AFTER TURNER'S DEATH TO THE OPENING OF THE TURNER GALLERY IN 1910
[CHAPTER LVI]
VICISSITUDES OF THE TURNER BEQUEST
'In the name of God, Amen. I, Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A., of Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square, in the County of Middlesex, Esquire, do make and publish and declare this to be, and contain my last Will and Testament....
Turner's long will, with the complicated codicils which he added to it, fills eleven closely printed pages of an Appendix to Thornbury's Life. It is a confused and involved document, and the lawyers spent years and much money endeavouring to effect a compromise between the contesting parties. Ruskin succinctly summed up the litigation thus: 'The nation buried with three-fold honour, Turner's body in St. Paul's, his pictures at Charing Cross, and his purposes in Chancery.'
If love governed the world, if we lived for one another, it would have been quite possible to carry out, at once, Turner's wishes, which are sufficiently plain, in spite of the muddle of the will. He desired that the nation should have his pictures, that they should be kept together in a room or rooms added to the National Gallery to be called 'Turner's Gallery,' to be built within a period of ten years; that his fortune should be devoted to founding a Charitable Institution for unfortunate artists; that provision should be made for Hannah Danby and Mrs. Booth; that the Royal Academy should be given funds to found a Turner Medal, and that the testator should have a fitting monument in St. Paul's and a fine funeral. Turner had revoked his legacies to his next of kin: they were to have nothing. As Monkhouse justly remarks, the will was not exactly an unselfish document. Apart from his generosity to unfortunate brothers of the brush, and his care, no more than his duty, for his mistress housekeepers, it was devised to perpetuate his own fame, and to disregard his relatives.
In 1856 the Vice-Chancellor made an order which took the place of the will. The nation obtained all the works of art by his own hand, and the Royal Academy a sum of twenty thousand pounds for the Turner Medal and Scholarship. The real estate went to the heir-at-law, and Hannah Danby and Mrs. Booth received their portions. The plates, engravings and copyrights, and the rest of the property, were divided among the next-of-kin.
In 1854 the removal of the pictures and drawings from Queen Anne Street to the National Gallery began; in 1856 a final delivery was made, and in 1858 the catalogue delivered by the assessors, Sir Charles Eastlake, the President of the Royal Academy, and Mr. Knight, the secretary, consisted of the following works:—
Finished pictures100
Unfinished pictures including
mere beginnings182
Drawings and sketches in
colour and in pencil including
about 300 coloured
drawings19,049
19,331
Of the oil-paintings thirty-four were almost immediately placed on exhibition. Additions were constantly made, until by May 1857, the exhibited works had reached the number of one hundred and five. That, in brief, is the early history of the exhibited portion of the Turner Bequest, as given in the preface to the Inventory. The whole history, including the exhibition of a number of the water-colours at Marlborough House and the Victoria and Albert Museum, would require a long chapter to tell in detail.
I must now turn to the 19,049 drawings and sketches with which the name of Ruskin is for ever associated. He has told the story in his inimitable way in the preface to the fifth volume of Modern Painters. In 1857 he received notice that permission had been obtained for him from the Trustees of the National Gallery to arrange, as he thought best, the Turner drawings belonging to the nation. 'On which,' says Ruskin, 'I returned to London immediately.'
'In seven tin boxes in the lower room of the National Gallery, I found upwards of nineteen thousand pieces of paper, drawn upon by Turner in one way or another. Many on both sides; some with four, five or six subjects on each side (the pencil point digging spiritedly through from the foregrounds of the front into the tender pieces of sky on the back); some in chalk, which the touch of the finger would sweep away. (The best book of studies for his great shipwrecks contained about a quarter of a pound of chalk debris, black and white, broken off the crayons with which Turner had drawn furiously on both sides of the leaves; every leaf, with peculiar foresight, and consideration of the difficulties to be met by future mounters containing half of one subject on the front of it, and half of another on the back.) Others in ink, rotted into holes; others (some splendid coloured drawings among them) long eaten away by damp and mildew, and falling into dust at the edges, in capes and bays of fragile decay; others worm-eaten, some mouse-eaten, many torn half-way through; numbers doubled (quadrupled, I should say) up into four, being Turner's favourite mode of packing for travelling; nearly all rudely flattened out from the bundles in which Turner had finally rolled them up, and squeezed them into his drawers in Queen Anne Street. Dust of thirty years' accumulation, black, dense and sooty, lay in the rents of the crushed and crumpled edges of these flattened bundles, looking like a jagged black frame, and producing altogether unexpected effects in brilliant portions of skies, whence an accidental or experimental finger-mark of the first bundle-unfolder had swept it away.... With two assistants, I was at work all the autumn and winter of 1857, every day, all day long, and often far into the night.
'The manual labour would not have hurt me; but the excitement involved in seeing unfolded the whole career of Turner's mind during his life, joined with much sorrow at the state in which nearly all his most precious work had been left, and with great anxiety, and heavy sense of responsibility besides, were very trying; and I have never in my life felt so much exhausted as when I locked the last box, and gave the keys to Mr. Wornum in May 1858.'
It would take too long to continue the narrative of Ruskin's labours: the four hundred cabinets designed by him to contain the drawings; his privately printed catalogue; the official catalogue; his division, interesting but bewildering, of the Exhibited water-colours into groups; his notes upon them, delightful to the dilettante, but of little service to the student.
The Unexhibited drawings were arranged by Ruskin in three hundred and eight parcels, and classified by him according to his theory of their artistic value.
71 parcels were inscribed with the letter 'R,' meaning, right
in intention.
124 parcels were inscribed with the letter 'M,' meaning, middling
value.
108 parcels were inscribed with the letter 'O,' meaning, entire
rubbish.
5 were marked as unexamined.
Never was man less suited to the task of cataloguing, which should be absolutely methodical and entirely unfanciful, than John Ruskin. In a letter to the Keeper (Mr. R. N. Wornum), enclosing his catalogue, Mr. Ruskin referred to the lettering on the parcels as horrible, and added, 'I never meant it to be permanent.'
