“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-rate ability; 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.”
“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-rate ability; 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.”
Again in 1796, the “Companion to the Exhibition,” with regard to his first sea-piece contains this paradoxical sentence, attempting to express his peculiar power of giving a distinct impression of ill-defined objects, which was apparently evident even in this early work.
“Colouring natural, figures masterly, not too distinct—obscure perception of the objects distinctly seen—through the obscurity of the night—partially illumined.”
“Colouring natural, figures masterly, not too distinct—obscure perception of the objects distinctly seen—through the obscurity of the night—partially illumined.”
Again in 1797, we have this testimony as to the extraordinary (for that time) character of his work, from an entry in the diary of Thomas Greene, of Ipswich, about theFishermenof 1797.
“June 2, 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.”
“June 2, 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.”
Here, then, before Turner’s visit to Yorkshire, we have evidence that not only was the superiority of his work apparent, but that one or two of the special qualities which were to mark it in the future were already perceived, and publicly praised.
After looking carefully at all the ascertainable facts of Turner’s youth, we can only come to the conclusion that it was not the fault of nature or mankind that he grew into a solitary and disappointed man.
Secretiveness on his own part and want of trust in his fellow-creatures seem to have been bred in him, and to have resisted all the many proofs which the friends of his youth, and we may say of his life, afforded, that there were kind and unselfish persons in the world whom he could trust, and who would trust him. There is no proof that he ever had confidential relations with any human being, not even Girtin. That he should have willingly cut himself adrift from human fellowship we are loath to believe, in spite of the many facts which seem to support it. It seems more natural, and on the whole (sad as even this is) more pleasant, to believe that he met with a severe blow to his confidence; that, though naturally suspicious, the many kindnesses he received were not without a gracious effect, but that his budding trust was killed by a sudden unexpected frost. For these reasons we are inclined to believe in the story of his early love; although it, as told by Mr. Thornbury, is not without inconsistencies.
Turner is said to have plighted vows with the sister of his school friend at Margate; he left on a tour, giving her his portrait, the letters between them were intercepted, and after waiting two years she accepted another. When he reappeared she was on the eve of her marriage, and thinking her honour involved, refused to return to her old love.
Such in short is the story which we wish to believe, and as it came to Mr. Thornbury from one who heard it from relatives of the lady, to whom she told it, there is probably some truth in it. It is, however, almost impossible to believe that Turner, whose tours never extended to two years, and whose power of locomotion was extraordinary, should allow that time to elapse without going to see onewhom he really loved. If he did not get any letters he would have been desperate; if he did get letters they would have shown him that she had not received his, which would have made him, if possible, more desperate still. As the name of the lady is not given, it is next to impossible to find out the truth. Our faith, however, as a balance of probability, still remains that Turner was jilted, and that the effect of it was to confirm for ever his want of confidence in his fellow-creatures.
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FHE the facts of the foregoing chapter it may be fairly presumed that although Turner’s election as Associate in 1799 followed quickly after his fine display of pictures from the northern counties in 1798, he was before this a marked man, whose superiority over all then living landscape painters was visible to critics and lovers of art, and could not have been disguised from the eyes of the artists of the Royal Academy. It did not require a genius like that of Turner to distance competitors on the Academy walls in those days. England was almost at its lowest point both in literature and art. The great men of the earlier part of the eighteenth century, Pope, Thomson, Gray, Collins, Swift, Fielding, Sterne and Richardson, had long been dead, and of the later brilliant, but small circle of artists and men of letters of which Dr. Johnson was the centre (Goldsmith and Burke, Garrick and Reynolds, Hume and Gibbon), Reynolds only was left, and he was moribund. Of other artists with any title to fame there was none left but De Loutherbourg and Morland; Hogarth had died in 1764, Wilson in 1782, Gainsborough in 1788. The new generation ofmen of genius were born; some were growing up, some in their cradles. A few had already shown signs. Wordsworth and Coleridge had just put forth their “Lyrical Ballads” at Bristol, Burns was famous in Scotland, Charles Lamb had written “Rosamund Gray,” but Scott the “Great Unknown,” was as yet “unknown” only, though five years older than Turner; Byron had not gone to Harrow, and the united ages of Keats and Shelley did not amount to ten years; the only living poets of deserved repute were Cowper and Crabbe. Della Crusca in poetry, and West in art, were the bright particular stars of this gloomy period. The landscape painters who were Academicians were such men as Sir William Beechey, Sir Francis Bourgeois, Garvey, Farington, and Paul Sandby, and among the Associates, Turner had no more important rival than Philip Reinagle. Girtin and De Loutherbourg alone of all the then exhibitors were anything like a match for him, and Girtin spoilt (till 1801) any chance he might otherwise have had of Academic honours by not exhibiting pictures in oil; he died in 1802, leaving Turner undisputed master of the field. It is not greatly therefore to be wondered at that Turner was elected Associate in 1799, and a full Academician in 1802. It was, however, much to the credit of the Academy that they recognized his talent so soon and welcomed him as an honour to their body, instead of keeping him out from jealous motives. Turner never forgot what he owed to the Academy, and whether it taught him nothing, as Mr. Ruskin says, or a great deal, as Mr. Hamerton thinks, does not much matter—it taught him all it knew, and gave him ungrudgingly every honour in its gift. But its claims on his gratitude did not stop here, for it was his school in more than one branch of learning; fromits catalogues he derived the subjects of most of his pictures, they directed him to the poems which set flame to his imagination, and helped (unfortunately), with their queer spelling and grammar and truncated quotations, to form what literary style he had; but the greatest boon which the Academy afforded was the opportunity of fame, a field for that ambition which was one of the ruling powers of his nature.
