Yes, Turner was now a successful man, but he was still, as always, a student. The Sketch-Books, as I have said, reveal him better than reams of commentary. Take, for example, the 'Eclipse' Sketch-Book of 1804, showing how he worked and how he strove to understand phenomena, even if the wonders studied did not apply actually to the work at hand. The 'Eclipse' Sketch-Book is brief. Here are the descriptions of the six 'Eclipse' drawings he made in black and white chalk:—'
Commencement of Eclipse.
More than half of sun eclipsed.
Sun nearly three-quarters eclipsed.
Sun nearly lost among clouds.
Three-quarters of sun in eclipse.
Landscape with clouds, no sun.'
I shall always retain that mental picture of Turner alone, somewhere, studying an eclipse; and also the picture of him, alone, at Stonehenge, studying that solitude, and making of it a water-colour that prefigured the freedom and sensitiveness of his later work. I see it now, the brown, simple foreground, the ancient stones erected to record the appearances of the sun, rising gauntly in the middle distance, and half the drawing tingling with a sunset sky. Was there ever a painter so obsessed by sunsets? But towards the end of his life it was sunrises—always sunrises.
Moonlights, sunsets, sunrises! In them Turner sought light and found hope.
Plate VIII. Stonehenge—Sunset. Water colour (about 1804) In the collection of W. G. Rawlinson, Esq. (Size, 8 3/4 x 6 3/4)