Famous European Artists

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

In 1843, he took his last journey to the Continent, making many sketches about Lake Lucerne, which was very dear to him. From 1847 to 1849, he paid several visits to the photographic artist Mayall, calling himself a master in chancery, as he did not wish to be recognized. He was deeply interested in the progress of photography. When Mayall was in pecuniary trouble in consequence of a lawsuit about patent rights, Turner, unasked, brought him fifteen hundred dollars, telling him to repay it sometime if he could. He gladly accepted the loan and paid it. After nearly two years, Turner found that his personality had become known, and could never be induced to visit the place again.

In 1850, he sent his last pictures to the Academy: "Æneas relating his Story to Dido," "Mercury sent to admonish Æneas," "The Departure of the Trojan Fleet," and "The Visit to the Tomb."

He was now seventy-five years old. In 1851, he exhibited no pictures, and ceased to attend the Academy meetings, which had always given him so much pleasure. David Roberts, the artist, wrote him, and begged to be allowed to see him. Two weeks later, Turner called at the studio. "I tried to cheer him up," says Roberts, "but he laid his hand upon his heart and replied, 'No, no; there is something here which is all wrong.' As he stood by the table in my painting-room, I could not help looking attentively at him, peering in his face, for the small eye (blue) was brilliant as that of a child, and unlike the glazed and 'lack-lustre eye' of age. This was my last look."

For several months, the aged artist was absent from his home in Queen-Anne Street. Finally, Hannah Danby, who had been his housekeeper for fifty years, and was said to have been his mistress, found a letter in the pocket of an old coat, which led her to believe he was in Chelsea. She and a relative sought him, and found him, December 18, 1851, very ill, in a small plain cottage on the banks of the Thames, owned by Sophia Caroline Booth. He was called "Admiral Booth" by her neighbors, who thought him an admiral in reduced circumstances. He died the day after his friends found him. An hour before his death, he was wheeled to the window to look out upon the Thames, and bathe in the sunshine which he so dearly loved.

"So died," says Monkhouse, "the great solitary genius, Turner, the first of all men to endeavor to paint the full power of the sun, the greatest imagination that ever sought expression in landscape, the greatest pictorial interpreter of the elemental forces of nature that ever lived.... Sunlight was his discovery; he had found its presence in shadow; he had studied its complicated reflections before he commenced to work in color. From monochrome he had adopted the low scale of the old masters, but into it he carried his light; the brown clouds, and shadows and mists, had the sun behind them, as it were, in veiled splendor. Then it came out and flooded his drawings and his canvases with a glory unseen before in art. But he must go on, refine upon this; having eclipsed all others, he must now eclipse himself. His gold must turn to yellow, and yellow almost into white, before his genius could be satisfied with its efforts to express pure sunlight."

Turner was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, between the tombs of Sir Joshua Reynolds and James Barry, the service being read by Dean Milman. By his will, he left all his pictures and drawings to the nation, to be preserved in a "Turner Gallery," specifying that "The Sun Rising in Mist" and "Dido building Carthage" should be hung between the two pictures painted by Claude, the "Seaport" and "Mill." During his life he is said to have refused two offers of five hundred thousand dollars for the pictures in his Queen-Anne Street house. He left one hundred thousand dollars to the Royal Academy, five thousand dollars for a monument to himself in St. Paul's, a few small bequests for relatives, money for a medal to be given for the best landscape exhibited at the Academy every two or three years, and the remainder of a large fortune for the maintenance of "poor and decayed male artists being born in England and of English parents only, and lawful issue;" the latter gift to be known as "Turner's Gift."

The will was contested by relatives, and, after four years of litigation, the testator's intention to provide for aged artists was disregarded, and the property given to the "nearest of kin." Such instances are teaching our great men to carry out their benevolent wishes in their lifetime. Though Turner had great faults,—it is stated that he drank to excess in later years,—he had great virtues. Though parsimonious with himself, he was generous to others. Ruskin tells these incidents:

"There was a painter of the name of Bird, and when Bird first sent a picture to the Academy for exhibition, Turner was on the hanging committee. Bird's picture had great merit; but no place for it could be found. Turner pleaded hard for it. No, the thing was impossible. Turner sat down and looked at Bird's picture a long time; then insisted that a place must be found for it. He was still met by the assertion of impracticability. He said no more, but took down one of his own pictures, sent it to the Academy, and hung Bird's in its place.... At the death of a poor drawing-master, Mr. Wells, whom Turner had long known, he was deeply affected, and lent money to the widow until a large sum had accumulated. She was both honest and grateful, and, after a long period, was happy enough to be able to return to her benefactor the whole sum she had received from him. She waited on him with it; but Turner kept his hands in his pocket. 'Keep it,' he said, 'and send your children to school and to church.' He said this in bitterness; he had himself been sent to neither."