Adjoining this blackened 'Morning' is an unimportant, hardly noticeable 'Sea Piece,' painted about 1802.
On the other side of the doorway is the 'Moonlight, a Study at Millbank,' of 1797, looking like a fog at midnight dominated by a moon—like a wafer. Adjoining it is the pleasant self-portrait, painted in 1802 when he was twenty-seven—Turner with the strong chin, loose lower lip and the observant eyes, gazing straight out at the world. Next to it is the 'Mountain Scene' of 1800, small and poor, and beneath is the straightly-seen 'View on Clapham Common,' quite attractive.
Almost pathetic is this wall of timid and indifferent early Turners, hanging just without the precincts of the superb array of his life work, but interesting as showing from what insignificant beginnings rose the mighty edifice. I think if I had my way, I would make the contrast even more marked, almost epigrammatic. I would hang the little 'Moonlight at Millbank' just above the 'Sunrise With a Boat Between Headlands,' and the little 'Carnarvon Castle' against the loveliness of 'Norham Castle' at dawn.
Again and again I visited this threshold room, barred by a screen from the new Turner Gallery. At ten o'clock on the morning of July 18th, 1910, I was there again with an invitation-card to view the 'New Turner Wing.'
[CHAPTER LIX]
1910: THE NEW 'TURNER GALLERY' AT MILLBANK
So, at last, fifty-nine years after his death one of the wishes of his muddled will is almost obeyed—that his works should be hung 'in a room or rooms, to be added to the National Gallery, and to be called "Turner's Gallery."'