MERCURY AND ARGUS. 
 
 FROM THE ENGRAVING BY J. T. WILLMORE, A.RA. 
 
TURNER'S 
 
 CELEBRATED LANDSCAPES 
 
 SIXTEEN OF THE MOST IMPORTANT WORKS 
 
 OF J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. 
 
 REPRODUCED FROM THE LARGE ENGRA I 'INGS IN 'PERMANENT 
 TINT Tt Y THE oAUTOTYPE PROCESS. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 BELL AND DALDY, YORK STREET, 
 
 COVENT GARDEN. 
 1870. 
 
The Plates in this Work are reproduced in Autotype by Messrs. Crmdall 
 amd Fleming, under license from the Autotype Printing and Publishing 
 Company [Limited.) 
 
 OHIffWIOK PBBM: -FKINTKii ht WHITTIHGHAM AN u W1LKINB, 
 TOO KB COURT, OBAXCBBT LANK. 
 
LIST OF THE SUBJECTS. 
 
 
 Engraver 
 
 
 Page 
 
 (|P|r|jflp ROSSING the Brook .... 
 
 B. Brandard 
 
 
 24 
 
 S^^^ Dido Building Cahthage .... 
 
 T. A. Prior 
 
 
 28 
 
 feiaiffiSz^i^ra. Shipwreck on the Coast of Northumberland 
 
 J. Burnett . 
 
 
 32 
 
 Neuwied and Weissenthurn 
 
 R. Brandard 
 
 
 36 
 
 Heideleerq ......... 
 
 T. A. Prior 
 
 
 38 
 
 Dover, from the Sea 
 
 J . T. Wilhnore, 
 
 A.R.A. 
 
 40 
 
 Hastings, from the Sea 
 
 R. Wallis 
 
 
 42 
 
 Lake of Zurich ........ 
 
 T. A. Prior 
 
 
 4G 
 
 The Golden Bough 
 
 J. T. Witt/more^ 
 
 A.R.A. 
 
 52 
 
 The Grand Canal, Venice ...... 
 
 W. Miller . 
 
 
 56 
 
 The Approach to Venice 
 
 R. WoMis . 
 
 
 68 
 
 Eheenbreitstein ........ 
 
 J. Pye . 
 
 
 70 
 
 Mercury and Argus 
 
 
 A.R.A. 
 
 76 
 
 
 
 A.R.A. 
 
 80 
 
 Modern Italy 
 
 W. Miller . 
 
 
 82 
 
 The FiGnTiNG Temeraire 
 
 
 84 
 
TURNER'S CHILDHOOD. 
 
 AD never praised me for anything but saving a halfpenny," 
 Turner used to say in after life, in apology for his parsimonious 
 habits. He said it lightly, perhaps half jestingly ; but there 
 is a wonderful sadness in the few words. They show at a 
 glance the mean and straitened circumstances with which the child was sur- 
 rounded, and that the father carried his economy to a parsimonious extreme, 
 but they show something deeper and sadder than this, — that the child had as 
 little praise as money, and that the father was as great a niggard of one as the 
 other. This is the true note of sadness that rings in the words. Mr. Ruskin, 
 in his advice to a biographer of Turner, told him to be sure that Turner " felt 
 himself utterly alone in the world, from his power not being understood," and 
 we believe this to be true in spite of all his fame and success. If, then, we 
 imagine this want of true appreciation when a man, to have succeeded a youth- 
 time spent in unremitting and solitary labour, and that again, a childhood spent 
 without praise, we shall little wonder at Turner's melancholy, his self-depen- 
 dence, his self-concentration, his dislike of and disqualifications for society, nor 
 shall we wonder much at the absorbing nature of his love for his art, his 
 jealousy of discovering her secrets to others, or even at his parsimony. 
 
 It seems to us that his isolation was not imaginary, but real ; for not only 
 did he from his childhood lack praise, and afterwards, though not praise, appre- 
 ciation and sympathy, but he had no power of inspiring others with personal 
 interest in himself. There are some people who, from their birth to their death, 
 
2 Turner s Childhood. 
 
 are never alone or without friends. There is something in their smile, even as 
 children, which makes them " noticed." As they grow up, with no greater 
 claims upon society than perhaps a fine pair of eyes and a ready smile, they 
 attract persons to their side wherever they go ; a dozen strangers will speak to 
 them for one who will speak to an ordinary person. Such men may most truly 
 of all be called " Fortune's favourites." They not only charm, but appear to be 
 charmed ; they may do what for others to do is to forfeit respect and affection, 
 but they are forgiven at once ; they may with the utmost impunity offend one 
 set of friends, there are always others ready for them. Frank Castlewood in 
 Esmond is a typical specimen of this class, and one which all will remember. 
 But there is the very opposite to this class. Men who, however deep may be 
 their passions and affections, however great their talents and genius, are utterly 
 without this effective power ; men who remain silent when fools talk, not because 
 they despise the conversation, but because they cannot join in it; men whom you 
 may see day after day for years without knowing what manner of men they are, 
 whether rich or poor, wise or simple, cold or warm ; men whose being has 
 none of the ordinary channels outward, and has no rapport with mankind. 
 Such a man was Turner, and he is an extraordinary instance of how a great 
 genius may grow and flourish without sympathetic commerce with his fellows, of 
 a mind which in spite of the want of what is generally necessary to mental 
 growth, crippled by that want, and always longing for the supply of it, yet had 
 vital strength enough to dispense with it, and to develope in and by itself 
 without it to a maturity of almost matchless perfection. 
 
 But now, without further preface, we will proceed to consider the main facts 
 of Turner's early life. 
 
 The "Dad" who only praised him for saving halfpence, was a barber of 
 Maiden Lane, the last vestige of whose habitation has been destroyed within 
 the last few years. But Maiden Lane has not much changed its general 
 aspect, since little Joseph ran up and down it, so that any one who likes to 
 indulge his fancy in peopling old localities with dead celebrities can without 
 
Turner s Childhood. 3 
 
 much stretch of the imagination and with a small knowledge of the history of 
 infantile costume still think that he sees the undeveloped artist playing in the 
 gutter of that quiet lane. 
 
 But we are afraid that even now we are beginning too soon, and that we 
 ought at least to go back two or three generations before we can satisfy public 
 curiosity as to the genesis of this great man. Unfortunately in his case research 
 has at present yielded but barren results. The first really important fact con- 
 nected with Turner is, that his father was poor and of low station. 
 
 We will, however, state what is recorded respecting his ancestors, some of 
 which, we fear, come under the head of what have been felicitously called 
 " erroneous facts." His father's family lived at South Molton, in Devonshire, 
 but his father came up to town and settled in Maiden Lane. Turner is reported 
 to have said that he himself came up to London when very young, but there is 
 no doubt that he was baptised in the parish church of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 
 on the 14th of May following his birthday, which was on the 23rd of April, 1775; 
 it is not absolutely certain therefore that he was not born in Devonshire, and 
 if so he was certainly right in saying that he came up to London very young. 
 
 He was christened Joseph Mallord William. This second name, peculiar 
 as it is, seems to savour of ancestry, but we are not satisfied at any attempts 
 which we have seen to account for it. Mr. Thornbury indeed states that his 
 father married " a young woman whose name was Mallord (or Marshall) from 
 whom the painter derived one of his christian names," but two pages before he 
 has already told us " that his father was married (by license) to Mary Marshall." 
 Unless she was a widow, or had two surnames, or Marshall and Mallord arc con- 
 vertible terms, or Mallord was her christian name, it appears difficult to determine 
 how Turner could have derived his second name from a mother of the name of 
 Marshall. And Mr. Thornbury does not help us out of the difficulty. 
 
