The Project Gutenberg eBook ofTurner's Golden Visions

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofTurner's Golden VisionsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Turner's Golden VisionsAuthor: C. Lewis HindRelease date: April 5, 2018 [eBook #56923]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues, Clare Graham and MarcD'Hooghe at Free Literature (Images generously madeavailable by the Internet Archive.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURNER'S GOLDEN VISIONS ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Turner's Golden VisionsAuthor: C. Lewis HindRelease date: April 5, 2018 [eBook #56923]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues, Clare Graham and MarcD'Hooghe at Free Literature (Images generously madeavailable by the Internet Archive.)

Title: Turner's Golden Visions

Author: C. Lewis Hind

Release date: April 5, 2018 [eBook #56923]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues, Clare Graham and MarcD'Hooghe at Free Literature (Images generously madeavailable by the Internet Archive.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TURNER'S GOLDEN VISIONS ***

Plate I.Frontispiece Norham Castle—Sunrise(about1885) Tate Gallery

'Turner has some golden visions, glorious and beautiful. They are only visions, but still, they are art, and one could live and die with such pictures.'—John Constableon the 1828 Royal Academy Exhibition.

In writing on Turner one must necessarily make levies on the works of other authors. I give hearty acknowledgment to Mr. A. J. Finberg'sInventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest(printed for His Majesty's Stationery Office), which he himself has used with skill and accomplishment in hisTurner's Sketches and Drawings(Methuen & Co.). Among the other books consulted and quoted from areTurner, by Sir Walter Armstrong (Agnew & Sons);Turner, by W. L. Wyllie, A.R.A. (G. Bell & Sons);The Turner Drawings, by E. T. Cook (Pall Mall Press);The Engraved Work of Turner, andTurner's 'Liber Studiorum', by W. G. Rawlinson; the delightful Extra Numbers ofThe Studioon Turner, and the excellent little book by the late Cosmo Monkhouse. Ruskin, of course, is frequently referred to and quoted, also the inaccurate but indispensable Thornbury, whoseLife of Turnerall succeeding writers on Turner have borrowed from and upbraided.

C.L.H.

PART ONE

A MEMORY: TELLS OF A BOY WHO LOVED TURNER'S

'VIEW OF ORVIETO'

I. The Boy and golden Orvieto3

II. The Boy wonders at Turner's Art Life7

III. The Boy wonders at Turner the Dumb Poet11

IV. The Boy, having become a Man, wonders at theInventory of the Turner Bequest Drawings17

PART TWO (1775-1803)

FROM 'FOLLY BRIDGE' TO 'CALAIS PIER'

V. 1775. Birthplace and Parents23

VI. 1790 (aged 15). He exhibits at the Royal Academy, and is described as a light-hearted, merry creature27

VII. 1795 (aged 20). The Drawings of 'the ingenius Mr. Turner' are stated by a newspaper of the day to be 'tinctured with truth and fidelity'34

VIII. 1800 (aged 25). His first Oil Pictures, and Extracts from his Sketch-Books39

IX. 1802 (aged 27). He exhibits grandiloquent 'Jason' and a simple 'View on Clapham Common'46

X. 1803 (aged 28). The Year of 'Calais Pier'51

PART THREE (1804-1810)

FROM 'THE SHIPWRECK' TO AN EARLY GOLDEN VISION

XI. 1804 (aged 29). He studies an Eclipse and paints the Sunset57

XII. 1805 (aged 30). He paints 'The Shipwreck' for Fame, and begins a series of 'Delight Studies' for Love59

XIII. 1806 (aged 31). The chaos of the 'Hesperides' and the peace of 'Abingdon'62

XIV. 1807 (aged 32). He begins theLiber Studiorum, and exhibits 'The Sun Rising through Vapour'65

XV. 1808 (aged 33). He writes P.P. after his name and paints in a Garden at Hammersmith72

XVI. 1809 (aged 34). He exhibits the glowing 'River Scene with Cattle' and refuses to sell 'Bligh Sand'78

XVII. 1810 (aged 35). A Quiet Year and an early Golden Vision82

PART FOUR (1811-1820)

