Thornbury tells us that Lord Hill, on looking at the picture, exclaimed: 'What's this? Call this painting? Nothing but dabs.' But upon retiring and catching its magical effects, he added: 'Painting! God bless me. So it is.'
In this year the attacks in the press began, heralded by Blackwood, with a severe criticism of 'Venice from the Porch of Madonna della Salute.' The writer in Blackwood said:—
'Venice, well I have seen Venice. Venice the magnificent, glorious, queenly, even in her decay—with her rich, coloured buildings, speaking of days gone by, reflected in the green water. What is Venice in this picture? A flimsy, whitewashed, meagre assemblage of architecture, starting off ghostlike into unnatural perspective, as if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the only attempt at richness in the picture). The greater part of the picture is white, disagreeable white, without light or transparency, and the boats, with their red worsted masts, are as gewgaw as a child's toy, which he may have cracked to see what it is made of. As to Venice, nothing can be more unlike its character.'
Poor old Turner! But this 'Venice' as not a good picture. John Ruskin, then sixteen years of age, read the article in Blackwood, read it with indignation, and his brain became a tumult of thoughts, and, when the attack was continued, he wrote a letter. Seven years later that letter became a book, the first volume of Modern Painters.
[CHAPTER XLII]
1836: AGED SIXTY-ONE
THE RECEPTION OF 'JULIET AND HER NURSE' PROCLAIMS THAT TURNER IS BEGINNING TO LOSE FAVOUR WITH THE PUBLIC
This year, alas! Turner exhibited 'Juliet and her Nurse,' and 'Mercury and Argus.' How strange it is that the hand that was painting Delight Drawings and Pictures for pleasure should also be producing 'Juliet and her Nurse' and 'Mercury and Argus' for exhibition. Even kindly Time has not brought 'Mercury and Argus' into favour. Shown at the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910, all a modern critic could say was: 'It is charitable to suppose that it was hastily produced for purposes of exhibition, with a carelessness as to technical structure which time has exposed.' The contemporary attacks on 'Juliet and her Nurse,' following the severe criticism in Blackwood of the Venice picture, provoked Ruskin to write the letter, the germ of Modern Painters, mentioned in the foregoing chapter. This defence by the fiery champion of seventeen was acknowledged by Turner' with thanks but without praise,' and he added, 'I never move in these matters.'