It was such spade-work as the "Liber Studiorum" that enabled him to triumph in such an impossible subject as "The Burning of the Houses of Parliament." Imagine what this series of drawings meant! Claude's "Liber Veritatis," to rival which the "Liber Studiorum" was designed, was a mere record of his pictures. Turner's "Liber Studiorum" was a survey of Nature, classified under six heads,—architectural, pastoral, elegant or epic-pastoral, marine, mountainous, and historical or heroic. These divisions were suggested by "Dad." "Well, Gaffer," said Turner, "I see there will be no peace till I comply; so give me a piece of paper." He made each drawing in sepia; he etched the essential lines, and he trained a school of engravers (not without quarrelling) to engrave them.
Men have loved the "Liber." Connoisseurs, like Mr. Rawlinson, have specialised in it. I know an enthusiast who spends hours in the course of the year, smoking his pipe, gazing at (a poor impression, but his own) No. VII., "The Straw Yard," that hangs on his study-wall against a reproduction of Girtin's "White House at Chelsea," and he wonders which he would save first if the house caught fire. I have been a quarter of an hour late for an appointment through returning twice to a certain house to enjoy again Mr. Frank Short's engravings of two of the unpublished drawings—the "Crowhurst" and the "Stonehenge." But I never knew what the "Liber" really was until I saw Mr. Rawlinson's collection, the depth and velvety richness of a very early state of the "Raglan Castle," and the large and still simplicity of the "Junction of Severn and Wye." Some day it may be your privilege to see them; but first we will descend to the ground floor of the National Gallery and please ourselves by making a choice among the seventy and more sepia drawings for the "Liber" that hang on the wall of the first room.
But I doubt if you will have patience to go through all, for around, and in little rooms beyond, are the water-colours.
PLATE VII.—LAUSANNE.
(From the water-colour by Turner in the National Gallery)
It may be Lausanne: it may be Berne, or merely a Turnerian Swiss dream of flushed spires, and a dim foreground where anything may be happening. This is one of the water-colours permanently on view at the National Gallery. The others are preserved in two large cabinets in an inner room, and shown in detachments at intervals of three months.
[LETTER V]
THE FLAME LEAPS, EXPANDS, AND EXPIRES
When I think of Turner it is the later water-colours that flash before me. The oils are magnificent, tremendous, wrought in rivalry and for fame: the water-colours, lyrical impressions, moods of elation inspired by beauty, are himself. We will go straight to the six studies that hung on the wall by the fireplace, essential effects selected with unerring instinct from the unessential, called "Running Wave in a Cross-tide: Evening;" "Twilight on the Sea;" "Sunshine on the Sea on a Stormy Evening;" "Breaking Wave on Beach;" "Sunset on the Sea;" and "Coasting Vessels." The very titles are lyrics. Yet they are not more beautiful than other interpretations, pushed into the region where feeling and vision merge into ecstasy—those I have already mentioned, and some, my particular favourites, hanging on the wall to the left of Ruskin's bust—the "Pilatus," the careful alchemy of "Carnarvon," and the atmospheric veils that part above the "Lake of Uri." Year by year other of his water-colours shine out momentarily at exhibitions, such as at the last Old Masters, when we saw the blue and gold "Lake of Thun," and the visionary "Lake of Zug" about which Ruskin wrote so enthusiastically in "Modern Painters"; and the "apocalyptic splendour" of the "Zurich" at Messrs. Agnew's.