 An attempt to obtain any accurate information respecting his mother, her 
 name or names, her family and antecedents, has involved us in a sea of " facts 
 apparently so " erroneous," that we at first designed to leave the matter alone 
 
4 Turner s Childhood- 
 
 and be content with the father ; but perhaps a statement of our difficulties will 
 induce some better informed person to be kind enough to solve them.' 
 
 She is said to have been a native of Islington, the first cousin to a grandmother 
 of a Dr. Shaw, but her family lived at Shelford Manor House, near Nottingham, 
 and she was " a Nottinghamshire young lady," whose family are supposed by Mr, 
 Thornbury to have treated the son of the barber with indignity. He states that 
 " the marriage of Miss Marshall with the barber was perhaps thought a disgrace to 
 the family at Shelford Manor House. How the Devonshire barber found oppor- 
 tunities to court the Nottinghamshire young lady, I do not know ; perhaps he 
 had been called in to dress her hair while she was visiting down in Devonshire ; 
 but it is no use guessing, for it is but letting down at night buckets from an 
 ascended balloon, and drawing up nothing but darkness. 
 
 " Certain it is that pride has a long memory, and seldom forgets an injury. 
 The proud family let the barber pass away, and be absorbed among the millions 
 of London, apparently without compunction or regret, for the creed of caste is 
 still as strong among us as with the old Egyptians or the modern Hindoos, and 
 these social lapses are seldom forgiven. 
 
 " For the believers in two sorts of blood— blue and red, aristocratic and 
 plebeian — the discovery of the fact that Turner's mother was of gentle birth will 
 be of extreme importance. To those who see in all the world only two sorts 
 of people— men and women— it will be, however, of less interest." * 
 
 We confess that after this we are heartily disappointed and puzzled to 
 find two or three pages further on that this fine young lady had an uncle who 
 plied the humble trade of a butcher. Perhaps her mother was only house- 
 keeper or cook at the Manor House. 
 
 It is pleasant, however, hi the lack of more definite information as to their 
 
 1 A better informed person has, since tliis was Written, assured us tliat he -derived the name of 
 Mallord from his mother's eldest brother, Joseph 'William Mallord Marshall. 
 
 2 The Life of J. M. W. Turner, B.A. by Walter Thornbury, vol. i. pp. 10, 11. 
 
Turner s Childhood. 5 
 
 families, to be able to give portraits of his father and mother, the first of which 
 is drawn with a firm hand. 
 
 First, his father. "As I knew him well," Mr. Trimmer' says, "I will try 
 and describe him. He was about the height of his son, a head below the 
 average standard, spare and muscular, with small blue eyes, parrot nose, pro- 
 jecting chin, fresh complexion, an index of health, which he apparently enjoyed 
 to the full, He was a chatty old fellow, and talked fast ; but from spealdng 
 through his nose, his words had a peculiar transatlantic twang. He was more 
 cheerful than his son, and had always a smile on his face." 
 
 Of his mother. " There is an unfinished portrait of her by her son, one of his 
 first attempts. I could perceive no mark of promise in this work, and the same 
 remark might be extended to his first landscape attempts. It is not wanting in 
 force or decision of touch, but the drawing is defective. There is a strong like- 
 ness to Turner about the nose and eyes. Her eyes are blue, lighter than his, 
 her nose aquiline, and she has a slight fall in the nether lip. Her hair is well 
 frizzed— for which she might have been indebted to her husband's professional 
 skill — and is surmounted by a cap with large flappers. She stands erect, and 
 looks masculine, not to say fierce ; report proclaims her to have been a person of 
 ungovernable temper, and to have led her husband a sad life. In stature, like 
 her son, she was " below the average height." In the latter part of her life, she 
 was insane and in confinement. Turner might have inherited from her his 
 melancholy turn of mind." 
 
 These facts at least we have sure. His father was a barber of economical 
 habits, and his mother a violent woman, who ended her days in a lunatic asylum. 
 This is not a very promising beginning for a great artist. 
 
 But, economical as the barber was (and was probably obliged to be, though 
 the trade must have been a busier one in those days of wigs and powder than it 
 is now), he certainly seems to have had some reason for being proud, as he is said 
 
 1 Eldest sou of the Rector of Heston, near Brentford, one of Turner's friends . 
 
6 
 
 Turner s Childhood. 
 
 to have been, of giving his son a good education. For a barber's son, there is 
 reason to believe he had a good education ; and, from the little we know, we 
 think it may be gathered that his father early perceived the bias of his disposi- 
 tion towards art, and did everything in his power to foster and encourage it. 
 His father, indeed, seems rather to have sacrificed general to special training. 
 Turner appears to have had only three or four years at the most of regular 
 schooling, which though sufficient for a barber was but a spare allowance for 
 a great genius. 
 
 In 1785, or when he was ten years old, he was sent to his first school at 
 Brentford ; but when he was eleven or twelve, as Mr. Thornbury thinks, he was 
 sent to the Soho Academy, where he drew under Mr. Palice, a floral drawing- 
 master ; when he was thirteen, he was sent to school at Margate, and he was 
 admitted a student of the Royal Academy in 1789. 
 
 But here, we must give up chronology altogether. There is scarcely a date 
 which can be depended on with regard to Turner's education, general or artistic. 
 There is a mythical period in the history of every nation except the United 
 States, and there is a mythical period in the history of Turner, let us get over it 
 as soon as we can, for there is little deep meaning in, and a very "small halo of 
 romance around, the myths of Turner's childhood. 1 
 
 There is an old saying, that clever boys turn out stupid men ; but, whatever 
 truth there may be in the maxim, it certainly does not hold good of artists, for 
 there is scarcely one respecting whom anecdotes of precocity are not reported. 
 They all scrawl pictures on the nursery floor, or take portraits like life in tender 
 years. And Turner was no exception to the rule. At Brentford he is said to 
 hare drawn on the leaves of his books when he should have been conning his 
 lessons, and long before he went there he had shown signs which marked 
 him out for an artist. It is curious, however, to note that the first story told 
 
 1 The best description of Turner's boyhood will be found in " Modern Painters," vol. v. p. 291, 
 whore Mr. Euskin eloquently contrasts it with that of Giorgione. 
 
Turner s Childhood- 7 
 
 of his nascent genius is of an attempt made by him in a field very different from 
 that in which he was afterwards to excel. It is stated that, when he accom- 
 panied his father one day to the house of Mr. Tomkinson, a rich pianoforte 
 maker, he was struck with the figure of a heraldic lion in a coat of arms embla- 
 zoned somewhere in the room, and that when he returned home he made a 
 recognisable drawing of the monster from memory. 
 
 This Mr. Tomkinson 1 was a collector of pictures and a patron of young 
 artists; it was he who bought Etty's "Coral Finders" from the walls of Somerset 
 House, in 1824. AVe also hear of Turner's drawing Margate Church when nine 
 years old, and chalking cocks and hens on the school walls. It is characteristic, 
 however, and somewhat melancholy to find that, though many stories are told of 
 his artistic power, there is none told of himself. What he did is reported, but not 
 a word of what he said or felt, or learnt or loved, or even desired. There is no 
 history of the child Turner, only of the young artist, whose whole being seems 
 to have been early absorbed with one idea, namely, to copy and study nature 
 and pictures, at any time and at every time. We would willingly give up the 
 story of the cocks and hens, and even the great one of the salver, for one anec- 
 dote which would tell us somewhat of what he thought and felt in those days — 
 what sort of boy he was, in fact. Outside we know he was short, thick-set, with 
 blue eyes, and a fine head of dark hair ; but his mind appears to have been a 
 sealed book from first to last, which even he himself could not explain, except 
 by drawing pictures. What a wonderful book it was we know from these its 
 illustrations by his own hand, but the text is lost for ever. The only mental 
 characteristic of this time, which we can assert with some confidence, was 
 melancholy. 
 