But his tour in the North in 1797 was before his days of Academic rivalries and glories. He was only two-and-twenty, and seems to have been actuated by no motive but to paint as well and truly as he could the beautiful scenery through which he passed. The effect upon him 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. Mr. Ruskin writes more eloquently than truly about this first visit. “For the first time the silence of nature around him, her freedom sealed to him, her glory opened to him. Peace at last, and freedom at last, and loveliness at last; it is here then, among the deserted vales—not among men; those pale, poverty-struck, or cruel faces—that multitudinous marred humanity—are not the only things which God has made.” These are fine words, but what a picture, if true! Can this young man who has travelled through all these many counties in England and Wales, which we have already enumerated, never have known the “silence of nature,” or “freedom,” or “peace,” or “loveliness?” Can his experience of mankind, of Dr. Monro, of Girtin, of Mr. Hardwick, of Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Mr. Henderson, have left upon him such an impression of the failure of God’s handiwork in making men, that a mountain seems to him in comparison as a revelation of unexpected success? If Turner had been cooped in a garret of the foulest alley in London since his birth, and had only escaped now and then from the hardest drudgery to read the works of Mr. Carlyle, this picture might be near the truth, but we doubt even then if it could escape the charge of being over-coloured.
Whether Turner had any special object in this journey to the North in 1797 is not clear, but it is at least probable that Girtin’s success at the Exhibition of this year with his drawings from Yorkshire and Scotland may have influenced him, and that he may have already received a commission from Dr. Whitaker to make drawings for the “Parish of Whalley,” published three years afterwards. He must at all events have had much leisure from other employment in order to produce the important pictures in oil and water-colour which he exhibited the next year. Of these we only knowMorning on the Coniston FellsandButtermere Lake, now in the National Gallery. Another, whether water or oils we do not know, wasNorham Castle on the Tweed—Summer’s Morn, the first of several pictures of the same subject, which was a favourite of his for a good reason. Many years after (probably about 1824 or 1825), when making sketches for “Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland, with descriptive illustrations by Sir Walter Scott, 1826,” he took off his hat to Norham Castle, and Cadell the publisher, who was with him, expressed surprise. “Oh,” was the reply, “I made a drawing or painting of Norham several years since. It took; and from that day to this I have had as much to do as my hands could execute.” If the Castle was treated in the same way in this first as in the subsequent pictures of Norham,with the hill and ruin in the middle distance set against a brightly illumined sky, the effect was sufficiently new and striking to make the reputation of any painter in those days. It was an effect which as far as we know had never been attempted before, this casting of the whole shadow of hill and castle straight at the spectator, so that, in spite of the bright reflections in the watery foreground, he seems to be within it, and to see through the soft shadowy air, the solemn bulk of mound and ruin, with their outlines blurred with light, grand and indistinct against the burning sky.
NORHAM CASTLE, ON THE TWEED.NORHAM CASTLE, ON THE TWEED.
The pictures of 1797-99 confirmed beyond any doubt that a great artist had arisen, who was not only a painter but a poet—a poet, not so much of the pathos of ruin, though so many of his pictures had ruins in them, nor of the chequered fate of mankind, though there is something of the “Fallacies of Hope” indicated in the quotations to his pictures—as of the mystery and beauty of light, of the power of nature, her inexhaustible variety and energy, her infinite complexity and fulness. No one can look upon his splendid drawing ofWarkworth Castle, exhibited in 1799, and now at South Kensington, with its rich glow of sunset and transparent shadow, and its wonderful masses of clouds, without feeling that such work as this was a revelation in those days. Sparing and not very pleasant in colour, it is yet in this respect a great advance upon the former work of others and of his own; such colour as there is penetrates the shade and is complete in harmony and tone, while the sky has no blank space and is part of the picture, the vivifying uniting power of the composition, with more interest and feeling in one roll of its truly-studied masses of cloud-form than could be found in the whole of any sky of his contemporaries.
Altogether it is difficult to over-estimate the influence of this first journey to the North upon Turner’s mind and art, although he had almost perfected his skill and shown unmistakable signs of genius before. But these tours had other gifts not less important, though in a different way, for his introductions to Dr. Whitaker, the local historian, to Mr. Basire, the engraver, to Mr. Fawkes of Farnley, to Lord Harewood, and to Sir John Leicester (afterwards (1826) Lord de Tabley), through Mr. Lister-Parker of Browsholme Hall, his guardian, may all be said to have resulted from this tour.
