FROM A JOURNEY TO DEVONSHIRE TO HIS RETURN FROM ITALY
[CHAPTER XVIII]
1811: AGED THIRTY-SIX
'APOLLO KILLING THE PYTHON' AND A PICNIC
'The Python was a dragon which lived at Crissa, in the vicinity of Delphi, and committed great havoc among cattle and the inhabitants. The Pythian games there celebrated were established in commemoration of the destruction of the Python by Apollo.' So runs the official description in the catalogue appended to 'Apollo Killing the Python.' When it was exhibited in 1811, Turner supplied six lines from the Hymn of Callimachus. beginning:—
'Envenora'd by thy darts, the monster coil'd,
Portentous, horrible, and vast his snake-like form....'
'Mercury and Herse' was illumined by this couplet from Ovid's Metamorphoses:—
> 'Close by the sacred walls in wide Munichio's plain,
The God well pleased beheld the virgin train!'
How tiresome these descriptions and tags of verse seem, and how old-fashioned 'Apollo Killing the Python' looks, yet I have only to gaze at it for five minutes to be hypnotised by its grandeur; but the mood passes, and Ruskin's panegyric does not restore it, that succinct panegyric—'This is one of the very noblest of all Turner's works, and therefore I do not scruple to say, one of the noblest pictures in the world.'
The pages of Modern Painters roll on in magnificent and eloquent periods on 'Apollo Killing the Python.' Certain of the passages one knows by heart, few of them have anything to do with the art of Turner, and some are untrue, such as—'He was without hope'; 'Turner painted the labour of men, their sorrow and their death.' Often Ruskin's prose leaves us breathless, almost crushed:—
'Fancy him [the dragon] moving, and the roaring of the ground under his rings; the grinding down of the rocks by his toothed whorls; the skeleton glacier of him in thunderous march, and the ashes of the hills rising round him like smoke, and encompassing him like a curtain.'
The quotation from Ovid and the theme of 'Apollo Killing the Python' suggest that Ovid's Metamorphoses was one of the few books that Turner really studied and read through, probably again and again, as he found most of his subjects for classical pictures in Ovid. Monkhouse considers that with the exception of 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus,' there is none greater than the 'Apollo Killing the Python.' That must remain a matter of opinion. To me it seems that Ovid only confused Turner's imagination. He needed no classical legend to paint such masterpieces as 'Norham Castle at Sunrise,' 'The Evening Star,' 'The Burial of Wilkie,' 'Rain, Steam and Speed,' 'The Snowstorm,' or the later interpretations of Venice.
Let us turn from books, even from the classic Metamorphoses, to nature, to Devonshire, where in this year, or thereabouts, Cyrus Redding met him, to whom we owe delightful accounts of Turner in holiday mood.
On one of these excursions Turner once actually gave a picnic 'in excellent taste.' 'Our host,' says Redding, was 'agreeable but terse, blunt, and almost epigrammatic at times. Never given to waste his words, nor remarkably choice in their arrangement, they were always in their right place and admirably effective.' An account has also been preserved of a scene in an inn where they conversed until nearly midnight, when Turner laid his head upon the table and was soon sound asleep. They were up with the sun, and it was at that early hour that Turner made his sketch for 'Crossing the Brook' exhibited in 1815. Another excursion was by sea. The morning was squally, and the sea rolled boisterously into the sound. Then they landed and—
'Turner was all the while quiet, watching the troubled scene, and it was not unworthy his notice. The island, the solitary hut upon it, the bay in the bight of which it lay, and the long gloomy Bolt Head to seaward, against which the waves broke with fury, seemed to absorb the entire notice of the artist, who scarcely spoke a syllable. While the fish were getting ready, Turner mounted nearly to the highest point of the island rock, and seemed writing rather than drawing. The wind was almost too violent for either purpose; what he particularly noted he did not say.'
And here is a specimen of Turner's conversation, showing how true was his observation:—
'He was looking at a seventy-four gun ship, which lay in the shadow under Saltash. The ship seemed one dark mass.
'"I told you that would be the effect," said Turner, referring to some previous conversation. "Now, as you observe, it is all shade."
'"Yes, I perceive it; and yet the ports are there." '"We can only take what is visible—no matter what may be there. There are people in the ship; we don't see them through the planks."'
Turner's friends could have told Ruskin how untrue was such a statement as 'he was without hope.' Like ordinary mortals he had his good days and his bad days, his hours of fun and his hours of gloom, his moments of kindness and his moments of cruelty.