 This absence of definite information would suit well the purpose of an 
 imaginative book-maker. The fewer the facts, the larger the field for con- 
 
 1 This gentleman's name is spelt Tomkinson by Mr. Thornbury, Tompkinson by Mr. Gilchrist, 
 and Tomkison by Mr. Peter Cunningham, — we don't know which is correct. 
 
8 Turner s Childhood- 
 
 jecture : the shorter the text, the longer the sermon. But we have not space 
 nor inclination to indulge in such cobweb-spinning, we will only start a problem. 
 Turner used to say that a certain drawing of Vandevelde made him a painter, 
 but he had begun to draw at every opportunity long before this. What made 
 him and other artists begin? Taking the story of the heraldic lion for 
 true, what strange power was at work to make the boy of five stare at it and 
 study it, take it home with him in his mind and deliberately set to work to 
 imitate it ? Did he like the lion ? did it seem to him pretty or desirable ? 
 What attraction could exist between the unnatural form and him ? How did 
 it, to use that vague expression, " strike his fancy," or did it strike his fancy 
 at all ? What was it that made him do this thing ? Not admiration, not love, 
 surely. Was it that he felt the stirring of a conscious power and desire to 
 exercise it ; or, in other words, did he do it merely because he felt he could 
 and should like to try ; or was it only the common childish instinct of imitation 
 which had in him, like all others of his instincts and feelings, but one channel, 
 viz., pictorial delineation? Had it been a bee or a bird, or a real lion, or 
 anything natural or beautiful, the phenomenon were intelligible, but— an heraldic 
 monster ! 
 
 It is as we have said before, hopeless to attempt to give dates in this early 
 period of his career. We must content ourselves with knowing that he was 
 from his boyhood fond of going into the fields and on the Thames to sketch, 
 and that he appears to have had facilities for copying drawings from the then 
 best English landscape painters. Nature and Art he studied alternately, the 
 Nature of which he was to be the greatest interpreter, the landscape Art of 
 which he was to be the greatest developer that ever lived. 
 
 As an artist, indeed, partly by means of his own strenuous industry, partly 
 through fortune, he obtained a training which could scarcely at that time have 
 been better or wider. He attended the drawing-school in St. Martin's Lane, 
 he coloured prints for Raphael Smith, the celebrated mezzotint engraver, he 
 was apprenticed to an architect, he washed in sides and hues for other architects' 
 
r 
 
 Turners Childhood- 9 
 
 designs, and he learnt perspective of Thomas Malton, of Long Acre, an excellent 
 master of this important subject. Mr. Malton, we are told, after one or two 
 attempts, gave him up as hopeless, and this would afford another curious field 
 for conjecture if the assertion were beyond a doubt, but we do not know how 
 to reconcile it with Turner's statement, that his real master was Tom Malton, of 
 Long Acre. At Dr. Monro's, and at Mr. Henderson's, both of Adelphi Terrace, 
 he copied Dayes and Nicholson, Sandby and Hearne, Wilson and Cozens, and 
 we dare say, Barrett and Zuccarelli, and many more unknown to fame. Dr. 
 Monro also encouraged him and Girtin to make sketches from nature, which 
 were afterwards finished at his house. 
 
 The gulf between the youth who, with his friend Girtin, copied Dr. Monro's 
 drawings, and worked out his own first original attempts for half-a-crown a 
 night and his supper, and the prince of landscape painters who refused 
 thousands for a favourite picture, is now what we have to bridge. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 TURNER'S YOUTH. 
 
 "< &2Sttf2>£ S&H E small but judicious selection from the drawings left by Turner 
 to the nation, now exhibited at South Kensington, and the 
 pictures by him in the National Gallery, form a perfect history 
 of Turner's art life, and therefore of modern landscape painting, 
 and the very interesting collection of early English watercolours by Turner's 
 forerunners and contemporaries, now at the South Kensington Museum, enable 
 the student to compare Turner's early efforts with the mature productions of 
 those artists whom he used to copy when a boy. Pale, lifeless, conventional 
 works they appear for the most part, not likely to stir enthusiasm for art or 
 inspire desire of imitation. It is only an educated eye that can now trace the 
 dawn of light and beauty even in the delicate green drawings of Cozens, the 
 harbinger of watercolour art in England. It seems strange that anyone could 
 wish to be a landscape artist in those days, if these were the greatest triumphs 
 that the very masters could achieve. The art -was in the grub or chrysalis stage ; 
 and with no butterfly existence to hope for, who would wish to be a grub ? 
 Luckily there was Nature, and Turner saw her, hoped and believed in her 
 beauty and in his power of interpreting it, the only hope and belief he appears 
 to have had. But these were intense enough to absorb the whole man. 
 
 The sense of his own power must early have come upon him. A few years 
 of hard work and he could not only do all that his masters did, but more. The 
 drawings in Frame 1 at South Kensington, made when he was about fifteen, show 
 
Turner s Youth. 1 1 
 
 this. Mr. Ruskin, in his catalogue of Turner's sketches and drawings, calls 
 attention to shadows on the trunks, to effects of tenderly gradated colour, and to 
 ideas of composition in some of his earliest drawings which he could have learnt 
 from no living artist. But consciously or unconsciously, Turner refrained from 
 indulging himself in originality ; if he felt his powers, he did not exult in mani- 
 festing them ; a critical eye like Mr. Ruskin's might detect his genius, but to the 
 world he was only a careful follower of conventional precedents. He did not 
 hurry his development ; without hurry, without rest, is his motto, as he went on 
 working day by day, almost hour by hour, hoarding up his new discoveries in 
 his mind, and storing note-book after note-book with short-hand dottings and 
 scratches. He knew, or nature instructed him, that if his art would be a butterfly 
 she must first be a grub, and that any attempt to break her crust prematurely, 
 and strive to spread her ungrown wings, would end in disappointment and death. 
 
 There is almost the steadiness of fate in the persistency of Turner's work. 
 He masters one thing at a time. For years he works only in pencil, and grey 
 tint, filling books with studies of leaves, birds, trees, boats, swans, donkeys, and 
 more than all, architectural details. Employed to make topographical drawings 
 for the engravers, he travels all over England, mostly on foot, " twenty to 
 twenty-five miles a day, with his baggage tied up in a handkerchief and 
 swinging on the end of his stick," observing and sketching everywhere, for every 
 drawing which he does on commission taking a dozen or so pencil memoranda 
 for himself, mere scratches to a stranger's eye, but to him records of effect never 
 to be forgotten, germs of pictures to be finished many years hence, perhaps, and 
 in any ease valuable material and accumulated knowledge. Thus at the age of 
 twentj'-five he had probably collected more material than an ordinary artist 
 could use in his life-time ; but his appetite for knowledge was insatiable, his 
 industry indefatigable, and his love of accumulation almost, if not quite, morbid. 
 It seems in those early years to have been of little consequence to him what he 
 studied or drew, so long as he studied or drew something, — steam-engines and 
 ducks, trees or boats,— anything for stock. Who shall tell what was passing in 
 
12 
 
 Turner 's Youth. 
 
 his mind as he added sketch to sketch, and memorandum to memorandum. No 
 doubt he thought much of the future, and dreamed of the time when he should 
 put forth his power and astonish the world ; but there is little dreaming in his 
 work, it is all hard and real to the most practical degree. Business first and 
 pleasure afterwards ; and no one ever plodded after the plough, or pored over 
 mathematics with duller regularity than Turner plodded at his art work. What- 
 ever fire there might have been in his heart, he allowed no spark to escape 
 through his fingers ; whatever love for nature may have flushed his cheek, he 
 did not permit it to interfere with the details of a steam-engine or the fretwork 
 of an arch. Art might be rapture in the future, but it should be grim business 
 first, then the colours of the rainbow, now black and white, and white and black. 
 To an observer of him at that time, the art structure which he was building 
 must have appeared as dull as a gaol. We do not think that even Turner knew 
 for what a magnificent palace he was laving the foundations. He worked on 
 with deathless industry at the rudiments of the art; it was only occasionally that 
 lie allowed himself the luxury of a bit of colour, and if in any of his work he 
 showed emotion or even inclination, it was in a little holiday-drawing of animals, 
 but especially birds. 
 