For long it seemed as if the neglect of the tin boxes, containing the parcels of unexhibited drawings, would be permanent. Mildew formed on them, 'the contents of the tin boxes were in a dirty state, with broken pieces of old sealing-wax, tattered fragments of string, dusty brown paper, etc., etc.' In 1862 Ruskin, with the assistance of Mr. George Allen, effected a kind of spring cleaning. 'I've got the mildew off,' he wrote, 'as well as I could, and henceforth I've done with the whole business; and have told them they must take it off themselves next time or leave it on—if they like.' When Mr. E. T. Cook, who, in his book on the Turner Drawings, did so much to arouse public interest in the 'buried Turners,' saw the tin boxes in 1904, the 'mildew was on.' But the period of neglect of the unexhibited portion of the Turner Bequest was nearly at an end.
In 1905 Mr. A. J. Finberg was invited by the Trustees of the National Gallery to classify the '19,049 pieces of paper' chronologically, to re-arrange the Sketch-Books in order, and to compile a chronological and descriptive Inventory of all the unexhibited Turner sketches. Later it was decided to include the whole collection of exhibited drawings and sketches. The work occupied Mr. Finberg's entire time for four years, and the result was made public in 1909, when a Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest was published as described in Chapter IV. The exhibited water-colours, as well as all the sketches, are included in the Inventory. Perhaps for the sake of accuracy, it would have been better if Ruskin had never touched the seven tin boxes. In following the communings of Turner with nature, he disintegrated many of the Sketch-Books (over 150 were dismembered), removed a leaf here and there, omitted to number them, gave the sketches Ruskinian titles, and made the task of re-arranging them in chronological or topographical order almost impossible. Mr. Finberg allows himself the following gentle and amusing reproof of his great predecessor: 'The question of dates had little or no interest for Mr. Ruskin; on such questions he is, as M. Cherfils grimly remarks, "plus que sobre."'
In 1878, when a selection of nearly three hundred drawings and sketches were exhibited on the ground floor of the eastern wing of the National Gallery, the Turner water-colour rooms became a place of pilgrimage; still more so when additional rooms were added, and the sepia drawings for the Liber were displayed. The collection was changed quarterly, and for years many made a point of visiting those little rooms each time that the change was made. Who did not love the 'delight drawings'? who did not wonder anew each visit at their beauty? Students copied and re-copied them, desiring nothing better in life than to sit there, through long days, trying to follow the Master's vision.
So the years passed. Turner was a classic; his environment was fixed. It seemed as if no alteration would ever be made in the crowded gallery where his oil pictures hung, overflowing into the adjoining room, or in the series of little rooms on the ground floor which we visited at each re-hanging, greeting the water-colours at each encounter like the faces, loved and lost awhile, of old friends. It was enough to know when we missed them, that they would return again, and that the 'buried Turners,' the Sketch-Books with their thousands of pages, each containing something of the Master's work, were being cared for. Turner was firmly settled in his niche in the Temple of Fame. It seemed that nothing more could ever happen to him.
Then suddenly, in the month of May 1906, something did happen: something that made the art sensation of the year.
That event was the exhibition of the 'unfinished' oils by Turner at the Tate Gallery.
Plate XLIV. Spietz on the Lake of Thun, Looking Towards the Bernese Oberland. Water colour (1842) In the collection of W. G. Rawlinson, Esq. (Size, 14 x 9 5/8)
[CHAPTER LVII]
1906: EXHIBITION OF THE 'UNFINISHED' TURNERS AT THE TATE GALLERY
The event was heralded by the following paragraph communicated to the Press by the Director and Trustees of the National Gallery:— 'Unexhibited Oil Paintings; Turner's Bequest. The Turner Collection of paintings, placed in the custody of the National Gallery Trustees, on September 25th, 1856, contained, besides the pictures since hung in Public Exhibition Rooms, or in the Official Rooms at Trafalgar Square, or lent under the Loan Act of 1883 to Provincial Museums, a certain number of paintings which, on account of their unfinished or wrecked condition, it has never been thought possible to exhibit.
'A more careful examination has lately led the Trustees to believe that some, at least, of these paintings may now be framed and take their place in the general collection. A selection has been made for this purpose, and of the paintings selected, many have been relined, and all are in course of being surface cleaned and varnished.'
On February 5th, 1906, the 'unfinished' oil-paintings by Turner were exhibited for the first time, in Room VII. of the Tate Gallery. Those who were present will never forget the occasion. Exclamations of delight and astonishment were continuous. Few had ever experienced such a succession of thrills. Everybody was surprised into—almost into extravagance. The Times began its article: 'To-day the nation is invited to view some marvellous treasures, of which it has all unconsciously been the possessor for fifty years,' and quoted the remark of an artist who was present: 'We have never seen Turner before.' Another critic wrote: 'The first coup d'œil of the room in which these treasures are displayed, is one never to be forgotten for those with eyes for seeing. The rare moment in life has come when criticism is disarmed. Suddenly, and without warning, the observer has been transported to the realms of enchantment.'
It was, perhaps, unfortunate that mingled with these 'unfinished' Turners, these prismatic and pearly visions, these flushes of iridescent colour on white grounds, were some of the laboured but magnificent failures of his later years and other periods. Those who did not know the work of Turner thoroughly had some difficulty in harmonising the brilliant impulses of his maturity with the ambitious works of his decline.
Plate XLV. Bridge and Tower (about 1835) Tate Gallery
I have discussed these 'unfinished' oil-paintings in preceding chapters; but it may be interesting to place on record here a list of the titles of the twenty-six unexhibited pictures first shown to the public on February 5th, 1906. (Two more were added in 1909—'Bridge and Tower,' No. 2424; and 'A Wreck with Fishing Boats,' No. 2425.)
'Norham Castle, Sunrise.' No. 1981.
'Sunrise, a Castle on a Bay.' No. 1985.
'Sunrise, with a Sea Monster.' No. 1990.
'Sunrise, with a Boat between Headlands.' No. 2002.
'Hastings.' No. 1986.
'The Evening Star.' No. 1991.
