Plate XXI. Sketch of an Italian Town. Water colour (about 1828) Victoria and Albert Museum
[CHAPTER XXXV]
1829: AGED FIFTY-FOUR
THE YEAR OF 'ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS'
Of all Turner's pictures, 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus' makes the strongest appeal to the popular imagination. Call it scenic, call it theatrical; say that it is like the transformation scene at a pantomime; admit that it is all wrong, artistically; that it is lighted from anywhere and everywhere; concede all its impossibilities and incongruities, and the 'Ulysses' still remains a magnificent effort of the imagination, a glory to behold, from the figure of Phœbus, rising with his horses from the sea, to the vast Polyphemus, who, not being a mortal and bearing no resemblance to nineteenth—century man, is the most convincing figure that Turner ever painted. How often I visited the old Turner room at the National Gallery to study this picture or that, but always finding myself, sooner or later, drawn to this supreme effort of his imagination.
And now that he had emptied himself of all he knew and all he had dreamed, of wonder and splendour, came the reaction, and his humorous contempt of the chatter about this masterpiece, the wonder of the 1829 exhibition. (Yet nobody bought it.)