Chapter 3

We have fixed our attention thus far upon the sketches and drawings made from nature in the National Gallery collection, to the exclusion of the finished water-colours. This may seem all the more inexcusable, as I have preferred to treat these sketches rather with regard to their bearing upon the artist’s finished work—as stages in the development of the complete work of art—than as independent productions which can be accepted entirely for their own sake. But in a short paper like the present it is impossible to do justice to all the sides of such an important collection as the Drawings of the Turner Bequest. Numerically, the finished drawings form only a small fraction of the whole collection—about two hundred out of a total of over 20,000 drawings. Among them are about two-thirds of the “Rivers of France” drawings, and most of the “Ports” and“Rivers of England,” and Rogers’s “Vignettes.” These drawings were engraved during Turner’s lifetime and under his active superintendence; they are, therefore, amongst the best known of his works. The whole of the finished drawings have, moreover, been constantly on exhibition for more than fifty years. There remains, therefore, little either of praise or blame to be said of them that has not already been said many times. While, on the other hand, the studies and sketches are only now on the point of being made accessible to the public.

The practically complete series of Turner’s sketches and studies from nature seems to call for comprehensive treatment. Their careful study throws a wholly new and unexpected light upon the fundamental and essential qualities of Turner’s attitude towards nature, and therefore upon the essential character and limitations of his art. Or where the light is not altogether unexpected—as it would not be perhaps in the case of a diligent and methodical student of Turner’s completed works—the sketches amplify and illustrate in an abundant and forcible way what before could only have been surmised. I propose, therefore, to devote the remainder of my limited space to an attempt to indicate as briefly as possible the main features of Turner’s conception of nature, as it is revealed in his sketches, and to point out its importance both for the proper understanding of his finished work and for its bearing upon some adverse criticisms that have been brought against his work.

In my opening remarks I ventured to contrast Turner’s attitude towards nature with the attitude of the majority of contemporary artists. My intention in thus opposing these two different methods of work was not to suggest that one of them was either right or wrong in itself, or that one way was necessarily better or worse than the other. My intention was exactly the opposite. There is not one type of art production to which all artists must conform, and two totally different methods of procedure may each be positively right and equally valid. I will even go farther than this and confess that I regard the present-day method of working from nature as the only right and proper way of attaining the results that are aimed at. But it is the result, the purpose of the artist, that justifies the means, and this applies with just as much force to Turner’s way of working as to the modern way. To condemn Turner’s procedure, therefore, simply because it differs from that now in vogue, would be as unwise and unfair as to condemn the modern way because it differed from his. Different conceptions of the aim and scope of art involve different attitudes towards nature, and necessitate different methods of study.

Let us begin with the current conception—the conception of the landscape artist of to-day and of the public for which he works. Theaim of this art is what is called “naturalness,” that is, the picture should be made to look as much like nature as possible. The standard of excellence here is just the ordinary common appearance of physical reality. A picture that looks like nature is good, and one that looks “unnatural” is therefore bad. This kind of art is capable of giving a great deal of innocent pleasure to people who like to be reminded of scenes they love or are interested in. But it has its limits. It cannot go beyond the bare physical world. And it is bound to treat even this limited area of experience from a strictly limited point of view. It is bound to take the physical world as something which exists in entire independence of the spectator, as something which is indeed given in sense-perception, but which the spectator emphatically finds and does not make. Now so far as we take nature in this sense we have to do with an external power which is utterly indifferent to our merely human aims and purposes, and the artist can only look upon himself as a passive recipient, atabula rasa, on which external nature is reflected. This is the standpoint of the prosaic intelligence, the level upon which much of the ordinary reflection and discussion of the day moves.

