The 'Launceston' belonging to Mr. Schwann is certainly an imposing vision of height and grandeur; all the more imposing by reason of the tiny figure on horseback in the foreground. I who know Launceston well have never seen the castle rising sky-high as Turner saw it so magnificently in his mind's eye. Neither shall I ever see 'Barnard Castle' as seen by Turner, looking up the Tees towards the castle, in the sketch he made for the England and Wales water-colour, a poet's vision of opalescent colour floating in atmosphere.
[CHAPTER XXXIV]
1828: AGED FIFTY-THREE
THE YEAR WHEN CONSTABLE DESCRIBED TURNER'S VISIONS AS 'GOLDEN, GLORIOUS, AND BEAUTIFUL'
In 1828 Turner was again in Rome. 'The foreign artists,' says Thornbury, 'who went to see his pictures could make nothing of them. Turner's economy and ingenuity were apparent in his mode of framing those pictures. He nailed a rope round the edges of each and painted it with yellow ochre in tempera.'
The Inventory shows his travels of this year and the next—'Orléans to Marseilles'; 'Lyons to Marseilles'; 'Marseilles to Genoa'; 'Coast of Genoa'; 'Genoa and Florence '; and then the 'Roman and French' Sketch-Book. On page 26 of the 'Florence to Orvieto' Sketch-Book he wrote this as if the event had significance: 'Thursday Orvieto.'
One day he made Turnerian poetry:—
'Farewell a second time the Land of all bliss
That cradled liberty could wish and hope
Ere the fell Saxon and Norman band
Flouted her ... on the shore
Why go then? No gentle traveller
Cross thy path save the ...
The yellow, winding Tiber,' etc.