Dr. Whitaker was the vicar of the parish of Whalley, and was writing a book upon it in the manner of those days, giving descriptions of the local antiquities, the churches, the ruins, the crosses, and an account of the county families, with their pedigrees and engravings of their ancestral seats. Not only each county, but almost every parish had such a historian in those days, and although the spirit of these works is archaeological rather than artistic, engaged with genealogy rather than history, and with pride of family and county rather than of the people and nation, they did a great deal of valuable work. Dr. Whitaker’s work is no exception to this rule, and he was in many ways a typical writer of the kind, for he himself, though he “chose” the Church as his profession, was a man of property and county importance. Valuable as artists were in those days to the writers of these works, they were yet considered of very secondary rank. They were indeed not called “artists” but “draftsmen,” and notwithstanding that Dr. Whitaker recognized Turner’s genius, he did not think it necessary in this “Parish of Whalley” to mention in the preface the existence of sucha person, although the names of all the gentlemen of the county who had furnished him with drawings or information are carefully acknowledged therein; but nothing will show better the relations between the two men than an extract from a letter from the reverend bookmaker to one of his county friends, Mr. Wilson, of Clitheroe, dated Feb. 8th, 1800.
“I have just had a ludicrous dispute to settle between Mr. Townley” (Charles Townley, Esq. of Townley), “myself and Turner, the draftsman. Mr. Townley it seems has found out an old and very bad painting of Gawthorpe at Mr. Shuttleworth’s house in London, as it stood in the last century, with all its contemporary accompaniments of clipped yews, parterres, &c.: this he insisted would be more characteristic than Turner’s own sketch, which he desired him to lay aside, and copy the other. Turner, abhorring the landscape and contemning the execution of it, refused to comply, and wrote to me very tragically on the subject. Next arrived a letter from Mr. Townley, recommending it to me to allow Turner to take his own way, but while he wrote, his mind (which is not unfrequent) veered about, and he concluded with desiring me to urge Turner to the performance of his requisition, as from myself. I have, however, attempted something of a compromise, which I fear will not succeed, as Turner has all the irritability of youthful genius.”[19]
“I have just had a ludicrous dispute to settle between Mr. Townley” (Charles Townley, Esq. of Townley), “myself and Turner, the draftsman. Mr. Townley it seems has found out an old and very bad painting of Gawthorpe at Mr. Shuttleworth’s house in London, as it stood in the last century, with all its contemporary accompaniments of clipped yews, parterres, &c.: this he insisted would be more characteristic than Turner’s own sketch, which he desired him to lay aside, and copy the other. Turner, abhorring the landscape and contemning the execution of it, refused to comply, and wrote to me very tragically on the subject. Next arrived a letter from Mr. Townley, recommending it to me to allow Turner to take his own way, but while he wrote, his mind (which is not unfrequent) veered about, and he concluded with desiring me to urge Turner to the performance of his requisition, as from myself. I have, however, attempted something of a compromise, which I fear will not succeed, as Turner has all the irritability of youthful genius.”[19]
The “compromise” was handing over the task of drawing from the objectionable picture to Mr. J. Basire the engraver.
We should like to see Turner’s “tragical” letter, and also his rejected drawing; we should also like to have seen Dr. Whitaker’s face if he had been told that not many years after a book would have been published of drawings by Turner, the draftsman, with “descriptions by the Rev. Dr. Whitaker.”
Of Mr. Fawkes, of whose hall at Farnley Turner madea drawing for the “Parish of Whalley,” but with whom he is said by Thornbury to have become acquainted about 1802, it may be said that he was one of Turner’s longest and staunchest friends. The number of drawings (still at Farnley) which he made when visiting Mr. Fawkes between 1803 and 1820 (including as they do studies of birds shot while he was there, of the outhouses, porches, and gateways on the property, of the old places in the vicinity, and of the rooms in Farnley Hall) attest the frequency of his visits and his affection for the place and its occupants, while the splendid series of drawings in England, Switzerland, Italy, and on the Rhine, and the few precious oil pictures purchased by Mr. Fawkes, show him to have been not only a true friend, but a warm and sympathizing admirer of his genius. He indeed was a friend such as few are permitted to know—one of a goodly number who in Turner’s youth and manhood should have made the world to him specially pleasant and sociable, frank and healthy. If he could not or would not have it so, it was not from insensibility, for his feeling was deep and his heart was sound. “He could not make up his mind to visit Farnley after his old friend’s death,” and he could not speak of the shore of the Wharfe (on which Farnley Hall looks down) “but his voice faltered.” Dayes wrote of him in 1804, “This man must be loved for his works, for his person is not striking, nor his conversation brilliant.” At Farnley, as at Mr. Wells’ cottage, Turner was made at home, but that he did not escape good-humoured ridicule even at Farnley is plain from a caricature by Mr. Fawkes,“which is thought by old friends to be very like. It shows us a little Jewish-nosed man in an ill-cut brown tail coat, striped waistcoat, and enormous frilled shirt, with feet and hands notably small, sketching on a small piece of paper, held down almost level with his waist.”[20]It is evident that at this time, in spite of his clear little blue eyes, and his small hands and feet, his appearance was not one likely to prepossess women, or to inspire consideration among men, and that one of the ills from which his painting room afforded a refuge may have often been a wounded vanity. There can be nothing more constantly galling to a sensitive man of genius than to feel that his appearance does not inspire the respect he feels due to him. If he has eloquence sufficient to command attention, this will not matter so much; but if he has not even that (and Turner had not), his natural refuge is solitude, his one absorbing occupation is his art, his only worldly ambition is to show what is in him, and to compel respect to his genius through his works.
