“In 1832, when Constable exhibited hisOpening of Waterloo Bridge,[39]it was placed in the School of Painting—one of the small rooms at Somerset House. A sea piece,[40]by Turner, was next to it—a grey picture, beautiful and true, but with no positive colour in any part of it—Constable’sWaterlooseemed as if painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times into the room while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the decorations and flags of the City barges. Turner stood behind him, looking from theWaterlooto his own picture, and at last brought his palette from the great room, where he was touching another picture, and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey sea, went away without saying a word. The intensity of the red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of the picture, caused even the vermilion and lake of Constable to look weak. I came into the room just as Turner left it. ‘He has been here,’ said Constable, ‘and fired a gun.’”On the opposite wall was a picture, by Jones, of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace.[41]“A coal,” said Cooper, “has bounced across the room from Jones’s picture, and set fire to Turner’s sea.” The great man did not come into the room for a day and a half; and then in the last moments that were allowed for painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his picture, and shaped it into a buoy.”[42]
“In 1832, when Constable exhibited hisOpening of Waterloo Bridge,[39]it was placed in the School of Painting—one of the small rooms at Somerset House. A sea piece,[40]by Turner, was next to it—a grey picture, beautiful and true, but with no positive colour in any part of it—Constable’sWaterlooseemed as if painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times into the room while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the decorations and flags of the City barges. Turner stood behind him, looking from theWaterlooto his own picture, and at last brought his palette from the great room, where he was touching another picture, and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey sea, went away without saying a word. The intensity of the red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of the picture, caused even the vermilion and lake of Constable to look weak. I came into the room just as Turner left it. ‘He has been here,’ said Constable, ‘and fired a gun.’”
On the opposite wall was a picture, by Jones, of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace.[41]“A coal,” said Cooper, “has bounced across the room from Jones’s picture, and set fire to Turner’s sea.” The great man did not come into the room for a day and a half; and then in the last moments that were allowed for painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his picture, and shaped it into a buoy.”[42]
This daub of red lead was rather defensive than offensive, and there is no story of Turner which shows any malice in his nature. To his brother artists he was always friendly and just; he never spoke in their disparagement, and often helped young artists with a kind word or a practical suggestion. Even Constable—betweenwhom and Turner not much love was lost, according to Thornbury—he helped on one occasion by striking in a ripple in the foreground of his picture—the “something” just wanted to make the composition satisfactory. We think, then, that we may enjoy the beautiful story of self-sacrifice for Lawrence’s sake, without any disagreeable reflection that it is spoilt by others showing a contrary spirit towards his brother artists.
The year 1826 was his last at Sandycombe. As he had taken it for the sake of his father, so he gave it up, for “Dad” was always working in the garden and catching cold. He took this step much to his own sorrow, we believe, and much to our and his loss. Without the pleasant and wholesome neighbourhood of the Trimmers, with no home but the gloomy, dirty, disreputable Queen Anne Street, he became more solitary, more self-absorbed, or absorbed in his art (much the same thing with him), and lived only to follow unrestrained wherever his wayward genius led him, and to amass money for which he could find no use. How he still loved to grasp it, however, and how unscrupulous he was in doing so, is painfully shown in his dispute with Cooke about this time (1827), which prevented a proposed continuation of the “Southern Coast.” Mr. Cooke’s letter relating to it, though long, is too important to omit, and, though it may be said to beex parte, carries sad conviction of its truth:—
“January 1, 1827.“DEARSIR,“I cannot help regretting that you persist in demanding twenty-five sets of India proofs before the letters of the continuation of the work of the ‘Coast,’ besides being paid for the drawings. It is like a film before your eyes, to prevent your obtaining upwards of two thousand pounds in a commission for drawings for that work.“Upon mature reflection you must see I have done all in my power to satisfy you of the total impossibility of acquiescing in such a demand; it would be unjust both to my subscribers and to myself.“The ‘Coast’ being my own original plan, which cost me some anxiety before I could bring it to maturity, and an immense expense before I applied to you, when I gave a commission for drawings to upwards of £400,at my own entire risk, in which the shareholders were not willing to take any part, I did all I could to persuade you to have one share, and which I did from a firm conviction that it would afford some remuneration for your exertions on the drawings, in addition to the amount of the contract. The share was, as it were, forced upon you by myself, with the best feelings in the world; and was, as you well know, repeatedly refused, under the idea that there was a possibility of losing money by it. You cannot deny the result: a constant dividend of profit has been made to you at various times, and will be so for some time to come.“On Saturday last, to my utter astonishment, you declared in my print-rooms, before three persons, who distinctly heard it, as follows: ‘I will have my terms, or I will oppose the work by doing another “Coast!”’ These were the words you used, and every one must allow them to be athreat.“And this morning (Monday), you show me a note of my own handwriting, with these words (or words to this immediate effect): ‘The drawings for the future “Coast” shall be paid twelve guineas and a half each.’“Now, in the name of common honesty, how can you apply the above note to any drawings for the first division of the work called the ‘Southern Coast,’ and tell me I owe you two guineas on each of those drawings? Did you not agree to make the whole of the ‘South Coast’ drawings at £7 10s.each? and did I not continue to pay you that sum for the first four numbers? When a meeting of the partners took place, to take into consideration the great exertions that myself and my brother had made on the plates, to testify their entire satisfaction, and considering the difficulties I had placed myself in by such an agreement as I had made (dictated by my enthusiasm for the welfare of a work which had been planned and executed with so much zeal, and of my being paid the small sum only of twenty-five guineas for each plate, including the loan of the drawings, for which I received no return or consideration whatever on the part of the shareholders), they unanimously (excepting on your part) and very liberally increased the price of each plate to £40; and I agreed, on my part, to pay you ten guineas for each drawing after the fourthnumber. And have I not kept this agreement? Yes; you have received from me, and from Messrs. Arch on my account, the whole sum so agreed upon, and for which you have given me and them receipts. The work has now been finished upwards of six months, when you show me a note of my own handwriting, and which was written to you in reply to a part of your letter, where you say, ‘Do you imagine I shall go to John O’Groat’s House for the same sum I receive for the Southern part?’ Is thisfairconduct between man and man—to apply the note (so explicit in itself) to the former work, and to endeavour to make me believe I still owe you two guineas and a-half on each drawing? Why, let me ask you, should I promise you such a sum? What possible motive could I have in heaping gold into your pockets, when you have always taken such especial care of your interests, even in the case ofNeptune’s Trident, which I can declare youpresentedto me; and, in the spirit ofthisunderstanding, I presented it again to Mrs. Cooke. You may recollect afterwards charging me two guineas for the loan of it, and requesting me at the same time to return it to you, which has been done.“The ungracious remarks I experienced this morning at your house, where I pointed out to you the meaning of my former note—that it referred to the future part of the work, and not to the ‘Southern Coast’—were such as to convince me that you maintain a mistaken and most unaccountable idea of profit and advantage in the new work of the ‘Coast,’ and that no estimate or calculation will convince you to the contrary.“Ask yourself if Hakewill’s ‘Italy,’ ‘Scottish Scenery,’ or ‘Yorkshire’ works have either of them succeeded in the return of the capital laid out on them.“These works have had in them as much of your individual talent as the ‘Southern Coast,’ being modelled on the principle of it; and although they have answered your purpose, by the commissions for drawings, yet there is considerable doubt remaining whether the shareholders and proprietors will ever be reinstated in the money laid out on them. So much for the profit of works. I assure you I must turn over an entirely new leaf to make them ever return their expenses.“To conclude, I regret exceedingly the time I have bestowed in endeavouring to convince you in a calm and patient manner of a number of calculations made foryoursatisfaction; and I have met in return such hostile treatment that I am positively disgusted at the mere thought of the trouble I have given myself on such a useless occasion.“I remain,“Your obedient servant,“W. B. COOKE.”
