About this time (1793), Turner had the good fortune to attract the notice of Dr. Monro, the leading Physician of Bethlehem Hospital, who had a house in the Adelphi, and another at Bushey. He was a well-known lover and patron of water-colour art, and was in the habit of inviting promising young students, including Turner, Girtin, Varley, and other afterwards well-known artists, to his house, where they were given drawings by Rembrandt, Canaletto, Gainsborough, and other deceased masters, to study and copy; especially also some recent sketches by John Cozens, one of the most poetical of English painters, who had just returned from Italy and Switzerland, where he had accompanied the millionaire Beckford. The influence of Cozens on Turner was marked and immediate, and the latter must have made a very large number of transcripts of the elder painter’s works; in fact, all the very numerous early drawings of Italian and Swiss subjects by Turner in Indian ink and blue, which are so frequently to be met with, are copies from Cozens, as Turner did not visit the Continent until 1802; yet, as I have before remarked, all show a certain transformation in passing through his hands. Dr. Monro gave the lads half-a-crown a night and their supper, and kept their drawings. The training was an admirable one for them, and when the doctor’s collection was dispersed at his death, it did not prove a bad investment so far as he was concerned. Mr. Henderson, another collector and amateur artist, afforded Turner and his companions similar opportunities of studying and copying the works of older painters.
From 1793 to 1796 Turner’s advance in power was steady. His subjects were varied—English and Welsh cathedrals, old castles, ruined abbeys, village churches, country towns, waterfalls and trout streams—the latter generally with a bridge and always with an angler. He was himself a keen fisherman, and his anglers’ attitudes are always carefully drawn and at once recognisable. Occasionally some striking atmospheric effect, seen probably on the spot, is introduced. Sometimes the picture is strikingly enhanced by the play of sunlight, occasionally by boldly treated chiaroscuro. The architecture is invariably drawn with accuracy and taste, both as regards perspective and detail. His colouring was a dainty harmony of broken tints in pale blues, greens, browns, and neutral greys. Many good drawings of this time are in private collections, and the Print Room of the British Museum contains some fine examples which have been preserved from light, and are consequently in perfect, unfaded condition—notably Lincoln and Worcester Cathedrals, and Tintern Abbey. Most of the English cathedrals were drawn by him between 1793 and 1796, including, in addition to the two just named, Canterbury, Ely, Peterborough, Rochester, Salisbury, and York; as well as Bath, Kirkstall, Malmesbury, Malvern, Tintern, Ewenny, Llanthony, Waltham and many other abbeys, together with castles innumerable—all in the delicate, “tinted manner.” He also made a large number of studies of boats and shipping at Dover, one of which is reproduced here ([Plate IV.]). It was probably there and at Margate that he laid the foundation of the extraordinarily accurate knowledge of everything connected with the sea and shipping which distinguished him all his life.
His works of this early period are usually signed. The earliest signature known to me is the one alluded to on page 5, “W. Turner, 1786.” For the next few years he signed either simply “Turner,” or oftener “W. Turner,” occasionally adding the date. In 1799, when he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, he changed to “W. Turner, A.R.A.,” and in 1802, on receiving the honour of full membership, he became “J. M. W. Turner, R.A.” A few years later he was appointed Professor of Perspective to the Royal Academy, and much to the amusement of his fellow academicians he now sometimes added “P.P.” In the works of his later life, it is the exception to find any signature.
In Turner’s drawings of this period, as in those of the early English water-colour school generally, one is struck by a freshness, a simplicity, a new outlook on nature, which contrast with the works of the classical painters who since the death of Rubens and the great Dutch landscapists—Van Goyen, Cuyp, Hobbema, Van der Capelle, De Koninck, and others—had for a century or more dominated European art. Landscape had come to be regarded more as a fitting background to classical story, and although often stately, was always more or less conventional. Now, Nature was beginning to be studied and painted for her own sake. Yet Turner, like Byron, throughout his life recognised that natural scenery alone never makes a completely satisfying picture—always there must be some touch of the human element, some suggestion of human presence, human handiwork. This, however, is entirely a different point of view from that of the classical painters.
