127. Mouth of the Grand Canal ([Plate XXIII]).
On the right is the Dogana, with the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in the distance; on the left are tall buildings which once were palaces and are now mostly hotels, among them probably the Palazzo Giustiniani, which became the Hôtel de l’Europe, where Turner put up during his later visits to Venice. It is no good my trying to describe the colour of such a drawing. When it was sold at Christie’s in the Beecham sale an enthusiastic scribe writing in one the newspapers said that it was “as if drawn by a butterfly.” I remember that the expression struck me at the time as—impressionistic, but I think I know what the writer felt. There is something that makes one think of butterflies in its elusiveness and its fluttering beauty of colour.
160. An Iceberg.
This must have been done about 1845, and it is the latest of Turner’s sketches in the exhibition. It belongs to the time when Beale’s “Voyage” had set him dreaming about icebergs and whalers. There is a draft of some attempted poetry scribbled on the drawing, which I have spent perhaps more time than it is worth in trying to decipher. The only words I can feel sure about are the following:—
—Against all Hope—
No one has lived to tell the tail (sic!). No vestige found, nor deck—
no spar or mast—
Those who remember the oil painting called, Whalers (boiling blubber) entangled in floe-ice, endeavouring to extricate themselves—it was on loan at the Glasgow Art Gallery when last I saw it—may be able to form some vague idea of what Turner was thinking about when he made this fantastic and almost incomprehensible sketch.
TURNER’S PREDECESSORS
But the wonderful array of Turner’s works was far from exhausting the interest of this memorable exhibition. Grouped round the Turners were about thirty drawings by his predecessors, i.e. English water-colour painters who were born before him, and about seventy drawings by his contemporaries, i.e. artists who were born at or about the same time as Turner, or whose period of work coincided with his lifetime. There were also some drawings by later artists. I propose to speak of the former group in this chapter.
Perhaps the earliest topographical drawings in the exhibition were the two views of Bath, made in 1777, by Thomas Malton, the younger (1748-1804)—the West Front, Town Hall (51) and Pulteney Bridge (55). Though cold and precise these drawings have very great charm, and they are crowded with topographical and antiquarian interest. But they belong to an undeveloped stage of the art of water-colour painting. The details of architecture are drawn carefully and accurately, the figures are life-like though rather stiff, and the indications of light and shade explain the shapes of the buildings and knit the whole composition together. But the drawings do not go beyond this. The few pale washes of colour diversify the surface, but do not suggest either colour or atmosphere. Every object, the roadway, figures, buildings and the sky, has the same texture, which makes the general effect monotonous and abstract.
Though Paul Sandby (1725-1809) was born before the younger Malton, his drawing of The Swan Inn, Edmonton ([Plate XXV]) is, I fancy, some ten or perhaps twenty years later in point of execution than these Bath drawings; Sandby’s style, however, was always less abstract than Malton’s. Compared with the Bath views this drawing by Sandby is like a window opened on nature; it is flooded with light, the warm sunshine plays on and through the trees, lighting up the road, the figures and the whole scene. Yet Sandby’s care for detail is as great as Malton’s. Each house, each garden, each tree has its individual character fully recorded with unflagging industry and spirit. The spectator’s interest is awakened by the variety of shapes, colours and incidents, and sustained by the artist’s evident alertness and thorough enjoyment of the spectacle. Sandby was one of the first English artists to rob topographical delineation of its abstractness and impersonality. He throws the charm of his genial personality over the scene. And though his work is always alert, interesting and full of charm, this Edmonton drawing is, I think, one of the most delightful of his works that I have seen.