'Interior at Petworth.' No. 1988.
'Rocky Bay with Classic Figures.' No. 1989.
'Storm off a Rocky Coast.' No. 1980.
'Margate from the Sea.' No. 1984.
'Breakers on a Flat Beach.' No. 1987.
'The Thames from above Waterloo Bridge.' No. 1992.
'Yacht Racing in the Solent, No. 1.' No. 1993.
'Yacht Racing in the Solent, No. 2.' No. 1994.
'Yacht Racing in the Solent, No. 3.' No. 1995.
'Between Decks.' No. 1996.
'A Regatta at Cowes.' No. 1997.
'Shipping at Cowes, No. 1.' No. 1998.
'Shipping at Cowes, No. 2.' No. 2000.
'Shipping off a Headland.' No. 1999.
'Study of Sea and Sky.' No. 2001.
'The Old Chain Pier, Brighton.' No. 2064.
'A Ship Aground.' No. 2065.
'The Arch of Constantine, Rome.' No. 2066.
'Tivoli.' No. 2067.
'The Burning of the Ships.' No. 2068.
For weeks the appearance of Room VII. at the Tate Gallery had the aspect of a Private View day at the Royal Academy. Really it seemed as if art had become popular. The shell of Anglo-Saxon reserve was broken, and comments of amazement and delight were uttered aloud at the shimmering light of the sunrise series; at the pale beauty of the yachting pictures; at the loveliness of 'The Evening Star' nocturne; at the Monticellian orgy of colour in the 'Interior at Petworth'; at those irresistible final efforts of his imagination, coherent if extravagant, the 'Sunrise with a Sea Monster,' and 'The Burning of the Ships.'
Unfinished? A work of art is finished when the artist has said all he has to say. Turner had no more to tell about sunrises, sunsets, or pale sails against pale skies. He knew that, and he had the strength to leave them as they are—unfinished, but supremely realised.
Plate XLVI. Sunrise. A Castle on a Bay (1829 or after) Tate Gallery
[CHAPTER LVIII]
1908: FIFTY-TWO MORE 'UNEXHIBITED' TURNERS SHOWN AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY
In July 1908, it was announced that the Director of the National Gallery had 'discovered' in the private offices, three large water-colours by Turner. Later in the year, in the month of December, these, with forty-nine other examples that had never been exhibited before, were 'cleaned, mounted, framed,' and hung temporarily in Room XXII. of the National Gallery. This series, although extremely interesting, was not of the importance of the 1906 display. Some of the water-colours and pencil drawings, it is said, were found in a portfolio at the back of a bookcase, and the twelve oil studies in a dusty parcel bearing Ruskin's initials. Those oil studies, as has already been explained, were painted between 1805 and 1810 in oil on thin veneer; the forty water-colours were painted round about the year 1800, and included several of large size, such as 'Derwentwater,' 'Study for a Picture of Norham Castle,' and 'Scarborough Castle' These 'new' Turners remained for some time on screens in Room XXII. of the National Gallery, drawing crowds of people eager to see so many of the 'delight drawings' and studies by Turner, some of them 'prentice work; some of the highest importance, but done before he had quite mastered his material; some flashes of genius.
In 1910 they were removed to their last home in the Turner Gallery at Millbank, and in that year six more were added to the series—'St. Catherine's Hill, Guildford,' 2676; 'Newark Abbey,' 2677; 'Windsor from Lower Hope,' 2678; 'The Ford,' 2679; 'Sketch for Walton Bridges,' 2680; 'Walton Reach,' 2681. Here are the titles of the twelve oil sketches, and the forty water-colours. The Arabic numerals are those of the Catalogue, the Roman numerals and letters against the water-colours are the numbers and pages of the Sketch-Books and Sections in the Inventory.
Oil Sketches
'Newark Abbey.' No. 2302.
'A Narrow Valley.' No. 2303.
'A Wide Valley with a Town and Spire.' No. 2304.
'The Thames near Windsor.' No. 2305.
'Windsor Castle from the River.' No. 2306.
'A Town on the Thames.' No. 2307.
'Windsor Castle from the Meadows.' No. 2308.
'Tree-tops and Sky.' No. 2309.
'A River with a Castle and Village.' No. 2310.
'Sunset on the River.' No. 2311.
'Windsor Castle from Salt Hill.' No. 2312.
'Eton from the River.' No. 2313.
Water-colour Sketches
'View of Windsor Castle.' No. XXXIII. (H).
'Durham Cathedral.' No. XXXVI. (G).
'Derwentwater.' No. XXXVI. (H).
'Head of Derwentwater.' No. XXXVI. (I).
'Langdale Pikes.' No. XXXVI. (J).
'Coniston Old Man.' No. XXXVI. (L).
'Coniston Old Man.' No. XXXVI. (U).
'Rood Screen of a Church, seen from north Transept.' No. L. (A).
'Study for a Picture of Norham Castle' (1). No. L. (B).
'Study for a Picture of Norham Castle' (2). No. L. (C).
'Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.' No. L. (G).
'Donkeys beside a Mine Shaft.' No. LX. (I).
'A Castle seen through Trees.' No. LXIV. (L).
'Windsor Park. The Horses by Sawrey Gilpin, R.A.' No.
LXX. (G).
'St. Agatha's Abbey.' (?) No. LXX. (H).
'The Ford.' No. LXX. (K).
'Study for Historical Subject.' No. LXX. (N).
'Dolbadern Castle.' No. LXX. (O).
'Fonthill Abbey.' No. LXX. (P).
'A Welsh Mountain Subject.' No. LXX. (Q),
'Stormy Sunset in Wales.' No. LXX. (U).
'Falls of Schaffhausen from below.' No. LXXIX. (B),
'Falls of Schaffhausen and Castle.' No. LXXIX. (C).
'Schaffhausen from below the Falls.' No. LXXIX. (E).
'The Source of the Arveron' (1). No. LXXIX. (F).
'The Source of the Arveron' (2). No. LXXIX. (G).
'The Source of the Arveron' (3). No. LXXIX. (L).
