FROM 'FOLLY BRIDGE' TO 'CALAIS PIER'

Plate IV.Yacht Racing in the Solent, No. 2(1827) Tate Gallery

He was in dreamland while the 'stupid apes' watched him.

Did they hope to discover the dreamer's secret? Ah, gentlemen, you did not find the secret in the colour-box. And the dumb poet could never have told in words how he produced his pictures, although when he sold one he was wont to say, 'I've lost one of my children.'

The dumb poet!

There is a chapter in the second volume of Thornbury'sLifeheaded 'Turner's Poetry,' that seemed to the boy who loved 'Orvieto' to express absolutely, strangely, sadly, how illiterate and inarticulate outside his art was Turner, and how eager to express the emotions that moved dimly in his starved brain. Twelve pages of his halting, imperfect verse are printed, scraps from the longest fragments found among his papers after death, perhaps a portion of that interminable, chaotic poem,The Fallacies of Hope, extracts from which he used to append to his Academy pictures. There is hardly a clause that is coherent, there is no continuous thought, and some words are used in any sense. The impulse to sing is there, but the dumb poet has not begun to understand even the elements of the technique of composition. But the boy dug out and remembered two broken lines, and they became almost as much a part of his life as golden 'Orvieto.'

'... still the chief advanced,Looked on the sun with hope...'

'Looked on the sun with hope' might have served for Turner's epitaph.

'Still the chief advanced' might have served as a motto for that amazing book published in 1909, calledA Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest.[1]

When that book in two volumes was issued, the boy who loved 'Orvieto' as a middle-aged man. Having read theInventory—no, read is not the word;—when he had spent many hours over it, his wonder of Turner, if that were possible, increased. And dreaming of the drawings of the Turner Bequest, set forth so fully and patiently in this book, he echoed the words of the Director of the National Gallery, who wrote in the preface, 'There is nothing like it anywhere in the world.'

[1]A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, arranged chronologically by A. J. Finberg. His Majesty's Stationery Office. 2 vols. 15s.

Not until theInventorywas published was it possible to realise the amount of spade work—loving, minute, unwearying—that Turner did from the age of twelve to the age of seventy-one, spade work that enabled him to will the golden visions of his maturity.

Everybody who has examined the Turner Bequest of water-colours, and sketches in colour and in pencil, numbering over nineteen thousand pieces of paper contained in three hundred Sketch-Books, must agree that 'there is nothing like it anywhere in the world'; and everybody must rejoice that, through the munificence of the late Sir Joseph Duveen, there has now arisen as an annexe to the Tate Gallery the long, long deferred Turner Gallery, a tardy fulfilment of the Wizard's desire, one of the few dispositions, besides his eagerness to found a home for decayed artists, that was clear in his interminable and muddled will and codicils.

The story of the litigation over the will, and of the vicissitudes of the bequest has been often told, and it will have to be told again in its proper place in this book; how the pictures bequeathed byTurner to the nation were gradually selected for exhibition; how in 1857 the number had reached one hundred and five; how in that year Ruskin began to sift and arrange the finished water-colours, the pencil drawings, the colour sketches, and 'unfinished oils'; how he chose what he considered the best of the water-colours for intermittent exhibition; how he rolled up the 'unfinished oils '; how he classified and commented upon the 'nineteen thousand pieces of paper, worm-eaten, mouse-eaten, in various states of fragile decay, drawn upon by Turner in one way or another, many on both sides'; how in 1906 the art world was astonished and delighted by the exhibition at the Tate Gallery of the 'unfinished oils' by Turner, reclaimed from the cellars at Trafalgar Square; and how in 1908 several other 'unfinished' works, described as experiments 'in oil on thin veneer,' and a number of early water-colours and studies were for the first time exposed.

By that time Mr. A. J. Finberg was nearing the end of his vast work of cataloguing the Turner water-colours, and the 'nineteen thousand pieces of paper,' belonging to the nation. The two volumes known as theInventoryare the monument of his labour, which has been thoroughly done, indeed, with an attention to detail that wins the gratitude of all students. Wisely a strictly chronological arrangement was determined upon. The difficulties were immense, owing to the almost entire absence of reliable chronological information as to Turner's movements. He was not the kind of man to babble his plans, and Mr. Finberg admits that someof his judgments as to date and place are tentative; but we now have a guide, trustworthy as extreme care could make it, to the infinite variety of Turner's structural plans, his daily visions, his notes of things seen and quickly recorded, upon which his life-work was based.

TheInventorybegins with 1787, when he was twelve; it proceeds, year by year, to almost the end of his life, to 1846, when he was seventy-one. Almost every summer, one might say every summer, with painting materials, knapsack, and umbrella, he was off on his travels through England, Scotland, Wales, or the Continent, and, roughly speaking, to each year there is a sketch-book. Perhaps general-utility book would be the better name, for Turner drew and scribbled anything and everything on the leaves in his almost unintelligible handwriting. Mixed up with his sketches, we read how he got from place to place; of articles of clothing in use and wanted; the numbers of bank-notes; elemental French and German phrases; fragments of poetry, his own and others; extracts from Sir Joshua'sDiscourses; a cure for the bite of a mad dog; a recipe for surfeit; criticism of pictures, including Rembrandt's 'Mill,' Titian's 'Entombment,' and Rubens's 'Rainbow'; notes on the colours of hills; the names of flowers; descriptions of skies; fragments of letters, such as 'Give my love to Miss Wickham,' and so on, and so on.

