Turner is often claimed by the militant school of landscapists of to-day as one of the first and greatest ‘impressionists.’ In a certain sense no doubt this is true, but his ‘impressionism,’ it seems to me, was wholly different in nature from theirs.
During his life, as we have seen, he made thousands of sketches, some slight, some elaborate, of places, scenery, and natural effects—shorthand memoranda,’ so to speak—many of which may certainly be called ‘impressionist.’ But all these were founded on, or were intended to add to, his accurate, minute and exhaustive study of natural forms, and a draughtsmanship which has probably never been equalled by any other landscape painter.
Then, as is notorious, he frequently altered certain features of landscapes or buildings to suit the requirements of his pictures—their symmetry, their accent, their colour-scheme—or in order to convey some suggestion as to their meaning. In a letter still preserved, he declares himself opposed to literalism in landscape—“mere map-making” he terms it. And when for any reason he thus altered the actual features of a scene, he still almost always contrived to preserve the impression of it as a whole—usually under its best aspect, at its choicest moment. In this sense also he was an ‘impressionist.’
Again, when towards the close of his life he began to attempt the representation (mainly in oil colour) of pure sunlight—as in his latest Venice pictures; or of form in swiftest movement—as in Rain, Speed and Steam; or of the mighty contending forces of Nature—as in his Snow Storm off Harwich, he painted such subjects in the only method by which they could be intelligibly rendered. In the same way Whistler, in his Nocturnes, demonstrated for the first time in Western art, the beauty of prosaic and even ugly objects, seen in dim light. Both perforce adopted the ‘impressionist’ method, because it was the only effective, indeed the only possible one.
But to me it appears that there is all the difference in the world between these phases of ‘impressionist’ art and the principles of the modern landscape school, whose works a brilliant set of writers in the press of to-day are continually calling upon us to admire. The advanced ‘impressionists’ both in France and in England seem to go out of their way to represent the ordinary aspects of nature with a manifest determination to avoid any but the vaguest rendering of form, no matter how clearly defined in such circumstances those forms may seem to ordinary Philistine vision. They also ordinarily abjure as ‘literary’ any kind of appeal to the intellectual faculties, and apparently confine their aim to the production of a more or less startling, but generally cleverly managed patterning of light, shade, and colour, obtained usually by means of masses of coarse, solid, and often ragged pigment, carefully arranged so that the effect intended may be found, like a fire-plug, at a certain exact, calculated spot. Surely Turner’s ‘impressionism’ was far removed from this? Surely it is hard that he should be charged with being the precursor of the landscape school to which I have alluded, whatever may be its merits?
Possibly it is too soon as yet to predict what will be Turner’s ultimate place in art. Like every really great artist (I use the word in its widest sense) he will be judged, not by his defects or his mistakes—even if they be many and palpable—but by the heights to which he attained, and the mark which he has left for others to follow. For myself, I believe that if his water-colours are allowed to remain unfaded for future generations, they, along with his best oil pictures, will be counted worthy to entitle him to a place amongst the greatest painters of all centuries and all schools.
W. G. RAWLINSON.
[In common with the Editor of The Studio, I desire to acknowledge my deep obligations to the various owners of valuable drawings by Turner, who have kindly allowed them to be reproduced here. There were, however, others which I should like to have seen represented, but as these were not available, the Editor desired to replace them with examples from my own collection. This must explain what will otherwise seem the undue proportion of the latter.—W. G. R.]