 There is something awful in the idea of this solitary youth, silently storing 
 up pictorial wealth, hour by hour, and day by day, without a companion and 
 without a friend, if we except poor Girtin, who was, perhaps, the nearest 
 approach to a friend he ever had, but who was too open in his nature, and too 
 prodigal in his tastes to altogether suit the close and prudent Turner. As 
 boys, they met at Raphael Smith's, and coloured drawings together; at Dr. 
 Monro's they met and copied the contents of his portfolios together ; they went 
 out sketching together on the Thames and in the fields. Girtin was the only 
 youth alive fit to be Turner's artistic companion. They two discovered nature 
 afresh ; but Turner discovered two things to Girtin's one. Girtin's genius ripened 
 early ; but Turner's genius was too great and deep to ripen so soon. Girtin's fruit 
 was Turner's blossom. Turner was strong and Girtin weak. Girtin was sociable, 
 
Turner s Youth. 1 3 
 
 Turner solitary. Girtin married, and Turner clove only to Ms art; and soon Girtin 
 died, and Turner lived on, alone, and still a student, but even, as such, a greater 
 master than Girtin. There is indeed something awful in the necessary solitari- 
 ness of so great a genius as Turner. The only worthy fellow-labourer with him 
 in the vineyard was not able to withstand the heat of the day. 
 
 From what we have said, it will be seen that we do not agree with those who 
 thought, and perhaps think, Girtin the greater artist of the two, but it is evident 
 that Turner thought so. "If Tim Girtin had lived, I should have starved," 
 he said ; and again, when looking over some of his old friend's " yellow draw- 
 ings," " I never in my whole life could make a drawing like that ; I would at 
 any time have given one of my little fingers to have made such a one." 
 
 Girtin's drawings are scarce, but there is luckily a good one of liivaulx 
 Abbey at the South Kensington Museum, which anyone can see and compare 
 with Turner's contemporary and future work on the same walls. Messrs. 
 Redgrave, however, do not think that this drawing gives a full idea of the 
 poetry with which he treated such subjects. 
 
 Turner probably loved Girtin deeply, and mourned him long, but the 
 two sentences we have given above are almost the only traces left of the 
 feeling's with which Turner regarded him, and these characteristically refer 
 to the artist Girtin, and not to the man. The different natures of the two 
 men are well exemplified in the following extract from Mr. Thornburv's 
 biography :' — 
 
 " Girtin established a sketching class, which was open to patrons and 
 amateurs, as well as to artists. For three years his little society of enthu- 
 siasts met on winter evenings for mutual improvement. " No little coterie 
 could be more respectable,'' says a frequent visitor. How often the talent 
 of the barber's son must have been discussed at these pleasant evenings. 
 
 " This society was the model, no doubt, for the celebrated one at whose 
 
 Vol. I. p. 108. 
 
14 Turners Youth. 
 
 meetings the Chalons, Leslie, Landseer, long after, spent so many happy hours. 
 They met alternately at each other's houses. The subject was taken from 
 an English poet, and each man treated it in his own way. The member at 
 whose house they met supplied stained paper, colours, and pencils, and all 
 the sketches of the evening became his property. 
 
 " They met at six o'clock (hours were earlier then) and had tea or coffee ; 
 over their harmless cups they read the verses relating to the subject, and 
 discussed its treatment and the effect it would naturally give rise to. After 
 this, with heads down and bated breath, they worked hard till ten, when there 
 was cold meat, bread and cheese, and such humble, solid fare ; and at twelve, as 
 the day expired, they separated with hearty greetings. Beautiful works of art 
 were often produced in this impromptu way, and the first ideas of great 
 pictures were often suggested in dreamy hints that had sometimes a charm 
 greater almost than that of the completed truth. Turner would never join 
 this club ; he preferred working in solitude, and he could not at this time 
 afford to sell a ten-pound sketch for a cup of tea and a slice of bread and 
 cheese. Perhaps, too, he was at this time slow in execution, and found two 
 hours insufficient to elaborate any thought worth painting." 1 
 
 We are far from thinking satisfactory the reasons here given for Turner's 
 refusal to join the club; but the fact is enough. The society of Girtin and 
 his brother artists, the pleasant chat round the tea-table, the pleasanter artistic 
 rivalry, had no charms for Turner. He was not a " clubbable " man. We are 
 more inclined to think that it was his natural self-concentration, the incom- 
 municability of his temperament, his shyness, and incapacity for participating 
 in ordinary social pleasures, that made him hold aloof from his friend's circle, 
 than to set his absence down to reluctance to part with so much money's 
 worth of sketches. He no doubt always showed a great disinclination to part 
 
 ' The Society consisted of ten members : T. Girtin, the founder ; Sir Robert Ker Porter ; Sir 
 Augustus Callcott; J. R. Underwood; G. Samuel! P. S. Murray; J. T. Colman ; La Francia (pupil 
 of Girtin's) ; W. H. Wortliington; and J. C. Deuham. 
 
Turners Youth. 1 5 
 
 with his drawings, especially unfinished ones or sketches. But this was more 
 from the love of his sketches than the love of money. He loved money, 
 perhaps, though it is open to doubt whether he loved it for itself, but he 
 certainly loved art more ; and, moreover, there was a seriousness even in his 
 lightest work which was quite at variance with the playful exercise which 
 amused Girtin and his friends. 
 
 Girtin died in 1802, when Turner, though only twenty-seven, was elected a 
 Royal Academician, and was, as Mr. Wornum says, a great landscape painter, both 
 in water-colours and oils — great, that is, in comparison with his contemporaries, 
 but little in comparison with himself even a few years later. He was only, 
 according to Mr. Euskin, at the beginning of his first or student stage, but 
 there was no English painter who was his equal, and he had been an asso- 
 ciate of the Eoyal Academy three years, having taken the place of Flaxman 
 in 1799. Great as was the distance between the Turner of 1802 and the 
 Turner of the " Ulysses " and the " Tcmeraire," there was yet almost as vast 
 an interval between the Turner of the " Jason " and the Turner whose boyish 
 sketches, some ten years ago, were hanging round the shop of his father the 
 barber, and ticketed at prices varying from one to three shillings. 
 
 Many volumes might be filled with the history of his art work in these 
 few years of his life, and materials for it may be found in the almost innu- 
 merable sketches and artistic memoranda which he bequeathed to the nation. 
 Here is a description of his earliest sketch book : — 
 
 " Turner's earliest book, the cover now half cut off, seems to have been filled 
 by him with sketches when he was about fifteen years old. There is a back view 
 of the Hotwells, from Gloucestershire side; I think, pencil washed (sic). 1 There 
 are notes of gates, towers, and trees (with little pen-touches), at Sir W. Lippin- 
 eote's ; women and barrows, bell-turrets and yew-trees, cliffs, boats, and, lastly, 
 hasty views of rocks, boats, and Welsh hills from the Old Passage. In the same 
 
 1 TAornbury's Life of Turner, Vol. I. p. 377. 
 
1 6 Turners Youth. 
 
 book I find a profile sketch of St. Vincent Rocks ; a craft stranded on an island 
 in the Severn (' sea' written large on one place) ; pages of experimental purple 
 blots ; a bend of the Avon ; the tower of Thornbury Church ; the Welsh coast, 
 from Cook's Folly ; trees and hills, and ships. A study of Malmesbury Abbey, 
 from the meadows, over roofs of houses — foliage bad — is a south-east view, and 
 is dated 1791. The trees arc left a rank green with yellow tips; there is an 
 orange walk, grey and rusty stains are seen through an arch ; there are, here 
 and there sharp touches, but all is weak, plain, and timid, though exceedingly 
 careful. There is, however, no touch of unnecessary work, and where there is 
 detail, only a bit is finished to show how the rest is to be done." 
 
