In the ‘Kirkstall Crypt’ (R. 39), the design is also recast in the etching. The group of cows is altered, the foreground pillar is made thinner, the space between the two columns in the centre is widened out, and the aperture in the wall above the cows on the left is made light, instead of dark. These changes are all for the better. A careful study of these seemingly trivial alterations is valuable as an instance of the subtleties of design upon which all really fine art depends.
As these remarks indicate, I am in agreement with the general opinion that the engravings represent Turner’s intentions more fully than his preliminary drawings. But though this is generally the case, there are exceptions, and the most notable is, I think, that of the plate sometimes known as ‘Twickenham—Pope’s Villa,’ and sometimes as ‘Garrick’s Temple and Hampton Court,’ but which really represents a scene at Isleworth. In this case the drawing (Plate [XL.]) is much finer than the plate, although Turner etched the subject himself. But somehow the spacing of the whole is much less felicitous in the engraving than in the drawing. The rendering of the trees, too, is more conventional, but this is a characteristic of nearly all the plates, and is due to the difficulties of the medium, it being impossible to get the same subtlety of tone and delicacy of form in etching and mezzotint that can be got with a pen and wash on paper.
This question of the comparative conventionality of the foliage in the engravings induces me to say a few words about one of the loveliest renderings of woodland scenery in the whole series—the so-called ‘Raglan Castle’ (R. 58).[20] This is one of the plates that Turner mezzotinted himself, yet because the etched lines are not so free and supple as those of the preliminary drawing (No. 865, N.G.), it has been assumed that Turner left the etching to be done by one of his engravers, probably Dawe. This assumption is one that I cannot accept. The lettering on the plate, ‘Drawn and Engraved by J. M. W. Turner, etc.,’ points to the conclusion that Turner was responsible both for the etching and the mezzotinting. And when we compare the etching with the drawing, a number of slight but successful differences emerge, which no engraver would either have attempted to make or could have made if he had desired to do so.
‘The Source of the Arveron’ (R. 60), another of the plates ‘drawn and engraved’ by Turner, has also had its etching condemned and attributed to Dawe. If the plate is really so fine as all the critics of this kind insist, it is curious that the etching can be so poor as they say and yet not affect the excellence of the whole. This is inconsistent with the proper appreciation of the important role the etched lines play in all these mezzotints. That Turner regarded the etching as far more important than the scraping is shown by the simple fact that he undertook (nominally at least) to do it all himself, but he had no hesitation in handing the scraping over to the engravers.
These general considerations are further strengthened when we compare the finished plate (I am speaking only of the etching in the published states, and not of the rare ‘first state’ of the etching in the late Mr. J. E. Taylor’s collection) with the preliminary study made for it, now in the National Gallery (No. 879). The size and proportions of the plate differ from those of the drawing, so the etching could not have been traced from it, while the etching nowhere follows the drawing with the accuracy one would expect if it were merely an engraver’s copy. There is no authority in this drawing for the shapes given to the crests of the distant mountains in the centre, nor for the shapes of the upper portions of the nearer mountains on the left. The lower parts of the design are also modified from the forms in the drawing in exactly the way Turner habitually recast all the drawings he etched. It is also hard to suppose that Dawe or anybody but Turner could have recast the vague shapes of the disappearing ridge of the glacier on the left in the masterly way this has been done in the etching, or that anybody but Turner could have invented, on the strength of the loose indications in the drawing, the masterly lines that give definition to the stretch of valley against which the ice of the glacier is relieved. The shapes of the
PLATE XLII
VIEW OF A RIVER, FROM A TERRACE
SOMETIMES CALLED “MACON”