Plate XXXV. San Benedetto, Looking Towards Fusina (1843) National Gallery
Time has been cruel to both these Venetian pictures, perhaps cruel only to be kind. Even in Ruskin's time much of the transparency had gone; but there they are, dreams of Venice; not the Venice we see, not the Venice that Canaletto saw, but the Venice that floated before the eyes of Turner, that blossomed in the imagination of an old man nearing his seventieth year. I suppose we must call the other pictures of 1843 failures, but only because he tried to express the inexpressible—such themes as 'The Evening of the Deluge' and 'The Morning After,' with Moses writing the book of Genesis, mixed up with Goethe's theory of Light and Colour, and accompanied by an extract from the Fallacies of Hope:—
'The ark stood firm on Ararat: the returning sun
Exhaled earth's humid bubbles, and emulous of light,
Reflected her lost forms, each in prismatic guise.'
In this year, too, he exhibited 'The Opening of the Walhalla,' which has been banished to the honourable seclusion of the Dublin National Gallery. This Doric temple, erected on a hill overlooking the Danube, containing two hundred marble busts of eminent Germans, had been opened by King Ludwig of Bavaria in the previous year. The idea inspired Turner; he painted a characteristic picture of the ceremony and sent it to King Ludwig, who returned the gift with the comment that he did not understand it. Poor Turner! Munich would be well content to own the 'Walhalla' now.
In 1843 the first volume of Modern Painters was published, which 'originated,' as Ruskin tells us, 'in indignation at the shallow and false criticisms of the periodicals of the day of the works of the great living artist to whom it principally refers.' The second volume was not published until 1846; the third and fourth in 1856, and the fifth and last volume of this 'enormous work of thought, inspiration, sincerity and devotion' in 1860.
We have it on the authority of Thornbury, that Turner was vexed at Ruskin's panegyrics, and said, 'The man put things into my head I never thought of.' I doubt if Turner was vexed at the panegyrics, but it is quite certain that Ruskin's imagination saw things in the pictures that Turner never 'thought of.' Turner was a man of deeds, not of thoughts. He worked with his eyes, hand, and spirit: he was Nature's lover. It is certain, too, that after the first irritation felt by his contemporaries at some of the wilder works of Turner's later years had cooled, his fame would have steadily increased, and would have been as high as it is to-day, had Modern Painters never been written.