Plate XIII. Scarborough. Water colour (1811) Tate Gallery
'His spirits,' says Thornbury, 'were high, deep as were occasionally his fits of melancholy.' Once he wrote a letter to Calcott, in which he drew a wild duck or mallard, a pun on his second name; and as to his kindness, there is the story, one of many, of his generosity at the 1811 Academy to a young artist called Bird, whose picture had been crowded out. Turner begged the Hanging Committee to restore the work, insisting that it was too good to be rejected. They agreed, but declined to alter the hanging. Turner had another long look at Bird's picture, and then, taking down one of his own of the same size, hung Bird's in its place. I wonder was that 'one of his own' the 'Scarborough,' exhibited this year, the large, beautiful, and simple sketch for which is in the National Collection, one of the 'unfinished' water-colours reproduced in these pages.
We begin to understand something of Turner the man as well as of Turner the artist. As an artist he seems the more wonderful, the more one studies him. To-day I looked again at his 'Innsbruck,' his 'Sketch of an Italian Town,' and his 'Lake of Brienz' at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Those three water-colours, stages in his development, are sufficient to make an ordinary painter's reputation.
[CHAPTER XIX]
1812: AGED THIRTY-SEVEN
HE EXHIBITS 'HANNIBAL CROSSING THE ALPS,' SUGGESTED BY A SNOWSTORM HE HAD SEEN AT FARNLEY
In one of the Sketch-Books for this year labelled 'Sandycombe and Yorkshire' are the following, on the same page, in Turner's handwriting. We can imagine the reasons why he composed the tortuous passage on Salvator's 'powers of rapidity.' Did he, I wonder, buy the mattress?
'Salvator Rosa painted a picture for the Constable of France in a day, and carried it home, which rapidity so captivated the Constable that he ordered another large one, which he likewise began, finished and sent home, that (?) well paid for by purses of gold and as Constable commented which would be first weary, but upon the production of the fifth the employer sent two purses and declined rivalship with the artist's powers of rapidity.
| Candles | 1 |
| Trout | 2 |
| Pillow | 16 |
| Mattress | 1. 11. 6. |
The next Sketch-Book is short, and devoted to Farnley. The idea of the 'Snowstorm, Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps,' came to Turner through a storm he saw at Farnley.
One wild day Turner called loudly from the doorway:—
'Hawkey! Hawkey! come here! Look at this thunderstorm—isn't it wonderful? Isn't it sublime?'
And while he talked he was making notes of its form and colour on the back of a letter. Young Mr. Hawkes proposed a drawing block but Turner said the letter did very well. He was absorbed, entranced, while the storm rolled and swept, and the lightning flashed over the Yorkshire hills. When the storm had passed Turner returned to the room and said:—
'There, Hawkey. In two years you will see this again, and call it "Hannibal Crossing the Alps."'
We look at this tumultuous picture to-day and think of that thunderstorm at Farnley as we watch the lurid sun through the storm of snow that threatens to overwhelm the muddled, huddled, Carthaginian army. Yes: it is wonderful as was the thunderstorm to Turner. This picture, in a category between his classical works and his sunlight visions, was accompanied by nine halting, unpoetical lines from the Fallacies of Hope, this being the first time that a quotation from that poem was attached to the R. A. catalogues. The title was modified, probably, from Campbell's Pleasures of Hope.
'Craft, treachery, and fraud—Salassian force—
Hung on the fainting rear; then plunder seized
The victor and the captive,—Saguntum's spoil
Alike became their prey; still the chief advanc'd,
Looked on the sun with hope; low, broad, and wan
While the fierce archer of the downward year
Stains Italy's blanched barrier with storms.
In vain each pass, ensanguined deep with dead
Or rocky fragments, wide destruction roll'd.'
And the eyes fall upon two lines that mean something, that aptly express the thought of the dumb poet, the lines which I quoted in Chapter III.,—'Still the chief advanced, Looked on the sun with hope'—Turner's fitting epitaph, and life-long aspiration. He added to the Fallacies of Hope off and on for forty years, and it dealt with almost every conceivable subject from the Deluge to Napoleon.
This year his town address is given as Queen Anne Street West, but, as I have already explained, this did not mean a change of domicile, as the three houses, two in Harley Street and one in Queen Anne Street, were the same dwelling with a communication at the back.
