Fine prints

by Sir Frederick Wedmore

Charles Turner, the admirable mezzotint engraver—who, it should hardly be necessary to say, was no relation of the greater man—had charge of “Liber” in its early stages. The prints of the first parts bore an inscription to the effect that they were “Published by C. Turner, 50 Warren Street, Fitzroy Square.” But in 1811—when three years had elapsed since the publication of the fourth part—the fifth came out as “Published by Mr Turner, Queen Anne Street, West”—and “Mr Turner” meant, of course, the author of the work. Charles Turner, who had engraved in mezzotint every plate contained in the four parts with whose publication he was concerned, engraved, likewise, several of the succeeding pieces. Thus his share in the production of “Liber” was greater than that of any of his brethren. William Say’s came next to his in importance—importance measured by amount of labour—and Mr Rawlinson has pointed out that William Say approached his work with little previous preparation by the rendering of Landscape. The remark is, in some degree, applicable to most of Say’s associates. The engraver in mezzotint, at that time, as in earlier times, flourished chiefly by reproducing Portraiture. Raphael Smith and William Ward—great artists who were still living when the “Liber” was executed, but who had no part in the performance—had been employed triumphantly, a very little earlier, in popularising that delightful art of Morland, in which landscape had so large a place. Dunkarton, Thomas Lupton, Clint, Easling, Annis, Dawe, S. W. Reynolds, and Hodges complete the list of the engravers in mezzotint who worked upon the “Liber.” Admirable artists many of them were, but the collector, if he is a student, cannot forget how much the master, the originator, dominated over all.

Mr Ruskin and several subsequent writers have written, with varying degrees of eloquence, of originality, and, I may add, of common sense, as to the moral, emotional, or intellectual message the “Liber” may be taken to convey. This is scarcely the place in which to seek to decipher with exhaustive thoroughness a communication that is on the whole complicated and on the whole mysterious. The reader may be referred to the last pages of the final volume of “Modern Painters” for what is at all events the most impressive statement that a prose-poet can deliver as to the gloomy significance of Turner’s work. Mr Stopford Brooke—rich in sensibility and in imaginative perceptiveness—follows a good deal in Mr Ruskin’s track. I doubt if Mr Hamerton or Mr Cosmo Monkhouse—instructive critics of a cooler school—endorse the verdict of unmitigated gloom, and I have myself (in a chapter in a now well-nigh forgotten essay of my youth) ventured to hold forth upon the intervals of peace and rest which “Liber Studiorum” shows in its scenes of solitude and withdrawal: the morning light, clear and serene, in the meadows below Oakhampton Castle; the graver silence of sunset as one looks wistfully from heights above the Wye, to where, under the endless skies, the stream deploys to the river. I am referring, of course, to the Oakhampton Castle subject, and to the Severn and Wye; but the argument might have been sustained by allusion to many another print.

More important to our present purpose than to settle accurately its moral mission or to agree upon the sentiment of this or that particular plate, is it to value properly the sterling and artistic virtues which “Liber” makes manifest. Of these, however, there is one thing only that I care to emphasise here. Let all beauties of detail be discovered; but let us even here, and in lines that are of necessity brief, lay stress upon the all-important part played in the plates of “Liber” by one old-fashioned virtue, that will yet be fresh again when some of those that may seem to supplant it have indeed waxed old. It is the virtue of Composition. “Liber Studiorum” shows, in passage after passage of its draughtsmanship, close reference to Nature, deep knowledge of her secrets; but it shows I think yet more the unavoidable conviction, alike of true worker and true connoisseur, that Nature is, for the artist, not a Deity but a material: not a tyrant but a servant. In the near and faithful study of Nature—and nowhere more completely than in the prints of “Liber”—Turner did much that had been left undone by predecessors. But he was not opposed to them—he was allied to them—in his recognition of the fact that his art must do much more than merely reproduce. “Nature,” said Goethe, “Nature has excellent intentions.” And by Composition, by choice, by economy of means, sometimes by very luxury of hidden labour, it is the business of the artist to convey these intentions to the beholders of his work. How much does he receive? How much of himself, of his creative mind, must we exact that he shall bestow?

Let us come down, immediately, to money matters, and other practical things for the collector’s benefit.

