[CHAPTER XXXII]
1826: AGED FIFTY-ONE
ANOTHER UNIMPORTANT YEAR, IN WHICH HE LEAVES TWICKENHAM
Another unimportant year as regards the exhibition of pictures. It would almost seem as if Turner were reserving himself, pondering over his Italian experiences; or it may have been that his time was broken into by the trouble of leaving Twickenham.
He had taken Sandycombe for 'Dad'; he gave it up for the sake of 'Dad,' who was always catching cold while working in the garden. 'Without,' says Monkhouse, 'the pleasant and wholesome neighbourhood of the Trimmers, with no home but the gloomy, dirty, disreputable Queen Anne Street, he became more solitary, more self-absorbed or absorbed in his art (much the same thing with him), and lived only to follow unrestrained wherever his wayward genius led him, and to amass money for which he could find no use.'
About this time, too, he added to his troubles by another quarrel with Cooke the engraver, which prevented a proposed continuation of The Southern Coast series begun in 1814. Cooke's long letter is extant, and Turner's most ardent admirers must admit that he shows badly in the dispute. To set against his treatment of Cooke there is his gruff kindness to Lawrence à propos of his picture of this year called 'Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat, Evening.' This sea-piece, which had a brilliant sky, was hung between two portraits by Lawrence. Being painted in a low key, they suffered from the juxtaposition. 'Sir Thomas was in despair,' whereupon Turner took some water-colour lamp black and went all over his sky: 'Why, Turner, what have you done to your picture?' asked a friend, who had seen it before the coat of lamp-black. 'Oh! it's all right,' said Turner, 'it will all wash off after the close of the exhibition.'
The Inventory shows that Turner was abroad this year wandering mainly by the Meuse, Moselle, and Rhine. On one of the pages containing 'Various Views' Ruskin has the following note: 'It has seven subjects from Andernach on the Rhine, showing stormy sunsets and drifts of cloud all completely designed; the best, that on the left in the second row from the bottom, only measures one inch and a half in length by three-quarters of an inch in height.'
A 'View of Dieppe Harbour' in the 'Meuse-Moselle' Sketch-Book is one of twenty coloured sketches found in a parcel with the following endorsement in Ruskin's handwriting:—