Some one has said that Turner must on the whole have been an agreeable person to have in a house—if the house were big enough. His visits to Lord Egremont at Petworth were on much the same footing of intimacy as his visits to Walter Fawkes at Farnley. Turner had his own private studio at Petworth, and nobody but Lord Egremont was allowed admission. Even he, who has been described as 'the rough, cunning, honest old noble-man,' had to give a peculiar knock on the door before entering. It is said that Chantrey, when staying at Petworth, imitated Lord Egremont's peculiar knock, and to Turner's anger entered the room and saw him at work. This pair of eccentrics, Turner and Egremont, foregathered happily, and the friendship was severed only in 1837 by Lord Egremont's death.
The Inventory shows that Turner was at Petworth in 1830. One of the books contains a sketch for that quaint, attractive 'View in Petworth Park with Tillington Church in the Distance,' of which an unfinished version is in the National Collection. The finished oil is in the possession of Lord Leconfield. Most of the Petworth sketches are in brilliant tints of opaque colour on grey-blue paper: they resulted one merry day in that startling, delightful oil picture in the National Collection called 'Interior at Petworth.' Here is Turner working entirely for his own pleasure, absolutely indifferent to the forms of things, seeing the havoc through a mist of sunlight with brilliant rays shining down into the octagonal sculpture gallery beyond, and reflected through the Venetian blinds of a window in an alcove to the right. How the room came to be in this state we do not know. The pugs and spaniels are evidently enjoying the upturned table and the disarranged furniture: they caper delightedly over a lady's orange cloak and feathered bonnet.
I must find room for an extract from a curious and interesting article upon 'Turner's Path from Nature to Art,' by Professor Josef Strzygowski, that appeared in the Burlington Magazine. The learned professor devotes his pen to 'The Frosty Morning' and the 'Interior at Petworth,' which he considers represent the two poles: Nature and Art. After remarking that in the days when the 'Interior at Petworth' was painted no sketch was regarded as a picture, and so Turner never exhibited the Petworth 'Interior' which 'looks almost like an actual palette, and a palette, moreover, on which the colours have been thoroughly daubed together, dashes of colour from the paint-brush and the palette-knife left as they are, without the least intention of hiding the technique'—Professor Strzygowski proceeds:—
'We do not know what is represented; it seems as if the picture might just as well hang upside down. And when we have realised that we are looking upon an interior, where are the separate shapes expressed? We recognise a large sofa on the right, statues on the left, in front a little dog. But these three shapes, and all the others, are so confused, that no one can define their appearance. But what, then, does the picture really mean? asks the layman. That is the real discovery of modern times. Sketches in which an artist gives nothing more than his momentary impression, i.e., lets himself go subjectively, leaving the object, both as regards its meaning and its appearance, quite in the background, are now admitted to be finished works of art. The "Interior at Petworth" is not in Mr. Bell's catalogue. Turner, as we now know, reserved this work, with so many others, as a private confession of faith. ... For him the shape no longer exists; he sees only light and colour, and even those transform themselves in a peculiar way. He does not see a fragment of nature through the medium of his temperament; but gives us rather, on the contrary, his own temperament seen through a fragment of nature. Nature is wholly subordinated to his impetuous need for self-expression.... The representation, the "Interior" in itself, has no value for him, except in so far as its space can be exhibited as the recipient of tone and colour: the pictorial symbol, as the medium of his need for expression, is everything to him; the object, the thing and its shape, are nothing. Thus the cautious painter of "The Frosty Morning" becomes an artist; thus the thing he paints is transformed into spiritual significance, its shape becomes pictorial symbol; and the technique, which before was carefully veiled, changes to the boldest impressionism. ... Art like this is for epicures.'
Plate XXIV. Interior at Petworth (1830) Tate Gallery
Saner and very beautiful is the water-colour, 'On the Lake at Petworth, Evening,' in the National Collection, although I am bound to say that this golden and blue impression is equally beautiful if you look at it upside down.
In the 'Brighton and Arundel' Sketch-Books (1830), we find the following in Turner's handwriting on 'A View Looking Out to Sea with a Sailing Boat':—
'Beautiful effect of——,' 'Green Top' (i.e. to waves), 'foam grey in shade'—'reflections of the Boat ... in water,' 'Reflection of the Boy [?] on the Sail,' 'The warmth of the Tan Sail,' etc.