I never look at 'Between Decks' with the fore-shortened gun pointing at the blue sea, with the ungainly figures of sailors and marines accompanied by their wives and sweethearts, making such strong blobs of colour, but I think of a note by Mr. Finberg in one of the Sketch-Books of a few years forward prefacing some Turnerian studies which have been called 'Tone Preparations.'
'A number of these pages have been prepared with smudges of red and black water-colour, the colour being then dabbed and rubbed, with the object apparently of producing suggestions of figures, groups, etc. In some cases these suggestions have been further determined by pencil work.'
Turner was always careless with the figure. The red and gold sailors and their sweethearts are little more than suggestions of colour. The eye sees what it wants to see and he saw this vivid scene on the mess deck in the mass. There is more detail in 'Rembrandt's Daughter,' which was lent from Farnley Hall to the 'Fair Women Exhibition' of 1910. How Turner would have chuckled if he could have known that this work would be chosen to adorn a gallery devoted to types of Fair Women. He cared little about making Rembrandt's daughter fair. The idea in his mind was how he could best adapt and improve Rembrandt's 'Potiphar's Wife' and beat the Dutchman in the undertaking.
And how he would have chuckled if he could have foreseen that his 'Mortlake Summer Morning,' which he painted in 1826, would be sold in 1908 for twelve thousand six hundred guineas. The companion picture' Mortlake Terrace Summer Evening' was exhibited in 1827. It is said that Turner, thinking that a dark object was needed in the foreground, cut out a dog in black paper and pasted it on to try the effect. Another version of the story states that the black dog was affixed to the canvas by a jocular friend in Turner's absence. The dog remains to this day a dominant note. Those who saw the 'Mortlake Terrace Summer Morning' in London before it was sold wondered that Turner did not oftener confine himself to rendering simply and sympathetically what his eyes saw and what his heart felt. Burger, the great French critic, considered that these unaffected, straightforward, atmospheric riverside pictures deserved a place amongst the finest things in art. 'Ce qu'on voit des arbres et des pierres est enveloppé et dévoré par la lumière; tout semble être la lumière même et jeter aussi des rayons et des étincelles. Claude le suprême illuminateur n'a jamais rien fait d'aussi prodigieux.'
These canvases, representing the Thames-side seat of William Moffatt, used to be known as 'Mortlake Summer Morning' and 'Barnes Terrace Summer Evening.' It is a matter of regret that they are not in the Turner Gallery.
Plate XX. Between Decks (1827) Tate Gallery
In this year the issue began, and continued until 1838, of what was to have been his magnum opus, the Picturesque Views in England and Wales. Says Mr. Rawlinson:—
'In this ill-fated work, which was from first to last commercially a failure, he proposed to depict every feature of English and Welsh scenery—cathedral cities, country towns, ancient castles, ruined abbeys, rivers, mountains, moors, lakes, and sea-coast; every hour of day—dawn, midday, sunset, twilight, moonlight; every kind of weather and atmosphere. The hundred or more drawings which he made for the work are mostly elaborately finished and of high character. Some are perhaps over-elaborated; in some the figures are carelessly and at times disagreeably drawn; but for imaginative, poetical treatment, masterly composition, and exquisite colour the best are unsurpassed. I have ventured to say elsewhere that in my opinion there are at least a dozen drawings in the England and Wales series any one of which would alone have been sufficient to have placed its author in the highest rank of landscape art.'