It is curious to learn that, later in life, Turner, pointing admiringly to a green mezzotinto of a Vandevelde—a large vessel bearing up against the waves—would exclaim, 'That made me a painter!' Yet he stood before the work of one of those 'Van-somethings and Back-somethings,' who, Mr. Ruskin tells us, have 'more especially and malignantly libelled the sea.' 'I feel utterly hopeless in addressing the admirers of these men, because I do not know what it is in their works which is supposed to be like nature.' It seems that Turner was more catholic in his tastes than his panegyrist.
In 1789, following the advice of Mr. Hardwick, Turner became a student of the Royal Academy. In the same year Reynolds ceased to paint, owing to the failure of his sight. That Turner, who had been admitted to the President's studio to copy portraits, was present when the great painter laid aside his brush with the solemn words, 'I know all things on earth must come to an end, and now I am come to mine,' is one of those suppositions in which biographers are prone to indulge, but which few readers will be found to credit. In these days Turner's drawing was in advance of his colour: an order of things which was afterwards reversed.
In 1790 he first exhibited at Somerset House: the picture being 'Lambeth Palace.' From that time, down to 1850 inclusive, hardly a season being missed, Turner's name appears in the catalogues of the Academy. In all, two hundred and fifty-seven pictures by Turner were hung on the walls of the Academy exhibitions, while nearly twenty more were to be seen at the British Institution. He relinquished all idea of becoming a portrait-painter about the time of the death of Reynolds. His own portrait in the National Gallery was painted when he was seventeen. It is executed with skill, although without any charm of colour. It represents a young man of large heavy features, but of a not unattractive appearance altogether.
Upon a story of a love affair in the painter's early life, we are inclined to lay no great stress. There is no evidence that it affected his after-life, or that any excuse can be found in it for the faults of his character. Speaking of his own love of money, he would sometimes say apologetically, 'Dad never praised me for anything but saving a halfpenny.' A disappointment in love is more likely to make a man a profligate than a miser; if it affects him at all seriously, it will more likely produce a reckless waste than a sordid passion for money-making. The painter was prospering. He taught in schools, first charging five shillings a lesson, then raising his terms to ten shillings, next charging a guinea. What system of painting did he teach, this suspicious jealous man, who always worked with locked doors—who would never permit another even to see him draw—who seemed to hold (but it was a then prevalent belief with his profession) that art was producible by some occult process—was a mystery and a secret, like a conjurer's trick? He founded his style very much on that of his friend and contemporary Girtin, the water-colour painter. Both delighted in a golden yellowness of tone which it is probable Girtin had originated. Turner's regard and reverence for him and his works seem to have been very great. He always spoke kindly of him as 'poor Tom!' Of one of his drawings in the British Museum, Turner said, 'I never in my whole life could make a drawing like that; I would at any time have given one of my little fingers to have made such a one.' At another time he said, 'If Tom Girtin had lived, I should have starved!' Girtin died in 1802; in the same year Turner was made a Royal Academician; he had been two years before admitted to the honours of Associateship. The influence of Girtin upon English art has hardly been sufficiently recognised. Mr. Ruskin has had too little to say on behalf of one to whom it is evident that Turner owed very much.
Turner's rapid advance in his profession may be traced in his frequent change of residence. In 1796 he had quitted his father's house in Hand Court, to occupy rooms at No. 26 Maiden Lane. In 1800 he was at No. 64 Harley Street. The following year he had moved to No. 75 Norton Street. In 1804 he was back again in Harley Street. In 1808 he was Professor of Perspective, of Harley Street, and of West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith. He moved to Queen Anne Street in 1812, and that continued to be his address in the Academy catalogues up to the time of his death. But from the year 1814 to 1826 he was also the tenant of a house at Twickenham, which he first called 'Solus,' and afterwards 'Sandycombe' Lodge. He died in December 1851, at a small house near Cremorne Gardens, Chelsea. This he first tenanted probably about the year 1845.
A few continental visits, and tours in England, Scotland, and Wales, all undertaken apparently with professional objects,—incessant squabblings with his engravers, the most wearisome haggling with picture-dealers, genuine hard work, and the production of very perfect specimens of landscape art, and the outlines of Turner's life seem to be fairly sketched. His passion for his profession was intense, yet with it was the keenest love of its emoluments. His industry was beyond all praise, his energy indefatigable; he seemed to live perpetually before his easel, or with his sketch-book in his hands, and yet he had a broker's view as to the worth of everything he did; he appraised his every pencil-stroke, with the full determination of having his price for it. There is hardly a story of his ever giving away a drawing. A lady, in whose house he was residing, playfully asked him to make a sketch of her favourite spaniel. 'My dear madam,' said the painter, astounded and indignant, 'you don't know what you ask!' He once gave three sketches to aid an amateur artist, and most intimate friend and patron, who had brought his painting into an embarrassed condition; the sketches showed him the way out of his difficulty. Undoubtedly this action was very kind; but in the end the miser prevailed over the gentleman. Turner growlingly asked for his sketches back again!
