FROM A CONSIDERATION OF THE 'UNFINISHED OILS TO' RAIN, STEAM AND SPEED' AND THE LAST SKETCH-BOOKS
Plate XXVII. Sunrise, With a Boat Between Headlands (about 1835) Tate Gallery
[CHAPTER XLI]
1835: AGED SIXTY
SOME REMARKS ON THE 'UNFINISHED' OILS, AND BLACKWOOD'S ATTACK ON HIS 'VENICE' PICTURE OF THIS YEAR
Ruskin, to whom we owe so much, whose prose delights, consoles, inspires, confuses, bewilders and annoys in turn; who, by his very enthusiasm for Turner, occasionally ill-judged and unfair to other painters, is sometimes of disservice to Turner, has nevertheless constructed an edifice of interpretation, praise and blame that must last as long as the pictures themselves. Certain of Ruskin's phrases are unforgettable; one consists of but two words—'Delight Drawings,' designed to describe the water-colours Turner made during the last ten years of his working life; not done for the engraver or for exhibition, but just for his own pleasure. 'I look upon them,' said Ruskin, 'as more valuable than his finished drawings or his oil pictures, because they are the simple record of his first impressions and first purposes, plans or designs of the pictures which, if he had had time, he would have made of each place.'
Since these words were written, we have learnt to esteem even more highly these 'Delight Drawings,' and to regard them as the final and highest expressions of Turner's genius. With the inward eye I see Turner walking about a town with a roll of thin paper in his pocket, as Ruskin has described, making a few scratches upon a sheet or two, mere shorthand indications of all he wished to remember, then at his inn in the evening completing the pencilling rapidly, and adding 'as much colour as was needed to record his plan of the picture.'
Thus in the last decade of his life, when he had mastered his craft, turned away from the works of all other painters to the fair face of nature, did Turner produce his 'Delight Drawings.'
Equally quickly, happily and impulsively did he produce the 'unfinished' oils. Could there be a better name for these 'water-colours writ large,' than 'Delight Pictures,' done like the drawings for his own pleasure, in moments of impulse while he was working upon exhibition pictures, much as a man, when writing a history of a county, might break off to record in a hundred words, a 'thing seen,' something of the present, that had spoken to his heart while studying the present manners and customs of the county?
Plate XXVIII. Hastings (about 1835) Tate Gallery
It is impossible to date accurately all the 'Delight Pictures,' a list of which is given in the chapter towards the end of this book describing the sensation caused by the exhibition of the 'unfinished' oils in 1906. The 'Rocky Bay with Figures,' and the 'Sunrise, a Castle on a Bay,' both founded on sepia drawings for the Liber, may have been done as early as 1829 or 1830; the 'Yachting' series certainly belong to 1827; the 'Chain Pier, Brighton,' and the 'Ship Aground' to 1830, and 'The Evening Star' may be as early as 1829, or as late as 1840. Some, the most delicate and evanescent, wonders of light, flushes of colour, may have been painted any time between 1830 and 1840; others, perhaps later, as 'The Burning of the Ships,' and 'Sunrise and a Sea Monster,' which probably belong to the 'Whalers' period. It is impossible to describe them, and as many are reproduced in colour in this volume, the attempt is hardly necessary. The catalogue of the Turner Gallery bravely attempts description and elucidation; but these works were never meant either to be titled or described. I am content merely to look at the crepuscular beauty of the nocturne with the evening star; at the deep green sea lighted near the shore by a gleam of golden sunlight in 'A Rocky Bay with Classic Figures,' unaware until I am told, that Greek galleys are moored in the bay and drawn up on the shore, and that a shadow of a man is haranguing a group of shadowy sailors; at the mist-shrouded castle behind which the sun is rising—Turner the mystic, the initiate in light and colour.
But if these are beautiful, what word can describe the 'Sunrise with a Boat between Headlands,' the 'Hastings,' and the 'Norham Castle, Sunrise,' his final vision of the ruin that he had painted again and again (see Frontispiece). It has now become a mere whisper of light and colour, a half-uttered murmur of the wonder of sunrise. Detail has gone; it is flooded in light; the old familiar foreground has disappeared, leaving only the glory of the sky reflected in the water with the note of red, the blue rampart, and the haze that is all colours. What is to be said about 'Sunrise, with a Boat between Headlands'? I look at it, love it, and easily forget the useful information given in the catalogue to the effect that a water-colour similar in composition, once in the collection of the late Sir James Knowles, is said to be a view on the Lake of Lucerne. Hastings, too, Turner painted again and again, but never did he realise so perfectly the atmospheric vision that he once had of ugly Hastings as in this 'Delight Picture,' with the amber and golden sails rising to the pale blue sky, the amber sail strong against the rosy light on the cliffs. And the misty, yellow sunrise of the 'Bridge and Tower,' with the dreamland viaduct spanning the dreamland river, is it not beautiful? But when he painted that stalwart tree to the right, I think Turner's imagination flagged.
Delight Pictures! Delight Drawings! One of the drawings rises before me as I write, a late one done a few years before his death, that exquisite 'Study on the Rhine,' body colour on grey paper, in the collection of Sir Edward Durning-Lawrence. I have no words to describe this wonder of misty blue and gold, with the moon riding in a sky charged with the mystery of essential colour. We are all, like Ruskin, extravagant at times in speaking and writing of the finest work of Turner. A man, long dead, a contemporary, said: 'There are parts of some of them wonderful, and by God, all other drawings look heavy and vulgar.'
A living man said in my hearing: 'They are the finger of God: there is no other way to describe them.'
. . . . . . . . . .