FROM A JOURNEY TO DEVONSHIRE TO HIS RETURN FROM ITALY

XVIII. 1811 (aged 36). 'Apollo Killing the Python,' and a Picnic87

XIX. 1812 (aged 37). He exhibits 'Hannibal Crossing the Alps,' suggested by a Snowstorm he had seen at Farnley92

XX. 1813 (aged 38). Hoar Frost at Sunrise that has Vanished from 'A Frosty Morning'97

XXI. 1814 (aged 39). He paints more Classical Pictures, turns Author, and is happy at Sandycombe100

XXII. 1815 (aged 40). 'A wonderful year,' and a Turnerian Love-Letter104

XXIII. 1816 (aged 41). Skies! Skies! Skies!107

XXIV. 1817 (aged 42). He sells fifty Water-Colours to Mr. Fawkes of Farnley Hall108

XXV. 1818 (aged 43). 'The Abbotsford Turners' and an auction price of a Turner Water-Colour112

XXVI. 1819 (aged 44). Turner's First Visit to Italy, and an Exhibition in Grosvenor Place114

XXVII. 1820 (aged 45). Return from Italy. He begins to sight his Mystical Visions118

PART FIVE (1821-1829)

FROM 'THE BAY OF BAIÆ' TO 'ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS'

XXVIII. 1822 (aged 47). He throws off another 'Norham Castle,' and prepares to startle the world with 'The Bay of Baiæ'123

XXIX. 1823 (aged 48). 'The Bay of Baiæ': A Critic is critical and a Painter is enthusiastic125

XXX. 1824 (aged 49). A Glance at some ofThe Rivers of EnglandandHarhours of EnglandWater-Colours130

XXXI. 1825 (aged 50). A somewhat barren year, commented on in a bitter lament by Ruskin135

XXXII. 1826 (aged 51). Another unimportant year, in which he leaves Twickenham137

XXXIII. 1827 (aged 52). He paints the Sea in the open, and some Thames-side Pictures140

XXXIV. 1828 (aged 53). The Year when Constable described Turner's Visions as 'Golden, Glorious, and Beautiful'147

XXXV. 1829 (aged 54). The Year of 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus'151

PART SIX (1830-1834)

FROM THE 'INTERIOR AT PETWORTH' TO THE PERIOD OF THE 'UNFINISHED' OILS

XXXVI. 1830 (aged 55). He paints the 'Interior at Petworth,' and mourns the death of his Father, and of Sir Thomas Lawrence157

XXXVII. 1831 (aged 56). He turns his 'magic limelight' on 'Caligula's Palace and Bridge,' visits Sir Walter Scott, and makes his Will164

XXXVIII. 1832 (aged 57). He paints 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,' and is jocular on Varnishing Day167

XXXIX. 1833 (aged 58). He paints his first 'Venice' picture, and repurchases some of his own Drawings at Auction169

XL. 1834 (aged 59). Some old Stories and some Ageless Colour Studies172

PART SEVEN (1835-1845)

FROM A CONSIDERATION OF THE 'UNFINISHED' OILS TO 'RAIN, STEAM, AND SPEED,' AND THE LAST SKETCH-BOOKS

XLI. 1835 (aged 60). Some remarks on the 'Unfinished' Oils andBlackwood'sattack on his 'Venice' picture of this year179

XLII. 1836 (aged 61). The Reception of 'Juliet and Her Nurse' proclaims that Turner is beginning to lose Favour with the Public186

XLIII. 1837 (aged 62). 'Troubles begin to gather about him. Nothing will go right'188

XLIV. 1838 (aged 63). A 'Nonsense Picture' of 1838 which in 1878 fetched £5460 at auction190

XLV. 1839 (aged 64). 'The Fighting Téméraire' and a Sea-Piece on a Visiting-Card192

XLVI. 1840 (aged 65). A contrast between the terrific 'Slave Ship' and the mild 'New Moon'197

XLVII. 1841 (aged 66). How Turner 'did it.' He 'grasped the handle and plunged the whole drawing into a pail of water'200