“January 1, 1827.
“DEARSIR,
“I cannot help regretting that you persist in demanding twenty-five sets of India proofs before the letters of the continuation of the work of the ‘Coast,’ besides being paid for the drawings. It is like a film before your eyes, to prevent your obtaining upwards of two thousand pounds in a commission for drawings for that work.
“Upon mature reflection you must see I have done all in my power to satisfy you of the total impossibility of acquiescing in such a demand; it would be unjust both to my subscribers and to myself.
“The ‘Coast’ being my own original plan, which cost me some anxiety before I could bring it to maturity, and an immense expense before I applied to you, when I gave a commission for drawings to upwards of £400,at my own entire risk, in which the shareholders were not willing to take any part, I did all I could to persuade you to have one share, and which I did from a firm conviction that it would afford some remuneration for your exertions on the drawings, in addition to the amount of the contract. The share was, as it were, forced upon you by myself, with the best feelings in the world; and was, as you well know, repeatedly refused, under the idea that there was a possibility of losing money by it. You cannot deny the result: a constant dividend of profit has been made to you at various times, and will be so for some time to come.
“On Saturday last, to my utter astonishment, you declared in my print-rooms, before three persons, who distinctly heard it, as follows: ‘I will have my terms, or I will oppose the work by doing another “Coast!”’ These were the words you used, and every one must allow them to be athreat.
“And this morning (Monday), you show me a note of my own handwriting, with these words (or words to this immediate effect): ‘The drawings for the future “Coast” shall be paid twelve guineas and a half each.’
“Now, in the name of common honesty, how can you apply the above note to any drawings for the first division of the work called the ‘Southern Coast,’ and tell me I owe you two guineas on each of those drawings? Did you not agree to make the whole of the ‘South Coast’ drawings at £7 10s.each? and did I not continue to pay you that sum for the first four numbers? When a meeting of the partners took place, to take into consideration the great exertions that myself and my brother had made on the plates, to testify their entire satisfaction, and considering the difficulties I had placed myself in by such an agreement as I had made (dictated by my enthusiasm for the welfare of a work which had been planned and executed with so much zeal, and of my being paid the small sum only of twenty-five guineas for each plate, including the loan of the drawings, for which I received no return or consideration whatever on the part of the shareholders), they unanimously (excepting on your part) and very liberally increased the price of each plate to £40; and I agreed, on my part, to pay you ten guineas for each drawing after the fourthnumber. And have I not kept this agreement? Yes; you have received from me, and from Messrs. Arch on my account, the whole sum so agreed upon, and for which you have given me and them receipts. The work has now been finished upwards of six months, when you show me a note of my own handwriting, and which was written to you in reply to a part of your letter, where you say, ‘Do you imagine I shall go to John O’Groat’s House for the same sum I receive for the Southern part?’ Is thisfairconduct between man and man—to apply the note (so explicit in itself) to the former work, and to endeavour to make me believe I still owe you two guineas and a-half on each drawing? Why, let me ask you, should I promise you such a sum? What possible motive could I have in heaping gold into your pockets, when you have always taken such especial care of your interests, even in the case ofNeptune’s Trident, which I can declare youpresentedto me; and, in the spirit ofthisunderstanding, I presented it again to Mrs. Cooke. You may recollect afterwards charging me two guineas for the loan of it, and requesting me at the same time to return it to you, which has been done.
“The ungracious remarks I experienced this morning at your house, where I pointed out to you the meaning of my former note—that it referred to the future part of the work, and not to the ‘Southern Coast’—were such as to convince me that you maintain a mistaken and most unaccountable idea of profit and advantage in the new work of the ‘Coast,’ and that no estimate or calculation will convince you to the contrary.
“Ask yourself if Hakewill’s ‘Italy,’ ‘Scottish Scenery,’ or ‘Yorkshire’ works have either of them succeeded in the return of the capital laid out on them.
“These works have had in them as much of your individual talent as the ‘Southern Coast,’ being modelled on the principle of it; and although they have answered your purpose, by the commissions for drawings, yet there is considerable doubt remaining whether the shareholders and proprietors will ever be reinstated in the money laid out on them. So much for the profit of works. I assure you I must turn over an entirely new leaf to make them ever return their expenses.
“To conclude, I regret exceedingly the time I have bestowed in endeavouring to convince you in a calm and patient manner of a number of calculations made foryoursatisfaction; and I have met in return such hostile treatment that I am positively disgusted at the mere thought of the trouble I have given myself on such a useless occasion.
“I remain,“Your obedient servant,“W. B. COOKE.”