Turner, Thornbury tells us, almost entirely rebuilt his house in Queen Anne Street, and while all the houses round it from time to time smartened themselves up, this alone remained unchanged. The Gallery in later years, as we know, became most dilapidated:—
The oiled paper of the skylight hung down in black, sooty, furred slips. The damp here and there had free access; and it is certain that while many of the pictures ripened and improved, others were cracked, warped, chilled, and seriously injured. Both the "Hero and Leander," and "The Building of Carthage," suffered. Mr. E. Godall tells me that in one picture particularly, a great white button of paint that had stood for the sun had dropped off.
'"I think some one has picked it off intentionally," he could not help saying.
'"I think he has," replied Turner, quite unmoved.'
Turner was 'quite unmoved.' As he grew older he cared less and less for the things that most people deem so important. His golden visions did not depend upon material accessories. May we not find a hint of his almost inarticulate inner life in that little red book unearthed by Thornbury from his studio, where, amid notes about chemistry, memoranda as to colours, and prophylactics against the Maltese plague, are certain scraps of verse, something about 'Anna's Kiss,' 'A Look Back,' 'A Toilsome Dream,' 'Human Joy, Ecstasy, and Hope'?
But I am anticipating. We are still in the year 1812 and Turner is preparing 'A Frosty Morning' for exhibition, and considering one of his earliest series of book illustrations,—The Southern Coast of England, which was probably begun about 1812, although the first seven plates, including 'St. Michael's Mount,' 'Poole,' and 'Land's End,' were not published until 1814. The last issue was in 1826. De Wint, Clennell and Prout were also contributors to The Southern Coast. Turner was to receive seven and a half guineas apiece for the drawings, which was increased later to ten and twelve guineas. But in spite of that advance he became dissatisfied and broke with W. B. Cooke, the line engraver and publisher of The Southern Coast. Business relations with Turner were not easy.
[CHAPTER XX]
1813: AGED THIRTY-EIGHT
HOAR FROST AT SUNRISE THAT HAS VANISHED FROM 'A FROSTY MORNING'
Turner was anxious about his health this year, if we may judge from an entry in the 'Chemistry and Apuleia' Sketch-Book detailing the symptoms of the Maltese plague, and the cure. A 'receipt for covering Linen to make it impenetrable to water, etc.,' follows, then 'Study of Sky,' 'River with Hills on Either Side,' notes as to varnishes and sketches of nymphs dancing, showing that his anxiety about the symptoms of the Maltese plague had passed away.
In this year he exhibited the attractive and popular 'A Frosty Morning: Sunrise,' with a quotation from Thomson's Seasons: 'The rigid hoar-frost melts before his beam'; also 'The Deluge' with some lines from Paradise Lost:—
'... down rush'd the rain
Impetuous, and continued till the earth
No more was seen.'
These subjects indicate Turner's versatility and determination to impress the public with one thing, if not with another. 'A Frosty Morning: Sunrise' is infinitely nearer to the real Turner than 'The Deluge.' It is a pleasant picture, simple and direct, a true transcript of nature; but where is the hoar-frost which made such a sensation when the picture was exhibited? It is gone like the bloom on the Impressionist pictures in the Caillebotte Collection in the Luxembourg Gallery. The form of 'A Frosty Morning' remains, and it still suggests the chill of a winter sunrise, but gone is the sparkling hoar-frost.
Archdeacon Fisher writing to Constable about one of his landscapes said: 'I have heard your great picture spoken of here by no inferior judge as one of the best in the Exhibition. I only like one better and that is a picture of pictures, the 'Frost' by Turner. But then you need not repine at this decision of mine; you are a great man and, like Bonaparte, are only to be beaten by a frost.'
That is something; to have one's Academy contribution described as 'a picture of pictures,' and by one whose allegiance was given whole-heartedly to a rival painter. It would be interesting to know what Constable thought of Turner's 'Frosty Morning: Sunrise.' Already you perceive that Turner is forsaking his rivalries, and 'finding himself' with nothing between his vision and a Sunrise. There is a personal note in this picture. The horses were studied from the friendly steed 'Crop-ear,' somewhat stiff in the fore-legs, which Turner used to drive about the country when he was staying at Sandycombe. The young Trimmers said that Turner painted faster than he drove, and Thornbury remarked that he could never draw a horse; but I am sure that he could paint a hoar-frost at sunrise. And if this picture had been happily rolled up and kept in the cellars of the National Gallery with the other sunrise pictures, we might to-day still be enjoying Turner's sparkling vision of hoar-frost.