XLVIII. 1842 (aged 67). 'The Snowstorm and some 'Faultless' Water-Colours202

XLIX. 1843 (aged 68). Visions of Venice, and the First Volume ofModern Painters207

L. 1844 (aged 69). He exhibits 'Rain, Steam, and Speed,' and twice tries to cross the Alps on foot213

LI. 1845 (aged 70). Pictures of Whalers, and an Entry on the last page of his last Sketch-Book218

PART EIGHT (1846-1851)

THE YEARS OF DECLINE AND THE END

LII. 1846 (aged 71). The Beginning of Turner's Decline, and a 'Grey, dim Drawing'225

LIII. 1847, 1848, 1849 (aged 72 to 74). He disappears from his old Haunts, and is interested in Optics and Photography230

LIV. 1850 (aged 75). His last four pictures painted in hiding at Chelsea236

LV. 1851 (aged 76). The Mystery of the Last Years of his Life revealed to his Friends, and his Death240

PART NINE

AFTER TURNER'S DEATH TO THE OPENING OF THE TURNER GALLERY IN 1910

LVI. Vicissitudes of the Turner Bequest251

LVII. 1906. Exhibition of the 'Unfinished' Turners at the Tate Gallery259

LVIII. 1908. Fifty-two more 'Unexhibited' Turners shown at the National Gallery263

LIX. 1910. The New 'Turner Gallery' at Millbank271

LX. Turner at the National Gallery—and Claude: A Last Look280

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE1. 'NORHAM CASTLE, SUNRISE' (about 1835)frontispiece2. 'VIEW OF ORVIETO' (1830). NATIONAL GALLERYII3. 'LUCERNE AND THE RIGHI: EARLY DAWN' (about 1842). Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq. 10III4. 'YACHT RACING IN THE SOLENT'—No. 2 (1827). TATE GALLERYIV5. 'BARNARD CASTLE' (about 1827). Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.V6. 'DERWENTWATER WITH THE FALLS OF LADORE' (about 1797). Water-Colour. TATE GALLERYVI7. 'STUDY FOR A PICTURE OF NORHAM CASTLE' (about 1799). Water-Colour. TATE GALLERYVII8. 'STONEHENGE: SUNSET' (about 1804) Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.VIII9. 'THE SUN RISING THROUGH VAPOUR (1807). NATIONAL GALLERYIX10. 'THE DEATH OF NELSON' (1808). TATE GALLERYX11. 'RIVER SCENE WITH CATTLE' (1809). TATE GALLERYXI12. 'A MOUNTAIN STREAM' (about 1810). TATE GALLERYXII13. 'SCARBOROUGH' (1811). Water-Colour. TATE GALLERYXIII14. 'SKETCH OF COCHEM ON THE MOSELLE' (about 1831). Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.XIV15. 'CHURCH OF SS. GIOVANNI E PAOLO' (1819). Water-Colour. TATE GALLERYXV16. 'THE BAY OFBAIÆ'(1823). TATE GALLERYXVI17. 'VIEW ON THE MOSELLE' (about 1834). Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.XVII18. 'YACHT RACING IN THE SOLENT'—No. 1 (1827). TATE GALLERYXVIII19. 'SHIPPING AT COWES'—No. 1 (1827). TATE GALLERYXIX20. 'BETWEEN DECKS' (1827). TATE GALLERYXX21. 'SKETCH OF AN ITALIAN TOWN' (about 1828). Water Colour. VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUMXXI22. 'ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS' (1829). TATE GALLERYXXII23. 'THE EVENING STAR' (1829 or after) TATE GALLERYXXIII24. 'INTERIOR AT PETWORTH' (1830)XXIV25. 'THE OLD CHAIN PIER, BRIGHTON' (1830). TATE GALLERYXXV26. 'ROCKY BAY WITH CLASSIC FIGURES' (1829 or after). TATE GALLERYXXVI27. 'SUNRISE, WITH A BOAT BETWEEN HEADLANDS' (about 1835). TATE GALLERYXXVII28. 'HASTINGS'(about 1835). TATE GALLERYXXVIII29. 'THE SALUTE' (1838). Water-Colour. TATE GALLERYXXIX30. 'ANCIENT ROME, AGRIPPINA LANDING WITH THE ASHES OF GERMANICUS' (1839). NATIONAL GALLERYXXX31. 'THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, ROME' (1840). TATE GALLERYXXXI32. 'LAKE OF LUCERNE, FROM FLUELEN' (1840 or after). Water Colour. TATE GALLERYXXXII33. 'THE SNOWSTORM' (1842). TATE GALLERYXXXIII34. 'PEACE. BURIAL AT SEA OF THE BODY OF SIR DAVID WILKIE' (1842). TATE GALLERYXXXIV35. 'SAN BENEDETTO, LOOKING TOWARDS FUSINA' (1843). NATIONAL GALLERYXXXV36. 'THE SEELISBERG, MOONLIGHT' (about 1843). Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.XXXVI37. 'RAIN, STEAM, AND SPEED' (1844). TATE GALLERYXXXVII38. 'SUNRISE, WITH A SEA MONSTER' (about 1845). TATE GALLERYXXXVIII39. 'TELL'S CHAPEL, FLUELEN' (1845). Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.XXXIX40. 'QUEEN MAB'S GROTTO' (1846). NATIONAL GALLERYXL41. 'LAKE WITH DISTANT HEADLAND AND PALACES' (1840 or after). Water-Colour. TATE GALLERYXLI42. 'LAKE OF BRIENZ' (about 1843). Water-Colour. VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUMXLII43. 'IN THE VALE D'AOSTA, A PASSING SHOWER' (about 1839). Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.XLIII44. 'SPIETZ ON THE LAKE OF THUN, LOOKING TOWARDS THE BERNESE-OBERLAND' (1842). Water-Colour. W. G. RAWLINSON, Esq.XLIV45. 'BRIDGE AND TOWER' (about 1835). TATE GALLERYXLV46. 'SUNRISE, A CASTLE ON A BAY' (1829 or after). TATE GALLERYXLVI47. 'THE BURNING OF THE SHIPS' (1840 or after). TATE GALLERYXLVII48. 'VENETIAN FISHING-BOAT'(1839). Water-Colour. TATE GALLERYXLVIII49. 'A SHIP AGROUND' (1830). TATE GALLERYXLIX50. 'THE "SUN OF VENICE" GOING TO SEA' (1843). NATIONAL GALLERYL