When we realize that this was the same man that closed his connection with Mr. Lewis, because he would not both etch and aquatint the plates of the Liber for the same terms as those agreed upon for aquatinting alone, we are able to understand why he was characterized as a “great Jew,” in a letter of introduction, which he brought from a publisher in London to one in Yorkshire, when he went to that county to illustrate Dr. Whitaker’sHistory of Richmondshire. Mrs. Whitaker, who was his hostess at the time, hearing of this took the phrase literally, and, says Mr. Hamerton, “treated him as an Israelite indeed, possibly with reference to church attendance and the consumption of ham.”
In 1827 was published the first part of his largest series of prints, the “England and Wales,” which were engraved with matchless skill by that trained band of engravers who brought, with the artist’s assistance, the art of engraving landscapes in line to a point never before attained. The history of Turner and his engravers has yet to be fully written; the number of them from first to last is extraordinary, probably nearly one hundred. Of these, twenty, and nearly all the best, were employed on this work—Goodall, Wallis, Willmore, W. Miller, Brandard, Radcliffe, Jeavons, W. R. Smith, and others. Never before was so great an artist surrounded by such a skilled body of interpreters in black and white. The drawings were unequal in merit, but nearly all of them wonderful for power of colour and daring effect, with ever lessening regard for local accuracy. The artist threw aside all traditions and conventions, and proclaimed himself as “Turner,” the great composer of chromatic harmonies in forms of sea and sky, hills and plains, sunshine and storm, towns and shipping, castles and cathedrals. He could not do thiswithout sacrificing much of truth, and much of what was essential truth in a work whose aim was professedly topographical. Imaginative art of all kinds has a code analogous to, but not identical with, the moral code: beauty takes the seat of virtue and harmony of truth, and when the work is purely imaginative, there is no conflict between fancy and fact which can make the strictest shake his head. But when known facts are dealt with by the imagination, the conflict arises immediately, and it would scarcely be possible to find a case in which it was more obvious than in Turner’s “England and Wales,” in which he made the familiar scenes of his own country conform to the authoritative conception of his pictorial fancy. Whether he was right or wrong in raising the cliffs of England to Alpine dignity, in saturating her verdant fields with yellow sun, in exaggerating this, in ignoring that, has been argued often, and will be argued over and over again; but all art is a compromise, and the precise justice of the compromise will ever be a matter of opinion. Artv.Nature is a cause which will last longer than any Chancery suit. Even artists cannot agree as to the amount of licence which it is proper to take, but they are all conscious that they at least keep on the right side; one thing only, all, or nearly all, are agreed upon, and that is that licence must be taken, or art becomes handicraft. About Turner almost the only thing which can be said with certainty is that he stretched his liberty to the extreme limits.
Yet to the pictorial code of morals he was the most faithful of artists, he almost always reached beauty, his harmonies were almost always perfect, and he strove after his own peculiar generalization of fact, and his own peculiar extract of truth with the greatest ardour. This extractwas his impression of a place, made up generally (at least in his foreign scenes) of two or three sketches taken from different points of view, and he was very careful to study not only the principal features of the country, but the costume and employment of the inhabitants, and the description of local vehicle, on wheels or keel. From these studies would arise the conception of one scene, combining all that his mind retained as essential—a growth which, however false it might appear when compared with the actual facts of the place from one point of view, contained nothing but what had a germ of truth, and of local truth. That this applies to all his drawings we do not say, but we are confident that it does to most. Many of his drawings for the “England and Wales” were probably taken from sketches that had lain in his portfolios for years, and were dressed up by him when wanted, with such accessories of storm and rainbow as occurred to his fancy, or to his memory and feelings as connected with the spot. There is, we think, no doubt that Turner strove to be conscientious; but his conscience was a “pictorial” conscience, and no man can judge him. We can only take his works as they are, and be thankful that all the strange confusions of his mind, and mingled accidents of his life, have produced so unique and beautiful a result as the “England and Wales.” It is no use now regretting that his vast powers in their prime were used wastefully in what will appear to many as the falsification of English landscape; it is far better to rejoice that the genius and knowledge of the man were so transcendent that, in spite of all the worst that can be said, each separate drawing is precious in itself as a record of natural phenomena, and a masterly arrangement of indefinite forms and beautiful colour.
Mr. Ruskin affirms that, “howsoever it came to pass, a strange, and in many respects grievous metamorphosis takes place upon him about the year 1825. Thenceforth he shows clearly the sense of a terrific wrongness, and sadness, mingled in the beautiful order of the earth; his work becomes partly satirical, partly reckless, partly—and in its greatest and noblest features—tragic.” We are not prepared to assent to this entirely, especially as Mr. Ruskin states immediately afterwards that one at least of the manifestations of “this new phase of temper” can be traced unmistakably in the “Liber,” which was concluded six years before; but there is no doubt that his work for some of these years was distinguished by recklessness and caprice in an unusual degree, and we have little doubt that his removal from Sandycombe, and the consequent loss of healthy companionship, had something to do with it. During three years he exhibited no pictures of special interest, except theCologneof 1826, and theUlysses deriding Polyphemusof 1829. This latter picture we take to be a sure sign of recovery, as it shows perhaps the most complete balance of power of any of his large works, being not less wonderful for happy choice of subject than for grandeur of conception and splendour of colour—the first picture in which, since theApollo and Pythonof 1811, the union between the literary subject and the landscape, or (if we must use that horrid word) seascape, was perfect. This picture was noTemple and Portico, with the drowning of Aristobulus. The grand indefinite figure of the agonized giant, the crowded ship of Ulysses, the water-nymphs and the dying sun, are all parts of one conception, and show what Turner could do when his imagination was thoroughly inflamed. Whence the inspiration wasderived it is difficult to say. Like most of his inspirations, it probably had more than one source. Homer’s Odyssey is the source given in the catalogue; but it is probable, as we before have hinted, that the figure of Polyphemus was suggested by the splendid description in the fourteenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Many years had lapsed since he had shown the full force of his imagination under the influence of classical story, and he was never to do so again. Subjects of the kind suited to his peculiar genius were difficult to find, and he had no such habitual intercourse with his intellectual peers as enabled him to gather suggestions for his works. He was thrown entirely on his own uneducated resources, and the result was, with his imperfect knowledge of his own strength and the limits of his art, partial failure of most, and total failure of many of his most strenuous efforts. This is one of the saddest facts of his art-life, the frequent waste, or partial waste, of unique power.
