[CHAPTER XVI]
1809: AGED THIRTY-FOUR
HE EXHIBITS THE GLOWING 'RIVER SCENE WITH CATTLE,' AND REFUSES TO SELL 'BLIGH SAND'
Turner was an experimentalist, a seeker. If we did not possess the actual dates when most of his pictures were painted or exhibited, it would be difficult to assign a year to many. Some are a recurrent surprise and joy, standing out from their period, swift interpretations of something seen in nature, evocations of colour or decorative harmony. Consider his 'River Scene with Cattle' exhibited in his studio in 1809. For a long time it hung apart from the other Turners at the Tate Gallery, and it was always with a feeling of exhilaration that I encountered the russet cattle standing by this golden river, golden clouds and golden sand, and the two sailing barges gliding down the wide estuary to the sea. The work is harmonious; nothing in it offends. The children wading and playing on the shore are natural; the cattle seen against the sky 'happen' as beasts do in nature, and the whole picture lies bathed in a rich glow.
Plate XI. River Scene with Cattle (1809) Tate Gallery
Equally pleasant to look upon is 'Bligh Sand,' beautiful still, but what must it have been in its first freshness? It was becoming darker in Thornbury's time, which he ascribes to Turner's use of the dangerous sugar of lead. Although painted in 1809 'Bligh Sand' was not exhibited at the Royal Academy until 1815. Sir George Beaumont wished to buy it from the studio, but Turner, having a grudge against Constable's patron for his lack of early appreciation of his works, refused to sell 'Bligh Sand near Sheerness.' Years later, when the Turner Gallery in Queen Anne Street fell into disorder and untidiness, this beautiful picture was placed in front of a broken window and used as a draught protector. The Turnerian cats were able to squeeze past it as they passed to and from the studio.
'London from Greenwich,' a quiet, meditative Turner, was also painted in 1809, and 'Spithead: Boat's Crew Recovering an Anchor,' also the little panel called 'The Garreteer's Petition.' As nobody ever looks at this stupid little picture, I may remark that it represents a poet working in his attic at midnight, that on the walls of the attic are pasted a plan of Parnassus and a table of fasts, and that the catalogue contained these lines, manifestly Turner's, with the words 'long sought' italicised, pathetically sincere coming from Turner:—
'Aid me, ye powers? O bid my thoughts to roll
In quick succession, animate my soul;
Descend my Muse, and every thought refine,
And finish well my long, my long sought line.'