'A Road among Mountains.' No. LXXIX (H).
'A Valley Between Mountains.' No. LXXIX. (K).
'Gordale Scar.' No. CLIV. (O).
'Great End, Scawfell Pikes.' No. CLIV. (M).
'Barden Towers.' No. CLIV. (L).
'Head of Derwentwater.' No. CLIV. (N).
'Scarborough.' No. CXCVI. (C).
'An Italian Scene.' No. CXCVI. (X).
'Ruins of an Amphitheatre.' No. CXCVI. (Z).
'Stormy Evening on Coast.' No. CCLXIII. (334).
'A Sea Piece, Evening.' No. CCLXII. (333).
'Carnarvon Castle.' No. LXX. (M).
'Scene in the Great St. Bernard Pass (?).' No. LXXX. (D).
The Turnerian surprises were not yet finished. They culminated in the announcement that one of the desires expressed by the painter in his will, namely, that his pictures should be kept together in a building to be called the 'Turner Gallery,' was at last about to be fulfilled through the generosity of Mr. J. J. Duveen, afterwards Sir Joseph Duveen, who offered to add a new wing, comprising five rooms, with other rooms below, to the National Gallery of British Art, for the exhibition of the Turner Bequest. It was stated that the whole of the Turner collection would be removed to this building, with the exception of such pictures as should be needed sufficiently to exemplify the Master in the representative British School at Trafalgar Square, including the two works which, in fulfilment of the terms of his will, hang side by side with two pictures by Claude Lorrain.
So at last the dream which many of us had been dreaming for years, and working for in writing and speech, was to be realised. It first became, I think, a subject of public interest through a letter that Mr. Lionel Cust wrote to the editor of the Times in July 1906, at a time when the Government authorities contemplated utilising the vacant land at the back of the Tate Gallery for a new Stationery Office. The support given to Mr. Cust's proposals caused the abandonment of this scheme, and the Director of the National Gallery was informed by the First Commissioner of Works that if a certain sum of money could be provided from private sources to erect a Turner Gallery, the Government would be prepared to find the remainder. Thanks to the efforts of Sir Hugh Gilzean Reid, this sum was within a near distance of being secured, when further need for it was removed by the generous action of Mr. Duveen, who offered to erect a Turner Gallery at his own cost.
In 1907 the nation became indebted to Mr. C. Mallord Turner for a number of Turner relics. This collection, lent for a period of ten years, includes two cases of models of ships and a cabinet of glass jars of colour from the artist's house; an oil-colour box with palette and brushes; a travelling pocket-book holding cakes of water-colour; several drawings, and a letter from Turner to his father; the catalogue of pictures and drawings on exhibition at his gallery in 1809; one of the original copper plates for the Liber Studiorum, etched and mezzotinted by himself; eight volumes from his library, including guide and handbooks, with annotations and sketches by Turner; and a volume of MS. poems, and specimen MSS. of the lectures given by him at the Royal Academy as Professor of Perspective. Another donation, from Mr. Sidney Cockerell, was a portrait of Turner by Charles Turner, with an inscription on the back, stating that the drawing was made about two months before the death of the sitter, in 1851. It is a profile to right, head and shoulders, and the official description of the garments he wears is—'tall hat, white collar, large tie with pin and top-coat.'
In the months of May and June, 1910, the Turner Room at the National Gallery, the well-known, well-loved room was dismantled, and in June, the Turner Room at the Tate Gallery was closed, and the 'unfinished' oils were carried through the doorway of the new Turner wing, now ready for hanging. A screen was placed before the entrance, but the visitor looking above the screen had a glimpse of the brilliant red wall-hangings, and he wondered, somewhat anxiously, how the old dark Turners would look in their new and gorgeous environment.
The very early pictures have not been admitted to the splendour. They hang outside the annexe, on the dividing wall separating Room V. from the Turner Gallery, four on one side of the doorway, four on the other, examples of the Turner who had not begun to find his way. Some of the titles suggest light and air, but the execution is heavy and fumbling, and they are blackened by time. At the extreme left is the little 'Carnarvon Castle' of the year 1800; above is a trifle called 'View of a Town,' of 1798. In the middle of the group is the huge 'Morning on the Coniston Fells, Lancashire,' exhibited in 1798, muddled, inconsequent, almost a libel on the fines from Paradise Lost that accompanied it—
'Ye mists and exhalations that now arise,
From hill or streaming lake, dusky or grey,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honour to the world's great Author rise.'
Adjoining this blackened 'Morning' is an unimportant, hardly noticeable 'Sea Piece,' painted about 1802.
On the other side of the doorway is the 'Moonlight, a Study at Millbank,' of 1797, looking like a fog at midnight dominated by a moon—like a wafer. Adjoining it is the pleasant self-portrait, painted in 1802 when he was twenty-seven—Turner with the strong chin, loose lower lip and the observant eyes, gazing straight out at the world. Next to it is the 'Mountain Scene' of 1800, small and poor, and beneath is the straightly-seen 'View on Clapham Common,' quite attractive.
Almost pathetic is this wall of timid and indifferent early Turners, hanging just without the precincts of the superb array of his life work, but interesting as showing from what insignificant beginnings rose the mighty edifice. I think if I had my way, I would make the contrast even more marked, almost epigrammatic. I would hang the little 'Moonlight at Millbank' just above the 'Sunrise With a Boat Between Headlands,' and the little 'Carnarvon Castle' against the loveliness of 'Norham Castle' at dawn.
Again and again I visited this threshold room, barred by a screen from the new Turner Gallery. At ten o'clock on the morning of July 18th, 1910, I was there again with an invitation-card to view the 'New Turner Wing.'
[CHAPTER LIX]
1910: THE NEW 'TURNER GALLERY' AT MILLBANK
So, at last, fifty-nine years after his death one of the wishes of his muddled will is almost obeyed—that his works should be hung 'in a room or rooms, to be added to the National Gallery, and to be called "Turner's Gallery."'