[CHAPTER XXI]
1814. AGED THIRTY-NINE
HE PAINTS MORE CLASSICAL PICTURES, TURNS AUTHOR, AND IS HAPPY AT SANDYCOMBE
More classical pictures with the annoying foregrounds, the dream buildings reflected in the still water, and the beauty of the Turnerian distance. You can take your choice between 'Dido and Æneas leaving Carthage on the Morning of the Chase,' and 'Apuleia in search of Apuleius,' which won the premium at the British Institution for the best landscape of the year. Unblushingly Turner founded it on one of Claude's sketches in his Liber Veritatis. Although he set himself to rival Claude before all the world, sure of his own victory, he had not the slightest hesitation in basing his prize picture on a sketch by Claude.
But there is nothing classical or imitative about his 'Review at Portsmouth' Sketch-Book of this year with its innumerable sketches of shipping, and its usual stumbling scraps of verse such as—
'The floating bulwark lies
Above (?) the holy cross unfurled (?)
Blowing ... shows the saviour of the world
Hence gloomy evil infamy's.'
In 1814, as I have said in Chapter XIX., the first seven parts of The Southern Coast were published, and in this year Turner appears as an author with ill-success. He had attempted to describe 'St. Michael's Mount' for The Southern Coast, and Combe, the editor to whom Turner's description had been sent, writes thus to Cooke, the publisher:—
Friday afternoon.
My Dear Sir,—I am really concerned to be obliged to say that Mr. T——'s account is the most extraordinary composition I have ever read. It is impossible for me to correct it, for in some parts I do not understand it. The punctuation is everywhere defective, and here I have done what I could, and have sent the proof to Mr. Bulmer. I think the revise should be sent to Mr. T——, to request his attention to the whole, and particularly the part that I have marked as unintelligible. In my private opinion, it is scarcely an admissible article in its present state; but as he has signed his name to it, he will be liable to the sole blame for its imperfections.—Your faithful humble servant,
w. c.'
Cooke suppressed Turner's composition; but Combe, evidently knowing his man, told Cooke that unless he wished to drive Turner 'stark staring mad' he must be sure to send him corrected sheets of the suppressed article. The end was that Turner's contribution was cancelled. In 1827 all connection between Cooke and Turner was broken off. Turner was clearly in the wrong. How could anybody work with this genius? 'His mind,' says Hamerton, 'was subject to confused changes and irregularities about all transactions, owing to its want of method and clearness.' The Freemasons' Hall affair between Turner and Cooke must have been amusing to some, painful to others. 'It was,' says Thornbury, 'a dispute about the return of some drawings (I think of the Annual Tour) that both claimed. Turner's red face grew white with the depth of his rage, Cooke grew hot and red, and "must," "shan't," "shall," "rogue" flew about.'
In this year Turner bought Solus Lodge, later called Sandycombe Lodge, on the road between Twickenham and Isleworth. There his old father used to dig in the garden, and look after the household, and there Turner spent probably some of the happiest days of his life. He was friendly with the Trimmer family of Heston, four miles off, and the Vicar, the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, tried to teach Turner Greek in return for lessons in painting, but he could never overcome the difficulty of the verbs, and finally had to renounce the attempt. 'I fear I must give it up, Trimmer,' he said; 'you get on better with your painting than I with my Greek.' The young Trimmers, who were living when Thornbury wrote his Life of Turner, describe him as a slovenly old man (he was still far off fifty), very sociable and wont to make them laugh. The days must have passed pleasantly at Sandycombe, sketching in oils on a large canvas in a boat, painting in the summer-house of the garden which ran down to the Thames, fishing, and driving old 'Crop-ear' about the country. The young Trimmers give a much pleasanter picture of Turner than most of his friends and contemporaries, but then they loved him. They describe Queen Anne Street as homely, and say that when they visited him they were always welcome to what he had, and that he would offer them cake and wine, and stuff the cake into their pockets. And they show Turner in modest mood before the work of other painters, telling how he spoke with rapture of a picture probably by Poussin, 'Jonah cast on Shore,' describing it as wonderful; and how he was enthusiastic about Gainsborough's execution, and Wilson's tone. And how, one day, looking at a Van de Velde, Turner said, 'I can't paint like him.'