I must now take up the story of Turner's exhibited pictures in 1835, which included 'Line Fishing off Hastings,' now in the Victoria and Albert Museum; 'Venice from the Porch of Madonna della Salute,' now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, signed on a floating plank, the picture which Blackwood attacked; and two versions of the magnificent 'Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons,' one shown at the Royal Academy, the other at the British Institution. Turner had watched the conflagration the year before, as the 'Burning of the Houses of Parliament' Sketch-Book of 1834 tells us. There are also water-colours of this subject in the National Collection, and at Farnley, and a vignette in Sir Edward Tennant's collection. As a nocturne the 'Burning of the Houses of Parliament' is as furious as 'The Evening Star' is peaceful. Dim boats push out into the lurid light reflected in the water; other boats linger in the pools and eddies within the shadow of the bridge; the whole scene is a bustle of colour, from pale primrose on the bridge in shadow, to the hurry of red and yellow in the night sky bright with the illumined smoke. The Royal Academy version was, we are told, almost repainted by Turner on Varnishing Day. 'He finished it on the walls the last two days before the gallery was opened to the public'. The authority is Scarlett Davies, whose letter on the subject I have already quoted: 'I am told it was good fun to see the great man whacking away with about fifty stupid apes standing around him, and I understand that he was cursedly annoyed—the fools kept peeping into his colour-box, examining all his brushes and colours.'
Thornbury tells us that Lord Hill, on looking at the picture, exclaimed: 'What's this? Call this painting? Nothing but dabs.' But upon retiring and catching its magical effects, he added: 'Painting! God bless me. So it is.'
In this year the attacks in the press began, heralded by Blackwood, with a severe criticism of 'Venice from the Porch of Madonna della Salute.' The writer in Blackwood said:—
'Venice, well I have seen Venice. Venice the magnificent, glorious, queenly, even in her decay—with her rich, coloured buildings, speaking of days gone by, reflected in the green water. What is Venice in this picture? A flimsy, whitewashed, meagre assemblage of architecture, starting off ghostlike into unnatural perspective, as if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the only attempt at richness in the picture). The greater part of the picture is white, disagreeable white, without light or transparency, and the boats, with their red worsted masts, are as gewgaw as a child's toy, which he may have cracked to see what it is made of. As to Venice, nothing can be more unlike its character.'
Poor old Turner! But this 'Venice' as not a good picture. John Ruskin, then sixteen years of age, read the article in Blackwood, read it with indignation, and his brain became a tumult of thoughts, and, when the attack was continued, he wrote a letter. Seven years later that letter became a book, the first volume of Modern Painters.
[CHAPTER XLII]
1836: AGED SIXTY-ONE
THE RECEPTION OF 'JULIET AND HER NURSE' PROCLAIMS THAT TURNER IS BEGINNING TO LOSE FAVOUR WITH THE PUBLIC
This year, alas! Turner exhibited 'Juliet and her Nurse,' and 'Mercury and Argus.' How strange it is that the hand that was painting Delight Drawings and Pictures for pleasure should also be producing 'Juliet and her Nurse' and 'Mercury and Argus' for exhibition. Even kindly Time has not brought 'Mercury and Argus' into favour. Shown at the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910, all a modern critic could say was: 'It is charitable to suppose that it was hastily produced for purposes of exhibition, with a carelessness as to technical structure which time has exposed.' The contemporary attacks on 'Juliet and her Nurse,' following the severe criticism in Blackwood of the Venice picture, provoked Ruskin to write the letter, the germ of Modern Painters, mentioned in the foregoing chapter. This defence by the fiery champion of seventeen was acknowledged by Turner' with thanks but without praise,' and he added, 'I never move in these matters.'
During the journey to Italy, which Turner made this year with Mr. Munro of Novar, I do not suppose that he ever mentioned the name of Ruskin. That must have been rather a difficult journey, as Munro of Novar was suffering from a 'great depression of spirits'; but the trip seems to have been of benefit to Munro. He reports that Turner enjoyed himself in his way—'a sort of honest Diogenes way '—and that he was companionable enough if such teasing questions were avoided as to how he got this or that colour.
Turner never rhapsodised about scenery. His usual morning question during that journey was, 'Have you got the sponge?' He was fond of laconic remarks. One of them I shall always remember. Ruskin, before starting forth on a certain foreign tour, called upon Turner to bid him good-bye, the ardent youth no doubt expecting, hoping for, priceless words of counsel; but Turner was mainly anxious that the young author should not give his parents cause for anxiety on his travels. 'They will be in such a fidge about you,' were his parting words.
[CHAPTER XLIII]
1837: AGED SIXTY-TWO
'TROUBLES BEGIN TO GATHER ABOUT HIM. NOTHING WILL GO RIGHT'
The pictures exhibited in 1837 did not restore Turner to favour. They included the 'Snowstorm, Avalanche and Inundation,' described as a 'tumult of cloud, wind and raging torrent in the gorge,' the sketch for which he had made on his way to Italy with Munro of Novar; and the 'Departure of Regulus,' which Ruskin included among the 'nonsense pictures.'
Troubles begin to gather about him. Nothing will go right. The beautiful England and Wales series had been received with so little favour that it was decided to discontinue the issue. The stock was put up for auction, but Turner opened negotiations and purchased the whole privately for three thousand pounds. Many of those present were willing to buy portions of the work. To one of these Turner said: 'So, sir, you were going to buy my England and Wales to sell cheap, I suppose—make umbrella prints of them, eh? But I have taken care of that. No more of my plates shall be worn to shadows.'
The dealer tried to explain that he wanted only the printed stock, and Turner seemed to understand, made an appointment, then forgot all about the matter.
Fighting the world of men, he never wearied in finding his way about the world of nature, recording his impressions, and adding with difficulty to his small stock of education. On the first page of the 'Dresden' Sketch-Book is the following:—
'I want to go to Berlin.
Ich will nach Berlin gehen.
I wish to see.
Ich wollte—sehen, etc.'
A little later he comes into his own joys again—twenty-one pages of 'Buildings,' and sixteen of 'Views on River,' with sketches of sunsets and rocks, distant coasts and sailing boats—anything so long as it was beautiful in light, line or movement.