From the time that Turner became an Associate his struggles, if he can ever be said to have had any, were over, and many changes took place in his life and art. He ceased almost entirely from making topographical drawings for the engravers, limiting his efforts to a heading to the “Oxford Almanack,” and a few drawings for “Britannia Depicta,” “Mawman’s Tour,” and some other books, until the commencement of the “Southern Coast” in 1814. He had in effect emancipated himself from “hackwork,” and could turn his attention to more congenial and ambitious labour. The “draftsman” had become the artist, and he showed the improvement in his position by moving from Hand Court, Maiden Lane, to 64, Harley Street.
In future his exhibited pictures show very few“castles” or “abbeys,” unless they are the seats of his distinguished patrons, Mr. Beckford of Fonthill (for whom in 1799 he painted several views of that ill-fated tower, which might have formed a subject for a canto of Turner’s “Fallacies of Hope”), Sir J. L. Leicester, and others. His other castles, Carnarvon, 1800, Pembroke, 1801 and 1806, St. Donat’s, 1801, and Kilchurn, 1802, were all probably compositions in which local fidelity was cared for little in comparison with effects of light and pictorial beauty. How completely he disregarded local fact in the case of Kilchurn has been very completely shown by Mr. Hamerton, and Mr. Ruskin says, “Observe generally, Turner never, after this time, 1800, drew from nature withoutcomposing. His lightest pencil sketch was the plan of a picture, his completest study on the spot a part of one.”
Of this period, 1800-1810, Mr. Ruskin says, “His manner is stern, reserved, quiet, grave in colour, forceful in hand. His mind tranquil; fixed in physical study, on mountain subject; in moral study, on the Mythology of Homer, and the Law of the Old Testament.” We wish he had given his reasons for this last astonishing statement. For those who only know the working of Turner’s mind through his pictures, it is bewildering in the extreme, for in these there is no trace that he ever at any time studied the Law of the Old Testament, and the only classical pictures of this period, including the plates in the “Liber,” wereJasonandNarcissus and Echo. If we include the pictures of 1811, we get one Homeric subject,Chryses, but that has nothing to do with mythology.
The evidence of Turner’s pictures shows little tranquillity of mind during this period, but, on the contrary, all the restlessness of unsatisfied ambition. As he had already pittedhimself against, and beaten all the water-colourists, he now commenced a course of rivalry against all the oil painters past and present, who came anywhere within the reach of his art, which he endeavoured to extend far beyond landscape limits.
His first tilt was probably against De Loutherbourg in 1799 with hisBattle of the Nile, at ten o’clock, when the l’Orient blew up, from the station of the gunboats between the battery and Castle of Aboukir; and hisFifth Plague of Egypt(1800), hisArmy of the Medes destroyed in the Desert by a Whirlwind, andThe Tenth plague of Ægypt(1802), probably owed more to De Loutherbourg’s grand but theatrical pictures andEidophusicon, than to any meditation on the “Law of the Old Testament.”[21]Of Wilson, though dead, and neglected even when alive, he continued in active rivalry as late as 1822, when he proposed to Mr. J. Robinson, of the firm of Hurst and Robinson, to have four of his pictures (three of which were to be painted expressly for the venture) engraved in rivalry with Wilson and Woollett. “Whether we can in the present day,” he writes,“contend with such powerful antagonists as Wilson and Woollett would be at least tried by size, security against risk, and some remuneration for the time of painting. The pictures of ultimate sale I shall be content with; to succeed would perhaps form another epoch in the English school; and if we fall, we fall by contending with giant strength.” It is difficult to make out the meaning of even this short extract from this illiterate composition, but it is quite plain that the open rivalry with Wilson, which commenced about 1800, had not ceased in 1822.
