The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A.

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(

\

THE LIFE OF J. M. W. TURNER, R.A,

r

THE LIFE

OF

J. M.W.TURNER, R.A.

BY

PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON,

AVTHOR OP "bTCHING AND BTCHBRS/' "THOUGHTS ABOUT ART,** "tHB INTBLLBCTUAL

UFB/* *'a PAINTBR's camp,*' **M0DBRN FRBNCHltBN,** " TUB SYLVAN YBAR,*'

*' ROUND MY HOUSB,** '* TUB UNKNOWN RIVBR,*' BTC, BTC

" II serait inutile d'etre tfn excellent esprit et an grand petntre, si Ton ne mettait

dans son oeuvre quelque chose que la r^it^ n*a pas. Cest en quoi I'homme est

plus intelligent que le soleil, et fen remercie Dieu.*'

— Frombntxn.

WITH NINE ILLUSTRATIONS, ETOHEO BY A. BRUNET-OEBAINfiS.

BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS*

1879.

CAMBRIDGE :
PRBSSWORK BY JOHN WILSON AND SON.

440140

riAe 2 7 1937

PREFACE

I HAVE been the more willing to write a biography of
Turner" that it is impossible to study him without en-
countering the greatest of all problems in art criticism,
the relation of art to nature. Of all landscape-painters
he is at once the most comprehensive in his study of
nature and the most independent of nature, the most
observant of truth and also, in a certain sense, the most
untrue. This double life of Turner, as observer and
artist, compels us to distinguish between art and mere
observation from the very beginning, under peril of fall-
ing into snares which the subject itself has laid for us.
We must understand that art and nature are not the
same world, but two worlds which only resemble, each
other and have many things in common. Turner, with
the instinct of genius, understood this from the first.

Turner is a most instructive subject for the student of
art, because he is always and above all things the artist.
With all his study of objects and effects, he was never a
naturalist. The real motive of every one of his compo-
sitions is to realize some purely artistic conception, not

vi Preface,

to copy what he saw; consequently he lived in a state of
mental activity and feeling, which cannot be in the least
understood until we know what the artistic intelligence
is, and what are its necessities, its purposes, and its
aspirations. If Turner went frequently to nature for
material, he went to the works of great artists who had
preceded him that he might profit by their example, and
though he had so much originality as to astonish the
public of l;is time, the painter never lived who was more
thoroughly imbued with the great artistic traditions. He
educated himself not by copying the famous masters,
but by a series of experimental pictures in which he
purposely worked under their successive influences, and
when he passed from these exercises to experiments for
which there was no precedent, these new experiments
were not undertaken for the imitation of nature, but for
the extension of the possibilities of art. If there is any
reader to whom this distinction is not sufficiently clear, I
may make it a little clearer by observing that the essen-
tially artistic elements of a picture may be comprised
under the two heads of feeling and composition, neither
of which is to be found in external nature, though it
suggests both to the human spirit. Composition includes
all color arrangement, all combinations of light and
shade, all groupings and contrasts of selected and modi-
fied forms. Feeling, in art, expresses itself always by
the alteration of nature, by exaggerating a«d diminish-
ing, by selecting and rejecting, by emphasis and accent.
The art of a man of genius like Turner has much more
in common with music than with photography. Even

Preface. vii

the enemies of painting, those who are hostile to it be-
cause they cannot understand it, do at least understand
so much of it as this, that it is intensely artificial, that it
is not nature.

" I know nothing of painting," wrote Byron to Murray
from the city of Titian and Giorgione, " and I detest it,
unless it reminds me of something I have seen, or think
it possible to see, for which reason I spit upon and abhor
all the saints and subjects of otfe half the impostures. I
see in the churches and palaces ; and when in Flanders I
never was so disgusted in my life as with Rubens and his
eternal wives and infernal glare of colors, as they appeared
to me, and in Spain I did not think much of Murillo and
Velasquez. Depend upon it, of all the arts it is the most
artificial and unnaturaly and that by which the innocence
of mankind is most imposed upon. I never yet saw the
picture or the statue which came a league within my
conception or expectation."

Now, although Byron had much genius and some
literary education, he was, as regarded the plastic and
graphic arts, a thorough British barbarian, who detested,
abhorred, and spat upon (the expressions are his own)
the refinements which were beyond the limits of his
comprehension, so that when he speaks of painting he
speaks with the animosity of an enemy and the contempt
of a man of rank and reputation who cannot imagine
that anything may possibly be above him. But with
all his coarseness and violence, with all his blindness to
the beauty of painting, he sees one thing which its
warmest admirers too frequently fail to see — he sees

viii Preface.

that it is intensely artificial, that it is something widely
different from nature. He makes no blundering con-
fusion between art and nature, but sets himself on the
side of nature against art, and in the next sentences of
the letter just quoted alludes to mountains, seas, rivers,
horses, a lio.n, a tiger, and two or three women that went
as far beyond his expectation as pictures and statues
fell short of it. We may safely follow Byron in keeping
this distinction clear.

Another matter which we ought to understand before
entering upon such a study as this is the proper function
of the writer upon art. In my view; it is first to inform
himself as well as he can, and then to say what he thinks
with the most fearless candor, but without the slightest
pretension to authority. I should be sorry to see English
criticism, on any side of an artistic question, arrive at that
cowardly condition too often visible on the Continent,
when writers dare not venture to say what they think
about artists of established reputation for fear of imperil-
ing their own, and when the whole ingenuity of a writer
on art is devoted to a search for new excellencies in the
consecrated masters, even in their most trifling works, or
in doubtful works attributed to them, and in the weakest
and worst passages of those works. But whilst claiming
the right to say what I think, without any diminution of
strength of expression from deference to the opinion of
others, I repudiate all intention of speaking ex cathedrd
with any affectation of infallibility, because in matters of
art criticism authority has little foundation beyond simple
self-assertion. You can prove scientific matters posi-

Preface, ix

tively, but the scientific element is not the soul of art, and
when you come to consider the really artistic element
which is the soul of art, you will find that it perpetually
eludes the measuring-tapes of positivism. What, for
example, are the artistic merits of Turner? Truth of
form? Certainly not; his merits were in fine arrange-
ments of forms and colors, blended into those admirable
unities which constitute his pictures.

But who in the world can prove that he was a fine com-
poser, or a fine colorist? that his arrangements were
good ? that his pictures are admirable unities ? Nobody
can demonstrate these things, which in their very nature
are as incapable of demonstration as the beauty of an air
in music ; and yet these things are the very essence of
art. The writer on art can therefore never speak with the
authority which belongs to the teacher of science, who
announces what he can prove, and what the hearer can
verify for himself. But if a prudent writer on art re-
nounces the claim to authority, he may still hope to
deserve the credit which belongs to utility. His opinions,
if expressed candidly, may be of some value as a contri-
bution to that general enlightenment which constitutes
public opinion. The march of Humanity is like a proces-
sion by torchlight, in which men see their way by the
light given by others and also hold up torches of their
own. This is especially necessary in artistic matters,
where so much is artificial, and where natural truth, even
when it is perfectly ascertainable, is such an insufficient
guide.

I owe much to my predecessor Mr. Thornbury, whose

X Preface,

life of Turner, though hastily written, is full of interesting
material. I have not thought it right to iake all the
plums out of Mr. Thornbury's book, which will still be
consulted by those who are interested in Turner, but I
thought there was room for another biography executed
more at leisure. I have taken my time about this, and
brought it gradually to its present form, believing that it
omits nothing of essential importance.

Mr. Ruskin's enthusiasm for Turner has also been a
valuable help to me ; perhaps all the more valuable that
I do not fully share it. I do not, like Mr. Ruskin, con-
sider Turner a being of unequalled intellect and the
greatest 'painter of all time ; I consider him a man of
genius who may be ranked along with other men of
genius, but no more. Comparisons, in these matters, are
seldom profitable or appropriate ; but the intelligent
reader will not misunderstand me when I place Turner
side by side with Shelley. THey were two of the most
poetical, the most learned, and least material of poets,
each in his own sphere.

T"

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Genius and eccentricity. — The birthplace of a landscape-painter. — Tur-
ner's birth and circumstances. — Condition of landscape art. — Early
educational influences. — Turner at school. — Paternal encouragement.
— Beginnings in art. — Early study of architecture. — Academic train-
ing. — Early practice in portrait-painting. — A professional commence-
ment. — Turner's luck in life i

CHAPTER II.

The young artist. — Dr. Munro. — Girtin and Cozens. — Turner's early
work in oil. — Love and disappointment. — Absence of female influr
ence. — A dual life. — Turner a drawing-master 33

»

CHAPTER III.

Turner comes of age. — First northern tour.-:-Dr. Whitaker.< — Turner
elected A.R.A. — ^His diploma picture. — New and Old Gothic. — Pro-
fessional position in 1800 50

CHAPTER IV.

Kilchurn Castle. — ^Topography. — Turner's dream pictures. — The topog-
raphy of poets . . . . . . . . . . . 66

xii Contents,

CHAPTER V.

Turner elected R.A. — First continental excursion. — Turner and his
father. — Pictures of 1806 and 1807. — Turner takes to etching. — Tur-
ner as an engraver in mezzotint. — The Liber Studiorum . . .88

CHAPTER VI.

Turner a professor of perspective. — The Trafalgar picture. — First visit
to Petworth, 1809. — Pictures of 181 1. — Turner as a writer on art and
nature. — Turner as an observer and critic . . . . .118.

CHAPTER VII.

He removes to Queen Anne Street, 181 2. — Excursion to Devonshire,
181 2. — Turner's poetry. — Turner's prose 131

CHAPTER VIII.

Turner at Twickenham. — English coast scenery. — Crossing the Brook.
— Distances in elder art. — The fascination of the remote. — A second
possibility of marriage, 181 5. — Dido building Carthage. — Other class-
ical pictures. — Turner and Scott. — Oil pictures of 18 18.— Pictures of
18 1 9. — Rome from the Vatican. — Whitaker's History of Richmond-
shire 148

CHAPTER IX.
Transition to color.^Turner as a traveller. — His system of study . 176

CHAPTER X.

Rivalry with Wilson. — The Bay of Baix. — The Rivers of England. —
Provincial Antiquities. — England and Wales. — The Ports of Eng-
land. — The " Cologne." — Works from sketches by others. — Separate
plates. — Transactions with Cooke. — Pictures exhibited in 1827 . . 197

CHAPTER XI.

Journey to Italy, 1828. — The Polyphemus. — Death of Turner's father.
— The illustrations to Rogers. — Scotland revisited, 1830 . . .221

mm

Contents, xiii

CHAPTER XII.

The Rivers of France. — Turner's architecture. — Inaccuracy of other
artists. — ^The Rivers of France — color. — The Rivers of France — Tur-
nerian charm 239

CHAPTER XIII.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. — Turner's technical carelessness. — The
Golden Bough. — The Venice pictures. — An American criticism. —
French enthusiasm. — Illustrations to Milton. — Mercury and Argus. —
The Phryne. — Turner and Mr. Bohn. — Switzerland and Italy. — The
Agrippina. — Illustrations to " The Epicurean " . . ' . . . 260

CHAPTER XIV.

The T^m^raire. — The Bacchus and Ariadne. — The Snow-storm. — The
Slave-Ship. — Latter years of Turner. — Pictures of 1842. — Tendency
to the formless. — Dregs of life. — Last excursion on the Continent —
Disabled. — Turner's death. — Funeral at St: Paul's. — Turner's care
for his own fame. — Rivalry with Claude 286

CHAPTER XV.

Celebration by Mr. Ruskin. — Ruskin's " Modem Painters." — Mr. Rus-
kin's literary powers. — Mr. Ruskin and the English public. — Mr.
Ruskin not the discoverer of Turner. — Criticism and art in words. —
The love of effect. — Circumstances of Turner's death. — Mr. Ruskin's
estimate of Turner. — Turner and Pre-Raphaelitism. — The criterion
of truth. — Distinction between nature and art — Turner's position in
art — Mystery. — Turner's color. — ^Turner's imagination. — Taste. — R^
sum^. — Danger of Turner-worship. — Past and future of landscape-
painting ^ 316

CHAPTER XVL

Turner's character and habits. — Turner's manners. — Religion and
morality. — Temperance and intemperance. — Turner's generosity. —
Turner's will. — Works of art left to the nation. — Conclusion . . 364

Note. — Mr. Ruskin's Teaching 397

General Index 399

Index to Turner's Works alluded to 402

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM TURNER'S SKETCHES.

Page

In an Alpine Vaixey . . . ► ^94

Houses on a Southern Shore ........ 179

Ruined Castle . . . . .. . . . . . 185

Boats at Sea in a Breeze . . 205

Rome, Church and Convent of the Quattro Coronati . 222

City on one of the Rivers of France 239

French Boats near Shore, with a Lowering Sky . . . 243

Old Town on the Loire 257

Venice 269

•

/

Hi

THE LIFE OF J. M. W. TURNER, R.A.

CHAPTER I.

Genius and Eccentricity. — The Birthplace of a Landscape-Painter. — Tur-
ner's Birth and Circumstances. — Condition of Landscape Art. — ^Early
Educational Influences. — Turner at School. — Paternal Encouragement.
— Beginnings in Art. — Early Study of Architecture. — Academic Training.
— Early Practice in Portrait-Painting. — A Professional Commencement. —
Turner's Luck in Life.

T^HE curiosity which desires to know all that can be
known about great poets who have enchanted the
world for us, is often doomed to two very different kinds
of disappointment. Either there is very little to be ascer-
tained about the poet which the admirer of his genius
would greatly care to know, or else the personal character
and history of the poet himself seem inferior to the ideal
of him which is suggested by the noble beauty of his
works. We are unreasonable in our expectations of
general perfection in those who have much delighted us,
and enlarged our experience of sublime or sweet emotion.
We forget too easily that what seems to us so admirable
and wonderful in them, the divine creative power, is
often a very costly gift to the mortal who has received it
at his birth ; that it tyrannizes over him until most of his

2 The Life of J, M, W, Turner,

faculties are absorbed in it, and that it entirely destroys
that happy equilibrium which enables men to do, under
all circumstances, what public opinion would decide to
be precisely reasonable and becoming. The old popular
belief in the eccentricity of genius, which Sometimes took
the form of unsympathizing sarcasm or half-contemp-
tuous banter, and sometimes, in kinder souls, was the
origin of an especial indulgence for many errors and
shortcomings, had deeper foundations in the constitution
of human nature than certain unimaginative persons of
our own generation appear willing to admit. The opinion
which tends to prevail at the present day is a reaction
from the opinion of our forefathers. They believed that
genius implied, if it did not authorize, an independence of
common rules which society would be little disposed to
tolerate in people of ordinary endowment. We, on the
contrary, like our men of genius to be exactly like other
respectable people, both in education and in habits of
life, and we like it to be supposed that they can readily
conform in all respects to the exigencies of established
usage. It is quite true that they do not declare war against
Society with the fierce disdain of Byron or the indignant
revolt of Shelley, nor do they generally affect any pecul-
iarity of costume; and yet the greatest of them still
cherish, though in unobtrusive ways, the independence
dear to their kind. It is needless to mention names, but
if the reader will think over the short list of men of real
genius in the present age, he will at once perceive that
their conformity to usage is only external ; that their
contact with the ordinary world is, as Stuart Mill said,

Genius and Eccentricity, 3

slight and at long intervals, and that there are lives as
quietly devoted to high pursuits as that which was led
on the mount which reflects itself in the little mere of
Rydal.

The life of Turner, which I am now to relate, is the
life of a man of genius ; and it so happens that certain
influences, more or less obvious or subtle, conspired
together to push this man outside the ordinary round of
English existence, and to make him what is called
eccentric. It would be well, perhaps, if we knew exactly
what we mean by eccentricity, when we apply it to such
a life as his. Do we mean that the eccentric man has no
centre, or that his centre does not happen to coincide
with ours ? If we mean the first we imply censure, for
every man's eff^orts ought to be centred on a chief pur-
pose and limited by the circumference of a conscious
self-restraint ; but if, in calling any one eccentric, we
mean only that his centre does not happen precisely to
coincide with ours, then we simply state a fact which
implies no more moral condemnation than if we said
that the circle of his horizon was not what we see from
our own windows. The existence of Turner had two
centres, like an ellipse, and to these he remained true to
the end of his days. He had the passion for art — that
is, for expressing himself in art — and he had the far
commoner passion for accumulating money. Round
these two centres his existence moved with the regu-
larity of the " unhasting, unresting " stars. The ultimate
results were a great fame and a great fortune, .and such
a colossal " oeuvre " as no other landscape-painter ever left

4 The Life of J, M. W. Turner.

behind him, if both quantity and quality are considered.
The celebrity of the great artist is still increasing steadily.
Every year adds to the number of those who are culti-
vated enough to understand him, and who can, at least
in some degree, measure the breadth of flie abyss which
separates such performance as his from commonplace
work in art.

The Muse of Painting, if we may imagine such a
sister amongst the immortal nine, would scarcely, per-
haps, if the matter had been left to her own wisdom,
unaided by the counsels of Minerva, have chosen for
the birthplace of the prince of landscape-painters the
street where he first saw light. She might have chosen
rather, if only partially wise, some beautiful city, had
there been any such in the eighteenth century upon the
earth, whose fair palaces of marble rose in purest per-
fection above groves of the oriental plane, on the last
wave of green land between the purple mountains and
the cerulean southern sea. In such a birthplace the
marvelous child might have inhaled beauty like the air,
and as he grew from infancy to youth, from youth to
manhood, might have accumulated in his memory a
great store of wonderful unpainted pictures, to be realized
by him afterwards in his art, when the skill in it came
to him with time. Or, again, had the Muse been utterly
unwise and left to her own unwisdom, she might have
placed the child far away from all cities whatever, in the
heart of some lovely land in the happiest of climates,
where, day by day, the warm sun awakened a sparse
Arcadian population, nestling here and there in the

The Birth of a Landscape-Painter, 5

windings of their sweet vales. A foolish Muse might
have fancied that the lovelier the land round about the
child, the fairer would be his performance ; that if his
eyes were saturated with beauty through every sunny
day and every moonlight night, he would produce beauty
by necessity, as a barrel will yield you wine if it has
been filled with it after the vintage.

But however Providence acts with us, whether it be by
determining specially where a child is to be born, or simply
by so arranging matters that there is a certain proportion
of babies of genius, whose faculties will be developed if
circumstances happen to be propitious, and will remain
for ever undeveloped if circumstances are unfavorable, the
plain fact is that Turner was born in a situation really
much better for him than those which we have just been
imagining, or than any other which we should have been
likely to imagine. It is, I know, a common error to con-
clude that circumstances have been favorable when men
have achieved their success by vigorously contending
against them, but in this instance there is little danger of
our falling into that mistake. Landscape-painting is the
most recent of the fine arts, yet it is already old enough
for us to have ascertained the social conditions which pro-
duce it. We know, for example, quite positively that
uneducated persons who live in the midst of beautiful
scenery are entirely insensible to its beauty. If we try to
find out, by talking with them, what their impressions
and sentiments really are, the result is always the same :
they always show that what they mean by a beautiful
country is a country where the land is productive, and

6 The Life of J, M, W. Turner,

that an ugly country, in their language, means simply a
poor one. In those exceptional cases, where the rustic
mind may have some dim, unuttered sentiment of natural
beauty, it remains satisfied with the sight of the natural
objects themselves, and never attempts to express its
feeling about them in works of art. Theodore Rousseau
was one day painting a study of an oak-tree from nature,
when a peasant accosted him and asked, with the usual
disdain which rustics have for landscape-painters, what
was the use of making an " image " of the tree, since he
could look at the tree itself if he cared to see it } This
is exactly the rustic opinion about the uselessness of
landscape art, when by accident the bucolic mind be-
comes aware that such an art exists. We may conclude,
therefore, at once, that a landscape-painter must either
be born in a town or else under the influences of a town.
The next question is, whether it will be an advantage to
him, as a landscape-painter, that he should see much
human or architectural beauty in the town, such as was
visible in the most glorious cities of Greece or Italy
when men*s bodies and surroundings looked their best,
when beautiful costumes were often to be seen, and yet
more beautiful nakedness, and when the poor man might
lounge in the sunshine, and feast his eyes with the glory
of palaces and temples, and radiant, god-like images, on
which no soot-specks fell t Here, again, the true answer
to the question is not the answer which would naturally
first occur. When the beauty of cities and of human
life in them is sufficiently perfect to satisfy the taste of a
town-born artist, he will probably paint the figure, and

Turner 5 Birth and Circumstaftces, 7

feel but little inducement to indulge the landscape
passion, if even it could become strong enough under
such circumstances to produce any conscious longing.
The city, then, where the landscape-painter is born,
ought not to be very beautiful ; it ought rather to be
decidedly unsatisfying to the artistic sense, and the
people in it ought not to be beautiful either. It would
be well, too, if it were vast, so that the young genius
should not escape from it too easily into the country, but
be tormented with th'at aching of the heart which is the
nostalgia of the lovers of Nature. Besides these con-
ditions there is one which is absolutely essential — the
child must be so situated that it will meet with the work
of some previous landscape-painter; for art is always in
great part a tradition, even when practised by the most
original geniuses. There has never been an instance of
a great artist suddenly arising in a community outside
of artistic tradition. We speak loosely of artists who
have lived in isolation, but the really isolated artist has
never existed. This is so true that it is true even of the
specialties of art. An accomplished landscape-painter
could never be formed where there had not been a pre-
vious gradual development of landscape-painting to pre-
pare the way for him, and educate him, even although
the community were rich in sculptors and figure-painters.
The early circumstances of Turner were apparently
unfavorable, but in reality most favorable, to his de-
velopment. He was the only son of a London barber,
and born in a narrow central street called Maiden Lane,
which many of my readers will no doubt have visited

8 The Life of J. M. W, Turner,

for its connection with his name. The date of his birth
is the 23rd of April, 1775.

It was a great thing for him that the place of his birth
should be a city, and a large ugly English city, where
works of art might be seen occasionally, but where the
sense of beauty could never be satisfied by the aspect of
the streets and people. Equally favorable were the
social circumstances of his birth. He was born exactly
in that rank of society where artistic genius had, at that
time, the best chance of opening, Hke a safely-sheltered
flower. To perceive the full truth of this, we have nothing
to do but imagine him born in any other than the humbler
middle class. If his father had been a little lower in the
world, the boy would have been fixed down to some kind
of humble labor from his childhood, and held down to
it afterwards by want ; this at least is so probable as to
be almost a certainty, for Turner s genius discovered
itself very gradually, and he had no explosive originality
at the beginning. But what is quite a certainty is, the
stifling of his gift in any English family of that time which
had the slightest pretension to aristocracy. If Turner had
been what is called a gentleman, he would have been
exposed to influences which are as deadly to artistic
genius as an unbreathable gas is to the animal organism.
Without any open discussion of the subject, without so
much as one act of rebellion on his part, he would have
known, by the subtle instinctive perception of youth, that
the pursuit of art involved a mysterious degradation, and
in some vague, undefinable way, was disapproved of with
wonderful unanimity by the public opinion of his class.

Condition of Landscape Art, 9

The gentry of that time were of two kinds, the educated
and the uneducated ; the latter in strong majority. But
it so happened that the education which was given to such
as knew anything at all, left them as ignorant of the fine
arts as their untaught, rustic brothers, whilst it gave them
in addition, the pride of classical learning, from the serene
height of which it seemed to them that the fine arts were
farther than ever beneath them. The calm conviction of
the classically educated gentleman that he knew every-
thing compatible with the noble life, and that all studies
but his own were degrading, was more deadly to artistic
genius in his class than the simple stupidity of a purely
animal existence. So effectually did the prejudices of the
age repress the artistic sympathies, that even its brightest
and clearest intelligences were unable to understand
painting. Byron scorned it utterly, as became a well-
educated nobleman ; Scott, having a kinder and less
scornful disposition, did not express any open contempt
for it, but there is not a trace of evidence in his volumin-
ous writings that the influences of painting had ever been
really felt by him, or had any share in his education.
The ideas about art and artists which prevailed in the
England of our grandfathers were simply these. It was
believed that painting had a practical use in handing
down to posterity the likenesses of important people, and
artists were considered to be clever workmen who gave
proof of a certain utility to society in doing this. .Besides
this appreciation of portraits, there existed a futile kind
of connoisseurship, which the higher intelligence of the
time despised without trying to substitute anything

lo The Life of y. M. W, Turner.

better for it, and "Dutch drolleries'* or "conversation
pieces" afforded some amusement in drawing-rooms.
Beyond these ideas the general mind of the age was a
perfect blank, so far as the art of painting was concerned,
and it was not possible that the gentry of that day should
think of it as a medium for the expression of noble
imagination, of rare knowledge, or great thoughts.

Perhaps the lower middle class, in which Turner was
born, had not any clearer understanding of the subject,
but at any rate it was not prevented from touching
brushes and color by the dread of losing its gentility.
William Turner, the artist's father, had used a soft
badger-brush for daily lathering of people's chins, and
did not see any reason why his son should not use a
tool not much unlike it upon canvas. The father had
earned his living by manual labor of a skilful descrip-
tion, and so, in another way, might the son. It was of
course impossible for Turner's father, or for any one else,
to foresee the future greatness of his child ; for he was
not precocious, as Landseer was, in the kind of art which
he afterwards pursued. The elder Turner probably
looked upon painting simply as a profession which
might turn out to be lucrative, if the youth came to be
skilful in portraiture.

The date of Turner's birth, as well as the locality of
it, was highly favorable to the career he had before him.
The whole art of landscape-painting had been prepared
for the arrival of a great genius, who, after mastering
all that had been done already, should extend its bound-
aries in the realm of nature ; and yet at the same time

Condition of Landscape Art, II

the art was still young enough to leave ample scope for
originality. Claude Lorrain had opened men's eyes to
the beauty of rich sylvan masses, to the poetry of far
faint distances, and to the glory of the summer light on
golden southern afternoons. He had shown, too, what
a charm might be given to landscape-painting by taste
and skill in composition, by a musical sense of harmony
in forms and tones. But Claude, fortunately for his
successors, had never been an exhaustive genius, had
never been tormented by that restless spirit of discovery
which takes the freshness from so many fields. The
other well-known landscape-painters, Poussin and Sal-
vator, had opened other ranges of feeling than the
amenity of Claude, but they had contented themselves
with a very limited expression. It was much, however,
for a successor that the notion of a possible sublimity
in pure landscape should have been already exemplified
and received. When Turner began to work, the two
ideas that landscape might be beautiful, as in Claude, or
sublime, as in Salvator Rosa, were so familiar to the
general mind that every tolerably educated person had
associated one of these names with the loveliness of
nature, and the other with its wild grandeur. If the
novelists of those days had to describe some rich and
pleasant scene under a mellow light, they said that it
was such a scene as Claude would have loved to depict ;
and if they wanted to convey an appalling sense of
savageness when the story led them into a rocky country,
they invoked the name of Salvator. Besides these two
leading notes of beauty and sublimity, a third note had

12 The Life of J, M, W. Turner.

been already struck in the older landscape, that of
homely, rural peace. Cuyp had painted the quiet Dutch
meadow -lands in their own sunshine, and had proved
that no scenery is so humble as to be beneath the atten-
tion of an artist. A whole company of clever Dutchmen
had painted their muddy seas, flat shores, and more or
less picturesque shipping. All these men, true pioneers
of the free modern art which makes the whole visible
world its studio, had gone before Turner in their several
directions, and cleared his various paths. The technical
art of painting was also prepared by former experience,
so that he had simply to learn it, and was not called
upon to invent it. Hundreds of able men had used oil-
color soundly and well before the birth of Turner, who
indeed, never equalled the best of them in the handicraft
of their common art. In water-color his position was
more fortunate still, for his predecessors taught him the
safe beginnings of a good method, and led him just up
to that point in education from which a man of genius
can go forward by himself and brilliantly complete his
art. Paul Sandby and Cozens prepared his way, doing
all for him that was necessary at the time, and inducing
him to adopt simple methods and quiet coloring, more
favorable to ultimate mastery than the showy tricks and
glaring pigments which have since become so general.

The art of painting, when in its perfection, is always
composed of three elements. It is one of the forms of
poetry, but besides that it is a science and a handicraft.
The science is the knowledge of the appearance of
things, the handicraft is the workmanlike use of color.

Early Educational Influences, 13

Turner was born with the poetic faculty, but this would
have been sterile without teachers who could help him in
his advance to skill and knowledge. . The circumstances
of his education were in many ways strongly in his
favor, and when we know what he did in his maturity,
and how his youth was passed, we can easily trace the
influence of his different early studies and occupations
in the remarkable catholicity of his taste and the variety
of his performance. His mind was like a garden in
which many seeds were sown at the right time, some by
his father's care, but many others also by mere accident,
and as the soil was very fertile and rich, most of them
grew up vigorously in due season. There was not much
order in Turner's knowledge at first, but he endeavored
with partial success, to introduce some orderly arrange-
ment at a later period of his life.

The first influence is exercised by the father and
mother. In Turner's case that of the mother can only
have been hereditary, through the blood, for she became
insane and was removed from his father's house. Even
while she remained there the incipient evil declared
itself in her violent temper. It is said that she belonged
to a family of squires, the Marshalls of Shelford Manor,
Nottingham ; but she was born at Islington, and was
probably, even before her marriage, in a comparatively
humble rank of life, notwithstanding her descent from
Shelford. The question whether Turner's mother was,
or was not, what we mean in English by the word
" lady," has an interest for us with regard to him which
is quite independent of genealogy, though genealogy is

14 The Life of y. M. W, Turner,

interesting also. A lady is a woman who clearly under-
stands and consistently practises, the refinements of a
highly-civilized existence ; and the most real distinction
between a lady, and a woman who is not a lady, is
that one is more civilized than the other, and more
determined to preserve the habits of a high civilization,
both in her own person and in all those over whom she
has authority. These habits are not simply habits of
expense ; it is cheaper to remain sober than to get
drunk, and yet it is more ladylike to be sober. It does
not cost more money to speak good English than bad,
or to be gentle than rude ; yet a lady always, from pre-
ference, speaks correctly and has gentle manners. It so
happens by the force of circumstances that there are
more ladies in the upper classes than in the lower, and
that there is a severer public opinion in the upper classes
about most of the things which, taken together, consti-
tute civilization, because it is a fault in rich people (who
have such great facilities) not to be clean, and cultivated
and polite, when it may only be a misfortune in poor
ones. There is, then, really such a thing as ladyhood,
and it is one of the strongest of civilizing influences.
Turner, there is reason to believe, notwithstanding the
position of his mother's ancestry, never came under that
influence, and the want of it may have been the great
reason why he was never a perfectly civilized man. We
know really nothing about his mother, except that she
had a bad temper, that her home was an unhappy one,
that she became insane and was removed from it. Of
his father we know more. William Turner, the barber,

Turner at School, 15

was a Devonshire man who had settled in London. His
great characteristics appear to have been the especial
virtues of the middle class, industry and economy. In
teaching his son these two things he helped him in the
artistic career itself, for without the most persistent
industry the painter would never have mastered his
art, and without the strictest economy in early years
he would never have been able to pursue it with
sufficient independence for the attainment of greatness.
Thus William Turner gave his son both a sword and
a shield for the battle of life, and if we were writing
an allegory we might say that on the sword was en-
graven the word Diligentia^ and on the shield Parsi-
monia. Few young men need these virtues so much as
a young painter, for his art bristles all over with diffi-
culties, and until fame is won he may at any time be
compelled to abandon it from sheer necessity, against
which there is no defence but thrift. Happily for
Turner his father cared also for his education, and sent
him to school at Brentford when he was ten years old.
The boy went to school afterwards in London, and lastly
at Margate. What this school education did for him
may not appear much if we look at it as men of very
advanced culture look upon education, for it is certain
that Turner showed few signs of literary training. He
never, in after-life, knew any language at all. He did
not know any foreign language, and he never mastered
his native tongue. There is nothing surprising in this.
The whole class to which Turner belonged was then, and
is still, very imperfectly acquainted with the nobler half

i6 77/^? Life of J, M. W, Turner

of the English tongue. " The ignorance in this depart-
ment," says Professor Seeley, " of those who leave school
at fourteen or sixteen, is deplorable. It is far more than a
mere want of precision in the notions attached to words.
It is far more also than a mere ignorance of uncommon
and philosophical words. There is a large class of words
in the language, originally perhaps philosophical, but
which have passed so completely into the common parlance
of well-educated people that they cannot now be called
philosophical, but which remain to the class I speak of
perfectly obscure. The consequence is that such people,
in reading not merely abstruse books, but books in the
smallest degree speculative or generalizing, constantly
mistake the meaning of what they read. It is not that
they understand their author imperfectly ; they totally
misunderstand him, and suppose him to say something
which he does not say. It is no wonder that such per-
sons have no turn for reading.'* This is quite a true
account of the condition of literary culture in the class
which is educated as Turner was in those three schools
which he attended in his boyhood. English is not
really taught in such schools, and the boys have not the
time which would be necessary to the mastery of any
other language, so they leave without knowing any
language whatever. In a few very rare c^ses a taste
for literature stimulates them to learn English in after-
life ; but the true, strong phalanx of the class goes at
once energetically into business, and remains for ever
totally incapable either of using the higher English itself,
or of understanding it when used by others. And in

Turner at School, 17

addition to the general unculture of his class Turner had
a personal difficulty, in his own mental idiosyncracy. He
might have been taught English by a very patient and
able master, entirely devoted to him, but the master
would have found the. work of instruction a heavy
undertaking. The truth is that Turner was one of those
persons who seem born to be illiterate. He had not the
literary faculty. To the end of his life he was never
sure of getting safely to the end of a written sentence.
He never was able to spell. And still, notwithstanding
this candid admission of his deficiency, we think it
evident that his schooling must have established a wide
difference between him and. a lad who has never been
taught anything at all, such as a Suffolk ploughboy
before the invention of School Boards. His years of
schooling did not make him a linguist, but it is highly
probable that they conveyed a good many facts to his
mind, and a certain quantity of legends and traditions,
which, to a poetical temperament like his, are quite as
valuable as facts. Some of the great classical traditions
must have reached him in this way; he must have heard
of Greece and Rome, and heen brought nearer to antiquity
than those disinherited ones who live exclusively in the
present. He must have learned, too, that England is
not the world. It requires little knowledge of geography
to be aware that the Alps exist, that there are such lakes
as Como and Lucerne, such rivers as the Seine and the
Loire ; and yet this knowledge, inevitable as it seems to
all educated persons, is by no means universal, even now.
If Turner had never been sent to school at all, it is quite
2

i8 The Life of J, M, IV. Turner,

possible that he might have remained ignorant, that his
curiosity might never have been awakened. His father
came from South Molton, a Devonshire village. If he
had remained there, and not cared to educate the child,
the boyish imagination of Turner would never have
wandered over the noblest scenery in Europe. It is the
dreams of youth which become the realities of manhood.
Let us not, then, undervalue the schooling which opened
wide fields for dreaming to a boy of such an imaginative
temperament

The future landscape-painter was fortunate in the
localities of two out of his three schools — Brentford, by
one' of the richest parts of the Thames, then much less
populous than it is now, and Margate, on the sea -shore.
Think of the difference between two such places as these
and a place like Rugby, for example, where Dr. Arnold
could find absolutely nothing to gratify his instinct for
natural beauty ! I have no desire to attach an exag-
gerated importance to the circumstances of my hero's
youth, and should prefer, if possible, to steer clear of
that ancient error of biographers which prophesies after
the event, and shows how the kind gods watched over
the great man's infancy, and led him from strength to
strength. But without idealizing the story of a life, we
may and must attribute an enormous importance to the
influences which affected its earlier years. The power of
such influences depends on the inborn susceptibilities.
When the idiosyncrasy is keenly alive to external nature,
the scenes amidst which youth is passed leave their
impress to the close of life. Every reader of these pages

Paternal Encouragement, 19

who has the landscape instinct knows this by his own
experience. He remembers every hill and every hollow
in the land of his boyhood, and if, luckily, there was a
stream there, he remembers every sleepy pool and every
babbling shallow. Even the very stones are like friends
to him, and he pardons the hardness of their hearts. In
the case of Turner, we know quite certainly that he
became a great painter of sea and river, especially of the
sea -coast, and of stately and noble rivers, such as the
Seine and the Loire. It is, therefore, a probability
which closely approaches certainty, that the Thames at
Brentford, and the sea and coast at Margate, were not
without influence upon his destiny, in determining the
tendency of his affections. It is known, too, that he
began to draw by instinct in his school-days, and that he
tried to imitate what he saw. There is a story that his
first artistic attempt which attracted the notice of his
father was a copy of an heraldic lion, which he had
made from memory, having seen the original in the
house of one of his father's customers. This beginning
is interesting as a proof that, even in boyhood, he felt
some reliance upon the faculty which was the mainstay
of his future work, for without memory a painter of land-
cape effect is like a carpenter without wood.

The elder Turner at once perceived that there were
artistic faculties in his boy ; and instead of doing all he
could to thwart them, as is the usual habit of parents, he
determined to encourage them, and give his boy whatever
help might be attainable. Surely this circumstance, that
his father was a friend and not an enemy to his genius,

20 The Life of J. M, W. Turner.

counts for much amongst the many favorable powers
which led Turner to wealth and fame. The father was
relatively an enlightened person with regard to the fine
arts. It was a great thing at that time, when the English
school was so little encouraged, to know that Art was
alive in England, and to be at all hopeful about the future
career of a young man who dedicated himself to such a
pursuit. Even in our own day, when so much noise has
been made about modern art by picture -dealers and
writers in the newspapers, there are still millions of
people in the country who are either entirely ignorant of
its existence, or else consider you eccentric and unpracti-
cal if you take any interest in it. The older Turner, like
the Florentine barber in RomolUy lived in a centre of cul-
ture, and though Maiden Lane is not in appearance more
beautiful or artistic than some street in Manchester or
Birmingham, it is even yet, and was far more decidedly
at that time, much closer to the artistic centre of England.
It is known positively that Stothard went to get his hair
cut by the barber in Maiden Lane, and that the barber
and his client talked together about art, for William Tur-
ner said to Stothard, " My son is going to be a painter."
The barber's shop was near Somerset House, and not very
far from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds. It is not un-
reasonable to suppose that, at a time when artists lived
much nearer to Covent Garden than they generally do at
the present day, the elder Turner would be brought into
contact with others besides Stothard. A contemporary
of the artist, whose name has not been preserved, said
that the boy began his professional career very early, by

Beginnings in Art, 21

hanging little water-color drawings round the entrance to
his father's shop, the prices being duly marked upon
them, and not 'exceeding three shillings for each separate
work of art. Supposing this to be true, and it is quite
according to the character of both, father and son, who
knew the value of three shillings, we consider that it was
an excellent thing for the young artist. It was certainly
a very humble kind of publicity, and yet .sufficient for a
stimulus, and much more encpuraging than being refused
at the Academy exhibition. Not all the Academicians
united had power enough to close that other little exhibi-
tion round the barber's door. If there were a few sales
they must have been an immense encouragement to a
poor boy — quite enough to keep up an ardent interest in
his work.

About this time he copied Paul Sandby, thus laying
the foundation of his own future excellence in water-color
much more securely than if he had tried to copy one of
our brilliant modern water-color men. He also began to
work seriously from nature, no longer as a schoolboy
amuses himself with sketching, but in the temper of an
incipient artist. A boyish friendship with Girtin, the
young genius who might have been a rival if he had lived
past early manhood, strengthened young Turner in his
artistic determinations, by preserving him from too much
golitude in his pursuit. Girtin and Turner worked
together at the trade of coloring prints : dull work, per-
haps, for two great geniuses as those boys really were,
and yet excellent practice for beginners in the technical
business of water-color. Neither of the two friends was

22 The Life of J. M. W. Turner.

likely so far to forget the culture of his own abilities as to
settle down permanently to the mechanical handicraft of
art without aspiring to higher things, so they both, in
times of comparative liberty, made simple landscapes in
the topographic fashion of those days. From the age of
thirteen, when Turner left the last of his three schools,
he pursued the practical work of art, in one way or an-
other, almost without intermission till old age.

The boy did not, at this time, remain exclusively in
London. He went to Bristol occasionally to visit a friend
of his father, a Mr. Harraway, for whom he drew his own
portrait. In London he was never without useful help,
both in instruction and employment. Porden, an archi-
tect, employed him to add water-color backgrounds to his
architectural designs. When these happened to be
country houses, Turner would have a certain limited scope
for the exercise of his talent in landscape, and we find
that he availed himself of such opportunities very will-
ingly, and was highly appreciated by Mr. Porden, who
offered to take him as an apprentice without the usual
premium. One of his educators was a perspective
draughtsman, Thomas Malton, who lived in Long Acre.
Turner afterwards said that he learned perspective from
Malton, but Malton complained of his pupil's incapacity,
and took him back to his father's house as unteachable.
On a second trial Turner got on no better, and was again
returned upon his father's hands. There is nothing in
this which need surprise us in the least. The science of
perspective, as taught geometrically by Malton, lies quite
outside of the purely artistic powers, and Turner's genius

Early Study of Architecture, 23

was essentially and exclusively artistic. Scientific per-
spective is # pursuit which may amuse or occupy a mathe-
matician, but the stronger the artistic faculty in a painter
the less he is likely to take to it, for it exercises other
faculties than his. Besides this, he feels instinctively that
he can do very well without it. He learns natural per-
spective mainly by the eye, and when he works from
imagination he simply sees the objects in his own mental
vision, and draws them as he sees them, very much as
they would appear to him in nature. The failure of the
young Turner to learn scienttfic perspective is therefore
quite in harmony with what we know of his intellectual
constitution, and need not surprise us more than his life-
long difficulty about language.

The young artist at this time was brought into still
closer connection with architecture. He had already, as
we have seen, worked industriously upon architectural
drawings, by surrounding the buildings with sky and
landscape of his own, and in this he had given satisfaction
to his employers. A step further in the same direction
might make him an architectural draughtsman, and possi-
bly, in the future, an architect. His father decided that
this step should be taken, and the boy was placed, at the
age of fourteen or fifteen, in Mr. Hardwick's office. This
may be considered one of the most fortunate circum-
stances of his life. The architectural labors, which he
went through with his usual diligence, must have been
useful to him afterwards when he introduced architecture
into his works, which he did very frequently ; but besides
this Mr. Hardwick had a lively appreciation of artistic

24 The Life of y, M, W, Turner,

talent, saw evidence of it in his young pupil, and said
that he ought to go and study at the Royii Academy.
There are differences of opinion amongst landscape-
painters about the utility of Academic training to an
artist who desires to pursue their branch of the profession.
Some landscape-painters say the Academic training is of
little use to them, or that it is certainly not so useful as
studies from landscape-nature out of doors ; others believe
that the work done in Academies, though it has so little
apparent connection with landscape, is a better prepara-
tion for the future work of a landscape-painter than the
premature study of trees, and hills, and water. There are
reasons in favor of the latter opinion which are not
obvious at first sight, but they are of a kind which the
most intelligent artists are the most likely to estimate
justly. There is an almost universal illusion that land-
scape-painting is comparatively easy, an illusion which is
based upon the truth that accurate drawing is not essen-
tial to a landscape-painter. There are, however, other
qualities than mere accuracy in good landscape-painting,
and other difficulties in the representation of nature than
a simple definition of its forms. The greatest difficulty of
this branch of art may be expressed in a single word —
complexity. The complexity of natural landscape is such
that it cannot be understood, and therefore cannot be
interpreted, without powers both of analysis and of
synthesis which a young student is not likely to have
acquired. A young student, in the presence of landscape-
nature, is bewildered by the intricacy and abundance of
the material before him ; he requires a simpler model to

Academic Training. 25

begin with, for he ought to pass from the simple to the
complex ; and besides simplicity in the model, he requires
permanence of effect. In a climate so changeable as that
of England, not only do the effects change from hour to
hour, and in distant scenery from minute to minute ; but
there is never any probability that if you go to a place on
three successive days, exactly at the same moment, you
will find your first effect again. Every one knows how
entirely different a place looks at different times, but the
landscape-painter alone feels this changeableness as an
inconvenience to his studies. To the mature and accom-
plished artist, who works from memory, aided by rapid
notes, the changeableness of nature is an additional
source of interest in his observations ; to the beginner,
it is one of the most serious hindrances which can be
imagined. Now the study of the human figure, as it is
pursued everywhere in Academies, avoids both these
difficulties of complexity and changeableness, whilst it
thoroughly educates the eye to the perception of line,
projection, and color. It does not educate the special
faculty of the landscape-painter, which is a peculiar kind
of memory, but it prepares him for his future work by a
steady training in the elementary business of art ; and
thus, by giving him the knowledge and power which all
painters must have in common (knowledge of objects and
power to represent them), leaves him free, in after-years,
to concentrate his attention more especially upon the
particular culture which will be needed for his own
career. This, I believe, is a fair statement of the advan-
tages of Academic study to a landscape-painter, so far

26 The Life of y, M, W, Turner,

as it goes ; yet it might be carried farther without
exaggeration. No one who is practically acquainted
with the subject will deny that a figure, placed in a cer-
tain light, is as much an object under an effect as a near
mountain in clear weather ; it is, therefore, an initiation
in the laws of effect as well as in those of form and
color. Still more decidedly may effect be studied in a
gallery of statues, which is sure to exhibit permanently
many of the most delicate phenomena of light and
shade. You have not, it is true, in living figures or
statues, those sudden and surprising revolutions of color,
which are produced in mountain scenery by changing
effects of light; and it is better in the early study of
phenomena so difficult to account for, that the mind
should not find itself confronted, just at first, by almost
insoluble problems. What we maintain is, that Acade-
mic study is the best general initiation in the art of
painting, because it gives the best opportunities for a
rational advance in study, from the simple to the com-
plex, from what is perntanent enough to be copied quietly
to what is so transient that it can only be rendered with
the help of the memory. To be a pupil of the Royal
Academy was, therefore, the best thing which could have
happened to Turner in his youth, even though he was
not to be a figure-painter in after-life. It may be regretted,
perhaps, that the Academy did not take more pains to
impress upon the minds of its pupils the necessity, or at
least the desirableness, of painting their pictures so as
to make them last : but neither Turner nor Reynolds
learned their suicidal habits in technical matters from

Academic Training, 27

Academic tradition : it was their own fatal ingenuity in
after-life which led them to discover the arts by which a
picture may be so painted that it will become a ruin
during the lifetime of the artist. The Academic tradi-
tion of oil-painting is safe enough, so far as permanence
is concerned. A few well-known and very permanent
pigments are commonly used by students, most of them
being the cheap and durable earths ; nor is there anything
in the Academic manner of using them which necessarily
leads to the destruction of the work. But why need we
argue in generalities with reference to the technical educa-
tion of an artist whose works are here to bear testimony
themselves } Turner began by painting soundly in oil ;
his unsound work belongs to his full jnaturity. We know
on excellent authority — the authority of the owner- —
that the portrait which Turner painted of himself, at the
age of seventeen, is still in a perfect state of preserva-
tion. The pigments used in that portrait, and the
manner of applying them, were alite in accordance with
the Academic tradition of the time. Another portrait of
himself, about the same age, in the National collection, is
also preserved. We believe, then, that although the
Academy neither did nor could do anything to develop
the wonderful poetic power which astonished the world
much later, it carried forward Turner's early education in
a practically safe way, and taught him more than he
would have learned by continuing to copy Paul Sandby,
or by making sketches of landscape-nature with no better
guidance than his own imperfect knowledge.

A very distinguished living landscape-painter, whose

28 The Life of J, M. W. Turner.

works have deservedly won public favor by their union
of a fine sentiment for wild northern scenery with un-
common executive skill, earnestly recommended one of
his less skilful brethren to make portraits frequently, in
order to gain more strength and facility in the representa-
tion of objects. The artist who gave this advice had
himself painted portraits exclusively for many years, and
attributed much of his skill in landscape to this early
practice in what may seem a totally different branch of
art. The advice was good for the reasons we have given
in favor of figure-study generally. The art of painting
combines two things, the representation of objects. and
the representation of effects. A head is a good object to
study, because its forms are not accidental, but organic,
and because in hair, flesh, and eyes, it presents quite
different textures, besides whatever textures of dress
there may happen to be about and below the neck. A
head may also be well seen as the artist returns to his
work day after day, and it may be seen exactly under
the same effect of light. It is, at the same time, though
an organized object, free from the inconvenience of
intricacy. The structure of it, so far as it concerns an
artist, is simple and easily understood, after a little study
of anatomy. On the whole, a human head is the best
object to study which is readily accessible everywhere,
and this is the reason why it has been recommended,
even for the advancement of landscape-painters.

Turner, with his usual good fortune, which generally
led him to do the right thing at the right time, was
admitted to the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds, to paint

A Professional Commencement, 29

there from that great master's works. At that time he
probably intended to be a portrait-painter, for portrait
was then the only really lucrative branch of art, and it is
very possible that if Reynolds had lived a few years
longer his great personal influence would have kept his
young pupil on the path which he himself had so suc-
cessfully followed. But it so happened that when Turner
entered the President's studio, Sir Joshua was approach-
ing the sad close of his labors and his life, so that his
personal influence was not continued long enough to
make Turner definitively a portrait-painter.

Another happy circumstance of Turner's early career
was that in those days a very ^ young artist had some
chance of getting a picture into the Academy exhibition,
which is always an immense encouragement in itself, quite
independently of sale. The ninety years which have
elapsed since Turner's boyhood have multiplied the
number of artists in England so enormously, that few
young men in the present day can hope to see their
names in the Academy Catalogue. Turner's first picture
was exhibited in 1787, he being then twelve years old.
The subject of this picture was Dover Castle. After this
beginning he knew that the road to fame was open to,
him, if he had genius and industry. Of genius there was
not as yet, nor for long afterwards, the slightest visible
evidence, but the habit of industry was already formed.
He kept to his early practice of washing in skies and back-
grounds for architects. After some years he began to
receive certain commissions for topographic drawings, or,
in other words, he began to get paid for doing exactly the

30 The Life of y. M, W, Turner,

kind of study which at that time of his life would be the
best preparation for his future work in landscape. This
topographic business took him to many interesting places,
and amongst others to Oxford. The natural vigor of
his constitution, one of the many blessings which were
favorable to his career, made him a pedestrian from the
very beginning, and led him into the* habit of taking
memoranda as he walked. In this way he began quite
early in life to accumulate that prodigious mass of ob-
servations which provided the material for his artistic
productiveness. His comparatively humble birth, and
the simple way of living to which he had always been
accustomed, made him contented with whatever accom-
modation he chanced to find upon the road. He had
never been spoiled by luxury, he had no gentility to
maintain ; wherever he went he carried with him the one
comfort money cannot procure, the regularity of healthy
sensation, the strength of his vigorous youth. There
are many situations in life apparently much more fortu-
nate than that of this poor young artist, but there are
few in reality so enviable. Entirely free from the time-
wasting obligations of people in the upper classes of
society, happy with small gains, receiving constant and
sufficient encouragement, the future lying before him
like the vast distances in the real world of his wanderings,
his whole heart in the study of his profession, this young
favorite of Nature and of Fortune began his great
career.

There are people stupid enough to wonder how a
poor barber's son could ever be a favorite of Fortune,

Turner* s Luck in Life, 31

as if the capricious goddess had no other gifts to bestow
than money and money's worth. Her gifts are only
good for their utility to the life and the work that has
to be done in it. With the wealth of Sir George Beau-
mont, Turner might have been an artist like Sir George
Beaumont, and gone on to the end of his days plotting
where to put his brown tree. Even a little learning
in Greek and Latin might have been the total destruc-
tion of his genius, by giving him the pride of scholarship
and closing his eyes to nature and to art. In this
case, then, both poverty and ignorance may have been
gracious gifts of Fortune. Nor was she really unkind
to him in giving for the residence of his soul that
uncomely face and body. Man is an intelligence served
by organs, and few intelligences have been better or
more regularly served in this way that that of Turner.
It is the simple truth that his legs were more useful
to him than a pair of horses. His eyes were so good
that when he painted he would throw a sketch on the
ground, or anywhere, and work easily from it if only
it happened to be the right side up. His nervous
system was so sound that he could work anywhere and
everywhere, and he was perfectly indifferent to those
arrangements for comfort which artists usually consider
essential, and which really are essential to them. His
small hand was so delicate that it could draw with a
degree of executive refinement which astonishes even
opticians, the most refined of all workmen in the pure
handicrafts. His arm was so steady that he habitually
painted on upright canvases without a mahl-stick, which

32 The Life of J, M. W, Turner.

all other painters find to be necessary. His constitutional
strength was such that he could work fifteen hours at a
stretch without weariness, and his digestion so vigorous
that all extremes of living were alike to him. It is true
that he was short and plain, but stature and beauty were
entirely unnecessary to his* work. He was tall enough to
paint a large picture, and handsome enough to be himself
paintable in the freshness of his youth. Had he been
physically more attractive he might have been conscious
of the advantage, as he was afterwards conscious of his
disadvantage in this respect ; and he might have felt, like
other handsome men of genius, a desire to show himself
to people, and shine in society, which would probably
have been a great hindrance to his progress, if not abso-
lutely destructive to his originality. Such as Nature
made him, and as Fortune placed him, he was exactly so
constituted and so situated that his success in art, and
his happiness in it, became necessary consequences of
that harmony which has been considered the highest of
earthly felicities, the harmony between constitution and
conditions.

CHAPTER II.

The young artist — Dr. Munro. — Girtin and Cozens. — Turner's early work
in oil. — Love and disappointment. — Absence of female influence. — A
dual life. — Turner a drawing-master. — He comes of age. — First northern
tour. — Dr. Whitaker. — Turner elected A. R. A. — His diploma picture.^
New and old Gothic. — Professional position in iSoa

TT7HEN as yet a mere boy, at an age when others are
preparing for some remotely future career, at an
age when many have not yet even made up their minds as
to the nature of their life's occupation, Turner was
already actively engaged in his profession. At fifteen he
' exhibited his view of the Archbishop's Palace at Lambeth,
and studied the sanie year at Eltham and Uxbridge
with a view to next year's exhibition. A year later,
with that readiness to seize upon an impression which
he retained to the close of life, we find him draw-
ing the Pantheon after the fire, which was exhibited
in 1792, the artist being then seventeen years old ; and
it may be observed that in a study of his at Malmesbury
Abbey, for a drawing which was exhibited that year, he
had taken note of a shadow playing on tree-trunks in
the same spirit of observation which characterises the
memoranda of his fullest maturity. Another of Turner's
great permanent characteristics is visible at a very early

3

34 The Life of J. M. W. Turner.

period of his career. No landscape-painter was ever so
wide in range as he was. The exact opposite of Con-
stable, whose art was the expression of intense affection
for one locality, Turner took an interest in the whole
world of landscape, and, therefore, was of necessity a
traveller as well as a sketcher or maker of memoranda.
Now we have only to inquire into the occupations of his
earliest professional years to see at once that he got
into the habit of travelling, and had full opportunities for
indulging his instincts in that direction, at an age when
most young men are confined by school or apprenticeship.
He began by travelling in England and Wales, and had
studied a great variety of scenery before his twentieth
year. In 1793, being then eighteen, he was sent by one
of his employers. Walker, the publisher of the " Copper-
plate Magazine," to Kent, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, and
Cheshire. His drawing3 were engraved, even at that
early stage in his career — an immense encouragement to
a young artist, from the publicity which engraving gives,
and its consequent chances of fame. The exhibitions of
the Royal Academy were open to him from his boyhood,
and this encouraged him to work in color, and not to
confine himself to simple chiaroscuro drawing for the
engravers. Before he was twenty he had penetrated into
Wales, very probably from Bristol, and had drawn the
river Monach, near the Devil's Bridge, in Cardiganshire ;
he had also drawn at Tintem and Great Malvern. In
1794 he exhibited five works, but the next year he ex-
hibited eight, and the year following eleven. At twenty
he had drawn Lincoln, Peterborough, and Cambridge,

Dr. Munro. 35

besides views in Denbighshire, Monmouthshire, and
Cardiganshire. At twenty-one he had visited the Isle of
Wight, besides Salisbury, Ely, and Llandaff. His first
Continental excursion did not take place until some years
later, but the Rhine and the Alps could be waited for
with patient hope by a youth who had England and
Wales for his sketching -ground, with all their rivers and
hills.

Every one who takes an interest in Turner knows that
when a young man he used to go with his friend Girtin to
sketch at Dr. Munro's house in the evenings, and that
the two young artists received as payment for their labors
the sum of half- a- crown each, and their suppers. This
may seem a small matter to us who think of Turner as an
artistic Croesus, but it was a pleasant help to him at that
time, not only for the half-crown, the value of which it is
certain that he fully appreciated, but for the kind encour-
agement given by Dr. Munro, for the pleasant fellowship
with Girtin, and for the frequent opportunities of studying
works by previous artists, of which Dr. Munro had been
an intelligent collector. There were several Gains-
boroughs in the house, and mauy water -color drawings
by the «arly men, Paul Sandby and others, whom Turner
was destined to leave so far behind, that they seem to us
at this distance to belong almost to the pre-historic ages
of the world. Dr. Munro had also a collection of draw-
ings by the old masters, including Canaletti, who may
even then have led young Turner's thoughts towards
Venice, which he illustrated much later with such magni-
ficent unreality. But of all the works of art belonging to

36 The Life of y, M, W, Turner.

Dr. Munro at this time, it is likely that the water -colors
of Cozens would influence both Girtin and Turner the
most decidedly, both because they were nearest to them
in the history of art, and because Cozens was an artist of
deep feeling, with a remarkably fine sense of what was
noble and large in landscape, and a seriousness, some-
times amounting to solemnity, which would inevitably
have great influence over two such minds as those of
Turner and Girtin. Even Constable,- who was so differ-
ently constituted, and who chose a path in art so different
from the broad tranquillity of Cozens, admired him with
such enthusiasm that, as his friend T,eslie tells us, he said
that his works were poetry, and his genius the greatest
which had ever applied itself to landscape. Leslie had
such admiration for Cozens that he said there could be no
improvement upon him "when at his best.'* Of the two
young men who studied Cozens together Girtin is most
generally regarded as his immediate successor, because he
died so early, and so did not come down to the quite
modern time, as Turner lived to do. Those evenings at
Dr. Munro's are, therefore, curiously historical, and espe-
cially interesting to all who care for water-color painting,
and its wonderful development in England. Cozens was
there, not in the flesh, but in the spirit, which expressed
itself with a poet's sweetness in his drawings ; Girtin was
there, in the delicate early bloom of his short life, destined
like Shelley and Keats to few years of labor in his art,
and yet to immortal fame. Turner was there in the
strength of his youth, having already well and vigorously
begun the most productive career in the history of
landscape art.

Girtin and Cozens, 37

The writer of these pages well remembers that he §rst
heard of Girtin from Leslie, who possessed a few works
of his, and greatly valued them. In the " Handbook for
Young Painters,*' Leslie spoke of Girtin with his usual
appreciation, and gave a very beautiful engraving from a
poetical evening scene of his on one of the Highland
lakes. In the same work he gave a fine Italian subject
by Cozens — a wood, with stone-pines rising above it
. against the evening light, and a vast, monotonous build-
ing, with many windows — a monastery, perhaps, or
convent. Both are evidently the works of poets, but as
we have been so much* familiarized with lake scenery by
more recent artists, the Cozens seems the more original
of the two. If, however, we take the trouble to place
ourselves, by a little mental effort, as far back as Girtin's
time in the history of English art, setting aside all that
has since been done for the illustration of Highland
scenery, we shall at once perceive that it needed the
instincts of genius to see what he saw in it, and to
interpret it with a sentiment so exquisite. Leslie con-
sidered his style to be one of more equally sustained
excellence than that of Cozens, for though Girtin died
very early (at the age of twenty-seven), his mental health
remained good to the last, " and he continued to draw till
within a few days of his death, though he was so debilita-
ted that he could scarcely hold his pencil." He acquired
the power of a master very soon, and exercised it so much
that the quantity of good work he left behind him is
surprising to artists, especially when they know that some
of his valuable time was thrown away upon a panorama

38 The Life of J. M. W. Turner,

of Xondon. " Sobered tints of exquisite truth," said
Leslie, " and broad chiaroscuro, are the prevailing charac-
teristics of Girtin." Turner had the deepest respect for
Girtin's genius, and an especial affection for some golden
effects of his ; he believed, too, that the premature death
of his gifted young friend had removed from his path the
most dangerous of all his rivals, though it is likely that if
the life or death of Girtin could have depended upon
Turner's decision, affection would have prevailed over m
ambition, and they would have contende4 in friendly
rivalry for the suffrages of the public, without jealousy in
the heart of either. Notwithstanding Turner's warm
admiration for his friend, whom he sincerely believed to
be superior to himself in certain qualities, it may well be
doubted whether Girtin would ever have displayed such
various and great powers as Turner afterwards developed.
It seems much more probable that he would have ranked
with such an artist as David Cox (forcible in execution
and grand in sentiment, but of narrow intellectual range),
than with such an unprecedentedly comprehensive artistic
intellect as Turner's.

The two friends worked from nature together by the
Thames as early, it is believed, as the year 1789; and
they were companions at Mr. Henderson's, as well as at
Dr. Munro's, in pleasant evening work. They did not,'
however, visit the Highlands together, though Leslie says
that Girtin was known to have paid a visit to the lakes of
Scotland, and Turner was drawn to them also, the year
before Girtin died.

Although Turner's professional business in early life

Turner's Early Work in Oil. 39

was to draw topographic views for the publishers, he was,
as we have seen, an accepted exhibitor at the Royal
Academy, and this encouraged him to paint in oil. His
first oil -picture seems to have been done in 1795, from
one of his sketches of Rochester, taken two years before ;
but there is another account, which affirms that Turner's
first attempt in oil had for its subject a sunset on the
Thames, near Battersea, which had been seen by the
artist on the previous day, when Bell, the engraver, was
with him, and that Bell was also present when the attempt
in oil-painting was made. The two accounts fix the
beginning of Turner's career as an oil-painter in the same
year, 1795 ; and they may possibly be reconciled by sup*
posing that the sunset at Battersea was the first landscape
experiment in oil, and the Rochester tlTe first picture. It
is evident, however, that neither of these is to be con-
sidered an absolutely first attempt in oil-painting, for
Turner was now twenty, and he had painted his own
portrait in oil, with considerable power, at the age of
seventeen — the portrait which we all know in the National
Gallery. We ought not to forget, either, that Turner had
been a pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and had painted in
his studio at the age of fifteen. It is probable, also,
that his trainmg as an Academy student would include
some practice in oil, so that neither the Rochester nor
the Battersea sunset could be considered the work of a
novice, though the artist who painted them had hitherto
done much more in water- color, and had not applied his
knowledge of oil-painting to landscape. The technical
history of Turner's youth may be told accurately in a few

40 The Life of y, M, W, Turner,

words. At the age of seventeen he was a fairly good
painter in oil, but in a heavy though safe manner, and had
overcome all the first difficulties in the career of a por-
trait-painter. When he abandoned the intention of
making portraiture his profession, and took to landscape,
he worked in water-color, in which he had acquired con-
siderable skill at an early age. At the age of twenty he
began to try to express in oil the knowledge of landscape
which he had acquired with pencil and water-color. At
the age of twenty-two he was able to paint landscape in
either of the two mediums, but remained for a long time
more addicted to water-color, and used it in preference
all his life for work intended to be engraved. In later
years he painted much in oil, but the influence of his
water-color practice is evident in nearly all his pictures ;
in many of them it is even painfully evident, so that
Constable, not unjustly, called them "large water-colors."
What interests us for the present is that Turner's whole
career was foreshadowed in everything before the expira-
tion of his minority. Whilst yet a minor he was a painter
in water -colors, a painter in oils, a considerable traveller
within the limits of his native island, and his works were
already engraved. At twenty he was not preparing for
life, but really lived already, and had entered thoroughly
upon his career, not in a vague, general way, but in all its
several departments, except etching on copper and engrav-
ing in mezzotint, whilst even for these his early use of the
pen and the wash of neutral tint was the best of all
possible preparations.

Turner's destiny in another very important matter

Love and Disappointment 41

appears to have been settled for him at the very thresh-
old of manhood. It is a commonplace that marriage
affects the fate of a man more than anything else except
thie circumstances of his birth ; but in the ordinary walks
of life the chances are generally that the consequences of
marriage will be favorable. A man is tied tt) his shop or
his office, and does not feel more fastened down to his
counter or desk because he has a wife to welcome him at
home when the slavery of the day is over. In ordinary
occupations the work to be done has a definite character,
and requires the simple application of ordinary abilities
and common industry ; it is not a succession of hazardous
enterprises, undertaken with the whole energy of extra-
ordinary faculties. The life of a painter like Turner is
really a succession of hazardous enterprises, in which he
risks his time and genius, just as a poet does when he
composes works without any certainty of sale. For these
great attempts, many of which were failures at the time
from the worldly point of view, he needed absolute
personal independence and the most perfect privacy.
His sense of the importance of this privacy was so
strong that he would admit nobody into his painting-
room, and he liked to be in places where nobody could
possibly find him. But, besides privacy, he valued
liberty ; the liberty of the artist, the liberty to make an
excursion when he felt it to be necessary or simply
helpful to his work. Marriage would have been perilous
to this kind of independence ; and if Turner had been
married early in life it is possible that he might have
contented himself with being happy, if he had found

42 The Life of J. M, W, Turner,

happiness, and abandoned the ambition to become great.
His fate was settled otherwise ; an early disappointment
made him give up all thoughts of marriage, and left all
his peculiarities, including the peculiarity of being a
genius, full liberty to develop themselves without re-
straint.

In those early days, when Turner's professional work
was that of a topographical draughtsman, who increased
his income by practising as a drawing-master, it is related
that he loved the sister of one of his old school-fellows,
and that they were engaged to be married ; but that the
marriage never took place because, during a long absence
of Turner's, his letters were intercepted by the young
lady's stepmother, who disliked the match. When Tur-
ner came back he found his betrothed engaged to another,
to a man for whom she had no affection, and yet she
would not break o£E this new engagement because the
wedding-day was very near at hand, and she believed
that matters had gone too far for her to retreat with
honor. Notwithstanding all that Turner could say or do
to prevent it, the sacrifice was consummated; and he
remained single all his life in consequence of this bitter
disappointment.

The tradition is, that Turner's absence lasted two
whole years ; but it is difficult to believe this. We know
very little of the circumstances, for we do not even know
exactly what Turner was doing at the time, nor where he
was during his absence ; but it seems in the highest
degree improbable that, as a young lover, he would have
endured to be separated from his betrothed for two whole

Love and Disappointment 43

years, or anything like it : such a pedestrian as he was
then would have walked, rather, across the distance which
divided them. But this is one of those stories, half-
legendary already, which one cannot wholly believe nor
yet quite disbelieve. At the same time, from their very
lack of substance, such stories are difficult to criticise.
When there are dates, for example, the critic has some
ground to go upon, for he can ascertain from other
sources what the subject of the history was doing at the
time fixed ; but here we have no date, except a supposi-
tion that the event may have happened some time about
1796. Again, it is said that Turner went abroad to study
his art, and "that this absence on the Continent was the
cause of the separation : but the catalogues of the exhibi-
tions mention no Continental work of Turner until the
year 1803, when he was twenty -eight years old. We
may, however, admit as highly probable that Turner may
have had a disappointment of this kind in his youth,
since few men remain confirmed old bachelors unless
they have had one or more such disappointments. And
although this legend is alike without names and without
dates it is circumstantial enough not to be wholly dis-
regarded, and is said to have come from the nameless
lady herself, through friends or relatives of hers. What
we positively know is, that Turner remained a bachelor,
and apparently in a more decided spirit than that of Etty,
who passed through a succession of unfortunate attach-
ments and disappointments. It is said that the girl
whom Turner loved condemned herself to the life-long
misery of an ill-assorted union ; but we know that the

44 The Life of J, M, W, Turner,

painter entered upon half a century of celibacy — of
celibacy without chastity — a life in which he formed
indeed connections with the other sex, but connections
of a kind which could do nothing for the elevation of his
mind or for the removal of his defects.

Fortunate in so many things, Turner was lamentably
unfortunate in this ; that throughout his whole life he
never came under any ennobling or refining feminine
influence, either in marriage or out of it. His mother
was bad-tempered, and finally even insane, having to be
separated from her husband, and placed in seclusion.
The best hope for him, after this first misfortune, lay in
a happy marriage with some cultivated lady, or at least
with some woman who had a delicate, feminine sense of
what was becoming. In early life, considering his own
humble position in society, he was not likely to make
what is called by worldly people " a good match," but he
might have met with a girl who had a natural good
taste and refinement, as many have who are not exactly
"ladies" in the conventional sense of the word. This
chance he lost for ever by his absolute renunciation of
all ideas of marriage. There still remained for him one
possibility. One of his mistresses might, by chance,
have been a superior person : this has happened occa-
sionally in such connections, though rarely : it happened,
for example, in the connection between Shelley and
Mary Godwin, which was not at first a marriage in any
sense but their own ; and it happened also in the case of
Byron and the Countess Guiccioli. Both these ladies,
though their conduct was not moral, were persons of

Absence of Female Influence, 45

culture and refinement, who kept their lovers up to a
better and higher kind of life than they would probably
have followed without them. This is especially true of
the Countess Guiccioli, who partially reformed Byron
by making his life relatively decent and respectable in
comparison with what it had been before she knew him.
Mary Godwin did not reform Shelley, merely because
he did not need that kind of reforming, but she gave
him intellectual companionship. Turner, as great a poet
as either of these two, though he expressed himself in a
different medium,^ never knew, during the whole course
of his life, what it was to have such companionship as
that with any woman. He had not even, so far as we
know, any intimate friendship with a lady able to
encourage and understand him — such a friendship, I
mean, as that which subsisted between the younger
Ampere and Madame R^camier. It is probable, how-
ever, that female influence of an elevating kind is of far
greater value to a writer than it could ever be to a
painter. The benefit of it is to stimulate the faculties by
a constant interchange of thought, and so to refine a
man's thinking on the subjects which occupy his mind
before he attempts to give them a direct 'literary ex-
pression ; so that, when he comes to write, his ideas have
already had the benefit of friendly discussion with an
intellect equal in rank, perhaps, to his own, but having
different perceptions, being of another sex. One of the
best known instances of this benefit to a writer is the
case of John Stuart Mill, who so warmly and candidly
acknowledged it. But now let us try to imagine how a

46 The Life of J. M, W. Turner.

similar feminine influence could operate upon the pro-
ducing faculties of a painter. Clearly as we see how
Shelley or Mill may have gained by it, we can only
obscurely perceive any possible benefit to the work of a
painter like Turner from previous friendly discussion
with any lady, however cultivated. A painters inten-
tions cannot be discussed until they are already in great
part realized, — we can criticise the finished picture, we
cannot criticise the intended picture, because we cannot
foresee the relative importance which its parts will have
when the whole work is finished. The criticism of un-
finished works is often so little applicable, that instead
of helping the artist it only irritates him. The coloring
of a picture in its early stages is often not merely
different from what it is intended to be ultimately, but
just the opposite, because a color is prevented from
looking crude when painted upon its complementary.
The only real help which a painter gains whilst a work
is in progress is from his brother-artists, and even they
are very likely to misunderstand his purposes. An
eminent contemporary, who greatly enjoyed and valued
the society of ladies, and lived in it willingly during his
hours of leisure, absolutely excluded them from his
painting room, even those of his own household. The
only use of feminine influence to a painter is a general
effect upon his mind — a refining effect, if the lady is
more refined than the artist with whom she lives. But
who in the world, masculine or feminine, had ever more
refined perception of landscape beauty than Turner had }
Could any refinement of feminine perception have added

A Dual Life, 47

to his refinement ? No ; the gain which he might have
derived from marriage might have been an infinite gain
to himself in many ways, but it is not likely that it
would have been a gain to his art. It is highly improl>>.
able that he would have painted better if married, and
it iis possible that the cares of a family might have pre-
vented him from executing those important works which
the public did not encourage, but which are now the
very corner-stones of the great edifice of his fame.

