“MY DEAR CHANTREY,
“I intended long before this (but you will say, ‘Fudge!’) to have written; but even now very little information have I to give you in matters of Art, for I have confined myself to the painting department at Corso; and having finished one, am about the second, and getting on with Lord E.’s, which I began the very first touch at Rome; but as the folk here talked that I would show them not, I finished a small three feet four to stop their gabbling. So now to business. Sculpture, of course, first; for it carries away all the patronage, so it is said, in Rome; but all seem to share in the good-will of the patrons of the day. Gott’s studio is full. Wyatt and Rennie, Ewing, Buxton, all employed. Gibson has two groups in hand, Venus and Cupid; and The Rape of Hylas, three figures, very forward, though I doubt much if it will be in time (taking the long voyage into the scale) for the Exhibition, though it is for England. Its style is something like The Psyche, being two standing figures of nymphs leaning, enamoured, over the youthful Hylas, with his pitcher. The Venus is a sitting figure, with the Cupid in attendance; and if it had wings like a dove, to flee away and be at rest, the rest would not be the worse for the change. Thorwaldsten is closely engaged on the late Pope’s (Pius VII.) monument. Portraits of the superior animal, man, is to be found in all. In some, the inferior—viz. greyhounds and poodles, cats and monkeys, &c., &c.
“Pray give my remembrances to Jones and Stokes, and tell him I have not seen a bit of coal stratum for months. My love to Mrs. Chantrey, and take the same and good wishes of
“Yours most truly,
“J. M. TURNER.”
This method of communicating with “his people” is peculiar, and shows that he was not in the habit of corresponding with them when away on his numerous visits and tours. Perhaps they could not read, perhaps he wished to save postage—whatever hypothesis we may adopt, the fact is singular. The pictures of The Banks of the Loire; The Loretto Necklace; Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy (par la Diligence) in a snowdrift upon Mount Tarra, 22nd of January, 1829—all exhibited in 1829—were the results of this tour, besides some of the pictures of 1830, one of which, View of Orvieto, is, according to Mr. Hamerton, the identical “small three feet four” which he painted to “stop the gabbling” of the folk at Rome.
In this year (1830, he being then fifty-five years old) died Sir Thomas Lawrence, whose loss he probably felt much, and of whose funeral he painted a picture (from memory); but the year had a greater sorrow for him than this—the loss of his “poor old Dad.” The removal from Twickenham did not avail to preserve the old man’s life for long. We have the testimony of the Trimmers, with whom after the event he stayed for a few days for change of scene, that “he was fearfully out of spirits, and felt his loss, he said, like that of an only child,” and that he “never appeared the same man after his father’s death.” To men like Turner, who are not accustomed to express their feelings much, or even to realize them, such blows come with all their natural violence unchecked, unforeseen, unprovided against. It had probably never occurred to him how much his father was to him, how blank a space his loss would make in his narrow garden of human affection. From this time he was to know many losses of old friends, each of which fell heavily upon him, leaving him more lonely than ever. His friends were few, and they dropped one by one, nor is there any evidence to show that their loss was ever lightened by any hope of meeting them again; the lights of his life went out one by one, and left him alone and in the dark. In 1833 Dr. Monro died, in 1836 Mr. Wells, in 1837 Lord Egremont, in 1841 Chantrey, and he was to feel the loss of Mr. Fawkes and Wilkie, and many more before his own time came.
In February, 1830, he wrote to Jones:—
“DEAR JONES—I delayed answering yours until the chance of this finding you in Rome, to give you some account of the dismal prospect of Academic affairs, and of the last sad ceremonies paid yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourn from whence no traveller returns. Alas! only two short months Sir Thomas followed the coffin of Dawe to the same place. We then were his pall-bearers. Who will do the like for me, or when, God only knows how soon! However, it is something to feel that gifted talent can be acknowledged by the many who yesterday waded up to their knees in snow and muck to see the funeral pomp swelled up by carriages of the great, without the persons themselves.”
No doubt these deaths set him thinking of his own, and the disposition of his wealth so useless to him, and he probably brooded long over the will that he signed on the 10th of June in the next year (1831). Many excuses have been made for his niggardly habits on the score of the nobleness of mind shown in this document; he screwed and denied himself (we are told) when living, to make old artists comfortable after his death. We are afraid that there is no ground for this charitable view, nor any evidence that he ever denied himself anything that he preferred to hard cash, or that he ever thought of giving it, or any farthing of it, away to anybody, till he had more than he could spend, and was brought by the deaths of his friends to realize that he could not take it with him when he died. Then indeed he disposed of it; but where was the bulk to go? Not to his nearest of kin, whom he had neglected all his life—fifty pounds was enough for uncles, and twenty-five for their eldest sons; not to his mistress or mistresses, who had been devoted to him all his life, or to his children—annuities of ten and fifty pounds were enough for them; but for the perpetuation of his name and fame, as the founder of “Turner’s Gift” and the eclipser of Claude.[44]
We do not know when Turner became acquainted with Samuel Rogers; but probably some years before this, as he is named as one of the executors in the will, and the famous illustrated edition of “Italy” was published in 1830, followed by the Poems in 1834. These contain the most exquisite of all the engravings from Turner’s vignettes. Exquisite also are most of the drawings, but some of them are spoilt by the capriciousness of their colour, which seems in many cases to have been employed as an indication to the engraver rather than for the purpose of imitating the hues of nature. The most beautiful perhaps of all, Tornaro’s misty brow, seems to us far too blue, and the yellow of the sky in others is too strong to be probable or even in harmony with the rest of the drawing. It would, however, be difficult to find in the whole range of his works two really greater (though so small in size) than the Alps at Daybreak, and Datur hora quieti, of which we give woodcuts, losing of course much of the light refinement of the steel plates, but wonderfully true in general effect. The former is as perfect an illustration as possible of the sentiment of Rogers’s pretty verses, but it far transcends them in beauty and imagination; the latter is not in illustration of any of the poet’s verses, but is a more beautiful poem than ever Rogers wrote.