I may, I hope, be pardoned for preferring the classification of Turner’s “periods” adopted in my study of “Turner’s Sketches and Drawings” to Mr. Ruskin’s sweeping generalization. Turner’s Farnley work impinges on three of these periods—it begins with that of 1802 to 1809, when Turner was producing his own glorious sea-pieces; it covers the next period, from 1809 to 1813, when Turner was developing that deep and solemn conception of the poetry of rural life, which found expression in the Frosty Morning, Abingdon and Windsor; and it runs half-way into the period of Turner’s greatest academical and popular success—that of 1813 to 1830. Of these three phases of Turner’s dazzling and complex genius I regard the middle one as the most important. The works produced in those years founded a genuinely national school of homely realism, and show Turner as the leader and inspirer of the Norwich School, and the master of David Cox, De Wint and all that is best in English water-colour painting. The spirit which animated this period is the spirit which informs nearly all the oil paintings and water-colours in the Farnley Hall Collection.
At the death of Mr. Walter Fawkes, Turner’s works at Farnley Hall consisted of seven oil paintings and about two hundred water-colours. Since then the collection has been reduced to about two-thirds of its original size. Various drawings have been given as presents to different members of the family, and accidents of various kinds have happened to a few of the drawings. One of Mr. Walter Fawkes’s sons was given a couple of drawings to decorate his room at Eton. One of the drawings got dirtied and the boy put it in a basin of water to clean it, with disastrous results—a very expensive way of learning the difference between an oil painting and a water-colour. But the biggest gap in the collection was made by one of the present owner’s predecessors, the Rev. Ayscough Fawkes, who sent forty-nine water-colours and three oil paintings to Christie’s in June, 1890.
No complete list of the original collection has yet been published. The following list is as nearly exhaustive as I have been able to make it. I have broken this list up into eight groups for convenience of reference, viz., (1) The oil paintings, (2) The early Swiss drawings, (3) The Rhine drawings, (4) Yorkshire, marine and other subjects,(5) The Wharfedale Series, (6) Birds, (7) Vignettes, (8) Italian and later Swiss drawings. Where the works have passed from the possession of Mr. F. H. Fawkes, the present owner of the collection, I have indicated in brackets the collection into which they have passed, or the latest appearance in the sale-room or exhibition of which I have a record. Where there is no entry in brackets after the title the work is still at Farnley Hall.
THE OIL PAINTINGS.
1. London from Greenwich Park. 36” × 48". (National Gallery, No. 483.)
2. Shoeburyness Fisherman hailing a Whitstable Hoy—sometimes called Pilot with Red Cap hailing a Smack in Stormy Weather. 36” × 48".
3. The Victory returning from Trafalgar, beating up Channel in three positions: fresh breeze. 27” × 40". (Christie’s, 1890; Sir Donald Currie.)
4. Scene in the Apennines, with peasants driving sheep. 13½” × 19¼"—panel. (Christie’s, 1890; E. L. Raphael, Esq. Exhibited R. A. 1892; Guildhall, 1899.)
5. The Sun rising in a Mist. 27” × 40". (Christie’s, 1890; Mrs. Johnstone Foster.)
6. The Lake of Geneva, from above Vevey, and looking towards the Valley of the Rhone. 41½” × 65¼". (Christie’s, 1890; Sir Donald Currie.)