 In 1793 he went upon his first sketching tour for a topographical work 
 projected by Mr. Walker. The tour occupied six weeks, and was to " Margate, 
 Canterbury, and elsewhere." This was the first of many such tours, in the 
 course of which, before 1802, when he made his first trip to the Continent, he 
 had ranged over Kent and Essex,. Wilts and Worcestershire, Cumberland, 
 Yorkshire and Cheshire, Lincoln, Oxfordshire, and parts of Wales and 
 Scotland, to say nothing of his journeys around London. Of the commissions 
 which he executed during these wanderings we give the following account 
 verbatim from Mr. Thornbury. 
 
 " In 1794,' when Turner is nineteen, he is drawing Rochester and Chepstow 
 for Walker's 'Copper-plate Magazine;' 2 his tours have been as yet chiefly in 
 the home counties, and on the coast in Wales. In 1795 he makes drawings 
 of Nottingham, Bridgenorth, Matlock, and Birmingham, for the same perio- 
 dical ; the Tower of London and Cambridge for the 1 Pocket Magazine ;' and 
 Worcester and Guildford for Messrs. Harrison; 3 in the next year, 1796 (aged 
 twenty-one), for that and other magazines, from previous tours, he makes draw- 
 ings of Chester, Leith, 4 Peterborough, Tunbridge, Bath, Staines, Bristol, Walling- 
 ford, and Windsor. In 1797 (aged twenty-two), he sketches in Flint, Hereford- 
 
 Vol. I. p. 252. 1 The Itinerant. 3 Pocket Magazine, probably. 4 A mistake for Neath. 
 
Turners Youth. 17 
 
 shire, and Lincolnshire ; and the first illustrations of his to a really topographical 
 work appear ('Views in the County of Lincoln'). 
 
 " In 1798 (aged twenty -three), appear in the ' Itinerant,' his Sheffield and 
 Wakefield; and in 1799 (aged twenty-four), when illustration-work seems un- 
 usually scarce with him, he begins the first of his nine years' drawings for the 
 ' Oxford Almanac' In 1800 (aged twenty-five), work comes with a rush, and 
 he furnishes numerous drawings of abbeys and gentlemen's mansions to Angus's 
 ' Seats,' 1 and Whittaker's ' Parish of Whalley.' In 1801 Turner contributes his 
 only drawing to the ' Beauties of England and Wales' ; and, in 1803, contributes 
 to Byrne's 1 Britannia Depicta.' " 
 
 It is useless to attempt anything like a complete history of what he did in 
 those years, but the amount and variety of his study must have been tremendous. 
 But he not only studied, for, even at the age of fifteen, he produced works which, 
 however humble, were thought worthy of a place on the Academy walls. We 
 publish at the end of this volume a complete list of his exhibited drawings and 
 pictures, from which it will be seen that, beginning from 1790, or the year after 
 he was admitted a student, to the year 1799 inclusive (his period of development 
 before the formation of any original style, according to Mr. Buskin), he had 
 exhibited fifty-nine works. These, with the exception of sixteen, were archi- 
 tectural subjects, and mostly water-colours. 
 
 It must not, either, be supposed that he had shown no signs of originality. 
 The notion of drawing the Pantheon, the morning after the fire, was surely ori- 
 ginal, though the work is said not to have been marked for anything more than 
 grim accuracy. This drawing was exhibited in 1792, or, at the age of seventeen, 
 and the next )-ear he produced " The Rising Squall — Hotwells, from St. Vincent's 
 Rock, Bristol," which is said to have drawn attention. In the two following years 
 come river scenes in Wales, and in 1796 "Fishermen at Sea." The year 1797 
 is signalized by his first oil picture, " Moonlight — a study at Millbank," a simple 
 
 1 Only one drawing to Angus's Seats. 
 
1 8 Turners Youth. 
 
 effective little work, remarkable for its sense of calm, and the plain directness of 
 its execution. It is just worth remark also that this, his first exhibited oil paint- 
 ing, has for its subject a scene not far from the cottage where, fifty-four years 
 later, he was to breathe his last. This painting is in the National Gallery, 
 together with two out of the three oil paintings which he exhibited in the next 
 year, 1798, the " Winesdale," the " Coniston Fells," and the " Buttermere." Mr. 
 Wornum speaks of the " Coniston Fells " as a picture " in which he (Turner) 
 appears all at once as a great painter," and adds, respecting his work this year 
 among the lakes and mountains : — 
 
 " Turner's own atmospheric experiences in his early morning sketching 
 expeditions, seem to have led him to thoroughly feel and appreciate the im- 
 pressive descriptions of Thomson and of Milton, of such morning effects ; and in 
 this year he commenced that long series of poetical illustrations which after- 
 wards so frequently accompanied the titles of his pictures in the Royal 
 Academy catalogues." These pictures no doubt did much towards gaining his 
 election to the vacant associateship in the following year, when he exhibited 
 his first battle piece (which was also his first imaginative work), and ten other 
 pictures or drawings. He was now but twenty-four years of age. 
 
 Twenty-four years of age, and already the greatest landscape painter of his 
 day; great as an oil painter, but greater in watercolours. It is only necessary 
 for one to look at that splendid drawing of Warkworth Castle, now at South 
 Kensington Museum, and which was that exhibited in 1798, to prove not only 
 what immense studies he had made in that art, but what an immense distance 
 along the road to truth and beauty he had made that art travel with him. It is 
 not too much to sa} r , that if he had died at the age of twenty-four, he would 
 yet have done more for the advancement of watercolour landscape painting than 
 any one who lived before or since. 
 
 One curious thing may also, we think, be remarked respecting his oil 
 paintings of this time. They do not seem to be so imitative of other artists as 
 those greater ones which succeeded them. He seems to have gone direct to 
 
Turners Youth. 19 
 
 nature in his picture of the Coniston Fells, for instance, and to have taken the 
 style of it from no man. It seems to us to be as original in its way as Gains- 
 borough's pictures in theirs, or Constable's in theirs, and this is saying as much 
 as could well be said. Indeed there are few things more remarkable in art than 
 the originality of the styles of our great early landscape painters ; they all, 
 except Wilson, who must not be left out of the list of great names, went direct to 
 nature, and painted her in their own peculiar way, but Turner has this dis- 
 tinction from all others, that ho not only painted nature in his own way, but in 
 the way of all others, and what is more, excelled most of them in their own 
 styles. 
 
 But we must end this long chapter, for we have as yet reached only the 
 dawn of what Mr. Euskin calls his first style. He is yet, to use our old com- 
 parison, but a grub, and has not yet unfolded his wings to the sun. His pictures 
 are yet comparatively colourless ; he has not even painted one bright or light 
 picture. He has been working in the dark, but he is already a master of com- 
 position, of architectural drawing, of aerial effects, of perspective, and above all, 
 perhaps, of tonality. He has already raised himself above his rivals, but he is 
 still fifteen years from his " Crossing the Brook," thirty from his " Ulysses," and 
 forty from " The fighting Temeraire." 
 
 But before closing the chapter, we would say one word of his personal life, 
 which is so soon to be completely lost in his art. A cruel story is told of an early 
 love of his, his only one. It is said that the attachment sprung up when at school, 
 that it ripened afterwards into love; that when away on a long sketching tour 
 his letters were intercepted by the girl's stepmother, and that when he returned 
 he found her about to be married to another. How far to accept this story we 
 do not know; but at all events, the disappointment must have come when he 
 was a mere youth. What effect it may have had upon Turner it is impos- 
 sible to say, and we shall never know. Such still waters as those of Turner's 
 heart run very deep. But whether he met with bitter disappointment in early 
 love, it is tolerably certain that he had no love, worthy of the name, for any 
 
20 
 
 Turners Youth. 
 
 woman during the remainder of his life, though mention is made of a later 
 attachment. Love for his art engrossed the whole man. 
 