[CHAPTER XLIV]
1838. AGED SIXTY-THREE
A 'NONSENSE PICTURE' OF 1838 WHICH IN 1878 FETCHED £5460 AT AUCTION
From this year onward until after 1845, when his health began to fail, Turner spent more and more time on the Continent, making his beloved impressions of the moment, and producing the unrivalled water-colours of his 'latest phase,' each a 'vision of delight.' The Sketch-Books of the period are records of foreign travel. Venice and the Lake of Lucerne were the places of his heart's choice. I know not how many times he drew the Righi, making the mountain now dark, now pale, now red, now blue; or how many times he painted Venice, her churches, her buildings and her water-ways until in the end the city in the sea became a celestial city in a dream—his dream. The exhibited pictures of 1838 are splendid failures. They included 'Modern Italy' and 'Ancient Italy,' the latter classed by Ruskin among the 'nonsense pictures.' Here is the passage: '"Caligula's Bridge," "Temple of Jupiter," "Departure of Regulus," "Ancient Italy," "Cicero's Villa," and such others, come they from whose hand they may, I class under the general head of "nonsense pictures." 'But so strange a creature is man, so deaf to advice, that this 'Ancient Italy' was sold by auction in 1878 for £5460. Some prize Turner's failures higher than the successes of other men.
Plate XXIX. The Salute, Venice (1838) Tate Gallery
'Phryne Going to the Public Bath as Venus—Demosthenes taunted by Aeschines,' I have not seen. It is one of the Turners that were withdrawn from the walls of the National Gallery. Mr. Wyllie describes this procession of dancing girls, madly throwing a white Cupid into the air and pirouetting, as woven into a bewildering maze of light and colour.
'Drawing is neglected, and the most audacious expedients resorted to, increasing the brilliancy and the movement of the throng. Some of the faces are white with vermilion shadows. The head of Demosthenes is twisted out of all likeness to human form. In fact everything is sacrificed to colour.'
Never has Turner been so wilful as he is now at the age of sixty-three. Think of it—sixty-three, and wilder, more revolutionary, more indifferent to convention than a hot-headed youth of twenty-three. 'He paints white sails or buildings up against a sunset, which is a thing impossible.' He disregards drawing and form, and squeezes features 'together into one corner of a face, slanting diagonally across it like handwriting' ... True.
But the magician conquered, not through these wildnesses, but in spite of them. Even when most extravagant, there is enough of the essential Turner to make the picture great. His dreams were too vast for the poor tools at his command; he tripped over his tools, he tripped up over nature; but he did what no other man has ever been able to do. And he could still be magnificently sane when he painted something that his eyes had seen, not something that his chaotic fancy had imagined. The year following the 'Phryne,' he exhibited one of his sanest, and probably his most popular picture—'The Fighting Téméraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to be Broken up,' the last picture of his 'at which no stone was thrown.' And he gave to it a true and trite tag of poetry, which I take the liberty of writing as prose, that the curious reader may amuse himself by trying to recast the line into poetry: 'The flag which braved the battle and the breeze no longer owns her.' The first nine words may be by some esteemed poet: none but Turner would have written the last four words as a line of verse.
[CHAPTER XLV]
1839: AGED SIXTY-FOUR
'THE FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE,' AND A SEA-PIECE ON A VISITING-CARD
A party of the Academy Club were journeying to Greenwich, on their annual visit, when the steamer passed a tug with an old battleship in tow.
'There's a fine subject for you, Turner,' said Clarkson Stanfield, And Turner, who could take a hint from anybody, looked, chuckled, ruminated, no doubt made a pencil sketch, and the result was 'The Fighting Téméraire.'
She was launched at Chatham Dockyard in 1798: she had been the second ship in Nelson's division at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Sold out of the service at Sheerness in 1838, she was now being towed to Rotherhithe to be broken up. Her career was ended, but Turner has made the memory of the old wooden warrior immortal. 'The Fighting Téméraire' is too well known to be described. Pages and pages have been written about the picture with scornful comments that the sun and the mast are in the wrong places, and I know not what else. The mast, of course, should not be abaft the funnel; this curious error, or perhaps intention on Turner's part so that nothing should interfere with that black note, was corrected by J. T. Willmore, in his engraving. The 'Téméraire' as popular. No abusive voice, says Ruskin, was ever raised against it. 'And the feeling was just, for of all pictures and subjects not visibly involving human pain, this is, I believe, the most pathetic that was ever painted.'
An admirer who tried to purchase the 'Téméraire,' had a long interview with Turner in Queen Anne Street, but the painter could not be induced to put a price upon the picture, although he offered to take a commission of the same size at two hundred guineas. There is the usual Varnishing Day story told about the 'Téméraire.' Geddes, who had a portrait hung above, realising that his picture was killed by the dazzle of Turner's sunset, prepared to introduce a showy carpet into the floor of his portrait. He had laid it in with a flat, bright tint of vermilion when Turner appeared. 'Oh, ho! Mr. Geddes,' he cried, and seizing his palette knife loaded on orange, scarlet and yellow. Returning the next day Turner found that the bright vermilion ground in Geddes's picture had been converted into a 'rich, quiet, sober-coloured Turkey carpet.'
Less popular, because it makes no appeal to pathos or sentiment, was another exhibit of this year, with another of the unwieldy titles, 'Ancient Rome, Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus, The Triumphal Bridge and Palace of the Cæsars restored,' with this quotation, obviously Turner's own composition:—
'The clear stream,
Aye—the yellow Tiber glimmers to her beam,
Even while the sun is setting.'
Plate XXX. Ancient Rome—Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus (1839) National Gallery
If only Agrippina, with the ashes of her husband and the bodies of her suite were absent, what a lovely vision this would be with the rosy bridge, the yellow fairy-like building, and the full moon riding in the evening sky. Yet why ask to have the figures taken away? They are Turner; it is all Turner, a glorious Turner, still in the hour of his splendour, and quite careless of the fact that it was at Brindisium, not Rome, that Agrippina landed. Northcote, who had a dark subject picture hanging above 'Ancient Rome,' said, 'You might as well have opened a window under my picture.' Turner was always opening a window to a poet's land, which, if it has no earthly habitation, exists, eternally, in that place where all beautiful things dwell—the imagination. The Sketch-Books of this period are as crowded with drawings as the court of Agrippina with figures. In the 'Venice' Book of 1839 against a water-colour entitled by Ruskin 'Venice: Sunset sketch with turned edge,' he has appended this note: 'Preserve this drawing exactly as it is, as evidence of the way he worked; the turned edge of the paper painted upon.'