Such things are for the general, for anybody and everybody who is interested in the commerce with daily life of a man of genius.For the student of Turner's work, these details of his sketching tours, chronologically arranged, are invaluable.

The boy who loved 'Orvieto,' and who is now a man, having contracted to write a book on 'Turner's Golden Visions,' felt, with thisInventorybefore him, wherein Turner himself tells in disjointed fragments the autobiography of his working life, that the way to write the book was to take the years in progression, to dwell on each significant epoch and the work it produced, and thus to trace the development of the dumb poet from darkness to light, from the black 'Moonlight at Millbank,' to such an ethereal golden vision as 'Norham Castle at Sunrise.'

He begins at the very beginning with the year 1775, when a son was born to two humble people in a dark court off the Strand, whom they christened Joseph Mallord William Turner.

Plate V.Barnard Castle. Water colour(about1837) In the collection of W. G. Rawlinson, Esq. (Size, 8 7/8 x 6 1/2)

1775-1803

1775

Few of the wayfarers who hurry along Maiden Lane from Covent Garden to Bedford Street remember that in this busy, refurbished street Turner was born. London has changed much since his time, and Maiden Lane has changed also. Hand Court, opposite the Cider Cellar, in which was the entrance to the barber's shop kept by Turner's father, has long disappeared, and so has the modest dwelling.

The house in which Turner was born, and where father, mother, and son lived, is thus described by Ruskin:—

'Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set block of houses, to the back windows of which it admits a few rays of light. Access to the bottom of it is obtained out of Maiden Lane, through a low archway and an iron gate; and if you stand long enough under the archway to accustom your eyes to the darkness, you may see, on the left hand, a narrow door, which formerly gave access to a respectable barber's shop.'

Thornbury has the following:—

'I remember the house well—I have been up and down and all over it. The old barber's shop was on the ground floor, entered by a little dark door on the left side of Hand Court. The window was a long, low one; the stairs were narrow, steep and winding; the rooms low, dark, and small, but square and cosy, however dirty and confined they may have been. Turner's bedroom, where he generally painted, looked into the lane, and was commanded by the opposite windows. The house where I suppose he afterwards went to for more quiet and room, is at the end of Hand Court, and is on a larger scale, with two windows in front; but it must have been rather dark, though less noisy than his father's house.'

It is said that the very early drawing by Turner, called 'Interior of a Kitchen,' in the possession of the nation, represents the kitchen of the house in Maiden Lane, and that the old woman crooning over the fire is Turner's mother; but this has been doubted by that arch-doubter, Mr. A. J. Finberg. Mrs. Turner's aspect is reported to have been masculine, not to say fierce; she is said to have been a person of ungovernable temper, to have 'led her husband a sad life,' to have been odd to the point of insanity. Indeed she was quite insane at times, and maybe Turner derived something of his genius from this ill-starred mother with the unbalanced wits.

It is probable that the Mary Turner who was removed from St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and admitted into Bethlehem Hospital on December 27th, 1800, was Turner's mother. She was discharged uncured in the following year.

'Dad' was sane and cheerful, a friend and companion to his son, proud of his genius, and helpful to him. His name will often appear in these pages. He is described by Henry Trimmer, vicar of Heston, one of Turner's few intimate friends, as a chatty old fellow who talked fast. We are also told that his cheerfulness was greater than his son's, and that a smile was always on his face. To this strangely assorted couple, a chirpy father and a crazy mother, a son was born on the 23rd of April 1775, about one year and eight months after their marriage. So Nature works, and the good folk who would 'select' parents for their wholesomeness and sanity may not be as successful in producing a genius as Nature in her unpremeditated way. Joseph Mallord William Turner was baptized at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, in the following month.

Ruskin has devoted a brilliant chapter to contrasting the boyhoods of Turner and Giorgione. But is Turner to be pitied? Art occurs, and perhaps there could not have been a more suitable place for a great landscape painter to be born than in a dark court off Maiden Lane by the Strand. For, being born in a dark court, he had to seek the world of beauty, the wonder of undefiled sunrises and sunsets, green fields and purple hills, pale streams and opalescent lakes. He had to make an effort to find them.

At home there was at least mental excitement. His father's customers were continually coming and going, curious men from the outside world, who talked wittily and wore pretty clothes, and gave to the watchful boy glimpses of the vivid world in which they lived. And near by was the river, with its shipping, and the ever-changing aspect of the tides, the old Thames, which he loved all his life, and from which he derived inspiration and consolation.

1790: AGED FIFTEEN

As Thomas Stothard was a customer of Turner's father, and as many artists lived about Covent Garden, the boy's interest in art must have been early aroused. It is said that at the age of nine young Turner made a drawing of Margate Church, shortly before he went to his first school at New Brentford.

An old schoolfellow tells how he drew cocks and hens on the walls, and birds and flowers and trees from the schoolroom windows; and there is a story, which has been learnedly revised byNotes and Queries, of a sketch which he made of a coat-of-arms from a drawing at Mr. Tomkison's the jeweller. At the age of thirteen he is described as short and thick-set, with grey-blue eyes and arched eyebrows, a handsome boy, careless of dress, but sturdy and determined.