From the delicate tints which, up to 1795-6, had characterized the work of Turner, in common with that of his contemporaries of the English water-colour school, he passed, almost suddenly, in 1797, to a larger and stronger style and a bolder range of colour, although the latter was still limited as compared with the fuller tones of his middle and later years. At first, in 1796, the pale blues and greens were simply deepened and strongly accented, as was seen in the superb drawings of Snowdon and Cader Idris which were shown last year (1908) at the Franco-British Exhibition, and to some extent in the Distant View of Exeter, in the Tatham Sale of the same year. Soon, however, these tones were combined and contrasted with deep, rich, golden browns. In 1797, 1798, and 1799, Turner sent to the Royal Academy Exhibitions a series of magnificent drawings of large size, all showing a striking advance in range and power. Eight views of Salisbury Cathedral painted for Sir R. Colt Hoare (two are in the Victoria and Albert Museum), the fine Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey (Sloane Museum), the still finer Warkworth (Victoria and Albert Museum) and the famous Norham Castle (the late Mr. Laundy Walters), with several others, mark a new departure in his art. Turner always said that he owed his success in life to the Norham Castle. Thirty years later, when he was illustrating Scott’s works, and was the guest of Sir Walter at Abbotsford, walking up Tweedside one day in the company of Cadell the publisher, as they passed Norham Turner took off his hat. On Cadell asking the reason, he replied, “That picture made me.” Probably he considered that it was to its influence that he owed his election as an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1799, the year of its exhibition.
Some recent writers have contended that this great expansion of Turner’s art was due to the influence of his friend and companion Thomas Girtin, but they have adduced no evidence to support that theory. Girtin, it is needless to say, was a very great painter, and his early death in 1802 was a severe loss to English art. And no doubt he and Turner, in their constant intimacy, must have continually and considerably affected each other—indeed up to 1795 it is often exceedingly difficult to distinguish between the two men’s work. But, so far as I have been able to study Girtin’s early drawings, I cannot discover in those executed before 1797—the year which witnessed Turner’s new departure—any of the breadth and boldness which marked both men from 1797 onwards. Certainly no work of Girtin’s of 1796—the year previous—approaches in force Turner’s Snowdon and Cader Idris, which already in design if not in colour herald his all-round expansion of 1797.
Nor does the current opinion of that day appear to support the view just alluded to—quite the contrary. The “St. James’s Chronicle” of 1797, after praising Turner’s Transept of Ewenny Priory and Choir of Salisbury Cathedral in the Royal Academy Exhibition of that year, goes on to remark that, “Mr. Girtin’s drawings in general appear to be formed in the style of Turner.” Again, “The Sun” of 1799 devotes a long paragraph to the eulogy of Turner’s Carnarvon Castle, concluding with the remark, “This is a drawing that Claude might be proud to own”; it then praises Girtin’s Bethgellert, but prefaces its notice with the observation “We do not remember to have seen the name of the artist before the present year. The drawing is something after the style of the preceding artist” [Turner]. Redgrave also effectually disposes of the question in “A Century of Painters,” 1866, Vol. II., page 402.
Moreover, Turner’s great drawings of 1797, 1798 and 1799 have characteristics which are not at all those of Girtin. Already there is visible something of that wonderful delicacy, that sense of mystery, of ‘infinity,’ that indefinable charm which we call ‘poetry,’ which distinguishes his work—and especially his work in water-colour—from that of every other landscape painter—work all the more remarkable in that it proceeded from a man born in a back lane off the Strand, without any education worthy of the name, and throughout his life unable to speak or write grammatically—yet withal a man of strong intellect, keenly ambitious, a reader, and a voluminous writer of poetry.
One drawing only of this period is reproduced here—Distant View of Lichfield Cathedral ([Plate V.]). It suffers from the unavoidable reduction in size, but it is characteristic of Turner’s altered style. Unfortunately it has at some time been varnished, probably by the painter himself, as have two others equally important, of the same period—The Refectory of Fountains Abbey and a replica of the Cader Idris—both of which are now in America. Gainsborough treated several of his drawings similarly, as did Girtin, Varley, Barrett and others of the early English school, their object being avowedly to rival in water-colour the depth and richness of oil painting. But not unfrequently, as here in the Lichfield, the varnish in time disintegrates the colouring matter and produces a curious granulated look, not unlike aquatint. Indeed, the fine Fountains Abbey just alluded to was sold not many years ago at a well-known London auction room, as a coloured aquatint, and fetched only £5.
After Turner’s election in 1799 as an Associate of the Royal Academy, he exhibited fewer water-colours and more oil pictures, although he was continually producing drawings, mostly of large size and on commission. For the next few years his style did not greatly alter, although a steady growth in power and range is visible. Several large views of Edinburgh and its neighbourhood, a series of Fonthill commissioned by Beckford, another of Chepstow executed for the Earl of Harewood, together with the Welsh castles of Conway, Carnarvon, St. Donat’s and Pembroke, are among the most important. The Stonehenge reproduced here ([Plate VII.]) is probably the work of about 1803-1804.