The 'Venetian Fishing Boat' also shows the 'way he worked,' when working for his own pleasure, not for exhibition—green water, violet hills, rosy buildings held together by the strength of that tawny sail—lovely.
On a packet which contained a number of drawings in a Sketch-Book, now labelled 'Miscellaneous,' Ruskin inscribed the following: 'Thirty-four pieces of paper, some double. Pencil Outline. Rubbish; only worth looking at for references. It contains many late scrawls of German scenery. Studies of Germany, etc.'
What may have seemed rubbish to Ruskin, pencil scrawls, etc., may have been of vital importance to Turner. How these Sketch-Books evoke the man and the moment. In one of them is 'A Study for a Sea-Piece,' scrawled on a visiting-card, above the name of Mr. J. M. W. Turner, 47 Queen Anne Street, Harley Street. The number of studies of the sea he made during his life certainly exceeded the number of visiting-cards he used.
[CHAPTER XLVI]
1840: AGED SIXTY-FIVE
A CONTRAST BETWEEN THE TERRIFIC 'SLAVE SHIP' AND THE MILD 'NEW MOON'
What a contrast is the cracked and faded picture 'The New Moon' in the National Collection, also called 'I've lost my boat, you shan't have your hoop,' with its sunset sky and young moon, the reflections still beautiful in the wet sand, to the terrific and impossible 'Slave Ship,' now in America, with its sharks, its huddle of bodies manacled and writhing in the water, and the iron chains floating on the surface, as if they were corks. As Monkhouse justly observes, one of Turner's finest conceptions is spoilt for the want of a little commonsense.
How opinions differ. Of this picture Ruskin wrote: 'I think the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and, if so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of "The Slave Ship," the chief Academy picture of the exhibition of 1840.' After a long and eloquent description of the sea, without mentioning the sharks, or the bodies, or the chains, he concludes: 'I believe, if I were reduced to rest Turner's immortality upon any single work, I should choose this.'
I will now quote George Innes, the American painter: 'Turner's "Slave Ship" is the most infernal piece of clap-trap ever painted. There is nothing in it. It has as much to do with human affections and thought as a ghost. It is not even a fine bouquet of colour. The colour is harsh, disagreeable and discordant.' Hamerton suggested that the opinion of George Innes owes part of its severity to reaction against Ruskin's eloquence.
Among the other pictures of this year were a 'Venice,' now at the South Kensington Museum, the middle distance crowded, the creamy towers beautiful; and the magnificent 'Rockets and Blue Lights,' a tempestuous nocturne, impressionism run riot, which fetched in the Yerkes sale at New York in 1910, £25,000, and which was hailed in the transatlantic newspapers as the finest example of Turner's genius ever seen in the United States. In this year, also, perhaps later, may be placed 'The Arch of Constantine, Rome,' that colour dream with the yellow sunset blazing behind the tree, and the arch looking like a rose red ruin of the imagination. Mr. Alfred Thornton, who has worked out minutely the actual topography of this picture, has come to the conclusion that Turner adhered very closely to the facts, obviously because the facts happened to coincide with his vision. Of the companion picture, 'Tivoli,' Mr. Thornton says: 'The artist seems to have recorded a series of impressions he might have gathered during an evening walk at Tivoli. Scarcely any two parts of the picture are side by side in nature, yet all can be identified with more or less certainty.'
Plate XXXI. The Arch of Constantine, Rome (1840) Tate Gallery
'The Burning of the Ships,' which is the same size as 'The Arch of Constantine' and 'Tivoli,' and probably arises, like them, out of his last visit to Rome, is sheer vision, sheer imagination, perhaps founded on some recollection of naval warfare, or a vague memory of an incident in the Iliad. It is a fantasy of colour and atmosphere. To look closely is to see clouds of smoke rising from distant ships, with suggestions of an arch and buildings, and galleys crowded with rowers; but Turner was beyond form and definition when he painted 'The Burning of the Ships'; he saw only the effect of the fire and the fury, lingering with much loveliness in light.
In 1840 or later he painted many of the water-colours that arrest us by their beauty in the new Turner Gallery, such as 'The Lake of Lucerne, from Fluelen,' the large, unfinished 'Lake with Distant Headlands and Palaces,' and that delight drawing in Mr. Rawlinson's collection called 'In the Vale D'Aosta, a Passing Shower.'
But of all the pictures produced this year the cracked and faded 'New Moon,' with the sunset sky, and the funny additional title, 'I 've lost my boat, you shan't have your hoop,' seems to me the most personal to Turner. He is back in his boyhood at Margate or elsewhere, running on the sands with little companions and dogs at sunset, when the new moon was in the sky, and the world was young,—a mild, pathetic little picture, a strange contrast to the 'Slave Ship.'
[CHAPTER XLVII]
1841: AGED SIXTY-SIX
HOW TURNER DID IT? HE 'GRASPED THE HANDLE AND PLUNGED THE WHOLE DRAWING INTO A PAIL OF WATER'
Turner was represented by six pictures at the Royal Academy this year—unimportant, not one worthy of his reputation. There was a topographical Venice, which Chantrey bought on Varnishing Day before he had seen it; and the rather decorative, rather splendid, rather fatigued picture called 'Depositing of Giovanni Bellini's three pictures in the Church of the Redentore, Venice,' not one of which modern expert criticism allows to Bellini. Little that would have mattered to Turner; he was concerned with the look of the pageant only, a little confused—gold, red and blue surging in sunlight. No doubt it pleased the old man to add the name of Giovanni Bellini to the famous painters who are associated with the descriptions of his pictures.
The titles of the Sketch-Books of this year evoke all manner of visions of beautiful places and the works associated with them—Lucerne, the Rhine, Thun, Zug, Goldau, Fluelen, Bellinzona, Como, Splugen and Grenoble.