It is still possible, here and there, in an auction room, to buy an original set of “Liber Studiorum”—a set, that is, as Turner issued it—but it is never desirable. For Turner, who was not only a great poet with brush and pencil, and scraper and etching needle, but an exceedingly keen hard bargainer and man of business, took horrible care (or just care, if we choose to call it so) that the original subscribers to his greatest serial should never get sets consisting altogether of the fine impressions. He mixed the good with the second-rate: the second-rate with the bad. It was not till collectors took to studying the pieces for themselves, and making up collections by purchase of odd pieces here and there—rejecting much, accepting something—that any sets were uniformly good. The first fine set, perhaps, was that, in various States, which was amassed by Mr Stokes, and passed on to his niece, Miss Mary Constance Clarke. To have the marks of these ownerships at the back of a print, is—in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred—to have evidence of excellence. Twenty years ago, one could buy such a print, now and then, at Halsted’s, the ancient dealer’s, in Rathbone Place; and have an instructive chat to boot, with an old-world personage who had had speech with “Mr Turner.” Even now, in an auction room, one may get such a print sometimes. Another of the very early collectors was Sir John Hippesley, who bought originally on Halsted’s recommendation, and who—having been for years devoted to works of other masters—ended by breakfasting, so to speak, on “Liber Studiorum”: on the chair opposite to him, as he sat at his meal, a fine print was wont to be placed. Amongst living connoisseurs, Mr Henry Vaughan and Mr J. E. Taylor, Mr Stopford Brooke and Mr W. G. Rawlinson, have notable collections of very varying size and importance. Mr Rawlinson believes much more than I do—if I understand him aright—in the desirability of possessing engravers’ trial proofs—in a certain late stage. Most engravers’ proofs are, of course, mere preparations, curious and interesting, but in themselves far less desirable than the finished plates to whose effects of deliberate and attained beauty they can but vaguely approximate. Of course if you are so exceedingly lucky a man as to have been able to pounce upon the particular proof which was the last of the series, you possess a fine and incontestable thing; but generally an early impression of the First published State represents the subject more safely and assuredly; and, failing that, an early impression of the Second State; and so on. An indication of priority is no doubt well—but it is well chiefly for the feebler brethren. You must train your eye. Having trained it, you must learn to rely on it. Books and the knowledge of States are useful, but are not sufficient.

In the few years that elapsed between the establishment of “Liber” as avowedly fit material for the diligence and outlay of the collector, and the great sale of the “remainders” in Turner’s own collection—which only left Queen Anne Street in 1873, some two-and-twenty years after his death—prices for fine impressions of the “Liber” plates, bought separately, were high. Then, in 1873, during that long sale at Christie’s, a flood of prints, and many of them very fine ones, came upon the market. “Would they ever be absorbed?” it was asked. They were absorbed very quickly. But just until they were absorbed, it was, naturally, possible, not only to choose (at the dealer’s, chiefly, who bought big lots; at the Colnaghi’s and Mrs Noseda’s, particularly)—it was possible to choose sagaciously, out of so great a number, and to choose cheaply too. Then “markets hardened.” The various writings calling attention to the wisdom of collecting had probably their effect. Then things slackened again. And now, though rare proofs and very fine impressions—which are what should be most cared about—hold their own, there is a certain lull in the activity of buying. The undesirable impression goes for very little. Yet the fluctuations, such as they are, either way, are of no vast importance. Of any but the very rarest, or very finest subjects, six to twelve guineas gets a good First State. Three to six guineas may be the price of a good Second. A Third or Fourth or Fifth State fetches less, unless—as in an exceptional instance, like the Calm—it is preferable. Of all the different subjects, the rarest is Ben Arthur. In a fine impression—with the cloudland and the shadows not impenetrably massive—it is exceedingly impressive. But never as a thing of power should I rate it above Solway Moss or Hind Head Hill; or, as a thing of beauty, above Severn and Wye.

No great collection of the “Liber Studiorum” has been sold of late years, but if we go back to the year 1887, we can give a few prices culled from the catalogue of the Buccleuch Sale. An engraver’s proof of the Woman with a Tambourine fetched £15, 15s. there; an engraver’s proof of Basle, £27; a proof of the Mount St Gothard, which at least must have had the virtue of approaching finish, fell to Colnaghi’s bid of £55; the First State of the Holy Island Cathedral, which sold for £3, 3s., must either have been poor or monstrously cheap, though the plate is one in which, even to the collector with the most trained eye, the possession of the First State is not strictly necessitated: the subject is among those—and they are not so very few—in which the Second State, well chosen, is altogether adequate. The First State of the Hind Head Hill reached £14, 14s.; the First of the London from Greenwich, with its noble panorama of the long stretched Town and winding river, reached £15, 15s. A proof of the Windmill and Lock reached £31; a First State of the Severn and Wye, £21; a First State of the Procris and Cephalus, £11; a First State of the Watercress Gatherers, £11, 11s. The pure etchings, which I have written of in an earlier paragraph in this chapter, sell, generally speaking, for three or four guineas apiece; the etching of the Isis, which is extremely rare, fetched at the Buccleuch auction £13, 13s. By the Fine Art Society £74 was paid for a First State of the Ben Arthur. The plates least eagerly sought, or in inferior condition, went for all sorts of prices between a pound or two and four or five guineas. I think, as far as value may be judged without the presence of the particular impressions which were sold, the little list I have now given above may fairly indicate it, but no quite thorough indication can be got without an immense accumulation of detail, and, on the reader’s part, an immense knowledge in interpreting it. It is not unintentionally that we have lingered long over the “Liber.” But more than one other great series must engage at all events a brief attention.