After his first attachment, and the bitterness of dis-
appointment which succeeded to it, Turner became two
men in one. There is nothing very unusual in a duality
of this kind, for many men find it a convenience to
separate themselves from themselves, and be at one time
the man of business, or the official, and at another the
private gentleman untrammelled by business or offi-
cialism. What is striking, however, in the case of
Turner, is the very strong contrast between the two
natures which dwelt together in him, and which were
alike just as much his own as two houses belonging to
the same proprietor, and used for alternate habitation.
We have plain proof in his works that his artist-nature
was one of ineffably exquisite refinement. It has been
said of him that his mind was as nearly as possible like
those of Keats and Dante intermingled : in such a com-
parison one might feel inclined to substitute Shelley for
Keats, but it may be quite safely asserted, that only
amongst the most etherial poets can we find a spirit of
such delicacy as his. At the same time he had another
nature, which was something between those of a common

48 The Life of J. M. W, Turner,

sailor and a costermonger : by which I mean, that he
was externally coarse, and had an appetite for low
pleasures, with a passion for small gains. The poet's
nature did not raise or refine the other, nor did the other
perceptibly degrade that of the poet. The combination
was not a mixture, and the central self of personality,
the conscious Ego^ ^vhatever that may be, passed from
one to the other quite easily down to the very close of
life ; as a pedestrian may take the road or the footpath
at will when both run parallel along the whole course
of his journey. The mystery of this is beyond all possible
explanation ; our nature is not sufficiently understood by
us for such things to be clear except as simple facts.
A character like Turner's would be rejected at once, in
fiction, as untrue,, but as a real existence it is undeniable.
We shall have to recur to this subject towards the close
of our biography, for the present we leave it and continue
the story of the Life.

It is possible even, that if Turner had been pressed
hard by the necessities of providing for a family he
might have remained a drawing-master, for he had some
success in that capacity in early life, and was fairly well
paid for his lessons to amateurs and in schools. Little
is known of his methods of instruction, but we may pre-
sume that at the early age of twenty-one he would teach
more explicitly, and more graciously, than on the few
occasions in mature life when he conveyed any practical
instruction to others. It is evident that the kind of art
he practised in early life was much more traditional and
communicable than the extraordinary and unprecedented

Turner a Drawing-Master, 49

manner which expressed the fulness of his genius.
When a young man, he did little more than repeat what
had been done before by other topographical draughts-
men, applying a traditional method to new subjects ;
and as the method had been taught to him, so it might
be to others after him. But he was not one of those
artists who are fitted by nature to make teaching the
business of their whole lives. Although, at a later
period, he became Professor of Perspective to the Royal
Academy, and took great pains to fulfil the duties of his
office, he was not gifted for a professor's work. Art is
always difficult to explain, and Turner had not the kind
of intellect which analyzes things in such a way as to be
favorable to clear expression in words ; nor had he, at
any time, that command of language which is necessary
to lucid exposition. Besides this difficulty, which was a
part of his very peculiar idiosyncrasy, it happened with
Turner, as it has happened with many other artists, that
as soon as he began to feel his own power his art became
nothing but a series of experiments, often very audacious,
which it would have been injudicious to communicate to
pupils even if it had been possible. Hence, although
he began his career as a teacher, and seems, from the
increase of his charges, to have succeeded well in that
profession in early life, we learn without surprise that he
did not retain his hold upon it, and that more com-
municative teachers were preferred by the ladies and
gentlemen of his time. The absorption in his own art
unfitted him more and more for the business of the
drawing-master.

CHAPTER III.

Turner comes of age. — First northern tour. — Dr. Whitaker. — Turner
elected A. R. A. — His Diploma picture. — New and Old Gothic. — Pro-
fessional position in 1800.

TN 1796, when Turner was twenty-one years old, he went
to live in rooms of his own in the lane at the end of
Hand Court, for quietness. He exhibited much this year,
including subjects from Salisbury, Westminster, Staff ord-
•*shire,. Wales, the Isle of Wight, and the sea. From this
time it becomes more difficult to know with certainty from
his exhibited works where he had been the year previous,
because he has already begun to accumulate memoranda,
and makes use of his earliest stores. Thus, in 1796 he
exhibits drawings of Salisbury and Ely Cathedrals, and of
fishermen at sea; and the next year he exhibits other
drawings of the same cathedr^ils, and another drawing of
fishermen. This may have been merely a recurrence to
material already accumulated, but on the other hand, when
we meet with some place in his drawings which he has
not previously illustrated; we may conclude that in all
probability he had visited it the year before. Up to the
exhibition of 1798 he shows nothing from Yorkshire, but
in that year he has several Yorkshire subjects ; therefore

First Northerti Tour, 51

we may conclude that he first visited that county, after-
wards so great a favorite of his, in the year 1797. In that
year he exhibited the little picture Moonlight, a study at
Millbanky which is now in the National Gallery, and is
interesting as being the first of his works in oil which
were exhibited at the Royal Academy. The picture is
dull and heavy, and shows not the least trace of genius,
yet it has always been rather a favorite with the writer of
this biography for its truth to nature in one thing. All
the ordinary manufacturers of moonlights — and moon-
lights have been manufactured in deplorably large quan-
tities for the market — represent the light of our satellite
as a blue and cold light, whereas in nature, especially in
the southern summer, it is often pleasantly rich and warm.
Turner did not follow the usual receipt, but had the cour-
age to make his moonlight warm, though he had not as
yet the skill to express the ineffably mellow softness of
the real warm moonlights in nature.

The year 1797 must have been one of the happiest of
Turner's early life. For the first time he got fairly into
the nort^l of England, and became acquainted with a kind
of scenery which he loved for ever after. The catholicity
of his taste in the choice of subject was already one of the
marked characteristics of his mind ; yet although he could
find something to interest him anywhere, he found in
Yorkshire, in the closest proximity to each other, those
elements of interest which are* often s6 widely apart that
even the audacity of an artist cannot venture to bring
them together. In the Highlands of Scotland we have
mountains but no architecture ; in Lincolnshire architec-

52 The Life of J. M, W. Turner,

ture but no mountains ; whilst through all the lovely
reaches of the Thames you may seek^in vain amongst its
richest meadows for monastic remains like those of Foun-
tains, Rivaulx, Kirkstall, or Bolton. There are castles on
the southern coast, but where on the chalk cliffs will you
find another Whitby ? There are hills in Surrey, but
what are the little southern heaths in comparison with the
bleak vastness of a Yorkshire moor, where no sound is to
be heard but the whistling of the wind and the whirr of
the heath-cock's wings ? In the close proximity of quite
different material, the hilly parts of Yorkshire are a para-
dise, to an artist of such various taste as Turner's. In an
hour's walk he may pass there from the fertility of Arabia
FeHx to the stony desolation of Arabia Petraea ; the hills
are lofty enough to give him some foretaste of Highland
sublimities, and the vales are rich enough to remind him
of the old pastorals, if his feelings are still attached to
them by the ties of artistic tradition.

But not only did Turner visit Yorkshire in 1797. The
taste for travel was already too strong in him to be satis-
fied without seeing everything within his reach ; so as he
thought that the English lakes and the extreme north of
England were not very far out of his way, he determined
to see these also, and penetrated into Westmoreland,
Cumberland, and Northumberland. The results of this
excursion are partly visible in the next Academy Exhibi-
tion, to which the young artist sends monastic ruins and
valleys of Yorkshire, mountains and lakes from Cumber-
land and Westmoreland, and baronial castles from North-
umberland, still standing by sea or river. In the same

First Northern Tour, 53

year, as if to show that his interest in quiet southern scenes
had not been diminished by any new-born enthusiasm
for the sublimities of the north, he sends to the Academy
A Study in September of the Fern-House, Mr, Lock's Parky
Mickleham, Surrey, Castles and abbeys he has seen in
all their grandeur, yet still thinks that the fern-house in
Mr. Lock's park is worth drawing and exhibiting also.
This is most characteristic of Turner, and we shall find
him throughout his career always ready to turn from great
things to little things, his power of taking an interest in
what he saw being always active, and neither deadened by
too much stimulus nor atrophied by the insufficiency
of it.

The year 1798 is not so rich in engravings from Tur-
ner's works as others before and after it. In that year
the plates of Sheffield and Wakefield appear in the " Itin-
erant," two towns which were less unpicturesque then
than now. Both of them have good scenery very near at
hand, but they have been spoiled for the painter by their
very prosperity during the last seventy-five years. It was
part of Turner's professional business at that time to
illustrate towns, and he had done a good deal in that line,
no doubt very conscientiously, but his tastes were already
too exclusive for him to settle down to a regular trade of
that kind. In 1799 the list of his exhibited works in-
cludes subjects from Wales and Northumberland, as well
as two from Salisbury, which he often recurred to in early
life ; but this year he is ambitious, and paints a marine
picture of the Battle of the Nile, mentioned in the cata-
logue with a quotation from " Paradise Lost," that well-

54 The Life of % M. IV. Turner,

known passage where the angels turn artillerymen, which
is usually considered one of the blemishes of the poem.
Turner seems to have been reading Milton at that time,
for he quotes him again, apropos of Harlech Castle, an
evening drawing of which is one of his contributions to
the Academy. The year before he quoted chiefly from
Thomson's " Seasons ; " this year he quotes them once,
dpropos of Warkworth Castle, Northumberland. It may
be observed in this place that Turner's fancy for quoting
poetry varied greatly in different years. One year he
would quote rather extensively, and at another not at all.
For example, in 1799 he enriches the Academy Catalogue
with no less than thirty-seven lines of poetry from various
authors, but in 1801 he does not quote a syllable. At a
later period he makes the fatal discovery that a painter
may compose his own bits of poetry and quote himself,
but of this peculiar development of the Turnerian genius
we shall have more to say in due time.

In 1799 Turner began the series of nine annual illus-
trations to the " Oxford Almanac," and it is probably in
this year that he made the acquaintance of Dr. Whitaker,
author of the "History of Whalley." Although Dr.
Whitaker's name is perfectly well known in the north of
England, and to readers in other parts of the island who
take an interest in the history and antiquities of Lanca-
shire and Yorkshire, we may explain for others who have
not been led to any special study of those counties that
the learned Doctor had a strong interest in the localities
which he knew best, which, happily for posterity, led him
to write three of the best local histories which have ever

* Dr, Wkitaker. 55

•

proceeded from the affectionate industry of an archaeolo-
gist. These three histories had for their subjects the
parish of Whalley, the district of Craven, and a part of
Yorkshire about Richmond, known to local antiquarians
as Richmondshire. Dr. Whitaker was Vicar of Whalley
at the time that he wrote the history of that remarkably
extensive and interesting parish, and it so happens that
his son, who is now about to publish a new edition of the
work, is also Vicar of Whalley, and to him I am indebted
for a few details about Turner. He believes, but is not
certain, that the young painter's first introduction to Dr.
Whitaker was through Mr. Edwards, the Halifax pub-
lisher, when the Doctor was approaching the close of his
labors as the historian of Whalley. Turner s new patron
employed him to make designs for several of the plates
which were to illustrate his work ; and the young artist
executed his task conscientiously, but with so little talent
of any obviously visible kind, that Dr. Whitaker's fidelity
to him, in subsequently commissioning the drawings for
the " History of Richmondshire," has always seemed to
me remarkable as an evidence of his perspicacity. Few
who had known Turner from such illustrations as his
Whalley Abbey, Clitheroey and Browsholme, would have
entertained the slightest hope that he could ever produce
such designs as those in the " History of Richmond-
shire ; " but it is possible that Dr. Whitaker may have
watched Turner's development in other publications.
Between the "Whalley" and "Richmondshire" appeared
Dr. Whitaker's " History of Craven," and to this Turner
contributed an architectural subject His connection

_^.^aa^

56 The Life of J. M, W. Turner,

with these historical works was of use to him, by making
him more intimately acquainted with places and people in
a very interesting part of the north of England. The old
mansion of the Whitakers, the Holme (familiar to the
present biographer from his infancy), is situated in one of
the most beautiful scenes of Lancashire which still remain
unspoiled by the manufactures. Near Burnley the vale is
broad, and is occupied by the noble demesne of Towneley,
which sweeps up the great waves of land before and
behind the Hall, and fills all the hollow between them
with rich meadows and a park full of Sylvan beauty ; but
as you go from Towneley to the Holme the valley rapidly
narrows, till at last it becomes a gorge or defile, with bold
steep slopes which end in rugged cliffs of perpendicular
rock, as high as the sea-cliffs on the wild Yorkshire coast.
On each side of the glen there are gullies or ravines
formed by the watercourses, and at the foot of one of
these ravines stands the old house yet, much altered and
enriched, but still preserving its main features. It is just
one of those regions which Turner would have illustrated
nobly in his maturity.

With his usual wonderful good luck, our hero was
elected Associate of the Royal Academy at the early age
of twenty-four. A landscape-painter in the present day,
aged twenty-four, and able to do just what Turner could
do then — that is, to paint his diploma picture of Dolbadern
Castle, North Wales — might possibly, no doubt, be elected
Associate ; but the chances are so much against him that
he would be just as likely to be made a Knight of the
Garter. The competitors of Turner were much weaker,

His Diploma Picture. $7

no doubt, than the competitors of a young aspirant in the
present day, so that victory was easier for him ; but the
best part of his luck consisted in this, that in 1800 the
Academy had not yet become an exclusive club of figure-
painters, so that landscape had a fair chance of recogni-
tion. In the present day almost all the Academicians
and Associates are figure-painters, and their almost invari-
able custom is to elect men who follow their own branch
of the profession. There is no written rule against the
election of a landscape-painter, and at exceedingly rare,
and ever rarer intervals, a landscape-painter of extraordi-
nary merit, in his full maturity, is made an Associate, in
order to prove that the Academy is not absolutely
intolerant of such artists. But in our day a landscape-
painter has not the faintest chance of being elected an
A.R.A. to encourage him and help him whilst the difficul-
ties of his career loom still like mountainous steeps before
him. It was in this that Turner was so fortunate. The
right to a good and secure place on the Academy walls
was^ given to him when he was striving hard with all the
energy of youth ; the Associateship came like a fair wind
to a little boat that is fighting against the tide, and not
like a breeze to a ship in port.

The subject of Turner's diploma picture was Dolbadern
Castle, in North Wales. The castle is a simple round
tower by the shore of the smaller of the two lakes of
Llanberis, and within a short walk of Llanberis itself, at
the foot of Snowdon. Very likely many readers of these
pages may have seen the little castle, and sketched it, for
it is rather a popular subject for a sketch. Those who

58 The Life of J. M, W, Turner,

know the place will remember its marked and peculiar
geological character (blue slate), which no landscape-
painter before our generation would have recognized.
One of the most curious things in the history of landscape-
painting is the persistence with which the artists, and the
public who admired them, remained blind to the facts of
the earth's structure, even to the visible, obvious, most
striking and external facts, until there was a definite
science of geology, with a scientific nomenclature.
Turner's Dolbadem is merely a brown picture of the
Wilson class, with some feeling for the sublimity of an
isolated tower amidst mountain scenery, but no delight in,
nor observation of, the especial character of landscape
round Llanberis. It would indeed, in the last years of
the eighteenth century, have been a proof of almost
unimaginable audacity in a young artist to venture to
paint blue slate. Wilson, whose name so naturally
suggests itself to us in connection with Llanberis, which
is near the little estate that saved him from utter indi-
gence at last, never ventured to paint the real scenery of
Wales, though he loved it, and drew some consolation
from the solemnity of it at the close of life. It might
almost be supposed that the painters of those days foresaw
the artistic difficulties and dangers which were likely to
be, and which in fact have been, opened like pitfalls to
imprudent artists by the free access to the whole of na-
ture which is claimed by the modern spirit. Turner,. at
Dolbadern, was still in the spirit of the elder artists, to
whom art seemed much more distinct from nature than it
seems now to their successors. They looked upon the

New and Old Gothic, 59

painted world on canvas as a world in itself, and they
were cautious about introducing into the painted world
the material of the dangerously various reality. It may
have been a result of this early caution in accepting nature
as good material for art, that Turner, to the end of his
days, considered art and nature as two entirely distinct
things, or categories of things, in which he differed from
the modern English realists who succeeded him, and
whose main purpose was, in the most literal sense, to hold
the mirror up to nature.

About this time Turner's name became associated with
that of the famous author of " Vathek ; " for he went to
Fon thill in 1799, and made several sketches of the Gothic
Abbey there, which Mr. Beckford was then building, and
in which (as Scott did afterwards at Abbotsford) he made
the perilous experiment of a romance in stone and lime.
Beckford's stone romance included the wonderful tower,
of which the impossible ideal, with eleven thousand stairs,
existed already in his story of " Vathek ; '' but the tower
fell down long ago, and the Fonthill collections are
dispersed, and the fame of Beckford's heap of gold has
faded before the lustre of bigger heaps which have been
accumulated since his time. So passes the glory of the
world ! But when " England's wealthiest son " was build-
ing his tower by sunlight and by torchlight, gangs of
workmen succeeding each other without intermission —
for there were no genii to add nightly cubits to this
edifice in the region of reality — the young artist who
quietly looked on was himself laying the foundations of a
more durable monument.

6o The Life of y, M. W, Turner.

The year after his visit to Fonthill, Turner studied
Gothic of a more authentic character at York, a better
place for an artist at the beginning of this century than
(thanks to the improvements of philistine corporations)
it has since become. There he sketched the noble
Minster, which Etty afterwards loved more passionately
than ever building was loved before ; and before leaving
Yorkshire he sketched both Kirkstall and Bolton, which
he made good use of afterwards when his powers as an
artist were much more fully developed. Kirkstall is in
these days better in a drawing than in the reality, for the
modern industrial life of Leeds has come so very near it
that the visitor cannot exclude it and get back to the
tranquil old monastic life without an effort of the imagi-
nation of which few visitors are capable. Even in
Turner's day the modern world could not be entirely
excluded from the scene, though he acknowledged its
presence only by a single building on the other side of
the weir, carefully screened by massive trunks of trees.
Bolton Abbey is still so preserved from the too imme-
diate contact of manufacturing modernism that it is yet
possible to dream there of the past, though even Bolton
itself is now dangerously near to the factories, and you
may reach them from the inn there in a disquietingly
short time on horseback. Turner had ever afterwards
the most intense affection for Bolton Abbey and its
neighborhood, and for the river Wharfe, which flows
through the sweet meadows in the vale and makes a
beautiful curve round the site of the Abbey itself. Who
that has once followed the Wharfe from the narrow glen

New and Old Gothic, 6i

below Barden Tower, past the Strid, the Abbey, and the
bridge, and down for a few miles till it becomes broad and
sleepy above the weir at Burley, can wonder that an artist
like Turner should have loved it? In later life all that
land became consecrated for him by one of the most
affectionate friendships that ever cheered the solitude of
a bachelor's existence. Farnley Hall is near the Wharfe,
and Mr. Fawkes of Farnley made Turner so happy there
that the place was dearer than home to him. . He was a
hard worker, and, like all hard workers, capable of thor-
oughly forgetting work and heartily amusing himself.
His favorite recreation was fishing. The Wharfe is a
very good stream for the angler between Bolton Abbey
and Farnley Hall ; so that Turner may have had an
angler's attachment for it as well as a painter's. Besides
the Wharfe, and the sweet vale in which Bolton Priory
lies nestling, there was a strong attraction for a Lon-
doner in the hills whence the young stream flows. There
are many bold hills in Yorkshire, but few strike the eye
and awaken the imagination more than the heights about
Barden Tower, because their wildness is such a contrast
after the rich peace of the sacred vale. All Turner's
drawings of that land show how strongly its hill-forms
affected him. See the Bolton Abbey in Rogers, for exam-
ple, and the other illustration to " The Boy of Egremond,"
the Strid, in which the steepness of the hills is well
remembered, whilst the true character of the stream at
that place is neglected or forgotten.

We may take note at this time of one or two changes
of London residence. The reader may remember that

62 The Life of J. M. W, Turner,

in 1796, when Turner was twenty-one years old, he went
to live in rooms of his own at the end of Handy Court,
Maiden Lane. In 1800 he went to live in Harley Street,
and either in that year or the next, for there are different
accounts of this removal, he removed to 75, Norton
Street, Fitzroy Square. His flittings appear to have
been the consequences of professional promotion. At
every decided step in advance he took a different habi-
tation. This is rather curious, indicating, as it does, how
entirely he lived in his professional life.

It is not very easy for us, at this distance of time, to
realize to ourselves quite accurately the professional posi-
tion of Turner in 1800, for either we are likely to overrate
it (from the power of his name upon us now), or else we
may even under-estimate it from the contrast between the
sort of work that he did then and the wonderful perform-
ance of his full maturity. Another difficulty is that there
is not a single artist now living in England, or in Europe,
who occupies exactly the same position which Turner
occupied at the very beginning of this century. He was
not yet considered a great artist, and did not deserve to
be so considered ; but on the other hand, he was looked
upon as the best man for a certain class of illustrative
work which was in demand, and in much greater demand
than it is now. The English form of the spirit of the
classical Renaissance was just giving way to that first
interest in the work of the middle ages which found its
literary expression, later, in the romances of Sir Walter
Scott, and so strongly colored what is distinctively the
literature of the nineteenth century, that it is scarcely

Professional Position in 1800. 63

possible to find an English author living in it, from Byron
downwards, whose works are not tinged, at least in parts,
with the light of the mediaeval Renaissance. Turner was
not naturally a mediaevalist ; his modes of thought, and
his early training^ led him rather to the kind of classicism
which has prevailed in the education of modern painters.
These artists haye been much withdrawn from mediaeval
influence by a very simple and intelligible cause. The
mediaeval artists could invent noble architecture and
beautiful decoration, but they could not draw the figure.
Painters went necessarily and inevitably to those prede-
cessors who understood the human form. The Greeks
understood ijt ; even the Romans understood it also ; the
whole of what we call the classical world understood it,
and the whole of what we call the mediaeval world re-
mained in ignorance of it. For this reason the culture
and tradition of modern art are a classical culture and
tradition. It may still be doubted whether Turner, had
he been left to follow his own instincts without reference
to the demands of publishers or purchasers, would ever
have painted Gothic architecture at all. Amongst the
pictures which he consciously intended to be his great
masterpieces, and which he undertook without reference
to the immediate demand, Gothic architecture does not
occur, whilst classical architecture is of frequent occur-
rence. But although Turner's tastes or instincts did not
lead him directly to Gothic architecture, he was brought
to it indirectly by his love of English landscape, and his
generally comprehensive interest in human work of all
kinds. When he sat down to sketch a scene with an

64 The Life of y. M. W, Turner,

ordinary house in it, he would not omit the house; he
never omitted anything that had human interest ; much
less, then, would he omit an object so full of human
interest as a Gothic castle or abbey. He drew such
mediaeval remains in a painstaking and prosaic way at
the beginning (as at Whalley, for example), but as he im-
proved in the knowledge and treatment of landscape he
perceived more clearly how much might be done with
Gothic architecture as picturesque material, and he drew
it better, in combination with the surrounding landscape,
than any other artist of his time. In this way he came to
have a safe little professional speciality. Whenever a
publisher wanted a good drawing of an English abbey, or
castle, or cathedral, he knew that young Mr. Turner
would do it for him in a satisfactory way, with all its
landscape or street surroundings. But whilst Turner
could draw mediaeval architecture, he was not a mediae-
valist. He would study a " gentleman's seat " with as
much complacency^ and as faithful care, as Salisbury
Cathedral or Fountains Abbey. He had none of those
intense repugnances which prevent many young artists
from earning their living, but would draw anything that
came in his way. This comprehensiveness, or tolerance,
gave him a safe position in the pecuniary sense, though
his earnings were not great ; and we h^ve seen that on the
artistic side his qualities, though far from brilliant as yet,
were sufficiently visible to procure him regular admission
to the Academy exhibition, and to get him elected Asso-
ciate at a remarkably early age. We have not in these
days any young artists in Turner's position, because his

Professional Position in 1800. 65

trade of drawing mediaeval buildings has been almost an-
nihilated by photography. Yet it was the engravings
from these drawings which first made Turner known, and
which kept him safe from want at a time when his pictures
were not saleable. In 1800 his name was already strong
enough for a publisher to venture upon separate engrav-
ings from his works. The first were the Mausoleum at
Brocklesby, and Dunster Castle from the south-west. From
that date single plates appeared at intervals till his death,
and after it. In the present day the print-publisher would
not invest capital in labored engravings from the works
of a landscape painter such as Turner was in his early
manhood. The pictures which the print-sellers of these
days cause to be engraved are almost exclusively incident
pictures, or pictures which appeal to deep-seated national
sentiments of loyalty or religion.

In the year 1800 Turner seems to have thought it
necessary, as an Associate of the Academy, to send some-
thing of a higher character than usual to its exhibition, so
he exhibited The Fifth Plague of Egypt, a tiresome brown
picture of a class which would soon become intolerable if
we were compelled to see many of them. The other
works exhibited by him that year were all from Fonthill,
except a view of Caernarvon Castle. About this time in
his life Turner seems to have thought it necessary to
send one ambitious Biblical picture to each exhibition, for
in 1801 he attempts no less a subject than The Army of
the Medes destroyed in the Desert by a Whirlwind (from
Jeremiah), and in 1802 he paints The Tenth Plague of
Egypt,

5

CHAPTER IV.

Kilchurn Castle. — Topography. — Turner's dream pictures. — The topog-
raphy of poets.

TT was probably in the year 1801, Turner being then
twenty-six years old, that he went to Scotland for the
first time in his life ; saw Edinburgh, the Falls of Clyde,
and Loch Lomond, and penetrated into the Western
Highlands, where he made a study of Kilchurn Castle
and the mountains at the head of Loch Awe. The
picture of Kilchurn was exhibited in 1802, and enhanced
the artist's reputation ; its chief interest for us just at
present is, that it marks more definitively than any other
work of that time his complete deliverance from topog-
raphy, and his artistic independence of the fact. Dol-
badem is inaccurate also, but it is so in quite a different
way. In the Dolbadern the artist works traditionally,
and has the elder landscape-painters in his mind all the
time that h« is painting, but in the Kilchurn he is abso-
lutely delivered from tradition. He is delivered at the
same time, and quite as absolutely, from the topographic
slavery of his youth. The Kilchurn is neither an imita-
tion of Wilson nor a copy of the actual scene in nature.
It is a Turner, and nothing but a Turner. •

Kilchum Castle, 6j

There is no scene in Europe more familiar to me than
the head of Loch Awe, where Kilchurn Castle is situated.
I have lived there for years, and know the topography
of the place quite thoroughly, with that minuteness which
is only possible to a resident who takes the keenest
interest in the neighborhood where he lives, and makes
landscape-painting his main occupation, and walking and
boating his amusements. This close intimacy with the
place permits me to appreciate the exact degree in which
Turner's topography is a deviation from the topography
of the actual world ; and Jhe reader will perhaps think
it not too great a demand upon his patience if I make
the difference as clear as I can in this instance, for it is
of the very utmost importance to our understanding of
Turner's mature work, occurring as it does quite early in
his manhood, and fixing the date of his emancipation
from reality. Turner's view of Kilchurn is taken from
the shore of the river Orchay, at a little distance above
the castle, and it includes as material, ist, the river, with
its right and left banks ; 2nd, Kilchurn castle ; 3rd, a
glimpse of the lake ; 4th, a great mass of mountain,
which Turner calls the Cruachan Ben Mountains; 5th, a
mountainous distance. We will examine these parts of
the composition one after another,

I. The River, ^-Tht Orch ay flows past Dalmally till
it comes to within a short distance of Kilchurn; but it
does not go directly to the castle, it leaves Kilchurn on
the left and falls into Loch Awe above it. The Orchay,
when it gets into the neighborhood of Kilchurn, finds
itself in a genuine alluvial plain, not of great extent, yet

68 The Life of J, M, W. Turner,

having all the characteristics • of such a plain; The
reader who understands the action of the river guesses at
once that in such a place the level of the water will be
two or three yards lower than that of the land, and that
on one side at least the bank will be perpendicular, and
more or less undermined by the water. In the Orchay
it so happens that the steep cutting is on the Kilchum
side, where the river comes within sight of the castle.
This expression, " within sight," is somewhat inaccurate ;
for when you are in a boat on the river you cannot see
the castle at all, at the spot from which (according to
the perspective of the walls) Turner's view must neces-
sarily be taken. He, therefore, entirely altered the char-
acter of the river and foreground. He ignored the
existence of the flat plain through which the river cuts
its way, and gave wavy land instead of it, without any
steeply -cut banks at all. By this sacrifice (a sacrifice,
please observe, not of some unimportant fact, but of
essential local character) he made the river artistically
manageable, which in nature it is not, and he contrived
so that it should lead the eye to the castle. Before
quitting the river, I may observe that Turner introduced
three boats, that the boats are managed by Highlanders
in kilts, and that two out of the three have sails. Now,
of course I cannot prove that no s^ils were used on
Loch Awe in Turner's day, but I do not believe that he
ever saw one there. When I lived there, nothing as-
tonished me so much as the entire absence of any
nautical instinct or knowledge in the inhabitants. The
oldest men told me that no one ever used a sail on Loch

Kilchum Castle, 69

Awe, because of the violent gusts of wind, and I believe
that this extreme caution had come down to the people
from their ancestors. The simple explanation of the
sails in Turner's picture is, that he wanted them to cut
the base-line of his mountain, and throw the mountain
further back: . ,

2. The Castle, — Turner's alterations in the castle seem
more difficult to explain than those in the structure of
the earth. Turner's Kilchurn is not the real Kilchurn at
all ; and the difference between them seems much more*
due to simple carelessness than to any artistic craft.
The castle in the picture is certainly a much clumsier
and less interesting object than it is in the reality.
Few of the Highland castles have any architectural
interest ; but Kilchurn is one of the best of them, owing
to .the happy disposition of its principal and minor
masses. There is a square keep, to begin with, at the
east angle (the angle nearest to the spectator in Turner's
picture), with round corner turrets, resting on well-
moulded corbels. Turner simply ignores the separate
existence of this keep, and merges it in the general
mass of the castle. As to the corbel-turrets, he omits
them altogether, though he must have been aware of
their importance to architecural character. At the
northern angle of the real castle there is a small round
tower, or turret, like the tourelles so common in French
chateaux. This was never as high as the keep, nor even
as the chimneys. Turner omits it altogether, or supposes
it, like the keep, merged in the common mass, and as
high as the keep itself. A very important characteristic

70 The Life of y, M. W, Turner.

of the Scottish castle and French chateau is the relative
importance of their chimneys. At Kilchurn there are
several chimneys still in good preservation, four of them
being very conspicuous, and three out of the four are
striking objects from the point of view chosen by Turner;
yet he gives nothing recognizable as a chimney in all
his building. To the left hand the artist draws a lower
or minor mass of building, and inserts a semi -circular
projection in the middle of it, like the semi -circular
towers in Roman city walls. There is nothing of this
kind in the reality. A very important picturesque char-
acteristic of Kilchurn Castle is the magnificent abundance
of ivy on the side of the ruins towards the lake. A
great mass of this is visible from the place where Turner
sketched, on the left hand corner of the building. There
is no ivy whatever on Turner's Kilchurn. It may be
objected that the ivy has grown since then, but the
thickness of its trunks, which are colossal, is evidence of
its great age. The reader will please to observe, that in
these deviations from the truth the artist has in every
instance sacrificed not only fact but character. Not
only does his castle fail to recall such details as the
placing of the windows — though even this affects char-
acter, for the regularity of the windows in Kilchurn,
which Turner has neglected, is an important architectural
characteristic — not only does the artist omit little details,
but he utterly despises the most important features of the
buildingy its great keep, its minor towers, its turrets, and
its chimneys. He is supposed, indeed, to have drawn a
certain building, but he draws it in such a manner as to

Kilchum Castle, 71

mark his complete indifference to everything in it that
is interesting, either from the picturesque point of view
or the architectural.

3. The Mountain, — It is not so easy to fix upon points
of comparison between a mountain drawing and the
reality, as it is to criticise a drawing of architecture; but
there are certain features which cafi be fixed upon even
in a mountain. I may begin by saying quite plainly,
that from the point of view chosen by Turner, a point of
view definitively fixed for us by the perspective of the
castle walls (it is lucky that we have this pour nous
orienter), there is no mountain to be seen bearing the
most distant resemblance to that which he gives us.
That side of Loch Awe is separated from Loch Etive
by a chain of mountains terminating in Ben Cruachan.
You have Ben Cruachan, with its base in the pass of
Brandir, then Ben Vorich, then Ben Anea, and after that
the mountains of Glen Strae.* With these last we have
nothing to do now because Turner has his back to them.
A man drawing Kilchurn from Turner's place can see
Ben Anea easily by turning his head to the right. The
mountain before him, on the other side Kilchurn Castle,
is not Ben Cruachan but Ben Vorich. As for Cruachan,
he is completely hidden behind Vorich, and as much

* With regard to this bit of geography the reader is respectfully requested
not to go by the maps, unless he has the Ordnance Survey. The other
maps generally give the right situations of Scottish towns and villages, but
are utterly untrustworthy as to the physical geography of the country. I
have never seen a map of Scotland which put the mountains in their right
places, or which gave an accurate shore-line of the lakes. Ben Vorich is
not to be confounded with Ben Voirlich.

72 The Life of J, M, IV. Turner.

invisible as if he were in Greenland. The 'latter, then,
is the mountain (in nature) that we have to deal with
now.

Ben Vorich, as seen behind Kilchurn, slopes towards
the lake at an angle of thirty degrees near the water, and
of twenty degrees higher up the slope. It has no peak.
It Js richly wooded up to a height of about one thousand
feet.

Turner's mountain slopes towards the lake at an angle
of seventy degrees near the water, and at an average
angle of thirty degrees higher up. It has a peak. It is
not wooded at all.

Ben Vorich does not, from that point, present a very
broken outline. It has some variety in it, but it is not
much broken.

The outline of Turner's mountain is wild and rugged
in the extreme, from the peak down to the precigice.

The conclusion to which this comparison forces us is
that Turner substituted some other mountain for that
which is really visible behind Kilchurn. If he drew
anything in nature, we may have to go some distance to
seek it.

There are only two mountains near Loch Awe which
could have offered even a distant suggestion of the
Turner mountain. One is Ben Anea, which from a
certain place on the Orchay appears by an effect of per-
spective to have a sort of pretension to a peak; but
Ben Anea is hemmed in by other mountains, and does
not descend precipitously to the lake. Turner's moun-
tain is precipitous, and clear of others on the left-hand

- XT-

/ / I \ •

.J

v>. . --^.

/ N

A

, ">

M

vV

SKETCH or BEN (RUACHAN AFTER lURHER

BEN CRUA CHAN, FROM A T0P06RAPHIC DRAWING.

Kilchum Castle, 73

side. Ben Cruachan has a real peak, and is isolated just
on that side. I conclude, therefore, that the mountain in
Turner's picture is suggested by Ben Cruachan.

Now, the nearest place from which the peak of Ben
Cruachan ceases to be eclipsed by the head of. Ben
Vorich is nearly three miles from Kilchurn by water,
and a good deal further by land. Turner must, therefore,
have combined sketches taken at a distance of three
miles from each other in one picture.

When we arrive at the place where the peak is about
as much disengaged as it is in Turner's picture, we get a
view of Ben Cruachan, which has indeed some very slight
and distant resemblance to Turner's mountain ; but we
observe that the artist has no more cared to preserve
even the character of the mountain than he did that of
the castle. The real Ben Cruachan is not very rugged,
except just about the summit, and even there the rugged-
ness of it is much reduced by distance. There are a few
humps, or bosses, on its side, it is true, but by far the
most characteristic feature is the vast curving slope from
the shoulder down to the loch. The average inclination
of this is not so great as might be imagined, for it
does not exceed twenty degrees. It was neither striking
enough nor entertaining enough to suit Turner, who.
broke it up into ruggedness above, and finished it with a
sheer precipice below. In the reality you cannot see
Ben Cruachan from this point without seeing Ben Vorich
also, and the latter interferes considerably with his
greater neighbor. Turner ignores Ben Vorich altogether,
giving him no separate individuality, though some of the

74 The Life of y, M, W, Turner.

mountainous masses to the right may be supposed, by
our charity, to belong to him. The reader will see from
my topographical drawing, that the mass of Ben Vorich
makes the peak of Cruachan look insignificant.

We may observe, lastly, that although the real Crua-
chan is wooded up to a certain height, say from 300 to
1000 feet. Turner's mountain is not wooded at all.

4. The Remote Distance. — It is difficult, of course,
with an artist who takes his materials wherever he likes,
to fix upon mountain outlines in nature and say that he
meant to draw those more than any others ; but if Crua-
chan affords any indication, these distant hills must be
the moorland on and about Craiganunie. I need hardly
observe that they are pure invention. Craiganunie does
not, from any point of view, take those outlines, nor out-
lines of that character.

In order to make this distance visible from his point of
view near Kilchurn, Turner has entirely removed some
wooded land which would have hidden it. Nevertheless
that wooded land is very good for artists, with its grand
old Scotch firs and its rocky foregrounds, and it is one of
the most characteristic parts of the immediate neighbor-
hood of Kilchurn.

If the reader has had the patience to follow me atten-
tively through this analysis he will at least be quite
convinced of one thing, that so early as 1802, when
Turner was only twenty-seven years old, he had already
absolutely abandoned everything of the nature of topo-
graphic fidelity. The difference between his treatment
of landscape and faithful portraiture is not the diflFerence

Kilchum Castle. 75

between one kind of topography and another; it is the
difference between a certain kind of truthfulness and the
total abandonment of that particular kind of truthfulness.
It is as if a writer of travels were to say to himself,
" Hitherto I have endeavored to tell the truth about the
places which I have seen, but from this day forwards,
although reniaining an honorable person in the ordinary
intercourse of life, I shall consider myself, whenever I sit
down to write my travels, at perfect liberty to say what is
not true, and to omit what is true, just as it may suit my
convenience and seem to me likely to astonish, or amuse,
or in any way charm or delight, my readers." Had there
been any endeavor, in Turner's case, to preserve some
particular kind of local truth ^— to preserve, for example,
the truth of local character merely, whilst abandoning
particular facts — the case would have been a change of
principle as to truth, but not an abandonment of principle.
What Turner really did, however, was not to emancipate
himself partially; he emancipated himself entirely; and
after having been in his youth a describer of what he had
seen, he became henceforth just as much an author of
fiction as a poet in words or a novelist.

The distinction between Turner's treatment of natural
material and that of the majority of landscape-painters
will better be understood by an example. As we have
been talking about Kilchurn, it will be a saving of trouble
to the reader if I describe another view of the same place.
In the Royal Collection at Osborne there is a picture of
it in water-color by Mr. G. H. Fripp, which was engraved
by Mr. Wallis for the Art youmal. It appeared in that

y6 ' The Life of J, M. W. Turner,

periodical for February, iZ6Z, The view here is in a
different direction, but the treatment of the two artists
may be very closely compared. Mr. Fripp's picture
includes the castle, the alluvial plain of the Orchay, Ben
Anea, and the mountains of Glen Strae. It is not by any
means a strictly accurate piece of topography, Mr. Fripp
having used his liberty as an artist in various ways, which
we will indicate very shortly ; but he has been extremely
careful to preserve what seemed to him all the most
important truths of local character, so that any one who
loved the place might find in the picture at least all those
features which he would be likely to remember and to
recognize. The feelings of attachment to locality, which
are often so inextricably mingled with our admiration for
natural beauty, are hurt and wounded by Turner's indiffer-
ence to everything that we know and love ; but in Mr.
Fripp's work they find a succession of satisfactions. The
castle is not minutely accurate ; the nearest corbel-turret
is omitted, perhaps by the fault of the engraver, but we
find all the principal features — the keep, the gables, the
chimneys, the staircase turret, the heavy masses of ivy,
the rock on which the castle stands. This is not simply
a castle quelconque ; it is Kilchurn Castle, and no other.
In the landscape we have the same degree of fidelity to
all the leading features. There is the alluvial plain, with
its stunted trees, scattered near the Orchay, but gathering
into a little wood behind Kilchurn itself. There is the
bay of Kilchurn between us and the castle ; and across
the lake, to the left, the Goose's Rock which projects into
the water, with the trees about it. Mr. Fripp has not

Kilchum Castle, jj

omitted the solitary farm-house near the Goose's Rock
(see " Painter's Camp," p. 105, Am. edition), nor has he
forgotten the picturesque rocks and trees on his own side
of the lake, but has used them in his foreground. As I
wander into Mr. Fripp's distance up Glen Strae, I remem-
ber many a real wandering in that region, and feel grateful
to the artist for enabling me to live p^st days over again.

With so much local fidelity, what, then, is the artistic
liberty used by Mr. Fripp, of which we spoke a little time
since } In what does his manner of treatment differ from
the strict topographic truth 'i

It differs, first, in being more concentrated than the
natural scene. Interesting material, on the right hand
and on the left, is brought hearer together, so as to get it
into the picture. For example, the Goose's Rock, which
is interesting, is outside the picture to the left, but it is
brought in to add interest. Another alteration is that all
the mountains are made higher, and their lines steeper,
than in nature : the diflFerence of steepness between a line
in the picture and the same line in nature is from fifteen
to twenty degrees. In all probability Mr. Fripp exagger-
ated height and steepness unconsciously, for artists do so
almost invariably in consequence of the vivacity of their
own impressions. The truth is, that although the
mountains at the head of Loch Awe strike the imagi-
nation very powerfully, they are not precipitously steep.
The angle of their outline in nature seldom exceeds thirty
degrees. In Mr. Fripp's picture it reaches about fifty
degrees. Another very decided difference between Mr.
Fripp's work and nature is, that he remarkably exagger-

yS The Life of y, M, W, Turner,

ates ruggedness. The slopes of Ben Anea are not, in
nature, very rugged ; on the contrary, that mountain is
somewhat remarkable for the fine rounding of its principal
parts. Mr. Fripp prefers ruggedness to roundness (think-
ing it more picturesque) and hews the surface of the
mountain into steps and precipices ; for which, indeed,
there is an excuse in nature, for the rock is often visible,
but no more. The other mountains are treated on the
same principle. The foreground is true to local character,
but is simply used as material, the rocks and trees being
put where they suit the artist's convenience.

Such is the exact degree in which Mr. Fripp will
deviate from nature in his drawing, and in this degree of
deviation he resembles the majority of our more conscien-
tious artists. They alter nature in order to make their
work look more pictorial, but they do not, as a general
rule, abandon the endeavor to render local character to
the best of their ability. There are great differences in
their success, and differences in the license they allow
themselves : but the general feeling amongst artists is,
that when a picture is called by the name of a place, it
ought to bear some resemblance to that place.

One or two of the most earnest young English artists
have gone further than this, and attempted genuine por-
traiture, trying to draw things really and truly as they are.
They met with an unforeseen difficulty in the constitution
of the human mind. All men when they are struck by
anything in nature exaggerate it. I mean, that they see
the real thing in nature bigger and more important than
it really is. The consequence of this is, that a represen-

Kilchum Castle, " 79

tation of the thing which only gives the true importance
of it relatively to other objects, is at once rejected as
inadequate. There is a wide distinction between the
really apparent size of objects and the size which we
imagine them to appear. The first can be measured
scientifically at any time with the utmost accuracy, and
precisely stated in terms of degrees and minutes, just as
we can measure the exact inclination of a mountain slope ;
the second is purely a mental impression.* We admit
then, and consider it a settled question, that pure topog-
raphy is not to be expected from an artist, and we will
even admit that such deviations as those of Mr. Fripp are
lawful ; because though he may not care for truth of
minute detail, he does evidently care for truth of charac-
ter, and try to preserve it. But what are we to say of
Turner.^ Is his system, or his absence of system, com-
patible with the degree of veracity we have a right to
expect from an artist }

There is certainly a moral question here which deserves
a little consideration. An artist sells a picture as being
representative of a certain place, and on examination it
turns out that the picture does not resemble the place,
and that it is a mere fancy of the painter's. If it were
perfectly understood that no resemblance was attempted,
there would be no deception. If you order a picture of
Adam and Eve in Paradise you know, without being told,

* The reader is referred to an article on this subject in the Portfolio for
1875, P*S^ 7^' 'r^® reasons for the inadequacy of pure topography have
also been explained in my "Thoughts about Art," in the chapters on
" Painting from Nature," " The Place of Landscape-painting amongst the
Fine Arts," and " The Observation of Nature."

8o The Life of y, M. W, Turner,

that the figures are not portraits of Adam and Eve, but
that they are either pure inventions or studies from
Academy models ; but if the subject of the picture were
Prince Albert and Queen Victoria you would expect some
degree of likeness, and consider yourself unfairly treated
if they were not recognizable. There is a moral question,
also, about the naming of pictures after places. It is done
to profit by the interest which people take in places that
they have heard of or read about, and it is not strictly
honest to sell to them as portraits of places designs which
are all but imaginary. Turner was an excellent man of
business in his own way, and he knew that people liked to
fancy that they were looking at the portrait of some
definite place, and not at a mere " composition." The
temper of the public on this subject is well understood by
experienced artists. One successful old painter said to
me, "If I paint a landscape and call it a composition,
people are not satisfied and think it too artificial, because
they are aware that it is composed ; but if I call the same
picture by the name of some place that they can find on
the map, they are satisfied and look upon it with perfect
faith, as a true representation of nature."

There is, however, a certain remote relation between
such a work as Turner's Kilchum and the place it pro-
fesses to represent. It bears about the same relation to
reality that our dreams do when we dream of some place
that we have visited. We then see places oddly jumbled
together, and our memory, retentive enough of certain
things, entirely omits others of equal or still greater im-
portance. You may dream, for example, if you have been

Kilchum Castle, 8i

reading about Mount Blanc and St. Paul's Cathedral, that
you see St. Paul's in the valley of Chamouni with Mount
Blanc for a background, but that the Cathedral has neither
dome nor belfry, just as Turner's Kilchum had neither
chimney nor turret ; and you may perhaps see in your
dream, without surprise, the waters of Lake Leman within
a mile of the Mer de Glace. If Turner had simply visited
Kilchurn without making a sketch, and afterwards made
this picture of it from memory, intending it to be accu-
rate, we should say that his memory was singularly defec-
tive. The experiments of M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran in
the " Education de la M6moire pittoresque " have pro-
duced results with which no effort of Turner's memory, of
which we have any evidence, will bear the slightest com-
parison.* This work of Turner's is not remembering, it
is dreaming, and drawing or painting the dream.

At length, then, after examining Turner's work and
comparing it with nature and with the work of another

* M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran was teacher of drawing at the ficole Im-
p^riale de Dessin in Paris in the time of Louis Napoleon, and he made a
remarkable series of experiments upon his pupils to ascertain how far the
artistic memory may be cultivated. His account of these experiments was
published in a pamphlet (Bauce, 13 Rue Bonaparte, 1862). They aston-
ished the most experienced artists, who saw them subjected to the most
rigorous proof, in which invention was allowed to take no liberties. In
Turner's work you never can disentangle memory and invention so that it
is really impossible to ascertain with precision whether his memory was
accurate or not. He may have remembered accurately and been unfaithful
to his accurate recollection as he was to the facts themselves when they lay
before him whilst he studied from nature. On the other hand, his memory
itself may have been treacherous. My own belief is that he was too imagin-
ative to have an accurate memory. I believe that accuracy is compatible
with imagination only when the feelings are not concerned, and feeling is
always present in Turner's work.

6

82 The Life of 7- M. IV. Turner.

artist, we have arrived at this conclusion, that in the year
1802 he had begun to paint his dreams. This is worth
all the trouble we have taken about it, because the gene-
ral belief is that Turner did not become a dreamer till a
much later period.

And now let us ask, What are the nature and qualities
of the dream } Is it mere confusion, or is it orderly with
an order of its own, which is not the order of reality }
The answer is, that the dream has great order and unity.
Even the treachery of the artist's memory has helped the
unity of the impression. A believer in the infinite perfec-
tion of Turner's mental faculties might affirm that he
remembered everything, but purposely rejected what he
did not consider necessary to his artistic intention. This
would be a simple assertion which can be made of any
one, and which, in the case of Turner, is without the
slightest evidence in its support. It is a theory which
may be eagerly accepted by those who have a blind faith
in the genius of the artist, but when you come to examine
his genius according to the methods of scientific criticism
you will not accept such a theory so easily ; certainly not
until you are convinced that there is strong evidence in
its favor. The real operation of Turner's intellect upon
his materials appears to have been a selection, both by
the fidelities of his memory and by what I have just called
its treacheries. I may illustrate this by a piece of advice
which was given to me by a distinguished critic of litera-
ture. " Take as many notes as you like," he said, " but
never refer to them, except by the memory, when you are
actu§illy writing. Your memory will select for you those

Tumet^s Dream Pictures, 83

which you ought to use, and reject for you, without any
conscious trouble on your part, those which would only
be an encumbrance to your work." Without stopping to
consider whether this was good or bad advice (it would
not be good in all cases), I may say that it describes very
accurately the operation of the imaginative intellect in
art. The imaginative memory retains what is necessary
to its work, and drops what is unnecessary. In the case
of the picture before us we must not allow ourselves to be
misled by the mere title. The artist calls his work Kil-
chum Castle to catch the public ; it is the tradesman, and
not the poet, who names the picture. Kilchum had not
become so famous as Wordsworth and Scott made it
afterwards, but it had already a romantic interest from the
story of the " Bridal," and an interest of locality from its
fine situation in the Highlands, which a few English
tourists had already begun to explore. The real motive
of the picture was not Kilchurn, but the play of clouds
about the crest of a Highland mountain, which mountain
signified little. The mountain is any mountain you
please ; it resembles Ben Lomond nearly as much as Ben
Cruachan : the castle is any castle you please ; it resem-
bles Ardhonnel more closely than I^il churn, though Tur-
ner probably never saw Ardhpnnel. The clouds play
about the granite peak, a shower falling here from their
trailing fringes, a sunbeam flashing there on the toppling
silvery billows which are their everchanging summits, a
level wreath of white vapor clinging in the shelter of the
peak itself, great volumes rolling and surging in the abyss
of the deep corrie, and on the steep stony sides of the

84 The Life of J, M, W, Turner,

mountains the purple shadows fall, vast and swift, veiling
each of them its hundred acres of desolation. What has
all this to do with the presence, or the absence, of tower
or turret in the dismantled ruin below ? Who thinks of
man's work when he witnesses the majesty of the storms
on the everlasting mountains ? The clouds played so for
unnumbered centuries before the little feudal fortress was
built, and they will play just as merrily when every ves-
tige of it shall have utterly disappeared.

Let us think then of Turner henceforth simply as a
poet who is not to be bound down by topographic facts of
any kind. We shall find evidence, as we proceed, that he
did not pay deference, either, to the higher scientific con-
ditions of pictorial truth : but this is a part of our inquiry
which it is better to reserve until we are brought to it by
the story of his life.

He paid as much attention to truth of all kinds as
poets generally do. He lived in a world of dreams, and
the use of the world of reality, in his case, seems to
have been only to supply suggestions and materials for
the dreams.

Had he lived till these days and been acquainted with
our contemporary literature he might fairly have said,
" Why do literary men find fault with me for my free use
of the poetic license ? They just take as great liberties
themselves. Talk of my Kilchum, indeed ! what do
you say to Mr. Matthew Arnold's Church of Brou I Mr.
Arnold tells us over and over again that the Church
of Brou is in the mountains, close to the pine-forests."

The Topography of Poets. 85

** Clad in black, on her white palfrey,
Her old architect beside,
There they fodnd her in the mountains,
Morn and noon and eventide.

" There she sate, and watched the builders
Till the church was roofed and done ;
Last of all, the builders reared her
In the nave a tomb of stone.

" Upon the glistenmg leaden roof

Of the new pile, the sunlight shines,
The stream goes leaping by.
The hills are clothed with pines sun-proof,
*Mid bright green fields, below the pines.
Stands the church on high.
What church is this, from men aloof ?
*Tis the Church of Brou.

« « « •

" On Sundays, at the matin chime,

The Alpine peasants, two and three.
Climb up here to pray ;
Burghers and dames, at summer's prime.
Ride out to church from Chambery,
Dight with mantles gay.
But else it is a lonely time
Round the Church of Brou.

« « « «

So rest, for ever rest, O princely pair.

In your high church, 'mid the still mountain air."

The poem from which these extracts are made is very
beautiful, and I would not have it otherwise than as it
is; yet what amazing topography, especially amazing in
dealing with a subject which is strictly historical and
strictly local ! The church of Brou is not in the moun-
tains at all, but in the low country, six miles from the
first rise of the Jura hills, and the scenery about it is

86 The Life of J. M. W. Turner.

that of the great plain of La Bresse. I know the church
well. There is no leaping stream near it, nor are there
any sun-proof pines. There is no climbing up to it, the
road is good and nearly level. The church does not
stand on high. The tomb of the Duchess Marguerite is
not '* in the nave " at all, it is on the right-hand side of
the choir. So far from being aloof from men, the church
is within half-a-mile of an ancient town (Bourg en
Bresse), which has now ii,ooo inhabitants, with an old
church of its own ; and it so happens, that while that of
Brou was building there was a bishop of Bourg, and the
old church there was a cathedral. It is not probable that
the burghers and dames came from Chambery to service
at Brou, seeing that Chambery is more than a hundred
kilometres from Brou — too much for a Sunday morning's
ride.

This is but one instance of topographic inaccuracy in
poetry ; any habitual reader of the poets could find many
others. Why, then, do we exonerate the poet and blame
the landscape-painter } The reason is, that we have not
yet fully conceived how identical the two artists are.

So soon as Turner reaches perfect manhood he be-
comes the poet, as much as the necessity for earning a
living will allow him. He is not always quite so careless
of local truth as he was at Kilchurn ; he knows his public
and his employers, knows that they will expect the
Tower of London to be different from the dome of St
Paul's, and makes his subjects just topographic enough
to pass for likenesses when the places are too well
known. But he hated being "mappy," as he called it in

The Topography of Poets, 87

his rough, unliterary way, and left that industry to
others. It is certain that he would have abominated
the work of our severely literal school, if he had lived to
see it.

Most landscape-painters, as they advance in life, be
come more and more careless about portraiture of places ;
but what is surprising in Turner is, that he should have
made the choice between art and nature at so early a
period of his career. It is wonderful too, that a man should
love nature as he did, be continually observing her, really
know more about natural phenomena than any of his
predecessors, and yet coolly and deliberately prefer his
own dreams to the beautiful and interesting places which
he travelled so far to see ! It seems as if he travelled
because he could not do without the suggestion, the
stimulus, of fresh scenes and places ; but also as if his
mind, when once fecundated by the sight of nature, must
produce fruit of its own kind, and in its own way. It is
said that each mind lives in its own world ; how true this
is of Turner ! how true it is that every one of his pictures
or designs is chiefly interesting for us as a new glimpse
of that enchanted land which belonged to him and to him
only, into which we can only enter by his permission,
and with his guidance, out of which he himself could
never escape !

CHAPTER V.

Turner elected R.A. — First continental excursion. — ^Turner and his father.
— Pictures of 1806 and 1807. — Turner takes to etching. — ^Tumer as an
engraver in mezzotint. — The Liber Studiorum.

T"! rHEN Turner exhibited his Kilchum at the Royal
Academy his name, for the first time, appeared in
the glory of full capitals, with every syllable of his three
Christian names before it. In 1801 he had been plain
W. Turner, A. ; in 1802 he became JOSEPH MAL-
LORD WILLIAM TURNER, R.A.

He was only twenty-seven years old, " a mere land-
scape-painter," as critics and historical painters used to
say, earning his living mainly by humble industry in the
business of illustration, and yet he became'a full Acade-
mician at that early age. His election is the more re-
markable that he had done nothing whatever to bring it
about, except his fair hard work in his profession. He
was absolutely incapable of social courtiership in any of
its disguises. He gave no dinners, he paid no calls, he
did nothing to make the Academicians believe that he
would be a credit to their order in any social sense.
Even after his election he would not go to thank his
electors, in obedience to the established usage. " If they
had not been satisfied with my pictures," he said to

Turner Elected R,A, 89

Stothard, " they would not have elected me. Why, then,
should I thank them ? Why thank a man for performing
a simple duty ? " His views on this subject were clearly
wrong; for the rules of good manners very frequently
require us to thank people for performing simple duties,
and the Academicians were not under any obligation to
elect the young painter so soon : but how completely
Turner's conduct in this matter proves that he can only
have been elected on his merits ! It is unnecessary to
repeat what has been already said about Turner's good
(ortune in living at a time when the Academy would
receive landscape-painters. His elevation to the full
membership was of immense value to him in his career,
and he knew this so well that he remained deeply
attached to the Acaclemy all his life. He was Associate
or member of it for a full half century, and during fifty
years was only three times absent from its exhibitions.
The Academy had been kind to him from boyhood, an
alma mater from the first ; and now in the strength of his
manhood she opened wide for him the gates of her
Temple of Fame.

It may be a convenient help to the memory to join the
election to the full membership with the abandonment of
topographic truth in art. The coincidence is very close.
The year when Turner appeared as Royal Academician
was the very year in which he exhibited a picture con-
ceived in absolute disdain of topographic truth. From
that time forwards he may have admitted some recogniz-
able measure of such truth, to conciliate publishers or
buyers, but his own mental emancipation from it was
complete.

90 The Life of J. M, W. Turner.

Let it not for one moment be supposed that, from the
point of view of the higher art-criticism, I, or any one
else, would blame Turner for emancipating himself in this
way. There is no doubt a certain feeling of disappoint-
ment when we come to realize the almost incredible
degree of his unfaithfulness to topographic fact, especi-
ally if we have a strong attachment to places and a feeble
interest in art. But the artist in Turner gained won-
drously by the liberation which sacrificed the topographer.
From the time of his early maturity he became, above
and before all other things, artist. It is not even accu-
rate to say that he deserted one order of truth for another,
that he quitted topography for the rendering of scientific
truth of aspect ; for although there is much truth in his
works, he never hesitated to become utterly unscientific
* when his artistic instincts suggested that kind of unfaith-
fulness. It is not now the time or place to apply this
kind of criticism ; but we shall have to apply it later.
For the present it is enough to say, that the young Acad-
emician had a temper as scornfully independent in his
work as in his social relations, that he painted what suited
him just as it suited him, and that the impulse to follow
his own genius became stronger and more irresistible as
he grew older. His temperament was full of audacity,
self-centred, self-reliant, eager for success and fame, yet
scornful of popular opinion — a contradiction, if it is one,
very common in the characters of artists and men of
letters, yet seldom so strikingly visible as in Turner ; for
no man ever loved fame and money more than he did,
and no man ever condescended less to the opinion univer-

First Continental Excursion. 91

sally received amongst the vulgar, that art is the imitation
of nature.

Great Britain is an excellent country for a landscape-
painter ; but it is a country which, from its very nature,
excites an Englishman's curiosity to see what lies outside
of it. It is difficult, after seeing our sublime little north-
ern mountains, to repress the desire for mountain scenery
of a yet sublimer order ; it is difficult, after following our
comparatively short rivers, to avoid dreaming of those
vaster arteries of the Continent which flow for two
hundred leagues. Everything that England has awakens
the desire to see something which she has not. After
seeing Westminster Abbey one desires to visit Rouen,
Amiens, Rheims, Chartres, and Beauvais ; after standing
under the dome of St. Paul's we should like to see St.
Peter's at Rome. The Englishman has so much in his
own island that he is educated into longing for more and
grander things of the same kind ; and it so happens that
there is nothing in England except our ships and sea-
ports, of which some finer, or at any rate bigger, specimen
cannot be found on the Continent. For most things we
are like children who have ridden on ponies, and con-
ceived from that experience a peculiar passion for tall
horses. Of course such an artist as Turner, with his
intense appreciation of vastness, was not going to be
confined all his life to the limits of our insular scenery.
His first raid upon the Continent immediately followed
the first exhibition in which he had borne the full honors
of the Academy : let us remember this, for it is important.
The whole of Turner's Continental work was done in his

92 The Life of J. M. W. Turner,

maturity, and consequently after his emancipation from
topography.

His first impression of Calais was strong enough to
suggest a very strong picture, the Calais Pier^ with
French Poissards preparing for Sea — an English Packet
arriving, which has been etched not long since, on a
great scale, by Mr. Seymour Haden. Luckily this work
is now the property of the nation, for it is the first mani-
festation of the full energy there was in Turner's genius
— of its energy, but not as yet by any means of its sense
of beauty. The picture is full of life and motion, but the
coloring of it is conceived as if it were intended to be
etched, and not intended to be exhibited perpetually as a
work in color. The light-and-shade, too, seems to have
been designed for the etcher, with his simple broad dis-
tinctions and^ vigorous darks, rather than for the engraver,
with his subtle translations of delicate tones. Still it is
already master's work, and if it had beep exhibited two
years earlier the Academical election would have seemed
more the acknowledgment of success and less the intelli-
gent anticipation of it. Another important result of this
Continental tour was The Festival upon the Opening of the
Vintage of Macon, As the sense of power had revealed
itself in the Calais Pier, so the sense of beauty had its
satisfactions in the Macon Vintage. It is a graceful com-
position, full of the sentiment which we call classic, with
its noble river-divided landscape, its elegant trees, its
pleasant slopes of land and joyous animated figures. It
is, in short, a beautiful fancy with much southern poetry
in it, carrying us half-way to the Virgilian dreamland, but

First Continental Excursion. 93

it is not Macon. The real scenery of Macon is interest-
ing to the intelligent traveller, but it is in the highest
degree embarrassing to the artist, and cannot be treated
pictorially without the free use of the artist's license,
about which Turner had no scruple. Not only did Turner
permit himself the widest departures from ftut, but he
also (as at Kilchum) neglected important truths of char-
acter. In the country near Macon one of the most
striking peculiarities is the perfect flatness of the land on
the left bank of the Sa6ne, and the boldness of the slopes
on the right, yet this strong contrast is not given. The
river is a Turnerian river, but not the Sadne near Macon ;
the vine-lands are Turnerian, they are not the vine-lands
of the Maconnais.

From Eastern France our hero crossed over into
Switzerland, and seems to have made a halt at Bonneville,
on his way to Chamouni — a longer halt than passing
tourists usually make there, for he got materials for two
pictures, one of the little town with Mont Blanc, and the
other of the Chdteau de St. Michel, at Bonneville. He
went on to the Mer de Glace, drawing the glacier and
source of the Arveiron ; crossed the Alps till he got into
the Val d'Aosta, and drew there also. Of his thoughts
and impressions during this first journey among scenery
which must have greatly excited him we know nothing
but what may be gathered from his sketches. We have
no ample correspondence, like Byron's letters from the
Continent, giving the successive impressions of scenes
when first visited. The feebleness of Turner's literary
faculty, and the defects of his education, made writing

94 Thi- Life of jF. M. W. Turner,

irksome to him, whilst his total ignorance of foreign Ian-
guages must have kept him, when abroad, in too isolated
a position for any profitable intercourse with the inhabi-
tants. The man who could turn either the French or the
Italian name for the beautiful valley just mentioned into^
such a wonderful muddle as the ** Valley of d*Aoust "
seems a hopeless student of languages, yet he printed it
so in the Academy Catalogue. He writes Macon, the
town, with the cedilla (Magon), as if it were the French
for mason ; a mistake which nobody with an ear could
commif, after having been at the place and heard its
name pronounced. He writes " Arveiron," " Arveron ; "
but this is more excusable, as it is a common English
error, or abbreviation. The incapacity of Turner in all
that constitutes literary power, even of the very humblest
order — the power of the emigrant who can write an in-
teresting letter to his relations in the old country, the
power of the traveller who can keep an intelligible jour-
nal — was an incapacity so complete that the biographer
has no materials for the history of the artist's mind except
his sketches and paintings and the dates on them. What
he thought, or whether he thought at all, is a mystery to
us : all we know is, that he received a succession of land-
scape impressions, which immediately transformed them-
selves in his brain till they became dreams, and that these
dreams either bore some resemblance to the places, or did
not, just as it happened. At the same time we are not to
forget that excursions such as this Continental journey
had their real utility for Turner, but a strange kind of
utility. They gave materials for new dreaming. The

mi^mmmmmmmmmmmmm^mmammmmtmmmmmmm^K^mtmmmmmtmmmmam

First Continental Excursion, 95

picture of the Macon vintage is unlike the reality, and yet
in some strange, unaccountable way, was suggested by
the reality. So w^ith the mountains. It is probable that
Turner never painted a portrait of any mountain what-
ever : his way of treating Ben Cruachan (wholly arbitrary)
is his way of treating Alp or Apennine ; and yet it would
be a great mistake to suppose that his travelling was of no
use to him, that he learned nothing from the mountains
in Argyllshire or Savoy. On the contrary, where another
artist would have spent his time in the unintelligent copy-
ism of particular facts, such as the shape of this or that
rocky pinnacle.or buttress (a shape which would be altered
past recognition by walking a mile in either direction),
Turner was imbuing his mind with those great laws of
structure which govern every hill of one class and every
mountain of another. All that this proves is, that his
mind acted as the most elevated minds generally do act.
The small mind learns painfully the particular fact, and
feels lost if the memory fails to retain it ; the large mind
notes the fact, but at once passes beyond, to the principle,
and after that holds the fact with a somewhat loose and
careless grasp. Emerson says that in youth we remember
painfully the very words of some great man whom we ad-
mire; but that when our minds have grown larger we
become indifferent to this kind of accuracy, being our-
selves capable of thinking the thoughts over again, in our
own way. This was Turner's habit with regard to Nature.
He did not care to remember so as to quote Nature word
for word, but he put himself as nearly as possible in har-
mony with Nature, so that he might be able at any time

96 The Life of J, M, W, Turner.

to create natural beauty over again in his own way. This
is the sort of relation, and the only sort, which subsisted
between the great natural universe and the little Turne-
rian one. From the date of his election as Academician,
Turner fed himself at thd everlasting and inexhaustible
banquet of natural beauty, but only as an original poet
may freely pasture his mind on the literature of other
ages. In this free spirit he travelled ; never resting long
in one place, and never, or hardly ever, doing more than
sketch with the pencil-point, altering everything that he
sketched. On his return to London, after every such ex-
cursion, it is doubtful whether he ever possessed one ac-
curate study the more, and it cannot be proved that he
had any accurate recollection of a single scene that he had
passed through. The real gain to him was of a different
order. After a sea voyage he had the marine element in
his mind ; after wandering through Alpine valleys he
came back with an Alpine education, knowing how a
snowy crest shines in the sunset, how a glacier creeps
down to a valley, and a waterfall leaps from a cliff.

When Turner became an Academician he took his old
father away from his business of barber, and gave him a
home in his own house. It is said that he was kind and
respectful to the old man, invariably; which we may
easily believe, though there have been stories to the con-
trary, originating in the simple habits of both father and
son. It seemed to both of them perfectly natural that the
elder man, having now much time on his hands, should
occupy himself in little tasks which would save a shilling
here and there; but if the painter readily consented to

Turner and his Father, 97

this, was it not the most delicate conduct possible under
the circumstances ? Old William Turner had been indus-
trious and economical all his life, and, like all old men
who have been accustomed to work for a living, he felt the
need of useful occupation. It is said that he acted as
porter at his son's gallery, would stretch canvases for
him, and do other little things, in all which there is cer-
tainly no real humiliation, but simply the gratification of
an old man's wish to be useful. The relation between
father and son is indeed quite the prettiest part of the
life-story we have to tell. The artist was never hindered
by his father, but aided by him in all possible ways with
tender parental care and sagacious foresight. The son,
on his part, was dutiful and filial to the last, taking the
old man to his house, and drawing closer the bond of
affection as the social distance between them became
wider. Thus it is precisely when the painter wins the
full honors of the Academy, honors which give a recog-
nized and envied position in London society, that he takes
his father home. A meaner nature would have tried to
keep the old man at a safe distance. Few readers of this
biography can have failed to meet with instances of pro-
fessional men, brilliantly successful in the world, whose
humble parents are never by any chance to be met with
in their houses, and are never mentioned by them.
Thackeray had certainly met with such instances, and
was thinking of them when he described Sepio : " He
prances about the park on a high-bred cock-tail, with lac-
quered boots and enormous high heels; and he has a
7

98 The Life of J, M, W. Turner.

mother and sisters somewhere — washerwomen, it is said,
in Pimlico."

The house to which Turner took his father from
Maiden Lane was No. 64, Harley Street. The artist
went to live there in the year 1803. In that year he ex-
hibited, amongst his other contributions to the Academy,
an indifferent figure picture, A Holy Family, in which
the early influence of Reynolds is very distinctly visible.

For the next three years there is hardly anything to
tell of Turner's life beyond the mere catalogue of his
pictures, and it would encumber the gages of this biog-
raphy to give the titles of them all. The Sun Rising
through Vapor, which now hangs with the Claudes in the
National Gallery, was exhibited in 1807 at the Royal
Academy, and the Goddess of Discord in the Garden of
Hesperides appeared in the British Institution the year
before. Both these are notable pictures, but the Hesper-
ides landscape has a certain fixed place in Turner's
history as an artist which gives it a special importance.
It was a very ambitious picture, and in it he attempted to
combine, and to reconcile, something of his knowledge
of mountain form recently acquired amongst the Alps
with his knowledge of landscape tradition learned from
the old masters in picture-galleries. All artists attempt
the reconciliation of some sort of tradition with what they
learn from nature ; but in our day we very seldom see a
painter of any considerable power hampering himself with
the orthodox classicism. If any classicism pervades some
portion of the art of to-day, it attempts to show how much
better we understand classic feeling than our orthodox

i

Pictures of 1806 and 1807. 99

predecessors did, instead of following blindly in their
footsteps. A modern critic ignorant of Turner's real
history and finding himself for the first time before this
Hesperides landscape of his, would say that here was a
man still bound in the chains of tradition, yet struggling
towards the truth of nature ; a follower of the ancients,
for whom there was some faint hope that in a remote
future he might come to see the world with the open eyes
of a modern. All this would be a complete mistake.
In 1806 it is evident that Turner could have drawn
mountain forms better than this if he had chosen ; for he
drew them better in 1801 with no other experience than
a little knowledge of Scotland. His picture of Kilchurn,
with all its topographic inaccuracies, was (for that time)
a very remarkable instance of mountain truth, and the
artist cannot have been made more ignorant of such truth
by his experience of the Continental mountains. The
Garden of the Hesperides is full of what seems ignorance
of natural form and color too, and yet it cannot have
been ignorance. It was a return to the traditions of the
picture-gallery, for which, let us bear in mind, Turner
does not seem at any time of his life to have felt any
hearty aversion. It pleased him to turn his back
temporarily upon Nature, and fabricate a classical picture
in browns and grays, with impossible geology, in the
style of the old masters. There is no denying that
the picture has considerable majesty, a kind of simple
grandeur which the old painters cared for more than
truth, and it is painted with a power which already rivals
theirs ; but it cannot give much satisfaction to any lover

icx> The Life of y, M, W. Turner.

of natural beauty. The next year's picture, the Sun
Rising through Vapory is a direct return to Nature, and
is the first decided expression on an important scale
of Turner's master-passion in his art, the .love of light
and mystery in combination. Although Turner was only
thirty years old when this picture was painted, it is quite
mature in treatment throughout, and the proof that he
himself believed it to be so is, that he selected it as one
of his two representatives in the contest with Claude,
which he certainly would not have done if the work
had retained the slightest trace of youthful inexperience.
The foreground is rich in fishing-boats and figures. In
the distance are mighty ships of war, floating on a glassy
sea. The sun is struggling through the mist, and lighting
a few scattered clouds towards the zenith. Much of the
foreground is occupied by a fishing-boat ashore and a
group of fisherwomen on the sands, who are cleaning
and selling fish. The whole scene is of a kind which
must have been very familiar to Turner (more familiar
than any gardens of Hesperides) ; for he liked to be with
fishermen and sailors, and was an early riser, who had
often seen the sun in the east through the mists of an
English sea.