Plate XXXII. Lake of Lucerne, from Fluelen. Water colour (1840 or after) Tate Gallery
In the Salting Collection at the British Museum is a 'Bellinzona' of the period, faint greens, faint purples, with touches of red, the form all lost in colour, brooded over by the ridge of snow mountains, the pencilled line of which has been left. In the possession of Sir Hickman Bacon is a water-colour simply called 'A Swiss Lake,' the still water reflecting the rosy hills, and the delicate blues and yellows of the sky—just iridescent atmosphere floated upon the paper. I look at it, wonder how it was done, and decide that the explanation by Leitch, the water-colour painter, told by Mr. Shaw Sparrow in The Studio, as to 'how Turner did it,' does not help me.
Leitch informed a friend of Mr. Sparrow's that he once accompanied Pickersgill to Turner's studio, and there watched the great man working, or shall I say composing. There were four drawing-boards, each of which had a handle screwed to the back. After the subject had been lightly sketched in, Turner grasped the handle and plunged the whole drawing into a pail of water by his side. 'Then quickly he washed in the principal hues that he required, flowing tint into tint, until this stage of the work was complete. Leaving this first drawing to dry, he took the second board and repeated the operation. By the time the fourth drawing was laid in, the first would be ready for the finishing touches; and Leitch was greatly impressed by the commonsense of the whole proceeding.'
Commonsense and genius, knowledge and daring, cunning and simplicity: result—Turner's later water-colours.
[CHAPTER XLVIII]
1842: AGED SIXTY-SEVEN
'THE SNOWSTORM' AND SOME 'FAULTLESS' WATER-COLOURS
I open my thumbed copy of Modern Painters, turn to a certain page in volume I., and read this: '"The Snowstorm," one of the very grandest statements of sea-motion, mist, and light, that has ever been put on canvas, even by Turner.'
In this appreciation we can go all the way with Ruskin. 'The Snowstorm' in its new home in the new Turner Gallery looks the work of a giant in the interpretation of sea-motion, mist and light.
The 'Snowstorm; Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth making Signals in shallow water and going by the lead,' was laughed at by the press when it was shown in the 1842 Academy. The parody of the title that appeared in Punch was almost funny; but the old man did not think it funny: 'A Typhoon bursting in a Simoon over the Whirlpool of Maelstrom, Norway; with a ship on fire, an eelipse, and the effect of a lunar rainbow,' with the following skit on the Fallacies of Hope:—
'O Art, how vast thy mighty wonders are
To those who roam upon the extraordinary deep;
Maelstrom, thy hand is here,'
Plate XXXIII. The Snow Storm (1842)
Thornbury asserts that the critics of all kinds, learned and unlearned, were furious when it was exhibited; some of them described it as a mass of 'soapsuds and whitewash.'
'Turner,' wrote Ruskin, 'was passing the evening at my father's house, on the day this criticism came out; and after dinner, sitting in his arm-chair by the fire, I heard him muttering low to himself, at intervals, "Soapsuds and whitewash" again, and again, and again. At last I went to him, asking why he minded what they said. Then he burst out, "Soapsuds and whitewash! What would they have? I wonder what they think the sea's like? I wish they'd been in it."'
As a matter of fact, Turner had given himself infinitely more trouble over 'The Snowstorm' than over 'The Fighting Téméraire,' and he had been in considerable danger. To paint 'The Snowstorm,' he had put to sea from Harwich in the Ariel in a hurricane, had made the sailors lash him to the mast, and there the student of sixty-seven remained for four hours studying the awful scene. I look at 'The Snowstorm' to-day, and remember. I am filled with awe at the man's power. No, we do not smile at 'The Snowstorm' now; but certain folk still smile at 'War: The Exile and the Rock Limpet,' depicting an attenuated Napoleon, standing against a blood-red sunset, in the shallows of a tidal pool, on the shore of St. Helena, gazing with folded arms out to sea. Turner failed to make this nobly inspired dream a reality—that is all.
Punch made merry over the 'Exile and the Rock Limpet,' calling it 'The Duke of Wellington and the Shrimp (Seringapatam, early morning),' with another parody of the Fallacies:—
'And can it be, thou hideous imp,
That life is, ah! how brief, and glory but a shrimp!
(From an unpublished poem.)'
And remarked that:—
'The comet just rising above the cataract in the foreground, and the conflagration of Tippoo's widow in the Banyan forest by the sea-shore, are in the great artist's happiest manner.'
'Peace, Burial at Sea of the Body of Sir David Wilkie,' was a vision which Turner completely realised, the poetry, the pathos, the grandeur, the decorative splendour—all. The sails of the steamship are dark against the evening sky, as if in mourning, and amidships, in a blaze of torchlight, the body of Wilkie is being lowered to his watery grave. Stanfield, who saw the picture on Varnishing Day, thought the effect of the sails was 'untrue,' which, of course, they are, but Turner would not alter them. 'I only wish I had any colour to make them blacker,' said the old warrior.
From this picture of peace and solemnity I turn to the peace and loveliness of some 'smaller' water-colours of this, his sunset, period.
PLATE XXXIV. Peace. Burial at Sea of Sir David Wilkie (1842) Tate Gallery
Ruskin, in his 'Notes on Turner's Drawings exhibited at the Fine Art Society in 1878,' which is printed as the Epilogue to the volume called Notes on Pictures, tells how in the winter of 1841-42 Turner brought back with him from Switzerland a series of sketches, fifteen of which he placed, as was his custom, in the hands of his agent, Griffith of Norwood, so that he might obtain commissions for finished drawings of each.
Ruskin tells us that 'he made anticipatorily four, to manifest what their quality would be, and honestly "show his hand." Four thus exemplary drawings I say he made for specimens, or signs, as it were, for his re-opened shop, namely:—
1. The Pass of Splugen.
2. Mont Righi, seen from Lucerne, in the morning, dark against dawn.
3. Mont Righi, seen from Lucerne at evening, red with the last rays of sunset.
4. Lake Lucerne (The Bay of Uri) from above Brunnen, with exquisite blue and rose mists and 'mackerel' sky on the right.
The whole story, which is told in Ruskin's most simple and charming style, is too long to be repeated here. Nine commissions only could be obtained, making ten with the one given to Griffith as commission. 'Turner growled, but said at last that he would do them,' and among them was a 'Lucerne Town,' which Ruskin, by hard coaxing and petitioning, obtained his father's leave to promise to take if it turned out well. It did.
