Turner's Sketches and Drawings

by A. J. Finberg

PLATE XVIII

STUDY OF A BARGE WITH SAILS SET

PEN AND INK, WASH, AND WHITE CHALK ON BLUE PAPER. ABOUT 1802

the marked influence of Rowlandson, George Morland and De Loutherbourg. There is one animated little drawing with brown ink outlines of sailors getting some obstreperous pigs on board a small coasting vessel in a strong gale of wind. Apparently the cart has been driven into the sea beside the vessel, an impossible feat in such a sea; the sea must also be too deep for the wheels of the cart to rest on the ground, and if the wheels touch the bottom there is not enough water for the two boats. But in spite of these minor defects the subject provides scope for a fine animated group of men in the cart struggling with the pigs, who have determined to precipitate themselves into the water rather than go where they are wanted.

That Turner was not altogether satisfied with his design is proved by the existence of two other versions of the same subject. In one of these the motive of the cart in the sea has been abandoned. The cart is now placed in the foreground on the beach, and the rearing horses and struggling and shouting men are clearly inspired by Rowlandson’s and De Loutherbourg’s treatment of similar themes. These drawings are in pencil outline only, but there is also a rather elaborate water-colour of a shipwrecked sailor clinging to the rocks, with huge glassy-coloured waves in the manner of De Loutherbourg.

Turner’s unfamiliarity with the sea no doubt accounted to some extent for its attraction. His imagination was here free to disport itself untrammelled by the bonds of experience, and safe from the irksome yoke of the familiar. When we come to study Turner’s first important sea-piece, the fine picture in the Bridgewater House collection of ‘Dutch Boats in a Gale: Fishermen endeavouring to put their Fish on Board’—first exhibited in 1801, we can see how little art is bound to depend upon the individual artist’s personal experience. Turner had painted landscapes before he knew the country, and buildings before he had seen them, so now he paints sea-pieces before he has been to sea. There is no evidence to show that he had ventured out of sight of land before 1802, and then it was only to cross the Channel from Dover to Calais. But before this he had exhibited not only the Bridgewater picture to which I have referred, but a large ‘Battle of the Nile’ (1799), Lord Iveagh’s superb ‘Fishermen upon a Lee Shore’ (1802), and the almost equally fine ‘Ships bearing up for Anchorage’ (1802), in the Petworth gallery.

It is true that he had used to the uttermost the few opportunities which had fallen in his way of observing the sea from the shore, and that he had some little experience of ships and sailors in rivers and on the coast. (See, for example, the series of sketches of boats’ crews towing men-of-war in the River Usk, in the ‘Cyfarthfa’ Sketch-Book of 1798.) What direct knowledge of this kind he possessed he naturally used, but there can be no doubt that the main body of his knowledge as well as inspiration was derived not at first-hand, but indirectly, at first, through the pictures of English painters like De Loutherbourg, and later, through the pictures and drawings of the Dutch sea-painters. The point is worth the attention of those who treat the close connection between art and nature which happens to exist just at present as an inherent characteristic of pictorial art, and make much of this supposed characteristic in opposition to the freedom of music. When we cease to keep our attention riveted on the naturalistic art of the present, we soon find indications that the essential forms of pictorial art are as much independent constructions of the creative mind as the forms of music.

In the group of studies for pictures of the sea which are related to the Duke of Bridgewater’s picture, we see Turner playing with pictorial forms with as much freedom as a musician plays with his notes. The horizontal line of the sea, the heaving waves, the masses of light and dark in the sky, the stolid forms of the big ships, the instability of the smaller boats,—these are notes which Turner never seems wearied of evoking, and weaving into ever fresh combinations. The demands of mere representation count for almost nothing in these entrancing drawings. The artist draws simply because he loves his artistic symbols, loves weaving them into designs, and because his gift of melodic invention is inexhaustible.