With this noble work we should compare one of which we can better judge by the engraving—the Loch Coriskin, in the illustrations to Scott, because it introduces us to another and a most [§ 15. And of commencing, chosen with peculiar meaning for Loch Coriskin.]remarkable instance of the artist's vast and varied knowledge. When rain falls on a mountain composed chiefly of barren rocks, their surfaces, being violently heated by the sun, whose most intense warmth always precedes rain, occasion sudden and violent evaporation, actually converting the first shower into steam. Consequently, upon all such hills, on the commencement of rain, white volumes of vapor are instantaneously and universally formed, which rise, are absorbed by the atmosphere, and again descend in rain, to rise in fresh volumes until the surfaces of the hills are cooled. Where there is grass or vegetation, this effect is diminished; where there is foliage it scarcely takes place at all. Now this effect has evidently been especially chosen by Turner for Loch Coriskin, not only because it enabled him to relieve its jagged forms with veiling vapor, but to tell the tale which no pencilling could, the story of its utter absolute barrenness of unlichened, dead, desolated rock:—
"The wildest glen, but this, can show
Some touch of nature's genial glow,
On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencoe.
And copse on Cruchan Ben;
But here, above, around, below,
On mountain, or in glen,
Nor tree, nor plant, nor shrub, nor flower,
Nor aught of vegetative power,
The wearied eye may ken;
But all its rocks at random thrown,
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone."
Lord of the Isles, Canto III
Here, again, we see the absolute necessity of scientific and entire acquaintance with nature, before this great artist can be understood. That which, to the ignorant, is little more than an unnatural and meaningless confusion of steam-like vapor, is to the experienced such a full and perfect expression of the character of the spot, as no means of art could have otherwise given.
In the Long Ships Lighthouse, Land's End, we have clouds without rain—at twilight—enveloping the cliffs of the coast, but concealing nothing, every outline being visible through their [§ 16. The drawing of transparent vapor in the Land's End.]gloom; and not only the outline—for it is easy to do this—but the surface. The bank of rocky coast approaches the spectator inch by inch, felt clearer and clearer as it withdraws from the garment of cloud—not by edges more and more defined, but by a surface more and more unveiled. We have thus the painting, not of a mere transparent veil, but of a solid body of cloud, every inch of whose increasing distance is marked and felt. But the great wonder of the picture is the intensity of gloom which is attained in pure warm gray, without either blackness or blueness. It is a gloom, dependent rather on the enormous space and depth indicated, than on actual pitch of color, distant by real drawing, without a grain of blue, dark by real substance, without a stroke of blackness; and with all this, it is not formless, but full of indications of character, wild, irregular, shattered, and indefinite—full of the energy of storm, fiery in haste, and yet flinging back out of its motion the fitful swirls of bounding drift, of tortured vapor tossed up like men's hands, as in defiance of the tempest, the jets of resulting whirlwind, hurled back from the rocks into the face of the coming darkness; which, beyond all other characters, mark the raised passion of the elements. It is this untraceable, [§ 17. The individual character of its parts.]unconnected, yet perpetual form—this fulness of character absorbed in the universal energy—which distinguish nature and Turner from all their imitators. To roll a volume of smoke before the wind, to indicate motion or violence by monotonous similarity of line and direction, is for the multitude; but to mark the independent passion, the tumultuous separate existence of every wreath of writhing vapor, yet swept away and overpowered by one omnipotence of storm, and thus to bid us
"Be as a Presence or a motion—one
Among the many there—--while the mists
Flying, and rainy vapors, call out shapes
And phantoms from the crags and solid earth,
As fast as a musician scatters sounds
Out of an instrument,"—
this belongs only to nature and to him.
The drawing of Coventry may be particularized as a farther example of this fine suggestion of irregularity and fitfulness, [§ 18. Deep studied form of swift rain-cloud in the Coventry.]through very constant parallelism of direction, both in rain and clouds. The great mass of cloud, which traverses the whole picture, is characterized throughout by severe right lines, nearly parallel with each other, into which every one of its wreaths has a tendency to range itself; but no one of these right lines is actually and entirely parallel to any other, though all have a certain tendency, more or less defined in each, which impresses the mind with the most distinct idea of parallelism. Neither are any of the lines actually straight and unbroken; on the contrary, they are all made up of the most exquisite and varied curves, and it is the imagined line which joins the apices of these—a tangent to them all, which is in reality straight.[[40]] They are suggested, not represented, right lines; but the whole volume of cloud is visibly and totally bounded by them; and, in consequence, its whole body is felt to be dragged out and elongated by the force of the tempest which it carries with it, and every one of its wreaths to be (as was before explained) not so much something borne before or by the wind, as the visible form and presence of the wind itself. We could not possibly point out a more magnificent piece [§ 19. Compared with forms given by Salvator.] drawing as a contrast to such works of Salvator as that before alluded to (159 Dulwich Gallery). Both are rolling masses of connected cloud; but in Turner's, there is not one curve that repeats another, nor one curve in itself monotonous, nor without character, and yet every part and portion of the cloud is rigidly subjected to the same forward, fierce, inevitable influence of storm. In Salvator's, every curve repeats its neighbor, every curve is monotonous in itself, and yet the whole cloud is curling about hither and thither, evidently without the slightest notion where it is going to, and unregulated by any general influence whatsoever. I could not bring together two finer or more instructive examples, the one of everything that is perfect, the other of everything that is childish or abominable, in the representation of the same facts.
But there is yet more to be noticed in this noble sky of Turner's. Not only are the lines of the rolling cloud thus irregular in their parallelism, but those of the falling rain are equally [§ 20. Entire expression of tempest by minute touches and circumstances in the Coventry.]varied in their direction, indicating the gusty changefulness of the wind, and yet kept so straight and stern in their individual descent, that we are not suffered to forget its strength. This impression is still farther enhanced by the drawing of the smoke, which blows every way at once, yet turning perpetually in each of its swirls back in the direction of the wind, but so suddenly and violently, as almost to assume the angular lines of lightning. Farther, to complete the impression, be it observed that all the cattle, both upon the near and distant hill-side, have left off grazing, and are standing stock still and stiff, with their heads down and their backs to the wind; and finally, that we may be told not only what the storm is, but what it has been, the gutter at the side of the road is gushing in a complete torrent, and particular attention is directed to it by the full burst of light in the sky being brought just above it, so that all its waves are bright with the reflection.