What a wonderful realisation of a dream of colour is another water-colour of this period, reproduced in these pages—'Spietz on the Lake of Thun, Looking Towards the Bernese Oberland.'
On the last page of the Ruskin Catalogue, which is now called Epilogue, the old man, most eloquent and most sorrowful, writes:—
'The "Constance" and "Coblentz" here with the "Splugen" (1), "Bay of Uri" (4), and "Zurich" (10), of the year 1812, are the most finished and faultless works of his last period; but these of 1843 are the truest and mightiest ... I can't write any more of them just now.'
About this time Munro of Novar offered twenty-five thousand pounds for the whole contents of the Queen Anne Street Gallery. Turner hesitated, but finally refused. Frith, in his Autobiography, tells the story thus:—
'When Munro of Novar went for his final answer, Turner cried, "No! I won't—I can't. I believe I am going to die, and I intend to be buried in those two (pointing to "Carthage" and "The Sun Rising Through Vapour"), so I can't—besides I can't be bothered. Good-evening!"'
The evening of his life was to last nine years, and Turner found his own way of escape from being bothered.
[CHAPTER XLIX]
1843: AGED SIXTY-EIGHT
VISIONS OF VENICE AND THE FIRST VOLUME OF 'MODERN PAINTERS'
The two pictures of Venice exhibited in 1843, so changed, so faded, are in their way among the loveliest things Turner ever painted. 'San Benedetto, Looking Towards Fusina,' was formerly known as 'The Approach to Venice,' and I wish that title could have been retained, as one always thinks of it as 'The Approach to Venice,' and always in connection with the companion picture, 'The "Sun of Venice" Going to Sea,' with the name of this immortalised, fishing-boat 'Sol di Venezia' conspicuous on the sail. These two fading visions of Venice are indescribable, although everybody attempts to describe them. An eloquent passage may be found in the essay M. de la Sizeranne wrote for The Studio on 'The Genius of Turner,' from which the following is an extract:—
'Nothing will be found more beautiful than the "Approach" itself. No robe from Tintoretto's brush will be found to possess the splendour of the gondolas conveying us. No Titian—that of the mountains of Cadore, the presence of which we divine, no nimbus about the head of a saint, will equal that sun, no purple these skies, no prayer the infinite sweetness of the dream experienced during those brief, delicious moments. Nothing will be found to compare with the distant vision of that city which, on the horizon, seems to be too beautiful ever to be reached, and appears to recede from the traveller's barque—
Ainsi que Dèle sur le mer,
gilded like youth, silent as dreams, and like happiness unattainable.'
Earlier in the Essay this sensitive writer says:—
'Turner was the first of the Impressionists, and after a lapse of eighty years he remains the greatest, at least in the styles he has treated. That Impressionism came from England is proved by the letters of Delacroix, and demonstrated by M. Paul Signac in his pamphlet on "Neo-Impressionism." ... Turner is the father of the Impressionists. Their discoveries are his. He first saw that Nature is composed in a like degree of colours and of lines, and, in his evolution, the rigid and settled lines of his early method gradually melt away and vanish in the colours. He sought to paint the atmosphere, the envelopment of coloured objects seen at a distance, rather than the things enveloped: and he quickly realised that the atmosphere could not be expressed, except through the infinite parcelling out of things which Claude Lorrain drew in a solid grouping and painting en bloc. He shredded the clouds. He took the massive and admirable masses, the cumuli of Ruysdael, of Hobbema, of Van de Velde, picked the threads out of them, and converted them into a myriad-shaded charpie, which he entrusted to the winds of heaven.'
Plate XXXV. San Benedetto, Looking Towards Fusina (1843) National Gallery
Time has been cruel to both these Venetian pictures, perhaps cruel only to be kind. Even in Ruskin's time much of the transparency had gone; but there they are, dreams of Venice; not the Venice we see, not the Venice that Canaletto saw, but the Venice that floated before the eyes of Turner, that blossomed in the imagination of an old man nearing his seventieth year. I suppose we must call the other pictures of 1843 failures, but only because he tried to express the inexpressible—such themes as 'The Evening of the Deluge' and 'The Morning After,' with Moses writing the book of Genesis, mixed up with Goethe's theory of Light and Colour, and accompanied by an extract from the Fallacies of Hope:—
'The ark stood firm on Ararat: the returning sun
Exhaled earth's humid bubbles, and emulous of light,
Reflected her lost forms, each in prismatic guise.'
In this year, too, he exhibited 'The Opening of the Walhalla,' which has been banished to the honourable seclusion of the Dublin National Gallery. This Doric temple, erected on a hill overlooking the Danube, containing two hundred marble busts of eminent Germans, had been opened by King Ludwig of Bavaria in the previous year. The idea inspired Turner; he painted a characteristic picture of the ceremony and sent it to King Ludwig, who returned the gift with the comment that he did not understand it. Poor Turner! Munich would be well content to own the 'Walhalla' now.
In 1843 the first volume of Modern Painters was published, which 'originated,' as Ruskin tells us, 'in indignation at the shallow and false criticisms of the periodicals of the day of the works of the great living artist to whom it principally refers.' The second volume was not published until 1846; the third and fourth in 1856, and the fifth and last volume of this 'enormous work of thought, inspiration, sincerity and devotion' in 1860.
We have it on the authority of Thornbury, that Turner was vexed at Ruskin's panegyrics, and said, 'The man put things into my head I never thought of.' I doubt if Turner was vexed at the panegyrics, but it is quite certain that Ruskin's imagination saw things in the pictures that Turner never 'thought of.' Turner was a man of deeds, not of thoughts. He worked with his eyes, hand, and spirit: he was Nature's lover. It is certain, too, that after the first irritation felt by his contemporaries at some of the wilder works of Turner's later years had cooled, his fame would have steadily increased, and would have been as high as it is to-day, had Modern Painters never been written.
