Turner's Golden Visions

by C. Lewis Hind

Plate XXVIII. Hastings (about 1835) Tate Gallery

It is impossible to date accurately all the 'Delight Pictures,' a list of which is given in the chapter towards the end of this book describing the sensation caused by the exhibition of the 'unfinished' oils in 1906. The 'Rocky Bay with Figures,' and the 'Sunrise, a Castle on a Bay,' both founded on sepia drawings for the Liber, may have been done as early as 1829 or 1830; the 'Yachting' series certainly belong to 1827; the 'Chain Pier, Brighton,' and the 'Ship Aground' to 1830, and 'The Evening Star' may be as early as 1829, or as late as 1840. Some, the most delicate and evanescent, wonders of light, flushes of colour, may have been painted any time between 1830 and 1840; others, perhaps later, as 'The Burning of the Ships,' and 'Sunrise and a Sea Monster,' which probably belong to the 'Whalers' period. It is impossible to describe them, and as many are reproduced in colour in this volume, the attempt is hardly necessary. The catalogue of the Turner Gallery bravely attempts description and elucidation; but these works were never meant either to be titled or described. I am content merely to look at the crepuscular beauty of the nocturne with the evening star; at the deep green sea lighted near the shore by a gleam of golden sunlight in 'A Rocky Bay with Classic Figures,' unaware until I am told, that Greek galleys are moored in the bay and drawn up on the shore, and that a shadow of a man is haranguing a group of shadowy sailors; at the mist-shrouded castle behind which the sun is rising—Turner the mystic, the initiate in light and colour.

But if these are beautiful, what word can describe the 'Sunrise with a Boat between Headlands,' the 'Hastings,' and the 'Norham Castle, Sunrise,' his final vision of the ruin that he had painted again and again (see Frontispiece). It has now become a mere whisper of light and colour, a half-uttered murmur of the wonder of sunrise. Detail has gone; it is flooded in light; the old familiar foreground has disappeared, leaving only the glory of the sky reflected in the water with the note of red, the blue rampart, and the haze that is all colours. What is to be said about 'Sunrise, with a Boat between Headlands'? I look at it, love it, and easily forget the useful information given in the catalogue to the effect that a water-colour similar in composition, once in the collection of the late Sir James Knowles, is said to be a view on the Lake of Lucerne. Hastings, too, Turner painted again and again, but never did he realise so perfectly the atmospheric vision that he once had of ugly Hastings as in this 'Delight Picture,' with the amber and golden sails rising to the pale blue sky, the amber sail strong against the rosy light on the cliffs. And the misty, yellow sunrise of the 'Bridge and Tower,' with the dreamland viaduct spanning the dreamland river, is it not beautiful? But when he painted that stalwart tree to the right, I think Turner's imagination flagged.

Delight Pictures! Delight Drawings! One of the drawings rises before me as I write, a late one done a few years before his death, that exquisite 'Study on the Rhine,' body colour on grey paper, in the collection of Sir Edward Durning-Lawrence. I have no words to describe this wonder of misty blue and gold, with the moon riding in a sky charged with the mystery of essential colour. We are all, like Ruskin, extravagant at times in speaking and writing of the finest work of Turner. A man, long dead, a contemporary, said: 'There are parts of some of them wonderful, and by God, all other drawings look heavy and vulgar.'

A living man said in my hearing: 'They are the finger of God: there is no other way to describe them.'

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I must now take up the story of Turner's exhibited pictures in 1835, which included 'Line Fishing off Hastings,' now in the Victoria and Albert Museum; 'Venice from the Porch of Madonna della Salute,' now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, signed on a floating plank, the picture which Blackwood attacked; and two versions of the magnificent 'Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons,' one shown at the Royal Academy, the other at the British Institution. Turner had watched the conflagration the year before, as the 'Burning of the Houses of Parliament' Sketch-Book of 1834 tells us. There are also water-colours of this subject in the National Collection, and at Farnley, and a vignette in Sir Edward Tennant's collection. As a nocturne the 'Burning of the Houses of Parliament' is as furious as 'The Evening Star' is peaceful. Dim boats push out into the lurid light reflected in the water; other boats linger in the pools and eddies within the shadow of the bridge; the whole scene is a bustle of colour, from pale primrose on the bridge in shadow, to the hurry of red and yellow in the night sky bright with the illumined smoke. The Royal Academy version was, we are told, almost repainted by Turner on Varnishing Day. 'He finished it on the walls the last two days before the gallery was opened to the public'. The authority is Scarlett Davies, whose letter on the subject I have already quoted: 'I am told it was good fun to see the great man whacking away with about fifty stupid apes standing around him, and I understand that he was cursedly annoyed—the fools kept peeping into his colour-box, examining all his brushes and colours.'