But man is not really a passive mirror in which a foreign nature is reflected, nor is he satisfied merely to submit himself to natural influences and vicissitudes. Man is never really satisfied to take the world as he finds it, but sets to work to transform it into what he feels it ought to be. The social and political world, with its realms of morality, art and religion, came into existence as a protest against the merely natural. In this world, created and sustained by human intelligence and will, the physical world is not abolished or destroyed, but it is transformed into a more or less willing accomplice of a strange and higher power. It is in this new form which nature assumes under the sway of intelligence and will that we find it in Turner’s works.[B]In his presence the external world loses its stubborn indifference to human aims and becomes saturated with purely human aspiration and emotion. Its colours and shapes cease to belong to the merely physical world. They become instead the garment in which the inward spiritual nature of the artist robes itself. Nature in this new aspect is no longer a merely hostile and mechanical system of laws; a soul has been breathed into it which we recognize as identical with our own.

Now it is evident that these two kinds of art, the passive andthe active, with their totally dissimilar aims, cannot and ought not to represent nature in the same way. The art which uses nature as a medium for the expression of ideas and feelings cannot attain its object by representing physical objects in the simple and direct way appropriate to the art which aims merely at naturalness. The artist’s intention must make itself manifest even in the manner in which he represents physical objects,—indeed, he has no other way of expressing his ideas. The active or creative artist will therefore make it clear that he has broken entirely with the disconnected, accidental and prosaic look of everyday existence which it is the one aim of the passive artist to retain.

From this point of view the charges that are often brought against Turner, that his colour is forced and unnatural, will leave us cold and indifferent. To make such an objection is merely a proof of mental confusion. The creative artistmustbreak with the prosaic vision of nature, if only to make it evident that his objects are not there for their own sake and for their immediate effect, but to call forth a response and echo in the mind of the observer. Turner’s colour—“dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere”—is one of his most potent instruments of expression, and must be judged as we judge, let us say, the verbal magic of Shelley’s verse, as a work of free beauty, fashioned in response to the deepest and truest cravings of man’s nature.

That Turner’s art moves mainly among the highest interests of man’s spiritual nature accounts to some extent for the pre-eminent position he now occupies among modern artists. It is always as an artist conscious of man’s high destiny that he claims to be judged, and though he often stumbled and his hand faltered, he never once sank to the level of the passive and prosaic imitator of nature’s finitude. This is not the place to inquire minutely into Turner’s failings and shortcomings, nor to study their connection with the innumerable masterpieces in which he dared and sometimes attained the very highest of which art is capable. An adequate discussion of the subtle inter-connection of Turner’s triumphs and failings would involve the raising of questions of which English criticism seems to prefer to remain in happy ignorance. I cannot therefore attempt to justify my conviction that he is not only the greatest artist our nation has yet produced, but also one of the greatest of modern artists, a man we must rank with Rembrandt and Jean François Millet. But this at least will be generally conceded, that he fully deserves that consideration and sympathy, which the ready instinct of mankind reserves for those who devote themselves without stint and without measure to the highest and most difficult tasks.

A. J. FINBERG.

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Plate XVIION THE LAKE AT PETWORTH—EVENINGCIRCA 1830. SIZE 7½″ × 5¼″IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. No. 425d

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FOOTNOTES:[A]“Biographies of the Great Artists—J. M. W. Turner, R.A.,” Sampson Low, 1897, p. 27. Of the many biographies of Turner, this, although slight, gives probably the best and truest view of him and his work.[B]Turner’s conception of nature, I may remark, is identical with that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who says: “My notion of nature comprehends not only the forms which nature produces, but also the nature and internal fabric and organisation ... of the human mind and imagination.” (Seventh Discourse.)

FOOTNOTES:

[A]“Biographies of the Great Artists—J. M. W. Turner, R.A.,” Sampson Low, 1897, p. 27. Of the many biographies of Turner, this, although slight, gives probably the best and truest view of him and his work.

[B]Turner’s conception of nature, I may remark, is identical with that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who says: “My notion of nature comprehends not only the forms which nature produces, but also the nature and internal fabric and organisation ... of the human mind and imagination.” (Seventh Discourse.)

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