Turner's education was perfunctory; indeed, he had no real education at all, but he acquired the rudiments at New Brentford and in Mr. Coleman's school at Margate. We are told that he made the journey 'in a hoy, a bluff-bowed cutter-rigged craft, with along bowsprit and heavy main boom.' That voyage must have been one of the events of his boyhood.

Mr. Palice, a floral drawing-master, also had the honour of instructing him, and Mr. Thomas Malton, a perspective draughtsman. Later he learnt something at Paul Sandby's Drawing Academy in St. Martin's Lane, but more from Mr. Hardwick, the architect, who employed him in adding landscape backgrounds to plans, etc., and who introduced him, it is believed, to the schools of the Royal Academy, where we find him enrolled as a student in 1789. But all this was fugitive and not very important. His real lifelong teacher was Nature, and he learnt how to express the ways of Nature by first studying the works of his contemporaries and predecessors.

He developed slowly. 'Folly Bridge and Bacon's Tower,' which appears as the first item in theInventory, under the year 1787, when he was twelve, is not an original drawing. Turner showed little or none of the early facility of genius. For long years he leaned on and learned from others. 'Folly Bridge' is merely a copy of a steel engraving by J. Besire of a drawing perhaps by E. Dayes. The colouring, says Mr. Finberg, is probably the boy's own invention. It is signed and dated W. Turner, 1787, and hangs to-day on a wall of the new Turner Gallery at Millbank.

From an early age he made money. His father showed his drawings and coloured prints in his shop-window, and sold them atprices ranging from one to three shillings. The acquisition of wealth remained one of the most persistent occupations of his life. He was 'found out,' as Monkhouse says, almost in his childhood, was paid for colouring prints and washing in the skies for architects—excellent practice. The knowing boy knew it. When, in after life, somebody expressed wonder that he should have worked for half a crown a night, he retorted that nothing could have been better practice. Sometimes he received as much as a guinea. An old architect told Thornbury that he paid him that sum in the shop in Maiden Lane for putting in a background.

But the most important episode of Turner's boyhood was the meeting with Girtin, at about twelve or thirteen years of age, in the workshop of the famous engraver, John Raphael Smith—Thomas Girtin, who was to have such an influence on his dawning art, and whose personality was to be one of the happiest memories of his life.

Turner's work up till about the age of fifteen has been summed up thus: (1) Making drawings at home to sell; (2) Colouring prints for John Raphael Smith; (3) Washing in backgrounds for architects; (4) Sketching with Girtin.

Even in those early days Turner was secretive. Nobody was allowed to see him draw, and he was as determined as he was secretive. Thornbury tells the following story:—

'Turner was busy one morning in the bedroom at Maiden Lane, working at some drawings for one of Britton's patrons—I think for the Earl of Essex. Suddenly the door opens and Britton enters, nominally to inquire how the drawings progressed, really to spy out all he could of Turner's professional secrets. In an instant Turner covered up his drawings, and ran to stop the crafty intruder's entrance.'"I've come to see the drawings for the Earl."'"You shan't see 'em," said Turner.'"Is that the answer I am to take back to his lord-ship?"'"Yes; and mind the next time you come through the shop, and not up the back way. I allow no one to come here "; and so shutting the door on sly Britton, Turner returned to growl at him over his work.'

'"I've come to see the drawings for the Earl."

'"You shan't see 'em," said Turner.

'"Is that the answer I am to take back to his lord-ship?"

'"Yes; and mind the next time you come through the shop, and not up the back way. I allow no one to come here "; and so shutting the door on sly Britton, Turner returned to growl at him over his work.'

TheInventoryshows that Turner was hard at work at this early age. In Sketch-Book No. II., dated 1789, twenty-five leaves are drawn on; No. III. contains five drawings, and includes his 'First View of Oxford,' signed and dated 1789. In Sketch-Book No. IV. there is a pencil outline of 'Wanstead New Church,' against the belfry of which he has written the word 'Ionic.' As I have said, these Sketch-Books might also be called general-utility books. Thus, in Sketch-Book No. V., containing drawings probably made in the Royal Academy Schools, on the back of a black-and-white chalk of the 'Belvedere Apollo' are thesenotes, showing that his busy brain was already beginning to consider etching, and that he was already indifferent to spelling:—

1 Get an Etching Ground, 26.2 Heat the Back of P.3 Rub it over with the Ball.4 Dab it over with the Dabber of'Well Hot. {5 Smoke it over with Wax Tapur6 Put some ... at back of Palte (? Plate)7 Re ... of Wax.Turpentine Varnish and Lamp black.'

About this time Turner began to study oil painting, receiving instruction from no less a person than Sir Joshua Reynolds. Little did Sir Joshua think, when he laid down the brush in 1789, that among the young men in his studio, and perhaps working on his pictures under his superintendence, was a youth whose name was to become as famous as the name of Reynolds.

We can tell exactly what degree of accomplishment Turner had reached at the age of fifteen, as the first drawing he sent to the Royal Academy, the year being 1790, the locality Somerset House, a view of 'The Archbishop's Palace, Lambeth,' is in a state of perfect preservation in the collection of Mr. W. G. Rawlinson. He does not yet show any originality. It is one of the tinted architectural drawings of the period, but the work is conscientious, the drawing firm, and the reflected lightson the houses well rendered. Here, too, are the Turner figures, taller than life, a little grotesque, but accurate as regards the costumes.

