Change from pure form to light and shade—‘Millbank’ and ‘Ewenny Priory’—Contrast between ‘Ewenny’ and ‘Llandaff’—The transition from objectivity to subjectivity—The growth of taste for the Sublime—There are no sublime objects, but only objects of sublime feeling—No guidance but from art—The Wilson tradition—The two elements in the sketches and studies of this period, (1) The study of Nature, and (2) The assimilation of the Wilson tradition—In the 1797 sketches these two operations are kept distinct—The North of England tour and its record—‘Studies for Pictures: Copies of Wilson’—The two operations begin to coalesce in the 1798 and 1799 sketches—The origin of ‘Jason’—The Scotch (1801) and Swiss (1802) tours.
THERE is an evident connection between such a study of light and shade as the ‘Interior of a Cottage’ (406 National Gallery) and at least two of the exhibits in the exhibition of 1797. One of these, the ‘Moonlight, a study at Millbank,’ was probably Turner’s first exhibited oil painting; the other, ‘Transept of Ewenny Priory, Glamorganshire,’ I am inclined to regard as the first drawing in which the budding genius of the young artist was authoritatively announced. It is impossible to be sure whether the direction of Turner’s attention to the subtler problems of light and shade led him to turn to oil painting as a more suitable medium for the expression of such effects, or whether his resolution to explore the resources of the more complex medium had the effect of directing his attention to the expressional qualities of light and shade. The ‘Millbank’ bears on its face the evidence of Dutch influence (Van der Neer, Van Goyen, etc.) as well as of inexperience of the technical requirements of the new medium. This inexperience renders the work
PLATE IX
INTERIOR OF RIPON CATHEDRAL: NORTH TRANSEPT
PENCIL. 1797
insignificant with regard to the development of the artist’s personality, but the bent of his mind towards the mystery and expressiveness of darkness is notable.
In the water-colour of ‘Ewenny Priory’—now one of the chief treasures of the Cardiff Art Gallery (Pyke-Thompson Bequest)—Turner’s genius is less hampered by technical difficulties. If this be indeed the drawing that was exhibited in 1797[7] it shows an amazingly rapid development in the artist’s powers, especially when we compare it with the ‘Llandaff Cathedral’ (790, National Gallery), which was exhibited only twelve months earlier. The ‘Llandaff’ is merely the work of a clever and skilful topographical draughtsman, the ‘Ewenny’ is the work of a powerful imaginative artist. The gloomy interior of the Norman ruin is no longer an object to be measured, dated, classified and labelled. It is no longer an ‘interesting specimen’ that we have set before us. The artist has now broken with the ordinary, every-day world of sense-experience, and we plunge with him into the world of the imagination, where objects are no longer separated from and held over against the self; they now throb and tingle with our own emotional life.