But he did not confine his rivalries to English painters, or to the field of landscape art. His long rivalry with Claude commenced with the “Liber Studiorum” in 1807, that with Vandevelde earlier. His famousShipwreck(painted 1805) now in the National Gallery, his perhaps finerWreck of the Minotaur, painted for Lord Yarborough, and hisFishing Boats in a Squall, painted for the Marquis of Stafford, and now in the Ellesmere Gallery, besides a fine sea-piece, painted for the Earl of Egremont, are examples of the latter. The Ellesmere picture was painted in direct rivalry with one of Vandevelde’s on the same subject, and both hang together in the Ellesmere Gallery. Of them John Burnet wrote:—
“The figures (in the Vandevelde) are made out and coloured without reference to the situation they are in; the sea is beautifully painted, and the foamy tops of the waves blown off by the wind with great observation of nature; nevertheless, the whole work looks little and defined compared with its great competitor. Turner’s boat is advancing towards the spectator with all sails set, and a similarity in both pictures is that the sails are prevented from being too cutting and harsh from their melting into and being softened by other sails of a similar shape and colour. A small boat is brought in contact in Turner’s, stowing away fish, which forms the principal light, if it may be so called, for there is no strong light in the picture; the lights are of a subdued grey tone even in the yeasty waves; the shape of the mass of light on the water is broad, and of a beautiful form; in Vandervelde’s (sic) picture it is spotty and devoid of union with the vessel. In Turner we see an obscure outlined form in everything, for though the warm tints of the masses of clouds serve to break down and diffuse the colour of the sails, their form is disturbed by the handling of his brush. In comparing the two pictures as works of art, Vandervelde’s must have the preference as far as priority of composition is concerned; but Turner has had the boldness to tell the same story, clothing it with all the grandeur and sublimity of natural representation. The light and shade is very excellent; the mass of dark sky, brought in contact with the sail of the advancing boat, is broad in the extreme.”
“The figures (in the Vandevelde) are made out and coloured without reference to the situation they are in; the sea is beautifully painted, and the foamy tops of the waves blown off by the wind with great observation of nature; nevertheless, the whole work looks little and defined compared with its great competitor. Turner’s boat is advancing towards the spectator with all sails set, and a similarity in both pictures is that the sails are prevented from being too cutting and harsh from their melting into and being softened by other sails of a similar shape and colour. A small boat is brought in contact in Turner’s, stowing away fish, which forms the principal light, if it may be so called, for there is no strong light in the picture; the lights are of a subdued grey tone even in the yeasty waves; the shape of the mass of light on the water is broad, and of a beautiful form; in Vandervelde’s (sic) picture it is spotty and devoid of union with the vessel. In Turner we see an obscure outlined form in everything, for though the warm tints of the masses of clouds serve to break down and diffuse the colour of the sails, their form is disturbed by the handling of his brush. In comparing the two pictures as works of art, Vandervelde’s must have the preference as far as priority of composition is concerned; but Turner has had the boldness to tell the same story, clothing it with all the grandeur and sublimity of natural representation. The light and shade is very excellent; the mass of dark sky, brought in contact with the sail of the advancing boat, is broad in the extreme.”
THE SHIPWRECK.THE SHIPWRECK.
Of his other rivalries at this period, those with the Poussins and Titian are the most notable. The one produced the famous, and, in spite of its poorness of colour and conventionality, the magnificent,Goddess of Discord choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of Hesperides, exhibited at the British Institution in 1806, and now in the National Gallery; the other, theVenus and Adonis, still more wonderful by reason of the beauty of its colour, its composition, and the audacity of the attempt. This was bought by Mr. Munro of Novar, and was lately sold at Christie’s, on the dispersion of the Novar collection, for £1,942. It is, as far as we know, the only picture in which he attempted with success to draw the human form on a large scale, and is certainly one of the best efforts of the English school to rival the “old masters;” the figures, the dogs, and the glorious vine-clad bower in which they are set are all worthy of the subject, and make a picture which reminds one of Titian, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Etty in about equal proportions.
It is strange that the great sea-pieces we have mentioned were not exhibited (except perhaps that at Petworth), but the occupation of his time by these magnificent works of emulation accounts for his doing so little for the engravers in these years, for they were all probably, except theWreck of the Minotaur, painted before 1807, when he turned his attention to his greatest, and perhaps most successful work of the kind, the “Liber Studiorum.” And here we may remark, that emulation with Turner, thoughit may have been a mark of jealousy, was always a token of respect. Feelings crossed each other in Turner’s mind as colours did in his works; it is often difficult to know whether his feeling is to be called noble or base, and the same complexity may be noticed in his “artistic” motives. When imitating other masters he brought his knowledge of nature to bear strongly on his work to make it more natural; when painting a natural scene, he employed all his traditional study to make it more “artistic.”