He must have been a merry, attractive boy when in congenial company: he did not lack friends. There was Mr. Narraway, whom he visited at Bristol, and the house of Mr. W. H. Wells, the artist, was open to him, where he was a constant and welcome inmate. Mrs. Wheeler has recorded the following charming reminiscences of Turner at this period:—

'In early life my father's house was his second home, a haven of rest from many domestic trials too sacred to touch upon. Turner loved my father with a son's affection; and to me he was as an elder brother. Many are the times I have gone out sketching with him. I remember his scrambling up a tree to obtain a better view, and then he made a coloured sketch, I handing up his colours as he wanted them.... Oh! what a different man would Turner have been if all the good and kindly feelings of his great mind had been called into action; but they lay dormant, and were known to so very few. He was by nature suspicious, and no tender hand had wiped away early prejudices, the inevitable consequence of a defective education. Of all the light-hearted merry creatures I ever knew, Turner was the most so; and the laughter and fun that abounded when he was an inmate of our cottage wasinconceivable, particularly with the juvenile members of the family.'

That is a happy glimpse of Turner the boy, and with that I leave his boyhood. He has just had a drawing exhibited at the Royal Academy; he is advancing towards proficiency in water-colour, his first and his last love; but not yet has he reached the 'golden simplicity' that Girtin realised, nor the 'silver sweetness' of Cozens.

1795: AGED TWENTY

Five years have passed. Turner is now twenty. We will glance back and see how he has fared. At about seventeen he attracted the attention of Dr. Thomas Monro of Bushey, and Adelphi Terrace, physician of Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals, a well-known lover of art, and patron of certain clever young men who were to raise the coloured topographical drawing into the well-loved art of British water-colour painting. 'Good Dr. Monro!' The phrase has become historical. Turner was grateful to Dr. Monro all his life, although there is no evidence of any great intimacy between them. Years later he said to David Roberts: 'Girtin and I have often walked to Bushey and back to make drawings for good Dr. Monro at half a crown apiece and a supper.' Turner's affection and admiration for Girtin, that brilliant youth who died young, lasted all his life. 'Had Tom Girtin lived I should have starved,' he is reported to have said long afterwards; and of one of Girtin's drawings he remarked, 'I never in my whole life could make a drawing like that. I would many a time havegiven one of my little fingers to make such a one.' When quite an old man he would mutter to himself about Tom's 'golden drawings.' Thornbury says that he praised Girtin's 'White House' with rapture.

Plate VI. Derwentwater, With the Falls of Lodore. Water colour (about1797) Tate Gallery

At Dr. Monro's house Turner, Girtin, Varley, and other young artists were set to copy drawings by Rembrandt, Canaletto, Gainsborough, and other masters; also the drawings of John Cozens, Turner's senior by twenty-three years, who had lately returned from Italy and Switzerland. Cozens, that poet with the brush, had a great influence upon him, but Turner's drawings of this period have none of the repose, quiet beauty, and spacious feeling of Cozens'. Perhaps the 'Pent House, Dover,' draws nearest to the poetry of Cozens. Simple in treatment and colour, it shows more imagination than the well-known 'Tintern Abbey' at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The 'Bristol and Malmesbury' Sketch-Book, dated 1791, has twenty-three leaves, all drawn on; the 'Bristol' Sketch-Book of the same year has seven; and in 1792 we find a drawing of the 'Burning of the Pantheon' in Oxford Street, a carefully worked water-colour with a large number of figures. On the left are firemen in their uniforms with hose and engines, and a crowd of spectators and passers-by. A drawing of the 'Pantheon the Morning after the Fire' was exhibited in the Academy of 1792. So, at the age of seventeen, while intent now, as for years to come, on the work of other painters, Turner had begun the direct studyof life, of vivid realities. In the 'Hereford and Worcester' Sketch-Book, 1792-93, there are 'Two Sketches near Malvern.' Beneath the second, showing a roadway with foreground trees, the following is inscribed in his own handwriting:—'The distance last with the sky a lovely tint of Blue Lake and Indian—more as it approaches.' He probably knew exactly what he meant. And no doubt the following comment on the back of a water-colour of a 'Tree and Tower' was all he needed to impress on his mind the effect of what he had seen:—

'In the shadow the Stones the same. Some Umber and S. Green—the broken part umber and Bister, the distance part a Blue Green Sap and B.'

By the year 1795, when he was twenty years of age, Turner was quite a successful young man. His drawings were hung at the Royal Academy, he sold them readily, and he had been commissioned by theCopper Plate Magazineto make a series of water-colours for engraving at two guineas apiece. In one of the volumes of that publication he is alluded to as 'The ingenius Mr. Turner.' Moreover, the public press had begun to notice the work of 'the ingenius Mr. Turner.' Here is a complimentary contemporary criticism:—

'388. "Christchurch Gate, Canterbury." W. Turner. This deserving picture, with Nos. 333 and 336, are amongst the best in the present exhibition. They are the productions of a very young artist, and give strong indications of first-rateability; the character of Gothic architecture is most happily preserved, and its profusion of minute parts massed with judgment and tinctured with truth and fidelity. This young artist should beware of contemporary imitations. His present effort evinces an eye for nature, which should scorn to look to any other source.'