We now come to a new scheme of Turner's, which he
began to realize in the year 1807. Clever painter as he
was already, he did not yet earn very much money by
the direct sale of his pictures ; some of the best of which,
though exhibited in the Academy and appreciated by his
brother artists who elected him, returned to his hands
after the close of the exhibition, and remained for long

Turner takes to Etching, loi

afterwards in his own keeping. He therefore determined
to do what many artists are doing at the present day —
he determined to appeal to the general public through
the medium of etching; but as the effect he sought
required chiaroscuro of a very complete kind, both in
fulness and in delicacy, he thought it desirable to add
mezzotint to his etchings.

It so happens that these two kinds of engraving are
the most opposite that can be imagined, and therefore
the most naturally complementary of each other. Etch-
ing depends on lines, mezzotint on shades. In etching
the darks are drawn, and every touch is so much added
darkness to the work. In mezzotint the dark is removed
to make light, and every stroke is so much added light-
ness. The faults of etching, considered as a representa-
tion of nature, are too much hardness of line, and too
little delicacy of distinction in shades. These faults can
be overcome, but not easily. Turner did not choose to
take the trouble to overcome them. He was always a
rapid worker, and liked expeditious methods. It is said
that at one time of his life he admired the foliage of a
brother landscape-painter, and asked to be allowed to see
him work. After watching the painter for a short time
he thanked him, but said that his manner would be
useless to himself, merely from its incompatibility with
rapid execution. Turner, indeed, seems to have shared
Landse^r's opinion, that speed was a good thing even
from the artistic point of view, or at any rate he may
have perceived that it had an important pecuniary value,
and was necessary to enable him to earn his bread in

I02 The Life of y. M, W. Turner,

the beginning of his career. Now painting of any kind,
whether in water -color or oil, is a rapid process in
comparison with highly -finished etching in complete
chiaroscuro. Turner had been accustomed to paint
quickly, and he wished to etch quickly also. There was
one way in which this could be done, namely, by etching
all the organic lines and markings, and leaving the rest
of the work, the fine shading, to the mezzotinter. With
characteristic shrewdness he adopted this method, and
thereby disembarrassed himself of at least three-quarters
of the work to be done. In this way he reduced etching
to a comparatively simple process, easily learned by any
one who was already able to draw; and as he had a
remarkable sense of the value of lines, partly a natural
gift, and partly the result of incessant sketching with the
pencil-point, the consequence was that he produced
etchings with hardly any preliminary apprenticeship,
which in their own peculiar kind as landscape markings
for mezzotint have never been surpassed, and are not
very likely to be in the future. The critics, however,
who entirely neglected these works for many years, and
did not recognize their merit until it was pointed out to
them, are in the present day going into the opposite
extreme, and praising Turner as a master of etching, just
as if he had practised the complete art — as Rajon does,
for example. This is only one of the innumerable in-
stances of that renchJrissement in eulogy which attends a
great reputation. When it becomes fashionable to admire
what a famous man has done, people seek distinction for
themselves in praising him, and the art of discovering

Turner takes to Etching, 103

new merits in his works becomes a part of the critic's
trade. At this stage in the history of a great renown,
the critic whose convictions are based upon accurate
knowledge finds himself so much left behind that any-
thing he has to say seems pale and tame in comparison
with what others have already said, and so he is either
reduced to complete silence, or else made to appear by
contrast, something like a*defamer of the illustrious dead.
At whatever risk of this imputation, let me say plainly
that Turner never in his whole life attained any technical
power in etching beyond the very simplest rudiments of
the art, and that he is not to be compared for one
moment as an executant, with the really accomplished
etchers of the present day. There does not pass a month
without the publication of some etching in the Portfolio
which Turner could not have executed. He had just one
kind of skill in etching, that of laying organic lines well
which were to be mezzotinted afterwards. He could do
this with singular strength and determination, putting
very high powers of mind into his work, and proving the
value of the etched line, as a skeleton to be covered with
subsequent shading, better than any other etcher whom I
could name. But I think that the fashionable enthusiasm
for Turner's work becomes a downright superstition
when it takes his etchings, without the mezzotint shade
which he always intended to add to them, as models of
what etching should be when nothing is to be left to
mezzotint.

It does not seem very wonderful, when we know how
simple was the kind of etching which Turner practised,

I04 The Life of y, M. W. Turner,

that he should have mastered so rapidly the limited
portion of the art which he intended to make use of;
but I have always thought it very remarkable that he
should have been able to make himself a good mezzotint
engraver with the very limited amount of practice which
he gave to it. He does not seem to have liked the
work of mezzotinting, for he did very little of it, and
yet the little he did was good. The process was too
tedious for him : the slow working from dark to light may
be borne by the patience of an engraver ; but it is not an
artist's process, as etching is. The consequence was,
that Turner generally left the mezzotinting to professional
men, such as Charles Turner, Lupton, and others; nor
did he always execute even the etching himself, as the
engravers could do it for him from his own drawings.
What he did invariably was an original drawing in brown,
with pen-work for his organic markings, and shadings
washed with a brush. From these drawings the engravers
worked.

The whole scheme of the Liber Studiorum was sug-
gested, as every reader of this biography is probably
already aware, by the Liber Veritatis of Claude; but
there is an essential difference between the intention of
the two works, which a just critic would never overlook.
Claude made drawings in brown of his pictures as they
successively left his easel, just as David Roberts used to
make memoranda with pen and ink to preserve for himself
a record of his entire ceuvre^ and also to serve for reference
in case of dispute about the authenticity of pictures
attributed to him. In doing this, Claude had no notion

The Liber Studiorum. 105

of making a loud appeal to the public. His Liber Veri-
tatis was a private possession, made public long afterwards
by the engravings of Earlom, but not intended for pub-
licity. The Liber Studiorum, on the contrary, was a .
direct appeal to the public to judge between its author
and the famous landscape-painter of Lorraine. Another
difference between the two schemes was, that Claude had
no design of proving to the world how varied were the
resources of his genius. He simply kept a memorandum
of each of his pictures separately, without reference to the
others; but Turner had a great comprehensive plan,
according to which every plate in his magnum opus was to
form part of an important whole, so that the work, when
completed, might be an epitome of the Tumerian universe.
The contest is, therefore, one between a living man con-
sciously resolved to exhibit his powers to the very best
advantage, and a dead man who had no idea that there *
was ever to be a contest at all, and had done his work for
his own private satisfaction. This is the first, but not the
last of Turner's plans, which reveal to us the intensely
ambitious character of his mind. It is probable that no
artist ever lived who had a higher opinion . of his own
powers, or who thought more about his own fame. Those
comparisons which modest people are anxious not to
suggest, this artist deliberately invited. At a later time
he gave directions that two of his pictures should be hung
side by side with two pictures of Claude, and at the early
age of thirty we find him determining to build himself a
monument, so devised and so entitled that no instructed
person shall ever be able either to see it or hear of it

io6 The Life of y. M. W. Turner,

without thinking of Claude's Liber Veritatis, Little as
the English artist knew of Latin, he found or borrowed
erudition enough to call his publication a Liber instead of
a Book — a Liber Studiorum instead of a Book of Studies.
The suggestion of Claude's title is so exact that it is
imitated, not only in the language and grammatical form,
but even in the number of the syllables.

In Turner's scheme there was a comprehensive large-
ness, not less characteristic of his mind than the self-
assertion which challenged the most famous landscape-
painter of the past. He divided his studies into . six
divisions : Historical, Pastoral, Elegant Pastoral, Moun-
tain, Marine, and Architectural. This is in the highest
degree interesting, as evidence that the artist was himself
perfectly conscious of the range and variety of his genius.
It was very like Turner, too, not to be able to get through
such a limited piece of literary work as the naming of his
divisions without a blunder of some kind ; so we find that
one of his divisions is " Pastoral," and another, " Elegant
Pastoral," as if the second were not a subdivision of the
first. It is like dividing the civilized world into Ameri-
cans, Europeans, and Frenchmen. What Turner origi-
nally intended may have been to separate the classical
pastoral in his works from the wilder modernism in which
he was one of the earliest discoverers or innovators ; but
when we come to examine the works themselves, we find
that if such an intention existed it must have been
forgotten in the execution. Norham Castle^ for example,
is '"pastoral," but Raglan Castle is "elegant pastoral."
A Bridge with Cows is pastoral, a Stone Bridge with Goats

The Liber Studiorum, 107

is elegant pastoral Chepstow yunciion of the Severn, is
classed amongst the elegant subjects, whilst a scene of
water-cress gathering near Twickenham is not. On the
other hand, there is a reason why Solway Moss should not
be elegant; it is too wild and northern, so it is put
amongst the simple pastorals, with the Farmyard with
Pigs and the Hedging and Ditching, We can see a
reason for the classification in some instances, but not in
all. It is probable that if the series of plates had been
carried out to the full extent which Turner intended, the
classical subjects, for which he had always a predilection,
would have been more numerous amongst those which he
called "elegant." In the title of another of his sections
there is a certain want of correspondence with part of the
contents. What he calls " History," includes legendary
subjects, such as jfEsacus and Hesperia, yason, and Procris
and CephaluSy and one illustration of a poem which is
certainly not historical, namely, the Faerie Queene: z, few
Biblical subjects are also included in this section, and
they seem rather strangely associated with those which
we have just mentioned. It is difficult, when we look
over the list of subjects, to understand how Turner
intended the plates to be parts of a great whole, though
his attempted classification proves that the intention was
certainly in his mind. The artist's chief purpose would
appear to have been variety, and yet even this purpose
might have been more fully attained from the sketches
and studies in his possession ; for the mountain subjects
are nearly all from Switzerland and Scotland, with nothing
from Northern England, or Wales. It is very curious

io8 The Life of J, M, W. Turner,

that, with Turner's classical tastes, there should be
nothing classical amongst his architectural subjects in
the Liber, unless Greenwich Hospital is to be considered
so. He draws a crypt, a castle on the Irish coast and
one on the Rhine, two Continental cities and one English
town, with two Bj-itish abbeys, a cathedral, and the interior
of a church, but never a Greek temple, or Roman aqueduct,
or arch of triumph.

Turner managed the publishing business of the Liber
Studiorum himself, and not so skilfully as a clever pub-
lisher would have managed it. The plates were not issued
with that degree of luxe which is necessary to make a
work of art look its best. The paper took the impressions
well, but was not rich enough in quality to make the
margins handsome, whilst each number of five plates was
stitched in a dark blue cover, very inferior to the tasteful
covers which are used for such publications in the present
day. Seventy-one plates being published at the price of
J[,\j \os, for the whole work, and one of these plates
being a gift of the artist to his subscribers, it follows that
the cost of each subject was five shillings exactly. Turner,
with that desire to get as much money as possible into
his own pocket, which always characterized him, and
often led him to overreach himself in his unwillingness to
let others make profit out of his work, spoiled the com-
mercial chances of this publication by refusing the usual
share of profits to the trade. It is true that these profits
always • appear enormous at first sight, and it seems
pleasanter to an artist to receive all the money which the
public lays out upon his engravings rather than let fifty

The Liber Studiorum, 109

per cent, of it go to the wholesale and retail printseller ;
but as it happens that the trade finds purchasers where
the artist himself cannot find them, the result of publish-
ing through the trade is invariably better for him in the
end. Turner not only employed the engravers himself at
the very moderate price of eight guineas a plate, so long
as they would work for him at that rate,* but he got up
the numbers in his own house with the help of a female
servant, who is said to have robbed him of many proofs
when she had to stitch the numbers. As Turner was his
own publisher we suppose that he must have had the
trouble of collecting money from his subscribers, and of
keeping the accounts relating to his publication, down to
the smallest detail. The first number appeared in 1807,
and its successors followed irregularly until 18 16, when
the publication finally came to a standstill for want of
encouragement, and because the artist had found more
profitable work to do. The sale of the earlier numbers
appears to have been larger than that of the later ones.

Now that Turner has become one of the greatest
names in art, people eagerly contend for fine proofs of
the Liber Studiorum, some of which have been sold for
as much as ;^20 each, whilst a perfect copy of the whole
work, composed of choice proofs selected from different
copies, is now worth a small fortune. Prints, however,
do not improve by keeping; and these proofs, which now
sell for so much to connoisseurs, are not better in any
way than those other proofs which the same class of

* The prices paid to engravers were first five guineas, then eight guineas,
and afterwards ten guineas or twelve guineas.

no The Life of % M. W. Turner.

connoisseurs thought so worthless in the first quarter of
this century that hundreds of them were used for lighting
fires. The Liber was neglected then, because Turner,
though an artist of reputation, had not yet become
splendidly famous ; and it is sought after now because
his name a3ds lustre to a collection of prints. It may be
doubted whether the change shows any decided improve-
ment in public taste. It is certainly very doubtful
whether, if works of exactly equal merit were now pub-
lished for the first time by an unknown artist, they would
repay the cost of engraving. Unhappily, in the fine arts,
the splendor of the name, and not the quality of the work,
determines the pecuniary result. Within quite recent
years the pictures of Jules Dupr6 have risen to forty
times their original value, and some of Miiller and David
Cox to eighty or a hundred times. The Liber Studiorum
has risen almost in the same proportions for some states
of the plates, though even yet a purchaser who buys to
gratify his artistic taste only, and does not care to con-
tend with rich people for rarities, may procure fair im-
pressions of separate plates at a moderate expense.*

The commercial side of art is always variable and un-
satisfactory to all, except those who make a profit out of
it. The artistic merits and qualities of a print remain the

* It is diflficult to understand on what principle the dealers now regulate
the value of ordinary impressions of the Liber Studiorum plates. The
writer of this note bought a good impression of the Little DeviPs Bridge of
one well-known dealer for £\ 8j., and afterward sent it to another well-
known dealer to see what he would offer for it. The answer was, " It is
worth only a few pence." This is a matter of perfect indifference when we
buy only for artistic qualities ; but collectors may do well to be careful
Caveat emptor I

The Liber Studiorum. in

same as long as the ink and paper last, whatever Fashion
may have to say on the subject. We may therefore leave
dealers and collectors to settle the current value of the
Liber Studiorum plates from year to year, whilst we turn
to the consideration of them from the artistic point of
view.

We are all familiar with a most ungraceful little word,
which it is almost impossible to introduce into writing of
any literary pretension, but which so happily describes a
common fault of common art that it is never likely to fall
entirely into disuse. The ungraceful little word is " nig-
gling." Well, the qualities of the Liber SUidiorum are
exactly the opposite of all which that word implies. Tur-
ner was in 1807 already so completely the accomplished
master in art that he possessed to the full what Reynolds
called the genius of mechanical performance. We should
not use " mechanical " in that sense to-day, because, to
us, it conveys the idea of a. machine's action rather than
an artist's ; the word we should use would be " technical : "
but we know what Reynolds meant, and if we did not his
own explanation would make it clear to us. "This gen-
ius," he said, " consists, I conceive, in the power of
expressing that which employs your pencil, whatever it
may be, as a whole: so that the general effect and power
of the whole may take possession of the mind, and for a
while suspend the consideration of the subordinate and
particular beauties or defects."

This is exactly the opposite of "niggling," which
means a childish trifling over parts, and Turner in the
Liber Studiorum followed the precepts of Reynolds.

112 The Life of J, M, W, Turner.

None of the engravings after Turner have more of what
artists call " breadth " than those in the Liber, and few
are so consistent in their simplicity and in the omission
of useless material. The predominant feeling in these
compositions is very serious ; in many of them it is tragic
or gloomy, and the light-and-shade is generally in a lower
key than in the artist's later work in oil or water-color.
The work with the etching-needle, representing Turner's
pen-markings on his drawings, is full of a masculine
economy and strength, like the words of a speaker who
says little, but always to the purpose ; but it is not pretty
nor amusing, like the clever playing with the same instru-
ment in the hands of some modern Frenchmen. The
Liber shows a good deal of the influence of Cozens and
Girtin, both in feeling and in method of using shade, and
behind these there is the influence of Claude; but the
sentiment is profounder than that of Claude, and the pas-
sion for natural truth is stronger than it was in him. In
two or three of the grandest and most solemn plates in
the series it has been believed, perhaps with reason, that
the artist was working under the influence of Titian.

The finest collection of Liber Studiorum impressions
ever seen together was exhibited by the Burlington Fine-
Arts Club in the year 1872, and the catalogue of that
exhibition affords some interesting fragments of informa-
tion about the progress of the work in the hands of Tur-
ner and his engravers. Although the artist was his own
publisher, he at first made use of his engraver, Charles
Turner, in that capacity, until there occurred a rupture
between them, due to the hardness and severity of the

The Liber Studiorunt, 113

painter. Although, as we have seen, the price asked for
the whole work was £17 10^., the early numbers were
charged to subscribers at the rate of 1 5^. for prints and
jQi $s. for proofs. These prices were afterwards altered
to one guinea for prints and twice as much for what the
artist was pleased to call proofs. " It is to be feared,"
says the author of the Burlington Catalogue, " that the
difference between these two classes of impressions con-
sisted wholly in the price." The confused way in which
the whole work was issued appears to have been still
further complicated by something like downright dishon-
esty. "I am sorry too," observes Mr. Thornbury, "to
say that there can be no doubt, from years of investiga-
tion by Messrs. Pye, Stokes, and other collectors, that
Turner often took out the thickened letters of the plates
in the bad third state and engraved open letters higher
up in the plate: in fact, he sold sham proofs, having
private marks and scratches to indicate to himself the
various states." If he did this, he is of course inexcus-
able ; but as the plates had been worked upon by himself,
he may have thought them as good as new. Mezzotint
wears away fast in the printing, and if a plate has just
been refreshed by added labor it may be equal to its
earliest state if the artist has been happy in his additions.
This may be an artistic excuse, but it is not a commercial
one, because the commercial sense of the word "proof"
is an early impression before the plate has been refreshed
by any restoration whatever, whether successful in the
artist's opinion or the contrary. The reader would be
unjust, however, if he inferred that Turner had no con-
8

114 '^^^ ^if^ of y, M, W, Turner,

science. He was grasping, and yet curiously conscien-
tious in his own way, and according to his own notions of
what was honorable and just.

Amongst Turner's notes on the margin of the engrav-
ers' proofs we have some interesting bits of his mind,
showing both his faculty as a critic and his temper. The
Dunstanborough Castle was engraved by Charles Turner,
who permitted himself the facility of a little aquatint.
The painter, of course, detected this at a glance, and
wrote coldly and severely, — " Sir, you have done in aqua-
tint all the castle down to the rocks ; did I ever ask for
such an indulgence } " This is very like one of the Duke
of Wellington's laconic reproofs, and seems rather hard
when addressed to a brother-artist who, on the whole, did
his work faithfully and well, especially when we consider
that aquatint was not formally excluded from the Liber,
but was employed occasionally, as, for instance, in the
entire sky of the classical composition called the Bridge,
One very important characteristic of Turner's marginal
remarks is, that they pn)ve him to have been quite clearly
conscious of what he was doing, and of the artistic
reasons for doing it : in other words, they prove that he
had the conscious critical faculty, and that he exercised it
on his own works and on the engravings from them. For
example, on the Morpeth he writes : " I think the whole
sky would be better a tone lighter, besides the light
clouds," and then comes the reason, " which will make the
hill more solid'' Here we have him anticipating a result
quite consciously. So on the margin of the Dunblain
Abbey he writes : " The sky must be much lighter and
clearer, and until it possesses both the other parts have

The Liber Studiorum, 115

not their value." The reader will observe the Tumerian
grammar in the last ^^nt^ncQ, possesses being used for is ;
or else the writer has forgotten that he has used adjectives
in the comparative degree, and is now thinking of the sub-
stantives lightness and clearness. In the note upon a
touched proof of the Little Devil's Bridge Turner says :
'* A slight indication of a ray of bursting light under the
bridge would improve that part, and a few sharp white
touches upon the leaves marked X> because they are now
two black spots without connection with the stems of the
trees'' Here again the reason is given, and this time it
is to prevent scattering, that great enemy of artistic unity.
Curiously enough, on another touched proof of the same
plate the artist had written : "Be careful about the dis-
tance. It wants air and light scraping to render it like
the place." This is the only indication I remember of any
anxiety on Turner's part to secure a likeness to the place.
We remember how he treated Kilchum, Raglan Castle^
in the Liber Studiorum, fared no better. The plate is so
unlike Raglan that the compiler of the Burlington Cata-
logue says, " There seems to be no warrant for giving the
name Raglan Castle to this subject ; it is said to have
much more resemblance to. Berry Pomeroy."

We know on the authority of Mr. Ruskin that the
author of the Liber Studiorum disliked the sale of sepa-
rate plates, because in his own mind there was a certain
connection of significance between the subjects. After
mentioning the castle and abbey subjects, Mr. Ruskin
says : " These are his types of human pride. Of human
love : Procris dying by the arrow ; Hesperie by the viper's
fang ; and Rizpah, more than dead, beside her children.

ii6 The Life of J, M, W. Turner,

Such are the lessons of the Liber Studiorum. Silent
always with a bitter silence, disdaining to tell his meaning
when he saw there was no 'ear to receive it, Turner only
indicated his purpose by slight words of contemptuous
anger when he heard of any one's trying to obtain this or
the other separate subject as more beautiful than the rest.
" What is the use of them," he said, " but together ? '*

Surely there was little reason in this case either for
bitter silence or contemptuous anger. Those hidden
meanings which it appears that Turner often intended to
attach to his drawings or pictures have little to do with
art, and might be much better expressed in a few words
of written English than by any quantity of landscape
design. Any versifier of ordinary skill could compress all
the "lessons" of the Liber Studiorum into a couple of
sonnets, and the sonnets would not be very valuable to
humanity for such wisdom as they might contain. We all
know that strong castle and fair fame will alike fall ulti-
mately into ruin, that death and decay are everywhere,
and that bones will ever be found bleaching on the moun-
tains. We all know that love has often been interwoven
with the most pathetic sorrow ; that it has often been
associated with sad tragedies. So far as the knowledge
of these things can be of use to our minds it is already
familiar enough, having been the frequent theme of poets
and moralists since the days of the ancient Hebrews, and
any longer or deeper dwelling on such subjects would
only make us morbid, like the Trappists, who enliven
their days of taciturnity by the salutation, " Fr^re il faut
mourir ! " and the answer, " Mourir il faut, fr^re ! " The
suggestion of ideas of this kind, which Turner bitterly

The Liber Studiorum. 117

despised the public for not understanding, is no doubt to
some degree within the province of landscape art, which
resembles music in its appeal to those who are susceptible
to its influences ; but it is in the nature both of landscape
art and of music to express moods rather than thoughts,
and it is unreasonable to be angry with people when they
do not read thoughts in a language less adapted to their
expression than the poorest of spoken dialects. It is pro-
bable that much of Turner's contempt for the public may
have been due to an exaggerated conception, very common
with illiterate men, of the value and originality of such
thoughts as he tried to express. It would have been easy,
had he condescended to do so, to make his thoughts clear
enough by the mere titles of his drawings ; but he seems
to have enjoyed, in a bitter way, the satisfaction of hint-
ing at obscure meanings and then despising his fellow-
countrymen for not following him. The real cause of
this temper was simply want of intellectual culture, which
would have made him perceive, that when a moralist
desires to read solemn lessons on the fate of nations land-
scape design is an inadequate means of expression. Such
culture would also have made Turner aware that there
was no novelty in his choice of subjects. Many painters
before his time had sought in ruin and decay the elements
of pictorial solemnity, whilst such motives as -^sacus and
Hesperie, Cephalus and Procris, and Rizpah, are in the
regular repertory of figure-painters, so that it would be
impossible to ascertain who first painted them, or to
foretell the time when artists will finally reject them as
outworn.

CHAPTER VI.

Turner a professor of perspective. — The Trafalgar picture. — First visit to
Petworth, 1809. — Pictures of 181 1. — Turner as a writer on art and
nature. — Turner as an observer and critic.

TN the year 1808 Turner added the mysterious letters
" P. P.'* to his Academical honors. These have
puzzled some of his admirers in the provinces arid foreign
parts, but they mean nothing worse than " Professor of
Perspective." The choice of the new Professor was at the
same time wise and not wise. Turner was utterly incom-
petent to explain anything orally to an audience, but he
was exceedingly conscientious, and did all he could by
elaborately prepared illustrations on a large scale to make
the principles of the science intelligible to his pupils. It
has been wittily observed that the artist never practised
what he professed. Certainly the perspective in his
pictures is not faultless, but there is as much of it as we
need. Nothing is more tiresome than an absolute scien-
tific accuracy in these things ; and we may be sure that it
was as far from Turner's essentially artistic nature as that
other kind of accuracy, the topographic, against which he
rebelled so energetically.

The professor was very conscientious about his work,
making careful illustrative drawings, and taking much

Turner a Professor of Perspective, 119

pains to be understood, but he had the defect of a bad
delivery. His fellow-Academicians may have made him
a Professor because he drew what were supposed to repre-
sent Carthaginian temples in certain pictures of his,
involving the more obvious application of perspective;
but the real truth is, that when it came to practice he
discarded theory altogether, and used a perspective of
his own in a wilful manner, infringing the mathematical
rules. He even maintained in his own laconic speech the
necessity for such deviations. G. Barret had once drawn
a temple in a landscape of his by rule, and Turner said,
'* You will never do it in that way." His own cannot be
defined without illustrations which it is not worth while
for such a purpose to engrave ; but it may be said with
perfect truth that, although possessing accurate know-
ledge, he- preferred taste to knowledge, and knowingly
refused to follow science whenever his artistic judgment
suggested the policy of a deviation. There was nothing
exceptional in this lordly way of dealing with perspective,
for he was equally arbitrary in every other department of
his art : in topography, as we have already seen ; in the
drawing of forms of all kinds, which he always forced into
the shapes that he wanted ; in light and shade, which in
his works is generally beautiful, but very seldom scien-
tifically true; and finally, in color, where he permitted
himself all manner of violence and aberrations.

The newly-appointed Professor of Perspective permit-
ted himself the luxury of a suburban house at the end of
the Upper Mall, Hammersmith. From that time till his
death he seems always to have had two residences, and

120 The Life pf y, M. W, Turner.

sometimes three, but they were never very remote from
each other. He may have thought them useful as a
means of escaping from visitors, to work in undisturbed
privacy. One biographer writes as if the Harley Street
residence had been abandoned when the Hammersmith
house was taken, but the Exhibition Catalogue gives both
houses at the same time.

About this time, 1808, it is probable that Turner
painted the big picture of Trafalgar which is at Green-
wich Hospital. This has always been an intensely un-
popular picture with sailors, and it has little artistic merit
to compensate for its want of naval knowledge. The
artist seems to have been so entirely absorbed by his
wish to represent the apparent confusion of a great sea-
fight, that he forgot the true sequence of events, and
forgot, at the same time, to charm the lover of art by that
subtle artistic arrangement which great artists have
usually thought necessary even when representing the
wildest actual disorder. The picture was, therefore, in a
double sense a failure. It was painted for George IV.,
who, perhaps, may not have liked it, as he generously
presented it to Greenwich, the worst place in the world
to hang Turner, whether good or bad; for, even if suc-
cessful from the artistic point of view, any work of his
would inevitably be too arbitrary and inaccurate to bear
the acute professional criticism of sailors.

In 1809 Turner seems to have gone to Petworth for the
first time. Lord Egremont was one of the very few
members of the aristocracy who appreciated either Turner
or the other great contemporary English painters. It is

First Visit to Petworthy 1809. 121

probable that this Earl, whom we may call a noble earl in
a sense very different from the conventional one, had a
character above the vanity of caring to look well in the
sight of posterity ; but it so happens, from his great kind-
ness to men of genius whose names are immortal in the
history of English art, that he himself has become
immortal also. Lord Egremont*s nature was at the same
time highly refined in its perception of artistic beauty,
and unafEected to the extreme of simplicity in the ordi-
nary intercourse of life. Turner had these two qualities
also ; he had the most delicate perceptions united to the
plainest manners. All witnesses seem to agree that
Turner and the great Earl got on quite well together ;
and this is in favor of Turner, not because Lord Egre-
mont was a man of rank, but because he was a man of
great discernment, and therefore not likely to tolerate
about him any artist, whatever might be his professional
ability, who had not the qualities of simplicity and genu-
ineness. All who knew Turner personally appear to be
agreed that, although he was not what is called a gentle-
man in the society sense of the term — not having the
grace and polish which are necessary to that character —
he still had good manners in his own plain way, and a
good deal of delicate tact, often under apparent roughness.
When Turner was at Petworth, his habit was to work
very assiduously in the morning, and as he rose very
early, it was easy for him to get a great deal done in
these hours of privacy ; but later in the day he would
amuse himself, especially in fishing, so that the other
guests imagined that he led quite an idle life. It is

122 The Life of J, M, W, Turner.

curious, in illustration of these habits of his, that his first
picture of Petworth should be entitled in the catalogue,
" Petworth, Sussex, the seat of the Earl of Egremont —
Dewy Morning^ In 1810 the three works exhibited by
Turner were all views of seats — two from Lowther
Castle, and the third this view of Petworth.

The next year, amongst nine works exhibited, we only
find one gentleman's seat, but there are three pictures
from ancient mythology or poetry, and one of the three
is the Apollo and Python, Nothing could be. more char-
acteristic of Turner than to paint, the same year, Apollo
slaying Python with his Arrows, and Somer Hilly near
Tunbridgey the seat of W, R Woodgatey Esq. Most artists,
when they have once begun to paint such highly classical
subjects as those in which far-darting Apollo is an actor,
begin to entertain feelings of contempt for the common
world of reality ; but Turner is just as ready to portray
whatever beauty there may be about Mr. Woodgate*s
country house near Tunbridge as if he had never painted
either deities or dragons. His mind recurs also to
Whalley Bridge, in Lancashire, which he paints with the
remains of the Abbey, and enlivens with dyers who are
washing and drying cloth. The same year one of his
pictures illustrates flounder - fishing, and another crab-
collecting on the shore at Scarborough. He also exhib-
its a picture of Chickens, showing a tendency to study
poultry, which is not uncommon with landscape-painters.

It was observed, with reference to Turner's notes on
the Liber Studiorum proofs, that they gave evidence of
his conscious exercise of critical reason and judgment.

Turner as a Writer on Art and Nature, 123

His notes on his own private memoranda occasionally
prove that he thought out his composition consciously,
and fully understood the importance of those little contri-
vances and artifices which, however trifling they may
appear to people who are not artists, are never foolishly
despised by those who are. Mr. Thornbury selects as an
instance of these notes one about bargemen hanging
clothes: "Bargemen hanging clothes on the shrouds — to
avoid long lines." Turner wrote this to remind himself
afterwards that by hanging clothes on the shrouds of
their barges, the men afforded him an opportunity, as an
artist, of interrupting the long lines of the shrouds, which
he thought might be inconvenient in the intended future
composition. The reader will observe that the reason is
given here just as it was in the notes on the Liderproois,
Turner also attempted to reason out for himself a theory
of reflections in water, but not quite successfully, because
the subject itself is difficult and obscure, and also because
Turner's use of language was defective. It may be worth
our while to examine his attempt at theory.

"Reflections not only appear darker, but larger than
the object which occasions them, and if the ripple or
hollow of the wave is long enough to make an angle with
the eye, it is on these undulating lines that the object
reflects, and transmits all perpendicular objects lower
towards the spectator ; but in receding lines, as well as
objects, rules seem to lose their power, and those guides
that enable us to find some cause for near objects lose
their power, or become enfeebled by contraction in remote
ones. It has been asserted that all appear equal from the

124 ^^^ ^if^ of J. M, W. Turner,

base line of the water ; but these axioms I dissent from.
It is true, that by placing the eye equal to the water, it
comes up to the rules laid down ; but when the water is
ruffled on which all things are to be reflected, it is no
longer in right angles, but according to the elevation of
the spectator becomes more or less an angle of incidence.
If the undulating surface of the liquid did not, by current
or motion, congregate forms, there would be no difficulty
in simplifying the rules."

It is always difficult to criticise theories which are
badly expressed, because we have to deal with two
entirely different things at the same time — what the
writer said, and. what he meant to say. The first sen-
tence, "Reflections not only appear darker, but larger
than the object which occasions them," is far from being
universally true, though the statement is universal. For,
to begin with, reflections are not always darker than the
things reflected ; that depends upon the state of the water
and of the atmosphere immediately above the water. If
the water is muddy in broad daylight, or if there is a
thin stratum of mist on the surface, the reflection will be
paler than the object. Again, reflections do not of
necessity appear larger than the things reflected. When
the water is perfectly calm the inverted image is of pre-
cisely the same size as the object; when there is ripple
the image is elongated, but it is not widened, except
under peculiar circumstances which we have not space to
explain. Turner then says, " If the ripple or hollow of
the wave is long enough to make an angle with the eye,
it is on these undulating lines that the object reflects

Turner as a Writer on Art and Nature, 125

and transmits all perpendicular objects lower toward the
spectator.'* This is true ; but there is no necessity for
the conditional, because all ripples whatever, be they but
the eighth of an inch in height, are long enough to
" make an angle with the eye, and do elongate reflections
of perpendicular objects." The next sentence is not very
clear, but the writer seems to have intended to say that
rules of a trustworthy kind have not yet been found, by
the guidance of which an artist might manage reflections
of receding lines and objects on the principles of nature,
whatever those principles may be. The truth is, that in
the present state of artistic and scientific intelligence
there are many visible facts in such reflections which
cannot be satisfactorily accounted for ; we can therefore
only paint things as they appear to us, without waiting'
for a complete theory of the subject. We now come to
difficulties of another kind, due to Turner's strange use of
words : " It has been asserted that all appear equal from
the base line of the water ; but these axioms I dissent
from." All what } Can he mean all reflections } Does
the " base line of the water " mean the exact level of the
water } If it does, the answer is simple — a human eye
placed exactly on the level of the water sees no reflections
whatever. The next sentence is unintelligible : " It is
true, that by placing the eye equal to the water it comes
up to the rules laid down." How an eye equal to water
can come up to rules laid down we do not pretend to
understand. "When the water is ruffled on which all
things are to be reflected, it is no longer in right angles,
but according to the elevation of the spectator becomes

126 The Life of J. M, W. Turner.

more or less an angle of incidence.*' The water is no
longer in right angles in reference to what ? Of course
every one who has read an elementary treatise on optics
knows that there is always an angle of incidence, when
the rays of light rebound from the reflecting surface to
the eye of the spectator, and there is sure to be an angle
of incidence in any case where there is a reflection at all,
whether the surface is " ruffled " or quite smooth. The
final observation is at the same time more intelligible
and more profound than those we have just examined.
" If the undulating surface of the liquid did not, by
current or motion, congregate forms, there would be no
difficulty in simplifying the rules." Certainly, if there
were neither current nor motion on the surface we should
have perfectly calm water, like a flat looking-glass ; and
optical writers have fully explained for us the theory of
the looking-glass, which is thoroughly understood. The
difficulty lies entirely in the laws of ripple or disturbance
of surface, of whichr nobody but an artist ever seems
to know anything at all, whilst the most accomplished
landscape-painters know very little that can be unre-
servedly and unquestionably stated.

I have quoted and criticised Turner's written observa-
tions on this subject, because his works prove him to
have been a great discoverer in this department of
natural truth, and it is interesting to see in how much
mental confusion and uncertainty he was groping his way
where not a living creature could enlighten him. The
varied studies of modern landscape-painters have made
water phenomena much better known, though not much

Turner as a Writer on Art and Education, 127

more clearly accounted for, than they were in the begin-
ning of this century, and the students of the future will
find a mass of suggestion and example in the art of the
nineteenth century which Turner could not find in that
of preceding times. The water -painting of Claude,
though very successful in rendering two or three common
aspects of nature, was so narrowly limited in its range
that little was to be learned from him, though that little
was of great value as a foundation. Ruysdael was equally
narrow. Something more might be got from the Dutch
marine-painters, but even their knowledge of water was
as nothing in comparison with the variety of Turner's
discoveries. Of all that he found out, what pleased him
best appears to have been the long-drawn confusion of
reflection upon a rippled surface, and he liked this so well
that it became a mannerism in his later works. It is
still, however, a great exaggeration of the truth either to
say directly, or to convey, the impression indirectly, that
Turner had exhausted the phenomena of nature even in
such a department of study. as water-surfaces only. Some
of the common appearances of water have not been illus-
trated by him in any work known to me, either in the
original or in an engraving ; and from some of the more
complex and remarkable phenomena of water-surfaces he
may have abstained from prudence, knowing that it was
impossible that the general public should understand
them. Mr. Leslie, in his Handbook for Young Painters,
mentions some effects on water which (though after the
death of Turner) he had never met with in pictures, and
then observes : " The truth is, we go on painting the
things that others and ourselves have painted before, and

128 The Life of J, M, W, Turner,

do not look out for the art nearly as much as we should
do." One reason for this may be, that the class of critics
who are called " connoisseurs '* always compare art with
previous art, and treat discoverers scornfully, as ignorant
innovators who do not know what is allowable in painting
and what is inadmissible. This traditional spirit in the
public and its guides did much to embitter the career of
Turner, though he succeeded in spite of it ; and it kept
down Constable's professional income so effectually, that
he could not have maintained his family without private
means.

Everything that can throw light upon Turner's habits
of thought is interesting to us, so we may remark that
he did not make notes exclusively of what attracted his
attention as an artist, but jotted down all sorts of little
odd facts in archaeology and geography. His mind was
not so much confined to art as we are apt to imagine,
from his want of success in other directions, that it must
have been. He had a lively curiosity, and that disposition
^ accumulate facts which is said to be peculiarly charac-
teristic of Englishmen. Mr. Thornbury says, ** He takes
notes like a spy or a pilot, and of things, too, that seem
quite out of his province." In this way he gradually
accumulated a general store of odds and ends, which gave
him what is called information, and made him able to talk
agreeably whenever it pleased him to break through his
habit of taciturnity. Mr. Cyrus Redding was Turner's
companion on a tour for a day or two, and says that he
spoke remarkably little, using habitually very few words ;
but on one occasion they sat up late together in an inn,
and then Mr. Redding tells us that Turner showed that

Turner as an Observer and Critic, 129

he had a certain power of laconic criticism. " I found
the artist could, when he pleased, make sound, pithy,
though somewhat caustic, remarks upon men and things,
with a fluency rarely heard from him." Some of the best
notes on the character of Turner's conversation in his
maturity are to be found in the reminiscences of the artist
given by Mr. Trimmer's eldest son to Mr. Thornbury for
his biography. Turner and Howard, the Academician,
stayed together at Heston, whereof the elder Mr. Trim-
mer was Rector, and the two painters had professional
conversations, which sometimes degenerated into disputes.
On one of these occasions Howard maintained that
artists ought to paint for the public, but it is interesting
to learn that Turner took the opposite view, and main-
tained that " public opinion was not worth a rush, and
that one should paint only for judges." Mr. Trimmer
confirms what others have said about the great landscape-
painter's extreme sensitiveness to the ignorant and
illiberal criticisms upon his works which used to appear
in the newspapers of his day. " I have seen him almost
in tears," Mr. Trimmer says, "and ready to hang himself
though still only valuing their opinions at their worth."
It is curious that the artist, so little communicative to
people generally, should have been quite freely com-
municative in his friendly private intercourse with the
Rector of Heston, especially when we remember that the
Rector belonged to the category of amateurs, for whom
as a class Turner cherished feelings of unconquerable
aversion. He appears to have given a good deal of
practical art instruction to this clerical friend of his, who,

I30 The Lift of J. M. W, Turner,

in return, tried to teach the painter to read Latin — a
hopeless undertaking of course. With regard to Turner's
estimate of ancient and modern artists, Mr. Trimmer says
that he never appeared illiberal when speaking of the
great masters ; that he spoke most enthusiastically of
Gainsborough's execution and Wilson's tone, plainly
thinking himself their inferior ; and that on one occasion,
before a picture by Vandevelde, he said, in answer to
some one who had observed that he could go beyond
that, " I cannot paint like him." On the other hand,
with regard to contemporary landscape-painters, Mr.
Trimmer is inclined to believe that he considered most
of them to be beneath criticism, and that he hardly did
justice to whatever merits they possessed. It is quite
possible that Turner may have abstained on principle
from the criticism of living artists in conversation, know-
ing that his opinion would carry great weight with those
who appreciated his genius, and fearing to do an injury
to men who had difficulties enough to contend against.
Although Turner could say sharp things when he chose,
he had not the habit, unfortunately very common amongst
artists, especially unsuccessful ones, of expressing scorn
for the work of others. All who knew him are agreed
upon this. They all agree, too, in describing his conver-
sation as remarkably laconic. In this respect he seems
to have resembled a distinguished artist whom we have
recently deplored, the late Frederick Walker, who had
the same reserve, the same disinclination to talk about
art and artists, and whose intimate friends never heard
him criticise a conteimporary.

CHAPTER VII.

He removes to Queen Anne Street, 1812. — ^Excursion to Devonshire, 181 2.
— Turner's poetry. — Turner's prose.

TN 1 81 2 Turner removed from Harley Street to 47,
Queen Anne Street, West, which will always be in-
timately associated with his name. Here he had not only
a studio to paint in, but also a gallery for the private

exhibition of his pictures, a place which he kept in a
condition little worthy of the treasures which it contained.
I never visited the house in Queen Anne Street during
Turner's life, but I well remember visiting it with Mr.
Leslie after his death, when everything remained just as
the departed genius had left it. There were about ninety
pictures in the gallery then, in a wonderful state of neg-
lect, the frames looking as if they had never been gilded.
Mr. Leslie told me that he had known the house forty
years, that during the whole time it had never received
one touch of paint or repair, and that the papers had
never been renewed. There was no picturesque magnifi-
cence about the house, such as artists often like when
they can afford it. Turner does not seem to have had
that delight in seeing varied colors and forms which
tempts artists like Fortuny to fill their studios with

132 The Life of J. M. W, Turner.

Oriental tissues and strange vases from beyond the sea,
or carvings of other and more imaginative times than
ours. On the other hand, Turner seems to have been
equally indifferent to classic elegance in the interior of
his house. Though his art education and his predilections
were classical, he did not care to surround himself with
the beauty either of antiquity or the Renaissance. We
do not know that this was in consequence of any conscious
determination : it seems more probable that early habits
of simple and economical living may have led the artist to
refuse himself beautiful things, simply because such an
outlay of money seemed an extravagance ; and it is per-
fectly possible that a man of Turner's habits might fancy
that he could not afford such a thing as a marble statue,
or an ebony cabinet delicately carved and inlaid with
malachite or lapis lazuli. But there is also another con-
sideration which may better excuse the meagreness of the
great landscape-painter's surroundings, and his apparent
indifference to those things of beauty which, as a poet has
told us so exquisitely, can give endless pleasure to their
possessors. Turner was one of the most imaginative men
who ever existed, and such men are often singularly
independent of what is visible. " Certain localities,'* says
Emerson, "as mountain-tops, the sea-side, the shores of
rivers and rapid brooks, natural parks of oak and pine,
where the ground is smooth and unencumbered, are
excitants of the Muse. Every artist knows well some
favorite retirement. And yet the experience of some
good artists has taught them to prefer the smallest and
plainest chamber, with one chair and table, and with no

He Removes to Queen Anne Street, 133

outlook, to these picturesque liberties." In Turner's
house, however, there was not even this austere poetry of
asceticism, which gives nobility to the cell of the monk
and the tent of the traveller or soldier. There was no
poetry in the place whatever, and it was this which jarred
upon ,my feelings. A place may be bare and simple, yet
affecting in the extreme. The remarkable simplicity of
Goethe's study and bed-chamber is affecting in itself. In
the study " no arm-chair is to be seen, no sofa, nothing
which speaks of ease. A plain hard chair has beside it
the basket in which he used to place his handkerchief."
Of the bedroom, Mr. Lewes says, ** a simple bed, an arm-
chair by its side, and a tiny washing-table with a small
white basin on it, and a sponge, is all the furniture." We
like this absence of material luxury in the personal belong-
ings of a great man, but then in Goethe's house the stair-
case and reception-rooms made a thousand appeals to the
mind. There were the Olympian gods, there was a
colossal bust of Juno, there were cartoons, sketches of
great masters, and etchings, a collection of gems, another
of bronze statuettes, lamps, and vases. There were
portrait busts of illustrious contemporaries. In Turner's
house there was little to show that he cared for any other
art than his own, and not much evidence that he cared
even for that, since he treated his own pictures with less
care for their appearance and preservation than the
humblest picture-dealer will give to his least valuable
merchandise. But beside this absence of suggestion and
of association with past art, the interior of Turner's house
had the defects of ordinary English middle-class interiors

134 The Life of y, M. IV. Turner,

without their qualities. It had their tastelessness but not
their tidiness ; it was as dull as the dullest of them, but
not so clean.

I remember that, as we were looking at a picture evi-
dently painted under the influence of Stothard, Mr. Leslie
said that he had happened to see Turner at work upon
it, and had made the observation, " So you are imitating
Stothard ! " " Yes," was the answer ; " and I wish I
could paint like him : he is the Giotto of England." The
comparison seems to refer to the beautiful purity and
simplicity of Stothard's art ; but it scarcely does justice
to the Englishman, who was much more advanced and
developed as a painter than the contemporary of Dante.
It is interesting, however, as evidence that Turner could
admire heartily, and has the same value in this respect as
his expression, " I can't paint like him," with reference to
Vandevelde.

Some amusing anecdotes have been told of Turner in
his house in Queen Anne Street ; how he resented intru-
sion, and did not hesitate to show it ; how difficult, almost
impossible, it was to get the least glimpse of his painting-
room ; how little disposed he was to offer hospitality,
except to one or two old friends, and then how very
simple and primitive was his style of living. The one
absorbing interest of his life was the passion for his art ;
and he liked to work in perfect solitude, because the
presence and conversation of another might have dis-
turbed the action of the imagination by making his hold
upon imaginative conceptions more uncertain and precari-
ous. But besides this reason for liking to be alone, there

He Removes to Queen Anne Street, 135

were others connected with the technical side of art. The
execution of modern painters is generally nothing but a
series of experiments, many of which are failures, and
have to be removed from the canvas. Turner's execution,
notwithstanding its extreme rapidity, was experimental in
many ways, and utterly unsafe, as is decisively proved by
the non-durability of his pictures^ If purchasers and
critics had been admitted into his painting-room, they
would have seen experiments of which it was as well that
they should remain ignorant. Amongst others, they
would have seen the indiscriminate use of oil and water-
color in the same work. An artist still living, whose
name I could give, had permission many years ago to
visit the gallery in Queen Anne Street, accompanied by a
friend. Turner was not in the gallery, and did not show
himself, so they supposed him to be out of town. Being
left alone, the two friends amused themselves by examin-
ing the technical work in the pictures, and one, which was
unfinished, had an especial interest for them in this
respect. There were some masts and rigging in this
work, very freely drawn, so one of the visitors exclaimed,
" I am certain that 's water-color," and wetting his finger
he rubbed it along one of the masts, which immediately
disappeared. At that moment the imprudent visitors
heard Turner's growling voice in the next room, and,
filled with dismay, fled from the house precipitately, but
unhurt. In this gallery he gave a very rough reception
to a relative of his mother who came to make his acquaint-
ance. On the whole, the house in Queen Anne Street
was decidedly not a safe place to venture into during the
lifetime of its master.

136 The Life of J, M, W, Turner.

Turner spent a great part of his time in his studio,
working from early morning until night, and wasting as
little time as possible on the luxuries and ceremonies of
existence ; but although he was in the most complete
sense of the expression a studio-painter, and did not
belong at all to that school of rustic artists who live in
the presence of Nature, still he felt now and then a long-
ing for that fair world which is not visible in Queen Anne
Street, and so he took sudden flights, according to his
caprice, to some beautiful part of Great Britain or the
Continent. His way of travelling was independent and
peculiar. The increase of his means did not develop in
his character any latent desire for luxury. He could be
happy still, as he had been in his youth, with nature and
his art, living easily in poor inns when better accommo-
dation was not to be had, and leading the cheerful life of
a pedestrian blest with excellent health and very eco-
nomical habits. He was not unsociable when he met
with kindness on his travels ; but he well knew that more
work, and better, could be done in solitude than in
society. In 18 12 he went to Devonshire, a county which
he particularly admired, and it was on that occasion that
he met with Mr. Cyrus Redding, whom we have already
quoted. During this tour the artist gave ample evidence
of his independence of comfort, studying effects quite
calmly in an open boat on a stormy sea when others were
sea-sick, sketching when he landed in a violent wind,
supping contentedly on bread and cheese and porter,
sleeping in a place where there were no beds by the
simple expedient of laying his head on the table, and

I

Excursion to Devonshire y 1812. 137

fresh the next morning for new wanderings. The uncom-
mon strength and soundness of his nervous system was
proved by an unusually severe test. He was on Mount
Edgecumbe with some friends, and engaged in conversa-
tion, when a battery of twenty-four pounders opened fire
quite suddenly only four or five feet above the heads of
the party. Although quite unprepared for the concussion.
Turner was not startled by it in the least. It was one of
the great advantages of his singularly perfect organi-
zation, that whilst possessing all that extreme delicacy of
perception which is necessary to an artist, and possessing
it in a most exceptional degree, he had none of that
nervousness with which men of genius are so often
tormented and distressed. For all artistic purposes his
nerves were as delicate as those of Shelley, whilst for the
uses of common life they were as strong as the nerves of
a common sailor. Few, indeed, are the common sailors
who would not betray at least some symptom of surprise
if a battery of cannon thundered unexpectedly over their
heads.

Another peculiarity of Turner's was brought out during
this tour, and on the very day when the incident of the
cannon occurred. Notwithstanding his habitual solitude
and parsimony, he could be hospitable when it seemed
to him that the occasion required it, though it must be
admitted that such occasions seem to have been of very
rare occurrence. However, it did so happen in the year
181 2 that Turner actually invited a party of ladies and
gentlemen to a picnic in Devonshire, and that he pro-
vided everything, including wines, on a liberal scale,

138 The Life of y. M, W, Turner.

whilst he acted his part of host in quite a becoming
manner. Leslie, in his Autobiography, tells a story of a
dinner at Blackwall, where there was a large party and
a heavy bill. Chantrey sat at the head of the table and
received the bill, so he handed it to Turner for a joke, as
Turner had a reputation for parsimony; but in this
instance the great landscape-painter did not act up to
his reputation, for he insisted upon paying the whole,
and did so en grand seigneur. It is evident, however,
that these rare anecdotes of Turnerian hospitality would
not be so well remembered if they were not in contradic-
tion to the ordinary habits of the man.

The pictures exhibited in 18 12 included the Hannibal
and his Army crossing the Alps, which was remarkable,
amongst other reasons, for a quotation from a manuscript
poem entitled " Fallacies of Hope," the first sample of
this poem which Turner offered to the appreciation of a
discerning public. He had discovered quite a new and
ingenious means of achieving poetical renown, namely,
through the medium of the Royal Academy Catalogue.
In this way the specimens of Turnerian verse, which
were printed from time to time, attained quite a consider-
able circulation ; but the effect upon the literary world
can hardly have been such as the poet must have desired.
The attempt was itself a remarkably apt illustration of
that very common fallacy of hope which leads people,
without the feeblest literary faculty for either prose or
verse, to imagine that they can construct a poem.

The composition entitled " The Fallacies of Hope,"
may have existed at one time, or it may have been only a

Turners Poetry, 139

project ; nothing remains of it now except the few
extracts in the Exhibition Catalogues. The painter left
however, a good many fragments of other poems amongst
his sketches and papers, for the habit of making poetical
attempts was very persistent with him, notwithstanding
the wretchedness of the results. It might be possible,
indeed, if it were worth the expense, to make up a small
volume of Turnerian poetry which might bear as a motto
on its title-page one line of the poet himself —

" Lead me along with thy armonuous verse."

Such a volume would contain some of the most remark-
able specimens of grammar, spelling, and construction,
that could be offered as exercises for correction to little
boys at school.

" Hill after hill incessant cheats the eye
While each the intermediate space deny.^*

** To form the snares for lobsters ^rmed in mail.
But man more cunning over t\i\s prevail,^*

" From his small cot he stretched upon the main.
And by one daring effort hope to gain
What hope appeared ever to deny."

" The floating sea-weed to the eye appears,
And, by the waving medium, seamen steers**

** Here roars the busy mell called breaks,
Through various processes overtakes
The flax in dressing, each with one accord
Draw out the thread and meet the just reward."

** Have we not soil sufficient rich ? **

" Or sulphurous cloud at open east* foretels
Where atmospheric contraries doth dwell."

The above extracts exhibit the Turnerian knowledge of

140 The Life of J. M. W, Turner.

grammar. The spelling is generally better than might be
expected in such "armonuous verse." The versification,
on the other hand, is perfectly amazing. There is never
any certainty when two or three verses have been got
through in the proper number of syllables that the one
which follows will not be a slough of confusion.

" Fain would I offer all that my power holds
And hope to be successful in my weak attempt
To please. The difficulty great, but, when nought
Attempted, nothing can be wrought"

The first line here would pass if we pronounced power
as a word of one syllable. The second line has two
syllables more than its share ; omit '* my weak " and it
becomes readable, though prosaic. The third is peculiarly
awkward to read, and has one syllable de trop. The
fourth has only eight syllables instead of ten. Still, if we
do not count syllables, the mere roughness of the passage
is permissible enough ; indeed, it reminds me strongly of
some of Robert Browning's reflections.

All these defects of versification, though they may
make a poet unreadable, are not in themselves enough to
prove that he might not ultimately have done good work.
A far greater evidence of incapacity is the poverty of the
versifier in ideas, and the laborious dulness of his think-
ing. There is not one ray of that poetic intelligence
which makes things new and fresh for us. In a word, the
written poetry of Turner is not only destitute of literary
craft and skill, but it is bHe. It is below the ordinary
level of taste and intelligence amongst boys in English
grammar-schools. Imagine a versifier stupid enough to
write such rubbish as the following !

Turner s Poetry, 141

** To guard the coast their duty, not delude
By promises as little heeded as they 're good:
When strictly followed, give a conscious peace
And ask at the eve of life a just release.
But idleness, the bane of every country's weal,
Eqttally enervates the soldier and his steel"

« « « «

" Where the soft flowing gives renown,

'Mid steep worn hills and to the low sunk town,
Whose trade has flourished from early time
Remarkable for thread called Bridport twine."

The bathos of this poetry is such that the most affect-
ing subjects move us only to laughter when Turner deals
with them. Here is a description of a death by lightning,
which finishes so that one cannot think of the subject
seriously :

" Dark indeed
Died the smitten wretch, not doomed to bleed.
The current dread charred with the veins
Sulphurous and livid, still the form retains.
Most dreadful visitation 1 Instantaneous death
Of supreme goodness allows the fleeting breath
To fall, apparently without a thought of pain."

It is difficult to make out the grammar of the last two
lines and a half. Is it the instantaneous death of supreme
goodness which allows the breath to fall, or is it instanta-
neous death which allows the breath of supreme goodness
to fall, and who is supposed to have been at all likely to
think about pain ? Is it death, or goodness, or the breath }

Another peculiarity of Turner's poetry is a sort of
thunderous grandeur, often coming with the most comic
effect immediately after a very matter-of-fact passage :

" If then my ardent love of thee is said with truth.
Agents the demolition of thy house, forsooth,
Broke through the trammels, doubts, and you, my rhyme,
Roll into being since that fatal time."

142 The Life of y, M, W. Turner,

The meaning of the lines about house property is not
very clear, though one has a vague notion that something
unpleasant has occurred, but the last line seems very sub-
lime. The idea of the poet's rhyme rolling into being
after the fatal time of that affair about the house-agents
has in it an undeniable grandeur. There is a very strik-
ing passage about the ancient Romans in connection with
a road of theirs near Salisbury. The second line of it
might be most appropriately quoted with reference to the
Coliseum, the Arena at Nimes, and many other relics of
antiquity :

" Then the famed street appears a line,

Roman the work and Roman the design.

Opposing hill or streams alike to them ;

They seemed to scorn impediments ; for when

A little circuit would have given the same,

But conquering difficulties cherished Roman fame."

Turner never did anything worse than his poetry, ex-
cept his prose. Yes, after fairly weighing the faults of
both, we are driven to the conclusion that the necessity
for some degree of attention to metre was an advantage to
him in literary composition. Amongst the verses you
will find a line occasionally which may fairly stand com-
parison with the more turgid ones in Thomson's *' Sea-
sons," or another line of a pedestrian kind, which is as
good as the prosaic ones in Wordsworth's " Excursion."

-r

The straining vessel to its cordage yields,
So Britain floats the produce of her fields."

2. ** Another guards the passage to the main."

3. " As morning fogs that rising tempt the breeze."

4. ** And barren left through all the varied year."

Turner* s Poetry, 143

5. " The parching heat of summer's solstice o'er."

6. " A gloomy lurid interval succeeds."

7. " Of on the blasted heath or far-stretch'd down."

J. < " While the fierce archer of the downward year
* \ Stains Italy's blanched barrier with storms."

These are not bad lines, taken separately, and if Turner
had always kept up to their level he might have been n
respectable mediocrity in versification, like many other
artists who have tried their hands at poetry for amuse-
ment. The reader has probably, by this time, had enough
of Turner*s verse, and may find it a relief to see a speci-
men of Turnerian prose — not merely a letter to a friend
accepting an invitation to dinner, but a philosophical
piece about molality and art. Let him study it as long
as Ire may think it worth his attention, and he will find it
utterly impossible, I will not say to understand the whole,
but to understand one single sentence in the paragraph :

" They wrong virtue, enduring difficulties or worth in
the bare imitation of nature, all offers received in the
same brain ; but where these attempts arise above medi-
ocrity it would surely not be a little sacrifice to those who
perceive the value of the success to foster it by terms as
cordial that cannot look so easy a way as those spoken of
convey doubts to the expecting individual. For as the
line that unites the beautiful to grace, and these offerings
forming a new style, not that soul can guess as ethics.
Teach them of both, but many serve as the body and the
soul, and but presume more as the beacon to the headland
which would be a warning to the danger of mannerism
and the disgustful."

144 The Life of J. M, W, Turner,

Of Turner's correspondence very little is in existence,
and little can have been worth preserving. He could
write a simple note, especially to an intimate friend ; and
though his spelling was always uncertain, he sometimes,
by happy accident, could get through a few sentences
without a blunder. Like most uneducated men, he dis-
liked letter-writing, and he carried this dislike to a degree
involving positive discourtesy to others. He received a
good many dinner invitations, and though not what was
called a diner-out, was on the other hand frequently dis-
posed to profit by that rule of society which allows a
bachelor to receive hospitality without returning it ; so
that although nobody could be sure he would accept an
invitation, nobody, on the other hand, could be certain '
that he would invariably prefer his bachelor's fireside.
His dislike to the trouble of letter-writing made him treat
invitations in a very peculiar manner, and in a manner
which only very kind and indulgent friends would have
put up with. Sometimes he answered them, but he did
not by any means consider it an obligation to do so ; and
he would go to dine, or determine at the last minute not
to go, just as we go to the theatre, without writing any-
thing to the provider of the. entertainment. Whenever he
went beyond a simple note his letters were ill-spelled and
ungrammatical.

This criticism of Turner as a writer may here come to
an end. Enough has beeii said to prove the truth of an
assertion made at the beginning of this biography, to the
effect that he did not know the English language. His
unsuccessful attempt to learn Latin with Mr. Trimmer is

Turner's Prose, 145

a proof that he did not know Latin. His outrageous
spelling of French names is equally good evidence that he
never mastered French, and there is not a trace of proof
that he ever knew any other tongue. The plain truth is,
that he never possessed any language whatever. Hun-
dreds of foreigners can write better English than he could.
There are English letters on my table from Dutchmen at
Amsterdam, at the Hague, at Leyden, which are far
superior in grammar, spelling, and construction, to any-
thing that Turner could compose after living in London
for fifty years, with access to the best society in England.
Is there any use, it may be asked, in dwelling upon
these weak points of a great genius } Would it not be at
once more agreeable and more becoming to veil them
gently in forgetfulness.? Perhaps it might, but surely the
agreeable and the becoming are not the only purposes of
biography. When we study the life of a man who is
famous for what he has done, it is good for us to have no
illusions about the range of his powers or the degree of
his cultivation. The quotations which have been made
will quite certainly prevent any reader from forming in
his own mind the image of an ideal Turner and worship-
ping it. Beyond this benefit, which is not to be dispised,
we have the other advantage of knowing how completely,
in Turner, the man was sacrificed to the artist, as gar-
deners sacrifice certain fruit-trees to their fruit. The
pruning was not done intentionally in his case. One
dominant faculty absorbed all the sap of his intelligence,
and left him as inferior to the mass of educated men in

common things as he was superior to them in the percep-
10

146 The Life of % M. W. Turner.

tion of natural beauty. It may be a consolation to
mediocrities to reflect that if they cannot paint they
would infinitely outshine Turner at a grammar-school
examination ; but, without desiring to soothe the jealous-
ies of artists who spell better than they paint, we may
surely affirm that it remains, and must ever remain, an
open question whether, if you compare Turner with what
we call an educated gentleman, the sum of superiorities
will not be on the side of the gentleman. The case of
Turner is just one of those cases which confirm an old
prejudice against artists, as craftsmen who have developed
a special skill at the cost of more necessary knowledge
and accomplishments. It throws, too, a very strong light
upon the question whether artistic genius is a special
faculty or an exceptionally high condition of all the fac-
ulties. I think that the case of Turner proves artistic
genius to be a special faculty only. If all his mental
powers had been of a high order he would have written
his native language easily and correctly as a matter of
course, and even composed good poetry, since he had
feeling and imagination. On the other hand, his career
proves conclusively that literary talent and the sort of
education which fosters it are not, as so many believe,
absolutely essential to the attainment of distinction and
success in life. The lesson which such men leave to us,
when we understand both their excellence and their
deficiency, is not to humiliate ourselves, not to lose our
self-respect in their presence, and on the other hand not
to attach too much importance to our own superiorities
over them, since they have done so easily without our

Turner^ s Prose, # 147

accomplishments. It is probable that every reader of
these pages is greatly superior to Turner in what is held
to be the education of a gentleman — why, then, should
he humble himself before Turner a,s a sort of demigod ?
At the same time it is impossible to forget that this
unpolished and illiterate being had the rarest gifts of
nature of a special kind, and cultivated them, by incessant
industry, to the uttermost; all which is a clear proof
that the knowledge of language is not necessary to the
exercise of high faculties.

CHAPTER VIII.

Turner at Twickenham. — English coast scenery. — Crossing the Brook. —
Distances in elder art. — The fascination of the remote. — A second possi-
bility of marriage, 1815. — Dido building Carthage. — Other classical
pictures. — Turner and Scott. — Oil pictures of 1818. — Pictures of 1819. —
Rome from the Vatican. — Whitaker's History of Richmondshire.

/^NE of Turner's important changes of residence took
^■^^ place probably in 181 3, when he bought a house at
Twickenham, called Sandycombe Lodge, which he kept
till 1826. In speaking of this acquisition as involving a
change of residence, we mean simply that the artist
changed his country-house, for he had no intention of
abandoning his house in town. Turner was too keen a
man of business not to know that a town-house was a
convenience which in his case paid for itself, and he does
not seem at any time to have had that intense passion for
the country which makes some lovers of nature feel
miserable in a street He could, in fact, live anywhere ;
yet he had his preferences, and Twickenham appears to
have been one of them. When Turner purchased the
little place there was a small house upon it, but he was
not satisfied with this, and erected another in its place,
which he designed himself. He was also the architect of
his own doorway in Queen Anne Street. The house at

Turner at Twickenham, 149

Twickenham was called Solus Lodge at first, but perhaps
the proprietor thought this only too characteristic, so he
^changed it to Sandycombe. Mr. Trimmer knew. Turner
at this place, and believed that his residence there had an
influence upon some of his important compositions which
bear no reference, in their titles, to any English scene.
Twickenham is so near to Richmond that Turner received
the influence of Richmond scenery to the full, and Mr.
Trimmer seems to be right in the supposition that the
character of the artist's classical compositions was affected
by this neighborhood.

In 18 1 3 he painted the Thames at Kingston Bank, and
he made a picture of Richmond Hill, which was exhibited
in 1 8 19. He had a boat at Richmond, and Mr. Trimmer
said that he painted from nature on large canvases in this
boat, a practice exceedingly rare with him. His other
means of locpmotion for sketching excursions in the
country consisted of a horse and gig — an old bay horse,
neither tall nor swift, which served him as a model for
both the horses and the well-known picture, A Frosty
Morning, Turner seems to have driven about a good
deal in a leisurely fashion, stopping to sketch when he
found anything of interest. He seems to have liked the
pony whilst it lived, and to have appreciated its good
qualities, for he used to say that it could climb the hills
like a cat and never get tired, and after the animal's death
he gave it honorable burial within the precincts of his
garden. It had rather a sad end, by strangulation in the
night, having entangled itself in its fastenings, which
were chains, used in consequence of its untowardness.

ISO The Life of y, M, W, Turner,

Man and horse do not seem to have got on well together,
notwithstanding much affection on the human side;
which, as usual in such cases, met with no return. Tu|p
ner does not seem to have suffered from unrequited
affection, but he grieved when the object of it was gone.

All the pleasant scenery about Twickenham and King-
ston was far less built upon in Turner*s time than it is now,
and the railways had not yet deprived it of the character
of rustic peacefulness ; but whatever may have been its
charms in those days, they were quite insufficient to bind
down Turner for long. He was at the same time one of
the most constant of artists, and one of the most various
in his affections. A place that he had loved once he
loved always, but he never seems to have had any disposi-
tion to anchor himself and his art together in some one
pleasant haven never to leave it more. The Thames was
very well to boat upon, a^d to be sketched occasionally,
and the gig with the old pony might be useful rather
frequently in the fiiie weather ; but Turner could no more
be kept within the limits of such citizenish excursions
than Byron could be bound down to the immediate neigh-
borhood of Newstead Abbey. A list of his works during
the time he had Sandycombe Lodge shows how little the
Twickenham influences had done to settle him. Even
when his purchase was quite recent he seems to have
been generally thinking of something else. In 1814 he
exhibited Dido and ^neas leaving Carthage on the morn-
ing of the Ctiase, and Apuleia in search of Apuleiiis, His
only traces of Thames influence in these pictures are,
that in the first there are stone pines, which Turner may

Crossing the Brook, 151

have been led to like by the Scotch firs at Richmond,
and in the second there is a river with a bridge of seven
arches.

Turner was led about this time to work heartily and
hopefully at a kind of scenery which he always very
much liked — the English coast scenery. A very able
engraver, Mr. W. B. Cooke, undertook a laborious and
costly publication of plates from the southern coast, and
Turner did forty of the drawings, beginning with St.
Michael's Mount, Poble, Land's End, Weymouth, Lul-
worth Cove, and Corfe Castle. By the time the forty
drawings were finished in 1826 the artist had explored
the coast, at least at intervals, from Ramsgate to Land's
End. He did these drawings at first for most moderate
prices, not more than £,J \0s. each ; they attracted his
attention closely to coast scenery, and one consequence
of this direction of his studies was a picture of Bligh
Sand, near SheemesSy with Fis king-boats trawling — cloudy
sky. This picture was exhibited in 18 15, a very prolific
exhibition year for Turner, including two of his best-
known and most important pictures — Crossing the Brooke
and Dido building Carthage, both of which were be-
queathed by him to the nation.

Crossing the Brook is a piece of Devonshire scenery,
with a vast expanse of distance, and one or two tall pine-
trees in the foreground. It is interesting as evidence how
very little material from nature Turner needed for a work
of art, that the most important tree in this picture was
painted from a slight pencil sketch, not of large dimen-
sions, which was reproduced in the Portfolio for Novem-

152 The Life of y. M. W, Timicr.

ber, 1877. The manner in which Turner dealt with this
sketch is a good instance of his great power, for the tree
is very strongly painted ; not that it looks at all like a
study from nature, but rather like a bold attempt to
appropriate the merits of Claude. The execution is
indeed founded quite frankly upon Claude, especially in
the artifice by which the farther masses of foliage are
separated from the trunk and branches, and made to
appear more distant than they would have appeared in a
literal interpretation. Although it is perfectly true that
the effect of binocular vision can never be given on a flat
surface, except by the help of the stereoscope, it is also
true that there are artifices in painting which do to some
extent compensate for this deficiency, and the chief of
these artifices is the exaggeration of distance between
near objects, such as the farther and nearer branches of a
foreground tree, none of which can really be very remote
from the spectator. The artist, however, may wish to
make the spectator feel as if the air circulated amongst
the leaves, and as if he could put his arms round the
trunk if he went up to it ; and to do this he may have
recourse to certain tricks of the craft, which are allowable
when the reason for them is understood.

