He painted 'Calais Pier' in his dark studio, with half his brain mumbling instructions to the other half as to how Van de Velde and the other brothers of the sea would have done it. He made the sketches from Nature as we have seen; but he had not yet arrived at the degree of knowledge enabling him to paint a picture without losing the impulse of the sketch. But Turner had to build his foundations: he knew that. He could never have painted 'A Ship Aground' in 1830, unless he had painted 'Calais Pier' in 1803. We may see from the 'Calais Pier' Sketch-Book how minutely he acquainted himself with such scenes in Nature. On leaf 58 is the following eloquent line in his own handwriting:—' Our landing at Calais. Nearly swampt.'
Ruskin refers to 'Calais Pier 'as' the first picture which bears the sign manual and the sign mental of Turner's colossal power.' He also observes, quite rightly, that nobody is frightened and there is no danger. And a child can see that it is untrue. Turner was never much concerned with what we call 'truth.' The effect was his aim, not the fact. The sky, except for the peep of blue, is black, the whole picture is dark almost to blackness, but Ruskin sees the first indication of colour, 'properly so called,' in the fish, and tells the following story:—
'The engraver of one of his most important marine pictures told me, not long ago, that one day Turner came into his room to examine the progress of the plate, not having seen his own picture for several months. It was one of his dark, early pictures, but in the foreground was a little piece of luxury, a pearly fish wrought into lines like those of an opal. He stood before the picture for some moments; then laughed, and pointed joyously to the fish, "They say that Turner can't colour!" and turned away.'
The casual wayfarer through the Turner Gallery sees only the absurdities of 'Calais Pier,' sniggers, perhaps, at the old fisherman in the boat who is shaking his half-filled bottle of brandy towards the woman on the pier, the lady having kept the rest for herself. But the artist who stands before 'Calais Pier' knows what knowledge and force there is in this dark sea picture of Turner's youth.
Such modern sea painters as Moore, Olsson, and the Frenchman, Matisse, have, in the beauty and truth of their realism, spoilt us for the old sea pictures. But they contained something that we have lost. Mr. W. L. Wyllie, A.R.A., in his book on Turner, says some fine and good things about 'Calais Pier.' After remarking that in 'Calais Pier' the light and shade is just that of Turner's studio in Harley Street; that the inky clouds throw black shadows just as a table or a sofa would in a room; that the pale blue sky is not reflected anywhere, either in the tumbling water or on the tarry sides of the fishing-boats, he continues:—
'And yet when we are back among the conventional black old pictures, such as 'The Shipwreck,' the 'Spithead,' or even the impossible, gloomy 'Garden of the Hesperides,' we feel that, after all, the old Wizard was a worker of wonders, and that he in his dark London room, with little more than black, brown, and grey, could move us to awe, terror, or wonder by the thousand-and-one secrets which he had at his fingers' ends; but which we moderns in the struggle to be realistic may perhaps have forgotten, or even, it may be, have never tried to learn.'
'Calais Pier,' says Thornbury, was the cause 'of one of the most painful things 'that ever happened to any of Turner's engravers. Lupton undertook to make a mezzotint of it, but he could not satisfy the artist.' This is not the proportion of my picture,' said Turner, 'there is some mistake here. These are perfect dolls' boats,' and so on. After much loss of time and innumerable corrections, it was left unfinished. Ruskin says that Turner got tired of his own composition; doubled the height of the sails, pushed some of the boats further apart, and some nearer together; introduced half a dozen more; and at last brought the whole thing into irreparable confusion—in which it was left.
We shall never know to what degree Turner's pictures have blackened. Burnet says that when the 'Festival upon the Opening of the Vintage of Macon' was first painted, it was full of vivid greens and yellows. This blackening of pictures should be an anxiety to all serious painters. Ruskin really did a great service to Turner, perhaps even greater than the publication of Modern Painters, when he rolled up the 'unfinished' oils and water-colours and deposited them in the cellars of the National Gallery. Our new joy in Turner, the rush of admiration and veneration that came when those golden visions were exhibited in 1906, could never have been had not they been protected from the light for so many years: then, suddenly, to reveal their splendour.