His increasing isolation of mind was mitigated no doubt by constant visits to Petworth, Farnley, and other houses of his friends and patrons, by the chaff of “varnishing days,” by social meetings of the Academy Club, and by frequent travel; but it increased notwithstanding. Not Mr. Trimmer, nor Lord Egremont, nor even his friends and fellow Academicians, Chantrey and Jones, could break through his barrier of reserve and see the man Turner face to face. From the beginning he had his secrets, and he kept them to the end. He could be merry and social in a gathering where the talk never became confidential, and with children (whom he could not distrust); but his living-rooms in Queen Anne Street, his painting-room wherever he was, and his heart, were, with scarcely an exception, opened to none. AtPetworth, Lord Egremont indeed was allowed to enter his studio; but he had to give a peculiar knock agreed upon between them before he would open the door.
In 1828 he was at Rome again, from which place he wrote the following letters[43]to Chantrey and Jones of unusual length and interest.
“TO GEORGE JONES, R.A.“ROME,“Oct. 13, 1828.“DEARJONES,“Two months nearly in getting to this terra pictura,and at work; but the length of time is my own fault. I must see the South of France, which almost knocked me up, the heat was so intense, particularly at Nismes and Avignon; and until I got a plunge into the sea at Marseilles, I felt so weak that nothing but the change of scene kept me onwards to my distant point. Genoa, and all the sea-coast from Nice to Spezzia, is remarkably rugged and fine; so is Massa. Tell that fat fellow Chantrey that I did think of him,then(but not the first or the last time) of the thousands he had made out of those marble craigs which only afforded me a sour bottle of wine and a sketch; but he deserves everything which is good, though he did give me a fit of the spleen at Carrara.“Sorry to hear your friend, Sir Henry Bunbury, has lost his lady. How did you know this? You will answer, of Captain Napier, atSiena. The letter announcing the sad event arrived the next day after I got there. They were on the wing—Mrs. W. Light to Leghorn, to meet Colonel Light, and Captain and Mrs. Napier for Naples; so, all things considered, I determined to quit instanter, instead of adding to the trouble.“Hope that you have been better than usual, and that the pictures go on well. If you should be passing Queen Anne Street, just say I am well, and in Rome, for I fear young Hakewell has written to his father of my being unwell: and may I trouble you to drop a line into the two-penny post to Mr. C. Heath, 6, Seymour Place, New Pancras Church, or send my people to tell him that, if he has anything to send me,to put it up in a letter (it is the most sure way of its reaching me), directed for me, No. 12, Piazza Mignanelli, Rome, and to which place I hope you will send me a line? Excuse my troubling you with my requests of business. Remember me to all friends. So God bless you. Adieu.“J. M. TURNER.”
“TO GEORGE JONES, R.A.
“ROME,“Oct. 13, 1828.
“DEARJONES,
“Two months nearly in getting to this terra pictura,and at work; but the length of time is my own fault. I must see the South of France, which almost knocked me up, the heat was so intense, particularly at Nismes and Avignon; and until I got a plunge into the sea at Marseilles, I felt so weak that nothing but the change of scene kept me onwards to my distant point. Genoa, and all the sea-coast from Nice to Spezzia, is remarkably rugged and fine; so is Massa. Tell that fat fellow Chantrey that I did think of him,then(but not the first or the last time) of the thousands he had made out of those marble craigs which only afforded me a sour bottle of wine and a sketch; but he deserves everything which is good, though he did give me a fit of the spleen at Carrara.
“Sorry to hear your friend, Sir Henry Bunbury, has lost his lady. How did you know this? You will answer, of Captain Napier, atSiena. The letter announcing the sad event arrived the next day after I got there. They were on the wing—Mrs. W. Light to Leghorn, to meet Colonel Light, and Captain and Mrs. Napier for Naples; so, all things considered, I determined to quit instanter, instead of adding to the trouble.
“Hope that you have been better than usual, and that the pictures go on well. If you should be passing Queen Anne Street, just say I am well, and in Rome, for I fear young Hakewell has written to his father of my being unwell: and may I trouble you to drop a line into the two-penny post to Mr. C. Heath, 6, Seymour Place, New Pancras Church, or send my people to tell him that, if he has anything to send me,to put it up in a letter (it is the most sure way of its reaching me), directed for me, No. 12, Piazza Mignanelli, Rome, and to which place I hope you will send me a line? Excuse my troubling you with my requests of business. Remember me to all friends. So God bless you. Adieu.
“J. M. TURNER.”
“TO FRANCIS CHANTREY, R.A.“No. 12, PIAZZAMIGNANELLI, ROME,“Nov. 6, 1828.“MY DEARCHANTREY,“I intended long before this (but you will say, ‘Fudge!’) to have written; but even now very little information have I to give you in matters of Art, for I have confined myself to the painting department at Corso; and having finishedone, am about the second, and getting on with Lord E.’s, which I began the very first touch at Rome; but as the folk here talked that I would show themnot, I finished a small three feet four to stop their gabbling. So now to business. Sculpture, of course, first; for it carries away all the patronage, so it is said, in Rome; but all seem to share in the good-will of the patrons of the day. Gott’s studio is full. Wyatt and Rennie, Ewing, Buxton, all employed. Gibson has two groups in hand,Venus and Cupid; andThe Rape of Hylas, three figures, very forward, though I doubt much if it will be in time (taking the long voyage into the scale) for the Exhibition, though it is for England. Its style is something likeThe Psyche, being two standing figures of nymphs leaning, enamoured, over the youthful Hylas, with his pitcher. The Venus is a sitting figure, with the Cupid in attendance; and if it had wings like a dove, to flee away and be at rest, the rest would not be the worse for the change. Thorwaldsten is closely engaged on the late Pope’s (Pius VII.) monument. Portraits of the superior animal, man, is to be found in all. In some, the inferior—viz. greyhounds and poodles, cats and monkeys, &c., &c.“Pray give my remembrances to Jones and Stokes, and tellhimI have not seen a bit of coal stratum for months. My love to Mrs. Chantrey, and take the same and good wishes of“Yours most truly,“J. M. TURNER.”
“TO FRANCIS CHANTREY, R.A.
“No. 12, PIAZZAMIGNANELLI, ROME,“Nov. 6, 1828.