There was a boy who grew up in the seventies of last century when the name of Turner aroused no particular interest or emotion: he was a classic, and he was treated with the incurious veneration that is given to classics. Turner was among the gods, and if a descent to the ground-floor of the National Gallery, where a selection of his water-colours was shown, did startle the wayfarer into amazement at the lyrical loveliness of those visions, compared with the sombre and heavy magnificence of most of the oil pictures, well, they were by Turner, and Turner being a classic, was not a subject for debate. He was with the masters—fit and few—a classic.

I think no one dreamed of the extraordinary revival of interest in Turner and increasing admiration for his genius that was to mark the twentieth century, when the 'unfinished oils' were exhibited, and later when the Turner Gallery at Millbank was opened.

The boy who grew up in the seventies, and to whom, in the first idealism of youth, Turner seemed almost superhuman, has closely followed the public manifestations of interest in the flame and fame of Turner; and now that he is about to write a book on the man of whom M. de la Sizeranne wrote:—'All the torches whichhave shed a flood of new light on Art, that of Delacroix in 1825, those of the Impressionists in 1870, have in turn been lit at his flame,'—he likes to return in memory to those days in the seventies when Turner first became wonderful, something not quite to be explained, in his life.

The boy was taken periodically, for education and pleasure, to the National Gallery, and as he was led through the various rooms astonishment passed into bewilderment. The mixed art of the world was far too complex for the boy's unfolded mind. The clash of personalities, the astonishing divergencies of the various schools of painting confused and distracted him, and only when he entered the Turner room (now dismantled), and was told, what he had already dimly divined, that the pictures crowded on those four walls were all by one man, did he find rest for his soul. He did not appreciate all the Turners, but he grasped their coherency, and realised what he was told, that they expressed the growth of one mind groping from darkness to light. Yet it seemed strange to the boy that he who painted the dark and material 'Calais Pier' should also have painted the gorgeous fairy tale called 'Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus'; that the calm and contemplative 'Crossing the Brook' should have proceeded from the same brain and hand that willed that wonder of wonders 'Rain, Steam and Speed,' or the fading loveliness of the picture that was then called the 'Approach to Venice.' The boy was not old enough to understand the interest and importance of studying a painter'swork chronologically, which would have made it plain to him why a man could paint the 'Calais Pier' at twenty-eight, 'Rain, Steam and Speed,' at sixty-nine, and the sunlight dreams between whiles, in moments of rapturous vision. These problems did not trouble the boy. He was too young to analyse his impressions, and they were all forgotten when he was shown the small picture called 'View of Orvieto.' That remained to him all through boyhood, and through manhood also, essential Turner, essential Italy, a dream Italy, but more real than the reality.

Yet 'Orvieto' painted in Rome in 1829, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1830, when the artist was fifty-five, is not one of his great works. And it is not a view of Orvieto, that is, a correct view. Turner was an interpreter of the soul of what he saw, not a reporter of topographical, historical or architectural accuracy. The golden valley bathed in sunlight, the city on the hill swooning in golden mist, and the magical fading away of the uplands into infinity, that is what the boy cared about. All that is pure Turner, the idealist, the visionary, the lover of light and colour and distances and the enchantments of nature. Turner too, but dual-natured Turner, is the inept foreground, a mere contrivance to throw the middle distance back; things pressed into his service that happened to come to hand, the litter of properties, the 'drawing-master tree,' the uncouth figures, the unsubstantial fountain.

Years later the boy visited Orvieto and found the city far less beautiful than Turner's dream. But by that time he had learntthat the true artist is not a copyist of nature, that he states his vision, the effect not the fact. This 'View of Orvieto' remained enshrined in his heart. To him as a boy it was Italy, and Italy never really meant anything else to his young intelligence, just Turner's vision of Orvieto, a golden town on a golden hill under a summer sky; a place where the sun always shines and where there are little white roads leading he cared not whither, because they all led to somewhere in Italy. This is the joy of the artist, a joy that often he never hears of. This is his joy—to touch a young heart to ecstasy, ay! even by a second-rate picture, and to keep in that young heart a vision that the world and time can never destroy, and that a visit to the place cannot dispel. To that boy Turner's 'Orvieto' meant Italy: since he has become a man he has wandered through Italy again and again from end to end, but even now if he wishes to recall Italy, to be kindled by the thought of that word meaning so much to Englishmen, he still turns to Turner's picture. For him it cannot fade: it cannot change.

Plate II.View of Orvieto(1830) National Gallery

From 'Orvieto' as a starting-point, the boy, who is now a man, proceeded in time to explore the art life of Turner, dwelling oftenest on his golden visions, in which this persistent man, eloquent nowhere but in his art, truly found himself. They were the goals of his pilgrimage, but few appreciated them. Among the few was honest, plain-spoken John Constable, who said of Turner's contributions to the Royal Academy of 1828, which were so unlike his own practical art: 'Turner has some golden visions, glorious and beautiful. They are only visions, but still, they are art, and one could live and die with such pictures.' Yet in that year the tale of Turner's golden visions had hardly begun to be told. He was to go on simplifying and simplifying, until modelling became subordinated to colour, and the forms and shapes of things became lost in the effulgence of light.

Was there ever such a life of industrious and progressive work? It began when he was a mere boy, in the dark court off Maiden Lane near the Strand; the long, laborious, loving effort ended only with the end, that furtive, fugitive end when, tired of man and his ways, the old, self-sufficient painterdisappeared from his haunts and his friends, and under the assumed name of Mr. Booth, the sun his master, the river his companion, met death in a little balconied house overlooking the Thames at Chelsea.

Work, work, work—absorbing, concentrated work—that was his life. This 'short, stout man with a red face and covetous eyes,' was hardly what the world calls a fine character, although there are on record many instances of his generosity and kindness, he was as secretive about his work as about his life. The door of his studio, whether in Queen Anne Street or on the hills was, metaphorically, always locked.

