Turner's Golden Visions

by C. Lewis Hind

HE DISAPPEARS FROM HIS OLD HAUNTS, AND IS INTERESTED IN OPTICS AND PHOTOGRAPHY

Turner's art life almost ceased during the years 1847, 1848 and 1849. Three old-new pictures only were exhibited: 'The Hero of a Hundred Fights,' probably an early picture re-touched, and two works of former years: 'The Wreck Buoy,' which he repainted, spending 'six laborious days' upon it, and 'Venus and Adonis,' dating from nearly fifty years before, after his visit to the Louvre in 1802.

The interest of these years, if it be an interest, is centred in his cunning and successful efforts to escape from the notice of friends and companions, and to withdraw his private life from any kind of intrusion. The doors of Queen Anne Street were locked and barred, and when he was absent from home, which was often, his old housekeeper, Hannah Danby, had no knowledge of his hiding-place. Sometimes he was seen at a council meeting of the Royal Academy or on Varnishing Day, but his friends were rarely able to obtain speech with him. Hawkesworth Fawkes tried to keep up acquaintance with his father's old Mend, and every Christmas a hamper arrived in Queen Anne Street from Farnley. There is a letter to Hawkesworth dated December 27th, 1847, beginning:—'

Many thanks for the P.P.P., viz., Pie, Phea, and Pud—the Xmas cheer in Queen Anne Street.'

One day, so the story runs, an artist took shelter in a public-house, where he found Turner sitting in the furthest corner with his glass of grog before him. Said the unnamed artist: 'I didn't know you used this house. I shall often drop in now I know where you quarter.' Turner emptied his glass, and as he went out said, 'Will you? I don't think you will.'

The secret of his hiding-place was not discovered until a day or two before his death. As everybody now knows, he lived mainly, during those last years, in the little house with the roof balcony facing the Thames at Cremorne, in what is called to-day Cheyne Walk. The story current for years was that he passed the house in one of his rambles, saw that rooms were vacant, liked the place, and after some bargaining with the landlady, agreed co become the tenant. He asked her name, and upon receiving the answer, 'Mrs. Booth,' chuckled, 'Then I'll be Mr. Booth.' This story is incorrect, as he had made the acquaintance of Sophia Caroline Booth years before, when she let lodgings at Margate. As it is believed that Turner paid his last visit to Margate in 1845, it is probable that he transferred Mrs. Booth to the little house at Chelsea in that year. Her name appears in a codicil to his will, dated February 1st, 1849, giving her the same provision as Hannah Danby, his housekeeper in Queen Anne Street, who had entered his service, a girl of sixteen, in the year 1801. Hannah Danby and Mrs. Booth both survived him.

Turner's curiosity, his eagerness for wider knowledge about his art and all that pertained to it, never relaxed, even in this period of his failing powers. One of the most interesting chapters in Thornbury's Life is the account given by Mayall, the photographer of Regent Street, of Turner's interest in optics and photography. I append portions of the information furnished by Mayall, whom Thornbury describes as 'that eminent professor in the progressing and wonderful art':—

'Turner's visits to my atelier were in 1847, 1848 and 1849. I took several admirable daguerreotype portraits of him, one of which was reading, a position rather favourable for him on account of his weak eyes and their being rather bloodshot.... My first interviews with him were rather mysterious; he either did state, or at least led me to believe, that he was a Master in Chancery, and his subsequent visits and conversation rather confirmed this idea. At first he was very desirous of trying curious effects of light let in on the figure from a high position, and he himself sat for the studies.... He stayed with me some three hours, talking about light and its curious effects on films of prepared silver. He expressed a wish to see the spectral image copied, and asked me if I had ever repeated Mrs. Somerville's experiment of magnetising a needle in the rays of the spectrum. I told him I had.

'I was not then aware that the inquisitive old man was Turner, the painter. At the same time, I was much impressed with his inquisitive disposition, and I carefully explained to him all I then knew of the operation of light on iodized silver plates. He came again and again, always with some new notion about light....'

Mayall tells us that Turner when he visited him bore the marks of age; but in the profile drawing of this period, ascribed to Linnell, with the straggling hair, the powerful nose, and the enormous stock about his neck, the face is keen, and the artist has quite caught the gleam of the grey eye. This drawing is not by Linnell, as has been hitherto supposed, but by Landseer and Count d'Orsay in conjunction. Mr. A. S. Bicknell, who was present when the sketch was made, contributed to the Athenæum of January 9th, 1909, the following letter on this subject, as interesting as it is authoritative:—'

'A few days ago I first saw a handsome quarto "Turner, by Sir Walter Armstrong, 1902," in which, as a second frontispiece, I found a head and shoulders portrait of that great artist, described on the opposite leaf as "from the sketch in water-colours by J. Linnell, in the collection of James Orrock, Esq."

'During the last fifty years I have occasionally come across a reference to this likeness, declaring that it was probably the work of some contemporary painter, sketched at a meeting or private entertainment; but as these surmises have at length crystallised into a positive assertion concerning Linnell, I think it may be well to place the truth on record.

'My father, Elhanan Bicknell, of Herne Hill, frequently entertained at dinner a large company of the most distinguished artists and patrons of art, amongst whom Turner, but never Linnell, was often one. It being the case that Turner objected to having his portrait taken, on an occasion of that kind two conspirators, Count D'Orsay and Sir Edwin Landseer, devised a little plot to defeat the result of this antipathy. Whilst Turner unsuspiciously chatted with a guest over a cup of tea in the drawing-room, D'Orsay placed himself as screen beside him to hide, when necessary, Landseer sketching him at full length in pencil on the back of a letter. Landseer gave what he had done to D'Orsay, who, after re-drawing it at home, and enlarging the figure to eight inches in height, sold it to J. Hogarth, printseller in the Haymarket, for twenty guineas; and it was then lithographed and published by the latter, January 1st, 1851, with the title of Turner's mysterious poem, The Fallacies of Hope, at the bottom. Sixteen copies were included in the Bicknell sale at Christie's in 1863. The Louis XIV. panelling of the room, as well as a piano, inlaid with Sèvres plaques, are indicated in the background; and I may also mention that I was present at that party, which took place, to the best of my belief, about Christmas, 1847, or early in 1849.

'Ruskin, who seldom admitted any blemish, even in the person of his hero, called this portrait a caricature, but it was nothing of the kind; I knew Turner extremely well, and I have always considered it to be a most admirable, truthful likeness; indeed, the only one exactly portraying his general appearance and expression in his latter years.'