“MY DEARCHANTREY,
“I intended long before this (but you will say, ‘Fudge!’) to have written; but even now very little information have I to give you in matters of Art, for I have confined myself to the painting department at Corso; and having finishedone, am about the second, and getting on with Lord E.’s, which I began the very first touch at Rome; but as the folk here talked that I would show themnot, I finished a small three feet four to stop their gabbling. So now to business. Sculpture, of course, first; for it carries away all the patronage, so it is said, in Rome; but all seem to share in the good-will of the patrons of the day. Gott’s studio is full. Wyatt and Rennie, Ewing, Buxton, all employed. Gibson has two groups in hand,Venus and Cupid; andThe Rape of Hylas, three figures, very forward, though I doubt much if it will be in time (taking the long voyage into the scale) for the Exhibition, though it is for England. Its style is something likeThe Psyche, being two standing figures of nymphs leaning, enamoured, over the youthful Hylas, with his pitcher. The Venus is a sitting figure, with the Cupid in attendance; and if it had wings like a dove, to flee away and be at rest, the rest would not be the worse for the change. Thorwaldsten is closely engaged on the late Pope’s (Pius VII.) monument. Portraits of the superior animal, man, is to be found in all. In some, the inferior—viz. greyhounds and poodles, cats and monkeys, &c., &c.
“Pray give my remembrances to Jones and Stokes, and tellhimI have not seen a bit of coal stratum for months. My love to Mrs. Chantrey, and take the same and good wishes of
“Yours most truly,“J. M. TURNER.”
This method of communicating with “his people” ispeculiar, and shows that he was not in the habit of corresponding with them when away on his numerous visits and tours. Perhaps they could not read, perhaps he wished to save postage—whatever hypothesis we may adopt, the fact is singular. The pictures ofThe Banks of the Loire;The Loretto Necklace;Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy (par la Diligence) in a snowdrift upon Mount Tarra, 22nd of January, 1829—all exhibited in 1829—were the results of this tour, besides some of the pictures of 1830, one of which,View of Orvieto, is, according to Mr. Hamerton, the identical “small three feet four” which he painted to “stop the gabbling” of the folk at Rome.
In this year (1830, he being then fifty-five years old) died Sir Thomas Lawrence, whose loss he probably felt much, and of whose funeral he painted a picture (from memory); but the year had a greater sorrow for him than this—the loss of his “poor old Dad.” The removal from Twickenham did not avail to preserve the old man’s life for long. We have the testimony of the Trimmers, with whom after the event he stayed for a few days for change of scene, that “he was fearfully out of spirits, and felt his loss, he said, like that of an only child,” and that he “never appeared the same man after his father’s death.” To men like Turner, who are not accustomed to express their feelings much, or even to realize them, such blows come with all their natural violence unchecked, unforeseen, unprovided against. It had probably never occurred to him how much his father was to him, how blank a space his loss would make in his narrow garden of human affection. From this time he was to know many losses of old friends, each of which fell heavily upon him, leaving him more lonely than ever. His friends were few, and theydropped one by one, nor is there any evidence to show that their loss was ever lightened by any hope of meeting them again; the lights of his life went out one by one, and left him alone and in the dark. In 1833 Dr. Monro died, in 1836 Mr. Wells, in 1837 Lord Egremont, in 1841 Chantrey, and he was to feel the loss of Mr. Fawkes and Wilkie, and many more before his own time came.
In February, 1830, he wrote to Jones:—
“DEARJONES—I delayed answering yours until the chance of this finding you in Rome, to give you some account of the dismal prospect of Academic affairs, and of the last sad ceremonies paid yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourn from whence no traveller returns. Alas! only two short months Sir Thomas followed the coffin of Dawe to the same place. We then were his pall-bearers. Who will do the like for me, or when, God only knows how soon! However, it is something to feel that gifted talent can be acknowledged by the many who yesterday waded up to their knees in snow and muck to see the funeral pomp swelled up by carriages of the great,without the persons themselves.”
“DEARJONES—I delayed answering yours until the chance of this finding you in Rome, to give you some account of the dismal prospect of Academic affairs, and of the last sad ceremonies paid yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourn from whence no traveller returns. Alas! only two short months Sir Thomas followed the coffin of Dawe to the same place. We then were his pall-bearers. Who will do the like for me, or when, God only knows how soon! However, it is something to feel that gifted talent can be acknowledged by the many who yesterday waded up to their knees in snow and muck to see the funeral pomp swelled up by carriages of the great,without the persons themselves.”
No doubt these deaths set him thinking of his own, and the disposition of his wealth so useless to him, and he probably brooded long over the will that he signed on the 10th of June in the next year (1831). Many excuses have been made for his niggardly habits on the score of the nobleness of mind shown in this document; he screwed and denied himself (we are told) when living, to make old artists comfortable after his death. We are afraid that there is no ground for this charitable view, nor any evidence that he ever denied himself anything that he preferred to hard cash, or that he ever thought of giving it, or any farthing of it, away to anybody, till he had more than he could spend, and was brought by the deaths of his friends to realize that he could not take it with him when he died. Then indeedhe disposed of it; but where was the bulk to go? Not to his nearest of kin, whom he had neglected all his life—fifty pounds was enough for uncles, and twenty-five for their eldest sons; not to his mistress or mistresses, who had been devoted to him all his life, or to his children—annuities of ten and fifty pounds were enough for them; but for the perpetuation of his name and fame, as the founder of “Turner’s Gift” and the eclipser of Claude.[44]
We do not know when Turner became acquainted with Samuel Rogers; but probably some years before this, as he is named as one of the executors in the will, and the famous illustrated edition of “Italy” was published in 1830, followed by the Poems in 1834. These contain the most exquisite of all the engravings from Turner’s vignettes. Exquisite also are most of the drawings, but some of them are spoilt by the capriciousness of their colour, which seems in many cases to have been employed as an indication to the engraver rather than for the purpose of imitating the hues of nature. The most beautiful perhaps of all,Tornaro’s misty brow, seems to us far too blue, and the yellow of the sky in others is too strong to be probable or even in harmony with the rest of the drawing. It would, however, be difficult to find in the whole range of his works two really greater (though so small in size) than theAlps at Daybreak, andDatur hora quieti, of which we give woodcuts, losing of course much of the light refinement of the steel plates, but wonderfully true in general effect. The former is as perfect an illustration as possible of the sentiment of Rogers’s pretty verses, but it far transcendsthem in beauty and imagination; the latter is not in illustration of any of the poet’s verses, but is a more beautiful poem than ever Rogers wrote.