'Christchurch Gate' was one of five drawings he sent to the Academy of 1794. In 1795, 'W. Turner, Hand Court, 26 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden,' exhibited eight drawings.

It will be seen from the above extracts from theInventoryhow early Turner became a traveller. He was a traveller almost to the end of his life, and, whatever else he forgot, he never left his sketch-book at home. 'No day without a note of Nature' might almost have been his motto. His sketch-books are the guides to his travels, and when I turn the pages and follow the wanderings of this unresting man of genius, there rises before me, as a companion to the sketch-books, the map that Mr. Huish compiled of Turner's tours through Great Britain. The lines of his tracks cover the map, those tracks along which he walked, or coached, or rode, and in their appointed places are marked the sixty-six castles, the twenty-seven abbeys, and the fourteen cathedrals that he drew. Some day, when I have leisure, I think I will make similar maps of his tours through France, Italy and Switzerland. He would walk his twenty miles a day with his baggage tied in a big handkerchief, his umbrella in his hand, and often hisfishing-rod. But the clearest vision of him I have is that day in 1792, when, at the age of seventeen, he started off on his first tour in Wales, on a pony lent him by his friend Mr. Narraway. To be seventeen, to be conscious of great powers, all the wide world and the wide future opening, and a good little pony as companion. Has life anything better to offer than that?

In the 'South Wales' Sketch-Book of 1795, among the 'Order'd Drawings,' a list of which he has inscribed on one of the pages, is 'Newport Castle—Mr. Kershaw.' No doubt this is the 'Newport' now in the Salting Collection at the British Museum, one of the most accomplished of his early drawings, pleasant in colour and bold in mass.

1800: AGED TWENTY-FIVE

Five more years have passed. Turner has made his North of England tour about which Ruskin wrote so eloquently—and so unconvincingly. Cosmo Monkhouse, while reproving Ruskin for the partial untruth of his beautiful prose, says of that 1797 journey:—

'The effect upon Turner of the fells and vales of Yorkshire and Cumberland seems to have been much the same as that of Scotland upon Landseer: it braced all his powers, developed manhood of art, turned him from a toilsome student into a triumphant master.'

Turner was not yet a triumphant master. He had progressed towards triumph in water-colour, shown in the spacious, harmonious, and atmospheric rendering of 'Derwentwater, with the Falls of Lodore,' and the very beautiful 'Study for a Picture of Norham Castle'—rising golden rocks and rosy sky reflected in the rosy water, one of two early drawings of this subject, displayed in the new Turner Gallery, and reproduced in these pages:but oil was still beyond him. He had not mastered the difficulties of that medium; he could do no better than the dark and dispiriting 'Morning on the Coniston Fells, Cumberland,' and the still darker 'Buttermere Lake,' that for years has been banished to a provincial gallery. The young chief had advanced; he had been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy; he had removed from dingy Hand Court to decorous Harley Street; and he was about to make the acquaintance of Mr. Walter Fawkes, the squire of Farnley Hall, near Leeds, which was to mean so much to him; but he was not yet a triumphant master. Only in his water-colours has he begun to show glimmerings of his golden visions. In oil he is studying detail rather than light; he is pondering over masses looming in dim airless spaces; he has not even yet begun to see the ethereal manifestations of his maturity.

No doubt he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1799 for the remarkable water-colours that he exhibited in that and in the previous year, which included the powerful sunset-glowing 'Warkworth Castle' now at South Kensington; the gloomy and magnificent 'Kirkstall Abbey' in the Soane Museum, and the 'Norham Castle' with the golden rocks and the rosy sky of dawn.

Norham Castle was Turner's mascot. He painted that picturesque ruin again and again; it appears in theLiber Studiorumand inThe Rivers of Englandseries, and 'Norham Castle' is the subject of two of the 'unfinished oils,' disembodied spirits ofloveliness, that caused such a sensation when they were exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1906.

In later life, when Turner was travelling with Cadell, the Edinburgh bookseller, making sketches forProvincial Antiquities, the artist suddenly raised his hat to the ruins and made them a low bow.

'What are you up to now? ' asked Cadell.

'Oh,' was Turner's reply, 'I made a drawing of Norham Castle several years since. It took, and from that day to this I have had as much to do as my hands could execute.'

Perhaps the interest of this period for students are certain early oil paintings, showing the germs, so meagre of promise, from which his magnificent life-work arose. The small 'Moonlight, a study at Millbank,' exhibited in 1797, is now so dark that the picture seems to be encompassed in a perpetual fog, dominated by a round wafery, whitey-yellow moon; the sprawling 'Morning on the Coniston Fells' of 1798; the 'Caernarvon Castle' of 1800, silhouetted against a cloudy sky, so small and unimposing, that, remembering what Turner became, one has for it a sentimental affection; and the dark, disappearing 'Dolbadern Castle' that hangs in the Diploma Gallery in Burlington House. It was exhibited in 1800; but as Turner was not elected a full Royal Academician until 1802, this can hardly be his Diploma picture. The 'Tenth Plague of Egypt,' exhibited in 1802, has been honoured by a place on the line in the new Turner Gallery at Millbank.

