[CHAPTER XIV]
1807: AGED THIRTY-TWO
HE BEGINS THE 'LIBER STUDIORUM' AND EXHIBITS 'THE SUN RISING THROUGH VAPOUR'
On January 20, 1807, the first part, containing five plates, of the Liber Studiorum was published. It would need a book to give an adequate account of the history of this great work of Turner's, begun in emulation of Claude Lorrain's Liber Veritatis and continued until 1819, when, being a financial failure, it ceased to appear. The original scheme of the Liber was for one hundred plates, of which seventy only and the frontispiece were published, leaving thirty to make up the number, twenty of which were in various stages of etching and mezzotinting when the work ceased in 1819. These have passed through many vicissitudes. Mr. Frank Short has in recent years brought his accomplished art to the engraving of sixteen of them.
Turner made the first drawings for the Liber when on a visit to Mr. Wells at Knoekholt in Kent, who persuaded him to undertake the work. He required 'much and long-continued spurring.' At last, after he had been well goaded, one morning, half in a pet he said: 'Zounds, Gaffer, there will be no peace with you till I begin—well, give me a sheet of paper there, rule the size for me, tell me what I shall take.' Then he began, and the first five subjects 'were completed and arranged for publication.'
Mr. W. G. Rawlinson's volume is the authority on the Liber, wherein Turner sought to 'display in engraved form the whole range of his powers, and to rival on their own ground his predecessors —Claude, Poussin, Rembrandt, Backhuysen, Cuyp, Van de Velde, Wilson, Gainsborough, as well as the painters of his day.' Turner made a hundred or more sepia drawings for the work, eighty-four of which are in the Turner Collection at Millbank. He etched with his own hand the foundation outline on the copper plate, which was then handed over to the professional engravers in mezzotint, who worked under his supervision, and a hard taskmaster he proved.
To one who is enamoured of the lovely and luminous colour of Turner in his supreme period, it is a fresh revelation of his power to see a room hung with first states—rich, velvety, profound—of the Liber, and to find how great is his spell even in monochrome. I know two such rooms, and never does the spell fail to work. The original sepia drawings have not this power in equal degree with the engravings, which simply shows how well Turner knew his business. On this subject Ruskin wrote the following letter to a correspondent, which was published in the Literary Gazette for November 13, 1858:—