The illustration from “Jacqueline” which we give, though not so transcendent in imagination, is a scene of extraordinary beauty of rock and torrent, and castle-crowned steep, such as no hand but Turner’s could have drawn, while theVisionfrom “The Voyage of Columbus” is equally characteristic, showing how he could make an impressive picture out of the vaguest notions by his extraordinary mastery of light and shade.
In 1833 Turner exhibited his first pictures of Venice, the last home of his imagination. The date of his first visit to the “floating city” is uncertain. There are two series of Venetian sketches in the National Gallery, which mark two distinct impressions. In the first the colour is comparatively sober; the sky is noted as, before all things, a marvellously blue sky; the interest of the painter is in the watery streets, the picturesqueness of corners here and there, in narrow canals and the different-coloured marbles of the buildings; he takes the city in bits from the inside in broad daylight, and they are studies as realistic as he could make them at the time. In the other series the interest of the painter isCOLOUR, not of the buildings, but of the sunsets and sunrises, the clouds of crimson and yellow, the water of green, in which the sapphire and the emerald and the beryl seem to blend their hues. The substantial marble, the solid blue sky, the strong light and sharp shadows have melted into visions of ethereal palaces and gemlike colour, like those in the Apocalypse. As he began painting the sea from Vandevelde and nature, so he began painting Venice from Canaletti and nature; but the transition fromthe studious beginning to the imaginative end was very swift in the latter case. Venice soon became to him the paradise of colour, and he rose to heights of chromatic daring which exceeded anything which even he had scaled before.
LIGHT-TOWERS OF THE HÈVE. From “Rivers of France.”LIGHT-TOWERS OF THE HÈVE.From “Rivers of France.”
The time at which we have now arrived was that of his earlier sketches, and he could turn away from Venice and draw with unabated zest the quieter but still lovely scenery of the Seine and the Loire. To 1833-4 and 1835 belong his beautiful series calledThe Rivers of France. Opinions are divided, as usual, as to the truthfulness of his art to the spirit of French scenery, and a comparison betweenThe Light-towers of the Hèvein our woodcut, and the drawing which he made on the spot (now in the National Gallery) will show how greatly his imagination altered the literal facts of a scene. One who has patiently followed his footsteps in many parts of England and on the Continent testifies to the puzzling effects of Turner’s imaginative records. He seeks in vain on the face of the earth the original of Turner’s later drawings, but he can never see these drawings without finding all that he has seen. Indeed, to understand them rightly, they must be considered as poems in colour suggested by pictorial recollections of certain scenes on the rivers of France. Most of them are arrangements of blue, red, and yellow, some of yellow and grey, all exquisitely beautiful in arrangement of line and atmospheric effect. Nor has he in any other drawings introduced figures and animals with more skill and beauty of suggestion. The whole series palpitates with living light, although the pigments employed are opaque, and each view charms the sense of colour-harmony, although the colours are crude and disagreeable. It has always appeared wonderful to us that, with his power over water-coloursand delight in clear tones, he should have been content to work with such chalky material and impure tints; it is as though he preferred to combat difficulties; but they were drawn to be engraved, and as long as he got his harmonies and his light and shade true we suppose he was content. The great skill with which he could utilize the grey paper on which these drawings were made, leaving it uncovered in the sky and other places where it would serve his purpose, conduced to swiftness of work, and may have been one of his motives. The drawing of Jumièges, of which we give a woodcut, is one of the loveliest of the series, with its mouldering ruin standing out for a moment like a skeleton against the steely cloud, before the fierce storm covers it with gloom.
In these yearly visits to France, Turner was accompanied by Mr. Leitch Ritchie, who supplied the work with some description of the places. They travelled, however, very little together; their tastes in everything but art being exceedingly dissimilar. “I was curious,” says his companion, “in observing what he made of the objects he selected for his sketches, and was frequently surprised to find what a forcible idea he conveyed of a place with scarcely a correct detail. His exaggerations, when it suited his purpose to exaggerate, were wonderful—lifting up, for instance, by two or three stories, the steeple, or rather, stunted cone, of a village church—and when I returned to London I never failed to roast him on this habit. He took my remarks in good part, sometimes, indeed, in great glee, never attempting to defend himself otherwise than by rolling back the war into the enemy’s camp. In my account of the famous Gilles de Retz, I had attempted to identify that prototype of ‘Blue Beard’ with the hero of the nurserystory, by absurdly insisting that his beard was so intensely black that it seemed to have a shade of blue. This tickled the great painter hugely, and his only reply to my bantering was—his little sharp eyes glistening the while—‘Blue Beard! Blue Beard! Black Beard!’”
JUMIÈGES. From “Rivers of France.”JUMIÈGES.From “Rivers of France.”
We do not know when Turner became first acquainted with Mr. Munro of Novar, one of the greatest admirers of the artist and collectors of his later works, but it was in 1836 that we first hear of them as travelling together, when, it is said, “a serious depression of spirits having fallen on Mr. Munro,” Turner proposed to divert his mind into fresh channels by travel. They went to Switzerland and Italy, and Mr. Munro found that Turner enjoyed himself in his way—a “sort of honest Diogenes way”—and that it was easy to get on very pleasantly with him “if you bore with his way,” a description which, meant to be kind, does not say much for his sociability at this period.
Indeed, he had been all his life, and especially, we expect, since he left Twickenham, developing as an artist and shrivelling as a man, and after this year (1836), though he still developed in power of colour and painted some of his finest and most distinctive works, the signs of change, if not of decline, were also visible. He was also getting out of the favour of the public, who could not see any beauty in such works as theBurning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, of 1835, orJuliet and her Nurse, of 1836.
FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE. Exhibited in 1839. National Gallery.FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE.Exhibited in 1839. National Gallery.
His fame began to oscillate, tottering with one picture and set upright by another. As long, however, as he could paint such pictures asMercury and Argus, 1836, and theFighting Téméraire, of 1839, it was in a measure safe. He was still a great genius to whom eccentricities were natural, but theFighting Témérairewas the last picture of his atwhich no stone was thrown. This is in many ways the finest of all his pictures. Light and brilliant yet solemn in colour; penetrated with a sentiment which finds an echo in every heart; appealing to national feeling and to that larger sympathy with the fate of all created things; symbolic, by its contrast between the old three-decker and the little steam-tug, of the “old order,” which “changeth, yielding place to new”—the picture was and always will be as popular as it deserves. It is characteristic of Turner that the idea of the picture did not originate with him, but with Stanfield. Would that Turner had always had some friend at his elbow to hold the torch to his imagination.