Thomas Green, of Ipswich, is known to fame—or perhaps I should say to the present writer—for the inscription in his diary of the following brief criticism of Turner's oil picture, exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1797, called 'Fishermen Coming Ashore at Sunset, Previous to a Gale ':—

'June 2nd,1797.—Visited the Royal Academy Exhibition. Particularly struck with a sea-view by Turner; fishing-vessels coming in, with a heavy swell, in apprehension of tempest gathering in the distance, and casting, as it advances, a night of shade, while a parting glow is spread with fine effect upon the shore. The whole composition bold in design and masterly in execution. I am entirely unacquainted with the artist; but if he proceeds as he has begun, he cannot fail to become the first in his department.'

Dayes, an architectural draughtsman, the master of Girtin, said of Turner:—

'The way he acquired his professional powers was by borrowing where he could a drawing or picture to copy from, or by making a sketch of any one in the exhibition early in the morning and finishing it at home.'

Another contemporary remarked of Turner, 'He must be loved for his works, for his person is not striking or his conversation brilliant '; a third described him as 'eccentric, but kind and amusing.' Blake, who was one of his pupils, complained of being left quite alone, and Thornbury states that he was too reservedand tongue-tied to be able to teach what he knew, even if he wished to disclose his hard-earned secrets. Turner never disclosed any of his secrets. What he knew he kept.

Plate VII.Study for a Picture of Norham Castle. Water colour(about1799) Tate Gallery

TheInventoryfrom 1795 to 1800 fills nearly eighty pages of minute records of his sketching tours. On one of the leaves of the 'South Wales' Sketch-Book, dated 1795, I find this, but, with the exception of the words 'Walls x White Lyon Inn,' not in his own handwriting:—

'To Tenby, 20 miles. Walls x White Lyon Inn. Before you visit Tenby view the Castles at Llanstephen and Laugharn (Larn as it is called). Llanstephen Castle stands at the entrance of the River Towy. At Tenby view the cliffs, caverns, rocks, islands, etc., etc.'

The 'Studies near Brighton' Sketch-Book (1796) contains a drawing of pigs and a donkey with this note by Ruskin:—

'Both wonderful, quite beyond telling. There is an etching of Rembrandt's which approaches the upper study, but by no means equals it. Examine it for a quarter of an hour through a magnifying-glass, and you will see something of what it is.'

When Ruskin praised, he—praised.

In another Sketch-Book of this period there is a copy by Turner of Wilson's 'Landscape with Figures'; and in 1797 we find a book full of Wilson copies, and labelled on the back by Turner himself, 'Studies for Pictures. Copies of Wilson.' Inthe 'Swans' Sketch-Book (1798) Turner has noted on the inside cover in ink a

'Receipt for making an Efficable (?) ointment for Cut ...'

The details of the recipe are confusedly given. On the flyleaf are several scraps of verse, probably his own. One of them runs:—

'Tell me Babbling Echo why,Babbling Echo tell me why,You return me sigh for sigh;When I of slighted love complainYou delight to Mock my Pain.'

On the back of a drawing of 'Somerset House' (?) is this (I copy the words just as he wrote them):—

Learn. SubstantivesNo Comparison but byAdjectives, as, good bonnebad, Beau, fine PositivePlus Beau finer Comparativele Plus Beau Superlitive ofFiner.Masculine LeWhite Blanc PositiveWhiter Plus Blanc ComparativeWhitest Le Plus Blanc Superlitive.'

Later, in the 'Dolbadern' Sketch-Book, he has copied out a list of French pronouns and their translations. There is somethingpathetic in these attempts of Turner to make up for his lack of education.

The 'Babbling Echo' poem suggests that there may be truth in the early love-story of which some of his biographers make much. That may or may not have soured him; it may or may not have been the reason why he remained a bachelor. I do not think that Turner ever thought seriously about matrimony. His art was his mistress, and to his art to his dying day he was loyal, to the sacrifice of everything else. And he was loyal in his way—or shall I say faithful in his way—to Hannah Danby, who entered his service in 1800 or 1801, a girl of sixteen; who was housekeeper in Queen Anne Street through his long life; and who, in the end, when he had done all his great work, found him dying in hiding as Mr. Booth, 'husband' of Mrs. Booth, in the little house at Chelsea overlooking the river.

1802: AGED TWENTY-SEVEN

Sometimes in early life Turner, one might say almost by chance, prefigures the golden visions of his maturity, as in 'Conway Castle,' in the possession of the Duke of Westminster, which dates from about this time. The foreground is awkward, and strewn with meaningless litter; but the castle stands up magnificently against the blue sky, darkening to orange at the horizon, and over all is a ripe golden glow. You see this picture across the gallery, as at the Japan-British exhibition, where it was shown. It calls: you are held by the dawning magnificence of Turner at twenty-seven; you realise that the magician has begun to work his spell.

The sketch-books of 1801 and 1802 are numerous and varied, showing his travels at home and abroad: the itinerary of his first tour on the Continent; the 'Calais Pier' Sketch-Book, with such drawings as 'Group of Figures on Pier watching Fishing-Boats at Sea,' one of the many studies he made for his great picture of 'Calais Pier'; and the curious and interesting 'Studies in the Louvre' Sketch-Book, in which we find this indefatigable youngman of twenty-seven not only sitting at the feet of, but metaphorically throwing himself into the arms of, the Old Masters. He makes copies of many pictures, such as Titian's 'Entombment,' 'Mars and Venus' by Domenichino, Rembrandt's 'Good Samaritan,' and to some of the copies he appends long descriptive criticisms that often elude our efforts to find their meaning.