It would have been better if the new Turner Gallery had adjoined the National Gallery; but that seems to have been impossible. At present the exhibited portion is distributed thus: 129 oils and 467 water-colours, etc., at the Tate Gallery; 20 oils and a large selection of water-colours at the National Gallery; and 31 oils and other works in the provinces. The Salting Bequest water-colours are in the British Museum, and there are also many examples, varying from his first to his last period, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, with several oil pictures. Besides these there is the unexhibited portion of the Bequest, and the numerous oil pictures and water-colours in private and public collections in this country and abroad, making the largest amount of work ever produced single-handed by any artist.
There is one word only to describe the setting of the new Turner Gallery, the word magnificent. There are five rooms on the main floor, and four on the ground floor. The walls of the two large rooms or halls are covered with a rich Venetian red silk brocade, the walls of the others are hung with gold canvas.
The first new Turner Room is 34 yards long, nearly 11 yards wide, and 13 yards high. I hardly knew the old, familiar masterpieces. At first I saw nothing but that gorgeous red brocade, sweeping over the walls, probably the colour Turner himself used (but certainly in a cheaper material) in his own gallery in Queen Anne Street. Red may have been his favourite colour, but we must remember that in his Queen Anne Street Gallery, the walls were covered with pictures, so that the red hangings were barely visible.
In the new Turner Gallery the eyes see first the dominating red walls,—then the pictures. No work is skied. All the pictures are on the line, arranged chronologically, from the dark 'Tenth Plague of Egypt' of 1802, to the flaming 'Fire at Sea' of 1834. How well, sombre but glowing, they all look. Hanging together are those early, grandiose, masterful canvases, a challenge to the art world of his day, the 'Calais Pier,' the 'Nelson,' and 'The Shipwreck.' Opposite, on the line for the first time, is the vast 'England: Richmond Hill,' vastly entertaining.
At one end of the room hangs the well-loved, cool, and temperate 'Crossing the Brook,' and at the other end, facing it, that mighty effort of his imagination, 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus,' almost dwarfed, strange to say, by its companions the whirling 'Medea,' and the flaming 'Fire at Sea.' Here and there are the quieter works, pastoral and appealing, done in 1809, when his mind was happy and at rest, the 'Bligh Sand,' and the 'River Scene with Cattle,' so tranquilly aglow.
Plate XLVII. The Burning of the Ships (1840 or after) Tate Gallery
The next room is hung with the best of the 'unfinished' oils. The red silk brocade is almost too overpowering for the aerial loveliness of the 'Sunrise' pictures, for that magical' Hastings,' with the tawny sail, and the crepuscular delicacy of 'The Evening Star.' The pearly 'Yachting' series stands the ordeal better, and that glorious riot of colour, 'Interior at Petworth,' actually flaunts the red brocade. The old warrior pictures look better than ever— 'The Fighting Téméraire,' the 'Burial of Wilkie,' and that swift foreshadowing of Impressionism, 'Rain, Steam and Speed.' If Turner, mad for fame, as for art, could have seen these two rooms, one hung with the pictures he did for exhibition, the other with those he did for joy! If only he could have had prevision of this year of his triumph!
The other seven rooms hung with gold canvas—just right—contain a selection of his water-colours, finished and unfinished, oil beginnings, and others. The water-colours range from the copy of 'Folly Bridge,' which he made at the age of twelve, to such visions of his later years, when definition became lost in light, and form in colour, as 'Ravine and Tower,' and 'The Via Mala,' and certain dreams from the 'Rheinfelden' and 'Heidelberg' Sketch-Books, that one looks at with wonder and joy, and again with wonder and joy.
There is a room of his early water-colours with two exquisite interpretations of 'Norham Castle'; there is a room of the sepia drawings for the Liber Studiorum, with a case in the middle containing twenty-one supreme water-colours, dominated, at the end of the case, by the 'Venetian Fishing Boat'—a fairy thing flashing green, blue, and gold; and elsewhere there is a range of his water-colours, each a treasure; but I think my choice would fall upon 'Sunshine on the Sea,' everything omitted except—sunshine upon the sea.
On the ground floor, approached by a staircase (on the stair walls hang three of his colossal failures, 'Waterloo,' 'The Deluge,' and 'Pilate'—do not look at them!—), are four more rooms. One contains seventeen 'beginnings' of oil pictures, painted about 1807, never exhibited before in public, but probably shown in his studio in Queen Anne Street in 1808, to tempt patrons to commission 'finished' pictures from them. Times have changed. We value beginnings now. Another ground-floor room is hung with large 'unfinished' early water-colours, including a lovely beginning in a rosy flush, of 'Coniston Old Man,' and an atmospheric filmy blue 'Valley with Mountains.'
Plate XLVIII. Venetian Fishing Boat. Water Colour (1839) Tate Gallery
An adjoining room contains the oils on thin veneer, painted between 1805 and 1810, and first exhibited in 1908. My choice would be 'Tree Tops and Sky.' And the last room of all, a light, cheerful apartment, as it should be, includes his last four pictures, painted the year before he died, and other magnificent failures and experiments. Here is a picture of the period when he was haunted by the idea of Whalers in Arctic seas; and when he muddled off a final beauty in despair of Venice at sunset with a blue sky and ragged clouds; and when he tried to see 'The Angel Standing in the Sun,' driving Death before him, Turner then being seventy-one; and other dreams by this amazing man, whose art vision endured, not only to the end, but became more ethereal and dehumanised and seer-like as his physical frame shrank and tottered.
All that is over. The immortal part of him remains, and this is the year of his final triumph, long delayed. He who loved fame and praise, and spent much of his life pitting himself against his contemporaries and predecessors, would chuckle to know that his works in the new Catalogue of the Tate Gallery extend to 144 pages, while all the other artists represented have but 264 pages between them.