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THE was now sixty-five years old, and his decline as an artist was to be expected from failing health and stress of years. For little less than half a century he had worked harder and produced more than any other artist of whom we have any record. Nor would he rest now, although his failing powers of body and mind required stimulants to support their energy.
Mr. Wilkie Collins informed Mr. Thornbury that, when a boy—
“He used to attend his father on varnishing days, and remembers seeing Turner (not the more perfect in his balance for the brown sherry at the Academy lunch) seated on the top of a flight of steps, astride a box. There he sat, a shabby Bacchus, nodding like a Mandarin at his picture, which he, with a pendulum motion, now touched with his brush and now receded from. Yet, in spite of sherry, precarious seat, and old age, he went on shaping in some wonderful dream of colour; every touch meaning something, every pin’s head of colour being a note in the chromatic scale.”
“He used to attend his father on varnishing days, and remembers seeing Turner (not the more perfect in his balance for the brown sherry at the Academy lunch) seated on the top of a flight of steps, astride a box. There he sat, a shabby Bacchus, nodding like a Mandarin at his picture, which he, with a pendulum motion, now touched with his brush and now receded from. Yet, in spite of sherry, precarious seat, and old age, he went on shaping in some wonderful dream of colour; every touch meaning something, every pin’s head of colour being a note in the chromatic scale.”
We have spoken of Turner as declining as an artist, but we are not sure that he did so till about 1845, when, Mr. Ruskin says,“his health, and with it in great degree his mind, failed suddenly.” Down to this time his decay seems to us to have been more physical than artistic, but with the physical weakness there had been, we think, for some time a deterioration of the non-artistic part of his mind. His decay, though so unlike the decay of others, appears to us to have nothing inexplicable about it if we consider him as a man who had never had any sympathy with the current opinions and culture of his fellows, and who, by some strange defect in his organization, was unable to think without the use of his eyes. That his eyesight failed there is no doubt, but that it did not fail in the one most essential point for a painter, viz., perception of colour, is, we think, proved by his latest sketches in water-colour, which show none of that apparently morbid love of yellow which appears in his later oil pictures, and testify to that perfect perception of the relations and harmonies of different hues which can only belong to a healthy sight. Instead of declining, this faculty of colour seems to have increased in perfection almost to the last. If we compare the sketch in the National Gallery of a scene on the Lake of Zug, done between 1840 and 1845, with one of the ‘Rivers of England’Dartmouth, two drawings wonderfully alike in composition and in general scheme of colour, no difference in this faculty can be observed; the later drawing is only a few notes higher in the scale. As Mr. Ruskin says, “The work of the first five years of this decade is in many respects supremely and withrevivingpower, beautiful.”
But still the decline of his non-artistic mind, never very powerful, had been going on for years, or at least such reasoning power as he possessed had exercised less and less control over the imperious will of his genius, whichimpelled him to pursue his efforts to paint the unpaintable. He had begun by imitation, he had gone on by rivalry, he had achieved a style of his own by which he had upset all preconceived notions of landscape painting, and had triumphed in establishing the superiority of pictures painted in a light key, but he was not content. His progress had always been towards light even from the earliest days, when he worked in monochrome. Sunlight was his discovery, he had found its presence in shadow, he had studied its complicated reflections, before he commenced to work in colour. From monochrome he had adopted the low scale of the old masters, but into it he carried his light; the brown clouds, and shadows, and mists, had the sun behind them as it were in veiled splendour. Then it came out and flooded his drawings and his canvasses with a glory unseen before in art. But he must go on—refine upon this—having eclipsed all others, he must now eclipse himself. His gold must turn to yellow, and yellow almost into white, before his genius could be satisfied with its efforts to express pure sunlight.
So he went on to his goal, becoming less “understanded of the people” each year, painting pictures more near to the truth of nature in sun and clouds, and less true in everything else. But it was about the everything else that the people most cared. They did not care for sunlight which blinded them, and to which the truth of figure, and sea, and grass, and stone, had to be sacrificed. They liked pictures which could give them calm enjoyment, records of what they had seen or could imagine, not of what Turner only had seen, and what seemed to them extravagant falsity.
Such, roughly put, was the condition of things when achampion arose to scatter Turner’s enemies to the four winds. He, Mr. Ruskin (1836), an undergraduate at Oxford, of the age of seventeen, was one not of “the people,” but of those comparatively few lovers of art and colour who saw and appreciated the artistic motives of Turner, and who reverenced, as a revelation of hitherto unrecorded, if not undiscovered, beauties of nature, those pictures at which the world scoffed. We cannot here enter further into the discussion involved, but the attitude of the two parties, the one represented by “Blackwood’s Magazine,” and the other by “Modern Painters,” can be judged by the following extracts. The noble enthusiasm aroused by the treatment ofJuliet and her Nurseby the critics, had suggested a letter in 1836, which gradually increased into a volume, not published till 1843, and in the meantime the undergraduate had gained the Newdegate, and earned the right to call himself “A Graduate of Oxford” on his title-page.
This is what Maga said in August, 1835, of Turner’s picture ofVenice, from the porch of Madonna della Salute, a picture in his earlier Venetian style:—
“Venice, well I have seen Venice. Venice the magnificent, glorious, queenly, even in her decay—with her rich coloured buildings, speaking of days gone by, reflected in thegreenwater. What is Venice in this picture? A flimsy, whitewashed meagre assemblage of architecture, starting off ghostlike into unnatural perspective, as if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the only attempt at richness in the picture). Not Venice, but the boat is the attractive object, and what is to make this rich? Nothing but some green and red, and yellow tinsel, which is so flimsy that it is now cracking..... The greater part of the picture is white, disagreeable white, without light or transparency, and the boats, with their red worsted masts, are as gewgaw as a child’s toy, which he may have cracked to see what it was made of. As to Venice, nothing can be more unlike its character.”
