Plate XXXII. Lake of Lucerne, from Fluelen. Water colour (1840 or after) Tate Gallery
In the Salting Collection at the British Museum is a 'Bellinzona' of the period, faint greens, faint purples, with touches of red, the form all lost in colour, brooded over by the ridge of snow mountains, the pencilled line of which has been left. In the possession of Sir Hickman Bacon is a water-colour simply called 'A Swiss Lake,' the still water reflecting the rosy hills, and the delicate blues and yellows of the sky—just iridescent atmosphere floated upon the paper. I look at it, wonder how it was done, and decide that the explanation by Leitch, the water-colour painter, told by Mr. Shaw Sparrow in The Studio, as to 'how Turner did it,' does not help me.
Leitch informed a friend of Mr. Sparrow's that he once accompanied Pickersgill to Turner's studio, and there watched the great man working, or shall I say composing. There were four drawing-boards, each of which had a handle screwed to the back. After the subject had been lightly sketched in, Turner grasped the handle and plunged the whole drawing into a pail of water by his side. 'Then quickly he washed in the principal hues that he required, flowing tint into tint, until this stage of the work was complete. Leaving this first drawing to dry, he took the second board and repeated the operation. By the time the fourth drawing was laid in, the first would be ready for the finishing touches; and Leitch was greatly impressed by the commonsense of the whole proceeding.'
Commonsense and genius, knowledge and daring, cunning and simplicity: result—Turner's later water-colours.
[CHAPTER XLVIII]
1842: AGED SIXTY-SEVEN
'THE SNOWSTORM' AND SOME 'FAULTLESS' WATER-COLOURS
I open my thumbed copy of Modern Painters, turn to a certain page in volume I., and read this: '"The Snowstorm," one of the very grandest statements of sea-motion, mist, and light, that has ever been put on canvas, even by Turner.'