Crossing the Brook is one of the most important
pictures in the career of Turner, and it may be well to
remember the date of it. This picture marks the transi-
tion from his earlier style to that of his maturity. If the
reader will take the trouble the next time he visits the
National Gallery to compare it with Turner's work in
1803, or in 1806, dates at which he was already quite a

Crossing the Brook, 153

powerful and successful painter, he will see great changes
both in purpose and in style. Calais Pier was painted in
1803. It is magnificently composed, and full of all kinds
of energy, manifesting the giant strength of Turner's
mind and hand, but it is heavily painted and opaque.
So great, indeed, are the impediments to a full enjoyment
of the work created by these effects, that the merits of it
may be more distinctly perceived in Mr. Seymour
Haden's etching than in the presence of the picture
itself, and most distinctly of all in the earlier states of the
etching, when it is least encumbered by labor. This is
so for a very simple reason. Mr. Haden has a well-
grounded preference for open work in etching, and likes
to suggest light and shade rather than to realize it. This
etcher's taste of his led him to eliminate three-quarters
of the blackness there is in the picture, and all its
opacity, preserving only its glorious composition and
energetic movement. This unfaithfulness to the letter
that killeth secured the far higher fidelity to the spirit
which giveth life, but by disengaging the spirit it has
proved how much the genius of Turner, in 1803, was
encumbered by traditions inherited from his predecessors.
Even in 1806 there is no visible progress towards any
self-disengagement or emancipation. The Goddess of
Discord in the Gardens of the Hesperides is almost as
heavily painted as the Calais Pier^ and as much wanting
in the charms of light and color. In all such works as
this nothing is really luminous, and color appears only in
certain portions of the work instead of pervading it ; as,
for example, in the fish of the Calais Pier, or a piece of

154 The Life of y. M, W. Turner,

drapery in the later picture. There are hundreds of old
pictures, often by famous men, which are popularly
supposed to be works in color, but which in reality are
nothing but simple monochromes in gray or brown, with
a little color here and there to prevent them from being
avowed monochromes. By means of this artifice a
painter who does not feel that he has very much coloring
power may gradually work his way from monochrome to
real color, and conceal the steps of the transition from
the observation of all who are not acquainted with the
technical craft of painting. Now, the picture of Crossing
the Brook is scarcely, even yet, a work in full color ; for it
does not go beyond the color-range of the Dutch land-
scape-painters, with their grays and quiet greens for the
earth, and pale blues for the sky ; but there is an essential
difference between this picture and the two before criti-
cised, which is, that such color as there is in it pervades
the whole work. The light, too, is equally pervading.
The canvas is lighted from side to side and from top to
bottom. There are critics who consider this to be one of
Turner's greatest works, but here they are in error. The
full splendor and power of his art were yet to come, and
this sober but admirable picture only cleared his way,
as a successful experiment, to an art which had no
precedent. One very essential thing in this experiment
remains to be mentioned. This picture proved to Turner
that he could paint a distance better than any master
who had preceded him, and this, in the literal as well as
the figurative sense, " opened for him new horizons."
It would be premature, in this place, to occupy the

Distances in Elder Art, 155

reader's time with a dissertation on the distances which
Turner painter afterwards, but there cannot be a doubt
that the success of the experiment in Crossing the Brooke
of which he must have been fully conscious, was the vic-
tory which nerved him for contests with difficulty in this
department of landscape-painting such as no artist had
ever attempted before him. The landscape-painters of
other times had indeed frequently tried to get truth of
tone in distances, and had succeeded ; but their distances
are always comparatively simple in treatment, even when
the material in them is most diversified ; and they appear
generally to have labored between these two alternatives,
either that they had to simplify nature, thus losing its
infinity, or else sacrifice truth of aspect to truth of fact,
informing you truly enough what villages, houses, and
fields existed ten miles from the spectator, but failing
altogether to convey the appearances with which the
effects of atmosphere and light must have clothed those
various objects.

As an example of simplification I may mention one of
the best -known Claudes in the Louvre, with the title
Ulysses restores Chryseis to her Father ; and as an example
of minuteness without truth of effect, the very remarkable
landscape seen through the arcade in the Van Eyck of the
Louvre, La Vierge au Donateur, There is great truth of
tone in the Claude, and I do not dispute the possibility
of the effect, but everything shows that Claude considered
simplification an essential quality in the painting of dis-
tances. Not only are the hills flat patches of almost
equally tinted paint, but even their outlines have a cor-

156 The Life of y. M, W. Turner,

responding want of variety. Follow the line of the
highest mountain, and you will scarcely find more thought
or design in it than would be necessary to make the out-
line of a thimble or a sugar-loaf; whereas in nature,
however much the mass of a mountain may be obscured
by mist, and its modelling flattened, the outline, if trace-
able at all, is sure to retain its character. The distinction
in tone between a hill on a misty morning and the sky
behind it may be so faint that nothing but the most deli-
cate art can render it ; yet at the same time the line, if
line it can be called, will be full of subtle incidents and
changes, difficult indeed to follow, but not to be omitted
without falsity any more than you could copy poetry
whilst omitting to write out the words. When we turn to
the Van Eyck, and look through the three arches of his
arcade, we see a complete epitome of all that he considered
noble or interesting in landscape ; a broad river with
islands and a fortified bridge, a city with churches on one
of its banks and the faubourgs of the city on the other ;
in the distance there is a chain of mountains, the whole
being very probably a reminiscence of the scenery about
Lyons, or, at least, an invention suggested by that scenery.
Now in this early landscape we have plenty of detail, for
nothing is slurred over, either from negligence or in
obedience to any theory of simplification ; the artist has
done his utmost in every way, and carried as well as he
could even to the snowy mountains, the shining crown of
his earthly landscape, the same exquisite and loving finish
that he bestowed on the pearls of the heavenly diadem
which the angels bear to the Virgin. But the details of

Distaftces in Elder Art, 157

the landscape, though numerous, are too clearly defined.
The artist does not lose and find them as the eye loses
and finds details in nature ; he sees a certain quantity of
them, which he sets before us in order like pretty objects
in a shop -window: in fact, his arcade does strikingly
resemble such a window, with models set behind it and
carefully colored. These, then, are the two main divisions
of old landscape distances, the simplified and the minutely
detailed : but besides these there was some clever dis-
tance-painting occasionally, in Dutch art, which deserves
separate mention. Of Ruysdael's mountain distances
little is to be said that is favorable. They are not so well
colored as those of Claude (being really nothing but dis-
guised monochrome), and they are not superior to his
work in knowledge ; but there are flat distances in Dutch
art, including some by Ruysdael, which show almost a
modern sense of extent of country and play of wandering
light.* Such, then, had been the artistic experiments
made by others in this direction before Turner came, and
his own early efforts showed little improvement upon his
predecessors. It has been remarked before, that whereas
with most men the maturing of the faculties leads from
imagination to reason, from poetry to prose, this was not
the case with Turner, who became more and more poeti-
cal as he advanced in life; and this might in some
measure account for his ever-increasing tendency to desert
the foreground, where objects are too near to have much

* There is a fine example of this in the National Gallery now ( Wynn-
Ellis collection), the large Ruysdael, with a church and an expanse of open
country beyond.

I $8 The Life of J. M. W, Ttmier.

enchantment about them, in order to dream, and make
others dream, of distances which seem hardly of this
world.

The fascination of the remote, for minds which have any
imaginative faculty at all, is so universal and so unfailing,
that it must be due to some cause in the depths of man's
spiritual nature. It may be due to a religious instinct,
^ich makes him forget the meanness and triviality of
common life in this world to look as far beyond it as he
can to a mysterious infinity of glory, where earth itself
seems to pass easily into heaven. It may be due to a
progressive instinct, which draws men to the future and
the unknown, leading them ever to fix their gaze on the
far horizon, like mariners looking for some visionary
Atlantis across the spaces of the wearisome sea. Be this
as it may, the enchantments of landscape distances are
certainly due far more to the imagination of the beholder
than to any tangible or explicable beauty of their own.
It is probable that minds of a common order, which see
with the bodily eyes only, and have no imaginative per-
ception, receive no impressions of the kind which affected
Turner ; but the conditions of modern life have developed
a great sensitiveness to such impressions in minds of a
higher class. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to
name any important imaginative work in literature, pro-
duced during the present century, in which there is not
some expression proving the author's sensitiveness to the
poetry of . distance. I will not weary the reader with
quotations, but here is just one from Shelley, which owes
most of its effect upon the mind to his perception of two

The Fascination of the Remote, 159

elements of sublimity — distance and height ; in which
perception, as in many other, mental gifts, he strikingly
resembled Turner. The stanza is in the " Revolt of
Islam : "

" Upon that rock a mighty column stood,

Whose capital seemed sculptured in the sky.

Which to the wanderers o'er the solitude
Of distant seas, from ages long gone by.
Had made a landmark ; o'er its height to fly

Scarcely the cloud, the vulture or the blast,

Has power — and, when the shades of evening lie

On earth and ocean, its carved summits cast

The sunken daylight far through the aerial waste."

This was written in 1817, just about the time when
Turner was passing from his early manner to the sublim-
ities of his maturity; and there is ample evidence, of
which more may be said later, that Turner and Shelley
were as much in sympathy as two men can be when one
is cultivated almost exclusively by means of literature
and the other by graphic art. But however great may
have been the similarity of their minds, whatever sus-
ceptibility to certain impressions they may have had in
common, the two arts which they pursued differed widely
in technical conditions. It may, or it may not, be as
easy to write verses as to paint when both are to be
supremely well done, but it is certain that poetic descrip-
tion requires less realization than pictorial, so that less
accurate observation will suffice for it, and an inferior
gift of memory. In the whole range of the difficulties
which painters endeavor to overcome there is not one
which tries their powers more severely than the represen-
tation of distant effects in landscape. They can never

i6o The Life of y. M. W, Turner.

be studied from nature, for they come and go so rapidly
as to permit nothing but the most inadequate memor-
anda ; they can never be really imitated, being usually in
such a high key of light and color as to go beyond the
resources of the palette, arid the finest of them are so
mysterious that the most piercing eyesight is baffled,
perceiving at the utmost but little of all that they con-
tain. The interpretation of such effects, however able
and intelligent it may be, always requires a great deal of
goodwill on the part of the spectator, who must be con-
tent if he can read the painter's work as a sort of short-
hand, without finding in it any of the amusement which
may be derived from the imitation of what is really
imitable. For all these reasons it would be a sufficiently
rash enterprise for an artist to stake his prospects on the
painting of distances ; but there is another objection even
yet more serious. Such painting requires not only much
goodwill in the spectator, but also great knowledge,
freedom from vulgar prejudices, and some degree of faith
in the painter himself. When people see a noble effect
in nature there is one stock observation which they
almost invariably make : they always say, or nearly
always, — "Now, if we were to see that effect in a pic-
ture we should not believe it to be possible." One would
think that, after such a reflection on their own tendency
to unbelief in art and to astonishment in the presence of
nature, people would be forewarned against their own
injustice ; but it is not so. They will make that observa-
tion every time they see a fine sunset or a remarkable
cloud in the natural world, and remain as unjust as ever

A Second Possibility of Marriage. i6i

to the art which represents phenomena of the same
order. Turner had to contend against this disposition to
deny the truth of everything that is not commonplace.
He was too proud and courageous to allow it to arrest its
development, and would not submit to dictation from any
one as to the subjects of his larger pictures. He knew
the value of money, and would work very hard to earn it,
but no money consideration whatever was permitted to
interfere between him and the higher manifestations of his
art. His oil-pictures, by their very unsaleableness, gave
him much artistic liberty, which he made use of to the
utmost. If Royalty and the aristocracy had bought
them the artist would have got rich earlier, but would
have been less master of himself.

It is said, that in the year 1815 Turner might possibly
have been married to a young lady who was a relation of
his friend Mr. Trimmer, but, unluckily, he felt too timid
to propose, though he wished the lady " would but waive
bashfulness, or, in other words, make an offer instead of
expecting one." She did not break through the decorum
of her sex, and Turner never mustered the degree of
assurance which is so common a characteristic of mascu-
line humanity, so the end of it all was that he simply
remained a bachelor. This is an odd instance of those
unrealities, so nearly realized, the marriages that might
have been. Perhaps the lady had a happy escape, for
with all our admiration for Turner we may frankly confess
that he had become by this time too much accustomed to
his own way of life to adapt it readily to feminine exigen-
cies. He was not the sort of person to associate well
II

i62 The Life of y, M, W. Turner,

with anybody. His temper, in this respect, is well illus-
trated by a little incident which occurred to him on a
sketching excursion with a friend. They had but one
palette between them, so it was settled that each should
use half of it, an arrangement which answered pretty well
for some time ; but at length Turner perceived, or fancied
that he perceived, something like an encroachment on his
half, when he growled out angrily, " Keep to your own
messes ! " Imagine such a temper in the partnership of
marriage !

The most important picture exhibited in 1815 was Dido
Building Carthage, or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire.
This is one of Turner's best-known works, and is likely
ever to remain so, because it has been hung near a
Claude, according to the directions in the will, and so
everybody tries to make up his mind as to whether it
deserves such good company or not. This comparison it
will be more convenient to postpone until our biographi-
cal narrative has come to an end. The Dido owes its
origin to various causes, — to the painter's early archi-
tectural studies, to his assimilation of Claude's artistic
ideas, and to an interest in Carthage, of a very peculiar
kind. Leslie hit the mark in a single sentence when he
said that the picture made him feel as if he were in a
theatre decorated with the most splendid of drop scenes.
Yes, that is true ; and the only intelligible utility of such
works is that they are a portable kind of decoration. It
is conceivable that a rich man, having a magnificent
room, might like to have such a canvas as this to give a
pompous air to one of the walls of it, but it is difficult to

Dido Building Carthage, 163

imagine how it could give him any deeper or more
delicate aesthetic satisfaction. As for intellectual satis-
factions, the thing is an intellectual misconception and
mistake. It belongs to the old erroneous school of false
history-painting, in which nothing is worth criticising but
the technical workmanship in composition and execution.
The representation of history so remote that we have
scarcely any data for anything can never be very interest-
ing. Turner's Carthaginiau pictures were painted before
the days of universal archaeology, and he knew nothing
even of the little that is ascertainable. It might have
been worth his while to go as far as Tunis and imbibe at
least the spirit of the Carthaginian scenery, as he imbibed
that of the Roman Campagna. They who have been
where Carthage once stood tell us that the landscapes are
fine in character, with the lake of Tunis, the distant azure
mountains, the scattered woods of olive and other trees,
the vast plain, not unrefreshed with verdure. Then you
have the fine North African atmosphere, with its perfect
light, through which the color shows itself, pure and
intense, like sapphires and emeralds through clear glass.
Turner did not concern himself, in this instance, with
local beauties or characteristics, but invented a place
which might have belonged to some English nobleman in
the Georgian era with a fancy for stone and mortar and a
taste for classic temples in his grounds. We feel, of
course, the skill of the practised composer ; the material
is so arranged as to keep well together, but the lighting
is impossible. Mr. Leslie pointed out that the shadows
from the projecting pieces of scaffolding to the left fell in

i64 The Life of % M. W. Turner.

z, direction only possible with a sun much higher than that
in the picture. He was right in this criticism, and might
have extended it not only to other details, but to large
masses, especially the mass of architecture to the right,
above the arch of what looks like a sewer in the comer.
All that is lighted as if the sun were fifty degrees (of the
circle of the horizon) farther to the left. With the lumi-
nary where he is, the piece of architecture in question
would have reposed in a broad, unbroken penumbra.
The sky is heavy and rather unpleasantly opaque, but
that may be due to chemical alteration in the pigments,
for Turner used them without regard to permanence.

The first price Turner asked for this picture was ^500,
but he did not find a purchaser, and feeling rather indig-
nant at this raised the price enormously afterwards by a
process of successive doubling. He could do so without
imprudence, as, in fact, he had determined to keep the
work until his death. This determination was put to a
very severe test some years later, when several gentlemen
who admired Turner (Sir Robert Peel, Lord Hardinge,
and others) offered ;£sooo for this and another picture of
Carthage, in order to present them to the National Gal-
lery. Turner was pleased by this offer, but adhered to
his original intention.

In 1 8 16 he was still in the classic vein, and exhibited
two pictures of the Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, in
the Island of ^Egina, which he had never visited. The
material was supplied by a sketch taken by Mr. Gaily
Knight.

The next year Turner returns to Carthage, and exhibits

Turner and Scott, 165

a large picture, entitled The Decline of the Carthaginian
Empire, The work was accompanied by both prose and
verse in the Academy Catalogue:

"Rome, being determined on the overthrow of her
hated rival, demanded from her such terms as might
either force her into war or ruin her by compliance. The
enervated Carthaginians, in their anxiety for peace, con-
sented to give up even their arms and their children.

** At Hope's delusive smile
The chieftain's safety and the mother's pride,
Were to the insidious conqueror's grasp resign'd ;
While o'er the western wave th* ensanguined sun
In gathering haze, a stormy signal spread.
And set portentous."

The second Carthage was a much worse picture than
the first, going still more into the accumulation of bad
architecture, whilst the coloring is quite inferior, except
in the sky. It has always seemed wonderful to me that
Sir Robert Peel and his friends, with their excellent
intentions towards the artist on the one hand, and the
nation on the other, should have selected these particular
pictures to immortalize him and benefit ourselves ; and I
heartily endorse Mr. Ruskin's estimate, " It is, in fact,
little more than an accumulation of Academy students'
outlines, colored brown."

Turner was brought back to less ambitious, but really
much better material, by a tour in Scotland in the year
18 18. He was associated with Sir Walter Scott in the
production of the Provincial Antiquities, and visited the
localities iji his company. The great novelist had a keen

i66 The Life of J, ^. W, Turner.

enjoyment of the things in nature which were the raw
material of Turner's art; he delighted in natural land-
scape; and no artist ever had a stronger passion for
romantic old buildings, especially when the interest of
them was enhanced by associations of history and
legend : yet, notwithstanding what was up to this point
a community of tastes, Sir Walter could not really enter
into the mind of Turner, because, whilst delighting in
nature, he had no understanding of graphic art. The
enjoyment of what he saw : the heather on the moor,
the gray walls of an ancient peel, the silvery birch and
glittering rivulet in the dell, — this enjoyment, of which
the refreshment is so often communicated to us in his
works, was entirely disconnected in his mind from the
kind of knowledge, far more painfully acquired, which is
the foundation of the art of painting, and he lived in a
state of happy ignorance about the subject. He was
never tormented, like Goethe, with the longings of a
painter or draughtsman, and had never gone through
those practical studies which open the eyes of an amateur,
even when they do not enable him to overcome the diffi-
culties of art. He would have preferred, as an artist, Mr.
Thomson of Duddingstone, the clergyman and landscape-
painter, but "supposed he must acquiesce" in the
selection of Turner, "because he was all the fashion."
This did not prevent Scott from using a few compli-
mentary phrases about Turner's genius, phrases which
are customary in speaking of eminent artists and do not
indicate any reality of admiration. "The Author of
Waverley" must have had little conception of the

Oil Pictures of iSiS. 167

splendid position which Turner was destined to occupy
in the artistic history of England ; and one cannot help
thinking with a touch of sadness of these two men,
temporarily associated together and nearer to each other
as artists than Sir Walter could be aware. Lockhart, on
the other hand, seems really to have appreciated Turner,
even at that comparatively early date, which was before
the production of his most delightful works ; for Lock-
hart said, even then, " The world has only one Turner,"
and spoke of him as "a great genius," and called his
drawing " magnificent delineation."

The Provincial Antiquities of Scotland^ include three
Edinburgh subjects and two of Dunbar, with views of
Roslin, Stirling, Crichton, Borthwick, and Tantallon
Castles, as well as Linlithgow Palace. The series
finished with the Bass Rock. The drawings were well
engraved by the best landscape -engravers of the day,
who afterwards did so much to disseminate the works of
Turner.

This year, 18 18, was not a brilliant period for Turner's
work in oil. The artist was like a ship in stays : the
impulse from one tack had exhausted itself, the impulse
of the next was only just beginning. There are no
pictures at this period with the massive but cumbersome
strength of the Calais Pier and the Shipwreck ; there
are none with the grace of a later time. Besides the
difficulty attendant upon a change in style amounting to
revolution, there was another which lay deep in the
inmost nature of the man. Turner never acquired that
delicate critical faculty which limits an artist to what he

i68 The Life of J. M. W. Turner.

can do thoroughly well ; his mind was too luxuriant in
its fruitfulness to bear with the restrictions which the
true classical temper imposes upon itself. He would
never have endured to confine his efforts to some narrow
specialty of his art, even with the certainty of a sustained
and unquestionable excellence. He could not, like
Meissonier, have deliberately resolved to paint only one
sex, and adhered to his resolve. Like all men of im-
mense range, he was constantly incurring new risks in
coping with new difficulties. So many things interested
him that he was always tempted to express his interest
about them in his art — having no other sufficient outlet,
since literary expression, eagerly desired, was denied to
him ; and so his work as a painter, instead of being
pushed steadily in a safe technical direction, became the
vehicle of feelings and ideas which had little to do with
landscape-painting, For example : the whole series of
his Carthage pictures was suggested, not by a landscape-
painter's healthy desire to paint the scenery about Tunis,
but by patriotic interests and anxieties in the great
struggle between England and Napbleon. He did not,
perhaps, accept the Gallic theory that England was the
modern Carthage, destined to destruction by the enemy
which called itself the modern Rome, but he had a fore-
boding that it might be so — that the greatness of his
country might bring down upon it the fate of those whom
relentless Envy pursues to a final, irremediable overthow ;
and this idea impelled him to paint repeatedly a vanished
city, of which he knew neither the architecture nor the
sight. A peculiar misfortune attended most of his

Pictures of iSig, 169

patriotic pictures. The Trafalgar was an impossible
medley of masts and sails, which no seaman can endure
and no artist would ever imitate ; but he painted it from
a sense of patriotic obligation — one of the false motives
that sometimes intrude upon the domain of art. The
same patriotism produced a Waterloo in the exhibition of
1 8 18, a picture which only served to exhibit the artist's
figure-painting to painfully manifest disadvantage. Turner
has often been unfairly criticised for the figures in his
genuine landscapes, where, with few exceptions, they serve
their purpose admirably. It would be difficult to name
another landscape-painter who has used the figurine, I
r will not say better, but so well. His groups form an
integral part of the scene, and keep their places quite
harmoniously with the trees and buildings, so that we do
not desire to have them elsewhere, and it is only an
imperfectly -educated criticism which dwells upon their
faulty drawing. But in such a picture as the Waterloo
that faulty drawing becomes insupportable. The reason
for Turner's failure in this instance is obvious. The
human interest is too overpowering here, the landscape
interest insufficient. It is a figure -painter's subject, a
subject for Detaille or de Neuville, not for him who,
after wandering in the tranquil paradise of Claude, was
destined to open for us a fairer Eden of his own.

In the exhibition of 18 19 Turner reverts to more
artistic motives. ' One of his pictures bore the title
(which looks, indeed, as if it had been written by a sailor)
Entrance of the Meuse — Orange Merchant on the Bar,
going to pieces ; Brill Church bearing S.E, by S,, Mar en-

I/O The Life of y, M. W. Turner,

sluys E, by S.; but the real suggestion of the picture
would only occur to a colorist. The artist had a fancy
for painting oranges bobbing about in sea -water, hence
the picture. The other work, Richmond Hill on the
Prince Regents Birthday, had its origin in a rare and
sudden sympathy with popular jollification, when happy
Londoners, rejoicing that so good a prince should have
been born to rule over them, danced with their Amandas,
or walked the smiling mead, according to the Thomsonian
verse. The following quotation accompanied the picture
in the Royal Academy Catalogue :

" Which way, Amanda, shall we bend our course ?
The choice perplexes. Wherefore should we choose ?
All is the same with thee ; say, shall we wind
Along the streams ? or walk the smiling mead ?
Or court the forest glades ? or wander wild
Among the waving harvests ? or ascend,
While radiant summer opens all its pride,
Thy Hill, delightful Shene ? "

How remote this poesy appears to us to-day ! Not
less remote these smiling meads and forest glades of
Turner, missing alike the enchantment of imagination
and the refreshment of reality. Leslie judged rightly
when he said of Turner, "Neither has he expressed the
deep, fresh verdure of his own country ; and hence he is
the most unfaithful (among great painters) to the essential
and most beautiful characteristics of English midland
scenery. Constable said to me, *Did you ever see a
picture by Turner and not wish to possess it .^ * I forget
the reply, but I might have named his view from the
terrace at Richmond; from which, with the exception of

Rome from the Vatican, 171

the general composition, every beauty of that noble land-
scape is left out. I remember, in a summer of unusual
drought, when the trees became embrowned and the grass
was burnt up, that the color of the woods and meadows
seen from Richmond approached to that of Turner's
picture ; but I never remember to have met with trees of
such forms as those which he has placed in its foreground
in any part of the world/'

In 1 8 19 Turner went to Rome, one result of which
excursion was the extraordinary picture, exhibited in the
following year, and still to be seen at the National
Gallery, of Rome from the Vatican, Raphael and the
Fornarina are in the immediate foreground, and some
pictures are lying about on the floor and against the
balustrade. The artistes intention may here have borne
some reference to his own honors. He figured in the Cata-
logue for 1820 as " Professor of Perspective and Member
of the Roman Academy of St. Luke," so we have both
perspective and Rome in the picture. It is a frank
violation of common rules which every artist ought to
know and observe, especially the capital rule that per-
spective which appears exaggerated is to be avoided, and
that interiors are to be represented as if the wall behind
the artist were removed, so that he could place himself at
a convenient distance, like a spectator at the theatre.
The objects in Turner's foreground come forward too
near to the footlights, the floor of the loggia slopes like
the floor of a ship's cabin in a storm, and it is impossible
to look at the picture without unpleasant sensations.
One cannot imagine a Sovereign Pontiff walking along

172 . The Life of y. M, W. Turner.

the floor of that corridor; it is only fit for slaters or
sailors. Equally wonderful is the arch through which we
get the view of Rome. It goes over our heads like the
Milky Way, and looks so prodigious in comparison with
its next neighbor that few would imagine the two to be
really of the same size. Turner's most enthusiastic
admirer confesses that this is "a challenge to every
known law of perspective to hold its own, if it could,
against the new views of the professor on that subject."
This may be the language of facetious criticism, but it
expresses a known fact. Turner really did reject the laws
of perspective, though it was his office to uphold them.

A very slight suggestion or indication was enough to
stimulate the imaginative faculty in Turner, and this may
sometimes have been rather a misfortune, as it made him
only too willing to work from memoranda supplied by
others. In our own day artists use photography, and
they use it much more than is generally supposed ; in
1820 they had not that resource, but there was the
camera-obscura. Hakewill's "Picturesque Tour in Italy"
was illustrated by Turner from camera-obscura sketches.
He got his own material in the north of England for Dr.
Whitaker's " History of Richmondshire." If the reader
will go back to the year 1799 (Portfolio, vol. vii., p. 10 1),
he will see the beginning of Turner's connection with Dr.
Whitaker and his works. After a long interval, the
painter and archaeologist were again associated together
in their labors. Each of the three districts — Whalley,
Craven, and Richmondshire — is an inexhaustible mine
for a landscape-painter; but when Turner was illustrat-

Whitaker's History of Rickmondshire, 173

ing the two first he was as yet very little of an artist in
the higher sense of the word : he was a painstaking and
tolerable accurate topographer, and little or nothing more.
In the interval between the Craven and the Richmond-
shire he became more of an artist and less of a topog-
grapher than any of his brethren. It is difficult, in the
history of the arts, to point to a more surprising trans-
formation. It is as if some painfully .dry chronicler of
common events had won the power and achieved the
liberty of a poet. Never was caterpillar so humble
changed into such a brilliant butterfly! The difference
between Turner's earliest and his later work for Dr.
Whitaker is, therefore, not to be attributed to any finer
character in the scenery, but to the revolution in the
mind of the artist. A painter of the second rank keeping
nearly on the same level, would have made far more of
Whalley and Craven, and less of Richmond shire.

Messrs. Longman gave Turner the landscape depart-
ment, and they employed Buckler for the architectural
subjects. I do not know the details of the business
matters connected with this publication, but it appears
that it cost ;^io,ooo; and I have been informed that by
far the greater part of this considerable sum went into
Turner's pocket. I think there must be some error here.
There are only twenty drawings in the Richmond Series,
which the artist began in 1820, a date at which the highest
prices he received for drawings had not exceeded ;^ioo.
The probability is, that the ;^io,ooo included the cost of
engraving ; and it does not seem impossible to bring out

174 7%^ Life of y, M, W, Turner,

the whole work, including the letterpress, for that sum.
However this may have been, the originals were afterward
sold ; and one of the principal purchasers was Mr. John
Marshall, of Leeds. These works were kept at Halsteads,
on Ullswater, by his son, Mr. William Marshall, who
used to tell anecdotes about them which have not been
preserved, unluckily for the interest of this narrative,
Wordsworth being one of the audience. The subjects
were not selected by Turner in an independent-artist
fashion, but were chosen for him by a little company of
gentlemen who made a tour for the purpose. The mem-
bers of this pleasant little society were Dr. William
Turner, " Old Tate," the celebrated Master of Richmond
Grammar School, and Mr. William Whitaker.

A very amusing anecdote has been told, with full
details, about Turner being mistaken for a Jew. It has
been said, that when he went to Yorkshire to illustrate
the " Richmondshire " he brought a letter of introduc-
tion from a publisher in London to one in Yorkshire,
telling him, in conclusion, to remember that Turner was
a great Jew, the consequence being that he was treated
as if he belonged to the Jewish religion. The incident
really occurred ; but the person who made the mistake
was a lady, Mrs. Whitaker (wife of the historian), who
was Turner's hostess at that time. She had heard that
the artist was a Jew, took it literally, as was very natu-
ural, and treated him as an Israelite indeed, possibly
with reference to church attendance and the consumption
of ham. One cannot help feeling for Mrs. Whitaker,

Whitaker's History of Richmondshire, 175

who must have needed all the tact of a lady to extricate
herself from such a position; but it is impossible to
regret her b^vue. It is one of the very finest and most
perfect b^vues committed in the first half of the nine-
teenth century, the only one quite equal to it being that
of the Empress Marie Louise, when she told a distin-
guished statesman that he was one of " les plus grandes
ganaches de F Empire,'^ believing that ganache meant a
Nestor, wise in council.

CHAPTER IX.

Transition to color. — ^Turner as a traveller. — His system of study.

npURNER was an exhibitor at the Academy for the
space of sixty years, with only four exceptions^ —
1805, 1821, 1824, and 1848. The first of these omissions
may be attributed to the necessity for earning money in
early life by other means than the painting of important
oil-pictures, and the last was due to declining health and
power; but that oi 1821 has been considered, perhaps
justly, to indicate a pause in his career as a painter when
a new conception of his art \^as taking possession of his
mind. He had given up topography long before, as we
have seen with reference to the Kilchurn, but the evolu-
tion from chiaroscurist to colorist was not accomplished
so soon. The most famous of the earlier pictures, those
solid, substantial pictures which are so strikingly unlike
the manner of his full maturity, were painted simply on
Dutch principles in gray and brown, with a patch of red
here and there, to make people believe that it was color.
In Crossing the Brook we have yellow grays and quiet
greens managed with the taste of a colorist who does not
yet venture to employ the full force of his palette. The
difference between Crossing the Brook and the Garden of

Turner as a Traveller 177

the Hesperides (which was exhibited at the British Institu-
tion in 1806) is, in principle, absolute; the later picture is
colorist's work in quiet hues, the earlier is* not colorist's
work at all. This great transition having been accom-
plished, a farther step had to be taken, of greater difficulty
than the first. To borrow a comparison from the war
between Russia and Turkey, I may say that he had passed
his Danube, but that in the mysterious distance the Bal-
kan mountains lay still to be traversed. Here, then, he
paused, exhibiting nothing in 182 1 ; in the following year
an unimportant picture called What you Will: in 1823, ^
great experiment in the new style; and in 1824 nothing
again. This may be an appropriate time for pausing in
the narrative of the Life to consider Turner's various
methods of studying from nature, of which we have said
little hitherto.

The reader may have felt some surprise at the cursory
way in which the painter's art travels have been passed
over, the reason for this being simply our ignorance of
any events which may have happened to him. No travel-
ler has left less in the way of written memoranda or
correspondence. His poverty in language amounting to
absolute destitution in foreign tongues, and the uncommu-
nicativeness of his character, made his intellect useless
for the study of human nature beyond the limits of his
own country. He was the exact opposite of such men as
Ticknor and Crabb Robinson, who always, in every
foreign city, fell into the very midst of the most cultivated
society, and heard all that was most interesting. Intellec-
tual tastes, and enlightened interest in foreign politics
12

178 The Life of J. M. W, Turner.

and literature, would have been quite incompatible with
the immense amount of professional labor that he went
through ; and as for thrilling adventures, we only remem-
ber that he once slipped on a very steep slope of rock, or
cUbriSy in the Isle of Skye, and saved himself by clinging
to one of the rare tufts of grass which are able to grow in
such places. Some artists have passed through stirring
scenes, and participated in them ; the recently published
autobiography of fitex, the sculptor (who did two of the
groups on the Arc de Triomphe) is as full of change and
interest as " Gil Bias " or " Don Quixote," with duels,
difficulties, disguises, glimpses of the highest society and
the lowest, sudden contrasts of splendor and poverty,
rapid changes of scene and circumstance, visions of
womanly beauty, of manly courage, and incidents of
pleasure and peril. The life of Goya was a wild romance ;
even the lives of Fortuny and of Regnault are as interest-
ing as the tragedies of Shakespeare. These artists were
mingled with the boiling tide of humanity, and had their
share of that stimulating commotion which is the intensi-
fication of existence. Turner knew too well the productive
value of solitude and peace to expose himself to useless
adventures, and he wandered about the Continent, so
lately desolated by the most terrible of modern conquerors,
in a spirit of perfect artistic tranquillity, conscious indeed
of the miseries of humanity, and partially saddened by
them, yet steadily minding his own business, which was
to observe how cities, and rivers, and distant mountains,
would combine into beautiful compositions. He had
visited Rome in 1813, he revisited it in 18 19, and saw the

Turner as a Traveller ' 179

Rhine in the same year, but we have no traveller's remi-
niscences to enliven our bare statement of the fact. The
best account of Turner's impressions as a traveller is to
be found in the vast collection of sketches bequeathed by
him to the National Gallery.

Turner's system of study from nature was from the first
adapted to the habits of a tourist who never remained
long in one place. Some of his studies are elaborate ; but
it is a' kind of elaboration due rather to a perfect command
of means, and great practice, than to much time spent
upon any one particular sketch. He was always a painter
from memoranda, and his sketches, whether slight or
elaborate, are really memoranda, and no more, except in a
very few instances, when he tried for imitative quality in
drawings of still life.

The collection of his sketches, now belonging to the
nation, is so considerable, that students may find in it
abundant examples of the various kinds of work which he
did in the presence of Nature. Some of thes'<6- sketches
have been copied for this biography with sufficient
accuracy as to form, and the reader may judge from them
of the degree of elaboration which Turner usually con-
sidered necessary.

The character of Turner's drawings varies considerably
at different periods, and during different tours. Some-
times the pencil is cut broad at the end, and the sketches
are very comprehensive in treatment ; at other times a
harder pencil is used, and it is sharpened to a fine point.
The papers vary also, being sometimes white, and at
other times gray, of various tints and textures. Then,

l8o The Life of y. M, W, Turner.

again, the relations vary between the line and the wash
in the degree of importance given to the one or to the
other.

But whatever may be the dijfferences between Turner's
ways of sketching, he was always equally decided; he
always evidently had determined beforehand exactly the
kind of work, and pretty nearly the quantity of it, that
he intended to put into his sketch. His ideas are per-
fectly clear, and his intentions settled. His interpretation
of Nature is always carried up to a predetermined point,
and no farther. Less consummate artists often find
themselves led beyond what they at first intended by the
interest of the subject and the pleasure of study, so that
they do not know when and where to stop. In Turner's
sketches, without any exception known to me, there is
absolute self-control. He never finishes to his utmost
unless it be to mark some particularly interesting portion
of a sketch, and then the finish is knowingly restricted to
that portion, and the rest is loosely indicated. He is not
at any time the slave of Nature or her echo, but always
her interpreter. In a certain sense his sketching is
intensely conventional. I do not mean that he always
followed ancient recognized methods, for he was an
audacious innovator ; I mean, that he worked as if draw-
ing, relatively to Nature, were understood to be a sum-
mary and artificial method of interpretation. This may
have been partly due to his love of rapidity. No one can
look over the national collection of Turner's sketches
without perceiving that he cultivated rapidity as an art,
that he consciously applied his mind to those artifices

His System of Study, i8i

which economise time, and which consequently enable an
artist to get much from Nature in one sitting. This habit
of economy in time is often much increased by practice
in noting down very transient effects, So that the methods
which an artist has invented for this purpose may be
used by him for things less transient when he is in a
hurry. Having sketched clouds quickly because they
retain their forms only for a few seconds, he may some-
times apply similar methods to trees and cities, when the
diligence only allows him ten minutes to make his sketch.
Many things conspire to teach Turner the art of using
time to the best advantage. The effects which he cared
to paint were generally transient, and his eager search
for new impressions prevented him, when on his travels,
from remaining more than an hour or two on one spot
So far as we can judge, the time given to his sketches
from Nature varied from three or four minutes to as many
hours. The most elaborate of them were retouched in
the house afterwards, but it is probable that he never, or
hardly ever, gave more than one sitting to the same
sketch in the presence of Nature, at least during his for-
eign tours. He had several distinct methods of sketch-
ing at command, to be used according to circumstances,
and was perfectly master of each of them ; so that when-
ever one seemed likely to take too much time, another
might be immediately adopted. Exceedingly unmethod-
ical in the ordinary habits of his life, he was methodical
in the extreme when working directly from Nature ; and
this is the more remarkable that he was not methodical
when painting in his studio at home. The difference

1 82 The Life of J, M, W, Turner.

may be explained by the difference of leisure. In the
studio he had time to try experiments ; but there was no
time for experimentalizing on the road, with the inn to be
reached at night.

The following classification will, it is believed, be found
to include all the different kinds of sketches and studies
which Turner usually executed from Nature.

I. Lead pencil on white paper. — Many of these pencil
studies are done with the point of a hard pencil, kept
well sharpened, especially for architectural material.
Shade is either not indicated at all, or very slightly, the
studies of this class being strictly notes of form. Even
form, however, is far from being complete ; there is only
just as much of it as the artist thought indispensable.
For example : in architecture, when details were repeated
in the building. Turner would often draw one of them
carefully, and indicate the rest ; and in landscape he
would indicate foliage in a- summary way by loops. In
these pencil studies Turner never came nearer to imita-
tion than the very simplest etching. Sometimes the
loops would be rejected for a comprehensive sketching of
masses, with a slight indication of shade, consisting
generally of a few diagonal lines kept well open. The
reader may judge of the more complete pencil studies by
referring to the sheep and the pine-tree on pages 174 and
175 of the Portfolio for 1876, and to the laifdscape on
page 189. He will see at once, that notwithstanding
Turner's great knowledge of light and shade, he was
very sparing of it in sketches of this class, yet he often
made use of them afterwards for the most elaborate works

His System of Study, 183

in water-color or oil. There are instances in which shade
is just indicated with a slight rubbing. He seems to
have had recourse to pencil-sketching at all periods of his
life ; but rarely to have practised highly-finished pencil
drawing, as the old figure -painters used to do. The
reason for this is, that when he had time for elaboration
he took up color. Pencil, in his system, was simply used
for memoranda, unless in some early work.

2. Broad lead pencil on buff paper ^ white lights in body
colory yellow occasionally used, — An early series of
sketches in Scotland are done in this manner. These
sketches are remarkable for breadth carried to excess,
for they contain hardly any information about matters of
detail of the kind that a painter needs. The finality of
them is such that they look as if the artist had no other
object than their production, and was fully satisfied with
broadly -shaded, but really very empty, spaces. These
Scottish drawings are rather large, which makes us more
alive to their want of detail.

3. Black and white chalk on gray paper. — Turner seems
to have been rather fond of black and white chalk early
in the century, but he afterwards preferred body-color for
lights, except in correcting proofs of engravings. He
used chalks magnificently, but with the utmost careless-
ness as to preservation. "These drawings," says Mr.
Ruskin, in speaking of a fine series of them, " were on
leaves of a folio book, which, for the most part, is dashed
over with such things on both sides of its thin, gray
leaves ; the peculiar ingenuity of the arrangement being
that each leaf has half of one sketch on its front and half

^

184 - The Life of J, M, W. Turner.

of another on its back, so that, mounting one whole
sketch must generally hide the halves of two. The
further advantage of the plan is that the white chalk
touches, on which everything depends, rub partly off
every time the leaves are turned ; besides that a quantity
of the said chalk, shattered by Turner's energetic thrusts
with it, is accumulated in a kind of Alpine debris in the
joints, shaking out, and lodging in unexpected knots of
chalk indigestion whenever the volume is shut ; and, to
make the whole thing perfect, the paper is so thin and
old that it will hardly bear even the most loving handling,
much less the rack and wear of turning backwards and
forwards on a mount, if attached by one edge."

There are some noble studies of boats of this class,
executed with great simplicity and directness of method,
but with consummate knowledge. Turner does not seem
to have troubled himself much about fixing, which lowers
the whites. Neither did he care to finish his chalk
drawings very far.

4. Black chalk on gray paper, with white lights in body,
color, — An example of this is one of his studies in Savoy,
that of VareppCy executed in 1802. It is sketched first
in lead pencil, slightly, on dark-gray paper, almost brown,
then drawn boldly in black chalk, and finally touched
with brush-white.

5. Pen sketches on gray paper, with white lights in
chalk, — Some of the sketches in France in the middle
time of the artist's career were done in this manner.
The ink is black, and the handling very swift and light.
Neither this combination nor the preceding one is, how-

I

\

His System of Study. 185

ever, technically harmonious. Chalk and pen -work do
not go well together, neither do black chalk and brush-
white. A better combination is the following :

6. Pen sketches on gray paper^ with white lights in
body -color. — Many of Turner's best and most rapid
sketches are done in this manner, which is valuable for
its permanence and precision. Nothing can be clearer
than a pen line in good black ink, and the point of the
brush can lay the body^color in the smallest touches and
sparkles. The paper which Turner preferred for this sort
of sketching was of a blue gray, and he liked (without
using it exclusively) the kind which has a blue fibre in
gray pulp.

7. Pencil sketches on gray paper, with white lights in
body-color. — The pencil used is generally hard and
pointed, and the same method is followed as in the pencil
sketches on white paper. Some of these studies on gray
paper are very elaborate, noting down abundant details
of cities, etc., with numerous touches in white to explain
them more clearly ; but they do not attempt any complete
expression of light and shade. There is a very fine

#

general view of Rome in the national collection of this
class.

8. White paper with a flat wash of gray. On this a
drawing in black chalk colored afterwards in water-color,
with lights obtained either by scraping or by body -color. —
At first sight the student is likely to imagine that these
studies are done on paper that was gray when manu-
factured ; but the work of the penknife shows that the
paper was really white and tinted by Turner himself.

1 86 The Life of J, M, W. Turner.

This combination of methods is excellent for its economy
of time. The forms are got rapidly in chalk, and an
artist so skilful in water-color as Turner was would add
the washes in an hour. The sketches of this class are
large, and very bold in treatment ; and there is nothing
in the national collection which proves more decidedly
the colossal strength of Turner's mind and hand when he
was excited by the sublimity of Nature, and utterly
heedless of the public. The flat wash differs in tint in the
different drawings. Sometimes it is dark, and so warm
as to be almost brown ; at others, it is a yellowish-gray,
the tint being chosen so as to do the most it can towards
advancing the drawing. The work of the penknife and
the brush for lights is also far from being uniform. For
example : there is a noble sketch of the Old Devil's Bridge,
St. Gothard, which is especially remarkable for the work
of the penknife in the foaming torrent. The St. Gothard,
with the bit of yellow sky at the top of the drawing, and
rising clouds amongst the pines in the chasm, is also a
most noble specimen of the same kind of work, and a
great example of sublimity in coloring. I use the word
coloring and not color, intentionally here, because these
sketches are really colored drawings. For breadth of
handling in the application of the washes on the drawing
I may mention the Mer de Glace Chamouniy and Mer de
Glace, Aiguille CharmoZy especially the latter. In these
two sketches the high lights are in body-color. In the
Source of the Arveiron the lights are obtained in that way,
and with the knife also. .

9. Water-color on tinted papers, — Turner was very fond

His System of Study, 187

of tinted papers for water-color sketching, and used them
of various kinds, a copl blue-gray predominating. The
following brief descriptions of a few examples will show
how he dealt with them :

Bonneville, Savoy. Firmly drawn in lead pencil first,
the drawing left very visible, especially in the foreground.
Washed in water-color and heightened with body-color
lights.

p.ome, the Alban Mount. Dark gray paper, black
pencil ; abundant washes in water-color with a full brush.

Studies at Marley and Rouen. Dark gray -brown
paper ; pencil sketch washed with half-color tints, rapidly
dashed on with a full brush ; lights in body-color.

Rome. Pearly-gray paper ; drawing with the point of
a hard pencil; water -color employed delicately and
partially, especially in the distances. Retouches in
opaque color.

Rome., St. Peter's. Pearly-gray paper, the first draw-
ing in hard pencil ; the second with the brush point, in-
troducing much golden color under the arches.

Honfleur. Blue-gray paper; all organic lines and
markings in indelible brown ink, afterwards washed over
in water-color.*

Effects of. Sky and Sea. Some studies of sky and sea
are done in bold touches and washes with a full brush,
there being no preparatory markings with the pencil.

A series of late Sketches of Venice. There is an
astonishing Venetian Series in the national collection

* Turner often used penwork under water-color, as he did etching under
mezzotint.

1 88 The Life of J, M. W. Turner.

much more Tumerian than natural ; but extremely inter-
esting on account of the plain evidence they give about
the principles of his later manner in water-color, more
visible in sketches than in more highly-finished drawings.
The paper is a mauve-gray, the pencil work pale, so as to
become invisible under the wash ; and the wash itself is
very broad, and in very pure colors. On this comes a
second drawing with the point of the brush, the vermilion
lines characteristic of Turner's late manner being added
in this way. Besides these, there are skilful touches in
thick color, or with a brush that is nearly dry. In all
these Venice subjects the coloring is as briljiant as the
hues of sunset, and the sunset is like a vision in the
western sky, a city of crimson, gold, violet, and vermilion,
floating over a sea of emerald. The real power of these
sketches is in the skies, which are generally possible.
The rest is not possible.

lo. Sketches in water-color on white paper, — This may
be separated into two subdivisions. In one of them the
work in pencil is intentionally hard, decided, and visible
to the end ; in the other it is faint and purposely over-
powered by the water-color. For instance, in a study of
Vesuvius from Naples, firmly drawn throughout in hard
pencil, the water-color work is carried very far in the
mountain, and in some buildings of the foreground, but
the rest is left frankly in pencil. On the other hand,
there are two superb studies of Tivoli, in which the pencil
has been used as little as possible, so that it becomes
invisible under the broad energetic washes. These
Tivoli subjects are remarkably fine examples of Turner's

His System of Study, 189

skill in pure transparent water-color, the lights of which
are all reserved in the white paper. He disliked the
employment of body-color in principle, though he used
it freely when the paper itself would not supply the light.
There is a grand energetic study of the Campagna, with
snowy mountains in the distance. The foreground is
yellow, with violent marks of the brush handle, and also
of the artist's thumb, all proving that he was in a state
of high excitement. Another of the Campagna, with a
foreground of red and dark green, is carried farther in
color than most studies of this class. A third of these
Campagna subjects may be mentioned for its extreme
delicacy of tone ; it shows the meanders of the Tiber and
a fortified bridge. The same bridge supplied subjects for
several rapid pencil sketches on white paper. If the
reader cares to see admirable examples of extreme
economy of labor and paint in water-color, he should
study Turner's fishes on white paper, his perch, tench,
and trout, drawn with the pencil and colored with a
wondrously small allowance of color, but most brilliantly.
Turner made some fine studies of birds on the same
principle, the markings of the plumage as elaborate as in
Bewick, but always very light and open.

The above classification of Turner's studies from
Nature will be found to include most of them, as he
became addicted to certain habits of work, and remained
faithful to them, at certain periods, long enough for the
production of studies in sets and series. My classifica-
tion does not, however, pretend to be exhaustive : I know
that there are studies by Turner which it does not com-

IQO The Life of J. M, W. Turner.

prehend : but it is comprehensive enough to meet the
reader's needs without wearying his patience. A few
words remain to be said about the relation of these
studies to Nature itself.

Turner differed from most landscape-painters in his
condition of mind in the presence of Nature. The ordi-
nary landscape-painter is truthful in his studies — truthful
at least, so far as the illusions of an artist will allow him ;
but he often permits himself some poetical reverie in the
studio. Turner may have tried also to be truthful as a
raw beginner ; but the work of his maturity in the pres-
ence of Nature is true to nothing but his own emotions.
There is a passage of Mr. Ruskin on this subject which I
will quote with the ungracious intention of expressing
dissent from it : " Turner's decision came chiefly of his
truthfulness ; it was because he meant always to be true,
that he was able always to be bold. And you will find
that you may gain his courage if you will maintain his
fidelity." About the decision of Turner there cannot be
two opinions, it is as evident as the decision of Napoleon,
and as wonderful ; but it did not come of truthfulness, it
was not due to any fidelity to what he saw : it was due,
on the contrary, to his audacious preference of his own
fancies to the facts of the external world. There can be
no doubt that Turner passionately enjoyed the beauty of
the world, and deeply felt the influence of its sublimity,
but he cared no more about the truth than Victor Hugo
cares. We have already seen what ** Turnerian Topogra-
phy " really was in our analysis of Kilchurn, and it is
unnecessary to say more about it here except that nobody

His System of Study, 191

can place the slightest trust in the topographic fidelity of
any sketch of Turner's. Now in studies of landscape,
true topography and accurate drawing are inseparable.
If the drawing is accurate, true topography will come of
itself, and the absence of topography in Turner's work is
associated with a reckless inaccuracy in design.

Passing now from drawing to color, let me explain what
Turner's coloring was and was not. It was not an imita-
tion of Nature except in certain studies, chiefly of still
life, done very conscientiously for discipline. It was
really a long series of experiments on the play of colors
themselves. Here is an anecdote in illustration of his
conception of coloring. He was staying once in a friend's
house at Knockholt, where there were three children.
The late Mr. Cristall, a friend of Mr. Samuel Palmer, was
also a guest at Kno(;Jcholt, at the same time, and he
witnessed the following incident, which he afterwards
narrated to Mr. Palmer. Turner had brought a drawing
with him of which the distance was already carefully
outlined, but there was no material for the nearer parts.
One morning, when about to proceed with this drawing,
he called in the children as collaborateurSy for the rest, in
the following manner. He rubbed three cakes of water-
color, red, blue, and yellow, in three separate saucers,
gave one to each child, and told the children to dabble in
the saucers and then play together with their colored
fingers on this paper. These directions were gleefully
obeyed, as the reader may well imagine. Turner watched
the work of the thirty little fingers with serious attention,
and after the dabbling had gone on for some time, sud-

192 The Life of y, M. W. Turner,

denly called out, " Stop ! " He then took the drawing
into his own hands, added imaginary landscape forms,
suggested by the accidental coloring, and the work was
finished. On another occasion, after dinner, he amused
himself in arranging some many-colored sugar-plums on a
dessert plate, and when disturbed in the operation by a
question, said to the questioner, " There ! you have made
me lose fifty guineas ! '* What relation had sugar-plums
to landscape-painting? Simply this, that a landscape
might have been afterwards invented in the same color-
arrangement. The sugar-plums would have been dis-
guised in landscape forms in Turner's arbitrary way.
Without wishing to prove too much by a couple of anec-
dotes,* I do think that every candid reader will agree with
me that we have here a mind seeking color combinations
for themselves^ without reference tp the truth of Nature.

Many of Turner's studies have convinced me that this
condition of mind, as a colorist, was habitual with him.
The drawings for the " Rivers of France " are glaringly
false in color, considered with reference to Nature, and the
later drawings of Venice are outrageous ; but if we look
upon them as simple experiments in the juxtaposition of
hues we shall understand them better. I am familiar
enough with French rivers, under all natural effects, but
I never yet saw one of their bridges dashed with the
Turnerian vermilion. The plain truth is, that when Tur-
ner thought that a streak of vermilion or a blot of cobalt
would help the brilliance of his drawing he set it there, as
a jeweller sets a red stone or a blue one.

* These anecdotes may be relied upon. They were kindly communicated
to me by Mr. Samuel Palmer.

His System of Study, 193

Another result of examining Turner's studies is that
we see both the extent of his knowledge and the limits of
it ; we see especially his independent power of discovery.
The fourth volume of De Saussure*s great original book,
"Voyages dans les Alpes," was published in 1796, with
many engravings. De Saussure was rich as well as
learned, and employed, no doubt, the best engraving
talent to be had at that time in Switzerland. The plates
are large — so large that many of them are twice folded
in a quarto volume ; and they are engraved with much
labor and c^re. They really do express the most perfect
mountain-knowledge which had been attained up to the
end of the eighteenth century. They really give evidence
of much deeper mountain lore than any which had been
attained by the old masters ; but compare them with the
incipient Alpine work of Turner, done in the first year of
the succeeding century, and what are they ? Nothing
but old maps, in which defective outlines surround spaces
filled with emptiness. Turner s drawings of the Alps,
even the early ones, are as much beyond those engravings
which the learned and admirable De Saussure approved
and published, as Greek figure -sculpture was beyond
Gothic. The evidence of Turner's knowledge is not less
abundant and convincing than the evidence of his wilful
inaccuracy. But although his studies prove that he knew
much, they do not prove that he knew everything. He
was not learned in sylvan lore. It is surprising that so
great a landscape-painter should have studied forest sce-
nery so little. He drew some trees elegantly, but clearly
preferred buildings as subjects of study ; and there is no
13

194 ^^^ I-if^ of y, M. W. Turner,

evidence that he had the sylvan sense, the delight in
forest scenery, which has animated the genuine sylvan
painters, such as Theodore Rousseau, for example. This
may have been due to his passion for great spaces ; he
may have felt confined and imprisoned in the woods. But
besides this, he took comparatively little interest in rustic
subjects. There are painters now living — Hanoteau is
one of them — whose knowledge of rustic material is
much closer, more intimate, more affectionate than Tur-
ner's. With an immense and unwearied industry. Turner
accumulated thousands and thousands of memoranda to
increase his knowledge of what interested him, especially
in the mountains, rivers, and cities of the Continent, and
the coasts of his native island. Amidst all this wealth of
gathered treasure his imagination reigned and revelled
with a poet's freedom. With a knowledge of landscape
vaster than any mortal ever possessed before him, his
whole existence was a succession of dreams. Even the
hardest realities of the external world itself, granite and
glacier, could not awaken him ; but he would sit down
before them and sketch another dream, there, in the very
presence of the reality itself. Notwithstanding all the
knowledge and all the observation which they prove, the
interest of Turner's twenty thousand sketches is neither
topographic nor scientific, but entirely psychological. It
is the soul of Turner that fascinates the student, and not
the material earth.

There are a few little details and anecdotes about Tur-
ner's practice as an artist which I have thought it better
not to scatter through the volume, as they illustrate each

His System of Study, 195

other when taken together. The instrument he most
commonly used in sketching was the lead-pencil. A
friend of his, travelling in the Jura, came to an inn where
Turner had entered his name in the visitors' book, and,
to make sure of the painter's identity, asked the inn-
keeper what sort of a man he was. " A rough, clumsy
man," was the answer; "and you may know him by this
— he has always a pencil in his hand!' When sketching
from nature in the Val d'Aosta with Mr. Munro, Turner
was vexed with himself for having used color instead of
the pencil, with which (as he observed) he would have got
much more in the time. Mr. Cyrus Redding, who saw
Turner at work, speaks of the roughness of his sketches,
which were in pencil, and remarks that many of his finest
pictures were painted from rough pencil memoranda.
There is, indeed, quite a special science or art of taking
memoranda, which Turner thoroughly understood. A
painter who is conversant with the materials of nature,
can paint from very slight memoranda, if only they are of
the right kind. Mr. Redding gives us another interesting
scrap of information about Turner's way of making a
sketch. " He sketched the bridge, but appeared, from
changing his position several times, as if he had tried
more than one sketch, or could not please himself as to
the best point." It is probable that the real explanation
of this would be that Turner collected into one and the
same sketch a good deal of material which lay scattered
around him in various directions, for he never troubled
himself about drawing a scene as it appears from a single
point of view. Mr. Redding speaks also of the confused

196 The Life of J. M. W, Turner.

nature of Turner's memoranda, taken on paper not bigger
than a sheet of letter-paper. The only instance of his
painting directly from nature in oil-color occurs in some
sketches on canvas done at Richmond in his boat. There
are about forty of these studies.

An interesting detail about his taste in scenery is that
he declared he had "never seen so many natural beauties
in so limited an extent of country as he saw in the vicin-
ity of Plymouth." He was especially pleased with Mount
Edgecumbe. Though rarely communicative about his
impressions in the presence of nature, Turner once talked
with a Mr. Rose, of Jersey, about scenes which he had
visited ; but Mr. Rose, unluckily, did not make a memo-
randum of his observations. Turner mentioned the Fall
of Foyers in Scotland, the Pyrenees, and the French
river Ranee, which he recommended as rich in pictur-
esque scenes.

CHAPTER X.

Rivalry with Wilson. — ^The Bay of Baiae. — The Rivers of England. — Pro-
vincial Antiquities. — ^England and Wales. — The Ports of England. — The
Cologne. — Works from sketches by others. — Separate plates. — Transac-
tions with Cooke. Pictures exhibited in 1827.

TN the year 1822 Turner had a scheme which may be
mentioned as an illustration of his character, both be-
cause it exhibits his love of important enterprises and
because it shows that tendency to put himself in direct
rivalry with deceased artists of reputation which, through
life, was one of the peculiarities of his ambition. He had
a conversation in the month of June with Messrs. Hurst
and Robinson, successors of the well-known Alderman
Boydell, in the course of which they encouraged him to
have an important plate engraved from one of his pictures,
by promising that if he undertook this at his own risk,
and sold copies of the engraving to no one but themselves
for the space of two years, they would take five hundred
impressions. In a letter, dated June 28th, 1822, Turner
enters into this plan, and proposes to combine it with a
scheme of his own, which was to issue four important
plates from his pictures, to place himself as a painter in
rivalry with Wilson, and- at the same time to place the
engraver whom he would employ in rivalry with Woollett.

198 The Life of J, M. W. Turner.

The letter is clearer and more business-like than many of
his compositions ; but there is one of his curious phrases
which, at first sight, does not seem very intelligible. He
says : " The pictures of ultimate sale I shall be content
with." What are "pictures of ultimate sale," and why is
Turner content with them } The answer, I imagine, must
be that he was to take his chance of selling the pictures
ultimately if he painted them for the present purpose of
being engraved. Turner mentions "four subjects to bear
up with " — namely, " Niobe, Ceyx, Cyledon, and Phae-
ton." These are all well-known works by Wilson. By
" Ceyx " Turner means the Cejyx and Alcyone^ and by
" Cyledon " he means the Celadon and Amelia, It is inter-
esting to note that he speaks of both Wilson and WooUett
as " powerful antagonists," and says : " If we fall, we fall
by contending with giant strength." This is clear evi-
dence that, when quite in his maturity Turner looked up
to Wilson instead of considering him an inferior, and that
his own project of contending against him was accom-
panied by certain misgivings. He proposed, as a first
picture, either his Hannibal or the Morning of the Chase ;
and his calculation was that, with the pictures still to be
painted, the whole project might be realized in five or six
years. He expressly excepted the Carthage from a possi-
ble list. The plan was never realized ; and it is said that
Messrs. Hurst and Robinson offended Turner by trying
to bargain with him for the two Carthage pictures at a
time when his own price was a thousand guineas each.

In that year, 1822, the prices received by Turner for
his water-colors were not very considerable. He got eight

The Bay of Baice. 199

guineas each for the Colne, Rochester^ and Norham ; and
;^85 for three drawings on the Rhine. But the impor-
tance of a work to the artist himself is not to be measured
by the price paid for it. That drawing of Norham Castle
is said to have been always regarded by the artist as the
turning-point of his success.

Nothing of importance was exhibited in 1822, but in
the following year a great picture appeared at the Acad-
emy, The Bay of Baice, The full title in the Academy
Catalogue was the Bay of Baice^ with Apollo and the Sybil.

" Waft me to sunny Baiae's shore."

Although connected with the name of a locality, this
picture really belongs almost as completely to the realms
of imagination as those pure inventions with fanciful titles
which amused or perplexed the critics. It is a poetical
scene, with a fine expanse of land and water, the land
scenery being more than usually elaborate and full of rich
invention. The gay delight in the beauty of "sunny
Baiae," which is expressed in the motto, is visible also in
the painting, which has been executed with evident enjoy-
ment. This is really a picture after Turner's own heart,
with plenty of light, plenty of space for the eye to wander
over, endless detail to amuse and occupy his inventive
faculty, and just a bit of mythology to take the subject
out of the common world. Besides, although the Bay of
Baiae is a real locality, it has been celebrated long ago in
the Horatian verse, and is therefore sacred to the classic
mvise. The Cumaean Sibyl, who is seated with Apollo
under the shade of the tall pine-trees, is famous in old

200 The Life of y, M, W. Tttmer.

poetry and in the art of the Italian Renaissance. Not-
withstanding his lack of scholarship, one of Turner's
strongest characteristics was a taste for associating his
work with places and personages of historical or legend-
ary interest, and there were certain stories of antiquity
which took root in his mind very strongly. That about
the Cumaean Sibyl, beloved by Apollo, was one of them.
It suited Turner by its sad poetical ending; for if the
Sibyl had yielded there would only have been an addition
to the liaisons of the gods, and she would have lived on
joyously in perpetual youth, but being obdurate she
slowly decayed and finally became only a voice. There is
no telling what analogies may have been suggested to
Turner's mind by the story of the Sibyl, but it is quite
possible that he may have followed out some analogies for
himself, in his own obscure way.

The picture was painted lightly and easily, with a
degree of refinement far surpassing the early work of the
master ; but it was not soundly painted as to the mate-
rials, for the delicate coloring has not stood well every-
where. In some parts it is cracked, in others the
relations of the most aerial tints have evidently somehow
gone wrong ; though what they were, as the painter laid
them, it is not now possible to determine.

In 1824 Turner exhibited no oil picture either at the
Royal Academy or the British Institution. He seems to
have been much occupied at this time of his life by
drawing for the engravers. His "Rivers of England"
was brought out in that year by W. B. Cooke. These
engravings were in mezzotint by Reynolds, Lupton,

England and Wales, 201

Bromley, Jay, Phillips, and Charles Turner. The title
given to this publication was far too comprehensive for
what it really included, as some of the most important
amongst English rivers are omitted. There is no illus-
tration of the Thames, the Mersey, or the Severn ; whilst
there are subjects on such little known streams as the
Eamont, the Coquet, the Colne, and the Okement. The
truth is, that the " Rivers of England ** can only be con-
sidered as a small portfolio of subjects which happen to
be mere streams, and several of them are so treated as
to be rather illustrations of buildings than of rivers.
The noble Brougham Castle would come grandly in a
collection to illustrate mediaeval castles, and the Kirkstall
Abbey might belong to a portfolio of ecclesiastical arch-
itecture. The sixteen subjects are treated with careful
attention to light and shade, of which some of them are
remarkably fine examples.

In 1825 Turner was still actively occupied with his
publications, or with illustrations to publications under-
taken by others. We have already mentioned his journey
to Scotland in 18 18, when he got materials for the
" Provincial Antiquities." This publication did not appear
until 1826, when it was published in two volumes, with
descriptive letterpress by Sir Walter Scott Mr. Thom-
son, of Duddingstone, drew some of the illustrations. A
much more important work employed Turner at this time,
and at intervals for twelve years afterwards — namely,
" The England and Wales," including towns, remarkable
buildings, and beautiful scenery. Altogether, the work
includes ninety-nine subjects which were published, and

202 The Life of y, M. W, Turner,

two of which the plates were never finished. More than
thirty towns are illustrated in the series, and more than
twenty castles, as well as many abbeys and priories, and
two cathedrals — Ely and Durham. There are several
marine subjects, and four lakes are included — namely,
Keswick, Llamberis, Ulleswater, and Windermere. Im-
portant, however, as the work unquestionably is, it can-
not be considered, in any complete sense, representative
of England and Wales. It was evidently not conceived
as a whole, but merely got together from materials which
Turner happened to possess in his portfolios. An artist
might illustrate England and Wales in a hundred plates,
but he could do it only by carefully selecting subjects
representative of whole classes — a hamlet, a village, a
town, a city, a cathedral, a country church, an old hall,
a castle, and so on, amongst the works of men ; and a
lake, a stream, a river, a mountain, etc., amongst the
works of nature. That would be the illustration of the
country by typical subjects ; but you find nothing of the
kind in this important work of Turner's. The subjects
seem to be chosen by pure accident. There is a plethora
of castles and abbeys, and only one mountain, drawn for
its own^sake — namely, Penmaen Mawr; whilst we have
not a single example of English forest scenery, nor even
of an English trout stream. A foreigner, glancing over
the engravings, might admire the talents of the artists,
but would get a most imperfect idea of England and
Wales. This is only one amongst several examples of
Turner's too comprehensive titles. They were generally
too comprehensive or ambitious, as we have seen already

England and Wales. 203

in " The Rivers of England," which is as if one were to
call half-a-dozen cockboats the British fleet. At a later
period Turner called a more important work " The Rivers
of France ; " but you may look through it from beginning
to end without finding a single subject either on the
Rhone or the Garonne.

The "England and Wales" series occupies an inter-
mediate position between Turner's early topographic
work, and that in which he drew in complete indepen-
dence of the natural scene. Too many of the subjects
were taken from definite buildings and places to permit
the artist a quite absolute liberty. He could not make
the cathedrals of Ely and Durham mere piles of imaginary
architecture, like that which he composed for his pictures
of ancient Carthage ; and it was necessary that Blenheim
House should be clearly recognizable by persons who
take an interest in historic habitations. It is impossible
to look over the index to the " England and Wales " with-
out seeing at a glance that, from the business point of
view, it is a continuation of the topographic labors of the
artist's youth, that the appeal to public interest is far
more dependent upon locality than upon landscape char-
acter. At the same time Turner put as much art into
his subjects as he possibly could, and elevated some prosy
English towns into the region of Turnerian poetry. He
was by no means overpaid for his labors, as he received
only twenty-five guineas for each of his drawings and
thirty proofs of the engraving. The drawings have since
risen in the market to eight or ten times their original
value. In 1824 Mr. Tomkinson had given Turner fifty

204 ^^^ Life of y, M, W. Turner,

guineas for two drawings in continuation of his " Southern
Coast," so that this price seems to have been his rule
about that period of his life.

In 1826 Turner issued the prospectus of his series,
**The Ports of England,*' a prospectus so unskilfully
worded that it must have been Turner's own work. It
begins as follows : " Under the patronage and dedicated,
with permission, to His Most Gracious Majesty George
the Fourth. Ports of England, from original drawings
by J. M. W. Turner, Esq., R.A. To be engraved in
highly-finished mezzotints by Thomas Lupton. Size of
the plates, 9 inches by 6J, and to be printed on small
folio. Price of the work : Prints, Zs. 6d,; proofs, 12s, 6d.;
proofs on India paper, 14J."

Anybody would conclude from this announcement that
the whole work was to be had for 8^. 6d.; but as the artist
further explains that it was to be issued in parts, and
that twelve parts were to form a volume, and says that
at the completion of each volume handsome letterpress
was to be published, which leads us to infer that there
were to be several volumes, the bewildered reader soon
begins to doubt the possibility of getting so limitless a
work for such a limited sum of money. Not a word is
said about the expected extent of the undertaking ; it
might have gone on, for anything the reader was told to
the contrary, until all the ports of England had been
illustrated in their minutest details. The space which
ought to have been occupied by a clear explanation of the
project, was taken up with appeals to the patriotic senti-
ments which might induce Englishmen to become sub-

The Ports of England. 205

scribers. Jhe style and language resemble those of a
civic speech -maker when he proposes a naval toast.
Notwithstanding this magniloquent call upon national
feeling in others, the artist's own enthusiasm for his
subject was not sufficient to sustain him through pro-
longed labors. The work never got beyond twelve plates,
bearing about the same relation to the ports of ^ England
that a former imperfect series had borne to her rivers.
The plates were re-published in 1856 by Mr. Gambart,
with letterpress by Mr. Ruskin, who observes that
Liverpool, Shields, Yarmouth, and Bristol are absent from
the series, whilst it includes some of the least important
of English watering-places. There is a slight difference
in title between Turner's prospectus and Mr. Ruskin's
publication. Turner had called his work the "Ports,"
Mr. Ruskin, or Mr. Gambart, decided to call it the
"Harbors" of England. The size of the plates is not
precisely what Turner at first intended them to be ; they
are generally from half an inch to an inch longer. He
got over the artistic difficulty of dealing with piers and
rows of houses, by giving great importance to turbulent
seas crowded with ships and boats in motion. The ships
were especially useful, because their sails could be made
to hide an uninteresting town, or break a monotonous
front of cliff. But this is only one of many artifices to
which Turner had recourse in this series in order to
overcome the natural untowardness of his subjects. I
do not know any connected set of his works in which he
made so much use of the weather. This may have been
partly in sympathy with sailors, who, whether in port or

2o6 The Life of y. M, W, Turner.

at sea, are always thinking about the wind; but it was
probably much more because he found it convenient to
veil what was uninteresting, and exhibit to better advan-
tage the more available portions of his subjects by
means of the resources which bad weather placed at his
disposal. Besides this, he had great spaces that wanted
furnishing, and he furnished them in the upper parts of
his drawings by means of rain-clouds, and in the lower
by means of waves and shipping. These plates consti-
tute an excellent set of examples in the art of furnishing ;
even the old Dutchmen, who were very clever in that
department, never went so far. Take, for instance, the
view of Deal. The plate contains about fifty-six square
inches of engraved surface; in this the view of Deal
measures five and a half inches long by half an inch high,
consequently it occupies two square inches and three
quarters of engraved surface. The foreground is com-
posed of two big waves with the trough of the sea
between them, and there is a group of fishing boats to
the left, which, were it not for the comfort of knowing
that Deal was within sight, might just as well be in the
midst of the German Ocean. And please observe that
this is not called a sea subject, but a port. Here is the
most serious objection to the treatment adopted, that it is
not in poetic harmony with the title. Instead of feeling
the comfort of sheltered havens, where ships may quietly
ride at anchor whilst the sea is raging outside, we are
kept tossing uncomfortably on tumultuous waves amidst
a jumble of pitching boats and flapping sails. So it is in
nine subjects out of twelve. In the remaining three (the

The ''Cologne:' 207

Plymouth, Falmouth, and Scarborough) we really feel in
port. The Scarborough, judiciously placed by Mr. Rus-
kin at the close of the series, is like peaceful music ; it
is even more restful than any music, for it does not move
and pass, but quietly is what it is, and stays with us.
Painting may even excel nature in the expression of
repose, for in nature there is no perfect rest, and not for
long will the evening light linger on the castled cliff, or
the **old gray church on the shore.**

Turner could paint repose admirably when he liked,
and his great picture in the exhibition of 1826 was a
magnificent example of it. I well remember the profound
impression which I received from that noble work on
seeing it for the first time in 1857, at the Manchester Art
Treasures Exhibition. The title was simply, Cologne —
the Arrival of a Packet-boat — Evenings but there were
such unity and serenity in the work, and such a glow of
light and color, that it seemed like a window opened upon
the land of the ideal, where the harmonies of things are
more perfect than they have ever been in the common
world. I remember reading, with a young man's indigna-
tion, a stupid criticism of this picture by Monsieur W.
Burger, in which he declared that everything in the
picture was uniformly colored like the yoke of an egg.
He would have admired it more, very likely, if he could
have seen it on the walls of the Royal Academy, when
Turner had temporarily hidden its glowing light and
color under a wash of lamp-black, in order that it might
not spoil the effect of two portraits by Lawrence,
between which it happened to be placed. " Poor Law-

208 The Life of J. M, W. Turner,

rence," he said, " was so unhappy. It 's only lamp-black.
It will all wash off after the Exhibition ! " Was there
ever a more exquisitely beautiful instance of self-sacrifice }
It is not as if Turner had been indifferent to fame, for he
was anxiously careful about everything that could affect
his reputation, and here we see him voluntarily exposing
himself to harsh criticism for having painted a foul, ill-
colored sky, when that very sky was one of the most
splendid pieces of harmonious coloring in the whole
range of landscape art. Unluckily for our estimate of
Turner's unselfishness, there are counter-anecdotes about
his eagerness to crush his neighbors by heightening the
intensity of his colors.