But he could. Van de Velde is to-day in the trough of his own dark seas, and Turner is on the crest of his own opalescent waves beneath a sky flushed with his dreams of colour.
[CHAPTER XXII]
1815: AGED FORTY
'A WONDERFUL YEAR' AND A TURNERIAN LOVE-LETTER
Eighteen hundred and fifteen was a wonderful year in the history of Europe, and it has also been called a wonderful year in the art history of Turner. He sent eight pictures to the Royal Academy, and among them were 'Crossing the Brook,' 'Dido Building Carthage, or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire,' and 'Bligh Sand near Sheerness.' Some consider 'Crossing the Brook' as the finest Turner, others regard it as rather old-fashioned with its conventional trees and domestic foreground, but all like its English character, the cool beauty of the colour, the white clouds that curl in the grey-blue sky, the wooded hills that rise from the Tamar, dividing Devon and Cornwall, and the miles of faint, fair, distant country. 'Crossing the Brook' was a favourite of Turner's, and so was the magnificent 'Dido Building Carthage.' This classical triumph, a shout of colour, with 'The Sun Rising Through Vapour' flank the two Claudes in the National Gallery, Turner's message of rivalry from the grave. In life he would not part with 'Dido Building Carthage.' Chantrey tried to buy the picture more than once, but found the price rose higher each time.
'Why, what in the world, Turner, are you going to do with the picture?' he asked.
'Be buried in it, to be sure,' growled Turner.
This year, too, we have the record of what has been described as Turner's second attempt at marriage, which I do not think amounts to much more than his first love-affair. At the end of the following letter will be found the offer of marriage; the lady in question was a relation of the Trimmers:—
Queen Anne Street, Tuesday, August 1st, 1815.
'My Dear Sir,—I lament that all hope of the pleasure of seeing you or getting to Heston must for the present probably vanish. My father told me on Saturday last when I was as usual compelled to return to town the same day, that you and Mrs. Trimmer would leave Heston for Suffolk as to-morrow, Wednesday. In the first place I am glad to hear that her health is so far established as to be equal to the journey, and to give me your utmost hope for her benefiting by the sea air being fully realised, 'twill give me great pleasure to hear, and the earlier the better.
'After next Tuesday, if you have a moment's time to spare, a line will reach me at Farnley Hall, near Otley, Yorkshire, and for some time, as Mr. Fawkes talks of keeping me in the north by a trip to the Lakes, and until November; therefore I suspect I am not to see Sandycombe. Sandycombe sounds just now in my ears as an act of folly when I reflect how little I have been able to be there this year and less chance perhaps for the next. In looking forward to a continental excursion, and poor Daddy seems as much plagued with weeds as I am with disappointment—that if Miss——would but waive bashfulness, or in other words make an offer instead of expecting one, the same might change occupiers; but not to trouble you further allow me with most sincere respect to Mrs. Trimmer and family, to consider myself.—Yours most truly obliged,
'J. M. W. Turner.'
The reference to Miss——does not suggest the heart of a burning lover: no, Turner's heart was in his work, and also, just now, in the prospect of a 'continental excursion.'
[CHAPTER XXIII]
1816: AGED FORTY-ONE
SKIES! SKIES! SKIES!
The Sketch-Books of the period are full of Yorkshire and Farnley subjects, and one of them contains a fragment of a letter from Mr. Walter Fawkes concluding: 'Everybody is delighted with your "Mill." I sit for a long time before it every day.' The 'Mill' which delighted Mr. Fawkes may be the 'View of Otley Mills with the River Wharfe and Mill Weir,' sold at Christie's in 1890.
I do not suppose that anybody has ever sat for a long time every day, or any day, before Turner's two contributions to the Academy of this year, 'The Temple of Jupiter Panellenius Restored,' and the 'View of the Temple of Jupiter Panellenius.' I turn from them to the Sketch-Book labelled simply 'Skies.' Inside one of the covers there is a sketch in pencil of a sky with the following in Turner's handwriting: 'Yellow Light. Blue Shadows. Red Crimson Light.' Following this there are sixty leaves and on each leaf is a study of a sky. How far they seem removed from the Temple of Jupiter Panellenius. Skies! Skies! Skies! And on the last leaf of this sketch-book is a pencil drawing showing 'An Interior with open doors leading to a garden,' as if, in this year of sky watching, he must, even when within doors, be looking out towards the light.
