PLATE XIV
CAERNARVON CASTLE.
PENCIL. 1799
but when we compare it with the original we find that the various discrepancies in the copy can only be accounted for by supposing that Turner was working to a considerable extent from memory. I admit the evidence is not conclusive, but I do not think we shall be far wrong if we take it that Turner did not at this time make any elaborate copies of Wilson’s pictures, but that he studied them closely and enthusiastically, and relied more upon his memory than his notes.
In the sketches made during the following years we find that these two separate operations show a tendency to coalesce. Turner has evidently taken a dislike to his earlier map-making style, and tries hard to see nature like Wilson. His sketches from nature become slighter and more hurried. In his efforts towards breadth he comes very near emptiness, and in his attempts to get away from his neat bit-by-bit style of work he often comes near downright clumsiness and carelessness.
The summers of 1798 and 1799 were largely spent in North Wales. Here he found exactly the material that chimed in with the mood of sternness and gloom he wished to express: steep, convulsive mountains, wild valleys and broken passes, the bare skeletonlike ribs of broken ships aground on lonely estuaries, massive ruins of huge castles perched on inaccessible crags, gnawed to the bone as it were by the wind and rain and remorseless Time.
His mental grasp has clearly broadened. He no longer sees buildings as isolated objects, but they now fall into their places as incidents in the wide panorama of the country. Nothing is now drawn for itself; the trees are emanations from the ground, the dry land and the waters are kinsmen, the stones in the foreground are parts of the distant mountains, and the mountains huge elder brothers of the pebbles by the river-side. The bubbling waters are but clouds made captive, the clouds the freed souls of the brooks, the trees the organ of their transformation; and castles like Conway, standing with their roots plunged deep into their rocky foundations, seem but rocks raised to a higher power. The distinction between human art and physical nature is everywhere broken down. The spirit of life in nature is identified with the volitions and passions of the artist’s own soul: he has become sensible ‘to the moods of time and season, to the moral power, the affections and the spirit of the place.’[12]