'There is something very strange and sorrowful in the way Turner used to hint only at these under-meanings of his; leaving us to find them out, helplessly; and if we did not find them out, no word more ever came from him. Down to the grave he went, silent. "You cannot read me; you do not care for me; let it all pass; go your ways."'
Plate XL. Queen Mab's Grotto (1846) National Gallery
And here is a wail that is probably quite within the sad truth. In a note to the first volume of Modern Painters, after remarking sadly that 'Turner is exceedingly unequal,' that he has failed most frequently 'in elaborate compositions,' and that 'finding fault with Turner is not either decorous in myself or likely to be beneficial to the reader,' Ruskin continues:—
'The reader will have observed that I strictly limited the perfection of Turner's works to the time of their first appearing on the walls of the Royal Academy. It bitterly grieves me to have to do this, but the fact is indeed so. No picture of Turner's is seen in perfection a month after it is painted. The 'Walhalla' cracked before it had been eight days in the Academy rooms; the vermilions frequently lose lustre long before the Exhibition is over; and when all the colours begin to get hard a year or two after the picture is painted, a painful deadness and opacity come over them, the whites especially becoming lifeless, and many of the warmer passages settling into a hard valueless brown, even if the paint remains perfectly firm, which is far from being always the case. I believe that in some measure these results are unavoidable, the colours being so peculiarly blended and mingled in Turner's present manner, as almost to necessitate their irregular drying; but that they are not necessary to the extent in which they sometimes take place, is proved by the comparative safety of some even of the more brilliant works. Thus the "Old Téméraire" is nearly safe in colour, and quite firm; while the "Juliet and Her Nurse" is now the ghost of what it was; the "Slaver" shows no cracks, though it is chilled in some of the darker passages, while the "Walhalla" and several of the recent Venices cracked in the Royal Academy.'
How the attacks and parodies of Turner must have pained Ruskin! This, for example, from Punch on 'Venice, Morning, Returning from the Ball':—
'We had almost forgotten Mr. J. M. W. Turner, R.A., and his celebrated MS. poem, the Fallacies of Hope, to which he constantly refers us, as "in former years"; but on this occasion, he has obliged us by simply mentioning the title of the poem, without troubling us with an extract. We will, however, supply a motto to his "Morning—Returning from the Ball," which really seems to need a little explanation; and as he is too modest to quote the Fallacies of Hope, we will quote for him:—
'Oh, what a scene! Can this be Venice? No.
And yet methinks it is—because I see
Amid the lumps of yellow, red and blue,
Something which looks like a Venetian spire.
That dash of orange in the background there
Bespeaks 'tis morning. And that little boat
(Almost the colour of Tomato sauce)
Proclaims them now returning from the ball:
This is my picture I would fain convey,
I hope I do. Alas! what Fallacy!'