When the boy, who loved the view of 'Orvieto' more than any picture he had ever seen, began to study Turner's art life he amused and confused himself by dividing it, as all his biographers have done, into periods. These he simplified into two broad divisions, first when this ever-ambitious painter pitted himself against his predecessors and contemporaries, and later when, entirely disregarding the works of man, he faced Nature, and challenged nothing less than the source of all light and colour—the sun.

Turner's art life shows no sudden rush of genius. Step by step he climbed, and had he died in 1802, at the age of twenty-seven, when Girtin, his friend and fellow-student, died, we should have had the record of a youth of great promise, but whose performances were no more wonderful, if as wonderful, as Girtin's. From the period of Training he passed to the period of Rivalry. Of themany painters he strove to outsoar there was none so worthy his challenge as Claude Lorrain, and to this day, in accordance with a condition of Turner's will, two of his pictures hang in the National Gallery side by side with two of Claude's, challenging the Lorrainer from beyond the grave. The challenger has his desire, but Claude is not conquered. The great Englishman does not dethrone the great Frenchman on his own ground. Claude is unrivalled in the balance of his classical pictures, and in their cool and temperate colour. The real Turner, the Turner who challenged the sun, had not yet found himself. In his periods of Power and Splendour, between the ages, say, of forty-five and sixty-five, dominated by such masterpieces as the 'Ulysses' and the 'Fighting Téméraire,' Turner disregarded all other painters. And while he was producing epics this prodigal artist was also throwing off lyrics—the impulsive water-colours, and those 'unfinished oils,' destined, when reclaimed and shown in 1906, to raise the art of Turner to the empyrean of landscape art. They were works of pleasure, easy evocations of his genius, done quickly and gladly, thrown aside, never exhibited.

Of all the periods of his art life there is none to be compared with the period contained in the few glorious years when he was past sixty and drawing near to his seventieth year, the period when light in all its manifestations obsessed him, when he produced the 'Norham Castle, Sunrise,' the 'Hastings' with the red sail, the later 'Venice' pictures, and the later water-colours, so delicate, so flushedwith sunshine that the world of sight seems to be swimming in iridescent vapour. Finally, there is the period of decline, but what a decline, that could evoke such a magnificent madness as 'Queen Mab's Grotto,' and such tumbling splendours as the four classical pictures he exhibited the year before he died!

The boy who loved 'Orvieto' despaired of ever being able to write adequately about Turner, so enormous, so diversified, was his achievement. Sometimes he thought he would like to consider nothing but the 'Orvieto,' the 'Rain, Steam and Speed,' the 'Sunrise' pictures and the 'Evening Star'; and among the water-colours a certain dream of blue loveliness called 'Lucerne' and the red 'Righi,' and perhaps the six small pictures, phantom ships and fairy skies, that he bequeathed to Mrs. Booth, and perhaps the four impressions in one frame, sensations they might be called, of Petworth at evening, mere sunset visions, but such visions.

What was the nature of the man who controlled these wonders? The boy read Thornbury's very interesting and very unreliableLife, he read Monkhouse and others, and as he read there rose before him a picture of the dual Turner, the great artist and the crafty tradesman. A little sadly he set himself to understand something of Turner the Man.

Plate III.Lucerne and the Righi—Early Dawn. Water colour (about1842) In the collection of W. G. Rawlinson, Esq. (Size, 12 x 9 1/2)

In thinking over Turner the Man, whom Thornbury called the Dumb Poet, again 'Orvieto' rose before the boy. The twin parts of that picture, the earthly foreground and the heavenly distances, continued to symbolise the dual parts of Turner's nature, as indeed the natures of all of us.