It was almost a shock to return from these golden lower rooms to the two large galleries on the main floor, adorned with the rich red silk brocade, that dazzles and distresses. I cannot like these red, flaming walls, but there is no doubt that the pictures look finer than they did in Trafalgar Square. Indeed, we seem to see some of them for the first time. I never realised before what a stupendous work is the 'Snowstorm—Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth, Making Signals.' One could spend an hour studying the swirl of the waves and the whirl of the storm, the movement of those deep water waves, and the lights that gleam in and through them. Incline your head a little to the right, and there is 'A Ship Aground,' with the tugging movement of shallow water, the reflections and the gleams portrayed with equal skill. Then turn your eyes still further to the right, and there is 'Rain, Steam, and Speed' and the 'Burial of Wilkie.' For some reason or another—the red walls, or the wonderful lighting of the gallery, or the flame of Turner that in this year of his triumph spiritualises our perceptions—these pictures seem to have taken on more delicate delicacies of eolour, new intricacies of vision.
And what about the 'Interior at Petworth,' that Mr. MacColl has bravely hung in the place of honour in the gallery where 'The Evening Star' and 'The Fighting Téméraire' dispute for our allegiance? The 'Interior at Petworth' is a puzzle to almost everybody. I watched a nice father and his nice little daughter, who had been talkative before most of the Turners, stand in front of this orgy of colour—dumb. Then the little girl said: 'Daddy, what does it mean?' And he after a long pause and another long look said, very seriously, as if he were a little ashamed: 'I don't know what it means, my dear.'
Plate XLIX. A Ship Aground (1830) Tate Gallery
How I longed to say to them: 'Friends, Turner didn't mean you to know what his "Interior at Petworth" means. He didn't mean you to see it. It's like this. He was a great artist, almost miraculous, with extraordinary faculties and power of work, and an ambition, that was almost a mania, to excel all other painters, living and dead, and to make the public of his day realise what a mighty man he was. So he painted his big exhibition pictures, every inch finished, understandable by everybody, classical, pastoral, homely, heroic—"The Bay of Baiæ," "Crossing the Brook," the "Frosty Morning," and "The Fighting Téméraire"; but that was only half his life. He was mad about drawing and painting; he never rested; he was always making experiments, trying to capture the fleeting loveliness of dawn or sunset, the pomp of high noon, and the splendour of colour in hot sunshine that to some artists is as intoxicating as wine. He never meant such experiments, done to relieve his surcharged soul, to be seen; he never exhibited them. It is we, valuing every scrap from Turner's hand, who are responsible for their exhibition; it is we who have brought to the light of day these attempts of the wizard, the old man mad about art, to force painting to realise what others would have thought to be unrealisable. They are wonderful. Folk will come from the end of the world to see them.
'Friends, how that room at Petworth came to be in that awful disarray I know not. It looks like a nightmare spring-cleaning, with no witness of the fury but the streaming sun. Turner looked on the sight—that's certain; was intoxicated by the orgy of colour, painted it in one swift hour, and having cased his soul, hid his colour-cry, as men hide their love poems in youth.'
Thus would I have spoken to that nice father and nice child; but while I was rehearsing my remarks, they had moved on. I sought them, and found the twain in one of the lower rooms where some of the early water-colours are displayed, 'unfinished,' because they were painted for love, not for exhibition, and love had said in them all that love can say.
I found the father and child standing just where I would like them to have been—before those two exquisite drawings hanging by the window, looking, not like paint, but like vapours of iridescent colour—the rosy flush of 'Coniston Old Man,' and the filmy blue of 'Valley with Mountains.'
Father and child were silent, but there was something in their eyes more eloquent than words. Then her hand stole into his and was clutched tight. My eyes moistened too. For I was looking upon the visible signs of invisible things. Love made those drawings, and the watchers were quickened by their loveliness. The father's grasp grew tighter on the small hand as she blinked away the mist in her eyes.
I should like to have explained, to that nice father and child, the Sketch-Books, the unseen part of Turner's prodigious achievement, the studies direct from Nature for his own use, records as he called them. Throughout his life his procedure seems to have been always the same—the sketch or the mere note direct from Nature, on which later, sometimes years later, he based an oil picture, or a water-colour for the engravers.
He could always, when he had once 'wrenched himself free from the trammels of topography and antiquarianism,' make a vital sketch from Nature, but it took him years to master oil-painting. The dark, heavy, early 'Buttermere Lake' was made from 'a pale and delicately charming water-colour.' There is not an artist who would not be delighted to study, in the Sketch-Books, the slight vital suggestions and to compare them with the finished works—the beginning and the end of his Hornby, Heysham, Watchet, Boscastle, Bolton; to look at the vigorous studies from which the 'Bridgewater Sea Piece,' and 'The Shipwreck' were made, and to swoop down upon that astonishing foreshadowing of Impressionism, 'Men Chatting Round the Fireplace at Petworth,' made during the visit to Petworth when he was fifty-five, from which his dream, world-well-lost period dated: Turner the visionary, who, like Wordsworth at the end, passed into regions where feeling is almost too mystical, too rarefied for expression, and indeed can only be expressed by allusion and suggestion.
The Turner Sketch-Books are as valuable, in their way, as, say, a discovery of diaries kept by Shakespeare from the day he first left Stratford to the hour he returned home full of honours and wisdom. Turner died in hiding—by choice; and, to our great advantage, he hoarded his Sketch-Books, as he hoarded his 'unfinished' works, meant only for his own eyes, those gleaming, grey-blue eyes that never lost their sparkle, and that saw and controlled his hand to paint a 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus' for fame, and a 'Teasing the Donkey at Petworth' for joy.
[CHAPTER LX]
TURNER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY—AND CLAUDE. A LAST LOOK
Turner has not disappeared from the National Gallery; he still has a small shrine there. The oil pictures retained at the National Gallery, with 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' in the place of honour, show an aspect of his achievement, but not the progressive splendour of his genius. In this room hang the two famous works by Claude Lorrain. Every one knows the story, which has been told again in these pages, how Turner, long before his death, bequeathed 'The Sun Rising Through Vapour' and 'Dido Building Carthage' to the nation on the condition that they should hang for ever between two paintings by Claude. Turner outshone Claude in all other fields, as the sun outshines the moon, but he never conquered Claude in the particular classical garden that the Lorrainer cultivated. You may judge for yourself. There they hang, the two great Claudes, between the two great Turners, an arrangement sanctioned by the Court of Chancery; there, if the spirits of the departed do ever visit this earthly scene of competition and aspiration, these two purified souls should have a gallant and courteous encounter.