His comment on 'The Deluge' by Nicholas Poussin begins:—'

The colour of this picture impresses the subject more than the incidents, which are by no means fortunate either to place, position, or colour, as they are separate spots untoned by the ... (? dark) colour that pervades the whole.'

And here is his confused criticism of Rubens's 'Landscape with a Rainbow':—

'The Rainbow appears to me the most to be considered as a picture, not but this as well as the rest of his landscapes is defective as light and the ... (? profusion) of nature. The woman in blue strikes the eye and prevents it straying to the confused and ill-judged lines, but as to the figure (? figures) in Mid, which is light ... (? lit from) the opposite side, a proof that he wanted light on that side and either chose to commit an error than continue the light by means of the ground or (? to) where the sky is placed. Then it is lead by the yellow within the trees to the sky and thence to the Bow, which is hard and horny by the use of the vivid Blue in the distance, which is anotherinstance of his distorting what he was ignorant of—natural effect.'

Among the pictures Turner exhibited this year are 'Jason in Search of the Golden Fleece,' the earliest of his dragon pictures, that sometimes seem rather grand, but usually merely grandiloquent. It was probably inspired by Salvator Rosa. Turner referred to 'Jason' in later years as 'an old favourite with some,' and Ruskin thought 'Jason' showed 'high imaginative faculty.' How Ruskin studied Turner! Listen to this fromModern Painters—:

'In very sunny days a keen-eyed spectator may discern, even where the picture hangs now, something in the middle of it like the arch of an ill-built drain. This is a coil of the dragon beginning to unroll himself.'

'Jason' is now well shown at the new Turner Gallery, but I, for one, infinitely prefer the bold study for this composition, hanging in an adjoining room. Sketch-Book LXI. is called the 'Jason' Sketch-Book.

To this period of his bolder experiments in oil belong such breezy works as 'Dutch Boats in a Gale' at Bridgewater House, and 'Fishing Boats in a Stiff Breeze,' both done in emulation of Van de Velde. Turner said that seeing a fine Van de Velde in a shop-window had made him a sea-painter.

In a letter from Andrew Caldwell to Bishop Percy, dated 14th June 1802, Turner is spoken of 'as beating Loutherbourg and every other artist all to nothing.'

It was not difficult for Turner to beat Van de Velde and de Loutherbourg all to nothing. We think so now, they thought so then, if Andrew Caldwell expressed the general opinion.

'A new artist has started up—one Turner. He had before exhibited stained drawings, but now paints landscapes in oil, beats Loutherbourg and every other artist all to nothing. A painter of my acquaintance and a good judge declares his painting is magic; that it is worth every landscape painter's while to make a pilgrimage to see and study his works. Loutherbourg, he used to think of so highly, appears now mediocre.'

But even in those days of rivalry with the so-called classical painters, Turner was already beginning to see for himself, and to express what his eyes saw. The 'View on Clapham Common,' probably painted in 1802, merely a study of sward and trees with men angling, is personal and all himself, although Ruskin thought that 'the somewhat affected rolling and loading of the colour in the sky is founded altogether on Morland.'

To me it is like a brief personal and sincere utterance at a political meeting where the speakers are all trying to say the effective thing in the effective manner. Even such a doughty critic as Meier Graefe recognises in this simple little picture a 'sincere surrender to the object.'

At the Tate Gallery we may see Turner, painted by himself, in the year that he took that walk on Clapham Common, a watchful, introspective face as of a soul trying to see through the veil, the eyes estimating and observant, the lips betokening something sensual, the other part of Turner.

1803: AGED TWENTY-EIGHT

Of the pictures Turner sent to the Royal Academy of 1803, including a 'Holy Family' (he tried everything in turn), one work dominates the group—the great, dark, studio-made 'Calais Pier,' which Turner, never afraid of a long title, called 'Calais Pier with French Poissards preparing for Sea, an English Packet arriving.' Neither Turner nor anybody else ever saw such a scene in Nature, and one wonders what Turner thought of this ambition of his youth years later when he painted the pearly visions of the 'Yachting' and 'Whalers' series, or such an attempt to express the marriage of light and water as 'Sunrise with a Sea Monster.'

He painted 'Calais Pier' in his dark studio, with half his brain mumbling instructions to the other half as to how Van de Velde and the other brothers of the sea would have done it. He made the sketches from Nature as we have seen; but he had not yet arrived at the degree of knowledge enabling him to paint a picture without losing the impulse of the sketch. But Turner had to build his foundations: he knew that. He could never havepainted 'A Ship Aground' in 1830, unless he had painted 'Calais Pier' in 1803. We may see from the 'Calais Pier' Sketch-Book how minutely he acquainted himself with such scenes in Nature. On leaf 58 is the following eloquent line in his own handwriting:—' Our landing at Calais. Nearly swampt.'