 We must not omit to mention in this account of his youth, his great admira- 
 tion for Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whose house he used to go to copy the knight's 
 exquisite portraits. It would seem that his enthusiasm for the works of that great 
 artist almost persuaded him to be a portrait painter. He never, however, attained 
 more than respectable skill in this line, as is evident from his picture of himself 
 in the National Gallery ; and though some portraits of his relations and friends 
 are among his earliest works, he abandoned portrait painting for ever at the 
 death of Sir Joshua. 
 
 This admiration for the great portrait painter, his love for Girtin, and 
 his early attachment to a girl, are almost the only pages of personal romance 
 or sentiment in his young life, and they are ended now ; when we take leave 
 of him, at twenty -five, in the dawn of manhood, a great artist, alone in the world 
 with his art. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 TURNER'S OIL-PICTURES. 
 
 ■ 
 
 FIRST STYLE. 1800-20. 
 
 N 1800 commenced what Mr. Rnskin calls the period of his 
 first style — after his development from 1790 to 1800. " It 
 may be also observed," says that critic, " that the period of 
 development is distinguished by its hard and mechanical work : 
 that of the first style by boldness of handling, generally gloomy tendency of 
 mind, subdued colour, and perpetual reference to precedent in composition.'' 
 
 In this period he is making use of all the artistic treasures which he has 
 been hoarding up during the previous ten years. Having, as it were, gone to 
 school in nature, and studied the works of English artists, he now graduates 
 and finishes his technical education by the study of continental scenery and 
 ancient masters. Up to 1820 he is still a student, in Mr. Ruskin's sense of 
 continual reference to precedent in composition ; and, though he paints pictures 
 which no one else could have painted, as the " Jason " and the " Shipwreck," 
 and one occasionally which is eminently Turneresque, as the " Field of 
 Waterloo," the large majority of paintings, especially the ambitious ones, are 
 conceived in the vein of one or more earlier masters. 
 
 In this period he seems to have tried his hand at every branch of the 
 art, sometimes in frolic, as when he rivals Wilkio in painting the " Country 
 Blacksmith Disputing upon the Price of Iron," &c. ; oftener in serious rivalry 
 
22 
 
 Turners Oil-Pictures. 
 
 of Claude, or rather in serious attempts to teach the public what Claude 
 failed in, as in the " Cartilages," and other works ; once or twice in tentative 
 efforts at figure painting, as in his " Holy Family," exhibited in 1802 and 
 now in the National Gallery ; and the " Venus and Adonis " formerly in the 
 possession of Mr. Munro. 
 
 It may seem to some that Turner's time was wasted in studying others' 
 paintings of nature instead of nature herself, seeing that he was so strong — so 
 much stronger than others ; but no worker, however strong, can afford to dis- 
 regard the labour of former men, though weaker than he. To say nothing 
 of the negative knowledge to be gained from the faults of others, there is 
 hardly any honest work that does not add some positive knowledge to the 
 world, or that does not represent old knowledge in a more condensed and 
 summed-up form ; so much work done that need not be done over again, so 
 much knowledge that can be acquired by a shorter process than experience. 
 This Turner knew, and so devoted twenty years of his life in mastering the 
 labour of centuries. Had he spurned these ancient rungs he would not have 
 climbed so surely or so swiftly to the top of the ladder of landscape art. 
 
 From Vandevelde he learnt to paint the sea, but he did not copy 
 Vandevelde. " He," says Mr. Ruskin, " went to the sea and painted it in 
 the way of Vandevelde, and so learnt to paint it more truly than Vande- 
 velde." All his early sea pieces owe something of their manner to this Dutch 
 artist. One, we believe, of his earliest storm pieces forms the subject of our 
 first plate. It is not the famous "Wreck" now in the National Gallery, or 
 the " Wreck of the Minotaur," equally famous, in the possession of Lord 
 Yarborough ; indeed, we have not been able to discover when the original 
 was painted, whether it is a water-colour drawing or an oil-picture, or in 
 whose possession it is, but we think that there is little doubt that it is a 
 water-colour of an early period. It is evidently in a dark key ; the savage 
 roll of the waves in whose power the ship is, and who have no pity, but 
 dash her in careless fury against the rocks, reminds one of the terrible dark sea 
 
Turners Oil-Pictures. 23 
 
 of the "Wreck" in the National Gallery, but not of his later works. The 
 ship is in the middle distance, her helpless hull showing dark against the spray 
 of shattered foam that rises above her masts, and shrouds the cliffs in mist. 
 Her fate were little doubtful if we saw but this ; but Turner not only 
 shows us her fate but the exact manner of it. Look at that half-covered 
 rock in the foreground, which the cruel wave seizes as it were with its teeth. 
 We see that these low rocks run round the little bay, and we know surely 
 that where the ship is, there arc rocks as hard and waves as cruel; and, 
 more than this, that white spar that sticks up like the bone of some skeleton, 
 shows that the waves of the foreground have also had their prey, but hunger 
 still. What can be more insatiable than this sea, what more inhospitable than 
 that coast ; but, to add to the pathos of the picture, Turner has introduced a 
 town on the distant cliff, safe and smiling in the sun. 
 
 How great an advance Turner made in a few years after 1800 would 
 bo apparent from his sea pictures alone ; but each exhibition brought to light 
 not only progress in one branch of the art, but in all ; each revealed powers 
 not to be dreamed of before. 
 
 In 1800 appeared Turner's " Fifth Plague of Egypt," the first of his pictures 
 illustrative of either ancient or sacred history ; and, in 1801, " Dutch Boats in a 
 Gale," his first picture of an agitated sea, and the " Army of the Medes de- 
 stroyed in the Desert by a Whirlwind," foretold by Jeremiah xv., verses 32, 33. 
 A picture or drawing of which we can find no description, but whose very title 
 shows how early his mind delighted in strange imaginations, and in attempt- 
 ing extraordinary atmospheric effects, and how it meditated on the history of 
 man, his sorrows, his ambition, the fallacies of his hope, and the puninoss of 
 his strength in conflict with the elements. 
 
 But these pictures, though they showed that Turner was no ordinary land- 
 scape artist, raised no hopes which could have foretold that the same artist was 
 in the next year to exhibit such rare and mature imaginative power as was 
 shown by his " Jason," his first classical picture, and, for complete expression of 
 
24 Turners Oil- Pictures. 
 
 mystic horror and of heroic courage, perhaps the finest of all pictures. This 
 " Jason " is not a Greek, they say, at least in his armour, nor are Shakespeare's 
 Greeks in the sense of being free from anachronisms; but what modern poet 
 has caught the heroic spirit as Shakespeare has? what painter has painted 
 the courage of the heroic age as Turner has in this figure, undaunted by the 
 " scaly horror " of that fearful dragon-fold ? But we must refer the reader, who 
 has not already read it, to what Mr. Ruskin has said 1 of the "Jason" in the 
 Liber Studiorum (a "reminiscence" as he calls it of this picture), and pass on. 
 
 This year (1802) was an important year for Turner, for in it he was elected 
 Academician, went abroad for the first time, and travelled in France and 
 Switzerland. Next year (1803) we have in no less than six pictures the first fruits 
 of the great effect produced upon Turner by the sight of foreign lands ; the 
 only other picture exhibited this year being his first attempt at pure figure 
 painting, the " Holy Family." It was a sudden and short burst of enthusiasm, 
 for, with the exception of the " Fall of the Rhine, at Schaffhausen," in 180G, and 
 a " View of St. Michael, near Bonneville, Savoy," in 1812, he exhibited no foreign 
 landscapes from this time till 1815. 
 
