoken and written enthusiasm.

Little did Constable, or any one else, realise the work that Turner was yet to do. In the following year, at the age of fifty-eight, he exhibited his first Venetian picture—Venice—that was to absorb and haunt him, and inspire some of the most lovely visions of his ageing eyes.

CHAPTER XXXIX

1833: AGED FIFTY-EIGHT

HE PAINTS HIS FIRST 'VENICE' PICTURE AND RE-PURCHASES SOME OF HIS OWN DRAWINGS AT AUCTION

Venice, 'the last home of his imagination,' if we exclude the mountains of Switzerland, and the Thames of England, where he found his final solace, begins to inspire his brush, but not the visionary Venice that he was to evolve later, visions of colour and light which seem to be floating from sight even as we look at them. First the spade work—that was Turner's way. As he began painting the sea from the pictures of Van de Velde, so he began painting Venice from the pictures of Canaletto, and in this first interpretation, or rather illustration, of Venice, he introduced, in his quaint, admiring way, his hero for the moment, at work. 'The Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace and Custom House, Canaletto Painting,' is a sober topographical performance compared with his later pictures of the bride of the Adriatic. Indeed the quotation from Rogers's Italy gives more of a lilt to the imagination than the picture:—

'There is a glorious city in the sea,
The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,
Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea-weed
Clings to the marble of her palaces.'

No fewer than twenty-seven pictures of Venice by Turner have been catalogued.

Between 1833 and 1835 were published the beautiful series of The Rivers of France known as Turner's Annual Tour. The letterpress was by Leitch Ritchie, but they did not travel together 'as their tastes were dissimilar.' Ritchie gives the following description of the artist's methods:—

'His exaggerations, when it suited his purpose, were wonderful; lifting up, for instance, by two or three stories, the steeple, or rather the stunted cone of a village church. I never failed to roast him on the habit. He took my remarks in very good part, sometimes indeed in great glee, never attempting to defend himself otherwise than by rolling back the war into the enemy's camp. In my account of the famous Gilles de Retz, I had attempted to identify that prototype of "Blue Beard" with the hero of the nursery story, by absurdly insisting that his beard was so intensely black that it seemed to have a shade of blue. This tickled the great painter hugely; and his only reply to my bantering was, his little sharp eyes glistening the while, "Blue Beard! Blue Beard! Black Beard!"'

There were sixty drawings in this wonderful series, most of which are in the Turner Gallery. He did not sell these water-colours, preferring to lend them to the publishers for engraving purposes for which he charged from five to seven guineas each. Ruskin tells how one day Turner brought to him the sixty drawings for The Rivers of France rolled in dirty brown paper, offering them for twenty-five guineas each. Ruskin, to his grief, could not persuade his father to spend the money. In later years he had to pay a thousand pounds for the seventeen which he gave to Oxford. To look through this series is to be again impressed by the range of Turner's genius. Which is the most beautiful? I know not. Sometimes one, sometimes another—the blue mystery of 'The Light Towers of Hève,' the huddled splendour of 'Sunset in the Port of Havre,' the wild translucent sweep of the tidal wave in 'Quellebœuf,' the quiet splendour, infinity on a few inches of paper, of 'The Seine between Tancarville and Quellebœuf,' the poetry of 'Caudebec,' the fantasy of 'Jumiéges,' the charm of 'The Post Road from Vernon to Nantes,' the mystery of 'St. Denis.' Invited to pick one, I should hardly know which to choose. What a parcel of dreams for Turner to bring to Ruskin rolled in dirty brown paper. And while Turner the poet was preparing to realise these dreams, Turner the man was casting his acquisitive eye on former works of his own that came into the market. When Dr. Munro died in 1833, Turner attended the sale of his pictures, and acquired a great many of his own early works; no doubt he bought others too, as among the doubtful drawings catalogued at the end of the Inventory, are many by different hands. Turner informed the auctioneer that some of the drawings attributed to him were not his. That must have been an interesting spectacle. For Turner, when he had a grievance, did not conceal it.

CHAPTER XL

1834: AGED FIFTY-NINE

SOME OLD STORIES AND SOME AGELESS COLOUR STUDIES

Turner, in his sixtieth year, is on the threshold of the period when colour and light were more and more to obsess him to the exclusion of form and detail. In the Inventory, there are books labelled simply 'Colour Studies,' and among the water-colours connected with his 'Meuse-Moselle-Rhine' tour are some bearing such suggestive titles as 'Crimson Ruins,' 'Vermilion Towers,' 'Tower in Sunbeam,' 'Blue Hills,' 'Ruins with Rainbow.' In the 'Colour Studies' Sketch-Book there are nearly fifty pages described merely as 'Colour Sketches'; and on the last page are several lines of illegible verse. Also, after a sketch of a 'Ruined Castle on a Rock' a recipe 'said to be an infallible cure for the bite of a mad dog.'

In the 'Oxford and Bruges' Sketch-Book he breaks into this:—

'Old Tom, of Christ Church, Oxford. What? is it you Old Tom that keep this row every night? What? is it right that you should summon us to bed at nine continually all the year round? Is it fair that you, Tom, should thus deal with us every night?'