Ruskin refers to 'Calais Pier 'as' the first picture which bears the sign manual and the sign mental of Turner's colossal power.' He also observes, quite rightly, that nobody is frightened and there is no danger. And a child can see that it is untrue. Turner was never much concerned with what we call 'truth.' The effect was his aim, not the fact. The sky, except for the peep of blue, is black, the whole picture is dark almost to blackness, but Ruskin sees the first indication of colour, 'properly so called,' in the fish, and tells the following story:—

'The engraver of one of his most important marine pictures told me, not long ago, that one day Turner came into his room to examine the progress of the plate, not having seen his own picture for several months. It was one of his dark, early pictures, but in the foreground was a little piece of luxury, a pearly fish wrought into lines like those of an opal. He stood before the picture for some moments; then laughed, and pointed joyously to the fish, "They say that Turner can't colour!" and turned away.'

The casual wayfarer through the Turner Gallery sees only the absurdities of 'Calais Pier,' sniggers, perhaps, at the old fishermanin the boat who is shaking his half-filled bottle of brandy towards the woman on the pier, the lady having kept the rest for herself. But the artist who stands before 'Calais Pier' knows what knowledge and force there is in this dark sea picture of Turner's youth.

Such modern sea painters as Moore, Olsson, and the Frenchman, Matisse, have, in the beauty and truth of their realism, spoilt us for the old sea pictures. But they contained something that we have lost. Mr. W. L. Wyllie, A.R.A., in his book on Turner, says some fine and good things about 'Calais Pier.' After remarking that in 'Calais Pier' the light and shade is just that of Turner's studio in Harley Street; that the inky clouds throw black shadows just as a table or a sofa would in a room; that the pale blue sky is not reflected anywhere, either in the tumbling water or on the tarry sides of the fishing-boats, he continues:—

'And yet when we are back among the conventional black old pictures, such as 'The Shipwreck,' the 'Spithead,' or even the impossible, gloomy 'Garden of the Hesperides,' we feel that, after all, the old Wizard was a worker of wonders, and that he in his dark London room, with little more than black, brown, and grey, could move us to awe, terror, or wonder by the thousand-and-one secrets which he had at his fingers' ends; but which we moderns in the struggle to be realistic may perhaps have forgotten, or even, it may be, have never tried to learn.'

'Calais Pier,' says Thornbury, was the cause 'of one of themost painful things 'that ever happened to any of Turner's engravers. Lupton undertook to make a mezzotint of it, but he could not satisfy the artist.' This is not the proportion of my picture,' said Turner, 'there is some mistake here. These are perfect dolls' boats,' and so on. After much loss of time and innumerable corrections, it was left unfinished. Ruskin says that Turner got tired of his own composition; doubled the height of the sails, pushed some of the boats further apart, and some nearer together; introduced half a dozen more; and at last brought the whole thing into irreparable confusion—in which it was left.

We shall never know to what degree Turner's pictures have blackened. Burnet says that when the 'Festival upon the Opening of the Vintage of Macon' was first painted, it was full of vivid greens and yellows. This blackening of pictures should be an anxiety to all serious painters. Ruskin really did a great service to Turner, perhaps even greater than the publication ofModern Painters, when he rolled up the 'unfinished' oils and water-colours and deposited them in the cellars of the National Gallery. Our new joy in Turner, the rush of admiration and veneration that came when those golden visions were exhibited in 1906, could never have been had not they been protected from the light for so many years: then, suddenly, to reveal their splendour.

1804-1810

1804: AGED TWENTY-NINE

Throughout his life Turner produced, apart from the water-colours for the engravers, which number nearly nine hundred examples, two kinds of work—the pictures done for fame, and those for his own delight—a 'Calais Pier,' and a 'Stonehenge at Sunset': a 'Jason' and a 'Norham Castle.' It is hard to believe that the broad and simple water-colour, 'Stonehenge at Sunset,' with the magnificent sky, was done about the same time as the 'Calais Pier,' but it was 'Calais Pier' that made Turner known to the public.

Henceforth he was rarely in want of commissions from influential patrons, including the Earls of Egremont, Essex, Lonsdale and Yarborough, Sir John Leicester, Sir John Soane and others. He did not always sell his oil pictures; indeed, as the years went on they remained in increasing numbers on his hands; but that was partly his own desire. Turner was always loath to part with his 'children.' The bulk of his fortune was made out of the engravings.

Yes, Turner was now a successful man, but he was still, as always, a student. The Sketch-Books, as I have said, reveal him better than reams of commentary. Take, for example, the 'Eclipse' Sketch-Book of 1804, showing how he worked and how he strove to understand phenomena, even if the wonders studied did not apply actually to the work at hand. The 'Eclipse' Sketch-Book is brief. Here are the descriptions of the six 'Eclipse' drawings he made in black and white chalk:—'

Commencement of Eclipse.More than half of sun eclipsed.Sun nearly three-quarters eclipsed.Sun nearly lost among clouds.Three-quarters of sun in eclipse.Landscape with clouds, no sun.'

I shall always retain that mental picture of Turner alone, somewhere, studying an eclipse; and also the picture of him, alone, at Stonehenge, studying that solitude, and making of it a water-colour that prefigured the freedom and sensitiveness of his later work. I see it now, the brown, simple foreground, the ancient stones erected to record the appearances of the sun, rising gauntly in the middle distance, and half the drawing tingling with a sunset sky. Was there ever a painter so obsessed by sunsets? But towards the end of his life it was sunrises—always sunrises.

Moonlights, sunsets, sunrises! In them Turner sought light and found hope.

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