I need hardly observe that M. Burger's assertion about
the uniform coloring, like yolk of egg, is due, first, to
his national antagonism to English art, and, secondly, to
his personal incapacity to see variety in color. The
Cologne^ though harmonious, is not uniform in its hues.
There is not only a golden glow in it, there are exquisite
passages of rose and violet in the tender transitions of
its evening lights and shadows. The picture was well
described by an excellent writer in the Manchester
Guardian :

" It represents," he said, " the Rhine under the walls of
Cologne, with the * Treckschuyt ' arriving, and taking up
its berth for landing the passengers. The river is placid,
and scarce rippled by the slowly-moving * Treckschuyt,'
as she makes her way past the picturesque craft beside
her. On the right are the walls, with a tower and spire

The " Cologne'' 209

breaking their line, and running up to a postern, backed
by a taller tower. In the foreground some balks of

f ^ timber, and the spider -like arms of a couple of those
fishing -nets, which tourists by the Rhine and Moselle

* know so well, reflected in the wet sand, and casting their

evening shadows as well as their reflections. In the dis-
tance you catch a glimpse of the distant bridge of boats.
The sky is being rapt through that rosy change which
precedes the dying of twilight into dark. The sun is
not seen in the picture, but a cloud lies between it and
the spectator; and from behind this the broad-slanting
rays strike on town and tower, and shoot down to the
stream, flinging on its unruffled face and on the rounded
sides of the * Treckschuyt ' the shadows of intercepting
edifices'; while from the lighted water a glow strikes back
into the cool violet shadows cast by wall and steeple, and

fills them with reflected light.

)»

This picture was sold at Mr. Wadmore's sale, in 1854,
for two thousand guineas to Mr, John Naylor ; and Mr.
Ruskin afterwards sent a pang of« regret through the
whole art-world of England by announcing that it had
been utterly destroyed in a railway accident ; a calamity
which in reality happened to some other pictures, not by
Turner, but belonging to the same owner.

The incessant industry of the great painter still applied
itself abundantly to the work of book illustration. In
those days photography was not actively supplying artists
with material, which, however imperfect it may be, is, at
least, impartial, and not distorted by passing through
another mind. In those days a landscape painter must
14

2IO The Life of J, M, W, Turner,

either travel to the places he had to illustrate, or else do
what he could with material supplied by others, such
material being usually sketches rather than studies. It is
always unsatisfactory to work from a sketch made by
another person ; for a sketch is a selection, and we cannot
select by deputy. If the traveller who made it was an
artist, he altered nature to suit the needs of his own indi-
vidual talent ; and if he was an amateur, he may have
missed important points from imperfectly trained obser-
vation. In either case, the material is scarcely to be
relied upon. The sketches of travellers — of African
travellers, for instance — are constantly made up into
showy book illustrations by clever men who know how to
make the best of any material ; but in these c&ses the
work so done is usually anonymous, and the clever men
who do it have not to maintain a great and peculiar artis-
tic reputation. Turner was in a different position. He
could not simply mend, complete, amplify, a sketch in its
own way, he was compelled by his own fame to transform
it into something entirely different, into something that
the public might at once recognize as a Turner. He did
this by giving skies and water of his own invention, by
composing all movable things according to his own taste,
and by drawing the rest over again with Turnerian altera-
tions and exaggerations in the recognized Turnerian
mannerism. That we may not have to recur again to this
subject, I will mention, in' this place, the principal works
in which Turner made use of sketches taken by others.
They began with HakewilFs " Picturesque Tour of Italy,"
published by Murray in 1820, from Mr. Hakewill's camera-

Works from Sketches by Others, 21 1

obscura sketches. In 1825 Murray's octavo edition of
Byron, in eleven volumes, included several illustrations
by Turner, some of which were from sketches by Mr.
Allison ; and in 1833 appeared Finden's " Illustrations to
Byron," including works by Turner from sketches by
Reinagle, Allison, and Page. A complete edition of
Byron's works, with Moore's Biography, appeared in
seventeen volumes in 1834; and Turner contributed to it
the same number of illustrations, several of which were
of places that he had never seen — such as Athens, Par-
nassus, Scio, St. Sophia, the Plain of Troy, and Corinth
— the materials being supplied by Page, Barry, and
Little. But by far the greatest of Turner's undertakings
in working up other men's memoranda was the series of
his illustrations to the Bible. He never visited Palestine,
yet illustrated Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Mount
Lebanon, the Dead Sea, and many other places, his pro-
viders being Mr. Barry, Sir A. Edmonstone, Sir Robert
Kerr Porter, Messrs. R. Cockrell, C. J. Rich, J. G. Wil-
kinson, Gaily Knight, Major Felix, and the Rev. R.
Master. There is also a set of views in India — seven in
number — chiefly among the Himalaya mountains, from
drawings by Lieutenant White. I need hardly observe
that the mere variety of the hands which supplied Turner
with all these materials is in itself a scource of difficulty
and embarrassment. Artists of the present day are much
happier with photographs, whose peculiarities and imper-
fections are always the same, and may be thoroughly
understood and regularly allowed for.

To all these various publications, which were spreading

i

212 The Life of y, M. W. Turner,

the name of Turner more and more amongst the public,
may be added the plates, published separately and at
irregular intervals, from the beginning of the century till
the artist's death. Some of those were in mezzotint by
Lupton, Charles Turner, and others ; but the majority
were in that modern style of landscape engraving which
is familiar to every reader, and which, with all its faults,
unquestionably marks the highest point of perfection
attained hitherto in the complete interpretation of land-
scape art on metal. It is not pure burin-work, but a
mixed style, including a great deal of etching, much work
with the point, and not a little ruling ; but, taken as a whole,
in the hands of the marvellously skilful men who used
it — such men as Miller, Cooke, Goodall, Jeavons, Heath,
Higham, Allen, Willmore, and Wallis — it interprets land-
scape painting more completely than any other method.
Mezzotint can render the tones of light and shade with
unsurpassable accuracy, but it is never so lucid and lumin-
ous as engraving, and consequently its effects of atmos-
phere can never be so pure. Independent etching, as I
have frequently had occasion to observe elsewhere, may
suggest delicate distinctions of tone, but does not so
surely render them as engraving does, and is therefore
not so well adapted for the interpretation of skies. The
influence of Turner upon engraving might supply a sub-
ject for a separate essay. He educated a whole school of
engravers, and a very remarkable school it was ; he edu-
cated them first by showing them the most subtle and
delicate tonality in his pictures, and afterwards by a strict
supervision of their work as it proceeded. His best

Transactions with Cooke. 213

qualities as a teacher came from his union of extreme
delicacy with force ; his worst fault, his most evil influ-
ence, came from his reckless desire for brilliance, which
made him always ready to destroy the tranquillity of a plate
if he thought that it did not look effective enough. This
was the same spirit, acting in another direction, which
made him so determined to make his pictures brilliant, at
all costs, on the walls of the Academy ; but there he could
achieve it with the help of chrome, and cobalt, and ver-
milion. On a dull plate he had no resource but that of
glittering lights, which he scattered in profusion **like
stars on the sea.**

Turner's transactions with his engravers, and with the
publishers of his prints, were not always perfectly agree-
able. Amongst other evidences of this, we have a long
letter from Mr. W. B. Cooke, dated the first of January,
1827, ^J^d proving by its contents that the hopeful and
cheerful associations of New-year*s Day had not power to
overcome the engraver's sense of injury and wrong. The
facts appear to have been as follows : Turner agreed to
make the South Coast drawings for ;£7 ^Oi^. each, and for-
the first four numbers of the work that was what he
received. Afterwards an agreement was made, by which
Turner was to receive ;£i3 2s, 6d. for each drawing in a
future ** Coast." He seems to have understood that this
increase of price was to have a retroactive effect, that he
was to receive a balance on the drawings already done
and paid for — drawings which belonged to the first divi-
sion of the work called the " Southern Coast.'* This Mr.
W. B. Cooke did not understand to be their agreement at

214 ^^^ ^if^ of J, M..W. Turner.

all, and the result was a tempest, the great painter loudly
declaring that he would have his terms, and would oppose
the work by doing another ** Coast." Mr. Cooke admitted
that he had agreed to pay ten guineas for each drawing
after the fourth number, and affirmed that he had faith-
fully adhered to this agreement ; which must have been
true, as he had Turner's receipts to prove it. At the time
this quarrel broke out the work had been finished upwards
of six months, and the painter had had his money. It is
evident by a quotation from a previous letter that the cor-
respondents had not been on quite pleasant terms before.
" Do you imagine," wrote Turner, " I shall go to John
o'Groat's House for the same sum I rjeceive for the
Southern part } " Mr. Cooke complains at the end of his
letter that he regrets the time he has bestowed in endeav-
oring to convince Turner calmly, since he had met with
such hostile treatment in return.

The clear result of the correspondence is, that there
had been three distinct prices. The first agreement was
to give Turner £,j \os. each for the drawings of the
Southern Coast ; the second agreement was to pay him
ten guineas for each drawing after the fourth number;
the third agreement was to pay him twelve and a half
guineas each for drawings to belong to a future coast
series of the same kind from the northern scenery of
Great Britain, since John o' Groat's House is in a very
northerly situation. Turner's conduct in the matter is one
of the most singular instances of confusion in a matter of
business that can be imagined. Stated plainly, it amounts
to this : that, on the strength of the third agreement, he

Transactions with Cooke. 215

applied the terms of the second agreement to the first.
He quotes Mr. Cooke's promise to give twelve guineas
and a half for the future coast drawings as a reason why-
there should be a balance still due to him — a balance of
two guineas — on the earliest drawings of all. There is
no reason to suspect Turner of dishonesty ; it is a case of
mental confusion in a grasping temperament. Avaricious
and grasping people often make mistakes in pecuniary
transactions, but it may be observed that a sure instinct
always preserves them from making such mistakes against
themselves. The transaction has an interest for posterity
in the light it throws on Turner's prices. He is fifty
years old ; he has been a Royal Academician for twenty
years ; he has painted many important pictures, including
three or four unquestionable masterpieces ; and he is
haggling and quarrelling with an engraver about a miser-
able balance of forty shillings a-piece on some of his best
drawings ! He looks with the same eagerness after a
guinea or two wherever he thinks he can establish a claim
to them. Cooke declares that Turner gave hi'm a draw-
ing of Neptune* s Trident as a present; but Turner
demands the return of it, and charges two guineas for the
loan. This appears almost inconceivably mean ; but we
must remember two things which may partially excuse
Turner: first, that his mind was subject to confused
changes and irregularities about all transactions from its
own want of method and clearness ; and, secondly, that to
charge for the loan of a drawing was an old habit with
him, contracted in early life, when it had been one of the
chief sources of his income as a drawing -master. He

2i6 The Life of y, M, W. Turner,

fancied he had lent the drawing, and charged for it as a
matter of course, just as a boat-keeper at Richmond will
make you pay when you have had one of his boats.

Let us return to the exhibited pictures. There is an
attempt at wit, by the mixture of incongruous nautical
and artistic ideas, in the title of the finest picture on the
list for 1 827 — Now for the Painter ! — Passengers going
on Board ; the word painter here meaning a rope, though,
seeing how few people understand nautical terms, the
majority of the public would, of course, take it to mean
le peintre rather than la corde. This was Turner's fun,
and it is not at all impossible that he may have intended
a little bit of self-glorification at the same time. " Now
for the painter ! Now, see what a real painter, a pictor
eximiusy can do ! Yo\i have been looking at the attempts
of my weaker brethren ; now it is my turn, so just look at
me ! " Whatever may have been the defects of our hero,
bashfulness and false modesty were not amongst them.
Like a certain famous artist who died recently, and who
calmly entitled himself " the master painter of Ornans/*
Turner believed in his own powers, as we should probably
believe also if we possessed them. The title was origi-
nally suggested by one of Callcott's, Letting go the
Painter The picture afterwards became the property of
Mr. Naylor, and was exhibited, along with his other
Turners, in the Art Treasures at Manchester in 1857. It
was described at the time by the able writer in the
Manchester Guardian, from whom I have already quoted ;
and I quote him again in the present instance because he
wrote from a fresh impression. He says :

Pictures Exhibited in 1827. 217

" The picture is by much the most powerful example of
Turner's sea-painting here exhibited, and, indeed, one of
the very finest seas we have ever seen from his hand. It
shows what an immense advance he had by this time
made upon the work of those days when Van de Velde
furnished his ideal of marine painting. Here is liquidity
and lustre, as well as true drawing of waves. His seas
reflect, as well as rock, the craft that roll and pitch upon
them as naturally as ever. We may see, too, how much
larger and grander his ocean has grown — how much
more awful in its expression of power is even this quiet
and harmless channel sea, than the storm-lashed surf
which is grinding the Minotaur to splinters."

The same writer had an interesting paragraph on an-
other of the pictures exhibited in 1827 — Mortlake Ter-
race ^ Seat of William Moffat^ Esq. — Summer Evening:

" He had exhibited a picture of the same place the year
before, with an effect of Early Summer Morning — both,
probably, records of a happy day. The day that closed
as this picture represents should have been a happy one.
The broad light of the evening sun still lies upon the
river, and casts the lengthening shadows of the limes
over the golden sward, where a garden-chair and a port-
folio speak of the artist who has just left the spot, and
the gilded barges and glancing wherries tell of holiday-
makers upon the river, and the dog has awakened from
his dose in the sun to leap upon the parapet and bark at
the passing boats. This dog is one of the often-quoted
examples of Turner's reckless readiness of resource, and
carelessness as to means of effect. There was no dog in

2i8 The Life of J. M. W. Turner.

this picture originally. Turner thought, or somebody
suggested to him, that a dark object on the parapet would
throw back the distance, and enhance the aerial effect of
the whole picture. So Turner cut out this dog in black
paper and stuck him on the wall, and, satisfied with the
effect, either forgot how it was produced, or did not think
it worth while to replace his paper dog with a painted
one, and there the paper dog remains to this day.*'

There is an instance, I believe, in one of his water-
colors, of a glorious setting sun, which on examination
turns out to be nothing but a common red wafer. I need
scarcely observe that in such cases the adjunct, from its
harmony with its surroundings, and the rble it is made to
play, becomes just as much a part of the picture as if it
were a pigment applied with the brush.

Amongst the. pictures exhibited in 1827 was Port
Ruysdael. It is scarcely necessary to observe that there
is no such place as Port Ruysdael, yet Turner gave the
title to two of his pictures ; first to this, and at a much
later period of his life to another, which was exhibited at
the Academy in 1844. It is the later of these pictures
which was etched for the Potfolio (it appeared in August,
1875), the original being in the National Gallery. In his
note on that work, Mr. Wornum said, " The Port Ruysdael
of 1827 was of the same size (three feet high by four feet
wide), and was bought by Mr. Elhanan Bicknell for three
hundred guineas ; it was sold at his sale many years after-
wards, in 1863, for the large sum of ;£i99S ; proving to
him, like many other of Turner's works, a very good
investment for his family." It is very probable that,

Pictures Exhibited in 1827. 219

besides the convenience of having a name of some sort
for an imaginary seaport, Turner may have intended to
honor the memory of his predecessor in art. He was not
one of those artists whose high opinion of themselves
prevents them from respecting others ; on the contrary,
he had a rather surprising degree of respect for several
old masters whom we consider much inferior to him. He
saw qualities in their works which were by no means
easy to imitate, and he readily overlooked what our criti-
cal fastidiousness considers to be their defects. Very few
modern landscape-painters admire Ruysdael much. The
continental critics are loud in his praise, of course, being
always ready to sing hymns of eulogy to any god who has
his place on the artistic Olympps.

In 1828 Turner exhibited another of his Carthage
pictures. Dido directing the Equipment of the Fleet ; or^
the Morning of the Carthaginian Empire, This picture
was originally painted for Mr. Broadhurst, but is now in
the Turner Collection of the National Gallery. It is
simply one of those compositions of imaginary architec-
ture, with water, in which the painter occasionally in-
dulged himself. The same year he exhibited two pictures
of marine subjects, much more within the range of our
English tastes and sympathies, East Cowes Castle, with
the regatta beating to windward, and the same place with
the regatta starting from their moorings. His fourth
picture that year was Boccaccio relating the Tale of the
Birdcage, and it was with reference tathis picture that I
narrated, in one of the early chapters of this biography,
an anecdote which Leslie told me in Turner's house in

220 The Life of J. M, W. Turner.

Queen Anne Street. Leslie accused him of imitating
Stothard, which Turner at once admitted, saying that he
wished he could paint like him, and calling him "the
Giotto of England." The comparison, like all such com-
parisons, will not bear investigation; but it is interesting
as an expression of Turner's admiration for a contempo-
rary, and the confession that the picture was not original
in manner may partly account for the fact that it is one of
the painter's failures.

CHAPTER XI.

Journey to Italy, 1828. — The Pol)rphemus. — Death of Turner's father. —
• The illustrations to Rogers. — Scotland revisited, 1830.

'T'URNER w^nt to Italy again in 1828, and we know
by a letter from him to his friend Jones, the Acade-
mician, that he had spent nearly two months on the way,
and in settling to work in Rome. The letter is dated
October 13th, so it is probable that he left London in the
latter half of August. He seems to have delayed most in
the south of France, and to have suffered so much from
the heat at Nismes and Avignon that it brought on tem-
porary debility, relieved afterwards by sea-bathing when
he reached the Mediterranean. There is an interesting
paragraph in the letter about the scenery of the Cornice,
with a pleasant bit of playfulness about Chantrey, whom
Turner loved.

" 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.'*

222 The Life of y. M. W. Turner.

On the 6th of November he dates a letter to Chantrey
from No. 12 Piazza Mignanelli, and begins as follows:

"My dear Chantrey, — 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 depart-
ment at Corso ; and having finished onet 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 them not^ I finished a small three-feet-four
to stop their gabbling: so now to business.'*

The rest of the letter is occupied with accounts of
other artists* doings, and there is a hit at Gibson's Venus
and Cupid.

" 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.'*

I have remarked elsewhere that we have seldom any
materials from which to construct an account of Turner's
artistic expeditions. He wrote few letters ; he did not
date his sketches, nor even always write upon them the
names of the places where they were taken ; he kept no
journal of his travels, and he was almost invariably alone ;
so that the want of material from his own hand is not
supplied by another. The glimpse that we get of him in
Rome is interesting as a proof that he not only sketched
but painted pictures there : he began one for ** Lord E.,**

/

youmey to Italy in 1828. 223

** but as the folk here talked that I would show them not^
I finished a small three-feet-four to stop their gabbling.**
Here is evidence that he did not let people see his works
in an unfinished state ; in which he was most wise. The
preparations on a canvas may be intentionally just the
opposite of the ultimate result ; it is said that Cuyp*s
golden light was laid in with silvery gray, and that the
finest flesh color of a great Venetian was first prepared in
green. The studio haunter comes and criticises ; men-
tally, if not orally, he thinks, "That sky is dreadfully cold
in color/* " that flesh is ghastly : ** the painter knows what
he is thinking, and must either endure it in silent vexation,
or else take the trouble to explain his processes, which
seems as if he jvere apologizing for what is really his own
superiority of skill and knowledge. Turner had not the
sort of temper either to bear with the criticism of Ignor-
ance, or to excuse himself for offending it ; so he bolted
his door and worked in protected peace. He will throw
a sop to Cerberus, a picture finished on purpose, and give
the "folk'* "a small three-feet-four to stop their gabbling.**
By this he means a canvas measuring four feet by three,
not such a very small size ; and with these dimensions to
guide us, we can fix upon the picture alluded to. It must
have been the View of OrvietOy now in the National
Gallery, which exactly measures four feet by three, and
was exhibited at the Academy in 1830.*

* Mr. Wornum described it as a brilliant landscape, with a town in |he
distance, and women washing at a fountain in the foreground ; but he said
it was painted in Rome in 1829. This appears to be a mistake, as the
letter to Chantrey was written early in November, 1828, and it speaks of
the picture as already finished.

224 ^^^ Life of y, M, W, Turner,

We have a means of guessing the date of the painter's
return to England. In the Academy Exhibition of 1829
there was a picture entitled Messieurs les Voyageurs on
their return from Italy {par la diligence) in a Snowdrift
upon Mount Tarra, 22nd of January, 1829. This was
very probably a recollection of an incident witnessed by
the artist at that place and time ; the travellers are ** on
their return from Italy," and it is probable that Turner
was amongst them.

All the results of this residence in Rome were not
immediately visible ; the impressions received there re-
mained in Turner's memory, and afterwards ripened into
two or three of his finest pictures. The more immediate
results were the View of Orvieto and a composition
entitled Palestrina^ which was exhibited in 1830 with the
following quotation from the painter's poem, the famous
manuscript, " Fallacies of Hope : "

" Or from yon mural rock, high-crown*d Praeneste,
Where, misdeeming of his strength, the Carthaginian stood,
And marked, with eagle eye, Rome as his victim."

Whilst painting pictures of more or less importance.
Turner continued his minoi* labors of illustration. From
1828 to 1837 he contributed drawings to the " Keepsake,"
and in 1829 he made drawings of Fon thill for the "Anni-
versary." That year was a great one in the history of
his art, for he exhibited the splendid Polyphemus picture,
and also the Loretto Necklace^ which, without being one <
of the greatest of his works, deserves mention both for its
beauty and for an unfortunate change of intention. The

The Polyphemus, 225

title is attached to a little figure -incident in the fore-
ground, a necklace given by a peasant to a girl who is
seated by his side, Loretto being visible in the middle
distance, on a hill, and the sea in the remote distance.
The striking peculiarity of the picture is a great tree, and
Mr. Ruskin says of this : " It has evidently been once a
graceful stone-pine, of which the spreading head is still
traceable at the top of the heavy mass ; the lower foliage
has been added subsequently, to the entire destruction of
the composition."

The great picture, Ulysses deriding Polyphemus^ is a
work of higher aim and of more unquestionable achieve-
ment. It has been freely criticised, and it belongs to a
class of compositions which may easily be pulled to pieces
by matter-of-fact people; but the impression which it
makes as a whole is an impression of extraordinary
splendor and power, and it is mere folly to weaken our
own sense of its magnificence by a sceptical analysis of
its materials, and of the sources from which the artist may
possibly have derived them. The ships, it is said, are
not such as the ancient Greeks ever used; to which it
may be answered, that it does not signify in the least
whether they are archaeologically authentic or not. Any
schoolboy, in these days, can ascertain in half an hour,
from modern books of reference, the precise truth about
some special matter of this kind, with an accuracy far
surpassing that of either Shakespeare or Paul Veronese.
It has been said that the properties in the picture remind
one of the opera, which is rather a compliment than the
reverse, for the last time I saw an ancient Greek ship
15

m6 TIu Life fff X M. W. T%ru€r,

crAS)^ ^sTIzl:^ en an ccera stx^e in a baZet. it was as
carefuIlT arzcaajIsirLcal as a r:cr*ire bv Alsaa Tadema.
The arti£:es of C"::ncGsi:i«:a are cbvicas enough; the
siiiss irT^m^'^ to the ri^at, so as cot to interfere with the
trau ot iun ref erdca oa the water ; the advanciiig rocks,
to brin^ the f:.mi3 of the land do -am picturescuely to the
i^a ; the mountainous shore, for the staf^esqne tgure of
Pol^-phemns to recline cpon ; the high deck cf the ship's
poop, as a pedestal for Ulysses to stand upon — all is
artificial ; all except the sky. which is a reminiscence of
pure nature, and so magnincent that it would be hard to
find its equal amongst the most glorious triumphs of art.
And yet, in order that there might not be a too absolute
dissonance between the naturalness of the skv and the
artificial character of the other material ia the picture.
Tamer has recalled human beliefs and the old Grecian
time, even amongst the evanescent splendors of the
clouds ; for he who looks at that rising sun may dimly
discern, through the mists of this world's atmosphere, the
swift horses of Apollo as they begin eagerly their course
in heaven. The confines, too, of earth and sky are pur-
posely mingled in the morning mist; and the Cyclops
himself is made so grandly \'ague by it, that we hardly
know if he be an earthly giant on his island hill in the
iEgean sea, or an angry god obscure in the clouds of
Olympus.

We have to return now from the dreams of Tumerian
art to the sad realities of an existence which did not
escape from the usual sorrows of human life. Turner's
father died in 1830, and in him the painter lost his nearest

Death of Turners Father 227

friend and the only relation with whom he kept up any
intercourse. After this date, then, we are to think of
Turner as a singularly isolated human creature, dependent
upon a very few friends for such society as he possessed,
and having no home, if by " home " we understand any-
thing more than a material building of bricks, with the
wooden furniture inside it. The loss to the painter must
have been inexpressible, for he loved his father deeply in
his own quiet, undemonstrative way. The old man had
given up his barber's shop more than thirty years before,
and had lived with his son ever since, finding many little
occupations, and making himself useful in various ways>
either by acting as keeper of his son's gallery in Queen
Anne Street, or by stretching and preparing canvases, or
by looking after the bit of garden at Twickenham, and
the frugal household afEairs. It requires little stretch of
imagination to realize the tranquil, affectionate life which
father and son led together during those long years, and
the dreadful void which the old man's departure must
have left in the daily existence of his son. No more to
find him in the garden ; no more to eat the simple meal
with him ; no more to have him there in an evening when
the long day's work was over, to tell him of professional
successes, of growing fortune, and extending fame ; never
again to be encouraged by his confidence, or rewarded
by his fatherly joy and pride; and instead of all these
solaces and consolations to find only vacancy, an empty
chair, a chilling solitude, was not that enough to pain a
heart less tender than that of Turner, which, if it loved
seldom, loved ever faithfully and well } Remember that

228 The Life of J M. W. Turner.'

the old man had always, from the first, done all he could
to help his gifted child, and nothing whatever to hinder
him ; that, instead of being alarmed by Heaven's great
gift of genius, and hostile to it, as mediocrity so often is,
he had welcomed it with joy and gladness, and watched it
as a gardener might watch some marvellous, miraculous
flower, and protected it against the hardships of the com-
mon world, and watered it with all necessary knowledge.
It was he who had first said, "William is to be a painter!'*
And before he was laid in his grave in St. Paul's, Covent
Garden, hard by the narrow street where he had followed
his humble profession, his '^ William" had painted the
Ulysses !

The painter afterwards composed an inscription for his
father's monument :

IN THE VAULT

BENEATH AND NEAR THIS PLACE

ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS OF

WILLIAM TURNER,

MANY YEARS AN INHABITANT OF THIS PARISH,

WHO DIED

SEPTEMBER 2 1 ST, 183O.

TO HIS MEMORY AND OF HIS WIFE,

MARY ANN,
THEIR SON, J. M. W. Turner, R.A.,

HAS PLACED THIS TABLET.
AUGUST, 1832.

Internal evidence, if all other were wanting, would
prove this to be a Turnerian composition. The pleonasm
in the second line, and the omission in the eighth, could
have occurred to nobody but the author of the " Fallacies

The Illustrations to Rogers, 229

of Hope," in the arrangement of carefully-chosen words
to be chiselled on enduring marble. It may, however, be
suggested in Turner's defence, that it is possible to be
beneath us without being near to us. New Zealand is
beneath us, but not near ; and what of the southern con-
stellations }

It was in the year 1830 that Rogers' "Italy" first ap-
peared with Turner's illustrations, and his " Poems " were
published four years later, illustrated in the same manner.
These editions were splendid examples of the degree of
perfection then attained by Englishmen in the various
arts which combine to produce the livre de luxe. They
could not have been produced at the beginning of the
century, and fine copies of them will ever remain a monu-
ment of English genius and taste in combination with
various kinds of artistic and mechanical skill. Very ill-
natured things have been said about Rogers for wishing
to get down to posterity by Turner's assistance, and there
are some clever epigrams on the subject ; but it may be
observed that in this instance there were two persons in
one — a singularly intelligent lover of art and a maker of
elegant verses, the lover of art being quite as much inter-
ested in the matter as the poet, or versifier, whichever we
may decide to call him. It may be argued, further, that
there is really more modesty than pride in permitting
one's verses to become mere letterpress to accompany
such an overwhelming artist as Turner. The result has
certainly been to keep Mr. Roger's poetry in existence,
and to give it a sort of immortality ; but it is an immor-
tality which few would envy. The pride of a real poet

230 The Life of y, M, W, Turner,

is to think that his verses will endure by their own vitality,
and we learn without surprise that Lamartine was vexed
when his exquisite poem " Le Lac " was set to music,
although the music was exquisite too, and that a famous
English poet of the present day unwillingly submitted to
illustration in the supposed interest of his publishers.

Turner has seldom been so perfectly the poet as in the
illustrations to Rogers. The vignette form may have
aided him here, as it is more poetical in itself than the
picture bounded by four hard straight lines with as many
right angles at the corners, but the vignette cannot make
a poet, though it may be convenient for one. It answers
to some pretty lyrical form in literature, which charms us
in the songs of a true singer, and leaves us perfectly
indifEerent in the attempts of the incapable. Of all
artists who ever lived I think it is Turner who treated the
vignette most exquisitely, and if it were necessary to find
some particular reason for this, I should say that it may
have been because there was nothing harsh or rigid in his
genius, that forms and colors melted into each other
tenderly in his dream-world, and that his sense of grada-
tion was the most delicate ever possessed by man. If
you examine a vignette by Turner round its edges, if you
can call them edges, you will perceive how exquisitely the
objects come out of nothingness into being, and how
cautiously, as a general rule, he will avoid anything like
too much materialism in his treatment of them until he
gets well towards the centre. There is some inequality
in the beauty of the vignettes, they are not all of them
equally exquisite ; but even the least poetical are still

The Illustrations to Rogers. 231

very far removed from the prose of art, whilst it is simply
impossible to find in them any careless neglect of those
subtle artifices of arrangement which Turner understood
better than any other landscape painter. Comparisons in
art are usually profitless, but they may be sometimes
instructive when the works to be compared are of the
same class. I will not compare Turner's art in the com-
position of the vignette with that of Stothard, because
Stothard was not a landscape-painter, and he had not
naturally the faculty which arranges things most happily
in vignettes ; it is enough to say that Stothard's contri-
butions to the illustrated edition of Rogers, though often
graceful and charming, look like patches on the page, and
the patches are sometimes awkwardly shaped, whilst
Turner's never seem to be shaped or put on the paper at
all, but we feel as if a portion of the beautiful white
surface had in some wonderful way begun to glow with
the light of genius. We feel this quality in the Turnerian
vignettes most strongly when we compare them with
works of the same class, and nearly the same date, such
as the vignettes to Burns by Mr. D. O. Hill, which were
published in 1835. I am not so ungracious as to mention
Mr. Hill only to sacrifice his reputation to the fame of a
greater than he. His vignettes have often given me
pleasure, for which I am not ungrateful. They are poetic
in feeling, and he had many of the qualities of a landscape
painter, such as a love of luxuriance in vegetation, a fine
sense of distance, an enjoyment of light, and a proud
affection for Scottish lowland scenery which made his
heart sensitive to its rich beauty. His engravers were as

232 The Life of y. M. W, Turner,

skilful as those who worked from Turner, being in some
cases the very same men; still the result is invariably
heavier, and the talent of the one artist seems over-
burdened by mere matter, whereas the genius of the
other uses material nature only for artistic and spiritual
ends.

I have not space for any minute analysis of Turner's
vignettes, but cannot leave them without saying a few
words more. They may be divided into landscape sub-
jects, marines, architecture, and supernatural inventions.
The vignette of Derwentwater is one of the best of the
pure landscapes. • The sky, with great pale clouds and
the sun in his splendor lighting their edges, is one of the
most perfect of all Turner's skies for its delicate truth of
pale tones. The treatment of the landscape material is
arbitrary, of course ; the islands are arranged at the
artist's pleasure, the forms of the hills are entirely altered,
a dark mass being enormously exaggerated to show what
Rogers called " th^ tumbling tide of dread Lodore ; " but
the vignette is an exquisite idealization of a lake. The
bits of Alpine scenery in " Jacqueline " and " The Alps
at Daybreak " are especially admirable for their expres-
sion of that shadowy vastness which so strongly impresses
us in the loftiest ranges. I have heard artists affirm that
even a large picture can give no idea of a lofty moun-
tain, yet the vignette of the Garonnelle, with the Alps of
Piedmont in the distance, gives me such an idea quite
perfectly, and it is only three inches high. This is due,
not to truth of portraiture, which Turner always neglected,
but to his knowledge of mountain structure and effect.

The Illustrations to Rogers, 233

Any one who knows the Alps can see at once that these
really are Alps, twelve thousand feet high at least, though
a Cumberland hill seen near would have its sky line quite
as high on the paper. One of the finest of the marine
subjects is Columbus discovering land, and here again we
have clear evidence that a great scale is not necessary to
the production of a great effect. The line of sea horizon
is only about an inch and a quarter long in the engraving,
yet from the effect chosen in water and sky it conveys an
awful idea of the vastness of the deep. The figure in its
simple grandeur, with the old ship for a pedestal, is one of
Turner's rare successes in figure conception. There are
two particularly successful instances of the treatment of
architecture : one a building seen from outside, Green-
wich Hospital ; the other the interior of an imaginary
Gothic chapel with banners and tombs. The Greenwich
is another excellent instance of largeness expressed on a
small scale. The vastness of the building is intentionally
exaggerated, and it is made to look prodigious. Who
would believe that the twin towers, with the domes, are
only an inch high on the paper } Their real measurement
is rather less, being nine -tenths of an inch exactly.
Within that little space you have columns on columns,
cornices, architraves, attics, dome, and lantern, all drawn
with the most exquisite care, and there is a delicate play
of light and shadow along the whole front of the building.
A very grand bit of supernaturalism is that of the armed
phantoms passing across the sky after sunset.

" Slowly along the evening sky they went,
As on the edge of some vast battlement ;
Helmet and shield, and spear and gonfalon,
Streaming a baleful light that was not of the sun 1 *'

234 ^^^ Life of y. M, W, Turner,

The verses are impressive, but the drawing is much
more impressive than the verses. The last rays of the
afterglow are in the sky ; the ships are motionless on the
dark ocean ; on the high poop of one of them stands a
little human figure, and before him passes the strange
procession of giant shapes, half mingled with low vapor,
through which a solitary star shines dimly. The superi-
ority of the drawing to the verses is due, I believe, to
the greater resources of mystery which the painter had at
his disposal. The sense of mystery can be conveyed in
words, but not easily in a few lines.

In 1830 Turner exhibited nothing but Pilate washing his
hands before the multitude, which was one of the painter's
failures, as the reader may well imagine from the subject.
It is in the national collection, and the canvas measures
nearly four feet by three.

In the same year the painter revisited Scotland, being
commissioned by Mr. Cadell, the publisher, to make
twenty -four drawings in illustration of Scott's Poetical
Works. Amongst these are two or three celebrated
ones. The Loch Corriskin, Skye, is a scene of extra-
ordinary desolation, which Turner felt profoundly, not-
withstanding his love for the richer beauty of the south.
He drew the precipices and the gloomy lake with great
fidelity to the character of the place, which had deeply
impressed him. Turner is reported to have said that he
nearly lost his life at Loch Corriskin by slipping down a
precipice, but saved himself by grasping two tufts of
grass ; a proof that Scott had used a poet's license in the
well-known verses in " The Lord of the Isles : "

%

Scotland Revisited in 1830. 235

" On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe ;

And copse on Cnichan-Ben ;
6ut here — ^above, around, below,

On mountain or in glen.
Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower,
Nor ought of vegetative power.

The weary eye may ken."

The Melrose is a beautiful piece of lowland river
scenery, the broad Tweed flowing through the plain, the
Eildon hills in the distance. The river is treated with
excellent taste, the character of its shore line being at
the same time graceful and very carefully studied ; the
hills are drawn with the greatest delicacy, and retain
their true hill character, not being turned into mountains.
This is the scene that Scott loved better than any other
scene on earth ; these are the hills and this the river
which agitated him with profound emotion when he came
back a shattered creature, insensible to the charms of
every land but this, from that weary voyage to Italy.

The foreground in the Melrose is one of the most un-
fortunate in Turner's compositions. A cart and two
horses are set just upon the lower boundary line of the
drawing to tell against the space of shining river, and
throw it well back, and keep it down in the plain ; but
the part is much too conspicuous in itself, and too ugly,
and it composes with nothing whatever. The little
picnic party to the right is not so objectionable. It is
highly probable that these figures of gentlemen taking
their ease, with bottle, provision-basket, and newspaper,
may have been suggested by the party from Abbotsford,

236 The Life of J, M, W, Turner,

for Lockhart tells us that during Turner's visit at the
house, Sir Walter and his friends accompanied him on
excursions in the neighborhood, in quest of subjects for
his pencil.

"On several such occasions," said Lockhart, "I was
of the party, and one day deserves especially to be re-
membered. Sir Walter took Turner that morning, with
his friend Skene and myself, to Smailholm Crags ; and it
was while lounging about them, while the painter did his
sketch, that he told Mr. Skene legends of the place.

" He then carried us to Dryburgh, but excused him-
self from attending Mr. Turner into the enclosure. Mr.
Skene and I perceived that it would be better for us to
leave him alone, and we both accompanied Turner."

This desire on Scott's part for a moment of solitude at
Dryburgh reminds us that in 1830 he was a saddened
man ; that she whom he called " My Charlotte, my thirty
years' companion," was already lying in the family grave
under the ruin : that for four years he had maintained a
gigantu: effort to pay his debts, and that little strength
remained to support him under a mountain of afflictions.
He could be submissively courageous even yet, but the
end of his labor was at hand, and it is likely that whilst
Turner was sketching Dryburgh the Last Minstrel was
looking forward to his long rest in that place which so
many of us have since visited for his sake.

Amongst other drawings made during this excursion
was one of Abbotsford, and I well remember both the
intensely romantic feelings which the engraving from it

Scotland Revisited in 1 8^0, 237

used to awaken in me long ago, and the extreme dis-
appointment produced in me, as in many others, by the
building itself — a disappointment partly due to the
exaggerated descriptions of Sir Walter's home as a
romance or poem in stone and mortar, but due also in
great measure to Turner's exalting and ennobling imagi-
nation. In his drawing Scott's country-house became a
fairy castle of vast size in a beautiful domain on the side
of a noble stream : in reality Abbotsford is only a fantastic
residence, imposing neither by its size nor by its archi-
tecture, whilst the Tweed near the house would be but
a very ordinary stream if it had not been consecrated for
us by the affection of an immortal genius.

Besides the twenty-four drawings to illustrate Scott's
poems. Turner undertook, for the same Edinburgh
publisher (Mr. Cadell), a series of illustrations of his
prose works. The main distinction between the two
undertakings is that the poems kept the artist entirely to
local subjects in the northern parts of our own island,
from Staffa and Loch Corriskin for " The Lord of the
Isles," to the Junction of the Greta and Tees in illustra-
tion of " Rokeby ; " whereas, on the other hand, the
range of the prose works was much wider, and here
Turner could have recourse to his own accumulations of
British and Continental studies, and even materials
supplied by others. A good many of his French studies
came in conveniently, and after making four illustrations
of Jerusalem for Finden's Bible, it was not difficult to
make a fifth for a new purpose. There were forty illus-

238 The Life of J. M. W. Turner,

trations to the prose works, in all, and of these twenty-
three are foreign, and only fourteen Scottish.*

* There has been some confusion of dates about Turner's visits to Scot-
land. A lady in Jersey, whose name is not given, said in a letter, dated
Sept. 23, 1 83 1, " Mr. Turner is returned from Scotland, where the weather
has been very boisterous, and his health not improved by the excursion."
Probably, in consequence of this letter, Mr. Thornbury says, " In the au-
tumn of 1 83 1 Turner was employed by Mr. Cadell to make a collection of
twenty-four sketches for a new edition of Scott's poems, the publisher to
retain the drawings." On the other hand, Lockhart fixes Turner's visits to
the scenes of Scott's poetry, in company with Scott himself, as having
occurred in 1830, which is evidently the correct date, as Sir Walter quitted
Scotland for Italy in the autumn of 1831, and had been unwell from the
beginning of the year. It is possible, but I have at present no evidence on
the point beyond the anonymous Jersey lady, and her evidence comes to us
at second-hand through Mr. Thornbury, that Turner may have visited
Scotland again in 1831.

CHAPTER XII.

The Rivers of France — ^Turner's architecture. — Inaccuracy of other artists.
— The rivers of France. — color. — The rivers of France — Turnerian
charm.

^ I ^HE famous work, the "Rivers of France/* which in
its latest edition was called Z^*^^r/7?m^n//« by Mr.
Bohn, the publisher, was at first issued in three successive
years under the title " Turner's Annual Tour." It was
published "for the proprietor" by Moon, Boys, and
Graves, but before the work was completed the title of
the firm had changed to Hodgson, Boys, and Graves.
The title-page of each year's issue was adorned with a
vignette, and the three vignettes are amongst the most
beautiful which Turner ever produced. The drawings
engraved in the body of the work are all oblong, and the
engravings generally measure five inches and a half by
rather less than four inches. The proportion may be
noticed for its avoidance of the long panoramic form,
which is very tempting for its convenience in the repre-
sentation of river scenery in lowland countries. How far
• this choice of shape may have been Turner's decision, or

\ that of his publishers, who would naturally like a shape

going conveniently into a book, I am unable to inform the
reader, but the matter is of more importance than at first

240 The Life of y, M, W. Turner,

sight may appear. The nearer a shape approaches to the
square form, the more a landscape-painter is tempted to
exaggerate the "height of things to fill up his composition
and get things in, on each side ; the more, on the con-
trary, the shape of the drawing is extended in horizontal
length, the less this temptation will be felt.

It is said that Turner was associated for three successive
seasons with Mr. Leitch Ritchie, who wrote the letter-
press which now accompanies the illustrations to the
" Rivers of France," but that their tastes were very dis-
similar in everything except art, so that they travelled
very little together. All that Mr. Ritchie had to say about
Turner's ways of work was, that he noticed his wonderful
exaggerations ; for example that he would elevate the
stunted cone of a village church into a tall steeple when it
suited his purpose. If Mr. Ritchie had known Turner's
habits as we know them, this would not have excited
his surprise. He used to banter Turner about it after-
wards in London, but without offending him, for the
landscape-painter had his retort about literary license.
Mr. Ritchie had attempted to identify Gilles de Retz with
Blue Beard, by insisting that his beard was so intensely
black as to have a shade of blue. " This,** said Mr.
Ritchie, " 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 ! '"
This is all we learn from Turner's travelling companion
about his ways of work on the French rivers, and it is not
much.

The reader may remember Lord Byron*s letter in an-

The Rivers of France. 241

swer to Mr. Bowles about artificial things in poetry, in
which he so stoutly maintained that artificial things have
a poetry of their own. • Thomas Campbell had written a
vivid account of his emotions on witnessing the launch of
a ship of the line. Bowles asserted that Campbell-s ship
derived all its poetry, not from art, but from nature, and
was dependent for it upon the waves and winds. To this
Byron vigorously replied, that the ship of the line con*
ferred its own poetry on the waters and heightened theirs ;
after which, extending the argument from ships to other
artificial things, he went on to speak of buildings on land
as increasing the poetry of the land.

"Am I to be told," he asked, "that the nature of
Attica would be more poetical without the art of the
Acropolis } of the temple of Theseus } and of the still all
Greek and glorious monuments of her exquisitely artificial
genius.^ Ask the traveller what strikes him as most
poetical — the Parthenon, or the rock on which it stands.^
the columns of Cape Colonna, or the Cape itself.*^ the
rocks at the foot of it, or the recollection that Falconer's
ship was bulged upon them } There are a thousand rocks
and capes far more picturesque than those of the Acro-
polis and Cape Sunium in themselves ; what are they to a
thousand scenes in the wilder parts of Greece, of Asia
Minor, Switzerland, or even of Cintra in Portugal, or to
many scenes of Italy, and the Sierras of Spain } But it is
the ''arty' the columns, the temples, the wrecked vessel,
which give them their antique and their modern poetry,
and not the spots themselves. Without them the spots of

earth would be unnoticed and unknown."
16

242 The Life of y M, W. Turner,

I am not aware that Turner ever expressed opinions
such as these in words, but there are a thousand evidences
in his numerous drawings that he agreed heartily with
Byron in looking for the poetry of his subjects much more
to man and man's works than to nature. Few landscape-
painters have drawn so many buildings, and few painters
of water have been so much disposed to crowd it with
ships and boats. I will not go so far as to say that pure
nature had no interest for him, but I think there is abun-
dant evidence that it was unsatisfying to his mind. It
would be easy to give rather a long list of compositions
by Turner, in which there is no landscape whatever, but
there is scarcely a single drawing or picture by him which
does not contain either a boat, or a building, or a figure.
One of , the first things that strikes us on looking through
the " Rivers of France," is how much less Turner seems
to have cared for the rivers themselves than for the
human works which are connected with them. The fol-
lowing analysis may throw some light upon his taste.

There are sixty plates in all, without counting the
vignettes, and amongst these sixty plates I find fifteen
with castles or chateaux in them, fifteen with cathedrals
or important churches, twenty -two with at least one
bridge, and of these there are six with two bridges.
There are, also, half-a-dozen subjects of seaports with
shipping -^nd boats in abundance. You may even find
that number of compositions without either water or land-
scape, the river being out of sight and the land all covered
with buildings. The Boulevard des Italiens, for example,
is given as an illustration of the Seine, which is like giving

The Rivers of France. 243

Regent Street as an illustration of the Thames. At
Orleans the place near the cathedral is preferred to the
Loire, and in several other towns the artist willingly
leaves the river for the streets. In the whole of the sixty
plates there is not one without a building of some kind,
and there is not a foreground without figures, nor a reach
of water without boats. Men and their works are indeed
so constantly predominant in these designs, that, to find
the refreshment of pure nature, we must quit the encum-
bered earth and take refuge in the clouds of heaven.

Now, the theory of Byron and the practice of Turner
assert a truth, which is that man's work may be poetical,
but they assert it too strongly in assigning to natural
beauty an entirely inferior position. There is such a
thing as the real landscape instinct, which is quite closely
connected with poetic emotion, and there is a rich abun-
dance of beauty in pure nature for its satisfaction. It is
this instinct which is not satisfied with Turner's selection
of subjects on the French rivers, for they do not always
flow through towns, under bridges, by castles and cathe-
drals. They pass through leagues and leagues of the
sweetest rural scenery, where he who is indifferent to
landscape beauty will find nothing whatever to interest
him, but where the true lover of nature will be quietly
gratified by a constant succession of beautifully grouped
trees, or varied forms of shore, changing from the moun-
tains of the Upper Loire to the coteaux of the vine-lands
and the flat Dutch-looking distances of the plains. After
floating for hours through these great spaces of rural
France, when you are beginning to weary a little of river,

244 The Life of y, M, W, Turner. •

and trees, and sky, you catch sight of some town in the
distance with its old church, or, in rare cases, its cathe-
dral, and then a fresh reach of the river discloses a bridge
of many arches and a jumble of roofs and chimneys half
hidden by the trees of the public walk. It is then that
you feel the value of the town as an ornament to the
river, and when you have been all day alone with nature
you are not sorry to communicate again with humanity,
to see the groups of people about the wharf and boats,
and gratify your love of architecture or your feeling for
the picturesque by a hunt after the remains of the middle
ages. Such are the pleasant experiences of artists who
love the water ; they see nature, and they see cities also,
but they see ^hem in due proportion. Now it seems on
looking through these sixty plates from Turner as if, in-
stead of leading us from town to town along the broad,
beautiful water-way of the river, he had got into a dili-
gence in one town and out of it at the next, like a traveller
"doing" the principal localities. Daubigny, who had not
Turner's magnificence of conception, loved nature with a
more intimate affection, and passed days and nights on
the Seine in a combination of hut and boat, rudely enough
contrived, yet a treasure for a student of river scenery.
He was not a great genius like Turner, but he really
loved the river, and in return for this simple devotion he
was rewarded by an insight into its own natural beauty,
which was wanting in the illustrious Englishman.*

* The following quotation from Mr. J. L. Molloy*s " Autumn Holiday on
French Rivers " gives an excellent idea of what I mean. It is rather-
long, but so good and true, and so strikingly apropos of our present subject,
that the reader will thank me for not abridging it : —

The Rivers of Frattce, 245

What Turner cared for was the picturesque aspect of
a French town taken as a whole, with its bridge, and
towers, and multitudinous roofs. I cannot think that he
took any very deep and serious interest in architecture
for itself, though he liked it as an element of the pictur-
esque. The front of Rouen Cathedral is very magnificent
and impressive, and it is the most favorable example of
architecture in the volume ; but in other subjects, such as
the castle of Amboise, the inaccuracies are of a kind
which convinces me that the artist was thinking only of

" Then, far ahead, in a haze of sunset, rose up the indistinct outline of
Blois.

" It was at such times we realised how grand was the Loire — the river of
ancient cities. Beautiful as the Seine was — in many respects far more so
than the Loire — it fell far short of the latter in expanse. Here was some-
thing of the breadth and distance of the sea. I feel the difficulty, the im-
possibility even, of describing the effect it produced on us.

" To come out of the solitariness of the rivers let the boat drift with the tide^
and turn round to watch the gradual unfolding of these cities^ was in its way
akin to the feeling of hearing for the first time one of the great symphonies of
Beethoven, And there is nothing fanciful in this comparison ; it is the
simple expression of the thought which occurred at the time. Many will
understand how things, apparently opposite, and without any material con-
nection, will, under certain influences, recall and suggest one another.
Weber, from only seeing the tables, chairs, and benches of a cafi^ piled up
to the ceiling, composed one of his grandest triumphal marches. On days
when the rain fell thfck and heavy he wrote his most joyous niusic, on
sunny days the saddest

" I remember one of us sa3ring that evening, as we looked at Blois, that it
was like a peal of old bells, when they dang all together.

" Most of our readers will probably have seen all these towns and many
parts of the Loire. But it will have been by diligence or rail — shooting
suddenly from a tunnel into tlie heart of the city, and with passing glimpses
of the river ; for no steamers can ascend above Tours — and Gien, Orleans,
Beaugency, Blois, and Amboise, are accessible by land only (except in small
boats). In no way but the way we travelled is it possible to see what these
places really are, and how they are inseparable from the rivers^*

246 The Life of J, M, W. Turner,

his poetical effect, and did not really care about archi-
tectural construction. As nothing is more unprofitable
than generalities in criticism, we will direct our attention
more especially to Amboise. In the first of the two
subjects, the two big round towers, for which the place is
celebrated, are greatly exaggerated as to height, which
deprives them of miich of their massive character. It is
plainly impossible to drive a carriage up the inside of
Turner's towers, but it can be done in one of the real
ones. In the reality, there is an old palace apparently
built on the top of a very strong feudal castle.* Turner
has been faithful to the idea just so far as this, but all his
architectural details are wrong, eVen big details — wrong
every one of them ; and this inaccuracy is still more
evident in the illustration called the Chdteau of Amboise,
where the architecture is conspicuous, and required care.
What surprises, me, even yet, after long familiarity with
Turner's, ways of work, is his, disdain, not of the ugly
truths which artists often avoid, but of the beautiful
truths which the artistic temperament usually delights in.
The real Chdteau of Amboise is not only different from
Turner's, but certainly more beautiful than his, and far
more picturesque.

The reader may remember that in my criticism of
Turner's Kilchurn Castlef I pointed out his omission of
important architectural features, such as the corbelled
turrets at the corners. In the Chdteau of Amboise it is
not so much omission that one has to complain of, as

* It is really built upon a rock, encased in walls with towers,
t See page 69.

Turner s Architecture. 247

wilful or involuntary misfepresentation. I can give a
parallel instance from literature. M. Louis finault says
that the English inscribe in letters of gold on the front of
their museums, "A thing of art is an endless joy/' Of
course we recognise what he means ; he means the
immortal verse of Keats, which was inscribed at one" end
of the Art Treasures* Exhibition at Manchester ; and the
Frenchman's line contains a sort of muddled reminiscence
of everything in the original, but on the whole the
English reader may still prefer, " A thing of beauty is a
joy for ever." Well, Turner's drawing of Amboise pro-
duces exactly that effect upon me. It may be an im-
provement, but I cannot help preferring the real thing.

I will mention two instances more. In the view of the
Pont Neuf, at Paris, the tower of St. Jacques de la Bou-
cherie is brought in at the left by a permissible violation
of strict topography which would have kept it out of the
drawing. As the artist had gone somewhat out of his
way to adorn his subject with the tower, it is natural to
expect that he would look at it, yet his drawing gives
evidence of the most perfect indifference to its archi-
tecture. It is rather a large object in the drawing, it is
a very important object, it is quite near enough for its
general character to be seen plainly and its details mys-
teriously, yet neither character nor detail is given, and a
grossly commonplace piece of nineteenth century Gothic
is substituted for one of the most perfectly beautiful, one
of the most exquisitely elegant masterpieces of the middle
ages. Not much is seen of the towers of Notre Dame,
but the little we do see abounds in architectural errors.

248 The Life of y. M, IV. Turner,

A draughtsman so careless about noble architecture was
not likely to pay more attention to that of streets and
houses, and, provided that he got an effect of quantity
and mystery, he attempted little more. Still, it is difficult
to avoid a feeling of surprise at Turner's indifference to
blocks of building which have an especial picturesque
interest. Trees grow now on the point of the island
between the two halves of the bridge, and hide the houses
at the Place Dauphine from the point of view in Turner's
sketch ; but when he drew it, either there were no trees
at all, or else he removed them on purpose. In either
case one is surprised at his neglect of the houses, because,
as every Parisian artist knows, they are quite remarkably
picturesque, with their cumbrous roofs overburdened with
dormer windows and chimneys. Of course, the houses
were there in Turner's time, and long before, according
to the poet:.

" Ces deux maisons, Ventre Sainct Gris 1
Je les cognois, diet Henry Quatre,
Icelles sont du vieulx Paris 1 "

Another of the Parisian subjects affords a good oppor-
tunity for testing the draughtsmanship of the artist,
because the materials in it are familiar. In the Hdtel de
Ville and the Pont d' Arcole we have three well-known
buildings — i. Part of the old H6tel de Ville — 2. The
Church of St. Gervais — 3. The Pump in the river. The
absence of refinement, of truth, and of precision, in
Turner's representation of these buildings is decisive,
and settles the question. If the reader will compare
Turner's Hdtel de Ville with a photograph of the real one,

Inaccuracy of other Artists, 249

he will see that the landscape-painter's interpretation
entirely loses the elegance of the original. The Pump
was a very picturesque object (a tower between two
wings, the whole erected on a great intricate wooden
scaffolding, through which the water flowed), and it was
etched by M6ryon with great delicacy and truth. If the
reader has an opportunity for comparing the etching with
the engraving after Turner he will see the difference. I
should not find fault with minor inaccuracies if truth of
character was preserved ; but it is not preserved in these
instances. The elegance of the tower of St. Jacques and
the H6tel de Ville is as much sacrificed as their details.
The real pump was picturesque, with a certain purity
and stateliness which M6ryon gave ; Turner made it
picturesque in quite another way, and a much coarser and
ruder way.

By the common consent of humanity a fault is half
excused, and more than half excused, when it is known to
be general. If all Cretans were liars, a Cretan of ordinary
virtue would have been a liar like the rest of his country-
men ; and for a Cretan to tell the truth he would have
needed, not ordinary commonplace virtue, but that excep-
tional virtue of the saint or hero which we admire when
we meet with it, but expect from no ordinary mortal. To
be quite fair towards Turner we ought to take into
account the general state of the art he practised. Of the
accomplished artists of his time. Turner was, I quite
believe, the most inaccurate, and the most ready to shut
his eyes to truths which did not interest him ; but if you
examine the work of his contemporaries with any strict-

250 The Life of y. M. IV, Turner,

ness, you will find the same indifference, in minor degrees,
without the compensation of that exquisite charm which
has made Turner's work immortal. If the reader should
happen to have the opportunity of comparing an engrav-
ing from Stanfields Verrex in the Val d'Aosta with
Harding's drawing of the same place (both exactly from
the same point of view), he will see to what extent those
artists considered themselves at liberty to treat buildings
as they pleased, for one, or both, must be wrong in every
detail.* Turner's carelessness of architectural truth goes
farther, no doubt, but it is the same thing in principle.
It has been said that picturesque drawing and archi-
tectural drawing are so distinct that the one disqualifies
for the other, and when inaccuracy has become a habit it
cannot be cured at a moment's notice, merely because the
artist happens to be drawing some very beautiful object,
like the tower of St.. Jacques de la Boucherie. But the
true philosophy of the subject goes deeper than this
practical side of the question. It has been stated by
Joubert, in one of his profound sentences : — *'The poet's
subject," he says (and a painter like Turner is just as
much a poet as any maker of verses), " should present to
his genius a region of fantasy which he can expand or
contract at pleasure. Places that are too real, and persons

* A very able artist, who has drawn architecture in Italy; France, and
elsewhere, for half a century, wrote to me as follows about the drawings of
Venetian architecture by Turner, Stanfield, and Prout : " However charm-
ing and talented their works may be in a picturesque sense, they are all,
and without one exception that I can now call to mind, clumsily, heavily,
and incorrectly drawn so far as architectural form and beauty are concerned.
Architects, I believe, are unanimously of this opinion.

Inaccuracy of other Artists. 251

that are too historical, imprison his mind and confine his
movements." Such an object as the tower of St. Jacques,
or a wing of the H6tel de Ville, is too real to be dealt
with by so poetic an artist as Turner, because he must
either think of its own beauty too much, or else represent
it unsatisfactorily. I do not think that a faithful repre-
sentation of the tower of St. Jacques would have spoiled
that particular drawing, but I am quite convinced that
the objective spirit which would have enabled Turner to
draw architecture faithfully, would have destroyed in him
that imaginative spirit which produced the Turnerian
world of dreams. It is true that M6ryon was a poet in
his way also, and that he saw very clearly, and was on
the whole a fairly faithful draughtsman, but the cases are
quite different. M6ryon*s gift was a sensibility to emotion
in the presence of certain buildings, and a power to com-
municate that emotion by a very clear representation of
them, in which his own passion betrayed itself more by
subtle modulations of line, and by a certain morbid in-
tensity of perception, than by any very manifest unfaithful-
ness ; Turner*s poetry was not in clearness at all, but in
confusion and mystery, and the object at all times had less
hold upon his memory and imagination than the effect.

To understand the impossibility of an accurate Turner,
the reader has only to realize to himself what accuracy
really is. It involves the complete suppression of feeling
and imagination in the artist, and no imaginative artist
will do anything so suicidal as to suppress his own
imagination. Again, to require of Turner that he should
be accurate in his representations of architecture, would

252 The Life of y. M, W, Turner,

be to require of him the subordination of his own art to
another art, the effacement of himself in the presence of
any builder who happened to have erected a church
steeple. The slightest reflection will convince us that a
genius like Turner's is far too strongly personal for such
humility as this. Again, we are much too apt to associate
memory and imagination together in our minds, as if one
never weakened the other. We forget Pope's doctrine,
which is the true one :

" Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away."

The imagination substitutes fresh images for those which
a good memory, without imagination, would retain.

Since the whole influence of common custom amongst
artists, and of Turner's own imagination, made him a
glaringly inaccurate architectural draughtsman, it may
be asked why he drew really existing architecture at all.
Why did he not confine himself simply to pure inventions
like the architecture in his Carthages, which never
existed in any country under the sun, and which no
builder will ever be extravagant enough, or so misguided,
as to erect in stone and mortar } The answer is of a
double character. In the first place. Turner felt a certain
emotion in the presence of architecture which operated
upon his mind, and tempted him to make drawings in
which the buildings which he admired occupied a very
important place. Besides this. Turner was a keen man
of business, and he knew that the sale of a set of engrav-
ings was much safer when they bore the names of places
that tourists had seen, or might possibly hope to see;

The Rivers of France — Color, 253

places not avowedly in dreamland, but actually mentioned
in the map. As for his inaccuracies, they might puzzle a
solitary traveller now and then, but people are usually so
wonderfully unobservant that they cannot detect them.
Before the invention of photography, the most absurdly
inaccurate engravings and lithographs of public buildings
were bought in thousands, and carried away contentedly
by travellers, who were satisfied so long as a tower did
not look like a dome, nor an obelisk like a factory
chimney.

It would be of little use to enter into an elaborate
dissertation on the coloring of the drawings for the
** Rivers of France," but I may make a few brief observa-
tions, founded upon a close acquaintance with the country
itself.

Every land has certain special characteristics in its
coloring, and we may judge, to a great extent, of an
artist's affectionate intimacy with his subject by the
fidelity with which he recalls these special characteristics.
Now I do not recognize this kind of fidelity in Turner's
coloring of French scenery. It seems to me that he
colored according to his own general conceptions of
what would be harmonious, with little or no reference to
the natural quality and effects of French landscape. The
drawings are brilliant, and often crude in their brilliance ;
they are never simply natural. Here, again, as in the
matter of architectural form, the intensely strong person-
ality of the artist subordinated truth to imagination, and
led him to substitute what he imagined for what he saw.
The drawings were seldom, it is believed, colored in the

254 The Life of J, M. W, Turner.

presence of nature ; Turner's more usual custom having
been to sketch from nature in pencil and dash the color
on his sketch afterwards; but however this may have
been, we know the result, which is rather the play of a
man of genius with his materials than the sober endeavor
to render the real aspects of the country. If the reader
will imagine Turner as a supremely clever executant in
water-color, who played with his orange and purple, his
red and green, his washes of cool gray to refresh the eye,
and his touches of burning scarlet to excite it; just as a
musical composer will combine the effects . of the various
instruments in an orchestra, he will, I sincerely believe,
not be very far from a just appreciation of his work. I
will go even a little farther and venture upon the assertion
that it is only the minor colorists who are quiet-minded
enough, or humble enough, for fidelity. All the splendid
colorists, the men who dazzle and astonish and win great
reputations for their color-power, are utterly audacious in
their manner of dealing with the truth of nature. They
go beyond it to play their own mighty music. We all
know the Rubens color, with its regular set scale of tints,
so admirably and truly analyzed by Fromentin. Turner
was more various, but not less personal, and if I were
asked whether his color reminded me of France, I should
answer, No, not of France, but of Turner. And if the
inquirer pushed his examination so far as to ask whether
the Turnerian color seemed to me a compensation for the
coloring of nature, I should answer that the two appeal
to different sentiments, that Turner's work is a display,
an exhibition of power and dexterity, calling for admira-

The Rivers of France — Color, 255

tion, whereas the comparatively humble artists who touch
our hearts by reminding us of the scenes and effects we
thoroughly and intimately know, make little display, and
are seldom extolled for genius, but find their way to our
affection. The reader will please remember that I am
speaking here of color, and, for the moment, of color only.
Well, in two words, the drawings for the " Rivers of
France" seem to me astonishing curiosities.* No one
but their author could have done them, but they are
simply the play of a consummate artist with the materials
in his color-box. This free way of playing with chromatic
elements is the true sign of a great color-faculty, and the
only way to produce splendid results, but though origi-
nally suggested by nature, . it leaves nature out in the
cold.

After having denied the truth of Turner's architecture,
and the truth of his color also, I may be suspected of
saying favorable things merely by way of compensation,
and to reconcile myself in some measure with English
public opinipn, which left him to sell his drawings for a
few pounds each and now purchases them at the rate of
twenty guineas the square inch. Be this as it may, the
truth must be told on both sides. After all the deduc-

* In the chapter on Turner's studies I went into the subject of his
coloring, and explained how he colored with a view to obtain certain
chromatic results rather than truth to nature. It is, unfortunately, not
possible to maintain any argument about color by giving examples, because
if reproductions were given an opponent could answer (probably with truth)
that the reproductions were not like the originals. If the reader could be
with me with the originals before us I would soon show him what I mean.
Turner as a colorist was splendid and powerful, but utterly unfaithful.

256 The Life of J. M. W. Turner.

tions of criticism the charm of the work remains. It is
with these drawings as with the romances of Sir Walter
Scott : a time comes in the life of every intelligent reader
when he perceives that Scott was not, and could not
be, really true to the times he represented, except when
they approached very near his own ; but a student of
literature would be much to be pitied who was unable
to enjoy " Ivanhoe " after this discovery. So when we
have found out the excessive freedom which Turner
allowed himself ; when we have discovered that he is not
to be trusted for the representation of any object, however
important — that his chiaroscuro, though effective, is
arbitrary, and his color, though brilliant, is false ; when
we have quite satisfied ourselves, in a word, that he is a
poet, and not an architectural draughtsman, or an imitator
of nature, is that a reason why we should not enjoy the
poems ? There is a wide difference, I grant, between the
pleasure of real belief and the pleasure of confessed
imagination : the first belongs to imaginative ignorance,
and is only possible for the uncritical ; the second belongs
to a state of knowledge, and is only possible for those
in whom the acquisition of knowledge has not deadened
the imaginative faculties. Show the ** Rivers of France '*
to a boy who has the natural faculties which perceive
beauty, but who' is still innocent of criticism, he will
believe the drawings to be true, and think as he dreams
over them that a day may come when he will visit these
enchanting scenes. Show them to a real critic, and he
will not accept for fact a single statement made by the
draughtsman from beginning to end, but he will say,

The Rivers of France — Tumerian Charm, 257

" The poetic power is here/' and then he will yield to its
influence, and dream also in his own way — not, like the
boy, in simple faith, but in the pleasant make-believe
faith which is all that the poet asks of us.

" Who believes me shall behold

« « , « « •

Only believe me. Ye believe ?

Appears
Verona

The worst passages in Turner, as in Milton and Words-
worth, are the matter-of-fact passages, where the poetic
faculty has not acted with sufficient energy to fuse the
material. In landscape-painting, this danger is greatest
in proximity to the foreground, and in the " Rivers of
France ** the foregrounds are often prosaic and unpleas-
ant when the material is of an inconvenient kind, such
as angular steps, logs of wood, and pieces of barren shore
which had to be covered with figures to hide their want
of interest. The distances are always poetical, full of
exquisite invention of distant detail, and of minute
beauties in which the spectator is constantly making fresh
discoveries. The town subjects, in which there is little or
no distance, are the least satisfactory. The St, Juliaiisj
Tours, in which all the material is matter -_of- fact —
a church quite near, a diligence with horses and people
— is a subject unsuited to Turner's genius, painfully
exhibiting his deficiencies as a draughtsman ;'the distant
view of Rouen, with its vastness of extent and mystery
of distance, full of minute indications, all of which set
the imagination to work immediately, is, on the contrary,
precisely one of those subjects in which he has had no

'7

258 The Life of J, M, W, Turner.

rival. Some of the finest things in the volume are
amongst the simplest ; the Clairmont, for example, with
its chdteau perched on a rocky height with a fine hollow
of wooded land behind it. All is simple in this compo-
sition ; the land is in large masses, the boats are few, and
there is a single star in the calm evening sky. In every
instance where a long sweep of river has been attempted
the result is a striking success, that being one of the
characteristics of French scenery by which Turner was
most powerfully impressed. His drawing of the forms
of land, coteaux and plains, is always beautiful, though
the height of the coteaux is generally exaggerated, and
nothing can surpass the exquisite sense of mystery with
which Turner finds the outline of a remote rise of land
and loses it again. His use of cloud, of smoke or steam
from chimneys or boats, is admirable, both near and in
the distance, and he avails himself of it in the most
cunning manner to lighten masses which might otherwise
appear heavy or monotonous. Sky and water, under very
varied effects, are never less than exquisite. The system
of light-and-shade, as usual with Turner, is delicate and
subtle, but arbitrary. He will observe most minute dis-
tinctions of tone and rely far more upon them than on
vulgar oppositions of black and white ; but at the same
time he will not be bound by scientific truth. Shadows
are cast just where he wants them, whether there is any
luminary to cast the shadows or not, and when the
luminary is there it generally throws the shadow in quite
impossible positions.

Turner understood some aspects of French scenery

The Rivers of France. — Tumerian Charm, 259

with peculiar sympathy and felicity, but there is much
in French landscape character which lies outside of
Turner's range, and has been discovered gradually by the
affectionate explorations of the native painters. The
chief distinctions between his work and theirs may be
expressed as follows. He was interested chiefly in towns
and in landscape distances ; they avoid the towns (with
a few exceptions) and attach themselves to rustic sub-
jects, the main interest of which lies either in the fore-
ground or in the middle distance. They have also a
certain simplicity and earnestness of sentiments which
were generally wanting in Turner, who loved elaboration,
quantity, and brilliance. Turner's view of France is the
view rather of a traveller than a resident. The view
taken by the French landscape-painters themselves has,
in almost in all cases, been curiously (if I may use the
word in this uncommon application) residential. Oqe of
the best of them, who lives within a morning's drive of
one of the finest parts of the Loire, never paints the
Loire and its magnificent distances at all, but confines
himself to the little rustic bits within a mile of his own
house, which is in a retired part/)f the country, buried
in dense woods. This is what I call the residential spirit
in an artist. It acts, to the letter, on Longfellow's
advice :

" That is best which lieth nearest :
Shape from that thy work of art."

CHAPTER XIII.

Childe Harold's Pilgdmage. — Turner's technical carelessness. — ;The golden
Bough. — The Venice pictures. — An American criticism. — French enthu-
siasm. — Illustrations to Milton. — Mercury and Argus. — The Phryne. —
Turner and Mr. Bohn. — Switzerland and Italy. — The Agrippina. — Illus-
trations to " The Epicurean."

TT is not necessary to mention every one of Turner's
pictures in the course of this biography, which, if that
were done, would be likely to become a catalogue. I may
also be pardoned for not saying much about pictures
which leave me simply indifferent, such as the Caligula's
Palace and Bridge^ which, in spite of its fine trees and
bright effect of sunshine behind architecture, is too obvi-
ously artificial, too devoid of any true inspiration, for
much aesthetic satisfaction or enjoyment. This picture
was exhibited in 183 1, and it belongs to the somewhat un-
decided time in which the artist's genius had not yet
delivered itself from what may be called the piled-up
sublimities. In 1832 the painter exhibited a much more
memorable work, entitled Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
{Italy). The conception of this picture was very broadly
comprehensive. Turner set himself the difficult, yet not
impossible, task of representing, in a single important
work, a r^sum^ of what was most characteristic of Italian

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. 261

scenery. Such a scheme, notwithstanding its difficulties,
was far better adapted to the imaginative intellect of the
artist than the representation of particular localities. It
gave his inspiration free play, entirely emancipated him
from even the slight restraint of his own kind of topog-
raphy, and left him face to face with a problem which he
was more competent to deal with than any other artist.
The allusion to "Childe Harold" refers particularly to
the twenty-sixth stanza of the fourth canto, which was
quoted in the Academy catalogue :

" And now, fair Italy I
Thou art the garden of the world, the home
Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree ;
Even in thy desert, what is like to thee ?
Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste
More rich than other clime*s fertility ;
Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced
With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced."