Plate XXXVI. The Seelisberg—Moonlight. Water colour (about1843) In the collection of W. G. Rawlinson, Esq. (Size, 11 x 9)
Neither that wonderful book, nor any other book, could serve Turner. Only he himself could have produced that fantasy, exquisite and intelligible, called 'The Seelisberg: Moonlight,' or the study, purple, gold and blue, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, of a lake, perhaps Brienz, enclosed by snowy peaks, with the wraith of a castle in the foreground, and the moon in the blue sky. He went his own way, and perhaps on the very day that he should have been reading the glowing periods of Modern Painters, hailing him as a sort of superman, he was the chief actor in that scene on board the old Margate steamer, watching the effect of the sun, and the boiling foam in the wake of the boat, and at luncheon-time eating shrimps out of an immense silk handkerchief laid across his knees. And while he was eating shrimps and watching the movement of the water, those who had reached the end of the first volume of Modern Painters were perhaps reading with shining eyes and lifted hearts the concluding passage about 'the great artist whose works have formed the chief subject of this treatise':—
'In all that he says, we believe: in all that he does, we trust.... He stands upon an eminence, from which he looks back over the universe of God, and forward over the generations of men. Let every work of his hand be a history of the one, and a lesson to the other. Let each exertion of his mighty mind be both hymn and prophecy; adoration to the Deity, revelation to mankind.'
That is Ruskin at his finest: here is Turner at his—well, as Turner.
A Mr. Hammersley, who visited him about this time in Queen Anne Street, described how he heard the shambling, slippered footstep coming down the stairs, the cold, cheerless room, the gallery, even less tidy and more forlorn, all confusion, mouldiness and wretched litter; most of the pictures covered with uncleanly sheets, and the man! 'his loose dress, his ragged hair, his indifferent quiet—all indeed that went to make his physique and some of his mind, but above all I saw, felt (and feel still) his penetrating gray eye.'
[CHAPTER L]
1844: AGED SIXTY-NINE
HE EXHIBITS 'RAIN, STEAM AND SPEED,' AND TWICE TRIES TO CROSS THE ALPS ON FOOT
The Sketch-Books of 1844 tell the happy story of continental rambles, with flashes of humour, such as this written in pencil against a water-colour of 'Rockets': 'Coming events cast their lights before them.'
He is at Lucerne, Thun, Interlaken, Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, Meiringen, Rheinfelden and Heidelberg and each book has its numerous sketches.
To show how unwearyingly this veteran pursued beauty, I quote in full the titles of the drawings in the short 'Lucerne' Sketch-Book, which has not been broken up:—
Page 1. Lake and sky. Water-colour.
„ 2. do. do.
„ 3. do. do.
„ 4-9. Blank
„ 10. Lake and sky. Water-colour.
„ 11. do. Stormy weather. Water-colour.
„ 12. The Righi: storm clearing off. Water-colour.
„ 13. A Stormy sunset. Water-colour.
„ 14. The Rockets. Water-colour. Written in pencil in
margin—'Coming events cast their lights before
them.'
„ 15. The blue Righi. Water-colour.
„ 16. The red Righi.
„ 17. The rain, with rainbow. Water-colour.
„ 18. The rainbow. Water-colour.
„ 19. Clearing up a little. Water-colour.
„ 20. Still raining. Water-colour.
„ 21. The rainbow. Water-colour.
„ 22. A gleam of sunshine. Water-colour.
„ 23. Sunset. Water-colour.
„ 24. The Righi. Water-colour. (18 leaves drawn on.)
Plate XXXVII. Rain, Steam, and Speed (1844) Tate Gallery
The exhibited pictures included that masterpiece in impressionism, 'Rain, Steam, and Speed.' Turner's whole life may be said to have been a preparation for this tour de force; all the knowledge that he had acquired, all the facts that he had accumulated, are used in this brilliant synthesis of the effect upon the eye of rushing movement through atmosphere. Has Claude Monet, who acknowledged the impulse he received from studying Turner in 1870, ever visualised movement, light and atmosphere in one impression, as did this wonderful Turner in his seventieth year? But though his power to express a fleeting vision was at its height in this picture, his ability to express his thoughts was as stumbling as ever, shown by the following—printed with other letters by Sir Walter Armstrong in his volume on Turner:—
'47 Queen Anne Street, Dec. 28th, 1844.
'Dear Hawkesworth,—First let me say I am very glad to hear Mrs. Fawkes has recovered in health so as to make Torquay air no longer absolute, and that the Isle of Wight will, I do trust, completely establish her health and yours (confound the gout which you work under), tho' thanks to your perseverance in penning what you did, and likewise for the praises of a gossiping letter, thanks to Charlotte Fawkes, who said you thought of Shanklin, but you left me to conjecture solely by the postmark Shanklin—Ryde— so now I scribble this to the first place in the hope of thanking your kindness in the remembrance of me by the Yorkshire Pie equal good to the olden time of Hannah's culinary exploits.
'Now for myself, the rigours of winter begin to tell upon me, rough and cold, and more acted upon by changes of weather than when we used to trot about at Farnley, but it must be borne with all the thanks due for such a lengthened period.
'I went, however, to Lucerne and Switzerland, little thinking of supposing such a cauldron of squabbling, political or religious, I was walking over. The rains came on early so I could not cross the Alps, twice I tried, was sent back with a wet jacket and worn-out boots, and after getting them heel-tapped, I marched up some of the small valleys of the Rhine and found them more interesting than I expected.
'Now do you keep your promise and so recollect that London is not so much out of nearest route to Farnley now ... Shanklin, and (I) do feel confoundedly mortified in not knowing your location when I was once so near you, for I saw Louis Philippe land at Portsmouth.—Believe me, dear Hawkesworth, Yours most sincerely,
'J. M. W. Turner.'