The twain would look gravely at the Turner pictures, and perhaps Turner would explain, if spirits need explanations, that the supreme work of his life is not here. But there are some works on the walls that would make Claude wonder.
Plate L. The "Sun of Venice" Going to Sea (1843) National Gallery
Would he not look entranced at Turner's visions of Venice —four pictures showing how he progressed from topographical facts to impressions of the city fading in the sea, trailing the loveliness of her colour with her: from the hard 'Bridge of Sighs,' with the metallic blue sky, painted in 1833, to the magic 'San Benedetto' of ten years later, the golden sky flecked with crimson, and the golden pathway on the sea, an open gate leading to a land that exists only in the imagination of poets in words and in paint.
Claude would look at this golden path that 'lies o'er the sea invisible,' and at that other splendour, glorious still, though faded like the real Venice, called 'The "Sun of Venice" Going to Sea,' such a sea, such a fishing-boat sailing out from the rose-red city.
Claude would look, and his eyes would glisten, and he would make obeisance, and acknowledge the supremacy of his companion in these paintings of the loveliness and mystery of light and colour.
With the other Turners at the National Gallery Claude would feel on more equal ground, and while looking at 'Ancient Rome,' with the diaphanous buildings, he might murmur the title of his own 'Enchanted Castle,'—fantasy arising firmly from fact, not as in 'Ancient Rome,' fantasy accompanied by uncouth facts.
And Claude would realise the inequalities of 'The Meuse, Orange-Merchantmen going to pieces on the Bar,' the incomparable sky, and the grotesque and ill-drawn figures of the fishermen lolling in their boats; the glory of 'Orvieto,' in the sky, and the unsubstantially of the figures and the fountain in the foreground; the force and swing of the sea in 'Spithead,' and the impossible height of the waves; the loveliness and splendour of the panorama of nature in 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,' and the futility of the 'party of pleasure' in the foreground; and—and—the tumbling splendour of 'Queen Mab's Grotto,' done when the old man was seventy-one, still ambitious, still ready at a moment's notice to realise the unrealisable.
Turner must explain to Claude, as henceforth officials must explain to bewildered visitors, that the works at the National Gallery are but a small part, not very representative, of his colossal life-work; that to see his achievement in all its astonishing variety, it is necessary to descend to the ground floor of the National Gallery, where a selection of the water-colours is still shown, and where the Sketch-Books are preserved, and then to make the journey to Millbank, home of the magnificence of Turner from the sombre masterpieces of his youth to the golden visions of his maturity—from his early experiments in tinted drawings to his last flashes of colour lost in light—works that have made the child who was born in a dark London court of a crazy mother and a chirpy father—immortal.
INDEX
WORKS REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT
'ABINGDON,' [63], [82].
'Æneas Relating his Story to Dido,' [230].
'Ancient Italy,' [190].
'Ancient Rome,' [194], [281], [283]
'Angel Standing in the Sun, The,' [275].
'Apollo Killing the Python,' [87], [88].
'Apuleia in search of Apuleius,' [100].
'Archbishop's Palace, Lambeth,' [31].
'Arundel Castle,' [133].
'Arundel Park,' [133].
'BAY OF BAIÆ,' [125]-[127].
'Barnard Castle,' [140].
'Bellinzona,' [201].
'Between Decks,' [141], [143].
'Blacksmith's Shop, The,' [69].
'Bligh Sand,' [79], [273].
'Bonneville,' [109].
'Bough, The Golden,' [173].
'Bridge and Tower,' [182].
'Bridge of Sighs, The,' [168], [281].
'Brighton, Old Chain Pier,' [101].
'Bridgewater Sea Piece,' [279].
'Brienz, Lake of,' [91], [211].
'Brougham Castle,' [133].
'Burning of the Houses of Parliament,' [183].
'Burning of the Pantheon,' [35].
'Burning of the Ships,' [181], [199], [202].
'Buttermere Lake,' [40], [279].
'CALAIS PIER,' [51]-[54], [272].
'Caligula's Palace and Bridge,' [164]
'Carnarvon Castle,' [41], [269].
'Carthaginian Empire, Decline of,' [110], [130].
'Caudebec,' [171].
'Chichester Canal,' [152].
'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,' [167], [280].
'Christchurch Gate, Canterbury,' [36].
'Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo,' [117].
'Clapham Common, View on,' [49], [269].
'Cochem on the Moselle, Sketch of,' [160].
'Cologne, Arrival of a Packet Boat,' [138].
'Coniston Old Man,' [274], [278].
'Conway Castle,' [46].
'Constantine, Arch of,' [198].
'Cowes Castle, East,' [140].
'Cowes, Regatta at,' [143].
'Crook of the Lune,' [110].
'Crossing the Brook,' [89], [104], [119], [120], [272].
'DELUGE, THE,' [97].
'Departure of the Trojan Fleet,' [236].
'Depositing of Bellini's Pictures in the Redentore,' [200].
'Derwentwater,' [39].
'Dido and Æneas Leaving Carthage,' [100].
'Dido Building Carthage,' [101], [131].
'Dolbadern Castle,' [41].
'Dordrecht,' [80].
'Dover Castle,' [133].
'Dutch Boats in a Gale,' [48].
'EDINBURGH FROM THE CALTON HILL,' [112].
'FIRE AT SEA,' [173], [272].
'Fishermen Coming Ashore at Sunset,' [42].
'Fishing Boats in a Stiff Breeze,' [48].
'Folly Bridge and Bacon's Tower,' [28].
'Frosty Morning, A,' [95], [97], [98], [119].
'GARRETEER'S PETITION,' [79].
'Goarhausen and Katz Castle,' [109].
'HANNIBAL CROSSING THE ALPS,' [93].
'Harbour of Dieppe, The,' [135].
'Hastings,' [9], [134], [181], [182].
'Havre, Sunset in the Fort of,' [171].