 These were, nevertheless, great years both of labour and performance, for, 
 in them he published ten parts of the Liber Studiorum, each of which contained 
 five plates, and painted some of his best pictures, as his " Shipwreck," painted 
 in 1805, but never exhibited; and his " Apollo and Python," now in the National 
 Gallery. It is useless, however, to repeat the list which we have given at the 
 end of this book of his exhibited works, and we have no space to dwell upon 
 other pictures than those of which we give an illustration, and so we must pass 
 on, leaving even the " Liber " for the present. 
 
 In 1815 his first style culminated. In that year he exhibited two pictures, 
 which are known wherever Turner's name is known — pictures which he himself 
 thought so highly of and loved so dearly, that in the later years he refused 
 
 1 Modern Painters, Vol. II. p. 164. 
 
CROSSING THE BROOK. 
 
 FROM THE ENGRAVING BY R. BRANDARD. 
 
Turner's Oil-Pictures. 25 
 
 fabulous prices for them, or what were fabulous in those days, so that he might 
 keep them as long as he lived, and leave them at his death to the country. 
 Those pictures were " Crossing the Brook " and " Dido building Carthage ; or, 
 the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire." 
 
 The " Crossing the Brook " may be considered to be the crowning— most 
 perfect work of his first style of subdued tones, as " Dido building Carthage " 
 may be regarded as the first prophecy of his second, in which darkness was to 
 give place to light, vapour to the sun, patient labour to exultant mastery, the 
 grey morning to the golden day. 
 
 The " Crossing the Brook" is one of those pictures of Turner which every 
 one admires ; it transcends no ordinary experience, it demands neither unusual 
 knowledge nor imagination to comprehend it; it is purely beautiful with a beauty 
 which appeals to the whole world. The view is taken from the banks of the 
 Tamar, that divides Devonshire from Cornwall, though, says Mr. Wbrnum," 
 " topographical accuracy is not to be looked for in this or any other of Turner's 
 paintings." " The scene is from the neighbourhood of the Morwell Rocks 
 and the Weir Head, some twenty miles from the sea, looking south towards 
 Plymouth and Mount Edgcumbe, with Poulston Bridge above, Calstock in 
 the middle distance, and beyond this is Calstock Church." 
 
 " In the immediate foreground is a brook, and there are two girls with 
 bundles, one of them seated by the waterside, the other wading the brook, 
 followed by a dog carrying some small parcel in his mouth. On the right 
 is a high and richly-wooded bank, with a dark arch at its base; on the left 
 are two fine examples of Turner's favourite stone-pines ; in the middle is the 
 winding Tamar and the woods of Cothele, bounded by Mount Edgecumbe 
 in the distance. 
 
 "The far distance is the estuary of the Tamar, with the Hamoaze, the 
 renowned harbour of the British fleet, in which, about the time of this picture, 
 
 The Turner Gallery, p. 30. 
 
26 Turners Oil-Pictures. 
 
 and for some few years after the peace (of Amiens), were moored in ordinary, 
 sometimes nearly a hundred ships of war. The flag ship lies in this harbour, 
 and it has moorings for one hundred sail of the line." 
 
 Of this picture Mr. Thombury says' : " The picture of ' Crossing the 
 Brook' was a great favourite with him (Turner), and when the engraver 
 mentioned that he should require it two years in his possession for the 
 purpose of engraving, he hesitated, mumbled something about the blank 
 space in his gallery, and said that two )'ears was a long period at his time 
 of life. 
 
 " ' When the plate was nearly completed he called upon me,' says 
 Mr. Brandard, the engraver, ' to go over the proof from the picture. In the 
 course of conversation he observed, ' This picture was a commission, but the 
 gentleman was not satisfied. I was to have had £500 for it.' Subsequently 
 he refused £1600." 
 
 Mr. Buskin says, in speaking of Turner's sparing use of colour in his early 
 days, " The ' Crossing the Brook,' and such other elaborate and large compo- 
 sitions, are actually painted in nothing but grey, brown, and blue, with a 
 point or two of severe local colour in the figures." And such is undoubtedly 
 the case, although the few colours used by the artist are employed with 
 such mastery that it seems almost incredible to one whose attention has not 
 been specially called to the fact. The picture is a complete expression of 
 the most refined and elegant beauty of English scenery.' 
 
 Turner has painted grander pictures but never a sweeter one than 
 "Crossing the Brook;" he has touched far higher chords, but never pro- 
 duced rhore perfect harmony ; he has represented greater loveliness, but never 
 
 1 Life of Turner, Vol. I. p. 298. 
 
 2 There are few counties in England where trees grow in such elegant forms as in Devonshire. 
 We believe that Turner's love for the pear-shape in trees was first gained in this county. We have 
 heard and seen it asserted that this shape is not to be found hi nature, but we have seen whole lines of 
 elms (usually ungraceful trees in England) , in the south of Devonshire of this shape. 
 
Turners Oil-Pictures. 27 
 
 any more pure ; lie has painted more of truth, but never anything more truly. 
 Full to overflowing as the composition is, there is no crowded spot; compli- 
 cated as the drawing is, every line is distinct ; massive as the foliage is, there 
 is light and air between each leaf. It is seldom that Turner ever gave up 
 his soul so completely to the expression of peace without a thought of war, 
 to joy without alloy, to beauty without canker, as in this picture. It is the 
 most perfect flower of his youth, perhaps of his life. Here at least, if there 
 is no strong hope, there is the serenity of calm content ; there is no bitter 
 memory, no fearful forethought; there is only present peace. 
 
 In a widely different spirit is conceived " The Building of Carthage." 
 It is intended to typify the dawn of a great naval power. Carthage is repre- 
 sented (contrary to historical fact) as on the banks of a river, which flows down 
 the centre of the picture. The afternoon sun is shining fiercely, nearly in the 
 centre of the picture, making the sky a blaze of light, and gilding the glowing 
 city and the distant hills. On the right is a precipitous cliff, clothed with 
 verdure and crowned with a temple. In the background is a bridge, in front 
 of which galleys are being built ; in the foreground boys are sailing mimic 
 ships ; behind these are Dido and her attendants, with plans outstretched 
 before her. In the middle distance is a curious square building, " surmounted," 
 says Mr. Wornum, " by something between a turtle and a crocodile — a typical 
 crest — perhaps another symbol of sea dominion." Nothing is wanting to 
 suggest the beginning of a reign of earthly pomp and maritime power. It is 
 not, however, a picture of calm hope, but of feverish ambition. Man for a while 
 supplants nature. One magnificent tree only is left. Except the cliff, too 
 steep fir building on, and the distant hills, there is no place uncovered by 
 magnificent structures begun and finished. 
 
 Mr. Iiuskin points out' the intensity with which Turner's imagination dwelt 
 always on the three great cities of Carthage, Home, and Venice — Carthage 
 
 1 Modem Painters, Vol. V. p. 340. 
 
28 Turner's Oil-Pictures. 
 
 in connection especially with the thoughts and study which led to the painting 
 of the Hesperides Garden, 1 showing the death which attends the vain pursuit 
 of wealth ; Rome, showing the death which attends the vain pursuit of power : 
 Venice, the death which attends the vain pursuit of beauty. 
 
 Turner dreamed gloriously, but his dreams were not unconscious ; he did 
 not dream of the future but of the past, the splendid castles which he indeed 
 "built in the air" were not the unsubstantial visions of a sanguine imagination 
 but the glorious reflections of sad and hopeless memory. His brightest pictures 
 were the foil of his darkest thoughts ; as he grew older, his pictures became 
 lighter in colour, but sadder if possible in sentiment. This Carthage is glorious 
 and bright even now when half its splendour has departed, and it yet fills one 
 with delight at its beauty. But despite this, its effect on the mind is not 
 cheering, its magnificence does not inspire a joyful sentiment. One cannot but 
 feel that its pomp is vain, its splendour hollow. It is too hot for content, and 
 the half finished piles are suggestive of ruin. It gives only half the thought 
 of the painter. If it had been possible, he would have painted the building and 
 the decline of Carthage on the same canvass; as it was not, he painted two. He 
 could not have painted one picture without conceiving the other. Both are 
 now in the National Gallery. 
 