“Venice, well I have seen Venice. Venice the magnificent, glorious, queenly, even in her decay—with her rich coloured buildings, speaking of days gone by, reflected in thegreenwater. What is Venice in this picture? A flimsy, whitewashed meagre assemblage of architecture, starting off ghostlike into unnatural perspective, as if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the only attempt at richness in the picture). Not Venice, but the boat is the attractive object, and what is to make this rich? Nothing but some green and red, and yellow tinsel, which is so flimsy that it is now cracking..... The greater part of the picture is white, disagreeable white, without light or transparency, and the boats, with their red worsted masts, are as gewgaw as a child’s toy, which he may have cracked to see what it was made of. As to Venice, nothing can be more unlike its character.”
VENICE. THE DOGANA. In the National Gallery.VENICE. THE DOGANA.In the National Gallery.
This is what the Graduate of Oxford says, after stating his dissatisfaction with the Venices of Canaletti, Prout, and Stanfield:—
“But let us take with Turner, the last and greatest step of all—thank Heaven we are in sunshine again—and what sunshine! Not the lurid, gloomy, plaguelike oppression of Canaletti, but white flushing fulness of dazzling light, which the waves drink and the clouds breathe, bounding and burning in intensity of joy. That sky—it is a very visible infinity—liquid, measureless, unfathomable, panting and melting through the chasms in the long fields of snow-white flaked, slow-moving vapour, that guide the eye along the multitudinous waves down to the islanded rest of the Euganean hills. Do we dream, or does the white forked sail drift nearer, and nearer yet, diminishing the blue sea between us with the fulness of its wings? It pauses now; but the quivering of its bright reflection troubles the shadows of the sea, those azure fathomless depths of crystal mystery, on which the swiftness of the poised gondola floats double, its black beak lifted like the crest of a dark ocean bird, its scarlet draperies flashed back from the kindling surface, and its bent oar breaking the radiant water into a dust of gold. Dreamlike and dim, but glorious, the unnumbered palaces lift their shafts out of the hollow sea—pale ranks of motionless flame—their mighty towers sent up to heaven like tongues of more eager fire—their grey domes looming vast and dark, like eclipsed worlds—their sculptured arabesques and purple marble fading farther and fainter, league beyond league, lost in the light of distance. Detail after detail, thought beyond thought, you find and feel them through the radiant mystery, inexhaustible as indistinct, beautiful, but never all revealed; secret in fulness, confused in symmetry, as nature herself is to the bewildered and foiled glance, giving out of that indistinctness, and through that confusion, the perpetual newness of the infinite and the beautiful.“Yes, Mr. Turner, we are in Venice now.”
“But let us take with Turner, the last and greatest step of all—thank Heaven we are in sunshine again—and what sunshine! Not the lurid, gloomy, plaguelike oppression of Canaletti, but white flushing fulness of dazzling light, which the waves drink and the clouds breathe, bounding and burning in intensity of joy. That sky—it is a very visible infinity—liquid, measureless, unfathomable, panting and melting through the chasms in the long fields of snow-white flaked, slow-moving vapour, that guide the eye along the multitudinous waves down to the islanded rest of the Euganean hills. Do we dream, or does the white forked sail drift nearer, and nearer yet, diminishing the blue sea between us with the fulness of its wings? It pauses now; but the quivering of its bright reflection troubles the shadows of the sea, those azure fathomless depths of crystal mystery, on which the swiftness of the poised gondola floats double, its black beak lifted like the crest of a dark ocean bird, its scarlet draperies flashed back from the kindling surface, and its bent oar breaking the radiant water into a dust of gold. Dreamlike and dim, but glorious, the unnumbered palaces lift their shafts out of the hollow sea—pale ranks of motionless flame—their mighty towers sent up to heaven like tongues of more eager fire—their grey domes looming vast and dark, like eclipsed worlds—their sculptured arabesques and purple marble fading farther and fainter, league beyond league, lost in the light of distance. Detail after detail, thought beyond thought, you find and feel them through the radiant mystery, inexhaustible as indistinct, beautiful, but never all revealed; secret in fulness, confused in symmetry, as nature herself is to the bewildered and foiled glance, giving out of that indistinctness, and through that confusion, the perpetual newness of the infinite and the beautiful.
“Yes, Mr. Turner, we are in Venice now.”
Unfortunately the brave young champion was too late, the eloquent voice that could translate into such glowing words the dumb poetry of Turner’s pictures had scarcely made the air of England thrill with its musical enthusiasm when black night fell upon the artist. The sudden snapping of some vital chord, of which that sameGraduate of Oxford only last year pathetically wrote, took place, and the glorious sun of his genius disappeared without any twilight; he was dead as an artist, and dying as a man. Neither his work nor his life could be defended any more. But the voice that was raised so late in his honour did not die, its vibrations have lasted from that day to this; and if the champion himself seems to be in some need of a defender now, if mouths that once were full of his praise are silent or raised only for the most part to depreciate, it is only what came to Turner and what comes to all who use their imagination too freely to enforce their convictions. A time must come when the spirit of analysis will eat into the most brilliant rhetoric; the false and true, which combine to make the most beautiful fabric of words, cannot wear equally well. To us it is always painful to differ from Mr. Ruskin, to whom we owe the grasp of so many noble truths, the memories of so many delightful hours; and if a time has come when our faith in his dogmas is not absolute, and we feel that he has misled us and others now and again, we cannot close reference to him and his works in this little book without testifying to the great and noble spirit which pervades his work, and recording our admiration of a life devoted to the service of art and man and God with a passionate purity as rare as it is beautiful.
VENICE, FROM THE CANAL OF THE GIUDECEA. Exhibited in 1840. South Kensington Museum.VENICE, FROM THE CANAL OF THE GIUDECEA.Exhibited in 1840. South Kensington Museum.
But before night fell, in the interval between 1840 and 1845, Turner painted a few pictures of remarkable beauty both in colour and sentiment—pictures which no other artist could have painted, and which we doubt if he could himself have painted before—pictures generally attempting to realize his later ideal of Venice, which even now, in their wrecked beauty, fascinate all who have patience tolook at them, and watch the apparent chaos of yellow and white and purple and grey gradually clear into a vision of ghost-like palaces rising like a dream, from the golden sea. Besides these he painted at least three others of unique power: one a record of what few other men could have had the courage to study or the power to paint; one showing the passion of despair at the loss of an old comrade; and another the boldest attempt to represent abstract ideas in landscape that was ever made. We allude to theSnowstorm;Peace, Burial at Sea; andRain, Steam, and Speed.
Mr. Hamerton says, in connection with the first of these:—