The details of his life are not agreeable, and not of much more interest than the outlines. Mr. Ruskin fixes the following as the main characteristics of Turner—uprightness, generosity, tenderness of heart (extreme), sensuality, obstinacy (extreme), irritability, infidelity.' By the light of all these 'Seven Lamps,' few people will have seen Turner besides Mr. Ruskin. Of the last four characteristics the painter will be generally found guilty; the first three remain as yet, at best, not proven. We are not tempted, just now, to account highly the uprightness of a man who could, and did, defraud the public by the sale of 'sham proofs' of the engravings of his pictures—of the generosity which made provision for his own memorial in stone in St. Paul's, yet left without bread his surviving 'housekeepers' and natural children—of the tenderness of heart which permitted that his father, moved from the shop, should play a servant's part in the gallery in Queen Anne Street, straining canvases, varnishing pictures, and showing in visitors, with a suspicion that he cooked the dinner even if he did not take the shillings at the door. 'Look'ee here,' said the poor old man, who, it is right to state, saw no humiliation in acting lackey to his prosperous son, 'I have found out a way at last of coming up cheap from Twickenham, to open my son's gallery. I found out the inn where the market-gardeners baited their horses; I made friends with one on 'em, and now, for a glass of gin a day, he brings me up in his cart on the top of the vegetables!' As a set-off to all this, we have now and then a spasmodic act of kindness: he rebukes Wilkie for talking about the fine effect of the snow falling while poor Lawrence's coffin was being lowered into the grave in the crypt of St. Paul's: he drives away the boys who injure his blackbirds: he sometimes gives half-a-crown when others would only offer a penny: and there is a story (very vague indeed) of his once lending £20,000 without security. But these are but the halfpennyworth of bread compared to the vast quantity of sack. The matter seems fairly summed up in the story of the man who said, 'Turner is not ungenerous; he once paid the toll over Waterloo Bridge for me!'
Mr. Ruskin charges Turner's faults upon his contemporaries and the public who failed to appreciate his genius. But is this for a moment sustainable? Was he unappreciated? His rise could hardly have been more rapid. He was a Royal Academician when he was twenty-seven. His merits were recognised almost immediately upon his becoming an exhibitor. Anthony Pasquin (Williams), who did not speak well of every one, loudly commends Turner's genius, and judgment, and originality, in 1797.[24] He was quite early a favourite with the public and the critics. His prices were always high. Mr. Ruskin has declared in his Economy of Art, that more than one hundred pounds should never be given for a water-colour drawing, nor more than five hundred for an oil-painting. But the sums Turner received were greatly in excess of these limits. For the 'Rise and Fall of Carthage' he was offered £5000. There is no evidence of his complaining of want of recognition by the public. He was dissatisfied, it is true, at the time of Shee's death, that he had not been made President; but this, as he well knew, was a matter that rested entirely with the Academy. 'What has the Academy done for me?' he would ask petulantly; 'they knighted Calcott, why don't they knight me?' This involved no charge against his critics. He was passed over for the same reason that Paley was neglected; because, as the courtly phrase went, he was not a 'producible man.' In fine, though he began with nothing, a barber's son in Hand Court, Maiden Lane, he died worth £140,000, and was buried in St. Paul's! This hardly looks like want of appreciation.
It has been the fashion to talk as though Mr. Ruskin had discovered Turner. Nothing can be further from the fact. Turner had been an exhibitor for more than fifty years when Mr. Ruskin commenced to write about his pictures. He had reached the Rock Limpet stage of his career. He could then produce little beyond frantic whirls of colour, and there was a not unnatural tendency to smile at these achievements in the galleries, and the Hanging Committee were often puzzled to know whether they had or not hung the pictures upside down. All that Mr. Ruskin could do, and he did it superbly, was to bring people to think less of what Turner then was, and more of what he had been. It is all very well to denounce severely those who smiled at, or the critics who said they could not comprehend, the later Turners. It is presumable that pictures are sent to exhibitions to be applauded or condemned, as the world may judge. Mr. Thackeray may be rated for his confession, in a magazine article of the day, that he did not understand the Rock Limpet, though he added a kindly longing 'for the old day, before Mr. Turner had lighted on the "Fallacies," and could see like other people.'[25] But was Mr. Ruskin in any better plight? Was he any nearer the painter's meaning? Hear his own story:—
'He (Turner) tried hard one day, for a quarter of an hour, to make me guess what he was doing in the picture of "Napoleon" before it had been exhibited, giving me hint after hint in a rough way. But I could not guess, and he wouldn't tell me!' It is hard after this to censure so amiable a jester as the late Mr. a'Beckett, for burlesquing the strange picture called 'Hurrah for the whaler Erebus—another fish!' in the words proposed to be substituted—'Hallo, there—the oil and vinegar—another lobster salad!'[26]