In 1814 began the famous “Southern Coast” series, which was brought to an end in 1827. For these prints, engraved in admirable and masculine “line,” chiefly by the brothers George and William Cooke, Turner had made water colours, whilst as a preparation for the “Liber,” he had made but slight though finely considered sepia drawings—mere guides and hints to himself and the engravers he employed upon the plates: things whose significance was to be enlarged: not things to be merely copied and scrupulously kept to. In quite tolerable condition the ordinary impressions of the “Southern Coast” plates are to be had in large book-form; but the collector, buying single piece by single piece, at one or two or three guineas each, seeks generally impressions before letters or with the scratched title. Of course the variations in condition are noticeable, but in the firm “line” of the “Southern Coast,” they are at least much less noticeable than in the delicate and evanescent mezzotints of “Liber.”

The year in which the publication of the “Southern Coast” was finished—when prints picturesque and vivid, and in some cases, as in the Clovelly of William Miller, perfectly exquisite, had been presented of the most interesting seaboard places between Minehead and Whitstable—that year was the period at which the publication of the third great series, the “England and Wales,” was begun. It was to have extended to thirty parts or more: each part containing four subjects. But, like “Liber,” it received, on its first issue, no full and satisfying measure of encouragement, and though it reached its twenty-fourth part, it did not go further. It was published at about two guineas and a half a part. “England and Wales” sets forth with great elaboration of line engraving the characteristics of the later middle period of Turner’s art, so far as black and white can set it forth at all. That was the period in which subject was most complicated and most ample—even unduly ample—and in which Turner dealt at once with the most intricate line and with all sorts of problems of colour, atmosphere, illumination. The work of all that period, from 1827, say, to ten years onwards—with many of its merits, its inevitable shortcomings, and its immense ambition—the “England and Wales” represents. The work of various engravers trained by Turner for the interpretation of all that was most complicated, it will ever be interesting and valuable. Such prints as Stamford, Llanthony Abbey, and the noble Yarmouth stand ever in the front line. The last, like the Clovelly of the “Southern Coast,” is a work of William Miller, the old Quaker engraver, whose rendering of Turner’s delicate skies no other line engraver has approached—not even William Cooke, who did so well that troop of light little wind clouds in the Margate of the “Southern Coast.” Admirable then, indeed, many of these things must be allowed to be; and in this sense they are almost unique, that scarcely anything else has possessed their qualities. Yet on the whole one admires “England and Wales” with reservations. One’s heart goes out more thoroughly to “Liber” and to “Southern Coast.”

There are other series which must not be passed over altogether—the “Richmondshire Set,” of which the first print was executed, I think, in 1820, though the whole volume was not issued till 1823. It too is in line: the finest print of all, perhaps the Ingleborough. Then there are six “Ports of England”: impressive, varied little mezzotints, unsupported by etching—prints in one of which Turner has set down, for all time, his clear, unequalled perception of the beauty of the Scarborough coast-line. Then there are the “Rivers of England,” with the noble Arundel, the restful Totness. Then there are, in line, the almost over-dainty yet miraculous little prints of “Rivers of France.” Then there are the wonderful vignettes in illustration of Walter Scott. These, like the illustrations to the Rogers’ “Poems” and the “Italy,” with which they have the most affinity, are luminous and gem-like. The Rogers illustrations of course deteriorate in later editions; the “Italy” of 1830 and the “Poems” of 1834 are the ones that should be possessed; and were the present volume of a wider scope and addressed to the book-collector, I should allow myself to say here what it seems I do say here, without “allowing myself”—that the collector should get, if possible, a copy in the original boards, and may give £5 for that as safely as a couple of sovereigns for a re-bound copy.