By this time, however, he had learnt nearly all that was to be learnt from art, ancient or modern, in the landscape way, but it was different with nature. That was a book which he could not exhaust, though he was never tired of turning over fresh pages. It was almost his only book, and he began a new chapter about 1801 or 1802, when he made his first tour on the Continent. Previous to this he must have paid a visit to Scotland, for the Exhibition of 1802 contained three Scotch views, one of which was theKilchurnalready mentioned. In 1803 he exhibited no less than six foreign subjects, of which one was theCalais Pier, now in the National Gallery, another theFestival upon the opening of the Vintage of Macon, in the possession of Lord Yarborough; the others wereBonneville, Savoy, with Mont Blanc;Chateaux de Michael, Bonneville, Savoy;St. Hugh denouncing vengeance on the Shepherd of Courmayeur in the Valley of d’Aoust; andGlacier and Source of the Arvèron going up to the Mer de Glace, in the Valley of the Chamouni.[22]After this burst of foreign subjects he did not exhibit another scene from abroad for twelve years, except theFall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen(1806), and content this time withsimpler, safer, English, aView of the Castle of St. Michael, near Bonneville, Savoy(1812). During the next few years the most important picture, and one of the most beautiful he ever painted, was the famousSun Rising through vapour: Fishermen cleaning and selling Fish, exchanged with Sir J. F. Leicester forThe Shipwreck, and now in the National Gallery, together withThe ShipwreckandSpithead: Boat’s Crew recovering an Anchor, another fine picture of the Vandevelde class.
In all these years, during which he kept up this constant rivalry with so many artists, living and dead—and we have not exhausted the list of them—he was continuing his unresting severe study of nature. For many more years this was to continue, this double artistic life, the strife for fame by grand pictures, of which emulation was the motive, the patient development of his knowledge and power by the close study of nature. Few who watched his pictures from year to year could have guessed what a store of beautiful studies of the Alps, about Chamouni, Grenoble, and the Grande Chartreuse he had lying in his portfolios; few could imagine that with materials for landscapes of a truthfulness and an original power never before known, he should prefer to paint pictures in rivalry with the fames of dead men. Possibly he thought that it was the nearest way to fame to show the public that he could beat Vandevelde, Poussin, and the rest of them on their own ground; possibly he may have been diffident of his power to dispense with their aid in composition. However this may have been, he chose to ground his fame so. Even in his “Liber,” he in three years gave only three foreign subjects out of twenty plates:Basle,Mount St. Gothard, and theLake of Thun.
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IHE 1807 Turner commenced his most serious rivalry, “The Liber Studiorum,” a rivalry which not only exceeded in force but differed in quality from his others. Previously he had pitted his skill only against that of the artist rivalled, adopting the style of his rival, but in these engravings he pitted not only his skill, but also his style and range of art against Claude’s. There are indeed only a few of the “Liber” prints which are in Claude’s style, and most of the best are in his own. Lovely as areWoman Playing Tambourine, andHindoo Devotions, they seem to us far lower in value thanMount St. GothardandHind Head Hill. There is the usual mixture of feeling in the motives with which Turner undertook this work, the same dependence on others for the starting impulse which we see throughout his art-life, the same originality, industry, and confusion of thought in carrying out his design. The idea of the “Liber” did not originate with him, but with his friend Mr. W. F. Wells. The idea was noble in so far as it attempted to extend the bounds of landscape art beyond previous limits, to break down the Claude worship which blinded the eyes of the public to the merit that existed in contemporary work, and prevented them, and artists also, from looking to nature as the source of landscape art.
It is scarcely too much to say that in those days Claude stood between nature and the artist, and that he was as much the standard of landscape art as Pheidias of sculpture. To try to clear away this barrier of progress, as Hogarth had striven years before to abolish the “black masters,” was no ignoble effort, and it was done in a nobler spirit than that of Hogarth, for he did not attempt to depreciate his rival. Yet the nobility of the attempt was not unmixed, for if he did not disparage Claude, he attempted to make himself famous at Claude’s expense. He did not indeed say, as Hogarth would have done, “Claude is bad, I am good;” but he said, “Claude is good, but I am better.” His own experience even from very early days should have told him that, despite the cant of connoisseurs and the strength of old traditions, no purely original work of his had passed unnoticed, and that the truest and noblest way of educating the public taste was by following the bent of his original genius, and leaving the public to draw their own comparisons.
THE DEVIL’S BRIDGE. From the “Liber Studiorum.”THE DEVIL’S BRIDGE.From the “Liber Studiorum.”
Mr. Wells’s daughter states that not only did the “Liber Studiorum” entirely owe its existence to her father’s persuasion, but the divisions into “Pastoral,” “Elegant Pastoral,” “Marine,” &c., were also suggested by him. Turner determined to print and publish and sell the “Liber” himself, but to employ an engraver. His first choice fell on “Mr. F. C. Lewis, the best aquatint engraver of the day, who at the very time was at work on facsimiles of Claude’s drawings.”[23]With him he soon quarrelled. The terms were, that Turner was to etch and Lewis to aquatint at five guineas a plate. The first plate,Bridge and Goats, wasfinished and accepted by Turner, though not published till April, 1812; but the second plate Turner gave Lewis the option of etching as well as aquatinting, and he etched it accordingly, and sent a proof to Turner, raising his charge from five guineas to eight, in consideration of the extra work. Turner praised it, but declined to have the plate engraved, on the ground that Lewis had raised his charges. This ended Mr. Lewis’s connection with the “Liber,” and Turner next employed Mr. Charles Turner, the mezzotint engraver, but he had to pay him eight guineas a plate. Charles Turner agreed to engrave fifty plates at this price, but after he had finished twenty, he wished to raise his charge to ten guineas, which led to a quarrel. With reference to these quarrels of Turner with his engravers, Mr. Thornbury says, “The painter who had never had quarter given to him when he was struggling, now in his turn, I grieve to say, gave no quarter,” and “inflexibly exacting as he was, Turner could not understand how an engraver who had contracted to do fifty engravings should try to get off his bargain at the twenty-first.” This, like most of Thornbury’s statements, is utterly untrustworthy. There is no evidence to show that a hard bargain was ever driven with him when he was struggling, there is no word of any dispute with engravers till he began to employ them himself, and as to his “not being able to understand” how any man should endeavour to obtain more than the price contracted for, it was exactly what he tried to do himself, when afterwards employed by Cooke.