'Helvoetsluys,' [167].
'Hève, The Light Towers of,' [171].
'Heysham,' [113].
'Holy Family,' [51].
'Hornby Castle,' [110].
'Hesperides, Garden of the,' [62], [63].
'INNSBRUCK,' [91].
'Interior of a Kitchen,' [24].
'Italian Tower, Sketch of,' [91], [150].
'JASON IN SEARCH OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE,' [48].
'Jumiéges,' [171].
'Juliet and her Nurse,' [186].
'KIRKSTALL ABBEY,' [40], [133].
'LAKE WITH DISTANT HEADLAND AND PALACES,' [199].
'Lancaster Sands,' [118].
'Launceston,' [145].
'Lifeboat Going off to Stranded Vessel,' [166].
'Line Fishing off Hastings,' [183].
'London from Greenwich,' [79].
'Lord Percy under Attainder,' [165].
'Lorreli, Twilight in the,' [229].
'Lowther Castle,' [84].
'Lucerne and the Righi—Early Dawn,' [205].
'Lucerne from Fluelen, Lake of,' [199].
'Lucerne, Lake of,' [113].
'MACON, FESTIVAL UPON THE OPENING OF THE VINTAGE OF,' [54].
'Mercury and Argus,' [186].
'Mercury and Herse,' [87].
'Mercury Sent to Admonish Æneas,' [236].
'Medway, The,' [133].
'Meuse, Orange Merchantmen, The,' [115], [228].
'Minotaur, Wreck of the,' [84].
'Modern Italy,' [190].
'Moon, the New,' [153], [194], [199].
'Moonlight, a Study at Millbank,' [41], [269].
'More Park,' [133].
'Morning on the Coniston Fells,' [40], [41], [269].
'Mortlake Terrace,' [140], [144].
'Moselle, View on the,' [175].
'Mountain Stream, A,' [82], [269].
'NELSON, THE DEATH OF,' [71], [72], [73], [272].
'Nemi, Lake of,' [100.]
'Newport Castle,' [38.]
'Norham Castle,' [40], [124], [274].
'Norham Castle, Sunrise,' [9], [39], [181], [182].
'ORVIETO,' [5], [6], [147].
'PANTHEON, THE MORNING AFTER THE FIRE,' [35].
'Peace, Burial of Wilkie,' [276].
'Pent House, Dover,' [35].
'Petworth House, Dewy Morning,' [84].
'Park, Evening at,' [133].
——Interior at,' [157]-[159], [262], [273], [276].
——Men Chatting Round the Fire at,' [279].
'Petworth, Teasing the Donkey at,' [279].
'Phyrne Going to the Bath,' [191].
'Portrait of Turner,' [269].
'QUEEN MAB'S GROTTO,' [10], [225], [282].
'Quellebœuf,' [171].
'RAIN, STEAM, AND SPEED,' [214], [276].
'Ravine and Tower,' [273].
'Regatta at Cowes,' [143].
'Rembrandt's Daughter,' [80], [140], [143].
'Rhine, Study on the,' [182].
'Richmond Hill,' [115], [272].
'River Scene with Castle,' [78], [273].
'Rocky Bay with Figures,' [154], [180], [181].
'Rockets and Blue Lights,' [198].
'Rome from the Vatican,' [116], [118].
'Ruysdael, Fishing-Boats Bringing Disabled
Ship to Port,' [217].
'ST. DENIS,' [171].
'St. Michael's Mount,' [101], [173].
'San Benedetto,' [207], [281].
'Scarborough,' [91].
'——Castle,' [133].
'Seelisberg, Moonlight,' [211].
'Seine Between Tancarville and Quellebœuf, The,' [171].
'Shields, North,' [133].
'Shipping at Cowes,' [142].
'Shipwreck, The,' [59]-[61], [272], [279].
'Ship Aground, A,' [161], [276].
'Slave Ship, The,' [197], [198].
'Snowstorm, Avalanche, and Inundation,' [188].
'Snowstorm, Steamboat off Harbour's Mouth, [202], [203], [273].
'Spietz on the Lake of Thun,' [206].
'Spithead,' [79], [282].
'Star, The Evening,' [152], [153], [181], [262].
'Stonehenge at Sunset,' [57].
'Study for a Picture of Norham Castle,' [39].
'Sunrise, a Castle on a Bay,' [154], [180].
——with a Boat Between Headlands,' [181], [182].
——with a Sea Monster,' [181], [219], [262].
'Sun Rising Through Vapour, The,' [61], [69], [119].
'Sunshine on the Sea,' [274].
'"Sun of Venice" Going to Sea,' [207], [281]
'Swiss Lake, A,' [201].
'TELL'S CHAPEL, FLUELEN,' [221].
'Téméraire, The Fighting,' [193], [194].
'Tenth Plague of Egypt,' [41], [272].
'Tintern Abbey,' [35].
'Tivoli,' [198].
'Totnes on the Dart,' [133].
'Town, View of A,' [269].
'Tree-tops and Sky,' [59].
'Turin from the Church of the Superga,' [109].
'ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS,' [151], [152], [272].
'VALE D'AOSTA, IN THE' [199].
'Valley with Mountains,' [274], [278].
'Van Tromp's Barge at the Entrance of the Texel,' [165].
'Venice,' [198].
'Venice, Approach to,' [217].
'Venice from the Church of Madonna della Salute,' [183], [184].
'Venetian Fishing Boat, The,' [195], [196], [274].
'Vernon to Nantes, the Post Road from,' [171].
'Via Mala,' [273].
'Visit To The Tomb,' [236].
'WALHALLA, OPENING OF THE,' [209].
'War: Exile and Rock Limpet,' [203].
'Warkworth Castle,' [40].
'Waterloo, The Field of,' [112].
'Watteau Painting,' [165].
'Whalers,' [219].
'What You Will,' [124].
'Wilkie, Burial of,' [276].
'Windsor,' [32].
——castle from the River,' [59]
'Windmill and Lock,' [75].
'YACHT RACING IN THE SOLENT,' [142].