Another blow fell upon Turner this year. The Mr. Hammersley aforementioned visited him again in Queen Anne Street, and gives the following account:—
'Our proceedings resembled our proceedings on the former visit, distinguished from it, however, by the exceeding taciturnity, yet restlessness of my great companion, who walked about and occasionally clutched a letter which he held in his hand. I feared to break the dead silence, varied only by the slippered scrape of Turner's feet, as he paced from end to end of the dim and dusty apartment. At last he stood abruptly, and turning to me, said, "Mr. Hammersley, you must excuse me, I cannot stay another moment; the letter I hold in my hand has just been given to me, and it announces the death of my friend Callcott." He said no more; I saw his fine gray eyes fill as he vanished, and I left at once.'
The loss of friends set his mind dwelling upon the past, and it was no doubt in gratitude to all he owed to Ruysdael that he painted and exhibited this year the vivacious sea-piece now in the National Gallery, which he called 'Fishing-Boats Bringing a Disabled Ship into Port Ruysdael.' Needless to say, there is no such port anywhere. He also exhibited the beautiful Approach to Venice' in the possession of Sir Charles Tennant; and—the old man twice tried to cross the Alps on foot, referred to in the above letter, which is almost as wonderful as painting a picture. It would seem that he really succeeded in the enterprise if 'passed' means 'crossed,' as in the 'Grindelwald' Sketch-Book, against a drawing of mountains, is the following scrawl:—
'No matter what bef [? befell] Hannibel—W.B. and J.M.W.T. passed the Alps from [? near] Fombey [?] Sep. 3, 1844.'
[CHAPTER LI]
1845: AGED SEVENTY
PICTURES OF WHALERS, AND AN ENTRY ON THE LAST PAGE OF HIS LAST SKETCH-BOOK
Now, when he is nearing his decline, Turner is described as stooping very much, and looking down. Thinking of Turner 'looking down,' I recall the story that came to Sir Walter Armstrong from Mr. Stopford Brooke: how some one who knew Turner, at least by sight, was one day passing along the wharves beyond the Palace of Westminster, when he noticed the figure of a sturdy man in black squatting on his heels at the river's edge, and looking down intently into the water. Passing on, he thought for the moment no more about it. But on his return, half an hour later, the figure was still there, and still intent in the same way. That watcher was Turner, and the object of his interest was the pattern made by the ripples at the edge of the tide.
Ruskin says that this year his health, and with it in great degree, his mind, failed suddenly. And to Ruskin we owe this pathetic passage:—
'The last drawing in which there remained a reflection of his expiring power, he made in striving to realise, for me, one of these faint and fair visions of the morning mist fading from the Lake of Lucerne.
'"There ariseth a little cloud out of the sea like a man's hand ...
For what is your life?"'
Plate XXXVIII. Sunrise With a Sea Monster (about 1845) Tate Gallery
And Turner was going his own way, making his little jokes. On June 31st, 1845, he wrote to Mr. E. Bicknell of Heme Hill:—
'My Dear, SIR,—I will thank you to call in Queen Anne Street at your earliest convenience, for I have a whale or two on the canvas.'
This letter, of course, referred to the 'Whalers' pictures, exhibited in 1845 and 1846.
The 'Whalers' Sketch-Book contains drawings of 'Steamer Leaving Harbour,' 'Burning Blubber,' 'Whalers at Sea,' 'Study of Fish,' etc. Perhaps he made a voyage; perhaps he talked with sailors in one of his haunts at Wapping, and learnt from them of the wonders of the deep waters related by Arctic voyagers. However the idea or the vision came he now makes sketches of whaling subjects and paints pictures of 'Whalers,' one of which is in the Turner Gallery, four boats' crews attacking their prey with harpoons, and in the background are the white sails of their vessels, dimly seen through mists and snow wreaths. The imaginative 'Sunrise with a Sea Monster' probably belongs to the 'Whalers' period. On the misty waters of the ocean, reflecting a yellow sunrise, a sea monster, with a head like a magnified red gurnet, advances, the huge head towering out of the water. In the distance are forms suggesting icebergs. Punch had a genial sneer at a 'Whalers' picture:—
'It embodies one of those singular effects which are only met with in lobster salads and in this artist's pictures. Whether he calls his picture "Whalers" or "Venice," or "Morning," or "Noon," or "Night," it is all the same; for it is quite as easy to fancy it one thing as another.'
Thornbury is responsible for the following:—
'I am afraid the tradition is too true, that that great and bitter satirist of poor humanity's weaknesses, Mr. Thackeray, had more than a finger in thus lashing the dotage of a great man's genius. Long after, I have heard that Mr. Thackeray was shown some of Turner's finest water-colour drawings, upon which he exclaimed: "I will never run down Turner again." But the blows had already gone to the old man's heart, and it did no good to lament them then.'
In the Sketch-Books of 1845 and 1846, we find him at 'Folkestone,' 'Hythe and Walmer,' 'Ambleteuse and Wimereux,' 'Boulogne,' 'Eu and Treport,' 'Dieppe,' and back again at 'Folkestone.' In the last of all the Sketch-Books, 'Kent,' 1845-46, when Turner was over seventy, is this against a drawing of 'Houses and Church':
'May 30. Margate, a small opening along the horizon marked the approach of the sun by its getting yellow,' etc.
Plate XXXIX. Tell's Chapel, Fluelen. Water colour (1845) In the collection of W. G. Rawlinson, Esq. (Size, 11 3/8 x 9)
A little later in this valedictory Sketch-Book is the following in his own handwriting:—
'May. Blossoms. Apple, Cherry, Lilac,
Small white flowers in the Hedges,
in Clusters, D. Blue Bells,
Buttercups and daisies in the fields,
Oak, Warm, Elm G., Ash, yellow,' etc.
With that utterance of joy in nature we may take our leave of the Sketch-Books, and of the close of the great period of Turner, thinking of small white flowers in the hedges, buttercups and daisies in the fields, seen by his old eyes, and recorded tremblingly in his last Sketch-Book. There is no sign of trembling in the exquisite vision of 'Tell's Chapel—Fluelen,' his adieu to Switzerland, perhaps the last water-colour from his hand.
[PART EIGHT]
1846-1851