Turner's conception of this typical Italy included a
mountainous distance, the distances in Italy being very
generally mountainous ; an interesting middle distance,
with hill and wood and water, plenty of buildings, partly
ruinous, in memory of the past ; and a foreground, with a
stone-pine which struck the artist as the most character-
istic Italian tree, and figures enjoying the sweet warm
southern evening, in the southern manner, with dancing
and festivity in the open air. This picture belongs to a
category of works which it is perfect folly to criticise ; for
the critical spirit, however useful and even necessary may
be the services which it renders, is always a spirit of
reserve, of caution, of investigation, whilst to enjoy great

262 The Life of y, M, W, Turner,

poems we need simply to tune our feelings into unison
with those of the poet himself, and let them vibrate sym-
pathetically as the strings of a piano vibrate in answer to
the notes of a violinist. The motive of the picture was
not to astonish by grandeur, but to charm by what is
loveliest in landscape ; and so there is in it little or
nothing of sublimity except the moderate sublimity of the
hill to the left whose summit is crowned with buildings,
and the quiet kind of sublimity which belongs to ruin
always. Soft outlines melting in the distant atmosphere ;
gentle curves of earth everywhere ; rich masses of remoter
foliage, and luxuriant vegetation in the foreground ; these
of themselves would suggest ideas of beauty, but they are
sustained and accompanied by the tenderest, most deli-
cate execution, and by a fortunate sureness of taste in the
treatment of every detail. Unhappily, the picture is far
from being in a satisfactory material condition.

Turner's disregard for the permanence of his work was
simply absolute ; he seems to have been indifferent to that
most valuable of all sciences for a painter, the knowledge
of pigments in their material effects upon each other.
His work gained greatly in refinement as he advanced in
art, but it lost in material substance, so that the heavy
early pictures, the brown and gray works executed when
the painter was as yet only feeling his way timidly to
color, are often the best preserved. In later life he got
into a fatal way of treating oil as if it had been water-
color, with a recklessness of everything but the immediate
effect, which it would be difficult to parallel in the history
of the great old masters, though several moderns have

Turner's Technical Carelessness, 263

been equally reckless, if reckless in other ways. Turner's
technical sins may be classed in two categories : he did
not care what colors he used, and he did not care about
the material consequences of his manner of using them.
He would employ pigments which are known to be un-
safe, and he would lay his tints on the canvas without
taking into consideration results which may be predicted
with all the certainty of science. The art of painting a
picture which shall last five hundred years is by this time
clearly understood ; the permanent pigments are known,
and so are the fugitive and mutually destructive pigments ;
we are able, also, to calculate with certainty on many
effects of method in painting — we know that a thin coat
of paint which perfectly conceals what is beneath it when
it is first laid on will in course of time no longer do so
with the same completeness ; and although we may not be
able to determine beforehand all the innumerable and
highly complex effects of technical imprudences, we can
at least avoid them.

Most unfortunately for Turner, and for all who value
his art, he could not endure the slight restraints which
technical wisdom imposes upon a painter. He gave his
genius lidre carri^re, as if pigments had required no more
care in their management than washes of Indian ink;
and by one of the strangest contradictions ever exhibited
by inconsistent human nature, at the very time when he
was beginning to form great projects for the establish-
ment of his posthumous fame, he refused to take the
simple, easy, and well-known precautions which would
have secured the permanence of those very works on

264 The Life of J. Mr W. Turner.

which his fame depended. The Childe Harold picture
has gone to pieces. The changes in certain portions of
the work are painfully evident, and although it may still
be enjoyed, it is only with that melancholy pleasure that
we take in spoiled and ruined things which have once
been ineffably exquisite.

A picture of less importance, but not entirely dissimilar
in character, Lake AvemuSy the Fates and the Golden
Bough, was exhibited in 1834, and afterwards purchased
by Mr. Vernon, who bequeathed it to the nation along
with the other pictures in his gallery. Here, too, we have
an Italian scene, with a stone-pine in the foreground,
water and richly-wooded land in the middle distance, and
pale hills or mountains far away. The subject is from
the sixth book of the ^Eneid in the page following the
universally known bit :

** Facilis descensus Averno ;
Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis :
Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras
Hoc opus, hie labor est."

The golden bough was a branch which, when plucked,
enabled the bearer to visit the infernal regions safely and
come back to the light of day.

" Latet arbore opaca
Aureus et foliis et lento vimine ramus,
Junoni infernae dictus sacer ; hunc tegit omnis
Lucus et obscuris claudunt convallibus umbrae. , "^

Sed non ante datur telluris operta subire,
Auricomos quamquis decerpserit arbore fetus.**

Turner liked to give a poetical association to his pic-
tures, and in this instance he was more than usually

The Golden Bough, 26$

happy, for The Golden Bough is as pretty a title as a land-
scape-painter could find, whilst Avemus is, at the same
time, interesting for its natural beauty and curiosity, and
just a little awful for its mythological attributes, even yet
not wholly incredible by the cultivated imagination. The
painter, however, so treated his subject that the pale blue
waters of Avernus, sleeping so calmly in their deep basin,
scarcely recall to us, as we see them in the picture, that
dark river Acheron, from which they were believed to
rise. The only motive of the painter appears to have
been beauty ; the beauty of a fair Italian landscape, ideal-
ized to the utmost by the power of his own genius. The
pictures of this class are, I believe, the most perfect and
complete expression ever given by Turner to his sense of
charm and loveliness in landscape, as distinguished from
his sterner delight in the sublime. No one who has not
tried to paint, and tried seriously and long, can estimate
justly the delicacy of tone and color in these pictures, the
exquisiteness of the transitions in the lightest passages,
and the sustained refinement which could carry the artist
safely over twenty or thirty square feet of canvas, when
the slightest failure would have shown as an intolerable
blot upon his work. If at this time of his life, when he
had formed his own style, and overcome the difficulties of
execution. Turner could have been wisely directed in the
knowledge which ensures the permanence of a picture,
and encouraged to produce an important but limited
series of great works to illustrate what had most impressed
him in all Europe, as the Childe Harold and The Golden
Bough illustrate the landscape of Italy, he would have left

266 The Life of y, M. IV. Turner.

behind him the most magnificent of monuments and the
best expression of his genius.

Mr. Vernon, who bought TAe Golden Bought also bought
a picture of Venice in the same Academy Exhibition,
Venice ; the Canal of the Ciudecca, and he possessed an-
other Venice of Turner exhibited in 1833. These Venices
were afterwards succeeded by many others, for as Turner
grew older, his increasing taste for brilliant color led him
to think more and more of that splendid city which excels
all others so especially in her coloring. A city of rose
and white, rising out of an emerald sea against a sky of
sapphire, here, in a few words, are the chief elements of
Venetian color. It may interest the reader to see some
notes by an observant writer who has lived much in
Venice, but whose impressions are quite independent of
Turner's, to whom he never refers, and whose work is
probably all but unknown to him. M. Henry Havard, in
his book on Amsterdam and Venice, has many descrip-
tions of the city on the Adriatic from various points of
view, descriptions always full of color. Here are three
or four of them.

I. Venice from a Distance. — Searching along the hori-
zon, trying to penetrate the haze, we try to distinguish
the marvellous city from the clouds in which she lies
hidden. Suddenly above the green waters, in front of
the blue mountains whose feet are lost in mist, we see
her rise. She glitters in the midst of the islands which
surround her. Her palaces of blue and white seem to
float on the Adriatic. She reminds us of a necklace of
pearls lying on a cloth of emerald velvet.

The Venice Pictures, 267

2. A Nearer View, — The forms do not yet appear
with clearness and precision ; there are no exact out-
lines, nothing but patches of rose and white which are
relieved against a blue horizon of an exquisite softness
and on the green waves which become silvery in the
sunshine.

3. Nearer Still. — As we approach, all. this delightful
chaos becomes less confused ; the campaniles detach
their delicate profiles and the domes their obesity ; the
lace-like balconies and oriental roofs of the palaces are
cut out more clearly, the outlines are more plainly visible,
but the tones remaia unchanged. The city preserves her
tints of white and rose, the sky and sea their tints of blue
and green.

The next description brings us within the city, and we
see the great boats with their colored sails, the stone
quays, and the marble bridges, the red campaniles, the
rose-colored brickwork and the white marble, all close at
hand. " It is a marvellous concert of the richest colors,
a clashing of the liveliest and most joyous tints."

In the notes supplied by Mr. William Wyld for his
biography in the Portfolio published in 1877, he gave
a short description of Venice without having read M.
Havard's book, and the two descriptions coincide exactly.
After mentioning the advantages of splendid costume
enjoyed by the Venetian painters as a daily spectacle in
the public places, he went on to say :

"Then they had, too, the lovely Italian skies, and the
shining silvery and rose-colored palaces glancing in the

268 The Life of J. M, W. Turner.

sun, which, with the emerald waters beneath, were always
in readiness as backgrounds to their compositions."

Most of Turner's Venice pictures are attempts to
convey, not exactly the sensation of color given by
Venice itself, but an equivalent sensation ; and although
the Venices purchased by Mr. Vernon are already a wild
extravagance in comparison with the sober but prosaic
work of Canaletto, they were afterwards surpassed in
their own direction by his latest Venices. He began to
exhibit Venetian subjects in 1833, and continued, with
intervals, till 1845. The whole of these pictures belong
to his late manner, and some amongst them to his latest.
The characteristics which they have in common are
splendor of color and carelessness of form ; the color
being in most instances really founded upon the true
Venetian color as we have just seen it repeatedly de-
scribed, but worked up to the utmost brilliance which the
palette would allow, the forms simply sketched, exactly on
the principles of the artist's own free sketching in water-
colors. To get the brilliance the painter is believed to
have adopted the following method, which has been used
with success in copying his pictures of this class. It is
believed, and with probability, that he first blocked out the
picture almost entirely in pure white, with only some
very pale tinting just to mark the position of the objects,
and that this white preparation was thick and loaded from
the beginning. On this he afterwards painted thinly in
oil or water-color, or both, so that the brilliance of the
white shone through the color and -gave it that very lumi-

The Venice Pictures. 269

nous quality which it possesses. This is simply a return
to the early Flemish practice of painting thinly on a light
ground, with this difference, however, that Turner made a
fresh ground of his own between the canvas and his
bright colors, and that the modelling of the impasto with
the brush was done in this thick white. The result was
to unite the brilliance of water-color to the varied and rich
surface of massive oil-painting.

The Venice pictures exhibited in the Academy from
1833, and now in the National Gallery, number in all
eleven canvases. One of the finest of these. The Sun of
Venice going to Sea, was etched by M. Gaucherel for the
Portfolio in 1874, and published in the November number
of that year. The etching has the spirit of the original
picture, and is an excellent reminder for those who have
seen it, but it can, of course, give no idea of the brilliant
color which is the principal artistic motive of the paint-
ing, and which is concentrated in the painted sail of the
fishing-boat. An etching of The Approach to Venice, by
M. Brunet-Debaines, appeared in the Portfolio for Sep-
tember, 1875. The subject is a view of the canal of the
Giudecca, with Fusina in the distance. The reader may
judge from this etching how Turner treated the materials
of Venice, the spaces of the water, the boats, and the
buildings. The sense of space and distance on water
surface is admirably expressed in this subject; the boats
are made to serve the artist's purpose in composition,
both by the way he has placed them and by their re-
flections, and the buildings are treated in Turner's usual
arbitrary manner with his disdain of architecture and

270 The Life of y, M. W, Turner,

topography. Some confusion has been created by giving
the title The Approach to Venice to a drawing from which
a picture was painted which is called San Benedetto, whilst
there is another picture called The Approach to Venice,
which is in a state of ruin from technical causes. Whilst
describing the San Benedetto picture, Mr. Ruskin says
first that the title is a mistake, as no such church could
be included in the view, and then he proceeds to recog-
nize a general truth of Venetian character in it :

** The buildings on the right are also, for the most part,
imaginary in their details, especially in the pretty bridge
which connects two of their masses : and yet, without one
single accurate detail, the picture is the likest thing to
what it is meant for — the looking out of the Giudecca
landwards at sunset — of all that I have ever seen. The
buildings have, in reality, that proportion and character
of mass, as one glides up the centre of the tide stream :
they float exactly in that strange, mirageful, wistful way
in the sea-mist — rosy ghosts of houses without founda-
tions ; the blue line of the poplars and copse about the
Fusina marshes shows itself just in that way on the hori-
zon ; the flowing gold of the water, and quiet gold of the
air, face and reflect each other just so ; the boats rest so,
with their black prows poised in the midst of the amber
flame, or glide by so, the boatman stretched far* aslope
upon his deep-laid oar."

The success of Turner's later method of coloring has
been questioned by some critics, who seem to be especi-
ally offended by the crudeness of the whites. The
following may be taken as a fair example of these criti-

An American Criticism, 271

cisms ; it is from an American writer who has travelled a
good deal in Europe :

" In these pictures Turner appears to have departed
from all those qualities which make his water-colors so
valuable. There is nothing of Nature in them. Occa-
sionally some familiar object is suggested ; but there is
no certainty, even after close study, of the motive, and
scarcely of the form. With many^ the time chosen —
especially in the Venetian pictures — is when the sun-
light is strongest, and we naturally fly from its glare. If
his ambition were to rival Nature's intensest light, he has,
as all painters must, signally failed. The pictures present
glaring white surfaces, spotted with positive colors, laid
on with a dash of the brush or the fingers, with little or
no attention to form ; an intense blue for the upper sky,
but all color opaque, and the canvas so heavily loaded
that in many places the paint has dried, cracked, and
dropped off. . . . We want luminous and liquid air, and
not plain white or blue paint, which Turner has given.
His skies are spotty and hard. They do not illuminate.
The bright atmospherical colors should appear of pris-
matic tenderness of outline and texture, as in the rain-
bow, arching space. Solid pigments will not express the
qualities of either sky, flesh, or water."

Is this criticism just } It is, I think, not a bad piece
of criticism. The writer has something to say, and does
not simply confine himself to condemnation without
giving his reasons. His eyes have been really offended
by the style of painting which I have just endeavored
to describe, and he states the reasons for the offence.

2/2 The Life of y, M, W. Turner,

His feeling is one which I constantly observe in people
who have some taste for art, but do not easily read its
strongest language. For many years such people kept
etching in a state of profound unpopularity because they
were offended by its strength of expression, and even at
the present day they are angry at what is really the most
powerful work. They look upon the fine arts as an imi-
tation of nature, not as an utterance of human genius:
and when the utterance reaches a certain pitch of inten-
sity it seems to them a bad imitation — coarse and harsh
and crude. The right theory was stated by Burger in
1863, when he said :

" In the works which interest us the authors substitute
themselves, so to speak, for nature. However common-
place the natural material may be, their perception of it
is special and rare. When Chardin has painted a glass,
it is Chardin whom we admire in the glass which he has
painted. It is the genius of Rembrandt which we admire
in the profound and singular character which he has im-
pressed upon the head, whatever it may have been which
served him for a model. We think, * Ah ! did they see
like that, and how simple or how fantastic it is in expres-
sion and execution ! * "

Now the mistake of the American critic is to have
condemned the Venetian pictures of Turner because they
are not imitations of nature. The question is not whether
they are close imitations of nature, but whether they have
the art-power of conveying a profound impression, and
that they unquestionably have.

French Efttkusiasm, 27J

Some years ago several eminent French etchers came
over to London for the purpose of executing plates from
pictures in the National Gallery. They were all men of
considerable experience in art, perfectly familiar with the
old masters, and with as much modern art as may be seen
in Paris ; some of them were painters as well as etchers,
and therefore practically acquainted with the use of oil
color. Thus prepared, and eager to make acquaintance
with our national collection, they went to Trafalgar
Square. It would be difficult to exaggerate the effect
which the Turner pictures produced on their minds. It
was not mere critical approbation, not merely the respect-
ful attention usually given to a great master, it was the
passionate enthusiasm with which highly educated and
very sensitive persons acknowledged a new, strange,
irresistible influence in the fine arts, the sort of enthusi-
asm which was awakened by the verses of Byron and the
violin-playing of Paganini. All these Frenchmen, what-
ever had been their previous speciality in art — whether
they had been etchers of the figure, or of architecture, or
of landscape — asked to be employed in the interpretation
of Turner; and the pictures which they most desire to
etch were not those of what has been considered his
sober, and sane, and orthodox time, but such things as
the later Venices and those daring experiments in light
and color which have so often been spoken of as little
better than the freaks of a gifted madman. Here, then,
is evidence, if all other evidence were wanting, that these
pictures have the one great power of all genuine works of
art, as distinguished from simple imitations of nature, the
18

274 ^^^ ^{f^ of y. M, W. Turner,

power which excites and arouses the artistic suscepti-
bilities.

Again, the offensiveness of what may be called tech-
nical excesses, such as excessive loading, for example,
or the excessive fulness or richness of a glaze, seems to
diminish in exact proportion to the artistic culture of the
spectator. I mean that the partially cultivated spectator,
such as the critic quoted above, will be offended by a
loading, and see in it nothing but thick paint, when a
trained eye like that of M. Gaucherel or M. Brunet-
Debaines will not be offended at all. I believe the reason
to be that the one stops at the mere paint and the other
goes at once far beyond it, to the artistic conception
which the paint is intended to convey.

In 1835 appeared Macerone's edition of Milton, in
seven volumes, and Tegg's one -volume edition of the
poems, in foolscap octavo. Turner illustrated the poems
for these editions with seven vignettes, which are gene-
rally considered, and rightly, amongst the least success-
ful of his inventions. There is a certain materialism in
Milton himself which a critical reader has considerable
difficulty in reconciling with the nature of his subject,
and yet it is easier to do this in reading a poem than in
looking at a drawing, for the imagination is less exacting
about material possibilities than the eye. One of the
most unfortunate of the vignettes was the Mustering of
the Warrior Angels, a mixture of unaccountable astron-
omy and bad figure-drawing, all rendered with that entire
unsatisfactoriness which is the consequence of setting
every natural law and possibility at defiance. Another

Illustrations to Milton, 275

lamentable attempt was The Temptation on the Pinnacle^
a most difficult subject to treat, and treated in such a
manner that one cannot venture to describe the drawing
as it really is. These failures are the more provoking
that Milton abounds in fine subjects for an imaginative
landscape-painter. How suggestive, for example are the
lines :

" Far off from these, a slow and silent stream^
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her watery labyrinth.^*

And those, again, which follow almost immediately :

" Beyond this flood a frozen continent
ZJes, dark and wildy beat tvith perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail."

The best of the illustrations to Milton are the St
Michael's Mount, with the shipwreck of Lycidas, and the
Ludlow Castle, with the rising of the water nymphs.
Here the painter was brought down to the real earth and
to his native land, and gained strength accordingly.

It was a custom of the classical school of landscape-
painters to take subjects from the legends of antiquity,
partly, no doubt, for the practical purpose of giving titles
to their pictures, and also because the legends are in
themselves poetical, and lend some poetry of association
to the landscape with which the craft of the painter has
connected them. Claude was fond of doing this, as we all
know from the Claudes in our own National Gallery,
almost all of which are associated with ancient legend or
history. The story of Cephalus and Procris is a good one
for this purpose, because the unhappy accident which

276 The Life of J. M, W, Turner,

ended fatally for Procris took place in a wood, and Claude
delighted in sylvan subjects. The story of Mercury and
Argus is, perhaps, even more available for the landscape-
painter, as the cow, lo, must be introduced, and a cow is
a landscape-painter's animal. Claude painted a picture
of Mercury and Argus which was one of a pair, the other
being Juno entrusting to Argus the guardianship of lOy
and amongst Claude's etchings is one of Mercury and
Argus, rather a pale etching, with a temple to the right,
and a distant view of a bay with hills beyond it, seen
between two groups of trees.

Besides these works of Claude there are others in
illustration of the same subject by the old painters ; for
example, Rubens painted it four times, as his taste for
landscape and the naked figure, and his skill in both, gave
him an interest in putting the two together. These
examples, but especially that of Claude, may have in-
duced Turner to try his strength on the same story ;
and whatever may be said of the cow and figures, it
would be difficult, in elder art, to find it illustrated with
such poetic feeling and such a happy mixture of natural
and artistic beauty. It is to be regretted that the pic-
ture, which was purchased by Mr. Naylor, is not in the
National Gallery, but it is widely known through the
engraving, one of the most luminous of the larger plates
ever executed from Turner's pictures. This work pro-
duced such a strong impression on Mr. Ruskin that he
referred to it no less than nine times in "Modern
Painters." Like Rubens, Turner introduced a rivulet in
his landscape, finding its way over the irregular ground.

Mercury and Argus, 277

This stream is well described by Mr. Ruskin in a few
words :

" In coming down to us, we see it stopping twice in two
quiet and glassy pools, upon which the drinking cattle
cast an unstirred image. From the nearest of these the
water leaps in three cascades into another basin close to
us ; it trickles in silver threads through the leaves at its
edge, and falls tinkling and splashing (though in con-
siderable body) into the pool, stirring its quiet surface, at
which a bird is stooping to drink, with concentric and
curdling ripples, which divide round the stone at its
farthest border, and descend in sparkling foam over the
lip of the basin."

The picture was one of the richest and fullest of those
produced in Turner's complete maturity, the quantity of
detail in it was immense, but detail fused and harmonized
into unity. The sun is the centre of the picture, or
nearly so, and the light brilliant. Great importance is
given to foliage, especially to one great tree, which has
the Turnerian pear-shape. I may observe that about this
time of his career Turner had a fancy for a great tree,
sometimes very much isolated. He probably found it
convenient to throw back the sky and distance ; and, by
his system of aerial perspective, which confined the
extreme darks to the immediate foreground, a tree did not
cut so crudely against the sky as it does in ordinary
drawing or in photographs. Turner had also, as I have
explained elsewhere with reference to the fir on the left
in Crossing the Brooke certain artifices in the treatment of

2/8 The Life of J, M, W. Turner.

such material which mitigated what might have been
objectionable without them. Not only was the tree
generally nearer in tone to the sky than it would have
been in nature, but the branches farthest from the spec-
tator, and consequently nearest to the sky, were made
still paler in proportion as a compensation for stereoscopic
effect, which painting cannot render. The general result
of this artifice was that, however isolated a tree may be
in one of Turner's landscapes painted in his maturity, it
is never by any chance like an object appliqu^y but forms
an integral part of the material between the spectator and
the horizon.

A magnificent instance of his treatment of trees when
his art was fully developed is the picture of Phryne going
to the Public Bath as Venus, I well remember how the
combined grace and energy of the branch drawing in this
picture seemed to me, before I knew the forest of Fon-
tainebleau, an idealization of sylvan beauty beyond the
possibilities of nature ; and how, when I came almost
directly from Fontainebleau to the National Gallery, I
found in the picture the power, the freedom, the elegance
which astonish us in the noblest Fontainebleau trees, and
give the visitor to that wonderful place an entirely new
conception of what sylvan magnificence may be. It is
useless to expatiate farther upon the subject, for no con-
ception of the trees in the Phryne can be given without
illustration, and even that, on a reduced scale, would be
inadequate, as the picture itself is more than six feet
high, and drawn with such delicate modulation in all its
curves that every inch of it is a study. Again, the most

The Phryne, 279

subtle etching or engraving would fail to render ade-
quately the play of light in the foliage and amongst the
branches, not to speak of the elaborate distances which
are as full of material as they can be. The Phryne is
certainly one of the very greatest pictures of Turner's
full maturity. It was first exhibited in 1838, and shows
signs of over-ripeness in the figures more than in any-
thing else.

The decay of Turner's art was of a character quite
peculiar to him. He is the only painter whose scheme
of color in the decline of life had a morbid tendency to
white and scarlet — white for the light, scarlet for the
shade — a combination as unnatural as it is glaring. You
may see this already in the figures of the PhrynCy and to
some exteht they undoubtedly spoil the picture, but they
will not prevent a cultivated critic from enjoying the
work as a whole. Something, too, may be said in favor
even of the figures themselves, defective as they may be.
Their faults are of a kind which the popular eye easily
detects, their merits are evident only to a few. They are
well composed, they take their place in the picture, and
add to' the impression of life and splendor which is already
partly created by the architecture of the baths. Besides
this, as Mr. Ruskin has remarked, '*The infinitudes of
gradation, and accurately reflected color, which Turner
has wrought into these strange figure groups, are nearly
as admirable as the other portions of the work."

In 1838 an incident occurred which throws some light
both on Turner's policy in matters of business, and on
the degree of success which attended one of the most

28o The Life of J, M. W. Turner.

important series of engravings from his works. In the
biographical sketch by Mr. Alaric Watts, which was pub-
lished in Bohn's edition, an account is given of a transac-
tion in which Turner bought up a series of copper-plates
— those of the " England and Wales '* — in. order to
prevent them from passing into the hands of a publisher,
who might have worn them out and issued impressions of
a quality injurious to the painter's reputation. The
** England and Wales " series had not been a commercial
success, so the work was brought to an abrupt conclusion
in 1838, and it was decided to sell off the stock and
copper-plates, and balance the accounts. The whole was
offered to Mr. Bohn, the publisher, for ;^3000, and he
offered j^28cx), but would not go any farther, so it was
decided to put the property up to auction: "After
extensive advertising,*' says Mr. Watts, " the day and
hour of sale had arrived, when, just at the moment the
auctioneer was about to mount his rostrum, Mr. Turner
stepped in, and bought it privately, at the reserved price
of ;;^3000, much to the vexation of many who had come
prepared to buy portions of it." Turner met Mr. Bohn
at the sale, and told him, in his gruff way, that he had
taken care to prevent him from selling cheap prints from
the coppers, adding the expression of a general determi-
nation, " No more of my plates shall be worn to shadows.'*
Mr. Bohn replied that his chief object was not the coppers,
but the large printed stock. Oh ! very well ; I don't
want the stock, I only want to keep the coppers out
of your clutches." So far mollified, the great artist
positively went so far as to invite Mr. Bohn to break-

Turner and Mr, Bokn. 281

fast the next morning, with a view of doing business.
The publisher kept the appointment at nine, but there
was no breakfast, and Turner asked as much for the
impressions alone as he had just given for the impressions
and coppers both together. This Mr. Bohn thought un-
reasonable, so he left the stock on the painter's hands.
It remained at Queen Anne Street till after Turner's
death, eating up interest and slowly deteriorating.

It is said that Turner visited Switzerland in 1838 ; but
I am, as usual, unable to give the reader any details of
his tour. The effect of Switzerland on his mind is much
more visible in his sketches and water -color drawings
than in his oil pictures. In the whole catalogue of
pictures exhibited by him at the Royal Academy and the
British Institution I only find three Swiss subjects : we
all know how much more numerous are his Italian
pictures. Notwithstanding the magnificence of Swiss
scenery, it is not generally popular amongst artists, and
a very experienced London picture-dealer told me that it
is not popular amongst the purchasers of landscapes. In
most cases a painter may shrink from Swiss scenery,
simply because he finds a difficulty in dealing with its
vastness ; but vastness was one of Turner's strong points
in art, and he drew mountains with great knowledge. The'
lake of Lucerne is said to have been one of the places
which gained the strongest hold upon his affections, yet
I believe he only exhibited one oil picture of it in the
whole course of his life. The historic traditions of Italy
seem to have drawn him strongly to Italian material, and
the traditions of landscape art may have had the same

282 The Life of J. M. W. Turner,

efiFect. Qaude, whom Turner imitated and emulated,
painted Italian scenery, and so did the other classical
landscape painters, but they never painted Switzerland.
In 1838 and 1839 Italy was quite predominant in Turner's
mind. In 1838 he exhibited Ancient Italy — Ovid ban-
ished from Romey and Modem Italy — the Pifferari, In
1839 ^^ followed up the idea by painting ancient and
modern Rome under the following rather elaborate titles :

"Ancient Rome. — Agrippina Landing with the Ashes
of Germanicus. The Triumphal Bridge an^d Palace of the
Ccesars restored,

** * The clear stream,
Aye, the yellow Tiber glimmers to her beam
Even while the sun is setting.'

" Modern Rome. — Campo Vaccino.

" * The moon is up, and yet it is not night ;

The sun as yet divides the day with her.* — Lord Byron."

Besides these pictures there was one in illustration of
Ovid (Pluto carrying off Proserpine) y and one representing
Cicero at his villa.

An etching, with aquatint, of the Agrippina was pub-
lished in the Portfolio for February, 1878, and by its help
the reader may easily follow what I have to say of the
picture. It is fine composition of its class, giving a grand
idea of the enormous palace of the Caesars, in which
Tiberius and Augusta remained invisible whilst the people
of Rome received Agrippina with the most touching
demonstrations of sympathy and sorrow. The archi-
tectural invention in the palace is not very elaborate, and

The Agrippina, zZl

it may be open to the criticism of architects, but the ideas
of vastness, majesty, and a haughty domination are con-
veyed very impressively. The smaller masses are not
altogether so fortunate ; they have an arranged look, like
the architecture in Martin's pictures ; and one of theni,
that above the bridge, is in very bad perspective. The
scene is lighted by slanting rays of sunset, which, with
the cast shadows and the mist in the atmosphere, afforded
Turner an opportunity for one of his poetical effects of
light, shadow, and reflection.

The picture will: not bear historical criticism. From
the title which Turner gave it, he evidently believed (or
supposed, intentionally, for his own convenience) that
Agrippina landed at Rome. She really landed at Brun-
dusium, and travelled to Rome by the Appian Way, along
which Drusus, with Claudius and the children of Ger-
manicus, who were in Rome, went as far as Terracina
to meet her. The whole description, as given by Tacitus,
implies an imposing entry into Rome by land on an in-
comparably vaster scale than the few groups of figures in
the picture. Turner, with his half-a-dozen people on the
right, his four boats on the left, with people in balconies
and on shore, renders the human interest of the scene so
inadequately, that we are driven to imagine it over again
for ourselves with the help , of the Roman historian.
There have been two great spectacles in modern times
which may help us to some conception of the real event.
When Nelson's remains were brought home to England
from Trafalgar, when the body of Napoleon was brought
to Paris from St Helena, popular emotion in England

284 The Life of y, M. W. Turner.

and France did not express itself by loitering groups on
the shores of the Thames and the Seine. The tide of
humanity came out like a flood, by thousands and tens of
thousands, filling the public place from side to side, the
long avenue from end to end. Yet there was a poignancy
of interest in the ancient event not equalled in either of
the modern ones. Nelson died prematurely, but was not
the victim of a murderer; Napoleon's ashes were not
carried in an urn by a never -injured Josephine. Show
us, O painter ! the bereaved wife as she came " bearing
the funeral urn,'* and the multitude in their fresh emotion,
strangers and kindred, men and women, recenies in dolore.
In 1839 Turner illustrated Moore's novel, **The Epicu-
rean," with four vignettes. The Garden^ The Ring, The
Nile, and The Chaplet, The Ring may be dismissed at
once as a wild fancy of a man swinging in the void,
surrounded by diabolical apparitions, a subject authorized
by the story, but not well chosen for illustration ; The
Chaplet is an interior of an Egyptian temple, not without
sublimity; The Nile is an impressive moonlight scene on
the river, with massive temples, stairs, and terraces ; and
The Garden is an attempt to realize the beauty of a garden
of the Epicureans at Athens, with a lake down in the
hollow, and a view of Athens, with the Acropolis beyond.
There are statues in the garden, and boats full of pleas-
ure-seekers on the lake; the whole scene glowing and
glittering in the sunshine of a summer afternoon. This
vignette and that of The Nile2LtQ quite sufficient evidence
that, in spite of the failure with the Milton vignettes
three years before, Turner still retained his remarkable

Illustrations to " The Epicurean^ 285

skill in dealing with this kind of design. The vignette of
The Garden, which only measures three and a half inches
by four, is a striking example of the power by which
Art can sometimes concentrate its materials. There is
enough in it to fill ^ large drawing, and as for the expres-
sion of the artist's conception (which is the chief purpose
of art), this is quite effectual. It transports us, I will
not say to the real Athens, but to the Turnerian Athens,
just as well as a large picture.

CHAPTER XIV.

The T^m^raire. — The Bacchus and Ariadne. — The Snow-storm. — ^Thc
Slave-Ship. — Latter years of Turner. — Pictures of 1842. — Tendency to
the formless. — Dregs of life. — Last excursion on the continent — Disabled.
— Turner's death. — Funeral at St. Paul's. — Turner's care for his own
fame. — Rivalry with Claude.

T^HE great work made public in 1839 was the T^m^-
raire. The entry in the Academy Catalogue is as
follows :

" The fighting T/m^raire tugged to her last berth to be
broken up, 1838."

" * The flag which braved the battle and the breeze
No longer owns her.' "

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the obvious wilfulness
in the lighting of this picture. With the sun and moon
where they are, it would not be possible for the vessels
to be so lighted ; but this may be granted as a painter's
license. Evidently Turner's object in this arbitrary light-
ing was to give the T^m^raire a sort of ghostly, unearthly
look, as if already more a melancholy vision of the past
than any present reality. Turner, with his love of the
sea and shipping, and his strong national feeling, took a
deeply pathetic interest in the old war -vessels of the
heroic time, the glorious days of Nelson ; and we who
of late years have seen so complete a revolution in the
building of war-ships — a revolution unfavorable alike to

The T^m^raire, 287

seamanship and to art — may admit that there were rea-
sons for such regrets as Turner's deeper than any that he
himself was aware of. Not only have the beautiful old
war-ships almost entirely disappeared, but they have left
no inheritors of their beauty. The same revolution which
has replaced the proud castle of the middle ages by the
low and ugly earthworks of modern fortification, has
substituted for the glorious battle -ship, with her high
freeboard, her tiers of guns, and magnificent display of
canvas, a variety of inventions in which beauty is super-
seded by grim utility and seamanship by machines. War-
ships in these days are not towed to their last rest at
sunset, but suddenly sent to it by a thrust of a consort's
snout.

The picture is, both in sentiment and execution, one of
the finest of the later works. The sky and water are
both magnificent, and the shipping, though not treated
with severe positive truth, is made to harmonize well
with the rest, and not stuck upon the canvas, as often
happens in the works of bad marine painters. The sun
sets in red, and the red, by the artist's craft, is made at
the same time both decided in hue and luminous — always
a great technical difficulty. Golden sunsets are easy in
comparison, as every painter knows. This picture has
more than once been associated by critics with the mag-
nificent Ulysses deriding Polyphemus^ which was painted
ten years earlier. Both are splendid in sky and water,
and both are florid in color. Mr. Ruskin's opinion is that
the period of Turner's central power, ** entirely developed
and entirely unabated, begins with the Ulysses and closes

288 The Life of J, M, W. Turner.

with the T/m/ratre.'* This decade had been a time of
immense industry for Turner. In that space he had
made more than four hundred drawings for the engraver,
had exhibited more than fifty pictures in the Royal
Academy, and had executed besides some thousands of
sketches, and probably many private commissions which
cannot easily be ascertained. It was the decade during
which he united a sufficient substance with poetry ; after
1839 he retained poetic power, but his works became
unsubstantial.

Mr. Thornbury, in his biography of Turner, informs us
that the subject of the T/m/raire was suggested to Turner
by Stanfield.

"In 1838 Turner was with Stanfield and a party of
brother -artists on one of those holiday excursions in
which he so delighted, probably to end with whitebait
and champagne at Greenwich. It was at these times
that Turner talked and joked his best, snatching now and
then a moment to print on his quick brain some tone of
sky, some gleam of water, some sprinkling light of oar,
some glancing sunshine cross-barring a sail. Suddenly
there moved down upon the artists* boat the grand old
vessel that had been taken prisoner at the Nile and that
led the van at Trafalgar. She loomed pale and ghostly*
and was being towed to her last moorings at Deptford by
a little fiery, puny steam-tug.

"'There's a fine subject. Turner,* said Stanfield."

After the close of the Academy Exhibition of 1839,
Turner decided never to sell the T/m/raire. The picture

The Bacchus and Ariadne, 289

was on what he called his two -hundred -guineas' size of
canvas, and an amateur would willingly have given more
than twice that sum, but Turner resolutely refused. He
probably intended the picture for the Turner-room in the
National Gallery, as soon as he perceived its relative
importance amongst his works.

Turner generally relied on his own resources even for
the arrangement of his figure groups, but in the circular
picture of Bacchus and Ariadne, which he exhibited in
1840, he frankly borrowed the principal figures from the
noble picture by Titian. Little else need be said of the
work, which is defective both in drawing and composition.
The figures, though perhaps not quite so shapeless as
those entirely invented by Turner, are less easily excused
— perhaps because they remind us too directly of their
too magnificent prototypes, and the composition is unsat-
isfactory because so obviously artificial.

It is unnecessary to dwell upon failures of this descrip-
tion, but this instance arrests one's attention, because it
follows so immediately after the triumph of the T/m^raire,
The painter had often done work in former years which
fell far below the level of his best, and this in a life of
such incessant industrial production was inevitable ; but
former failures had always been succeeded by splendid
recoveries of power, and were due far more frequently to
an unlucky choice of intractable or uninteresting subject
than to weakness in the artist himself. Now, however,
at the age of sixty-four, the great painter really entered
upon the period of his decline ; a decline of which it may
be truly saicj that although it afforded ample opportuni-

19

290 The Life of J. M, W, Turner,

ties for the cruelties of criticism, it proved, far more than
the cautious advance of his early manhood, the essentially
pictorial quality of his mind. For what in his last years
did he retain, and what did the enfeebled hand surrender ?
He retained color, reflection, mystery — the qualities
which only the most cultivated care for or apprehend : he
lost the firm grasp of objects, which is, I will not say the
infancy, but the early manhood, of the pictorial art. The
aspects of things are of far more consequence to a painter
than the realities, and the more he works the less the
actual substance affects him. For any one who under-
stands what painting is, how it deals with appearance and
not with substance, and how necessary, in order to paint
well, it is to see the appearance and the appearance only,
the later pictures of Turner are full of pathetic interest,
and are far indeed from being either ridiculous or con-
temptible. I do not pretend that they always render the
real appearances of nature, for they fall short of them in
many ways, but they always aim at the appearance and
never at the fact. Color and shade, light and reflection,
are the old painter's latest impressions and recollections
of that world of mystery and beauty in which he had
worked incessantly for fifty years. His very earliest work
had been as matter-of-fact as possible; his latest is a
vision of phenomena scarcely more substantial than the
tail of a comet, the arch of a rainbow, or the crimson
gleaming of the aurora borealis.

Let it not be supposed that those works of TuVner's
decline, however they may have exercised the wit of
critics and excited the amusement of visitors to the exhi-

The Snow-storm, 291

bition, were ever anything less than serious performances,
for him. The Snow-storm, for example (1842), afforded
the critics a precious opportunity for the exercise of their
art. They called it soapsuds and whitewash, the real sub-
ject being a steamer in a storm off a harbor-mouth making
signals and going by the lead. In this instance nothing
could be more serious than Turner's intention, which was
to render a storm as he had himself seen it one night when
the "Ariel *' left Harwich. Like Joseph Vernet, who, when
in a tempest off the island of Sardinia, had had himself
fastened to the mast to watch the effects. Turner, on this
occasion, " got the sailors to lash him to the mast to observe
it,"* and remained in that position for four hours. He did
not expect to escape, but had a curious sort of conscientious
feeling that it was his duty to record his impression if he
survived. The picture, then, was serious in purpose, and
not an invention, but a recollection of real nature. Tur-
ner was much hurt by the soapsuds and whitewash
criticism. " He was passing the evening at my father's
house," says Mr. Ruskin, "on the day this criticism came
out ; and after dinner, sitting in his arm-chair, I heard
him muttering low to himself at intervals,** Soapsuds and
whitewash ! ' again, and again, and again. At last I went
to him, asking ' why he minded what they said ? ' Then
he burst out : * Soapsuds and whitewash ! What would
they have } I wonder what they think the sea's like ? I
wish they'd been in it.'"

The Rev. W. Kingsley said that his mother, who had
been in such a scene on the coast of Holland, was much

* His own words to the Rev. W. Kingsley.

292 The Life of y, M, W. Turner,

struck with the truth of the Snow-storm when she first
saw it in Turner's private gallery. I may bear witness to
it also, having often been in rough weather at sea, and,
on one occasion, in a real winter tempest, when the main-
topmast was carried away and the sea-water swilled. down
into the engine-room, as nearly as possible extinguishing
the fires. Being interested in art, and proof against sea*
sickness, I have always employed such times in diligent
observation of natural phenomena, and can say with truth
that Turner's Snow-storm has always interested and never
offended me; and that although it is not possible to
imitate such phenomena as a Dutch painter would imitate
a bucket of water, still, if not imitated, they are fairly and
intelligently interpreted in the picture, however absurd it
may appear to those who have no experience of the fury
of nature or the difficulty of art. It may be answered that
a painter has no right to attempt such impossible sub-
jects ; but who are we, to define and limit his right to
paint } Effects which cannot be imitated may still, as in
this instance, be interpreted ; and a little knowledge, a
little indulgence of goodwill on our part, a little help from
our own memory and imagination, will complete what the
artist of necessity left imperfect, and make us feel with
him the grisly wildness of grim winter on the sea.

Another important sea picture of Turner's latter years
was the Slave-Ship y exhibited in 1840, with the following
title in the Academy Catalogue :

" Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying,
Typhoon coming on''

The Slave-Ship, 293

** Aloft all hands, strike the topmasts and belay ;
Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edge clouds
Declare the Typhpon's coming.
Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard
The dead and dying — ^ne*er heed their chains.
Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope I
Where is thy market now ? " — MS. Fallacies of Hope.

This picture became the property of Mr. Ruskin, who
wrote a fine description of the sea as Turner here repre-
sented it, and referred to the picture eleven times in
" Modern Painters." He afterwards sold it, and it went
to America. After being exhibited in New York in 1876,
where it "failed to make the impression expected,*'* it
went to Boston, where it created a great sensation and
stirred up an eager and vehement controversy. A Boston
correspondent was so kind as to send me some of the
long letters published during this period of active hostili-
ties, which proved that our American cousins can take a
very lively interest in artistic matters. The following
opinion, expressed by an intelligent and accomplished
American artist, Mr. George Inness, is interesting for its
frankness :

"Turner's Slave -Ship is the most infernal piece of
clap-trap ever painted. There is nothing in it. It has as
much to do with human affections and thought as a ghost.
It is not even a fine bouquet of color. The color is harsh,
disagreeable, and discordant."

This is severe, and I think its severity is partly due to
reaction against Mr. Ruskin's eloquent praises. On the

* This phrase is quoted from ** Harper's New Monthly Magazine."

294 The Life of J, M, W. Turner.

other hand, I have observed that some Americans seem
to think it a sort of duty to admire Turner, and to be-
come enthusiastic about even his least important works.
May I venture to observe, both to American and English
readers, that nobody is under any obligation to admire
either the late or the early works of Turner, that they
are as much open to criticism as those of any other
artist, and that the best way to judge them fairly is to
look at them as if they had never been either praised or
censured. The warm controversy at Boston about the
Slave*Ship was caused by a feeling of rebellion in some
minds, too independent to accept dictation from an
English critic, whilst others defended the picture as the
work of a man of genius who had been roughly treated
by the press. An antagonism of this description is good
for the fame of an artist, because it makes everybody
talk about him, but truth disengages itself only when the
noise has ceased and the smoke of the battle has passed
away. It is not of the least use to argpe about color.
From Mr. Ruskin the color of the Slave-Ship calls forth
no harsher criticism than that he thinks " the two blue
and white stripes on the drifting flag of the Slave-Ship
in the least degree too purely cold,'* and he elsewhere
expressly approves of its strongest passages. It is one
of those compositions in which Turner used the most
brilliant of all his pigments. A lurid splendor was his
purpose, and he hesitated at nothing for' its attainment.
It is hardly possible for any painter to deal with ver-
milion and lemon -yellow, in any quantity, without falling
into some degree of crudity. If you compare even the

Latter Years of Turner, 295

Timiraire with the rich deep harmonies of Titian and
Giorgione, you will feel it to be relatively crude. But are
fiery sunsets never to be painted ?

Form may be argued about more positively. The
wave* forms in the Slaver are original, but they are, I
believe, carefully observed. The comparatively flat or
simply swelling space between the rides of broken sea I
have often seen in nature, and the sudden leaping of the
spray is no doubt also a reminiscence. The introduction
of the sharks, manacles, and human hand and leg, was
artistically awkward to manage, and is so horrible that
the mind revolts from these details. The thoroughness
of study in the sky may be judged of by the rain-cloud
engraved from it by Mr. Armytage, under the title The
Locks of Typhon* Our sense of the delicacy of this piece
of work may be heightened by the exquisiteness of the
engraver's performance, but the painter must have worked
delicately also.

The personal history of Turner during the latter years
of his life is almost entirely devoid of interest. He lived
exclusively for his art, unless we except his friendships ;
but even these, though warm, were not the occupation of
every day, like his painting. He seems to have been
glad to meet his friends occasionally, but not to have been
dependent upon social intercourse as a daily necessity.
The loss of Chantrey was a bitter grief to Turner. He
had a fraternal and playful affection for " that fat fellow "
as he called him, and the sculptor's sudden death in
November, 1841, left a great void in Turner's existence.

♦ Published in the fourth volume of ** Modem Painters."

296 The Life of J, M, IV. Turner,

It is said that when Chantrey lay dead his friend called
to pay him a last visit, and finding Jones the Academician
(whom he also loved) in the chamber of death, wrung his
hand in silence and marched out of the house. The
shock occasioned by this event probably did Turner harm,
by putting him into low spirits, and predisposing him to
morbid influences. He was very ill in the spring of 1842,
and was shaken by his illness, and had afterwards to
live by rule.

The death of Wilkie had evidently impressed him also,
for in 1842 he exhibited a picture, entitled Peace — Burial
at Sea, now in the National Collection, to commemorate
Wilkie's funeral, which had taken place in June, 1841, off
Gibraltar, but at a distance from the shore. This picture
was etched for the Portfolio by M. Brunet-Debaines.*
It is square in shape, but in an octagon frame. Mr.
Wornum tells an anecdote about Stanfield, who visited
Turner's studio whilst the picture was on the easel, and
rather complained about the blackness of the sails ; to
which the painter answered, " If there was anything to
be had in nature blacker than that I *d use it." There
can be no doubt of the substantial truth of the anecdote,
but I remember (and made a note of it at the time) that
Mr. Leslie told it me, with a slight difference, in Turner's
Gallery in Queen Anne Street. He said that Stanfield's
criticism was made in the Academy on a varnishing-day.
" You 're painting the sails very black," said Stanfield,
and Turner answered, " If I could find anything blacker
than black I 'd use it." My impression is that this little

* This etching was published in that periodical for February, 1874.

Pictures of 1842. 297

colloquy was heard by Mr. Leslie himself. He was much
impressed by Turner's remark, as indicative of his sorrow
for Wilkie, and his determination to put the picture as
much as possible in mourning.

In the same year (1842) Turner exhibited his Napo-
leon at St. Helena under the title, War — the Exile and
the Rock Limpet, Napoleon is contemplating a limpet,
and supposed to be pronouncing the following lines from
the " Fallacies of Hope : "

" Ah I thy tent-formed shell is like
A soldier's mighty bivouac, alone
Amidst a sea of blood ....
. . . but you can join your comrades."

This suggested tp Punch " The Duke of Wellington
and the Shrimp (Seringapatam — Early Morning), " with
the supposed quotation :

" And can it be, thou hideous imp
That life is, ah I how brief, and glory but a shrimp I **

During these latter years of Turner's career as a
painter, the wits amused themselves rather freely at his
expense. It is said that he was acutely sensitive to these
attacks, which is to be regretted, but I do not think the
writers in Punch deserve any serious blame for the way
in which it pleased them to exercise their talents. They
laughed at Turner, it is true, but they laughed good-
humoredly, and without malice. It is quite undeniable
that there is a ludicrous side to some aspects of Turner's
art, if you choose to see it ; and although no critic with
good feeling would laugh at an old painter's work if he
knew that the jokes really wounded him, ridicule is

298 Tlie Life qf J. M. W. Turner,

generally a permissible weapon in art-criticism. Though
Turner could joke with his friends, he resembled Milton
in his lack of that keen sense of the ridiculous which
saves from so many errors. It is hard to say why
Napoleon, looking at a rock -limpet, should make us
laugh, but there is a difficulty about taking Turner's
' picture seriously. Another odd instance of the mistakes
he sometimes made in dealing with the outer world was
the picture of the Bavarian Walhalla^ and what he did
with it. The King of Bavaria had erected a building by
the Danube, in the Doric style of architecture, to contain
busts of eminent Germans. This temple of fame was
opened in 1842, and Turner seems to have been im-
pressed by what seemed to him King Ludwig's happy
idea, so, by way of rewarding that sovereign, he painted
a picture of the scene, packed it up in a case, and sent it
to His Majesty as a free gift. The King, on receiving
the picture, did not at all know what to make of it, and
probably thought the painter was mad, or making game
of him, so he ungratefully ordered it to be packed up
again immediately, and sent back to the artist. Turner
'Was never patronised by royalty, and this was the only
occasion on which he himself attempted to patronise
royalty. I need hardly observe that nobody with any
talent for guessing the probable condition of another
man's mind would have committed such a mistake as
that. Considering what an outrage against topography
and local truth the picture is, the King of Bavaria was
the very last sovereign in the world to whom it could
prudently be offered. It was inevitable that he should

Tendency to the Formless, 299

judge the work by its resemblance to a place which he
knew intimately, and which the painter had never seen.
As for the artistic charms of the Turnerian imagination,
nobody but the initiated could be expected to appreciate
them. This is but one instance the more of the great
truth that imaginative artists ought not to deal with
places that are too real.

The titles of Turner's later pictures are sometimes in
themselves a clear indication of the direction of his
artistic thinking. For example, in the year when he
exhibited the Walhalla there were two other pictures by
him, entitled Shade and Darkness and Light and Color,
It is evident from these titles that the painter's attention
was much more occupied by light and shade and color
than by the subjects of the pictures. This is what I
have already remarked elsewhere with reference to the
condition of Turner's mind in its latter years. It
certainly lost its hold of substance, of objects, but it
retained its hold of the artistic qualities of nature. It no
longer valued form — or perhaps I ought to say that it
was no longer capable of dealing with natural form —
but color and light it valued and appreciated still.*

The tendency to paint the formless was manifested in
another of the later pictures, Rain^ Steam^ and Speed —

* The full titles of the pictures mentioned in the above paragraph were,
Shade and Darkness — The Evening of the Deluge^ and, Light and Color
(Goethe's theory) — The Morning after the Deluge — Moses writing the Book of
Genesis. Turner's exegesis seems to be at fault here, as Moses did not
write the Book of Genesis on the morning after the Deluge. The titles of
these pictures were accompanied by quotations from the unpublished ** Fal-
lacies of Hope."

300 The Life of J. M. W. Turner.

the Great Western Railway, The title sufficiently indi-
cates the intention of the artist, which was evidently to
give the idea of " Rain, Steam, and Speed,** much more
than the portrait of a steam-engine or a view of the Great
Western Railway. A painter who tries to express mental
conceptions instead of copying matter always exposes
himself to harsh treatment from a large class of critics,
whose conception of art is realization, and who have no
indulgence for the art which does not realize. Here is a
specimen of this kind of criticism from an American book
with reference to this very picture :

"The bridges are mere ghosts of substance. Both
earth and water are equally destitute of quality. The
sky is far more solid than the stonework. It has no
luminosity whatever, but is actually falling to pieces
from its own weight of paint. Even the locomotive,
which should have the appearance of metal at least, is a
mere phantom. The ironwork, which naturally suggests
strength and opacity, is made of a thin glazing of black.
In short, the artist has reversed the first principles of
painting, leaving solids transparent, and making liquids
solid, and pitching all upon so high a key as to offend
the eye."

I do not for a moment doubt the perfect honesty of
this criticism, and it would be good criticism if it were
true that the purpose of art is the imitation of nature.
The plain truth is, that such things as locomotives and
railways are absolutely inadmissible in painting of a high
order except on condition of being sketched with what

Dregs of Life, 301

looks like an appearance of carelessness or ignorance.
Turner's picture may offend some people by its scorn of
material truth, but it would have offended every real
judge of art far more if it had condescended to a slavish
imitation of rails and a locomotive. I do not make this
assertion as a mere guess or supposition. The experi-
ment has been tried — I have seen it tried — by an
English painter of eminence, who is now a Royal Acade-
mician. At a time when English art was looking out in
various directions for new and unhackneyed material, this
painter thought he would try what could be made of the
railways, and very wisely, instead of trusting to the
opinion of others, he put the question practically, by
painting a locomotive from nature with as much care as
if it had been a* horse. The result was an interesting
piece of handicraft, for a locomotive is a most difficult
thing to paint : but the experiment settled the question
for me ; it convinced me that the hard materialism of
mechanical things, by its incompatibility with sentiment,
is unsuitable for fine art, and of the two steam-engines I
infinitely prefer Turner's. I remember another case in
point. Daubigny the landscape-painter was a very clever
etcher, and yet, in one of his plates in the "Voyage en
Bateau," he represented a railway train with the most
careless inaccuracy. I can only say that his drawing was
good enough for such material ; it gave a notion of the
train's length and speed, and that was about enough.

It is unnecessary to say anything of the very latest of
Turner's pictures. All those exhibited after 1845 belong
not merely to a period of decline, but to a state of senile

302 The Life of y, M, W. Turner.

decrepitude. It is, therefore, both a waste of time and
an offence against decency to criticise them with the
frankness which we rightly use in speaking of work done
in the maturity of the human faculties ; and as criticism
which is not frank can serve no useful purpose, it is better
to pass by these '* dregs of life and lees of man *' in mel-
ancholy and respectful silence. The titles of the very
latest pictures, those exhibited in 1850, have a certain
interest from their fidelity to classic subjects of the old-
fashioned kind, that belonged to the landscape art which
preceded Turner, and on which his own was founded.
We find him still, in 1850, thinking about iEneas, and
Dido, and Mercury, still quoting verses from the "Fal-
lacies of Hope," in which old Troy is mentioned. One
of the subjects is Mercury sent to admonish jEnecis ;
another, ^neas relating his Story to Dido ; and a third,
The Departure of the Trojan Fleet, It is remarkable, too,
that with a melancholy dwelling on death natural to one
who felt his strength ebbing away from him. Turner
should have exhibited in that last year a picture entitled
The Visit to the Tomb,

During the latter years of Turner's life, the only event
which broke the monotony of his daily work appears to
have been an excursion on the Continent (probably in
1843), during which he made his last sketches of a place
very dear to him, the glorious lake of Lucerne. I can
only repeat, with reference to this excursion, what has
already been said about others ; namely, that the absence
of correspondence and diaries, and the solitude of the
traveller, leave us without material for any narrative.

Disabled, 303

Turner recorded himself in his art, but in his art only,
and the sketches of a landscape-painter can preserve little
trace of the vicissitudes of his life. It would be simply a
waste of space to speculate on travels of which so little is
known to us, but we may better understand the peculiar
nature of Turner's life on the Continent by a contrast.
Think of Byron and Shelley in Switzerland and Italy,
always heightening their enjoyment of what they saw by
conversations with people who could understand them,
living with nature and humanity at the same time, writing
also their impressions in abundant letters addressed to
friends at a distance ; and then think of Turner, old and
solitary, going silently from lake to lake, from city to city,
ignorant of the languages of the countries in which he
sojourned, shunning his own countrymen when he met
them, writing hardly ever, and then so curtly that his
letters express no thoughts : and yet he, too, was a poet ;
a silent brother of those who wrote " Childe Harold," and
"Endymion," and "Alastor."

One of the pictures of his old age, exhibited in 1844,
under the title. Fishing Boats bringing a Disabled Ship
into Port Ruysdael, seems to foreshadow, like the Timi-
raire^ that approaching condition of helplessness \yhich
Turner looked forward to with a sad foreboding. The
evening of his life had begun, and was rapidly deepening
towards the night. He kept up, however, pretty well
until the year 1851, when he ceased to exhibit, and no
longer attended the meetings of the Royal Academicians,
which had formerly been greatly valued by him as an
opportunity for the kind of social intercourse most con-

304 The Life of J, M, W, Turner.

genial to his feelings. David Roberts wrote to him, and
begged to be allowed to see him, but got no answer to
his letter during the space of a fortnight, after which
Turner himself called on Roberts at his studio, and pro-
mised to call again whenever he came to town. The
following is the account of the interview given by David
Roberts himself :

"I tried to cheer him up, but he laid his hand upon
his heart and replied, * No, no ; there is something here
which is all wrong.* As he stood by the table in my
painting-room, I could not help looking attentively at
him, peering in his face, for the small eye was brilliant
as that of a child, and unlike the glazed and * lack-lustre
eye * of age. This was my last look. The rest is soon
told. None of his friends had seen him for months ;
indeed I believe I was the last, together with his friend
George Jones, who I afterwards learned had that day
also called upon him:"

A much stranger thing than Turner's absence from the
meetings of the Academicians was his absence from his
own home. His old housekeeper, Mrs. Danby, was in
painful anxiety about the place of his retreat, and dis-
covered it by accident. " One day," says Mr. Thornbury,
"as she was brushing an old coat of Turner's, in turning
out a pocket, she found and pounced on a letter directed
to him, and written by a friend who lived at Chelsea.
Mrs. Danby, it appears, came to the conclusion that
Turner himself was probably at Chelsea, and went there
to seek for him, in company with another infirm old

Death, 305

woman. From inquiries in a place by the river-side,
where ginger-beer was sold, they came to the conclusion
that Turner was living in a certain small house close by,
and informed a Mr. Harper whom she and Turner knew.
He went to the place and found the painter sinking.
This was on the i8th of December, 185 1, and on the
following day Turner died."

It is said that he died with the sun of the winter morn-
ing shining upon his face. " The attendant drew up the
window-blind, and the morning sun shone on the dying
artist." We naturally seek for some poetic circumstance
to accompany the death of a poet, but this ray of morning
sunlight is all we have in Turner's case. The history of
his last days has the kind of interest which is sought after
by novelists rather than that which inspires the most
touching verses of the poets. It is a subject for Dickens
rather than for the mournful singer of Adonais.

Turner, with that love of secrecy which had always

been one of his characteristics, and which in later years

had become a passion, had gone to hide himself in some

corner of London, where not one of his friends might find

him. He had discovered a small house at Chelsea kept

by a Mrs. Booth, and had settled there as a lodger, calling

himself Mr. Booth, and in the neighborhood he was

known as " Admiral Booth," for the people really believed

him to he an impoverished old naval officer. All this is

excellent material of the kind that Dickens made use of.

The rich old man, the famous painter, leaves a home

where he could procure for himself all the comforts or

luxuries he cared for ; quits the society of his fellows,
20

306 The Life of J, M. W, Turner,

where his wealth and fame were acknowledged by every
one; hides his wealth under an appearance of decent
poverty ; conceals his celebrity under an unknown name ;
abandons even the affection of those who had some feel-
ings of attachment towards him, his old housekeeper, the
group of his old comrades and friends, and goes to await
his end in a hired lodging, to be tended by a woman who
was a recent acquaintance, and in whose eyes his princi-
pal, perhaps his only merit, was his ability to pay his
expenses. What is the use of all the things for which
men weary their brains with toil if towards the close of life
they are to be cast aside as vanities ? What is the good
of troubling ourselves about wealth, and reputation, and
friendship, if a day is to come when we shall prefer
obscurity to fame, solitude to society, and simplicity to
splendor ?

"Seeing there be many things that increase vanity,
what is man the better ? "

" For who knoweth what is good for man in this life,
all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a
shadow?"

The temporary obscurity of the dying man was suc-
ceeded by a full glare of publicity for the dead. He was
buried in St. Paul's Cathedral with some considerable
pomp and ceremony. Many famous painters and men
celebrated in other departments of the fine arts, some who
loved art and encouraged it, and others who had felt for
the great painter some personal affection with which the
fine arts had no concern, followed him to his last resting-

Funeral at St PauPs. 307

place. The hearse was preceded to the Cathedtal by a
long procession of mourning-coaches and private carriages.
When the coffin was taken into the building the choris-
ters chanted the Dead March in " Saul," and the service
was read by Dean Milman. It appears from the con-
temporary account in the Times that a considerable
crowd was attracted outside by the ceremonial, and about
five hundred persons were present in the aisles and the
chapel.

It can matter little where the stiffened hand and the
sightless eyes of a dead landscape-painter may rest from
their pleasure and their toil. For some, who have loved
sylvan nature truly, it may be appropriate that the
" shadows of the silver birk," or of some other beautiful
or noble forest tree of their native land, should " sweep
the green that folds their grave ; " that light and shadow
should " ever wander '* over it, that rain should make
music in the tree, and the woodbine and eglatere drip their
dews, and the brooding bee chaunt sweeter tones than
calumny. There are many humble nature-loving land-
scape-painters for whom such a grave would be most fit-
ting ; others should rest beneath the immemorial oaks of
Fontainebleau, or in the recesses

'' Of the deep forest glades of Broceliande,
Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps,
Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps."

For Constable we feel that Hamstead Churchyard was
suitable, as he loved the place, but that a quiet church-
yard in his own Suffolk would have been more suitable
still. Gainsborough sleeps well in the little green at Kew,

3o8 The Life of J. M, W. Turner.

Millet and Rousseau in a little village cemetery nearest to
their own humble Barbizon. Why should not Turner
have been laid in some place where Nature is beautiful,
and where he had studied lovingly — in that valley of the
Wharfe, for instance, which he could never revisit without
tears ? The answer to such suggestions is that he lies in
the place chosen by himself, the place most suitable to his
character, and in reality also to his preferences and pur-
suits. Of all painters known to us he was, if not the
most ambitious, certainly the one whose ambition was the
least concealed. To lie under the great Cathedral, by the
side of Reynolds, gratified his ambition more than to take
his rest in the prettiest churchyard in Yorkshire. Again,
he was only occasionally, and as it were by chance, a
rustic painter. London was his birth-place, the dome of
St. Paul's had been a familiar object to him from his
infancy, and he had drawn or painted cities from his
earliest youth. Even the very architecture of St. Paul's
is in harmony with the painter's classical taste and asso-
ciations. He drew Gothic architecture when he had to
deal with it as a matter of business in a view of some
English or French city, but whenever he had to invent
architecture for one of his composed pictures it was invari-
ably classical.

It is characteristic of Turner's care for his own fame
that he left by will a thousand pounds for a monument to
himself in St. Paul's. This monument has taken the form
of a statue by MacDowell, and it is therefore often be-
lieved that Turner decreed a statue to himself. There is,
however, a shade of distinction between the general pre-

Turner's Care for His own Fame, 309

occupation about a monument and the definite ordering of
a statue, and it is probable that Turner, who had always
refused to allow his brother-artists to take his portrait, did
not foresee that a statue would be the consequence of his
bequest. I may observe, too, that the bequest itself im-
plies a curious mixture of modesty and its opposite.
Turner was always mode$t enough to feel strong doubts
about the care which others would have for his posthumous
fame. He seems to have thought, " If I don't take cafe
of my fame myself, by doing all I can to fortify it, nobody
else will do so, and it is likely to be extinguished." This
is rather a modest sentiment; but then, on the other
hand, it was accompanied by this other feeling about him-
self, — *' I am great enough to deserve to be remembered,
and will take good care that people shall remember me
whether they will or not." He had not the slightest trace
of that truest pride, that best dignity which scorns the
honor that is not freely given. He clung to fame as all
thai would remain to him or of him after death, and
resolved so to bequeath his possessions in pictures and
money that they might perpetuate his memory amongst
men. Even the charitable project in aid of decayed
artists, by which the bulk of his fortune was to give com-
fort in their old age to his brethren who had been less
prosperous than himself — even this charitable project,
which in itself deserves nothing but gratitude and honor,
was tarnished by the donor's perpetual anxiety about the
preservation of his name. He expressly stipulated in his
will that the charity was to be called " Turner's Gift," as
if in needless apprehension that the trustees might forget

3IO The Life of J, M. W. Turner.

to mention him in connection with it. He was equally
careful to stipulate that the pictures he bequeathed to the
nation were to be exhibited in rooms of their own, and
that these rooms were to be called " Turner's Gallery."
Again, instead of simply leaving money for a medal to be
given for the best landscape exhibited at the Academy
every two or three years, leaving the title of the medal to
be fixed by the Academicians, he takes care to settle be-
forehand that the medal shall be called " Turner's Medal."
Observe, too, the anxiety to ensure perpetuity to the gifts
which bear his name. They were not donations to be
once made and then forgotten. The National Gallery is
the most permanent exhibition in the country. Unless it
is burnt or sacked by Communards of a possible demo-
cratic future it will last with the civilization of England.
" Turner's Gallery " will thus be visited by unnumbered
generations. Again, the project of the charitable gift was
to endure as long as there were any artists to be helped
in their old age. Lastly, the medal is to be given as long
as landscapes are exhibited at the Academy. Who does
not see that the purpose of the triple scheme, like that of
the monument in St. Paul's, is to perpetuate the name of
Turner }

But there is another clause in the will, of which the
intention is equally plain, whilst the conception is more
audacious and original. After bequeathing to the Trus-
tees of the National Gallery the two pictures. Dido
building Carthage^ and the picture formerly in the Tabley
Collection, the testator goes on to impose a certain con-
dition about the hanging of these works which is, I be-

Rivalry with Claudt, 311

lieve, without a parallel in the history of Art. " I direct
that the said pictures or paintings shall be hung, kept,
and placed, that is to say, always between the two
pictures painted by Claude, the Seaport and Mill!' This
was an error of judgment in many ways. To begin with,
it is always a mistake to suppose that two great artists
can be compared with anything like a satisfactory critical
result, for the simple reason that originality is an essential
part of greatness, and that two originalities are not proper
subjectsc^f comparison. You may compare a strawberry
with another strawberry very reasonably, or a peach with
another peach, and give a prize to the one that had the
finer flavor, with little misgiving as to the justice of your
decision ; but the comparison of peach with strawberry
would inevitably be an unsatisfactory exercise of criti-
cism. Amongst painters you might well compare two
•imitators of one artist, and decide which imitator had
mimicked the master most closely. For example, if
Turner and Calcott had set themselves the one object of
imitating Claude, it would be easy to decide which of the
two Englishmen had produced the cleverer pastiche^ and
in such a case it would be a reasonable proceeding to
hang a Turner and a Calcott on each side of a Claude
which had been their model. Turner learned a great
deal, no doubt, from Claude, and to some extent he imi-
tated him in his early manhood, whilst he remembered
him through life ; the influence of Claude being still quite
distinctly visible even in such late works as Bay of Baice
and the Childe Harold. But the essential greatness of
Turner lies precisely in what is outside of Claude's range,

312 The Life of J. M, W. Turner

and cannot he compared with him. It is like comparing
Byron with Pope. There are parts of Byron's works
which may be compared with Pope, and the influence of
Pope is visible in the clear, strong language that Byron
always preferred ; but you cannot really compare the two
men when they are not on common ground. Turner's
intention may, however, have been rather to invite com-
parison between particular work than to suggest a general
comparison between the two artists. In that case the
error of judgment is still more palpable. Claude's field
was a narrow one. Though he lived long, and covered
many canvases, he seems to have had but few artistic
ideas, and the very paucity of these enable him to realize
them with all the greater perfection. Turner was vast in
range and very unequal ; Claude, narrow in range, but
remarkably regular in the degree of his technical success.
Now, what Turner did was this : he, a man of wide range,
attempted to contend with a man of narrow range, on one
of the narrow man's own private specialities. He invited
a comparison between his seaport with classical architec-
ture called Dido building Carthagey and Claude's seaport
with classical architecture, known as the Embarkation of
the Queen of Sheba, The mistake of inviting such a com-
parison is visible almost at the first glance. The Claude
is light, fresh, full of atmosphere, and that lively, inspirit-
ing feeling which takes possession of us when a pleasant
breeze and transparent waves invite us to sail out upon
the sea ; the Turner is heavy, and though, in a certain
sense, imposing and magnificent, is entirely wanting in
freshness. As to the Tabley picture {The Sun Rising in

Rivalry with Claude, 313

Mist), and Claude's Mill {The Marriage of Isaac and
Rebeccd), the critic is embarrassed by the impossibility of
comparing two absolutely dissimilar works. The Turner
is a northern seascape, seen from the shore,, near a jetty ;
British all through, from the men-of-war in the distance
to the fishermen on the sand ; the very atmosphere, which
the sun penetrates with difficulty, being foggy and British
also : the Claude (notwithstanding Isaac and Rebecca) is
in reality an extensive Italian landscape, in clear daylight,
with massive and graceful groups of trees. There is not
a tree in the Turner, there is not a sail in the Claude.
Turner has painted fog, and Claude a clear atmosphere.
The sun is in Turner's picture, and it is out of Claude's.
So we have to compare sails with trees, and the sea with
an inland landscape, and the sun with a summer cloud, and
a mill with a man-of-war. May the critics of future gene-
rations get much benefit by these comparisons !

There is another aspect of this bequest which forces
itself upon our attention — its want of modesty. The
rank of a painter is not determined by his merit but by
his fame, whatever may determine that. The fame of
Claude was, and is, prodigious. It is not enough to say
that his fame in landscape is equal to that of Raphael in
figure-painting, because Raphael has great rivals in his
department of art ; and Claude, as a painter of the beauty
and amenity of landscape, had a celebrity which until
quite recently was considered to be absolutely above all
possibility of rivalry, and which is still so considered by
nearly all the connoisseurs of continental Europe. The
reader will please to observe that I am speaking, not of

314 The Life of J. M, W. Turner.

merit, which is a questionable and doubtful thing, but of
fame, which is an ascertainable thing. For two centuries
Claude's position has been considered unquestionable;
his name has been known to every human being who
tried to sketch a landscape, however humbly, as that of
the supreme sovereign of the art ; it has passed into all
literatures, so that every writer who spoke of landscape
beauty thought of him as he thought of Salvator in con-
nection with landscape sublimity. The fame of Claude
is, indeed, so closely associated with landscape throughout
Europe, that if you know anything whatever about art, if
you have visited a gallery of any importance, or read the
shortest and most meagre history of painting, you are
sure to have heard of him as you are sure to have heard
of Raphael. Now suppose for one moment that some
contemporary Frenchman, some very able and clever man,
were to leave two figure-pictures to the 'Louvre on condi-
tion that they should be hung between two Raphaels,
what would all Europe say ? Simply that the Frenchman
was mad. And just so M. Viardot, in perfect good faith,
takes Turner's bequest as clear evidence of madness.