[CHAPTER XXIV]
1817: AGED FORTY-TWO
HE SELLS FIFTY WATER-COLOURS TO MR. FAWKES OF FARNLEY HALL
The 'Rhine Tour' Sketch-Book of 1817 suggests that Turner was in the mood to be careful about his material necessities, one can hardly call them comforts. Written inside the covers are the words:—
'Boots, Pouch, Fever Medicine, Bark, Pencils, Colours,' followed by, 'Vier ist myn Simmer—Where is my chamber?' On a later page I find the following list:—
'3 Shirts, 1 Night ditto, A Razor, a Ferrell for Umbrella, a Pair of Stockings, a waistcoat, 1/2 dozen of Pencils, 6 Cravats, 1 large ditto, 1 Box of Colours'—and then, on the next leaf, the inevitable 'Study of a Sky.'
On a page of the 'Dort' Sketch-Book is this note of a 'thing seen' that he may have thought of painting:—
'Float of Timber—1000 feet long at least, lashed into two pieces and guided by the cross piece of timber which hauls either part of the float or buoy in two lines—and drawn by 3 Horses down the Canal.'
Plate XIV. Sketch of Cochem on the Moselle. Water colour (about 1831) In the collection of W. G. Rawlinson, Esq. (Size, 9 1/2 x 6 7/8)
During this three weeks' tour in the Rhine district Turner produced no fewer than fifty drawings at the rate of about three a day. He first, says Mr. Rawlinson, stained the paper a uniform bluish-grey, which, although itself sombre in tone, effectively shows up the body-colour work, and must have effected an immense economy of time as compared with ordinary transparent colour. Returning to England he took the roll of drawings straight to Farnley Hall, and Mr. Fawkes bought them for five hundred pounds. For a long time they remained in a portfolio, but a few years ago some of them were sold at Christie's. Mr. Rawlinson possesses one of them, the delicate and romantic 'Goarhausen and Katz Castle.'
Other drawings of this period are the rich and forceful 'Bonneville, Savoy' in the Salting collection at the British Museum, a majestic water-colour; that vision of yellow foliage, blue water, and outstretched yellowy-blue country, 'The Lake of Nemi,' and the more academic 'Turin from the Church of the Superga,' the foreground with its artless groups not very attractive, but the distant glimpse of the snow mountains, and the white fleecy clouds seen against the blue sky, as lovely as Turner could make them,' and that is saying much.
Probably in this year he began the glorious illustrations to Dr. Whitaker's History of Richmondshire, which contains some of his finest water-colours. The first plate was published in 1819, the last in 1822. Turner was paid twenty-five guineas a drawing, and the magnificent enterprise cost the publishers, Messrs Longman, ten thousand pounds. 'The Crook of the Lune' is one of the finest of the series. 'You can find at least twenty different walks in it—yet all this wealth of exquisite detail is perfectly subordinated to the unity and harmony of the composition as a whole.' Another of the Richmondshire drawings is the 'Hornby Castle' in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which, through constant exposure to light, is a wreck of its former beauty.
His chief Royal Academy picture of 1817 was 'The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire.' It has disappeared from the National Gallery, loaned, I suppose, to some provincial museum, where a Turner, even a bad Turner, is a Turner. I will quote from the catalogue of 1817 its full title, and tag of verse by Turner, and say no more about 'The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire.'
'EXHIBITION XLIX 1817
'J. M. W. Turner, R.A. Professor of Perspective, Sandycombe Lodge, Twickenham, and Queen Anne Street West.
'The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire. Rome, being determined on the overthrow of her hated rival, demanded from her such terms as might either force her into war, or ruin her by compliance; the enervated Carthaginians, in their anxiety for peace, consented to give up even their arms and their children.
"At Hope's delusive smile,
The Chieftain's safety and the mother's pride,
Were to the insidious conqueror's grasp resign'd;
While o'er the western wave th' ensanguined sun,
In gathering haze, a stormy signal spread,
And set portentous."'
Behold a mystery! The eyes that saw and the hand that produced the simple splendour of 'Richmond Castle,' and the spacious beauty of 'The Crook of the Lune' could also see in fancy and produce in reality 'The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire.'
[CHAPTER XXV]
1818: AGED FORTY-THREE
'THE ABBOTSFORD TURNERS,' AND AN AUCTION PRICE OF A TURNER WATER-COLOUR
'The Field of Waterloo,' exhibited in 1818, with its obvious quotation from Byron, is as dead as rider and horse, friend and foe piled in the foreground. It now hangs on the outer stair-case of the new Turner Gallery, as if in disgrace.