The first book that the boy read about Turner was perhaps the wisest and the most sympathetic of all his biographies, that by the late Cosmo Monkhouse. On page 3 he found two quotations; one astonished, the other shocked him. They neither astonish nor shock him now because he is much older, and he knows that if one passage is exaggerated so is the other. He knows that Turner was neither saint nor sinner, but a queer-tempered man, with bursts of humour and geniality, and a thirst for knowledge; a man of genius with a dwarfed nature, uneducated, who in art moved easily among great things, and who, try as he would, and he did try, could hardly touch the hem of the garment of great things outside his art; who loved his work before anything in the world, who was not cultured, and whose manners were neither pretty nor engaging, who cared nothing for social conventions, but who went his own rough way, preferring Wapping and the sailors and the river, and rumand brown sherry, to the conventional delights and the fine feeding of Belgravia. Here are the two passages. The first is from Ruskin'sModern Painters, published in 1843, magnificent rhetoric, magical, and meaning very little:—

'Glorious in conception—unfathomable in knowledge—solitary in power—with the elements waiting upon his will, and the night and morning obedient to his call, sent as a prophet of God to reveal to men the mysteries of the universe, standing, like the great angel of the Apocalypse, clothed with a cloud, and with a rainbow upon his head, and with the sun and stars given into his hand.'

The second is from Thornbury'sLife of Turner, published in 1862. There is no confirmation of Thornbury's suggestion that Turner ever 'wallowed' at Wapping:—

'Towards the end of his career he would often, I am assured on the best authority, paint hard all the week till Saturday night; and he would then put by his work, slip a five-pound note into his pocket, button it securely up there, and set off to some low sailor's house in Wapping or Rotherhithe, to wallow till Monday morning summoned him to mope through another week.'

The boy who was shocked at that extract from Thornbury'sLife, following so closely upon Ruskin's eulogy, found consolation in an understanding passage written by Cosmo Monkhouse. It seemed to explain Turner.

'He lived in two worlds—one the pictorial sight-world, in which he was a profound scholar and a poet, the other the articulate, moral, social word-world, in which he was a dunce and underbred. In the one he was great and happy, in the other he was small and miserable; for what philosophy he had was fatalist. The riddle of life was too hard for his uncultivated intellect and starved heart to contemplate with any hope; he was only at rest in his dreamland.'

His dreamland served him to the end, to that day in 1851, when the old war-man, warring always for the beautiful, having lost the cunning of his hand, but not the vision of his eyes, died gazing on the river, his old companion, whom he had loved always.

Gradually, the boy who grew up in the seventies, and who knew golden 'Orvieto' by heart, began to form a mental picture of the man Turner, gathered from the pictures and caricatures of him, and the innumerable stories, some untrue, many exaggerated, that have collected about the hairdresser's son who became the world's greatest landscape painter.

His friend and patron, Mr. Fawkes of Farnley, made a caricature of Turner which shows him as a little man, 'in an ill-cut brown tail coat, striped waistcoat and enormous frilled shirt, the feet and hands notably small, sketching on a small piece of paper, held down almost level with his waist.' Yes, Turner was an odd man, odd in looks, rough in manner. When he had passed middle age the world meant very little to him. He cared for nobody: hewas hardly interested in Ruskin's magical extravagance of eulogy. 'My own admiration,' said Ruskin, 'was wild enthusiasm, but it gave him no ray of pleasure. He loved me, but cared nothing for what I said.' About the time that Ruskin was lecturing the world for not admiring Turner, and lashing himself into ecstasy over his idol, the idol was seen on board the old Margate steamer, studying sky and water, and eating his lunch of shrimps out of a huge red handkerchief laid across his knees.

Turner lived outside the world—in his dreamland. When the buoyancy of youth had passed; when 'dad' was dead, he grew more morose, more untidy and more exclusive, but his dream did not change. No! it became more mystical, more subtle, more unrealisable to his ageing eyes. Was he not in dreamland on that Varnishing Day of the Royal Academy of 1846 when George Parrott made a humorous sketch of him. There were four varnishing days in those halcyon times, and it was Turner's habit to send in his pictures merely laid in with white and grey, and to finish them on the walls. We see him in Parrott's Varnishing Day sketch at the age of seventy-one, a short, thick-set, clumsy figure, with ruffled silk hat upon his head and gingham propped against a chair—painting on a large picture, engrossed, oblivious of everything happening around. 'I am told,' says Scarlett Davies, 'it was good fun to see the great man whacking away with about fifty stupid apes standing round him, peeping into his colour-box and examining all his brushes and colours.'

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