'*One is still more surprised on seeing this historical
landscape of Turner placed between the two finest works
of the Lorrainer, the Mil/ Sind the Queen of Sheba ; and
our surprise redoubles when we learn that the picture is
so placed by the order of Turner himself, who required
this position for his pictures as the express condition of
their entrance into the National Gallery. I will not seek
any other proof of the state of insanity in which he
ended his life. Everybody knows that pride is the most
common cause of madness."

Rivalry with Claude. ' 315

This is what comes of measuring yourself with a great
established celebrity; your presumption is considered
evidence of insanity. It is certainly clear evidence of a
mental condition in which self-admiration had blinded
its victim to the true proportions of things. Claude had
an incomparably magnificent European position ; Turner
nothing but a rising celebrity in his own country. Even
at the present day Turner's name has little weight on the^
Continent, where he is generally considered a more or
less successful imitator of the old masters, who became
original only when he lost his reason.

CHAPTER XV.

Celebration by Mr. Ruskin. — Ruskin's ** Modem Painters." — Mr. Ruskin's
literary powers. — ^Mr. Ruskin and the English public — Mr. Ruskin not
the discoverer of Turner. — Criticism and art in words. — The love of ef-
fect — Circumstances of Turner's death. — Mr. Ruskin's estimate of Tur-
ner. — ^Turner and Pre-Raphaelitism. — The criterion of truth. — ^Distinction
between nature and art. — Turner's position in art — Mystery. — Turner's
color. — Turner's imagination. — ^Taste. — Resum^. — Danger of Turner-
Worship. — Past and future of landscape painting.

T HAVE attempted to mark the distinction between
•*• artistic rank, which is simply fame, and merit, which
depends upon faculty and labor. I reserve for a late page
an attempt to estimate the total value of Turner's work.
It has been considered part by part, as he produced it, in
the course of this biography. We have still to consider
broadly what he performed, and what he left undone.

Before we come to that I have to repair an omission
which was made purposely, in order not to interrupt the
course of the narrative. I have observed on several
occasions, that in most things which related to his art
Turner was one of the most fortunate of men. Good
luck attended him — not always as a man, but almost
invariably as an artist — from his earliest youth to the
latest decade of his life. His father encouraged instead

Celebration by Mr, Ruskin. 317

of thwarting his genius in boyhood. The Exhibition
Rooms of the Royal Academy were open to him from
the age of fifteen ; at the age of twenty-five he was made
an Associate, and at twenty-seven a Royal Academician.
His fame was spread abroad by the most accomplished
group of 'engravers who ever interpreted a landscape-
painter. At a very early age he could earn enough to
permit him to devote half his time to art for art's sake,
in complete independence of th^ buyer, and before middle
life he was independent, if he chose, from January to
December. Even the misfortunes which happened to
the man were generally favorable to the development of
the artist. The failure of his marriage project drove him
to a laborious solitude, and left him that liberty of move-
ment which enabled him to ransack Europe for the
subjects most favorable to his genius and the advance-
ment of his fame. With all his success there was the
drawback that a frivolous public and a periodical ptess,
but little instructed in matters connected with the fine
arts, permitted themselves to make fun ot his originalities.
Here, again, the annoyance was followed by a splendid
compensation. The sneers of a portion of the public,
and the sarcasms of the newspapers, brought a champion
into the field who worshipped Turner with a devotion such
as no other artist ever excited in his admirers, and who
expressed his feelings with an energy and an ability far
surpassing the powers of all previous writers upon Art.

Remember old Montaigne's definition of fame. " There
is the name and the thing : the name is a voice which
denotes and signifies the thing ; the name is no part of

3i8 The Life of J. M, W. Turner.

the thing, or of the substance ; 'tis a foreign piece joined
to the thing, and outside of it"

The thing in the case of an artist is the mass of his
actual production, the voice which denotes and signifies
the thing is the voice 6f the talkers and writers about
Art

Every artist knows that there are qualities in his
work which would become famous, if only " the voice "
would be good enough to/' denote and signify the thing."
The work is one thing, the fame another, as Montaigne
says, and outside of it. " The name is no part of* the
thing, or of the substance." It follows that, after having
made the thing, the artistic product, the paintings, the
artist has done his part, and has to wait patiently for the
" voice " to " denote and signify the thing " to the world
at large. Some, like Franz Hals, have had to wait two
hundred years before the voice spoke audibly ; even the
Great Captain and King, William III., remained more
than a hundred and forty years in his grave, before
Macaulay's splendid eloquence made him shine with his
full lustre in the immortalising pages of history. Turner
found his Macaulay during his own lifetime.

Mr. John Ruskin was the only son of a wealthy London
wine merchant, who knew Turner, and had bought some
of his pictures. He had been educated privately and at
Oxford, and his education had included some instruction
in practical art, under Harding and Copley Fielding.
This simple statement might, however, very easily convey
a false impression, because many amateurs have studied
water-color under those masters, without acquiring any

^

Ruskins ** Modem Painters, 319

very deep insight into artistic matters. Mr. Ruskin had
a peculiar and very precocious talent of a practical kind,
consisting, not in the power of composing brilliant pic-
tures, but in the less ambitious accomplishment of mak-
ing very precise, delicate, and truthful studies. Armed
with this useful talent, and having naturally an intense
enjoyment of both nature and art, and the modern land-
scape-passion in all its energy, Mr. Ruskin travelled in
youth and early manhood, observing everything with a
keen and intelligent curiosity. He soon became familiar
with the principal classes of scenery which Turner had
represented, both in Great Britain and on the Continent,
and at least equally familiar with the works of Turner's
most famous predecessors, which are preserved in the
galleries of Europe. The general result of these com-
parisons and investigations may be briefly expressed in a
sentence. The young student and traveller became
profoundly convinced that Turner's work displayed an
unprecedented fulness of knowledge, whilst that of his
predecessors in landscape- painting was an effort of at
least relative ignorance and incapacity.

With this conviction, and a strong feeling of indignation
at the inadequate manner in which the periodicals of the
day treated the genius of Turner, Mr. Ruskin, at the age
of twenty-three or twenty-four, determined to take up the
pen in favor of his favorite artist, and to write, in the
form of a short pamphlet, a letter to the editor of a
Review, about what seemed to him the ** shallow and false
criticisms" then current in the newspapers and magazines.

Before the letter to an editor had left the desk of the

320 ^ The Life of y, M, W, Turner,

writer, it had expanded itself into a volume, and before
the writer had fully accomplished his purpose, the book
grew into a great work, in five volumes, accompanied
by various auxiliaries in the shape of pamphlets, lectures,
and other minor works. The great work was entitled
"Modern Painters," but the author's original intention
had been to call it "Turner and the Ancients,'* — much
more appropriately, as Turner is the only modern painter
spoken of at any length, his English contemporaries,
when spoken of at all, being dismissed in a sentence or a
paragraph, whilst the reader may seek in vain for any
account of modern continental art. The change of title
was suggested by the desire to obtain a more extensive
circulation. Many, it was thought, might like to hear
about modern painters, who cared little about Turner and
the ancients.

The book had really two main subjects. It was a
treatise on the aspects of natural landscape, and at the
same time a vigorous advocacy of Turner. The first and
second volumes were published during the painter's life-
time, and probably read by him. Notwithstanding the
intensity of his passion for fame, the enthusiasm of his
young admirer seemed excessive to Turner, who con-
stantly tried to prevent him from writing, from a belief
that such excessive praise must hurt the feelings of other
artists. The truth is that Turner, all through the book,
appears as the giant, and other modern painters, however
eminent their abilities, are put by his side occasionally,
to let us see his superior height and bulk, when compared
with ordinary humanity, after which they are unceremo-

Mr, Ruskins Literary Powers, 321

niously dismissed. I may add that Mr. Ruskin began by
publishing his first volume anonymously, not because he
shrank from any responsibility, but on account of the
writer's youth, which, had it been known at first, would
probably have brought down upon him the contempt of
people who please themselves by assuming that age and
wisdom are identical.

Notwithstanding Turner's objection to being over-
praised, it was a most extraordinary piece of good fortune
for him that Mr. Ruskin should have become his advocate.
No painter, since the world began, ever had such an
advocate before, and there are excellent reasons for
believing (I will give some of them shortly) that no painter
will ever have such an advocate in the future.

The reader, after this rather strong expression in Mr.
Ruskin's favor, may perhaps conclude that in my opinion
he is the best critic who ever was or will be. No, that is
not what I mean. Mr. Ruskin shows little of the critic's
faculty, and is seldom in the really critical temper for any
length of time together; but he is a splendid artist in
words, and down to the present date he is the only artist
in words, of any conspicuous power, who has written
much, and with his best force, about painting.

My reasons for believing that in the future no painter
will ever have such an advocate again, are founded upon
the natural movement (I do not say progress) of the
human mind. Without burning enthusiasm a Ruskin is
not possible, and enthusiasm itself, in that degree, is pos-
sible only in the first freshness of national perception
about art. Anything like extensive critical experience
21

322 The Life of y. M. IV. Turner,

kills it. It is absolutely impossible, for example, that a
Ruskin should arise in France, because all artistic ques-
tions have lost their freshness there from too much dis-
cussion, and for the same reason it is now becoming
impossible that a second Ruskin should arise in London.
But there are other reasons why the appearance of such
a writer upon art could only occur at the time and in the
place when and where it actually did occur. The English
public was at that time admirably prepared by the great
authors of the earlier part of the century for the enjoy-
ment of first-rate literature, and being, at the same time,
with all its faults, essentially the most modest, the most
patient, and the most teachable public in Europe, it was
quite ready to accept instruction on a subject like art,
of which it felt that it knew much less than it did of
literature. Again, Mr. Ruskin appealed to the English
love of truth. Previous writers upon art had dwelt
much less on truth than on style, and on those artifices
of arrangement which the ordinary Englishman feels
strongly inclined to depise as tricks of trade, about which
no one but " the artist and his ape " need trouble himself.
The appeal to the truth of nature would have been met
at once, in France, by the answer that art and nature
were two entirely different things, and that the artist
could at any time escape from the criterion of truth by
claiming the artistic license, by virtue of which he is
authorised to alter nature in compliance with the exi-
gencies of art.

The beginning of Mr. Ruskin's advocacy of Turner
depended upon himself, but the continuation of it de-

Mr, Ruskin and the English Public, 323

pended on the public. Had the public turned a deaf
ear, the new teacher would have turned his attention
to other matters, and the first volume of *' Modern
Painters " would have remained alone, a singular m'onu-
ment of a young man's energy and courage. The public,
however, listened so willingly, that the first volume,
originally published in 1843, reached its fifth edition in
1851, and the second, which first appeared in 1846,
reached its third edition in 185 1. An audience being
thus assured, the writer had only to go on, and as he had
ample means at his disposal, with perfect freedom from
commercial or professional avocations, habits of steady
industry, and the strongest possible interest in artistic
questions, he made it his business to learn and teach what
seemed to him the truth about art, and especially to place
the fame of Turner on what he considered a sound and
unshakable basis.

Nothing could have been more prudent in the begin-
ning of Mr. Ruskin's long battle on behalf of Turner than
the appeal to the English love of truth, a love which is
always strong in theory, though in practice it may be
remarked that our countrymen often prefer fiction to
truth, and have even a strong tendency to the fictitious,
by a certain necessity of their imagination.* Mr. Ruskin's
first argument was of this kind : " You say Turner is not
true to nature. I will first give you good evidence that
he is true ; that he is truer than Claude and Salvator and
Caspar Poussin ever were ; and then at some future time
we will talk about beauty and sublimity." This line of

* As in legal and constitutional fictions, social fictions, etc, etc.

324 The Life of J. M, W, Turner,

argument was addressed to a certain state of the public
mind, and proved successful. Mr. Ruskin did not succeed
in proving that Turner was veracious, but he gave the
public some idea of the painter*s enormous knowledge.
If the public of those days, and the brilliant young
Oxonian who addressed them, had really understood the
peculiar nature of poetic art, they would both have at-
tached much less importance to truth, and his elaborate
investigation of the truth of nature would probably, i{
undertaken at all, have been undertaken simply as an
independent contribution to a new science, the science of
natural aspects, with very secondary reference to art.
Poetic art is indeed strangely independent both of science
and of veracity, and plainly, in its own way, refuses to be
tested by science, and even by reason. It is indeed as
nearly as possible useless to apply these tests to art
except for the critic's own personal education or amuse-
ment, as the artist can always so easily escape from them.
He has only to say that he did the thing because *the
picture seemed to require it, and there is an end of
reasoning. This was forcibly and justly expressed by
Henri Regnault in a letter from Rome. ** If one were
to reason about painting, one would not dare to do any-
thing. If you choose to reason before the works of the
masters, you will find many things which have no raison
d^itre, and which are where they are because they do well
there. Art should obey sentiment above all, and not fear
to set exactness and reason at defiance." Again, he said
with an admirable sense of what art really is : " Our law,
the law for us artists, is not good sense but fancy; and

Mr, Ruskin and the English Public, 325

if something absurd does well, I see no reason why we
should decline to make use of it.''

There are passages in Mr. Ruskin's works which seem
to imply that in his own opinion his writings revealed
Turner to the world, and these have been answered by
the clearest evidence (exceedingly easy to get together)
that Turner was a famous and successful man long before
the publication of "Modern Painters." It may even be
shown, by a simple comparison of dates, that Turner had
been a Royal Academician about seventeen years when
Mr. Ruskin was born, and no artist is ever elected to that
rank unless he is highly esteemed by his brethren. Dayes
said of Turner in 1804 (fifteen years before Mr. Ruskin's
birth) : " He has overcome all the difficulties of the art,
so that the fine taste and color which his drawings pos-
sess are scarcely to be found in any other, and are accom-
panied with a broad, firm chiaroscuro and a light and
elegant touch.*' From this and several other opinions
which I shall have to quote in reference to another sub-
ject, it is abundantly evident that Mr. Ruskin was not the
discoverer of Turner; but at the same time a certain
aspect of the matter has to be taken into consideration
which may partially explain and excuse his impression.
I requested an artist who had known the state of the fine
arts in England for more than fifty years to tell me what
he believed to be the exact truth about Mr. Ruskin's
discovery of Turner, and his answer (as nearly as I can
remember) was in these words : " Turner's merits were
perfectly well known to artists and to a few amateurs
long before the publication of * Modern Painters ; ' but in

326 The Life of y. M, W, Turner.

those days the general public never talked about him,
whereas since that book came out the general public
talks about him, and takes a sort of interest in his work."

I have said that Mr. Ruskin was less a critic than an
artist in words. This, again, was most fortunate for
Turner's fame. Real criticism is seldom attractive read-
ing. Poetry and eloquence transport and delight the
reader, criticism seldom does anything more than awaken
the critical spirit in the reader himself, and one of the
first uses that he generally makes of it is to question the
decisions of the writer who is trying to teach him. I ask
leave to establish this distinction more at length, because
it seems to me one of great importance in art-literature.

An artisty then, be he poet, painter, orator, musician,
or writer of enchanting prose, is a person who, consciously
or unconsciously, employs his mental gifts and labor in
order to produce emotion by exciting interest and sym-
pathy. He does this by using his own imagination to
appeal to the imagination of another; as, for example,
when the novelist invents a situation, or the historian
realizes past events as if he had actually witnessed them.
The reader of the novel or history then follows the imagi-
nation of the artist by a slighter and easier effort of his
own, and his pleasure consists precisely in this arousing
of his own imaginative faculty which gives him new
emotions under a new stimulus. The distinguishing
peculiarity of the artistic nature is that it does not hesi-
tate to produce emotion by saying what is not true. I
will give a single instance, just at present, by way of
illustration.

Criticism and Art in Words, 327

Leslie, in his autobiography, says that when he and
his daughters were at Brighton, Mr. Rogers took them
in his carriage to the Dyke.

"As we sat in his carriage looking over the vast
expanse of country below us, he pointed down to a
village that seemed all peace and beauty in the tranquil
sunset * Do you see,' he said, * those three large tomb-
stones close to the tower of the church ? My father, my
mother ai\d my grandfather are buried there.' "

Leslie told me the anecdote himself, and imitated
Rogers' tone of voice, which was most pathetic.

Now the truth was that Rogers had not a single relative
in that churchyard, and the only foundation for what he
said, as he soon afterwards confessed, was that he would
have liked to be buried there himself.

Somebody, on hearing the story, exclaimed "What a
lying old rascal ! " Rogers was not precisely that. With-
out being a great poet he had much artistic feeling, and
for a moment he heightened the interest of the peaceful
churchyard by going beyond the truth, by leaving the
truth behind as insufficient for the degree of sympathy
and interest which he desired to produce in his hearers.

The critical spirit, on the contrary, ao far from sacri-
ficing truth to feeling, is constantly sacrificing feeling to
truth. It does not precisely oppose itself to ideals or
deny the value of fiction, but it will have no confounding
of ideals with realities, of fiction with fact. Even at the
risk of disenchanting you it will plainly tell you where
the truth ends and the fiction begins; in history it

328 The Life of y. M, IV. Turner,

accurately distinguishes between legend and the ascer-
tainable, in science between what can and what cannot
be experimentally verified, and in the fine arts the truly
critical spirit takes upon itself the important but little
appreciated office of showing what is due to the study of
nature, and what has its origin in the embellishments or
the errors of individual taste, ignorance, or imagination.
Now as the production of sympathy and interest is the
purpose of art, and the announcement of plain truth the
purpose of criticism, it follows that the artist in words,
the poet, the rhetorician, needs the utmost attainable
degree of literary craft and skill, whereas the critic needs
only precision in the' use of language, simplicity, and
clearness. Pages adorned with the most moving elo-
quence, the most extensive and various learning, the most
exquisite art in the arrangement of words, with a delicate
sense alike of their signification and their sound, may
still be utterly worthless as criticism from the simple
omission of some fact or consideration which a real critic
would never have overlooked. And, on the other hand,
a wise judgment, the latest result of a life spent in honest
thought and laborious investigation, may be delivered in
a short sentence of the simplest, the baldest English, of
no more artistic value, as language, than the phrases used
in the most ordinary conversation. Nay, it may even be
less literary than that; it may be expressed in ungram-
matical language or in professional slang, and still be
excellent criticism of the very highest value.*

* Such phrases of critical advice as the following may be of inestimable
value when rightly applied, " Don't let your drawing be too tight j " " Don't
be mappy ; " " Miod that your work carries across the room."

The Love of Effect. 329

Now the critical faculty in Mr. Ruskin may have been
naturally strong, but as the artist in him was incompar-
ably stronger, the critical faculty, or the judgment, has
been perpetually snubbed, silenced, and set aside by the
artist*s need of effect. "English literature,*' wrote a
sober-minded foreign critic in 1861,* "is like a beautiful
woman who tries to hide- the traces of age beneath the
artifices of the toilet. Writers have but one object, to
stimulate a dulled and deadened sense. Style and com-
position, everything betrays the necessity for striking
effects. The reader s mind is to be kept in a state of in-
cessant expectation and surprise. The study of effect
leads to pretension, and pretension to charlatanism.
Eccentricity has become a means of attracting book-
buyers. There is calculated artifice in the antitheses, so
knowingly balanced, of Macaulay ; we find it in the artis-
tic paradoxes of Ruskin, and in the jargon of Carlyle.'*

This is severe, and I should not have used so harsh a
term as charlatanism in speaking of these three eminent
writers ; but it is simply true that their works are the
works of powerful literary artists who like to stimulate
and astonish the reader and compel him to give them his
attention. Exactly the same may be said of the violent
language used by Victor Hugo, and of the calculated
brusqueness and crudity of Browning, f

* Edmond Scherer, in the Temps,

t Or of Madame de StaePs perpetual seeking for effect. "She was
always," said Byron, " aiming to be brilliant — to produce a sensation, no
matter how, when, or where. She wanted to make all her ideas, like
figures in the modem French school of painting, prominent and showy —
standing out of the canvas, each in^a light of its own."

330 The Life of J, M. W. Turner,

If the reader is interested in seeing a great literary
artist at work for the purpose of producing a very strong
effect upon the public mind, let him follow me through
the next page or two. He knows already — we all know
— how kindly Turner was encouraged when, a young
man, how well and how early he was received in the
Academy, and how he enjoyed the friendship and sym-
pathy of intelligent men such as Lord Egremont, Mr.
Rogers, and many others, at a time when he was in the
full enjoyment of his powers. Now it suited Mr. Ruskin's
artistic purpose — at the close of a lecture at Edinburgh,
which was to be very pathetic and awaken deep feeling in
the hearts of his audience — to say, in order to prepare
the people for the sad account of Turner's death, that he
had incurred neglect until late in life. Even this mild
assertion would have been untrue. The exact truth is,
that Turner was not neglected during life, but that in his
case, as in many other cases, the fame of the artist when
living was less splendid than it has since become. But
now observe how Mr. Ruskin "forces the note." He
does not simply say that Turner was comparatively
neglected ; that would not be enough, the audience would
feel no thrill. These are the words used :

** Imagine what it was for a man to live seventy years
in this hard world, with the kindest heart and the noblest
intellect of his time, and never to meet with a single word
or ray of sympathy until he felt himself sinking into his
grave. From the time he knew his true greatness all the
world was turned against him : he held his own, but it
could not be without roughness of bearing and hardening

The Love of Effect, 331

of the temper, if not of the heart. No one understood him,
no one trusted him, and every one cried out against him.
Imagine, any of you, the effect upon your own minds, if
every voice that you heard from the human beings around
you were raised, year after year, through all your lives,
only in condemnation of your efforts and denial of your
success."

This passage is admirable as an appeal to the feelings.
It is the work of a consummate artist in words, and so
deeply pathetic, that if well delivered in the lecture-room
it must have touched the hearts of men and moistened the
eyes of women. I admit and admire its excellence, but I
say that whilst Mr. Ruskin was writing it and during the
whole space of time between the writing and the delivery
of the lecture, the critic in him must have be<en silenced
or asleep.

Many years before Turnier died was there not a great
meeting at Somerset House, attended by Sir Robert Peel,
Lord Hardinge, and many others t and did not all these
gentlemen confer upon Turner the very exceptional and-
very substantial compliment of subscribing five thousand
pounds to buy two pictures of his for the National Gallery t
Did not Archdeacon Fisher, a good judge of landscape,
with considerable social influence, declare, so early as the
year 18 13, that in his opinion the Frost by Turner was the
best landscape in the Royal Academy Exhibition } Did
not Lockhart, a very influential Scotchman, express his
opinion publicly, a year or two later, that Turner was
simply the greatest of all living landscape-painters } Was
not Turner selected to illustrate the greatest contempo-

332 The Life of J. M. W. Turner,

rary poets ? and did not Scott (who died in 1832) say that
Turner was "all the fashion;" so much the fashion in-
deed, that, by sheer weight of reputation, he was imposed
on the great novelist against his will ? Did not Constable
write on the 14th of January, 1832 : " I remember most of
Turner's early works ; amongst them was one of singular
intricacy and beauty ; it was a canal with numerous boats,
making thousands of beautiful shapes, and I think the
most complete work of genius I ever saw " ? We know
how passionately Constable admired Claude, yet in the
very next sentence he calls one of Claude's pictures
"grand and solemn, but cold, dull, and heavy'' Had Mr.
Ruskin listened to critical suggestions like these, he would
have had either to suppress a capital passage (always
most painful to the author), or else weaken it to such a
degree that all its influence would have been lost. The
greatest objection to Mr. Ruskin's system of teaching lies
in this nutshell. The artist, in him, x'S so powerful as to
act independently of the critical faculty, whether the criti-
cal faculty be in itself positively strong or feeble. Such
a condition of mind is often highly favorable to the pro-
duction of painting or poetry, the function of those arts
being not to preach truth, but to produce emotion. In
critical writing the case is altered. Here it is not emo-
tional influence that is needed, but a judgment so
masterful that it steadily restrains the pen, and a love of
truth so watchful that it refuses the aids of exaggeration.
It is not my intention to enter into an examination of
Mr. Ruskin's teaching generally. Such an inquiry would
of itself occupy a volume, and it would lead us away from

Circumstances of Turner^ s Death. 333

our present subject — the life and genius of Turner. But
it is quite within my province to examine a few of Mr.
Ruskin's statements about Turner himself, and about the
arts which he practised, or which have been used for the
dissemination of his works. I have begun with the state-
ment that Turner never met with a single word or ray of
sympathy until he felt himself sinking into his grave;
that no one trusted him ; that no one understood him.
All this was intended to prepare Mr. Ruskin's hearers for
a most touching and pathetic account of Turner's death.

" He received no consolation in his last years, nor in
his death. Cut off in great part from all society — first
by labor, and at last by sickness — hunted to the grave by
the malignities of small critics, and the jealousies of hope-
less rivalry — he died in the house of a stranger — one
companion of his life, and one only, staying with him to
the last." See with what admirable art the idea of deso-
lation is here conveyed, and what a sad ending it is ! how
solitary ! how bereft of human sympathy and kindness !
He dies in the house of a stranger — one companion, and
one only, stays with him to the last. He receives no con-
solation. It is a perfect picture ; the scene is admirably
described in a few pathetic words ; the emotion intended
to be excited very probably was excited. But is the
picture true } No, the appeal to the feelings is founded
upon a fiction. Turner was not abandoned by his friends
— it was he who abandoned them. Many of the Royal
Academicians were anxious about him, and, besides the
'members of his own profession, there were numbers of
other people in London who would have been delighted

334 The Life of J, M, W. Turner.

to render him a service. In spite of his habitual in-
civility in not answering letters, he was constantly* receiv-
ing invitations. He had a morbid fancy for hiding
himself, and woulcl not let anybody know where he really
lived. It is true that he died in the house of a stranger,
but he did so by the capricious exercise of his own free
will. There can be no necessity for a man to die in the
house of a stranger in the very city where he possesses an
excellent mansion of his own, with money enough to live
there in the most perfect comfort, and even luxury.

Mr. Ruskin's pathetic appeals to our commiseration on
behalf of Turner have produced some effect on other
writers, and may ultimately create a fabulous legend, like
the French legend about Napoleon's poverty at St.
Helena. Mr. Thornbury says, "he left the nation that
neglected him ;£i40,ooo/' If the nation neglected him
where did he get the money ? In the very next sentence
Mr. Thornbury says that he was not unaccustomed to the
society of men of wealth and rank. Good evidence, again,
that he was not neglected.

The same tendency to excessive statement which we
have noticed in Mr. Ruskin's description of Turner's
melancholy isolation, will be found in his account of
Turner's performance as an artist. The simple truth is
wonderful enough, but the desire to produce a strong
effect upon the reader's mind has generally carried the
author of " Modern Painters " far beyond its boundaries.

" J. M. W. Turner is the only man who was ever given*
an entire transcript of the whole system of nature, and is.

Mk Ruskifis Estimate of Turner. 335

in this point of view, the only perfect landscape-painter
whom the world has ever seen."

An entire transcript of the whole system of nature !
The system of nature is infinite ; man's time and strength
in this world are finite. It is not possible for finite man
to transcribe infinite nature entirely. The great army
of all the artists who have ever lived have still left plenty
of fresh material in nature for their successors. But it is
quite unnecessary for me to answer the author of " Modern
Painters/'.since the author on "Notes on some of the
Principal Pictures exhibited in the Rooms of the Royal
Academy " answered him so effectually in the year 1858.

" Nobody has ever painted heather yet, nor a rock
spotted richly with mosses ; nor gentians, nor Alpine
roses, nor white oxalis in the woods, nor anemone nemo-
rosa, nor even so much as the first springing leaves of
any tree in their pale, dispersed, delicate sharpness of
shape. Everything has to be done yet''

I may be told that this referred specially to the Pre-
Raphaelite method ; that what the writer intended to say
was, that no artist had painted these things with the
minute skill and attention of the Pre-Raphaelites, and
that the sentence bore no reference to Turner'^ transcript
of nature which was 'altogether different. Such an ob-
jection falls to the ground at once before Mr. Ruskin's
declaration that Turner was himself a Pre-Raphaelite.

But this is not all. It is evident from some preceding
lines of the same note, that in the year 1858 Mr. Ruskin

336 The Life of y, M, W, Turner,

considered even Turner's transcript of natural effects as
insufficient, since he was looking forward to a more satis-
factory rendering of the transcience of nature by hands
trained in thorough Pre-Raphaelite study. After speaking
of familiar and homely foreground subjects, he continued
as follows :

" But what shall we say when the power of painting,
which makes even these so interesting, begins to exert
itself, with the aid of imagination and memory, on the
splendid transcience of nature, and her noblest continu-
ance ; when we have the courses of heaven's golden
clouds instead of squares of blue through cottage case-
ments ; and the fair river mists, and mountain shrouds
of vapor instead of cottage smoke ; — pine forests as well
as banks of grass, and fallen precipices instead of heaps
of flints. All this is yet to come ; nay^ even the best of
the quiet, accessible, simple gifts of nature are yet to

come, "

We will recur, a little later, to the dogma that Turner
was a Pre-Raphaelite; for the present it is enough to
note that although a Pre-Raphaelite, and the very head
of Pre-Raphaelitism, he had left so much both of fore-
ground detail and distant effect entirely unrecorded.

Whatever Turner may have left undone, the author of
** Modern Painters " expressed unbounded faith in all that
Turner actually did.

" In all that he says, we believe ; in all that he does, we
trust. It is therefore that we pray him to utter nothing

_j

Mr, Ruskifis Estimate of Turner, 337

lightly, to do nothing regardlessly. He stands upon an
eminence from which he looks back over the universe of
God and forward over the generations of men. Let
every work of his hand be a history of the one, and a
lesson to the other. Let each exertion of his mighty
mind be both hymn and prophecy ; adoration to the
Deity, revelation to mankind."

This i3 simply the artistic exaggeration of a teacher
who, to make others bfelieve, professes a much more fer-
vent faith than that which is fundamentally his own.
Even when Mr. Ruskin wrote the first volume of " Modern
Painters " in the ardor of early manhood, he was not, in
other moods, an absolute believer in Turner's infallibility.
We know this by the following plain-spoken criticism of
some of Turner's most important works.

" The Caligula's Bridge^ Temple of yupiter, Departure
of ReguluSy Ancient Italy^ Cicero's Villa, and such others,
come they from whose hand they may, I class under the
general head of "nonsense pictures." There never can
be any wholesome feeling developed in these preposterous
accumulations y and where the artist's feeling fails, his art
follows ; so that the worst possible examples of Turner's
color are found in pictures of this class. Neither in his
actual views of Italy has Turner ever caught her true
spirit, except in the little vignettes to Rogers' poem.
The Villa of Galileo, the nameless composition with
stone-pines, the several villa moonlights, and the convent
compositions in the Voyage of Columbus, are altogether
exquisite; but this is owing chiefly to their simplicity,
and perhaps, in some measure, to their smallness of size.
22

338 The Life of J. M. W, Turner.

None of his large pictures at all equal them ; the Bay of
BaicB is encumbered with material^ it contains ten times as
much as is necessary to a good picture^ and yet is so crude
in color as to look unfinished. The Palestrina is full of. raw
white, and has a look of Hampton Court about its long
avenue ; the Modem Italy is purely English in its near
foliage ; it is composed from Tivoli material, enriched and
arranged most dexterously, but it has not the virtue of the
real things *

Notwithstanding these criticisms, the rank assigned by
Mr. Ruskin to Turner was that of the greatest painter of
all time.

" We have had, living with us, and painting for us, the
greatest painter of all time ; a man with whose supremacy
of power no intellect of past ages can be put in compar-
ison for a moment."

The reader will observe that Turner's supremacy is not
restricted to landscape, his own department of art. He
is not the greatest landscape-painter, but the greatest
painter.

Was he indeed really the Prince of painters, or is this
only an artistic exaggeration intended to awaken the
reader to a sense of the simple truth by asking him to
believe much more 1

It is now time to discuss briefly Mr. Ruskin's affirma-
tion that Turner was the true head of Pre-Raphaelitism.

The difficulty in arguing about this lies in the prudent
care with which the leaders of the Pre-Raphaelites always

Turner and Pre-Raphaelitism, 339

avoided any definition of their doctrines. They very
properly confined themselves to their own business of
painting, and left the talking to their friends and enemies
in the press. Pictures, however, speak in their own way,
and the real Pre-Raphaelite pictures, those painted when
the sect was still a power and attracting public attention,
were as different from Turner's work as it is possible for
one kind of art to be from its opposite. It may be worth
while to note the principal points of difference, because
they will help us to understand still more clearly the
peculiarities of Turner's system.

The Pre-Raphaelite pictures were full of details pain-
fully studied from nature, on the principle, apparently, of
the most minutely accurate portraiture. Mr. Ruskin
himself confirmed this by saying that the one principle
of Pre-Raphaelitism was absolute, uncompromising truth,
"obtained by working everything, down to the most
minute detail, from nature, and from nature only." He
said that every Pre-Raphaelite landscape background was
painted to the last touch in the open air from the thing
itself, and that every minute accessory was painted in the
same manner.

We may assume, then, that ac<;jirate portaiture of
objects was a leading Pre-Raphaelite principle. But
Turner's principle was to avoid accurate portraiture. I
might insist upon the difference of practice between
artists who always worked from nature and a painter who
never took a picture into the open air, but that is not the
essential point. A man might paint from memory, if his
memory were excellent, so as to make his work look as if

340 The Life of y, M. W. Turner.

it had been done from nature. He might report nature
as Woodfall reported the debates in the House of Com-
mons before shorthand writers took them down on the
spot. Turner did nothing of the kind. His paintings
are not reports, but works of fiction. He would not even
condescend to make an accurate portrait of so large an
object as a Highland mountain, nor of so interesting an
object as a feudal castle ; still less would he devote atten-
tion to truth of portraiture in matters of minor detail.
The popular impression is not always right, but it was
right in feeling the vastness of the difference between
Turnerian and Pre-Raphaelite work. There is nothing
natfin Turner's work; it is consummately artificial, full
of all the craft and subtlety of the ripest art, in which
truth is constantly sacrificed to beauty and detail to gen-
eral effect. The Pre-Raphaelites rejected the subtlety
and cunning of the artist's craft to go back to the truth
of nature. How far they succeeded in this enterprise we
have not to consider, but we may close the subject by
remarking that there is a Pre-Raphaelite landscape in the
National Gallery, the yerusaletn of Thomas Seddon.
Future generations may conveniently compare that with
Turner's work, and ^e the difference. The Pre-Raphael-
ite landscape is all clear, measurable, ascertainable fact ;
It is full of the most resolute object study, every object a
distinct and separate motive for the artist's effort. He
paints tree by tree, hillock by hillock, house by house,
and in the foreground sheep by sheep and goat by goat.
He paints the man in the corner exactly as he would have
painted him if there had been no landscape, and the

Turner and Pre-Raphaelitism, 34 x

landscape as if there had been no figure. You may
remove an object from any part of the work, and the loss
will not be felt ; the bits of study are as independent of
each other as the short paragraphs of general intelligence
in a newspaper. It is, in short, a kind of map, drawn
and colored with the most pains-taking accuracy, and, no
doubt, quite closely resembling the unlovely but interest-
ing reality. Precious work of its kind, and work which
we may be thankful for, but divided from that of Turner
by a gulf as impassable as the abyss between the earth
and the sun. The Pre-Raphaelite landscape is full of
truthful object portraiture; hundreds of different objects
are portrayed side by side as accurately as the artist
could achieve it by the closest observation on the spot ;
in the Turnerian landscapes you cannot find a single
accurate portrait of any hill, or tree, or building under
heaven. In Seddon's work there is no composition ; in
Turner's all the material is arranged in clusters and
groups, which again in their turn are grouped together
into a pictorial whole. The Pre-Raphaelite works entirely
from observation. Turner always from more or less suc-
cessful invention. Seddon does nothing but analyse,
Turner synthetises always, in the smallest of his vignettes
as in the largest pictures in his gallery.

It would have been pleasant and satisfactory, had it
been possible, to place art criticism on so positive and
secure a foundation as that of truth, for the truth of
nature is really, in most things, ascertainable by the kind
of labor which Mr. Ruskin so courageously bestowed on
mountains and vegetation. We should then have had a

342 The Life of % M. W. Turner.

criterion, and there would have been some possibility that
the fame of dead artists, and the incomes of living ones,
might have been less precarious, whilst criticism itself
might have attained the respectable position of a science.
The hope of such a generally satisfactory state of
things as this was entertained for a time by many intelli-
gent Englishmen, but it had no foundation in the essen-
tial nature of art.

"We must have the courage to declare," says J.
Milsand, with a just sense of what art is and is not,
" we must have the courage to declare, even at the risk of
being misunderstood, that truth in the ordinary sense of
the word will never be the aim of art, that the value
which a picture may happen to possess as a means of
making us understand the nature of realities, will never
have anything in common with its value as a work of art.
Let us be on our guard against the notion that truth is
the pictorial element of painting ; it is, on the contrary,
the side by which pictures address themselves to the
ordinary intelligence, to all the general faculties which the
artist possesses in common with other men, but which
are not his own soul as an artist, not that part of human
nature which he undertakes to express when he takes up
his palette. If he teaches us to see better because he
himself sees better than we do, we shall, no doubt, be the
gainers, so long as he renders us this service without
neglecting his special task ; and it is a sort of negative
duty for him not to shock our intelligence by remaining
below the familiar conception of nature which may be
prevalent in his time amongst the public. But as for
estimating his merit as an artist according to his instruc-

The Criterion of Truth. 343

tiveness, as for requiring him to rectify and complete our
conceptions, nothing could be more false or dangerous
than such a requirement. And this for two principal
reasons : the first is, that if his productions are lessons of
observation, the effort they require in order to be under-
stood will no longer allow the spectator to be moved ;, the
second, which is still more serious, is, that the painter
himself, if governed by a didactic intention, will no
longer be inspired by his own emotions."

All this is excellent, especially the concluding sentences,
which account fully and sufficiently for the undeniable
fact that all scientific illustrations, however admirably
executed, however rich in truth, invariably fail to produce
in us the pleasure excited by works of art, and also that
the nearer a picture approaches to the character of a
scientific illustration the less our artistic sense is gratified
by it. The disappointment of many young artists of the
present generation, who have thrown all their effort into
the acquirement and expression of mere knowledge, with
the smallest possible effect upon the public mind, might
have been prevented if the nature of art, as distinct from
science, had been rather better understood. They were
truthful and sincere when truth was not always wanted,
and even sincerity might be out of place. " What ! " the
reader may ask in surprise, " can good art ever be insin-
cere } ** Yes, in a certain sense, it undoubtedly can. The
artist may set aside or dissemble his personal convictions
out of consideration for the charm or power with which
he thinks it necessary to endow his work of art. Shall I
give an instance.^ Byron was a great artist, and now

344 ^^^ Life of y, M, IV. Turner.

see the contrast between his private opinion as a man,
and his published work as an artist. Here it is, in his
own words.

" I have always had a great contempt for women ; and
formed this opinion of them not hastily, but from my
own fatal experience. My writings, indeed, tend to exalt
the sex; and my imagination has always delighted in
giving them a beau iddal likeness, but I only drew them
as a painter or statuary would do — as they should be."

This is plain and clear. In this case the artist frankly
admits that he was not faithful to his own experience.
Raphael admitted as much when he said that he repre-
sented human figures not as they are but as they ought to
be, and he admitted it still more frankly by the contrast
between his drawings from nature (plain evidence that he
knew what nature was) and the same figures, idealised, in
his compositions.

At the close of Mr. Ruskin's preface to the second
edition of his first volume, he says : " My opponents yield
me the field at once. One (the writer for the Athenceuni)
has no other resource than the assertion 'that he dis-
approves the natural style in painting. If people want to
see Nature let them go and look at herself. Why should
they see her at second-hand on a piece of canvas } ' The
other (Blackwood)^ still more utterly discomfited, is re-
duced to a still more remarkable line of defence. * It is
not,' he says, * what things in all respects really are, but
how they are convertible by the mind into what they are
noty that we have to consider." Mr. Ruskin thought

Distinction between Nature and Art. 345

these remarks absurd, and yet the writers in the Athe-
nceum and Blackwood had grasped two of the greatest
principles of sound aesthetics. There is an excellent little
poem by Jules Breton, the eminent French rustic painter,
which illustrates what the Athencsum said. In this little
poem a landscape-painter is at work upon an oak; a
peasant comes to. see what he is doing, and laughs at
him for being at so much pains to make a sham oak-tree
in paint, when anybody can easily get to see a real one.
The writer concludes with the lesson that with reference
to the art which merely copies nature the peasant was
perfectly right. If painting were simply true, and no
more, there would be no reason for painting what can be
easily seen in nature, and yet how many of the very best
pictures have been made from commonplace materials !
Blackwood's line of defence is simply the true description
of the mental operation which produces art, and which
really and unquestionably does convert things into what
they are not. I may be excused for introducing a little
anecdote as an illustration of what the writer in Black-
wood so judiciously observed. I happened to be with a
well-known picture-dealer when he gave some friendly
advice to a young artist whose works were full of the
most painstaking fidelity, yet had not the slightest artistic
charm. " You paint things as they are," he said ; " and
that is a great mistake. All successful artists paint
things as they are not!' The remark struck me by its
boldness, by the speaker's complete emancipation from
the common delusion about truth, and all subsequent
experience has convinced me that he was right.

346 The Life of J, M. W. Turner.

The reader may now reasonably feel disposed to ask
me a question of this kind : " If you reject truth as the
test and criterion of art, what other criterion have you ? "
The answer, the candid answer, is that there is no posi-
tive criterion for the really artistic element in a work of
art. Almost everything in a picture may be tested except
its artistic quality, but this subtly eludes all measuring
and analysis. You can test truth of various kinds by the
help of the sciences, but a picture may have been exe-
cuted in the strictest conformity to science and still be
perfectly worthless' as fine art ; and when we come to that
artistic element itself which excuses so many errors, and
without which all the knowledge in the world is vain, we
can only feel its presence for ourselves, we cannot prove
it to another. What we really can do is to tell others
how the artistic power has affected ourselves, and this is
one of the most useful functions of the writer upon art.
It is this which is valuable in Mr. Ruskin's writings about
Turner, even in the utmost excesses of his statements.
After all deductions, the wonderful fact remains that
Turner, during his lifetime, found one admirer, a man of
genius, a man of wide culture and very 'exceptional in-
dustry, who seriously believed that his intellect was
unequalled, and that he was the greatest painter of all
time.

After this, any more moderate estimate must of neces-
sity appear lukewarm and spiritless, but, notwithstanding
this unfortunate effect of contrast, we will try to render a
candid account of Turner's position in art

The first question about any painter — not the highest

Turner's Position in Art. " 347

or most important question, but the first in order — con-
cerns his technical excellence. Was Turner an excellent
painter, technically ? This has been already answered at
various times in the present biography. He was excel-
lent in some points, but unequal and unsafe. It is very
difficult to classify him justly, he lies so much outside of
the good sound work of the great masters. It is probable
that he was himself aware of this, as when he said of Van-
develde : " I can't paint like him ; " and the desire to
execute works in the manner of his celebrated predeces-
sors, which remained with him until his originality had
fully developed itself, implies an uneasy preoccupation
about his technical powers, and a wish to ascertain, by
experiment, if they were equal to the ambitious task be-
fore him. There is a certain satisfaction in seeing work
thoroughly well done which the reader must have felt for
himself in the presence of the soundest and best work of
the old masters, and which Turner's work in oil does not
afford.* It seems as if, after having tried to paint soundly
in early life, he had given up the pursuit of technical

* Just as I am finally arranging these sheets for the press a letter reaches
me from a very experienced picture-dealer, who writes in the most absolute
sincerity, and this is what he says of Turner :

" I may be wrong, but I must confess to an increasing love for Corot and
Constable. Turner is losing his hold upon me. When I group a few
pictures, say Matthew Maris, Troyon, Diaz, Millet, Rousseau, James Maris,
and Turner, the Turner has the worst of it. That is to say, the Turner
is crude, violent, and as a bit of work amateurish in comparison with the
others. There can be no doubt as to Turner's genius, but his painting is
poor in comparison with the great modern masters."

The reader will observe how exclusively the objection to Turner, in this
quotation, applies to technical power, of which I may observe that picture-
dealers, from their constant habit of comparing, are often excellent judges.

348 The Life of y. M. W. Turner.

soundness in despair and determined to use painting
simply as a means of expression for his imaginative
powers, leaving its technical quality to chance. " In our
time/' said Fromentin, '* either men paint carefully and
not always very well, or else they take no further trouble
about it and hardly paint at all. The work is heavy and
summary, lively and n^gligit sensitive and rapidly got
over, or else it is conscientious, explaining itself every-
where, according to the laws of imitation, and nobody,
not even those who practise it, would venture to affirm
that such painting is any the better for being scrupulous."
If you give this admirably candid paragraph the attention
it deserves, it will enable you to understand the spirit
of Turners technical practice. He was one of those
moderns who " take no further trouble about it ; " his work
was "sensitive and rapidly got over," certainly not "con-
scientious, explaining itself everywhere according to the
laws of imitation.*' He painted simply to express himself,
heedless of the quality of the expression, just as Scott
wrote his novels without stopping to study " Fart de Hen
direr The whole condition of his mind, as to technical
matters, appears to have been a condition of despairing
indifference. He used any new color that the experimen-
talizing ingenuity of modern chemistry could invent for
the temptation of an artist He used body-color and oil
in the same works, and when pictures were sent by him
from Rome in 1829, he said : " If any wet gets to them
they will be destroyed." But it is not simply for its want
of durability that his painting is unsound. It has not the
firmness and substance of thorough work ; it does not

Tur7iers Position in Art, 349

offer to the eye of the spectator that satisfaction which the
textures and surfaces of the greatest masters invariably
give. Look at a De Hooge, say the Court of a Dutch
House, a picture with a good constitution, sound all
through, yet painted two hundred years ago. See how
brilliant it is ; see how the colors are laid in their places,
and how dense and strong is the substance of the paint,
yet how light at the same time, and representative of
nature ! I am not going to compare Hobbema*s simple
talent of observation with Turner's imaginative genius,
but pray look at Hobbema's Avenue of Middlehamis or
his Forest Scene in the National Gallery, and acknowledge
the sound quality of the work, quiet enough in color ; not
brilliant like the De Hooge, but as firm in substance.
Considered simply as painting, the work of these old
Dutchmen is to that of Turner what parchment is to
paper. If from Holland you cross over to Italy, and
accustom your eyes for an hour to the quiet splendor of
Titian — his rich surfaces, his blended colors, laid on a
substantial groundwork of safe dead-color — and then pass
to Turner, yoii will find a difference like that between
tapestry and cotton-print.

In water-color the case presents a very different aspect.
Turner was unquestionably, in his best time, the greatest
master of water-color who had ever lived. He may have
been excelled since then in some special departments of
the art, in some craft of execution, or in the knowledge of
some particular thing in nature ; but no one has ever de-
served such generally high rank as Turner in the art of
water-color painting. His superiority even goes so far

3 so The Life of J. M. W. Turner.

that the art, in his hands, is like another art, a fresh dis-
covery of his own. The color, in his most delicate work,
hardly seems to be laid on the paper by any means known
to us, but suggests the idea of a vaporous deposit ; and
besides the indescribable excellence of those parts of
Turner's water-colors which do not look as if they were
painted at all, there is excellence of another kind in those
parts which exhibit dexterities of execution. Nor is the
strange perfection of his painting in water-color limited to
landscape ; his studies of still life — birds and their plum-
age, bits of interiors at Petworth, etc. — are evidence
enough that, had he chosen to paint objects rather than
effects, he might have been as wonderful an object-
painter as William Hunt was, though in a different and
more elevated manner.

Though Turner was a reckless experimentalist, he was
a very brilliant experimentalist, full of ideas and perpetu-
ally trying to realize his ideas. In fecundity of concep-
tion the old Dutchmen and Venetians are not to be
compared with him for an instant The regular old-
fashioned system of painting, the system which enabled
the old masters to reach such great technical excellence,
was first to learn to paint from a clever man, and then
to apply the art to five or six subjects, to be repeated in
different forms till the artist died of old age. If Turner
had done this, if he had restricted himself to a narrow
speciality and paid careful attention to technical matters,
and had a good technical training at the beginning, his
work might have been as good as that of any old master,
but criticism has little concern with what might have

Turner's Position in Art, 351

been. As it is, criticism can only say that his experi-
ments were always interesting, and often in the highest
degree astbnishing and wonderful, but seldom quite
satisfactory, except in parts.

I have mentioned, as a reason for this deficiency, which
it is useless to try to blink, the wide range of Turner's
experiments ; but there is another reason for it. He was
always trying to paint the unpaintable, which the Dutch
and the Venetians most prudently and carefully avoided.
This tendency was skilfully hit by Punch with the exag-
geration which properly belongs to satire, in the following
imaginary title for a Turnerian picture :

" 34. A Typhoon bursting in a Simoom over the Whirl-
pool of Maelstrom, Norway ; with a ship on fire, an
eclipse, and the effect of a lunar rainbow.

" * O Art, how vast thy mighty wonders are
To those who roam upon the extraordinary deep I
Maelstrom, thy hand is here.'

From an Unpublished Poem**

Do not let us be so narrow-minded as to forbid an artist
to paint the unpaintable if he likes, but let us remember
that when he does so the result must inevitably be a mere
sign or substitute for the thing represented, a sort of
pictorial algebra. De Hooge could paint a Dutchwoman
standing in her backyard, close to her dust-bin, with a
degree of pictorial efficiency incomparably superior to
that of Turner when he painted the Angel standing in
the Sun. Again, the habit of painting unpaintable splen-
dors led Turner into a transcendental treatment of com-
mon realities, so that he came at last to paint the groups

352 The Life of J. M, W, Turner.

of figures, in his foregrounds as if they had been sunset
clouds.

There is one point, and one only, in which Turner
really did excel the artists of all time, and that is in his
appreciation of mystery in nature, and his superlatively
exquisite rendering of it.

If Turner deserves honor for the originality which
carried art further than it had ever before been carried in
this direction, it is simple justice to add that Mr. Ruskin
was the first writer on art who ever explained the value
of mystery in painting. He touched upon this subject
in the first volume of " Modern Painters,'* especially in
the important paragraph which affirms that nature is never
distinct and never vacant, and he recurred to it in two
chapters on " Turnerian Mystery " in the fourth volume.

Mystery in nature and art may be defined as that con-
dition of things in which they are partially seen, suffi-
ciently for us to be aware that something is there, but not
sufficiently for us to determine all about it by sight alone,
unaided by the inferences of experience. A bad painter
would either explain too much, from mere knowledge, or
else simplify to get rid of the difficulty ; a painter who
knew the value of mystery, and was able to render it,
would show just enough of his objects to let the eye of
the spectator lose them and find them again as it would
in nature with the same uncertainty about what they are.
He would render the confusion and abundance of the
signs by which the natural landscape expresses itself to
the human eye, not giving more of things than nature
gives, and trying, as far as possible, never to give very

Mystery, 353

much less. I may add that it is perfectly possible (many
readers will know this by experience) to have the strongest
appreciation of the value of mystery, without being able
to give it except under the penalty of feebleness, and it is
probably for this reason that so many honest painters
have made their work clearer and simpler than nature.
Turner could paint strongly and mysteriously at the same
time, which gave a great charm to his work for cultivated
eyes, though it had the disadvantage of offending the
vulgar by not being intelligible by them.

Mystery, in the art of painting, is most probably a
modern object of study and technical ambition. We do
not exactly know how Zeuxis and Apelles painted, but
any cultivated critic who knows something of Greek
sculpture and Greek literature, and of the interior but
still interesting classical paintings found at Pompeii, will
feel perfectly satisfied that however admirable ancient
Greek art may have been for its drawing, and perhaps
even for coloring of a very simple and elementary kind,
it cannot possibly have been mysterious. Clearness, the
clear presentation of tangible objects, was the Greek
conception of art, and you may look in vain through the
ancient art of Egypt, Assyria, China, and Japan, for any-
thing which indicates in the least that the artist regarded
the mystery- of nature in any other light than as a mere
embarrassment to be got rid of by his own clarifying and
simplifying conventionalism, as muddy water is to be
filtered to make it limpid, or as the branches of a pine-
tree have to be cleared away before it can be brought to
the straightness and smoothness of a mast. Follow the
23

354 ^^ ^if^ of y. M. W. Turner,

history of art downwards through ancient Rome, through
mediaeval Italy, Germany, and France, and see how long
you have to wait before anything at all resembling the
mystery of nature begins to find expression in graphic
art of any kind whatever ! Perugino is not mysterious,
does not seem to have the least idea that such a quality
can ever be desirable, his ideal is a perfectly clear sky
with slender trees against it, painted leaf by leaf, and
figures with perfect outlines. Van Eyck is clear and
positive. Albert Durer has a strong sense of quantity
in nature, but none whatever of mystery, and so it is with
all the early German and Italian engravers. The pro-
found and sombre genius of Rembrandt led him to study
a certain kind of mystery, that of things half- seen in
graduated obscurity, but he knew little or nothing of the
mystery of light. Claude, in his turn, having a poetic
sentiment, enjoyed the veiling of distances by atmosphere,
but his conception was always simple, and though in a
certain sense his distances may be said to be mysterious,
his foregrounds are much less so ; even in spite of his
fine sense of richness and intricacy in foliage. Even the
grand landscape design of Titian is too affirmative for the
evanescence of nature. There is a light sketchiness in
the landscape backgrounds of Rubens, and also in those
of Watteau, which does duty for mystery, but is not to
be compared for fulness of study and knowledge, to the
purposeful mystery of Turner, all charged with observa-
tion and meaning. It is then the simple truth, without
any exaggeration or hyperbole, that Turner was the first
artist who made mystery a special object of effort, and

Mystefy. 355

the first also to attain it in perfection. He was certainly
conscious of this peculiarity in his art. When a picture
of his went to New York to a Mr. Lenox, he asked Leslie
how Mr. Lenox liked it.

** He thinks it indistinct."

"You should tell him/' Turner replied, "that indistinct-
ness is my fault."

He said this in a good-humored way, but with a tone
which clearly implied that he considered mystery an
integral part of his art, and that whilst choosing to call it
a fault, he did so only in condescension to the taste of
the purchaser. Mr. Lenox, it may be -well to add, soon
altered his opinion as he gradually became able to read
the mystery of Turner.

Though certainly not the inventor of Pre-Raphaelitism,
and though educated by the influence of the old masters.
Turner was a daring innovator in many things, sometimes
fortunately, sometimes very much the reverse. An ex-
ample of this in color may be selected as one of those
very rare artifices of coloring which are positive enough
and simple enough to be discussed in art criticism. Mr.
Ruskin says of Turner (" Modern Painters," Part IX.
Chapter XI.):

" His most distinctive innovation as a colorist was his
discovery of the scarlet shadow, ' True, there is a sun-
shine whose light is golden, and its shadow grey; but
there is another sunshine and that the purest, whose light
is white and its shadow scarlet.* This was the essentially
offensive, inconceivable thing, which he could not be
believed in."

3S6 The Life of J. M. W, Turner,

Now it is quite true that Turner in his later work did
actually combine white lights with scarlet shadows, an
invention which nobody had ever hit upon before, and
therefore, perhaps, in that sense a discovery ; but this
invention was certainly not a discovery in nature, where
the combination does not exist. Either it was a tech-
nical device of Turner's to get a false brilliance, or else
he may have been gradually and unconsciously led to it
by physical degeneration of the eye. You may watch
and wait all your life long to see a natural object which
is white in its lights under sunshine and scarlet in its
shadows, and you* will never see it in this world. It is
like watching for the Holy Grail, ** rose-red with beatings
in it as if alive."

Mr. Ruskin places Turner amongst the seven supreme
colorists of the world, the other six being, in his estimate,
Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Corregio, and Sir
Joshua Reynolds. It is always interesting to know what
a critic thinks about the coloring of a painter, but it is
not of the slightest use to argue the matter, as excellence
in color cannot possibly be proved by evidence. I should
say that Turner's color was often wonderful, often far
below his best, and seldom natural. I should say, too,
that he produced fine color much less habitually than
Giorgione, Titian, and Corregio, that he was often crude
and violent, and occasionally hot, heavy, or dull. His
unfaithfulness to nature would prove nothing against him
as a colorist, but rather imply a possibility in his favor.
The color of the great colorists is really nothing but a
sort of visible music which has to be brilliant or harmoni-

Turners Color, 357

ous, but which is always sufficiently like nature if it does
not offend the spectator. Mr. Ruskin's declaration that
color requires especial veracity is simply one of those
paradoxes which he throws up now and then like rockets
to prevent his readers from falling into a state of inatten-
tion. " Form," he says, '* may be attained in perfectness
by painters who, in their course of study, are continually
altering or idealising it; but only the sternest fidelity
will reach coloring. Idealise or alter in that, and you are
lost. Whether you alter by abasing or exaggerating —
by glare or by decline, one fate is for you — ruin. Vio-
late truth wilfully in the slightest particular, or at least
get into the habit of violating it, and all kinds of
failure and error will surround you and hunt you to
your fall."

This is most effective writing, but as misleading as it
is effective. The proof that the color of the great color-
ists is not natural is that they are all so unlike each other.
If they were all faithful copyists of nature, they would
resemble one another exactly as photographs would if
photography could render color. I have said already
that color is visible music ; it is so indeed, and since the
colorists are musicians who compose for our eyes, they
have the same liberty, the same individuality, as the
musicians who write operas and oratorios.* "Titian and
Corregio," says V^ron, in his admirable volume on
**iEsthetics," "Rubens and Rembrandt, are no more like

♦ It may possibly be due to this affinity between color and music that all
painters (Amaury Duval declares that there is no exception to this rule)
love music with a sort of second love.

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'9'\r 1 • icdcienr ^ seems :7r.yi^r.irx:^ i:x ±:-:5> ctsei.

Turner s Imagination, 359

was empirical, experimental, rash, adventurous to temer-
ity, disposed to trust his own genius to any extent in
wanderings from the beaten track ; but he can hardly
even in his failures, be called deficient. His artistic
nature, with all its errors, was one of the most opulent
that ever existed.

I need hardly dwell upon his imaginative power, which
is so evident to any one who can recognize imagination
when he sees it that instances are superfluous. Every
picture of Turner's, every drawing, almost every sketch,
executed after he reached manhood, bears evidence of the
action of imagination, which in his works would often
amplify a simple theme, or heighten still further the sub-
limity of a sublime one. There have been few artists of
any kind, there has not been one landscape-painter, in
whom the action of the imaginative faculty has been so
constant ; and it is the more surprising in his case that
his production was so enormous. This incessant action
of the imaginative faculty made it impossible for Turner
to draw the scenes of nature faithfully; but what ,his
drawings lose in fidelity they generally more than regain
in art

A quality in Turner's art which has been much less
spoken of than liis imagination is his taste, which was of
exquisite refinement. It was not infallible, there are
compositions by him which seem sadly wanting in taste,
compositions overburdened with uninteresting material or
spoiled by awkward arrangement ; but notwithstanding
occasional failures it is certain, so far as anything about
such a disputable subject can be, that Turner had a deli-

36o The Life of J, M, W, Turner.

cate and singularly elegant perception of the becoming in
the arrangement of his materials, that he gave almost
every subject a certain charm, commonly attributed to
what people used to call his " magic pencil," but in reality
due to the fine choice in selection and rejection, watch-
fully exercised by a mind of extraordinary refinement. I
have not space to give special instances, but I may say
generally that (with very few exceptions) the little vig-
nettes seem to me the best examples of taste in all that
he did, each a bit of perfected beauty, natural and artifi-
cial at the same time.

" As some rare little rose, a piece of inmost
Horticultural art."

I should say, then, to sum up, that Turner was a land-
scape-painter of extraordinary yet by no means unlimited
genius, a subtle and delicate but unfaithful draughtsman,
a learned and refined but often fallacious chiaroscurist, a
splendid and brilliant but rarely natural colorist, a man
gifted with wonderful fertility of imagination and strength
of memory (though this last is less easy to determine
because he altered everything), a student of Nature whose
range was vast indeed, for it included mountains, lakes,
lowland rivers and the sea, besides all kinds of human
works that can affect the appearance of a landscape
(castles, abbeys, cities, villages, houses, bridges, roads,
etc., etc.), yet not universal, for he never adequately illus-
trated the familiar forest trees, and had not the sentiment
of the forest, neither had he the rustic sentiment in its
perfection. I should say that Turner was distinguished
greatly by his knowledge, but still more distinguished by

Risunti, 361

his exquisite taste, and by the singular charm which it
gave to most of his works, though not to all of them ; that
he was technically a wonderful but imperfect and irregu-
lar painter in oil, unsafe and unsound in his processes,
though at the same time both strong and delicate in hand-
ling ; that he stands apart and alone in water-color, which
in his hands is like a new art ; that he was an excellent
line-etcher in preparation for mezzotint, and a good
engraver in mezzotint besides ; and that with all these
gifts and acquirements he was a very great and illustrious
artist, but not the greatest of artists. I believe that his
fame will last ; that he was as much a poet on canvas as
Byron and Shelley were in written language, and that
although it is possible that his performance may be after-
wards excelled, it will be very difficult for any future land-
scape-painter to rival his reputation in his own country.

The qualities of Turner's art are so various and so
great, that there is some danger, especially with the influ-
ence of Mr. Ruskin*s eloquence and frequent use of hyper-
bole, of a national idolatry of Turner, like the Roman
idolatry of Raphael, or the French idolatry of Claude.
Such a result would be a great evil to landscape-painting
in England, and to the aesthetic culture of Englishmen
who are not practical artists. Even as it is, the fame of
Turner is injurious to English landscape-painters of merit,
who. if inferior to him in range of study or strength of
imagination, are often in some respects his superiors, and
able to render what they love best in nature with a degree
of affectionate fidelity which he certainly could not have
equalled. With all my admiration for Turner I should be

362 The Life of y. M. W. Turner,

sorry to contribute to such a result as this. The fame of
Claude, of Poussin, and Salvator, arrested the movement
of landscape art in France for more than a hundred years,
and the regular " classical landscape " on those models
(or supposed to be on those models) was until quite
recently the only landscape recognized by the official
teaching. Deliverance came at last through the modern
rustic school and the sylvan influences of the forest of
Fontainebleau. An uncritical adoration of Turner might
narrow and falsify English landscape-painting if the natu-
ral vigor and independence of the English race did not
continually re-assert itself. Let us enjoy what is delight-
ful in his art, and admire what is admirable, but let us
remember that he belongs already to the past, that he is a
dead master, that he will soon be an old master, and that
an art which would preserve its freshness must work on
towards its own future.

We have lived in an interesting and exciting time in
the history of landscape-painting, a time of discoveries
which in the nature of things cannot occur again.
Modern landscape was really begun by Claude in the
direction of idealism, and by the Dutchmen in the direc-*
tion of realism. Turner took up the idealism of Claude,
imitated it, or followed it up to a certain point, and then
diverged into an idealism of his own, which he applied to
a much wider range of material. The Pre-Raphaelites
tried the experiment of a new realism, not founded on
Dutch work as to its technical principles, yet resembling
Paul Potter in the close study of separate details. Con-
stable set the example of a resolute naturalism, an example

Past and Future of Landscape Painting. 363

which has had immense influence on modern art. I do
not see how it can be henceforth possible for landscape-
painting to go into any strikingly new direction, except
so far as this, that there will always be a certain fresh-
ness and novelty in the work of new men of original
genius on account of their personal preferences. Turner
may be excelled in many ways by some genius in the
future, more richly gifted and more thoroughly trained,
for though his art was extensive it was not without limits,
and though his skill was great it was not without imper-
fection ; but however wonderful may be the work of the
future genius, it is most improbable that he will ever win
a fame like the fame of Turner. He will not have Tur-
ner's opportunities for doing what has not been done
before. He will not have a writer of singular eloquence
and unlimited devotion to be the priest and prophet of his
divinity. He will live in an age of cooled enthusiasms
and inherited critical knowledge, which will indispose the
public for any eager partisanship in his favor. Even
already the first ardor of modem interest in artistic ques-
tions has given place to a tranquil philosophy. There is
nothing now in Europe like the warfare between the
Classics and Romantics, which agitated all the ilite of
Parisian intelligence in 1830, or even like the much
feebler excitement which attended the rise of Pre-Raphael-
itism in England. There has been some slight commo-
tion about the revival of etching, but that is merely the
resuming of a process which had been abandoned. It is
becoming more and more difficult to create a sensation in
art, and without a sensation such a fame as that of Tur-
ner is not possible.

CHAPTER XVI.

Turner's character and habits. — ^Turner's manners. — Religion and morality.
— Temperance and intemperance. — Turner's generosity. — Turner's will.
— Works of art left to the nation. — Conclusion.

'TPHIS ends what I have to say of Turner as an artist,
but there are some points in his character as a man
which cannot be left unnoticed.

He was one of the most eccentric Englishmen who
ever lived, a perfect British original. Emerson says that
Nature is at the greatest pains to protect originalities
against hostile influences ; and if so. Turner must have
been the object of special precautions on her part. The
narrowness of his literary education protected him, for
foreign languages, whether ancient or modern, expose the
mind to the influence of foreign ideas. It was even a
protection to his originality not to be able to write better
than he did, for he tried hard to write, long and vainly,
and if he had succeeded he would have spent much of his
energy in verse. It is easier for a painter to live in
eccentric isolation than for a man of letters, whose art it
is to use and elevate the common language of the world,
and who needs even more than others the common cul-
ture, the common experience of mankind. In many
respects the eccentricities of Turner had an excellent

Turner s Character and Habits, 365

effect upon his art. Nothing is more astonishing in Tur-
ner's life than his prodigious fertility, the enormous
quantity of his work, the hundreds and hundreds of
pictures that he left behind him, the thousands and thou-
sands of drawings and sketches, the mountain of labor
represented by the great sum total of his vast and various
performance ! Remember, too, that every touch of what
bears his name is really and truly his own, that he did
not keep a picture manufactory, as Rubens did, with a
score of workmen and pupils toiling incessantly under his
direction : that he did not despise detail, but finished all
his work sufficiently arid some of it minutely ; that he
wrought for color as much as form, tenderly, delicately,
and therefore (however swiftly) without hurry — and then,
after taking all these things into consideration, ask your-
self how it would have been possible for a man of the
world to do with his own fingers such a heap of work as
this ! Merely to copy all Turner's works completely,
without having any trouble about scheming and inventing
them, would occupy a man for a hundred years. He who
wrought them could not conform to the customs of " good
society." He got up early in the morning as laborers and
blacksmiths do, he worked at his trade all day, he wasted
no time over his simple meals, he embarrassed himself
with none of the cares and troubles of a great establish-
ment, and left what Emerson derides as the " cards, cus-
tards, and compliments " of society to those who value
them and have nothing better to occupy their thoughts.
He even carried his nonconformity to such lengths that
it is wonderful how people tolerated him at all. He

366 The Life of y. M, W. Turner.

seldom answered dinner invitations, but went or not, just as
he felt inclined at the last moment. He invited nobody
to dinner at his own house in Queen Ajine Street, and
though not quite so stingy as he has been represented, for
he would pay a score liberally at an inn (on rare occa-
sions, and partly because it amused him to astonish
people) the rule of his life was to shut himself up when at
home, and keep his movements secret when he went out
These eccentricities, which look so unsocial, were merely
the habits of a workmian who protected his own peace.
He understood that part of prudence thoroughly. He
saved money at first to win his artistic independence, the
liberty to paint what he liked and on his own artistic
principles ; the habit of saving remained with him after-
wards, but he never cared for money in comparison with
his art, and he did not, in the real and true meaning of
the expression, work for money after he became indepen-
dent. Most of his eccentricities may be explained by two
considerations : the first, that the practice of his art was
the delight as well as the labor of his life ; the second,
that the art he practised is best pursued in solitude. He
bolted the door of his painting-room and kept out critics
and gossips, surely a wise decision, unless it can be
proved that the critics and gossips would have aided him
in his labor.* Even when sketching from nature with a
friend, he would go apart for privacy and keep the result
of his sitting to himself. It is bad enough to be misunder-

* This he carried to such an extent that he never admitted even his
friend Mr. Fawkes of Farnley into his studio, and yet he loved Mr. Fawkes
far more than most men love their brothers.

Turner^ s Character and Habits, 367

stood when your work is done, without being plagued by
other people's want of apprehension whilst it is in prog-
ress. We have evidence that Turner was painfully Sensi-
tive to criticism, as many artists are, and that he was
tortured by what the newspapers said of him. There was
in his mind the apparent contradiction, which has fre-
quently been observed in men of genius, between an
eager desire for public reputation and an almost morbid
passion for privacy of life. Whilst planning schemes for
attaining the utmost possible notoriety, he lived in hiding
like an insolvent debtor.

Although a hard-working man, almost entirely absorbed
in the laborious practice of his profession. Turner was not
a Philistine ; I mean that he was not illiberally indifferent
to other kinds of culture than his own; on the contrary,
there is abundant evidence that he took an interest in
literature and science, though his mind was so especially
and peculiarly constituted for painting that his pursuit of
literature was not practically successful, and his scientific
studies hardly got beyond the initial stage of intelligent
curiosity. Even the titles of his pictures are enough to
prove some genuine interest in antiquity ; we have
already seen how much his mind was impressed by the
story of ancient Carthage. An artist who takes a general
interest in painting and architecture is sure to be led up
to antiquity through art if not through literature, and
Turner's acquaintance with ancient subjects was probably
due at first to the suggestions of the old masters. He
had at one time serious thoughts of giving himself classi-
cal literary culture, by the help of his friend Trimmer,

368 The Life of J, M. W, Turner.

and had the courage to attack both Latin and Greek, but,
as might have been anticipated, without success — an
inevitable consequence of his strange natural incapacity
for languages. His own poetry has been examined at
some length in this biography, and frequently quoted. It
gives evidence of a desire for literary activity, which was
not accompanied by any natural literary gift; still, we
ought to remember how much writers gain by culture,
especially in verse, and we may recall Byron's assertion,
that to make really excellent verses a man ought to have
no other occupation. Turner, like most artists, possessed
but few books, but it was his custom to have a volume or
two with him when he travelled, and it has been ascer-
tained that his travelling companions at one time were
Young's " Night Thoughts," Izaak Walton, and a transla-
tion of Horace. I have mentioned M. Amaury Duval's
theory, that all painters without exception have a second
love for music, so the reader may be curious to know
whether Turner loved music or was indifferent to it. He
was at one time an amateur musician, and his instrument
was the flute, but I do not know that he ever attained
any respectable degree of skill. A gamut for a flute was
found in one of his note-books, and the flute itself was
found in his house after his death. I believe that we
shall not be unjust to Turner in considering him a man
of one pursuit, who would willingly have extended the
range of his culture if he could have found the time, but
who did not allow the studies in which he was an amateur
to interfere with that one great field of study in which he
was so pre-eminently the artist. He had not the facilities

Turner's Character and Habits, 369

in various directions which are given by a good ordinary
education in languages and science, that general educa-
tion which may not be very much in itself, yet is to its
possessor like a bunch of keys, with which at any time he
can open the doors of knowledge. Would Turner have
been a greater artist with a better general education ?
The answer is very doubtful. Scholarship and exact
science might possibly have weakened within him that
visionary faculty which was the true fountain of his art.
To see Nature, to dream of what he had seen and trans-
form it as he dreamed, to realise the vision afterwards in
color, this was the occupation of his life ; and though
he did not despise other knowledge, he left it to its own
students.