THE ALPS AT DAYBREAK. From Rogers’s “Poems.”THE ALPS AT DAYBREAK.From Rogers’s “Poems.”
The fact is that in all business arrangements Turner’s worse nature, the mean, grasping spirit of the little tradesman, was brought into prominence. In the case of Lewis he was evidently in the wrong, in the case of Charles Turnerhe was only hard; but in all business transactions he was as a rule ungenerous, and sometimes dishonest. His action towards the public with regard to the “Liber” can be called by no other name. His prices at first were fifteen shillings for prints, and twenty-five shillings for proofs. When the plates got worn (and mezzotint plates are subject to rapid deterioration in the light parts), Turner used to alter them, sometimes changing the effect greatly, as in theMer de Glace, where he transformed the smooth, snow-covered glacier into spiky ridges of ice, or in theÆsacusandHesperie, where the effect of sunbeams through the wood was effaced, and the direction in which the head of Hesperie was looking was changed, and the face afterwards concealed. The changes were not always for the worse; the very wear of the plate in some cases, as in that of theCalm, improved the effect, and what we have called his confusion of thought, and what Thornbury has called his “distorted logic,” may have led him to believe that he was not wrong in selling as he did these worn and altered plates as proofs. A kind casuistry may lend us a word less disagreeable than dishonest to such transactions, but when we know that he habitually from the first made no distinction between proofs and prints—that he sold the same things under different names at different prices—every plea breaks down, and we are forced to the conclusion that when he thought he could cheat safely “the pack of geese,”[24]as he thought the public, he did so.
Nor can we acquit Turner of unfairness in issuing the“Liber Studiorum” in competition with the French painter’s “Liber Veritatis,” a book well-known to the public and to him, as the third edition of its plates, engraved by Earlom, was just issued, when the “Liber Studiorum” was begun. He must have known what the public did not probably know—that Claude’s rough sketches were mere memoranda of the effects of his pictures taken by him to identify them, and never meant for publication; whereas his were carefully-finished compositions, into which he threw his whole power. Not only was the publication unfair as regards Claude, but it was misleading to the public as regards himself. The title, “Liber Studiorum,” applies only to some of the prints. A few of the poorer plates, especially the architectural ones, and such simple designs as theHedging and Ditching, might properly perhaps have been called studies, but even upon these he bestowed a care and a finish that would entitle them to be called pictures, monochrome as they are.
The want of a well-considered plan, and the capricious way in which they were published, contributed to the ill-success of the work; and though we are accustomed to look upon its failure as a severe judgment on the taste of the time, we are not at all sure that it would have succeeded if published in the present day, unless Mr. Ruskin had written the advertisement.
“The meaning of the entire book,” according to that eloquent writer,“was symbolized in the frontispiece,[25]which he engraved with his own hand:[26]Tyre at Sunset, with the Rape of Europa, indicating the symbolism of the decay of Europe by that of Tyre, its beauty passing away into terror and judgment (Europa being the Mother of Minos and Rhadamanthus).”
“The meaning of the entire book,” according to that eloquent writer,“was symbolized in the frontispiece,[25]which he engraved with his own hand:[26]Tyre at Sunset, with the Rape of Europa, indicating the symbolism of the decay of Europe by that of Tyre, its beauty passing away into terror and judgment (Europa being the Mother of Minos and Rhadamanthus).”
Turner’s advertisement thus describes the intention of the work:—
“Intended as an illustration of Landscape Composition, classed as follows: Historical, Mountainous, Pastoral, Marine, and Architectural.”
“Intended as an illustration of Landscape Composition, classed as follows: Historical, Mountainous, Pastoral, Marine, and Architectural.”
We think Turner’s description the more correct, and that the intention of his frontispiece was to give all the “classes” in one composition, and we are extremely doubtful whether Turner knew or cared anything about either Minos or Rhadamanthus.