Turner journeyed north this year to make drawings for the Provincial Antiquities of Scotland, for which Sir Walter Scott was gratuitously writing the letterpress. He did not meet Scott on this occasion, but the artist and author met in 1831, when Turner was illustrating Cadell's edition of Scott's Poetical and Prose Works. The Provincial Antiquities drawings, which include the important 'Edinburgh from the Calton Hill,' were afterwards presented by the publishers to Sir Walter in recognition of his aid in the production of the book. For a long time they hung at Abbotsford, and the group was known by the honoured name of the 'Abbotsford Turners.' They are now scattered.
It would take a lifetime to follow the vicissitudes of all Turner's water-colours, when they were painted, and where they are to-day. The 'Heysham' of this year, with the elaborate lovely sky, is in the Salting Collection at the British Museum. To the 'Heysham' Ruskin devoted half a dozen pages in his Elements of Drawing.
Turner's water-colours are constantly changing hands. The gleaming eyes of the wizard, that some called covetous, would indeed have looked covetous could he have known that, in the twentieth century, a fine water-colour of his best period, for which he received a few guineas, may realise two thousand pounds.
'What do you think the Turner "Lake of Lucerne" will fetch?' said a Turner collector to me the day before an auction in June 1910. 'Oh, two thousand pounds,' I answered.
'Absurd!' he cried. It brought one thousand nine hundred and ninety-five pounds. I believe that there are certain men who would rather possess a fine Turner water-colour than any other work of art.
[CHAPTER XXVI]
1819: AGED FORTY-FOUR
TURNER'S FIRST VISIT TO ITALY, AND AN EXHIBITION IN GROSVENOR PLACE
The route of Turner's memorable first visit to Italy may be followed in detail in the Sketch-Books, between No. CLXXI., called the 'Route to Rome,' and No. CXCII., devoted to the 'Return from Italy.' His divagations and pauses are recorded on innumerable pages of sketches, studies, comments, and criticisms of pictures. Here are his cursory notes on a copy he made of a sea-piece by Claude:—
'Date 1631 or 81 Roma—he died at 82. Raf. 1512.'
'Wonderful grey green,' 'arm in light,' 'The mast Red—all painted at once with the colour.'
We find him at Venice, Rimini, Ancona, Naples, Paestum, Pompeii and Sorrento—anywhere, everywhere. Turn the pages. Here he is in the Vatican with a Sketch-Book labelled 'Vatican Fragments' containing such comments as 'Christ by Guercino beautifully color'd,' 'A Hare by Albert Dürer,' and 'Annunciation. The Angel very elegant.' On the way from Ancona to Rome his hand tries to transcribe what his watchful eyes note:—
'Loretto to Recanata. Colour of the hills Wilson Claude, the olives the light ..., when the sun shone green, the ground reddish green grey and apt to Purple, the Sea quite Blue, under the Sun a warm vapour, from the Sun Blue relieving (?) the shadow of the olive Trees dark, while the foliage light on the whole when in the shadow a quiet grey. Beautiful dark green yet warm, the middle Trees, yet Bluish in parts, the distance; the aqueduct reddish, the foreground light grey in shadow.'
But that visit to Italy, the magic and colour of it, the pictures he saw, the sunrises and the sunsets he studied, appear to have affected his art unfavourably for a time, to have disturbed him with florid and fantastic fancies. It was as if he became intoxicated with the art and aspect of Italy.
There is no hint of Italy in the works he exhibited this year. I can stand for a long time before 'The Meuse, Orange Merchant-men going to Pieces on the Bar,' lost in admiration of the wonderful sky, trying to avoid looking at the foolish fishermen, and remembering a phrase I have read somewhere that 'with this picture he gave the coup de grâce to Van de Velde.'
Another work of 1819 was the huge, neat and amusing view of 'England, Richmond Hill on the Prince Regent's Birthday,' now hanging in a place of honour in the new Turner Gallery. It dominates the wall, whereas in its old place above the line in the National Gallery one hardly noticed the Prince Regent's Birthday, with its quotation from Thomson:—
'Which way, Amanda, shall we bend our course?
The choice perplexes.'
'Richmond,' and 'Rome from the Vatican,' exhibited the following year, are the largest pictures Turner painted.