A written portrait of Turner cannot be complete
without ^some account of his manners and his morals.
He was a person of unprepossessing appearance, short
and thick- set, with coarse features and the general ap-
pearance of the skipper of some small merchant craft
living on shore in the interval between two voyages. He
does not seem ever to have set up for being what is called
a gentleman, but had the style and manner of the lower
middle class. He had a great difficulty in expressing
himself properly, which made him very reserved, and he
was absolutely incapable of saying kind and polite things
in an easy and graceful way, though not at all incapable
of doing them. Mr. Ruskin tells a story of his practical
kindness in combination with bad manners when out
sketching with a friend, who "got into great difficulty
over a colored sketch. Turner looked over him a little
24

370 The Life of y. M, W, Turner,

while, then said, in a grumbling way^ * I haven't got any
paper I like, let me try yours.* Receiving a block book,
he disappeared for an hour and a half. Returning, he
threw fhe book down, wiiA a growly saying : * I can*t
make anything of your paper.' There were three
.sketches on it, in three distinct stages of progress,
showing the process of coloring from beginning to end,
and clearing up every difficulty which his friend had got
into." This story exactly coincides with everything that
we authentically know of Turner; he was at the same
time kind in deed and rude in manner.- There was no
necessity, after borrowing the block-book, to throw it
down with a growl ; he might have handed it back to the
lender with a word of thanks. It has sometimes seemed
to me that many things in Turner's character are only
exaggerations of English characteristics. The typical
Englishman is shy, reserved, fond of privacy ; Turner
had these peculiarities in excess. The typical English-
man has plain manners ; Turner's manners were plain
to gruffness. The typical Englishman loves money and
yet is generous at the same time; Turner was habit-
ually avaricious, yet could be splendidly liberal when it
suited him. It is a well-known peculiarity of the English
character to shrink from the expression of noble senti-
ments, and from all language which by any possibility
could be called high-flown; Turner had this kind of
mauvaise honte to such a degree that he could not say
the civil things which are usual even amongst English-
men, and his conversation had not even that simple kind
of elegance which English usages permit. The English-

I

Turners Manners, 371

man dresses plainly ; Turner carried this to the extent of
shabbiness. English workmen work harder and better
than those of other nations ; Turner was pre-eminent for
his power of toil.

Mr. Ruskin has mentioned irritability as one of Tur-
ner's characteristics. Here is an instance which seems
to prove it. " On one occasion," says Mr. Rose, " I had
the audacity to ask him if he painted his clouds from
nature. One has heard of 'calling up a look.* The
words had hardly passed my lips when I saw my
gaucherie, I was afraid I had roused a thunderstorm ;
' however, my lucky star predominated, for, after having
eyed me for a few moments with a slight frown, he
growled out, * How would you have me paint them } ' then
seizing upon his fishing-rod and turning upon his heel, he
marched indignantly out of the house to the water* s-
edge.*' There was no necessity for being angry; the
question was not an insult, nor was it even foolish. Some
artists (Constable, for example) have painted their studies
of skies rapidly in oil ; others have contented themselves
with pencil memoranda from nature.' Turner was always
ready to resent either a question or a request as an

unwarrantable liberty. " Mrs. R had a pet spaniel

which was one day lyiftg in her lap ; Turner was seated
close by, reading; a sudden impulse induced her to ask
him to make a drawing of her favorite. The R.A.
opened his eyes with astonishment, at the same time
replying, 'My dear madam, you do not know what you
ask.' " Here is an account of a visit to Turner paid by
Dr. Shaw, a relation of his on his mother's side.

372 The Life of y, M. W, Turner,

"Of a sudden the great artist made his appearance.
I bowed, not too obsequiously nor too low, putting a
question to him immediately after the salutation as fol-
lows : * May I ask if you are the Mr. Turner who visited
at Shelford Manor, in the county of Nottingham, in your
youth ? ' * I am,' he answered, in a tone and manner full
of dignity, evidently evincing feelings of an untoward
nature. He was clearly paving the way for a magnificent
outburst of passion — the thunderstorm was gathering.
To appease him I became somewhat bland in manner. I
tried to throw oil upon the troubled waters. Assuming a
manner which perhaps might be denominated one of a
more winning kind, I said : * May I take the liberty of
asking you whether your mother's name was Marshall ? *
He replied, in a tone of voice accompanied with the look
of a fury, clearly showing that the flash of lightning had
appeared to warn me that the storm was about to . break.
After this I began to feel uneasy. I felt half inclined to
say something monstrously uncivil to him for his bearish
manners. I waited, however, for him to begin the attack,
which soon followed. He drew himself suddenly into the
most dignified attitude I ever beheld, even from a clever
actor or an infuriated duke. His manner was full of
majesty, accompanied with a diabolical look. He said :
* I consider, sir, that you have taken a most unwarrant-
able liberty with me by the manner in which you have
obtruded yourself upon me.' "

This was the peculiar character of Turner's irritability
— a disposition to resent anything resembling intrusion,
and to consider every attempt to open communication
with him as necessarily intrusive. The origin of this

Religion and Morality, 373

state of mind was probably nothing but an early practical
wisdom, a keen sense of the value of time, and of the
injury inflicted on an industrious man by the inter-
ruptions of idlers. We ought to remember that an artist
is not, like a shopman, in the constant habit of talking to
people in the way of business ; his work advances best in
solitude, and every interruption is a definite injury to him
unless it brings with it some acceptable compensation.
In Turner the horror of interruption grew to a morbid
excess, so that visitors found him irritated beforehand,
and the slightest maladresse on their part was enough to
kindle his impatience into anger.

Of Turner's religion I know really nothing, except
that (like Milton) he did not generally go to church,
though he went there with his friends when he visited
them in the country. Mr. Ruskin, who knew him per-
sonally, speaks of his "infidelity" and his "faithless-
ness ; " but I am quite unable to give the reader any
authentic account of Turner's opinions in detail, and yet
a biography of him cannot be complete without some
reference to the subject. His extreme brevity in letter-
writing, his reserve in conversation, and his general
weakness iti those intellectual faculties which express
themselves in words, made him a most unlikely person to
utter his mind at all copiously on theological subjects, and
we must remember that in his day heterodox opinions
were less freely circulated than they are now. All we
know is that Turner did not profess to be a member of
any visible church. Mr. Thornbury, in his biography,
said something to the effect that he was oppressed in his

374 The Life of J, M. W. Turner.

latter years by the despairing fear of annihilation ; but I
do not know that Mr. Thornbury had any authority for
this beyond an induction which may have been erroneous.
There are unbelievers (like Theodore Parker) who have
the most perfect confidence in a future life, and others
who (like Stuart Mill) have not that confidence absolutely,
yet meet their end without despairing fear. Turner may
have belonged to one of these categories, though it is not
probable that his opinion had any profound philosophical
character. It is more likely that he simply found diffi-
culties in believing, and stayed away from church without
going very deeply into theological or philosophical ques-
tions of any kind. From what we know of Turner's
intellect, it appears to have been entirely incapable of any
sustained critical investigation.

I find it difficult to speak of Turner's morality with
perfect justice to his memory, not because we have no
facts to argue upon, but because he has been unlucky in
the publicity given to them, and in a certain inelegance
which makes his errors appear more coarse and gross
than those of the old Italian masters. We all know the
pictures of Titian and his mistress, and his portraits of
her, yet nobody talks of the immorality of Titian ; but
Turner's domestic arrangements with Mrs. Danby and
Mrs. Booth give more acute pain to our sense of pro-
priety because they seem more degrading. We all make
distinctions of this kind, and we cannot help it. Lord
Byron's liaison with the elegant and accomplished young
Countess Guiccioli shocks us less than his intimacy with
the vulgar Venetian woman who preceded her. In Tur-

Temperance and Intemperance. 375

ner's conduct in this respect there were two offences, one
against morality and the other against good taste. I am
not going to defend or excuse either of these offences, but
in justice to Turner I wish them to be clearly separated.
Again, I think it is only fair to point out that Turner has
been singularly unfortunate in the evil reputation which
has attached itself, in quite a peculiar and especial
manner, to his conduct in this respect. I do not know
why — except that he was a man of genius and therefore
exposed to the envy and malice of his inferiors — Turner
should be singled out for especial opprobrium in such a
city as London, which is not visibly any more moral since
he has been laid in his grave. Unless people are reso-
lutely determined to shut their eyes to what passes
continually before their faces, they must be well aware
that Turner's conduct, though blamable, was not very
unusual. It is said that he left behind him four illegi-
timate children, but there is no evidence that he ever
seduced an innocent girl or disturbed the peace of a
household.

Turner's way of living was habitually simple and tem-
perate, but he drank occasionally more than his usual
quantity, and towards the close of his life he is said to
have stimulated sluggish or failing powers with frequent
glasses of sherry. It is not fair to represent him as a
drunken sensualist for this. Thousands of overworked
professional men have done as much, to the detriment, no
doubt, of their health, and perhaps even in the long-run
to the disadvantage of their work as well ; but in such
cases let us be charitable, and admit that the habit does

376 The Life of J, M. IV, Turner

not originate in sensuality. When the powers of produc-
tion fail, the producer too often tries to recover them for
the hour that he toils at his task even at the cost of some
after depression. Turner's occasional excesses when in
perfect health may be explained by the habits of his age.
In the days of George the Fourth many Englishmen got
tipsy from time to time, and nobody thought the worse of
them, and when they did not get tipsy they drank abun-
dantly still. Mr. Cyrus Redding, who travelled with
Turner in Devonshire, said "he was much attached to
vulgar porter, and discarded wine, at least with dinner,
although afterwards he would take his glass freely, as was
much more the custom in those days than at present."
This, I believe, is a fair and honest way of stating the
matter. Few Europeans in those days were water-
drinkers. Even the moderate ones, men such as Scott
and Goethe, drank in their quiet way enough to astonish
a modern teetotaller.* That Turner was never exces-
sively addicted to sensual gratification of any kind is
sufficiently proved by the enormous amount of delicate
work that he accomplished, and by the singularly fine
condition of his nervous system. I may remind the
reader that Turner painted habitually without a mahlstick,
which proves wonderful sureness of hand ; that his work

* " Lest this statement should convey a false impression I hasten to recall
to the reader's recollection the habits of our fathers in respect of drinking.
It was no unusual thing to be a "three-bottle man" in those days in Eng-
land, when the three bottles were of port or Burgundy; and Goethe, a
Rhinelander, accustomed from boyhood to wine, drank a wine which his
English contemporaries would have called water. The amount he drank
never did more than exhilarate him ; never made him unfit for work or for
society." — Lewes^ Life of Goethe,

Temperance and Intemperance. 377

on a small scale is more delicate than that of any. other
landscape-painter ; and that he could bear a volley from a
battery of artillery close to him, and quite unexpected,
without betraying the very slightest disturbance. He
was equal to any kind of travel, walked his twenty miles
and more with perfect ease, and was superior to sea-sick-
ness.* This does not indicate habitual intemperance.
We get a glimpse of him on the Margate boat in the
biography by Mr. Alaric Watts, which exhibits temperance
and economy at the same time :

" Mr. Turner was very fond of Margate, and in the
summer often went there on Saturday morning by the
Magnet or King William steamer. Most of the time he
hung over the stern, watching the effects of the sun and
the boiling of the foam. About two o'clock he would
open his wallet of cold meat in the cabin, and, nearing
himself to one with whom he was in the habit of chatting,

* " The sea had that dirty puddled appearance which often precedes a
hard gale. We kept towards Rame Head to obtain an offing, and when
running out from the land the sea rose higher, until off Stokes Point it
became stormy. We mounted the ridges bravely ; the sea in that part of the
Channel rolls in grand furrows from the Atlantic, and we had run about a
dozen miles. The artist enjoyed the scene. He sat in the stern-sheets
intently watching the sea, and not at all affected by the motion. Two of
our number were sick. The soldier, in a delicate coat of scarlet, white, and
gold, looked dismal enough, drenched with the spray, and so ill that at last
he wanted to jump overboard. We were obliged to lay him on the rusty
iron ballast in the bottom of the boat, and keep him down with a spar laid
across him. Demaria was silent in his suffering. In this way we made
Bur Island ; the difficulty was how to get through the surf, which looked
unbroken. At last we got round imder the lee of the island, and contrived
to get on shore. All this time Turner was silent, watching the tumultuous
scene." — Mr, Cyrus Redding s Autobiography,

378 The Life of J, M, W. Turner.

would beg a clean plate and a hot potato, and did not

refuse one glass of wine, but would never accept two. It

need hardly be added that he was no favorite with the
waiters."

The same economical disposition, combined with tem-
perance, may be detected in an item which frequently
occurred in his accounts of his travelling expenses under
the title " Boxing Harry," a piece of slang which Turner
probably picked up from the commercial travellers, and
which means a meat tea, or the combination of dinner
and tea- in a single repast, certainly not one of the
happiest inventions of economists.

The best point in Turner's character was his gene-
rosity, not in money matters only, but in the general
condition of his feelings. It may seem strange that such
a quality should have been compatible with what we know
of Turner, with his grasping habit in money matters, for
he clutched at shillings and sixpences, his gruff manners,
and his constant anxiety about his own position in the
world of art ; all that can be said is that we have here one
of those apparent anomalies in character which are not
very rare, though they invariably astonish us when they
occur. Victor Hugo once explained that the secret of the
interest inspired by some of his best-known inventions
was, that he purposely endowed repulsive or uninterest-
ing characters with some splendid virtue which overcame
the reader's dislike to them, and produced in his mind a
glow of reaction in their favor. Turner was a character
of this kind. Though unpolished, and even from the
point of view of any severe social criticism positively un-

Turner^ s Generosity, 379

civilized, though not (in the social sense) a gentleman,
or anything resembling a gentleman, Turner had a
nobility of heart as much above ordinary gentlemanhood
as true poetry is above mere versification. All who knew
him are agreed that he never was heard to speak in de-
preciation of any of his contemporaries, but there are
several instances of his kindness in rendering them ser-
vices, and in. saying what could fairly and truly be said in
their favor. This reticence is a rare virtue amongst
artists, not only because they are often (and very natur-
ally) jealous of each other, but because they often con-
scientiously disapprove of each other's work, believing it
to be positively harmful to public taste. Mr. Trimmer
once happened to be fishing with Turner, who took with
him Campbell's " Pleasures of Hope.** There were illus-
trations in the book, and he showed one of them to his
companion, saying, "That is pretty.** Mr. Trimmer
answered, " Nothing first rate, is it } " Turner repeated
his word of praise " It is pretty, and he is a poor man
with a large family.** Observe how carefully Turner
avoided saying anything, or even assenting to anything
unfavorable to his less fortunate contemporary. Here is
another anecdote of his generous recognition of an artist
inferior to himself. " There was a painter of the name of
Bird, and when Bird first sent a picture to the Academy
for exhibition, Turner was on the hanging committee.
Bird's picture had great merit ; but no place for it could
be found. Turner pleaded hard for it. No, the thing
was impossible. Turner sat down and looked at Bird's
picture a long time ; then insisted that a place must be

38o The Life of J. M. W. Turner.

found for it. He was still met by the assertion of im-
practicability. He said no more, but took down one of
his own pictures, sent it out of the Academy, and hung
Bird's in its place." * Now, is not that a lovely little
anecdote, a story to be told to the very angels in heaven ?
It is as sweet and acceptable to our moral sense as the
fragrance of the lily of the valley to our nostrils in the
spring. We know how attached Turner was , to the Royal
Academy, he loved it as people love their families and
their homes, and Haydon's attack on the Academy so
hurt Turner's feelings that he declared Haydon had
stabbed his mother. " He stabbed his mother, he stabbed
his mother ! " Nevertheless, Turner could so control his
own irritability that he did justice to the violent figure-
painter, who frankly acknowledged it: "But Turner
behaved well, and did me justice."

We may now pass to his actual generosity in money.
He was yery exacting in money matters, very close, and
sometimes almost mean in his closeness, as when he
would ask for small advantages when he received consid-
erable sums. At the same time, where his affections or
his sympathies were touched (and his nature was really
rich in both), he could be nobly and effectually generous.
The following true story, narrated by Mr. Ruskin, is prob-
ably but one example out of many :

"At the death of a poor drawing-master, Mr. Wells,
whom Turner had long known, he was deeply affected,

* I give the story in Mr. Ruskin's words. See " Lectures on Architeo- '
ture and Painting. Lecture iii."

«^

Turner's Generosity, 381

and lent money to the widow until a large sum had accu-
mulated. She was both honest and grateful, and after a
long period was happy enough to be able to return to her
benefactor the whole sum she had received from him.
She waited on him with it; but Turner kept his hands in
his pocket. " Keep it," he said, " and send your children
to school and to church." He said this in bitterness ; he
had himself been sent to neither."

Mr. Thornbury, in his biography, informs us that
Turner once returned to Mr. Charles Heath bills to the
amount of ;£iooo, because Mr. Heath's affairs were not
in a prosperous condition. Of course, had Turner been
as selfish as most people, that would have been the
strongest possible reason for getting the bills discounted
at once. But this is a mere trifle to another deed of
Turners, also narrated by Mr. Thornbury, who affirmed
that it was "thoroughly proved."

" An early patron of Turner, when he was a mere in-
dustrious barber's son working at three-shilling drawings
in his murky bedroom, had seen some of them in a window
in the Haymarket, and had bought them. From that
time he had gone on buying and being kind to the rising
artist, and Turner could not forget it. Years after he
heard that his old benefactor had become involved, and
that his steward had received directions to cut down some
valued trees. Instantly Turner's generous impulses were
roused ; his usual parsimony (all directed to one great
object) was cast behind him. He at once wrote to the
steward, concealing his name, and sent him the full
amount; many, many thousands — as much as ;i^20,ooo,

382 The Life of J. M, W. Turner.

I believe. The gentleman never knew who was his bene-
factor ; but in time his affairs rallied, and he was enabled
to pay the whole sum back. Years again rolled on, and
now the son of Turner's benefactor became involved.
Again the birds of the air brought the news to the
guardian angel of the family ; again he sent the necessary
thousands anonymously ; again the son stopped the leak,
righted himself, and returned the whole sum with thanks."

It is also affirmed that Turner used to say to one of
his intimate friends : " Don't wish for money ; you will
not be the happier; and you know you can have any
money of me you want."

He had tenants in Harley Street who had been in
arrears for two years, but he would not allow his lawyer
to distrain..

These scraps of anecdote are some evidence of the in-
nate nobility and benevolence of the man ; but since we
know the secretiveness of his disposition we may reason-
ably infer that most of his acts of kindness remained un-
known to all except the recipients.

One great project of his is known to us — his scheme
for bettering the condition of the unfortunate in his own
profession. Though successful in art himself, he had the
keenest sense of its difficulty and precariousness ; and^
whilst he never criticised an unsuccessful fellow-workman,
he knew how many artists led lives of constant anxiety,
deepening at last into final poverty and failure. Instead
of scorning his humbler brethren for their incapacity to do
what he had done, he occupied his solitary musings with
the problem how to so order matters that his success might

Turners Generosity, 383

be made to operate as some alleviation of their misfortune.
I have already sufficiently drawn attention to the one de-
duction which may be made from Turner's generosity ;
there can be no doubt that it was part of a great project
for the perpetuation of his name and fame, the bequest to
the National Gallery, and the Turner medal, being also
part of the same project. But although this desire for
fame is visible enough, we ought to remember, in justice
to Turner, that it has been shared by many other benevo-
lent persons who have not thought it necessary to hide
their lights under a bushel. George Heriot, of Edin-
burgh, immortalized himself in Heriot's Hospital, Mr.
Peabody has recently immortalized himself in the admir-
able and fruitful project which bears his name, and a
thousand other benefactors of minor note have preserved
their names for posterity in less conspicuous places. We
need not then blame Turner because he obeyed the im-
pulses of an instinct which is common to so many, and
desired to be remembered with gratitude for his benevo-
lence, as well as with admiration for his genius as an
artist. The benevolence was real ; there can be no doubt
that Turner enjoyed a real satisfaction in the conviction
that every sovereign he put by would lessen the burden
of some future distress. Let us rejoice that his kind
heart enjoyed the happiness of this illu3ion during the
long days of his solitary labors. It must have been sweet
to him, it must have enabled him to look forward to the
close of- his own life with the enviable assurance that it
would be the beginning of a new usefulness in the world.
And why, with a resolution in his mind so long cherished,

384 The Life of J. M, W. Turner,

so firmly rooted there, could not Turner ensure the exe-
cution of his desire? How does it happen that no
distress is to be alleviated by the money which he
accumulated for the purpose, that there is to be no
" Turner's Gift," that the old age of unfortunate English
artists is still to be wretched and uncared for ? Was not
Turner's intention plain ? The reader shall judge of this
for himself. Here is an extract from his will :

" It is my will and I direct that a Charitable Institution
be founded for the maintenance and support of Poor and
Decayed Male Artists being born in England and of
English parents only and lawful issue. And I direct that
a proper and suitable Building or Residence be provided
for that purpose in such a situation as may be deemed
eligible and advantageous by my Executors and the
Trustees to the said Charitable Institution." (Here follow
directions about the appointment of trustees.) " And I
declare that they shall be at liberty and have power in
case they shall think it necessary for the more effectually
and better establishment of the (Charitable) Institution to
sell only part of the principal of the said Stock for the
purpose of building a proper and fit house for the recep-
tion of the objects or the said Institution or that the said
Trustees shall or may rent a proper house and offices for
that purpose as they shall think fit and as shall be allowed
by law but so that there shall always remain a sufficient
amount of Stock to produce dividends and interest equal
to the full maintenance and support of the respective in-
dividuals and the houses or buildings and premises before
mentioned and which (Charitable) Institution I desire
shall be called or designated " Turner's Gift " and shall at

Turner s WilL 385

all times decidedly be an English Institution and the per-
sons receiving the benefits thereof shall be English-born
subjects only and of no other Nation or Country what-
ever.

Here we have Turner trying to imitate the technical
language of the lawyers, and it appears that he was not
successful in his imitation, for the lawyers decided that
the words which the reader has just been perusing did
not convey to their minds the idea that Turner intended
to found a charitable institution for decayed male artists.
A writer of books may not understand legal mysteries,
but he may have an opinion about the intelligibility of a
page, and I appeal to the reader whether the above quota-
tion does or does not convey the idea that Turner intended
to found some sort of institution to be called " Turner's
Gift," in which decayed male artists of English blood
were to find a refuge in their poverty and distress.^
Every candid reader going by the plain meaning of the
words will at once admit that such was Turner's intention,
and he will feel astonished that it was not carried out.
Not only was this his intention, but it was his main in-
tention, his great purpose, so far as his mpney was con-
cerned. The lawyers, however, decided otherwise, and
settled the matter in their own way. They followed the
will on three points which were certainly not more plain
than the foundation of "Turner's Gift." They gave the
pictures to the National Gallery, a thousand pounds for
the erection of a monument in St. Paul's Cathedral, and
twenty thousand pounds to the Royal Academy. These
25

386 TJu Life of J, M. W. Turner.

were really bequests of Turner's, but then the legal
authorities passed over the charitable institution for de-
cayed artists as a thing not really intended by Turner,
and did not even attempt a partial realization of his idea,
but decided that the real estate was to go to the heir-at-
law and the remainder to the next-of-kin. Such was the
result of a great Chancery suit, which occupied four years,
during which the lawyers and their clerks industriously
covered an enormous weight of paper, which nobody will
ever read and which had to be paid for out of the paint-
er's savings, a singular consequence of his own parsimony
and love of secrecy which had prevented him from pro-
curing competent legal assistance during his lifetime.

After the settlement of the will and the annihilation of
Turner's charitable schemes, the most important matter
as affecting the public was the disposal of the pictures
left to the nation. They were first exhibited in Marlbo-
rough House, and when that residence had to be prepared
for the Prince of Wales, rooms for their reception were
erected at South Kensington, at a cost of ten thousand
pounds. Turner's will had required that rooms should be
provided in the National Gallery within ten years after
his death, and although during their stay at Kensington
the pictures were under the control of the trustees of the
National Gallery, and were supposed to belong to it, still
they were not actually housed in the same building with
the old masters, which was evidently Turner's desire. It
therefore became necessary to find room for them in
Trafalgar Square, and this was done (October, 1861) in
accordance with a plan devised by Mr. Wornum, then the

Works of Art Left to the Nation, 387

Keeper of the National Gallery, who lodged them to the
west of the building, where they were well lighted and
could be studied with great facility. Since then the
Royal Academy has removed to Burlington House, the
National Gallery has been greatly enlarged, the pictures
have been all re-hung, and a new room has been given to
the principal Turners, in which, unfortunately, they are
not so well seen as under the former temporary arrange-
ment. A very plain room on the ground-floor has been
assigned for' the preservation of the drawings, a room
which, though sufficiently spacious, is certainly too mean
in its appearance to contain artistic treasures of such
value. Material treasure of greater amount is no doubt
lodged in the cellars of the Bank of England, but the fine
arts require some degree of elegance in their surroundings,
and this room has no more pretension to taste or elegance
than a London cellar-kitchen. However, in spite of this
unsuitableness of aspect, the place is a safe asylum for
these abundant records of Turner's artistic existence, and
there they may remain for future generations to refer to
them. It is to be regretted that, according to present
arrangements, they are not so easily accessible to students
as they ought to be. They are only to be seen on special
days, with a special order from the keeper. For perma-
nent residents in London this is not a great inconveni-
ence, because they can distribute their work accordingly ;
but for visitors from the country, and still more from
foreign countries, who can only spend a few weeks at a
time in London, the present arrangements amount to a
practical prohibition of any continuous study, especially

388 The Life of J, M. W. Turner.

if it happens, as it happened in the autumn of 1876, that
the keeper is unwell and the director is travelling abroad.
The Turner drawings might be, and ought to be, made
as accessible to students as the prints in the British
Museum.

Mr. Ruskin, as one of Turner's executors, asked and
obtained permission from the trustees of the National
Gallery to arrange the drawings as he thought best for
their preservation and for the convenience of students.
Nothing could have been better devised, or more ably
carried out, than Mr. Ruskin's plan, and the British
public owes great thanks to him for his labor, though
perhaps it may be surmised that the British public does
not, as a body, take any very enthusiastic interest in the
collection. Certainly the keeper of the Gallery is not
deprived of his natural rest and sleep by public impor-
tunity for orders to view the Turnerian treasure. The
following is Mr. Ruskin's own account of his labors
amongst the immense mass of accumulated material that
Turner left behind him :

*' In seven tin boxes in the lower room of the National
Gallery, I found upwards of nineteen thousand pieces of
paper drawn upon by Turner in one way or another.
Many on both sides ; some with four, five, or six subjects
on each side (the pencil-point digging spiritedly through
from the foregrounds of the front into the tender pieces
of sky on the back) ; some in chalk, which the touch of
the finger would sweep away ; others in ink, rolled into
holes ; others (some splendid colored drawings among
them), long eaten away by damp and mildew and falling

Works of Art Left to the Nation, 389

into dust at the edges, in capes and bays of fragile decay ;
others worm-eaten, some mouse-eaten, many torn half-
way through; numbers doubled (quadrupled, I should
say) into four, being Turner's favorite mode of packing
for travelling ; nearly all rudely flattened out from the
bundles in which Turner had finally rolled them up and
squeezed them into his drawers in Queen Anne Street.
Dust of thirty years' accumulation, black, dense, and
sooty, lay in the rents of the crushed and crumpled edges
of these flattened bundles, looking like a jagged black
frame, and producing altogether unexpected effects in
brilliant portions of skies, where an accidental or experi-
mental finger-mark of the first bundle unfolder had swept
it away.

"About half, or rather more, of the entire number
consisted of pencil sketches, in flat oblong pocket-books,
dropping to pieces at the back, tearing laterally whenever
opened, and every dra^wing rubbing itself into the one
opposite. These first I paged with my own hand; then
unbound ; and laid every leaf separately in a clean sheet
of perfectly smooth writing-paper, so that it might receive
no further injury ; then, enclosing the contents and
boards of each book (usually ninety-two leaves, more or
less drawn on both sides, with two sketches on the boards
at the beginning and end) in a separate sealed packet, I
returned it to its tin box. The loose sketches needed
more trouble. The dust had first to be got off them (from
the chalk ones it could only be blown off) ; then they had
to be variously flattened ; the torn ones to be laid down,
the loveliest guarded, so as to prevent all future friction ;
and four hundred of the most characteristic framed and
glazed, and cabinets constructed for them, which would

390 The Life of J, M, W, Turner,

admit of their free use by the public. With two assistants,
I was at work all the autumn and winter of 1857, every
day, all day long, and often far into the night."

The cabinets constructed for the four hundred draw-
ings, which have been framed and glazed, are models of
orderly and judicious arrangement, the drawings being
at the same time protected from injury and easily ac-
cessible.

So now most things about Turner have been settled in
one way or anothef. " Turner's Gift," to begin with, has
been settled by simple annihilation of the whole project.
The reception of his pictures by the National Gallery has
been settled by the assignment of certain rooms, and his
drawings honored by decent burial in a sort of crypt,
where, nevertheless, the exceptionally curious student will
find them in such order as Turner himself -could never
have imagined or desired, thanks to the devotion of Mr.
Ruskin. Turner's own mortal remains lie in the cata-
combs of St. Paul's, and the monument which he decreed
to himself has been erected in the form of a statue.

Some artists, we are informed by Mr. Thornbury,
"wished to put a memorial tablet over the door of the
house in Maiden Lane, where he was born, but the
Board of Works refused to allow it.

We have now followed to its last results one of the
most remarkable of human lives, and we may ask our-
selves, in quiet final reflection upon this great and
singular existence, whether it was enviable or not. It
had great elements of happiness, but certain other ele-

■— — ^-

Concltision. 391

ments, almost equally necessary, were wanting. Seventy
. years of health, of plain, good, serviceable, robust health,
may count for something, for much in the happiness of
a human life. Careful habits in money matters and a
constantly increasing power of earning money, secured
Turner from pecuniary anxiety, one of the most wearing
of all mental evils, at a very early age. He was soon
independent, and had, what to him was a keen and con-
tinual satisfaction, the pleasure of growing gradually
richer. He could therefore follow art for itself, with the
independence of an amateur united to the skill of an
accomplished artist, and this is a great happiness which
makes a man very independent of society. He was
recognized very early by the Academy, being admitted
to its exhibitions in boyhood, to the associateship before
youth was past, and to full membership in early man-
hood. He was not so fully or generally recognised in
his lifetime as he is now, but it is a great mistake to sup-
pose that he was always censured, ridiculed, or neglected :
on the contrary, he enjoyed when living ten times the
fame of a fairly successful artist, and was far more fortu-
nate in this respect than any of his most able prede-
cessors. Finally, as we have seen, he had the singular
good fortune of being abundantly celebrated by a writer
on art, who, though he has not the accuracy of a judge,
has a quality incomparably more influential, the eloquence
of an advocate, a writer who is alone in his power of in-
teresting the general public in matters connected with
the fine arts, and whose books have a place in literature
for their style, which will make them endure when

392 The Life of y. M. W. Turner,

sounder aesthetic doctrine, plainly expressed, will be
passed over and forgotten.

But all these elements of good fortune in the life of
Turner, health, wealth, and fame, with the happiness of
following a beloved art from sunrise to sunset every day
and from the dawn to the twilight of existence — all these
things were not enough to constitute a happy life. The
philosophical reader may answer this with the accepted
doctrine that happiness, in all lives, is an unattainable
illusion. So it is, no doubt, in any absolute complete-
ness, but there are relative degrees of it, and we may say
with confidence that Scott, though sorely tried, was a
happier man than Byron, and Leslie assuredly a happier
man than Haydon. Now, in the ordinary limited sense
of the word "happiness," as we all understand it, the con-
clusion is that Turner, with all his success, never had his
fair share of it. His high special culture, his low general
culture, were both causes of isolation, for both knowledge
and ignorance isolate us, each in its own way. But the
greatest hiatus in Turner's life was that he never knew
the happiness of marriage, for which his domestic ar-
rangements with his mistresses were not and could not
be a compensation. Marriage is not essential to happi-
ness ; many a not unenviable life has been passed in
celibacy ; but soldiers and priests, amongst whom celi-
bacy is most general, have constant fellowship with
others in their own calling. Turner, with his solitary
pursuit, had little of this fellowship ; and a happy mar-
riage, had it been his good fortune to make one, would
probably have brought him into more natural relations

— --■* - -J-- ^*^ . ^ ^ ._ ^:^^^ _. ^ ...".' '' ... . ^ '-->■*■ .-^- -^^-

Conclusion, 393

with the human species. With the strong support of a
firm and regular home affection, and the constant interest
of a legitimate family growing up around him, Turner
would have cared less for fame (which, after all, is a poor
affair in comparison with these) and he would have been
far less sensitive to criticism. He would have thought
less about himself and his own greatness, and lived with
less eager ambition. The contrast in this respect be-
tween Turner's life and that of the late J. F. Millet
shows Turner's loneliness in its true light. Millet had a
hard fight even for the necessaries of existence, but he
lived in perfect dignity in his quiet corner of the little
village of Barbizon, sustained by the truest and tenderest
affection, or affections, we may well say in the plural,
seeing that besides his wife he had nine children to love
him, and a few dear friends and neighbors. No man
could be more respected than Millet was, and he lived
surrounded by the influence of a home which, notwith-
standing his narrow means, was ten times as cheerful as
any that Turner ever possessed. I have been in both,
and have felt in both the indescribable influence of a
human habitation, of the things that surround a man,
and the difference was briefly this. Millet had a home
in that humble dwelling on the forest border of Fon-
tainebleau, and Turner had no home in that dreary,
dirty mansion in Queen Anne Street. And what are
wealth and fame as motives for exertion in comparison
with love and duty f

THE END.

-<*

2:1^^

**-"•--'

NOTE.

MR. Raskin's teaching.

From a desire to preserve the unity of the Life of Turner, I determined to
notice Mr. Ruskin*s teaching only just so far as it directly concerned Tur-
ner's biography, or the qualities of his art There are, however, some gene-
ral doctrines which Mr. Ruskin has proclaimed in comparatively recent times,
and which affect the reputation pi Turner, by including or by excluding his
works, or the interpretations of them, so that, though I did not criticise
these general doctrines in the body of my book, it is hardly possible to leave
them to work their evil effects on the public mind without some sort of
protest.

I. In the Lectures delivered at Oxford, and published at the Clarendon
Press in 1870, a passage occurs (Lect. V., 129) in which Mr. Ruskin emphat-
ically approves the childish doctrine of Leonardo da Vinci, that the best
painting is that which most nearly resembles the reflection of nature in a
mirror. The same doctrine is repeated at the end of the lecture on the
technics of wood-engraving, when Mr. Ruskin says: "Understand clearly
and finally this simple principle of all art, that the best is that which realizes
absolutely, if possible. Here is a viper by Carpaccio : you are afraid to go
near it Here is an arm chair by Carpaccio : you who came in late, and
are standing, to my regret, would like to sit down in it."

This is a return to the primitive conception of art, and I need hardly
observe that it would exclude Turner's works from the rank of what is
best, as nothing could be more remote from the reflection in a mirror, or
from the realization which may deceive, than the treatment which Turner
applied to the materials which he found in nature. This is true, not only
of his landscapes, but even of his studies in still life, which are too refined
for realization, and never resemble the reflection of the objects in a mirror.

396 Note,

2. Mr. Ruskin said in his lecture on the Technics of wood-engraving,
" that fine metal engraving, like fine wood-cutting, ignores light and shade ;
and that, in a word, all good engrajnng whatsoever does so"

I need hardly observe that this doctrine, if it were true, would exclude
from the rank of ^ood engraving the entire series of plates from Turner's
works, executed by the most eminent landscape-engravers of this century, for
these engravers have never ignored light and shade. Happily, the doctrine
is not true.

3. Mr. Ruskin (who has a bitter enmity against etching) sa3rs at the end
of his lecture on Design in the German Schools : " Etching is an indolent
and blundering method at the best" If this were true. Turner would have
been an indolent blunderer when he etched the plates in the " Liber Studi-
orum." I need not observe that etching has been practised by some of the
most eminent painters who ever lived, and who would not have used a bad
process, but I may add that etching is greatly -admired and approved of by
many most eminent painters who have not time to practise it themselves.
I have peculiar opportunities for knowing this through frequent correspon-
dence, as Editor of the Portfolio, with many of the greatest artists in the
world. Even Mr. Ruskin himself can sometimes forget his animosity
against the art, as for example in the following sentence, which is directly
contradictory of the assertion that etching is an indolent and blundering
method at the best : " The etching of Ger6me*s Louis XIV. and Moli^re is
one of the compUtest pieces of skilful mechanism ever put on metal"

GENERAL INDEX.

Academic study, the best initiation

into painting, 25, 26.
Academy, Turner as an exhibitor

at, 176.
American criticism, 300.
Ampere, the younger, 45.
Armytage, his engraving from the

sky in the Slave-Ship, 295.
Arnold, Matthew, his topography,

85.

Aristocracy, its hostility to art, 8.

Art, its essence, Preface vii.

Art, writer on, his function. Preface

vi.
Artistic nature, the, 326.
Arveiron, source of, 93.
Atherueumy the, quoted, 344.

BiCKNELL, Mr. Elhanan, 218.
Bird, th6 painter, 379.
Birthplace of a landscape-painter, 4,
Blackwood's Magazine^ quoted, 344.
Bohn, Mr., the publisher, and Tur-
ner, 280.
Bonneville, Savoy, 93.
Books in Turner's library, 368.
Booth, Mrs., 305, 374.
Bowles and Byron, 240.
Brentford, 18.'
Bridge, a, with cows, 106.
Brou, the church of, 85.
Browning, his brusqueness, 329.
Buckler, 173.
Burger, W., a critic, 207.
Burnley, its scenery, 56.
Business, Turner's policy in, 279.
Byron, 374.
Byron and the Countess Guiccioli, 44

Byron on painting, Preface vii.

Cadell, the publisher, 234.

Cardiganshire, 34.

Carlyle, 329.

Castles, Scottish, 69.

Chalk sketching. Turner's, 183, 184.

Chantrey, Turner's playfulness
about, 221 ; a letter to, 222 ; his
death, 29^

Charm of Turner's Rivers of
France, 255.

Chickens, a picture of, 122.

Claude and Turner, 312.

Claude, what he discovered, 1 1 ; his
painting of water, 127 ; his pic-
ture of Ulysses restoring
Chryseis to her Father, 15 j;
his choice of legendary sub-
jects, 275 ; his choice or scen-
ery, 282 ; his Seaport, and Mill,
311; his immense fame, 313;
Constable's criticism of one of
his pictures, 332.

Color, Turner's transition to, 176;
Turner's unfaithful, 253 ; vari-
ous in the great masters, 357.

Coloring, Turner's, what it really
was, 191.

Colorists, great, inaccurate, 254.

Connoisseurs and discoverers, 128.

Constable, his opinion of Turner,

332-

Cooke, W. B., the engraver, 151 ;
publishes the " Rivers of Eng-
land," 200; his dispute with
Turner, 213.

Cox, David, 38.

398

The Life of y, M, IV. Turner,

Cozens, 36.

Craiganunie, 74.

Craven, 172; Whitaker's History

Criticism, not attractive reading, 326
Cruachan, Ben, 7I1 72, 73.
Cumberland, 52.
Cuyp, 12.

Danby, Mrs., 374.

Daubigny, 244.

Decline, Turner's, its character, 289.

De Saussure, his " Voyages dans

les Alpes," 193.
Distances of the old masters, 1 55.
Dreams, resemblance of Turner's

pictures to, 81 ; Turner's, their

qualities, 82.
Dutch painting, distances in, 1 57.

Eccentricity of Genius, 2, 3.
Edgecumbe, Mount, Turner's ad-
miration for, 196.
Edwards, of Halifax, publisher, 55.
Egremont, Lord, 120.

Ely» 35-

Embarkation of the Queen of

Sheba, by Claude, 312.
Engravers from Turner, 213.
Engravings, first separate from

Turner's works, 65.
Enthusiasm, killed by extensive

critical experience, 321.
Etching and Mezzotint, loi.
Etex, the Sculptor, 178.

** Faerie Queene," the, 107.

Fawkes, Mr., of Farnley Hall, 6r.

Feminine influence, lack of, in Tur-
ner's life, 44 ; its only utility to
a painter, 46.

Figure, study of in Academies, 25.

Figures, Turner's, 279.

Figurine^ the. Turner's use of, 169.

Fisher, Archdeacon, 331.

Fountainebleau, trees at, 278.

Foregrounds, often prosaic, 257.

Forest scenery, slight study of by
Turner, 193.

Fortuny, 178.

Foyers, fall o^ 196.

Franz Hals, 318.

French scenery. Turner's apprecia-
tion of, 258.

Fripp, Mr., his Kilchum, 76.

Fromentin, on modern technical
execution, 348. ,

Genoa, scenery about, 221.
Gibson, his Venus and Cupid, 222.
Girtin, 35.

Goethe, his study, 133.
Great Britain, effect of its scenery
on our desires, 91.

Halsteads, on Ullswater, 174.
Hammersmith, Turner's residence

at, 119.
Hanoteau, rustic painter, 194.
Happiness, attainable degrees of it,

393.
Hardinge, Lord, 331.
Hardwick, architect, 27.
Harley Street, Turner m, 98.
Hill, D. O., his vignettes, 231.
Holme, the, seat of the Whitakers,

Howard, the Academician, 129.
Hugo, Victor, 329.
Human form, the mediaeval ignor-
ance of, 63.

Inness, George, his criticism of the

Slave-Ship, 293.
Isaac and Rebecca, Marriage of, by

Claude, ji;j.
Italy, Turner s journey to, in 1828,

221.

Jew, Turner mistaken for a, 174.
Joubert, quoted, 250.

KiLCHURN Castle, 66, 7a
Knockholt, Turner at, 191.

Ladyhood, 14.

Lamartine, his poem "Le Lac,"

230-
Landscape art, its complexity, 24.

Landscape instinct, the pure, 24^

Landscape - painting, its probable

future, 363.

General Index.

399

Lawyers, the, how they carried out
Turner's intentions, 385.

Lead pencil, Turner's common use
of, 195.

Lenox, Mr., purchaser of a picture
by Turner, 355.

Leslie, quoted on water effects,
1 27 ; his opiniqn of Turner's
Richmond Hill, 170.

Liber Veritatis, Claude's, 105.

Literature, English, seeks for strik-
ing effects, 328.

Loch Awe, the head of, 67.

Lockhart, his early appreciation of
Turner, 167 ; his opinion of
Turner, 331.

Macaulay, 318; his ^tithesis,

329-
Macpowell, his statue of Turner,

J08.
Maicien Lane, 20.
Malton, perspective draughtsman,

22. '
Marine painters, the Dutch, 127.
Marriage, Turner's renunciation of,

44.
Marriage, a possible, in 181 5, 161.
Marriage, 392.
Marshall, Mrs. John and William,

174.
Medal, Turner's, 31a
Meissonier, 168.
Memoranda, art of taking, 195.
Mer de Glace, 93.
Mezzotint and etching, loi.
Mill, Stuart, 374.
Millet, T. F., 393.
Milsand, J., on truth in art, 342.
Milton, quotations from, 53, 54.
" Modern Painters,"- Ruskin's, 320.
Molloy, Mr. T. L., quoted, 245.
Montaigne, his definition of fame,

317-
Mount Edgecumbe, Turner on, 137.

Munro, Dr., 35.

Mystery, in Art, first explained by

Ruskin, 352. *

Naylor, Mr. John, 209.
Northumberland, 52.

Offence given by strong work,

274.
Old masters, Turner's opinion of,

130.
Orchay, the river, 67.
Orleans, 243.

Painting, its three elements, 12 j
the old-fashioned system, 350.

Parker, Theodore, 374.

Peel, Sir Robert, 104, 331.

Pen-sketching, Turner's, 184.

Pencil - sketching. Turner's, 184,
185.

Perspective, Turner elected Pro-
fessor of, 118.

Picnic, provided byTurner, 137.

Poetry, Turner's, 139.

Porden, the architect, 22.

Portrait, practice of, useful to land-
scape-painters, 28.

Pre-Raphaelite pictures, 339, 34a

Prose, Turner's, 143.

Punchy the writers in, and Turner,
297.

QuEENE Anne Street, Turner's
house in, 131.

Range, the French river, 196.
Rapidity, cultivated by Turner, 180.
Redding, Mr. Cyrus, quoted, 129.
Regnault, Henri, 178; on reasoning

about painting, 324.
Remote, the, its fascination, 1 58.
Reynolds, his habits as a painter,

26.
Richmondshire, Whitaker's History

of, ^^y 173-
Ritchie, Mr., 240.
Roberts, David, 304.
Rogers, the poet, 229 ; anecdote of,

327-
Rome, visits to, 178.

Rousseau, Theodore, sylvan painter,
194.

Ruskin, Mr., his birth and educa-
tion, 318 ; less a critic than an
artist in W9rds, 321 ; his first
argument iri favor of Turner,
323; not the discoverer of

400

The Life of J. M. W. Turner.

Turner, 325; the greatest ob-
jection to his system of teach-
ing, 332; his account of Turner's
death, 333, 334 ; his estimate of
Turner, 334; his profession of
faith in Turner, 336; his ar-
rangement of Turner's draw-
ings, 388.
Ruysdael, 218; his painting of
water, 127.

Sandycombe Lodge, 149.

Scenery, uneducated persons insen-
sible to, 5.

Scherer, Edniond, on English litera-
ture, 329.

Scotland, Turner's first visit to, 66 ;
Turner's visit to in 1818, 165.

Scott, Sir Walter, 235. 236, 332 ;
his appreciation of nature and
art, 165, 166.

Seddon, Thomas, his picture of
Jerusalem, 340.

Shaw, Dr., his reception by Turner,

372.
Shelley and Mary Godwin, 44.
Shelley and Turner, Preface x.
Shellev, quotation from his " Revolt

of Islam," 159.
Sincerity, sometimes out of place in

art, 334.
Skye, the Isle of. Turner in, 178.
Slave-ship, 292 ; controversy about,

293- ,
Stael, Madame de, 329.

Stothard, Turner's admiration of,
i;j4; Turner's imitation of, 220 ;
his vignettes, 231.

Swiss scenery, unpopularity of, 281.

Switzerland, a journey to, in 1838,
281.

Thomson, of Duddingston, 166,
201.

Thomson, the poet, quoted by
Turner, 170.

Thornbury, Mr., on the public neg-
lect of Turner, 334.

Topography, pure, not to be ex-
pected from landscape-painters,

79-

Towneley, demesne of, 56.

Travel, what Turner gained by it,
96.

Trees, large isolated. Turner's way
of using them, 277.

Trimmer, Mr., quoted, 129.

Truth, the English love of, 322.

Turner, student and artist. Preface
V. ; his self-education. Preface
vi. ; advantages of his birth, 7 ;
his mother, 13 ; his ignorance of
language, 15 ; benefits of his
school education, 17 ; in an
architect's office, 23 ; a pupil
of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 28, 39 ;
his first picture in the Academy,
29; his early industry, 29; early
habits of pedestrianism, 30; a
favorite of Fortune, 30 ; his
wide range, 34; early travels,
34; his early practice in o51,
39; early beginning of his ca-
reer, 39; his early love affair,
42 ; as a drawing-master, 42, 48 ;
his two natures, 47; as a Pro-
fessor, 49; his interest in dif-
ferent kinds of subjects, 53;
elected A.R.A., 56; his resi-
dence in Harley Street, 62 ; his
residence in Norton Street, 62 ;
not naturally a mediaeval ist, 63,
64 ; his comprehensiveness, 64 ;
elected R.A., 88 ; date of his
emancipation from topography,
89; his literary incapacity, 94;
takes his father to live with
him, 97 ; as an engraver in mez-
zotint, 104; his peculiar skill
as an etcher, 103 ; as a Writer
on Art and Nature, 123, 124,
125, 126; his house in Queen
Anne Street, 131 ; his poetry,
139, 368; his prose,. 143; his
self-control in sketching, 180;
his father's death, 226 ; inscrip-
tion on his father's tomb, 228 ;
could not be accurate, 251 ; the
decay of his art, its peculiar
character, 279 ; his death, 305,
333; his funeral, 306; his un-
concealed ambition, 308; his

\ <

General Index,

401

care for his own fame, 309;
his good fortune, 317 ; his rank
as a painter, 338; work con-
trasted with Pre - Raphaelite,
339; his technical quality as a
painter, 347 ; as an experiment-
alist, 350 ; superiority in water-
color, 350 ; coloring, oppositions
in, 358 ; his imaginative power,
359 ; the refinement of his taste,
359 > risurni of his qualities,
360; his fame injurious to
other artists, ^61 ; his eccen-
tricity, 364; his habits of in-
dustry, 365; reason for his
unsociableness, 366; not a
Philistine, 367 ; an amateur
musician, 368: his personal
appearance, 369; his practical
kindness, 369; his bad man-
ners, 369; the English charac-
ter of his peculiarities, 370;
his irritability, 371, 372; his
religious views, 373; his mo-
rality, 374; his degree of
temperance, 375, 376; his
economical disposition, 378 ;
nobility of his character, 379;
his generosity, 378, 380, 381 ;
his great charitable projects,
382 ; his pictures at the
National Gallery, 386; his
studies and drawings, 388 ; his
isolation, 392 ; the greatest
hiatus in his life, 392.
Twickenham, Turner's house at, 148.

Unpaintable, the, as material for
art, 351.

Van Eyck, his picture in the Lou-
vre, La Viergeau Donateur^ 155.

Vathek, the author of, 59.

Venice, M. Havard's description of,
266.

Vernet, Joseph, 291.

V^ron, his work on ^Esthetics,
quoted, 357.

Verrex, by Stanfield and Harding,
250.

Viardot, quoted, 314.

Vignette, the, in Turner's hands,
230.

Vorich, Ben, 71.

Wales, Turner in, 34.

Water, Turner's observations on its

phenomena, 124, 125.
Water-colors, use of in Turner's oil

pictures, 135.
Westmoreland, 52.
Whalley, 172; Whitaker's History

of, 54.

Wharf e, the river, beloved by
Turner, 60.

Whitaker, Dr., 54, 55.

Wilson, rivalry with, 197.

Work, Turner's habits of, at Pet-
worth, 121.

Yorkshire, first subjects from,
1798, 50 ; variety ot its scenery,
SI.

INDEX TO TURNER'S WORKS,

DESCRIBED OR ALLUDED TO IN THE BIOGRAPHY.

«»

Abbotsford, 236.

Agrippina landing with the Ashes

of Germanicus, 282.
Amboise, 245.
iSsacus and Hesperiai 107.
iSneas relating his story to Dido,

302
Alps at Daybreak, vignette, 232.
Apollo and P3rthon, 122.
Apuleia in search of Apuleius, 15a
Arveiron, Source of, a sketch, 186.
Avemus, Lake, 264.

Bacchus and Ariadne, 289

Bay of Baiae, the, 1^

Bible, the, Turner's illustrations to,
211

Birds, studies of, 189

Bligh Sand, near Sheemess, 151.

Boccaccio relating the Tale of the
Birdcage, 219

Bolton Abbey, 60.

Bonneville, Savoy, a sketch, 187.

Bridge, a Stone, with Goats, 106,

Brocklesby Mausoleum, 65.

Brougham Castle, 201.

Boulevard des Italiens, 242.

Byron, Murray's edition of. Tur-
ner's illustrations to, 211

Calais Pier, 92, 153, 167.
Caligula's Palace and Bridge, 26a
Cambridge, 34.
Campagna, study of, i89i

Carthage pictures, the two, 198.

Carthagiman Empire, Morning of,
219

Cephalus and Procris, 275,

Chapel, Gothic, vignette, 233.

Chaplet, the, vignette, 284.

Chepstow Junction of the Severn,
107.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, 26a

Clairmont, 258.

Colne, river, 201.

Cologne — the Arrival of a Packet-
boat — Evening, 207, 208.

Columbus, vignette, 233

Coquet, river, 201.

Corfe Castle, 151,

Corriskin, Loch, 234.

Crossing the Brook, 151, 154.

Deal, view of, 206.
Denbighshire, 35.
Derwentwater, vignette, 232.
Devil's Bridge, Old, St. Gothard, a

sketch,' 186.
Dido and ^Eneas leaving Carthage

on the morning of the Chase,

I JO.

Dido building Carthage^ 162, 312.
Discord, Goddess of, in the Garden

of the Hesperides, IJ3.
Dolbadern Castle, Turner s diploma

picture, 56, 57, 58.
Drawings from Nature, 179.
Dunblam Abbey, 1 14.

Index to Turners Works.

403

Dunstanborough Castle, 114.
Dunster Castle, 65.
Durham Cathedral, 202.

Eamont, river, 201.
East Cowes Castle, 219
Egypt, the Fifth Plague of, 65.
Egypt, the Tenth Plague of, 65.
Ely Cathedral, 202.
England and Wales, series, 201,
203.

Falmouth, 207.
Farmyard with Pigs, 107.
Fishes, studies of, 189
Fishing-Boats bringing a Disabled

Ship into Port Ruysdael, 303.
Fonthill Abbey, 59.

Garden, the, vignette, 284.
Garonnelle, vignette, 232.
Golden Bough, the, 264.
Greenwich Hospital, 108.
Greenwich Hospital, vignette, 233.
Greta and Tees, junction of, 237.

Hake will's Italian Tour, Turner's

Illustrations to, 210.
Hannibal and his Army crossing

the Alps, 138.
Hannibal, 198.
Harbors of England, 205.
Hedging and Ditching, 107
Hesperides, the Garden of, 98.
Holy Family, by Turner, 98.
Honfleur, sketch, 187.
Hotel de Ville and Pont d'Arcole,

248.
India, Turner's Views of, 211.
Italy, Ancient, 282.
Italy, Modern, 282.

[acqueline, vignette, 232.
[ason, 107.

[upiter Panhellenius, Temple of,
pictures exhibited in 18 16, 164.

Kirkstall Abbey, 60, 201.

Lambeth Palace, view of, 33.
Land's End, 151.

Liber Studiorum, the, 104, 106;
style of the publication, 108;
present ' cost of, 109 ; artistic
qualities of, no; cost of when
published, 113; Turner's com-
merce in proofs of, 114; didac-
tic purposes, of, 115, 116, 117.

Light and Color, 299.

Lincoln, 34.

Little Devil's Bridge, 115.

Llandaff, 35.

Loretto Necklace, the, 224.

Ludlow Castle, 275.

Lulworth Cove, 151.

Lycidas, Shipwreck of, 275.

Macon, the Vintage at, 92.

Malmesbury Abbey, 33.

Marly, studies at, 187.

Medes, the Army of the, destroyed

in the Desert by a Whirl wmd,

65.
Melrose, 235.
Mercury sent to admonish i^neas,

302.
Mer de Glace, Aiguille Charmoz,

sketch, 186.
Mer de Glace, Chamouni, sketch,

186.
Mercury and Argus, 276.
Messieurs les Voyageurs, on their

return from Italy, 224.
Meuse, Entrance of the, with

Orange Merchant going to

pieces, 169.
Michael's, St., Mount, 151, 275.
Millbank, study at, ^i.
Milton, Turner's illustrations to,

274.
Monmouthshire, 35.
Moore's Epicurean, Turner's illus-
trations to, 284.
Morning of the Chase, 167.
Morpeth, 114.
Mortlake Terrace, 217.
Mustering of the Warrior Angels,

274.

Napoleon at St. Helena (Exile and

Rock Limpet), 297.
Nile, the, vignette, 284.

404

The Life of J. M. W. Turner.

Norham Castle, io6i
Now for the Painter I 216
Okement, river, 201.
Orvieto, view erf, 223.
Oxford Almanac, 54.

Palestrina, 224.

Pantheon, after the fire, 35.

Penmaen Mawr, 202.

Peterborough, 34-

Phryne going to the Public Bath as

Venus, 278.
Pilate washing his hands, 234.
Plymouth, harbor of, 207.
Pont Neuf, the, 247.
Poole, 151.
Port Ruysdael, 218.
Ports of England, 204.
Procris and Cephalus, 107.
Provincial Antiquities of Scotland,

201.

Raglan Castle, 106, 115. '
Rain, Steam, and Speed, -300.
Ring, the, vignette, 284. _
Rivers of England, the, 200.
Rivers of France, the,- 203, 239;

analysis of Turner's' subjects,

242.
Rome from the Vatican, 171.
Rome, Modem, 282; St. Peter's,

study of, 187 ; study at, 187 ;

the Alban Mount, a sketch,

187.
Rouen Cathedral, 245.
Rouen, distant view of, 257.

Salisbury, 35.

Scarborough, 207.

Scott, Turner's illustrations to his
poems, 234; Turner's illustra-
tions to his prose works, 237.

Shade and Darkness, 299.

Shipwreck, the, 167.

Sky and Sea, studies o^ 187.

Snow-storm, the, 291.

Solway Moss, 107.

Somer Hill, near Tunbridge, 122.

Stafia, 237.

St Julian's, Tours, 257.

Sun of Venice going to Sea, 269.

Sun, the. Rising in Mist, 312.

Sun, the. Rising through Vapor
(same picture as the preced-
ing), 98, 99, loa

Temeraire, the, 286.

Temptation, the, on the Pinnade,

275-
Thames, the, at Kingston Bank,

149.
Tivoli, studies of, 188.
Tomb, the Visit to the, 302.
Trafalgar, the large picture 0^120,

169.
Trojan Fleet, Departure of the,

302.

Uljrsscs deriding Polyphemus, 225.

Venetian pictures by Turner, their

power, 269.
Venice, late sketches of, 187 ; the

approach to, 269.
Venice ; the Canal of the Giudecca,

266.
Venices, Turner's, 268.
Vesuvius from Naples, study o^

188.
Walhalla, the Bavarian, 298.
Waterloo, picture exhibited in 1818,

169.
Weymouth, 151.
Whalley Bridge, 122.
Wight, Isle of, 35.
Wilkie, burial of, at sea, 296.

York Minster, 6a

MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS.

The style of this writer is a truly admirable one^ light and pictur-
esque^ without being shallow^ and dealing with all subjects in
a charming way. Whenever our readers see or hear of one of
Mr, Hamerton^s books^ we advise them to read it P — Springfield
Republican.

THE INTELLECTUAL LIFK Square i2mo. Price ^2.00.

" Not every day do we take hold of a book that we would £ain have always near os, a book
that wo read only to want to read again and again, that is so vitalized with truth, so hel{>ful in
its relation to humanity, that we would almost sooner buy it for our friend than spare him onx
copy to read. Such a Dook is 'The Intellectual Life,* by Philip Gilbert Hamerton, itself one
of the rarest and noblest fruits of that life of which it treats. (Here we must beg the pardon
of our younger readers, since what we have to say about this book is not for them, but for
their parents, and older brothers and sisters, though we can have no better wish for them
than that they may soon be wise and thoughtful enough to enjoy it too.)

" Just how much this book would be worth to each individual reader it would be quite impo»>
sible to say, but we can hardly conceive of any human mind, bom with the irresistible instincts
toward the intellectual life, that would not find in it not only ample food for deep reflection,
but also living waters of the sweetest consolation and encouragement.

** We wonder how many readers of this noble volume, under a sense of personal gratitude
have stopped to exclaim with its author, in a similar position, ' Now the only Croesus that I
envy is he who is reading a better book than this.* '* — From the Childreris Friend.

THOUGHTS ABOUT ART. New Edition, Revised, with

Notes and an Introduction. " Fortunate u he who at an early age knows what

art is.*' — GOBTHB. Square i2mo. Price ]^2.oo.

•

" The whole volume is adapted to give a wholesome stinmlus to the taste for art, and to
place it in an intelligent and wise direction. With a knowledge of the principles, which it sets
forth in a style of peculiar fascination, the reader is prepared to enjoy the wonders of ancient
And modem art, with a fresh sense of their beauty, and a critical recognition of the sources iti
their power." — New York Tribune

" Beginning with a recommendation to capable artists to write on art, and illustrating his
arguments on this point by some forcible illustrations, Mr. Hamerton proceeds to discuss the
dinej-ent styles of painting, defines the place of landscape among the fine arts, treats of the
relation between photography and paintme, makes some curious comparisons between word*
painting and color-painting, speaks of the painter in his relation to society, and finally offers
some practical and valuable suggestions concerning picture-buying and the choice of furniture
of artistic patterns for our houses. All these subdivisions of the general subject are toudied
airily and pleasantly, but not flippantly, and the book is delightfal xrom b^;inning to end." —
Hew York Commercial Advertiser,

MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS.

A PAINTER'S CAMP. A new edition, in i vol. i6mo.

Price 1^1.50. Square 1 2mo. Price ]^2.oo.

*' We are not addicted to enthusiasin, but the little work before us is really so foil of eood
points that we grow so admiring as to appear almost fulsome in its praise. ... It has been
many a day since we luve been called upon to review a work which gave us such real }^t2A-
uttP — Philadelphia Evening Telegraph.

'* If any reader whose eye chances to meet this article has read *The Painter's Camp,* by
Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, he will need but little stimulus to feel assured that the same
author's work, entitled 'Thoughts about Art,' is worth his attention. The former, I cunie.ss,
was so unique that no author should be expected to repeat the sensation {iroduced by it. Like
the * Adventures of Robinson Cnisoe,' or the * Swiss Family Robinson,' it brought to maturer
minds, as those do to all, the flavor of breezy out-of-door experiences, — an aroma of poetry
and adventure combined- It was full of art, and art-discussions too ; and yet it needed no
rare technical knowledge to understand and enjoy it." — Joel Benton.

"They (* A Painters Camp* and 'Thoughts about Art*) are the most useful books that
could be placed in the hands of the American art public. If we were asked where the most
intelligent, the most trustworthy, the most practical, and the most interesting exposition ol
modern art and cognate subjects is to be found, we sliould point to Hamerton s writings." —
The Atlantic Monthly,

THE UNKNOWN RIVER: An Etcher's Voyage of Discov-

ery. With an original Preface for the American edition, and thirty-seven plates
etched by the author. One elegant 8vo volume, bound in cloth, extra, gilt, and
gilt edges. Price j^.oo. A cheaper edition, square i2mo. Price j^2.oo.

*' Wordsworth might like to come back to earth for a summer, and voyage with Philip Gilbert
Hamerton down some 'Unknown River" 1 If this supposition seem extravagant to any
man, let him buy and read 'The Unknown River, an Etcher's Voyage of Discovery,' by
P. G. Hamerton. It is not easy to write soberly about this book wliile fresh from its presence.
The subtle charm of the very title is indescribable ; it lavs hold in the outset on the deepest
romance in every heart ; it is the very voyage we are all yearning for. Wlien, later on, we
are told that this 'Unknown River' is the Arroux, in the eastern highlands of France, that
it empties into the Loire, and has on its shores ancient towns of historic interest, -we do not
quite believe it. Mr. Hamerton has flung a stronger spell by his first word than he knew.

" It is not too much to say that this b^k is artistically perfect, perfectly artistic, and a poem
from be^nning to end ; the phrasing of its story is as exquisite as the etching of its pictures ;
each heightens the other ; each corroborates the other ; and both together blend in harmonioug
and beautiful witness to what must have been one of the most delicious journeys ever made by
a solitary traveller. The word solitary, however, has no meaning when applied to Hamerton,
poet, painter, adventurous man, all in one, and with a heart for a dog 1 There is no empty or
Darren spot on earth for such as he. The book cannot be analyzed nor described in any way
which Mnll give strangers to it any idea of its beauty." — * Scribner's Monthly,

CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS. With Twenty Illustrations by

J. Vbyrassat and Karl Bodmbr. Square i2mo. Price ;^.oo.

" This is a choice book. No trainer of animals, no whipper-in of a kennel, no master of
fox-hounds, no equine parson, couljd have written this book. Only such a man as Hamerton
could have written it, who, by virtue of his great love of art, has been a quick and keen
observer of nature, who has lived with and loved animal nature^ and made friends and com-
panions of the dcKT and horse and bird. And of such, how few there are ! Wo like to amuse
ourselves for an idle moment with any live thing that has grace and color and strength. We
like to show our wealth in fine equipages ; to be followed by a fond dog at our heel, to hunt
foxes and bag birds, but we like all this merely in the wav of ostentation or personal pleasure.
But as for caring really for animals, so as to study their happiness, to make them, knowing us,
love us, so as to adapt ourselves to themselves, is quite another thing. Mr. Hamerton hat
observed to much piupose, for he has a curious sympathy with the 'painful mystery of brute

I

MR. HAMERTON'S WORKS.

creation.' as Dr. Arnold called it He recognises the beauty and the burden ot that life whkh
is bounded by so fine and sensitive a mortality. He finds m the uses of the domestic animal
something supplementary to his own manhood^ and which develops both tlie head and heart of
the good master. We have been often remmded of Montaigne in reading this book, as we
always associate him with his cat. We never shall hear the name of Hamerton without think-
ini; of that little pdished skull of the terrier which for so many years Hamerton has oreserved
in love of the creatures whom God has made but as little lower than man, as He has made
mam bat little lower than the angels." — Boston Courior.

THE SYLVAN YEAR. Leaves from the Note-Book of

Raoul Dubois. With Twenty Etchings by the Author and other Artists. 8vo
Cloth, gilt edges. Price ^5.50. A cheaper edition, square i2mo. Price $2.00.

" With every successive book by Philip Gilbert Hamerton, his American audience becoiueb
larger and more appreciative. His * Intellectual Life' has been one of the best read and
most often quoted books of the last two years, and the quiet charm of his style has won its
way to a more cordial appreciation than almost any latter-day English essayist has received
among us. . . . The book comprises the account of this year of daily wanderings in search of
beauty- To artists it will be invaluable, for it will educate them in the habit of minute obser-
vation. No writer so detects the changing expressions, as well as the features, of Mother
Nature, as does Hamerton. He knows the color of every twig and leaf, every bit of moss or
lichen, the formation of every rock. No light or shade on the face of the day escapes hi*
anointed vision, — he sees the soul of things as well as the surface ; and he has the rare art to
inspire others for the time being with the gift of his own clairvoyance." — L, C. M. in ike
AT. Y. Triinwe,

*'*The Sylvan Year' is one of Mr. Hamerton's best books; and Mr. Hamerton, at his
best, is one ot the most charming modem writers. ... A record rich in intelligent observation
of animals, trees, and all the forest-world ; rich, too, in the literary beauty, the artistic touches,
and the sentiment that mark Mr. Hamerton's style." — From tJtie Boston Daily Advertiser,

'* Among the holiday books there is none more charming than Hamerton's * Sylvan Year.*
It attracts at first by its outside^ which is uncommonly pretty, and its contents win increasing
hiterest. Its author lived a year in the Yal Sainte Veronique, watching the forest through all its
changes, and adding to his already larce stock of woods lore. He has enough scientific knowl-
e(^, but, in talking of nature, he adds to that the observation of the artist, and the sentiment
of the poet and the man of true feeling. Then he knows the literature of the woods^ the
flowers, and the seasons ; and his pages are enriched by quotations from Theocritus, Virgil,
Chaucer, and modem poets. I^he style is very quiet, one reads it with a slow sort of delight
that nothing else gives, and the enjoyment of it grows with every new book that the author
writes. These out-door books of Mr. Hamerton are more attractive than his graver worki
which treat of the Intellectual Life and of Art, although those are admirable in their way.
But 'The Unknown River,' • Chapters on Animals,* and *The Sylvan Year,' have a simpli-
city, a delicacy, a depth of feeling, and a wealth of literary beauty that are very rarely found
nmted. A new volume, just come, * Around my House,* probably belongs to the same class,
and promises more days of pleasure in the reading.'* — Boston Correspot%aent of the IVorcester

ETCHING AND ETCHERS. Illustrated with Etchings

printed in Paris under the supervision of Mr. Hamerton. A new, revised, and
enlarged edition. 8vo. Cloth, gilt and black. Price ^5.00.

" NVe are not in the habit of overpraising publishers or authors, but we have no hesitation
in saying that Mr. Hamerton's 'Etching and Etchers* will henceforth deserve to have, and
certamlvobtain a place, in every gentleman's library in the country who can afford to buy the
book. Tlie subject is treated so conscientiously, theie is such a maturity and repose of thoughi
and »position, and in every page, whether you agree or disagree, so much to think over Math
luxurious reflection, besides which the illustrations are so i^uable and delicately chosen for
the object in view, that the book rather resemUes the medixval labors of life-long devotion,
than a nineteenth-century forty-steam-power of ephemeral production. In his 'Paintei*?

MR, HAMERTON'S WORKS.

Camp^' a small j^m of composition, Mr. Hamerton says somewhere, that his notion of art-
study IS not rapid travelling, but crawling through a country like a snail with your house on
your back. He could not have given a more beautiful illustration of his own ideal, or of the
truth of his theory applied to authorship.*' — The Spectator*

ROUND MY HOUSE : Notes of Rural Life in France in

Peace and War. Square lamo. Price ^2.00.

'* Whatever the subject he chooses, and he is at home with a good many, Mr. Hamerton
is pretty sure to write an entertainine book, and this one, which gives an account of his life in
France, is no exception. He takes tne reader into his confidence, and tells him just how hard
it was to find exactly the sort of house he wanted- . . . After describing this tempting place,
the author goes on to give his readers just that full record of what he saw in his daily life,
which is most interesting and useful to an outsider. l*he merit of this part is, that it so exactly
resembles the talk of a sensible man whose tact enables him to know just what his hearers
would like to hear." — Atlantic Monthly,

WENDERHOLME: a Tale of Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Square i2rao. Price ^2.00.

'*To those who are familiar with other works by Mr. Hamerton, it may be suflSdent, in a
general way, to say that * Wenderholme * is characterized by the same thoroughness, the same

Cincinnati^ O., Times.

MODERN FRENCHMEN. Five Biographies: Victor Jacque-

mont, Ttaveller and Naturalist ; Henri Perreyve, Ecclesiastic and Orator ; Francois
Rude, Sculptor ; Jean Jacques Ampere, Historian, Archaeologist, and Traveller ;
Henri Regnault, Painter and Patriot By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Uni-
form with *'The Intellectual Life," &c Square i2mo. Price $2.00.

" Philip Gilbert Hamerton has the faculty (not common to all authors) of making every
thing he touches interesting. Best known as a writer on art, his works upon that subject have
come to be recognized as standards His novels and essays are always full of meat, and his
works generally are characterized by a fairness and impartiality which give them peculiar
value. His latest work, * Modern Frenchmen,' is made up of five biographies.*' — Boston
Transcript.

*'' We know these men for what they did ; Mr Hamerton tries to make us know them
rather for what they were, and his study of their lives is literature of permanent worth, inde-
pendently of the importance, or the reverse, of their works in the world. Indeed, we may
safely say that Mr. Hamerton has done few things of greater or more lasting value than tills."
I/. Y Evening Post.

Mr. Hamerton*s Works (not including "Etchers and Etching")
may be had in i^niform binding. 8 vols. Square i2mo. Cloth,
price 1 16.00; half calf, price I36.00.

For sale by all booksellers. Mailed^ postpaid^ on receipt of adver-
tised price ^ by

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers,

Boston,