The most obvious intention of the work was to show his own power, and there never was, and perhaps never will be again, such an exhibition of genius in the same direction. No rhetoric can say for it as much as it says for itself in those ninety plates, twenty of which were never published. If he did not exhaust art or nature, he may be fairly said to have exhausted all that was then known of landscape art, and to have gone further than any one else in the interpretation of nature. Notwithstanding, the merit of the plates is very unequal, some, asSolway Mossand theLittle Devil’s Bridge, being more valuable as works of art than many of his large pictures; others, especially the architectural subjects, theInterior of a Church, andPembury Mill, being almost devoid of interest. As to any one thought running through the series, we can see none, except desire to show the whole range of his power; and as to sentiment, it seems to us to be thoroughly impersonal, impartial, and artistic. He turns on the pastoral or historical stop as easily as if he were playing the organ, and his only concern with his figures is that they shallperform their parts adequately, which is as much as some of them do.
We have spoken of the book as an attack on Claude, and of the “intention” of the work, but we are not sure that we are not using too definite ideas to express the variety of impulses in Turner’s mind that tended to the commencement of the “Liber.” We have seen that the first notion of it, and its divisions, were suggested by Mr. Wells, and the plates are nothing more nor less than a selection from his sketches and pictures, arranged under these heads. His early topographical drawings and studies in England provided him with the architectural and pastoral subjects, his studies of Claude and the Poussins and Wilson, with the elegant pastoral, Vandevelde and nature with the marine, and his one or two visits to the Continent with the mountainous. The frontispiece, the first attempt to give a coherent signification to the whole, was not published till 1812, and it was not till 1816 that the advertisement to which we have called attention appeared when, after four years’ intermission, the issue of the “Liber” was recommenced; even then it is only described as “an illustration of Landscape Composition;” and it is quite probable that the desire to make money, to display his art, to rival Claude, and to educate the public, contributed to the production of the work, without any very vivid consciousness on his part as to his motives of action. It has, like all Turner’s work, the characteristics of a gradual growth rather than of the carrying out of a well-defined conception.
FALLS IN VALOMBRÉ. From Rogers’s “Jacqueline.”FALLS IN VALOMBRÉ.From Rogers’s “Jacqueline.”
There is one way in which the title of the book may be considered as appropriate, and that is to take “studia” to mean “studies,” in the usual general sense of the word, for it is an index to his whole course of study (including booksand excepting colour), down to the time of its publication. With the exception of his Venetian pictures and his later extravagances, it may be said to be an epitome of his art without colour. Poets and painters may change their style, and may develop their powers in after-life in an unexpected manner; but after the age at which Turner had arrived when he commenced to publish the “Liber,” viz., thirty-two, there are few, if any, mental germs which have not at least sprouted. Turner, though he never left off acquiring knowledge, or developing his style, is no exception to this rule, and this makes the “Liber” valuable, not only as a collection of works of art, but as a nearly complete summary of the great artist’s work and mind. Amongst his more obvious claims to the first place among landscape artists, are his power of rendering atmospherical effects, and the structure and growth of things. He not only knew how a tree looked, but he showed how it grew. Others may have drawn foliage with more habitual fidelity, but none ever drew trunks and branches with such knowledge of their inner life; if you look at the trunks in the drawing ofHornby Castlefor instance (which we mention because it is easily seen at the South Kensington Museum), and compare them with any others in the same room, the superior indication of texture of bark, of truly varied swelling, of consistency, and all essential differences between living wood and other things, cannot fail to be apparent to the least observant. Although the trees of the “Liber” are not of equal merit (Mr. Ruskin says the firs are not good), this quality may be observed in many of the plates. Others have drawn the appearance of clouds, but Turner knew how they formed. Others have drawn rocks, but he could give their structure, consistency, and quality ofsurface, with a few deft lines and a wash; others could hide things in a mist, but he could reveal things through mist. Others could make something like a rainbow, but he, almost alone, and without colour, could show it standing out, a bow of light arrested by vapour in mid-air, not flat upon a mountain, or printed on a cloud. If all his power over atmospheric effects and all his knowledge of structure are not contained in the “Liber,” there is sufficient proof of them scattered through its plates to do as much justice to them as black and white will allow. If we want to know the result of his studies of architecture we see it here also, little knowledge or care of buildings for their own sakes, but perfect sense of their value pictorially for breaking of lights and casting of shadows; for contrast with the undefined beauty of natural forms, and for masses in composition; for the sentiment that ruins lend, and for the names which they give to pictures. If we seek the books from which his imagination took fire, we have the Bible and Ovid, the first of small, the latter of great and almost solitary power. Jason daring the huge glittering serpent, Syrinx fleeing from Pan, Cephalus and Procris, Æsacus and Hesperie, Glaucus and Scylla, Narcissus and Echo; if we want to know the artists he most admired and imitated, or the places to which he had been, we shall find easily nearly all the former, and sufficient of the latter to show the wide range of his travel. In a word, one who has carefully studied the “Liber” had indeed little to learn of the range and power of Turner’s art and mind, except his colour and his fatalism.
The first quotation from the “Fallacies of Hope,” nevertheless, was published in the catalogue of 1812, as the motto of his picture ofSnowstorm—Hannibal and his ArmyCrossing the Alps, and it is probable that the ill-success of the “Liber” contributed not a little to the gloomy habit of mind which breathes through the fragments of this unfinished composition. These were the lines appended to that grand picture:—