In May and June, presumably after his return from Italy, Mr. Fawkes of Farnley opened an exhibition of all the water-colours he possessed at his house in Grosvenor Place. The first two rooms contained drawings by Havell, Robson, Hedphy, Hills, Prout, Varley, Fielding, de Wint and others; the third room was reserved to Turner. The exhibition was a great success, and we are told that the public had an opportunity of seeing Turner 'moving about the rooms, the principal figure in his own triumph.' A contemporary critic seems, however, to have made up his mind that Turner's visit, to Italy had done him temporarily no good. In the Annals of the Fine Arts, of the year 1820, appeared the following criticism of Turner's works in the exhibition held at Mr. Fawkes's house in Grosvenor Place, which must have included some of the Italian drawings:—
'Turner appears here in his original splendour and to his greatest advantage. Those who only know the artist of late and from his academical works will hardly believe the grandeur, simplicity and beauty that pervade his best works in this collection.... The earlier works of Turner before he visited Rome and those he has done since for this collection are like works of a different artist. The former, natural, simple and effective; the latter, artificial, glaring and affected.'
Plate XV. Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo (1819) Tate Gallery
Was the water-colour of the 'Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo,' made in Rome in 1819, that now hangs, to our delight, in the new Turner Gallery, one of the drawings shown at the exhibition in Grosvenor Place? Hardly. For this beautiful drawing is 'natural, simple and effective,' not 'artificial, glaring and affected.' Turner saw this glowing church with his own eyes. Although in Italy, he was at home with himself when he painted this quiet interlude, undisturbed by the Roman art fever that heated and harassed his imagination.
A simpler simplicity, a purer and more mystical vision of colour was eventually to come to him; but not yet. For the next few years the Italianised Turner was to be finding his way, through the insistent memories of Italy, to the real Turner.
[CHAPTER XXVII]
1820: AGED FORTY-FIVE
RETURN FROM ITALY: HE BEGINS TO SIGHT HIS MYSTICAL VISIONS
Visitors to the Royal Academy of 1820 saw that the great man had been in Rome. How like Turner it was to call a picture 'Rome from the Vatican: Raeffaelle, accompanied by La Fornarina, preparing his pictures for the Decoration of the Loggia.' He loved to introduce a painter whom he admired into a picture—Raphael, Rembrandt, Ruysdael, Van Goyen, Watteau and the rest. This Raphael-Roman picture was one of Turner's failures, and like other failures it is no longer exhibited in the National Collection. What a contrast it is to such an essential Turner as the atmospheric 'Lancaster Sands' in the Farnley Hall collection, produced about this time. Another, a later version now in the Salting Collection at the British Museum, showing the sun setting behind the Cumberland Hills, and the stage coach, carts and figures hurrying to escape the rising tide, was engraved for the England and Wales series and published in 1828.
Here we stand at a halting-place in Turner's career. He has trained himself; he has fought his rivals, and, perhaps with the exception of Claude, has beaten them all on their own ground. He has expressed himself in the luminous atmosphere of 'The Sun Rising Through Vapour'; in the hoar-frost sparkle of 'The Frosty Morning'; in the cool blues and greys of 'Crossing the Brook,' and in the splendour of 'Dido Building Carthage.' In water-colour he has advanced from the formalism of the early tinted drawings to the restrained beauty of the Southern Coast and the accomplishment of the Richmondshire series. And he has been to Italy: his eyes are dazzled. Colour is to be his master, but after a few years he is to become almost impatient of local colour and form, and to lose form and local colour in the radiance of suffused light. He is to paint the aspect, not the object. I turn once more to the Inventory and under the rubric 1820 dealing with 'Colour Beginnings,' find this comment by Mr. Finberg:—
'As a rule these studies are of a highly abstract character, i.e., they deal only with the composition of fundamental colour masses—the ground tones, as it were, of a picture, which in the final result are largely concealed under the subsequent embroidery of secondary incidents and motives.'
In these 'Colour Beginnings' 'projects for designs which may or may not have been carried out,' Turner seems to be beginning to sight his mystical visions. The very titles of some are eloquent 'Moonlight Among Ruins,' 'Hulks on Tamar, Twilight,' 'The Rainbow,' 'Lighthouse against a Stormy Sky.' Eloquent, too, are three slight water-colours, showing only faint indications of the difference between sky and land.
[PART FIVE]
1821-1829