Turner's Sketches and Drawings

by A. J. Finberg

The first three plates in the ‘Liber’ are classified as ‘Pastoral,’ ‘Elegant Pastoral,’ and ‘Marine.’ When we compare the marine subject (the so-called ‘Flint Castle,’ which we now know to have been a scene on the French coast[14]) with the two pastoral subjects, we cannot but be struck with the disparity between the two classes of subjects. The marine subject is vigorous and veracious, the pastoral subjects unreal and conventionally poetical. This point of view is in keeping with the conception of the elegant pastoral, but ‘The Bridge and Cows’ (R. 2)—the pastoral subject—is as gentle and pretty as a picture in an idyll of Gessner or Thomson. This, indeed, represents Turner’s point of departure as a painter of rural subjects—the standpoint of the sentimental, affected, and unconvincing Arcadian idyll of the middle of the eighteenth century.

The ‘Straw-yard,’ the second pastoral subject in the ‘Liber,’ strikes me as a cross between a Gainsborough and a Teniers. Gainsborough’s influence is noticeable in the landscape, while the ungainly horses, the awkward men and clumsy farm implements are in the spirit of Dutch realism. These hints of the plainness and toughness of the marine subjects suggest what Turner will do when he feels equally at home in rural subjects, but at present we have merely two incompatible points of view in arbitrary juxtaposition. ‘Pembury Mill,’ the third pastoral, is rather more homogeneous in intention. It is a scene of cheerful industry and plenty, the noise of the millstone mingling with the cooing of pigeons, and lush leaves growing beside the water-wheel. It is a pretty subject, while no conscious attempts have been made to prettify or blink the actual facts of the case. The ‘Farm-Yard with the Cock’ (R. 17) still belongs to the eighteenth-century idyll. It is a pleasing combination of Gainsborough and Morland, or perhaps an echo of Wheatley. In the ‘Juvenile Tricks’ (R. 22)[15] Turner’s bent towards homely realism is clearly marked, but we do not get definitively away from the eighteenth century till we come to the ‘Windmill and Lock’ (R. 27).[16] Here we are in an entirely different world from that of Arcadian poetry. We have now put away childish things, and are face to face with the big real world in which man earns his bread with the sweat of his brow; in which men and women labour and sin, sorrow and repent. It is indeed the real world, the world of common perception and common experience, yet transfigured with the solemn glow of the truest and profoundest poetry.

The engraving of the ‘Windmill and Lock’ was published in June, 1811, but the picture and drawing were made some time before this date. In the part of the ‘Liber’ published immediately before the one which contained this plate, there was a plate of ‘Hind Head Hill’ (R. 25), which bears the date of 1st January, 1811. This subject was sketched in November 1807. It is therefore probable that the two drawings were made soon afterwards, let us say in 1808.

The period of the inception of ‘Hind Head Hill,’ then, marks the commencement of the era of Turner’s deeper and more solemn conception of the poetry of rural life. This subject itself, though classified in the ‘Liber’ as ‘mountainous,’ belongs to all intents and purposes to the phase of art which we are now studying. The bare hills dotted with sheep, with the murderer’s corpse creaking upon the distant gibbet, are quite in harmony with the mood of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads. In the same sketch-book are also the first ideas of no less than three other ‘Liber’ subjects, all conceived in the same mood of spiritual exaltation, and all sketched during the same journey from Portsmouth to London.

The events connected with this journey were of a nature calculated to throw Turner’s mind out of its ordinary habits and thoughts, to carry him ‘out of himself,’ and to prepare him for seeing the familiar scenes of everyday life in a fresh light. These events have therefore a special interest for us in this connection.

In May 1807 the Prince Regent of Portugal warned the Prince of Wales that Napoleon was on the point of invading England with the Portuguese and Danish fleets, and that the Emperor of Russia had bound himself by secret articles in the Treaty of Tilsit to support him in this measure. The ministry were informed of the plot, and Canning lost no time in dealing with the situation. An envoy was sent to the Crown Prince of Denmark at Kiel, with the demand that the Danish navy should be delivered over to England, to be taken care of in British ports, and restored at the end of the war. The demand was, of course, indignantly refused. But the situation was so serious that the ministry felt compelled to order the seizing of the Danish fleet, if it was not lent quietly. Denmark held the keys of the Baltic. Napoleon’s troops were ready to overrun it at a moment’s notice, and seize the fleet and all the naval stores, all that he wanted, in fact, for his attack on England. In securing the Danish fleet, the English then were simply taking it from Napoleon, and were merely acting for the purpose of self-preservation. By the 1st of September the French had occupied Stralsund. Copenhagen was immediately bombarded, and on the 8th the British entered the city, and the navy and arsenal were surrendered.

How this blow affected Napoleon is shown from a passage in Fouché’s Memoirs, published in 1824. ‘About that time it was,’ says Fouché, ‘that we learned the success of the attack upon Copenhagen by the English, which was the first derangement of the secret stipulations of Tilsit, by virtue of which the Danish fleet was to be placed at the disposal of France. Since the death of Paul I., I never saw Napoleon give himself up to such violent transports of passion. That which astounded him most in that vigorous enterprise was the promptitude with which the English ministry took their resolution.’ (Quoted in Miss Martineau’s History of England, 1800-1815, p. 283). At the time the mind of the public was profoundly stirred by this event. But the victors had almost brought the Danish ships within sight of England before the news of the frustration of Napoleon’s plans was made public. Turner must have been as excited as any one, for he set off immediately to Portsmouth, to see the victors sail into the harbour with their prizes and to celebrate the occasion in his own way.

When Turner left London his sketch-books as a rule bear witness of the fact. In the ‘Spithead’ sketch-book there is no record of the journey down from London. The first thirty pages are taken up with sketches of the movements of vessels in Portsmouth harbour, on one of them being a sketch of a boat’s crew recovering an anchor. In the following May, Turner included in his one-man show at his studio in Queen Anne Street West, an unfinished picture ‘of the Danish ships which were seized at Copenhagen, entering Portsmouth Harbour’ (Review of Publications of Art, No. 2, June 1, 1808, p. 167). In the foreground a ‘packet with soldiers on board’ is mentioned, and ‘two boats toward the left hand corner of the picture, one of which is heaving or letting go an anchor.’ The whole description, and these details in particular, prove beyond a doubt that this was the picture which, when finished, was exhibited in the following year (1809), at the Royal Academy, under the title of ‘Spithead: Boat’s Crew recovering an Anchor,’ and which hangs now in the National Gallery under this name. The change of title was most probably due to prudential considerations, as, after the first revulsion of popular feeling, the ministry had to endure considerable obloquy on account of this action, Napoleon’s intention of invading the country as well as the existence of the secret articles of the Treaty of Tilsit being stoutly denied, and the government being pledged not to reveal the source of the information on which they had acted.

Our immediate interest in this event is with the effect produced on Turner’s mind by the scenes which he had witnessed in and around Portsmouth. The sight of the united English and Danish fleets was one calculated to stir Turner’s imagination profoundly. The artist’s sensitive nature must also have been deeply affected by contact with the excited and jubilant populace, and with the sailors and fighting men upon whose individual exertions the safety of the country depended.

Such moments of national excitement tend inevitably to dwarf the petty and merely particular interests and prejudices of the individual. The substantive interests of the community, the universal forces that move men and hold them together, then present themselves in all their stark reality and overwhelming importance to every heart and mind. In such a mood, with a mind humbled and humanised, Turner set out to return to London.