 Of this picture numerous stories are told. Chantrey once tried to buy it, 
 but was startled by finding each time its price rose higher, — £500, £1000, 
 £2000. 
 
 " ' Why, what in the world, Turner, are you going to do with the picture ?' 
 " ' Be buried in it, to be sure,' growled Turner." 2 
 
 Chantrey is said to have replied, that he would infallibly be dug up again 
 for the sake of the picture, and to have recommended as a safer winding sheet, 
 the manuscript of the "Fallacies of Hope," from which imaginary > poem 
 Turner drew so many sphinx-like quotations for his pictures. 
 
 In the National Gallery. 
 
 2 Life of Turner, Vol. I. p. 299. 
 
DO BUILDING CARTHAGE. 
 
 FROM THE ENGRAVING BY T. A. PRIOR. 
 
Turners Oil-Pictures. 29 
 
 The picture was, according to Mr. Thombury,' originally painted for £100 
 for a gentleman, who declined to take it when the critics and the press began to 
 attack it, and, long after Chantrey had bargained for it in vain, Turner refused 
 a greater sum for it than even Chantrey had offered. 
 
 " At a great meeting at Somerset House, where Sir Robert Peel, Lord 
 Hardinge, &c, were present, it was unanimously agreed to buy two pictures of 
 Turner, and to present them to the National Gallery, as monuments of art for 
 eternal incitement and instruction to artists and all art-lovers. A memorial was 
 drawn up and presented to Turner by his sincere old friend, Mr. Griffiths, who 
 exulted in the pleasant task. The offer was £5000 for the two pictures, the 
 ' Rise' and ' Fall of Carthage.' 
 
 " Turner read the memorial, and his eyes brightened. He was deeply 
 moved ; he shed tears ; for he was capable, as all who knew him well know, 
 of intense feeling. He expressed the pride and delight he felt at such a noble 
 offer from such men; but he added, sternly, directly he read the word 'Carthage' 
 — ' No, no ; they shall not have it.' 
 
 " On Mr. Griffiths turning to leave, he called after him and said : ' O ! 
 Griffiths, make my compliments to the memorialists, and tell them ' Carthage 
 may some day become the propert}' of the nation.'" 2 
 
 Turner left this picture and " The Sun Rising in a Mist" to the nation, 
 on the condition that the) - should be hung next to Claude's " Embarkation of 
 the Queen of Sheba," and " Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca." The Carthage 
 is painted in distinct rivalry of Claude, to a great extent in imitation of 
 him, but it is open to doubt what Turner's precise object was, in attaching 
 this condition to the acceptance of the two pictures by the nation. If it was 
 to convince the world that he was the greater painter, he has succeeded. But 
 he could have succeeded without this. He could not have hoped or wished to 
 utterly eclipse Claude, because nobody knew Claude's merit better than Turner, 
 
 1 Life of Turner, Vol. I. p. 395. 
 
 ■ Idem, pp. 391, 395. 
 
30 Turner s Oil- Pictures. 
 
 and though the "Carthage" is like Claude, the "Sun rising in a Mist" is as 
 unlike a work of the French master, as one picture can be unlike another in 
 style. Perhaps he meant to say, " Here is one picture in ray style and one in 
 Claude's; Claude could not have painted in my style at all, and I have beaten 
 him in his own;" or, perhaps, as we think, he did not so much desire his own 
 fame at the expense of Claude's as to show by the contrast the difference 
 between them, and so teach the world a lesson of simple appreciation. If so, he 
 could scarcely have chosen a better way of achieving his object. The four pictures 
 present a short epitome of landscape art, and the student will learn almost as 
 much from the pictures of one of the artists as from those of the other. Turner 
 showed that he loved Claude by imitating him so much, but he hated the false 
 estimation in which he was held. Turner wanted justice. He did not desire to 
 be rated above his own value, or that Claude should be rated below his ; but 
 he hated the popular ignorance of both, and tried to set the balance straight ; 
 which end, with much help from Mr. lluskin, he has now accomplished. 
 
 In 1816, Turner exhibited two pictures of the Temple of Jupiter Panhel- 
 lenius, an instance of his love for contrasting modern decay with ancient glory. 
 One was a "View" of the ruin taken from a sketch by H. Gaily Knight, 
 (he occasionally made drawings and paintings of places he had never seen, from 
 the sketches of others), and the other an imaginative picture of the same 
 temple restored. 
 
 In 1817 appeared his "Decline of Carthage," a picture which he is said 
 to have preferred to the " Rise," but which is in such a sad state now, that 
 it is impossible to judge of the justice of his opinion. In 1818, four pictures, 
 including the " Field of Waterloo " and " Tivoli." In 1819, " The Meuse 
 Orange Merchantman going to Pieces," a fine picture, now in the National 
 Gallery. This year he also exhibited his " Richmond Hill," which and the 
 " Rome from the Vatican," exhibited next year, are perhaps two as uninterest- 
 ing pictures as ever were painted, far more so to our mind, than the wildest 
 extravagances of his latest period. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TURNER'S TOURS AND WATER-COLOURS. 
 
 F Turner commenced by drawing architecture pure and simple, he 
 soon began to leave the plain path of the topographical artist to 
 indulge in little excursions on his own account in the regions of 
 light and mist and natural effect. It is eas} 7 to observe, even in 
 his earliest drawings, that he was not satisfied with the simple task of plain- 
 copying the lines of the buildings, and adding a few conventional trees and 
 figures, as his predecessors had been. His artistic feeling was too strong within 
 him to be content with simple transcription of lines and stones, his mind strayed 
 from the prosaic details to poetical accidents, and could not be satisfied with 
 a drawing which did not respond in some way to its artistic sense. So we find 
 him earl}' attempting to surround his buildings with trees and grass, with light 
 and cloud, or, in a word, with nature; and to choose the best artistic as well as 
 the best architectural point of view. He and Girtin were the first Englishmen 
 to feel, and endeavour to make others feel, the sympathy between nature and 
 architecture, or rather perhaps the human sympathy which harmonises both, 
 and without which both nature and architecture have no beauty which can 
 interest man. If we except Gainsborough, no Englishman had yet arisen who 
 had attempted to convey the effect of nature upon humanity, men had tried to 
 draw with tolerable accuracy some things which they saw, but it was yet an 
 almost unattempted task to express the feelings inspired by sight. 
 
 More than this, with the above exception, and one or two more at most, 
 
32 Turner s Tours and Water-Colours. 
 
 Englishmen appear not even to have tried to draw what they saw, to have given 
 up as hopeless any attempt even to copy nature, and to have been content to 
 express her by certain conventional forms, which had come to be generally 
 accepted as the artistic equivalents of natural objects. Art had become the 
 mechanical reproduction of all the faults of former artists. Wilson, great artist 
 though he was, drew boughs like pitchforks, so a pitchfork became the artistic 
 formula for a bough. 
 
 The miserable state in which landscape art was when Turner was young 
 cannot be better shown than Mr. Ruskin shows it by quoting the directions 
 given for the production of a landscape under article " Drawing," in the " Ency- 
 clopaedia Britannica" (1797) : — ■ 
 
 " ' If ho is to draw a landscape from nature, let him take his station on a 
 rising ground, when he will have a large horizon, and mark his tablet into three 
 divisions downwards from the top to the bottom, and divide in his own mind 
 the landscape he is to take into three divisions also. Then let him turn his face 
 directly opposite to the midst of the horizon, keeping his body fixed, and draw 
 what is directly before his eyes upon the middle division of the tablet, then 
 turn his head, but not his body' (what a comfortable as well as intelligent opera- 
 tion sketching from nature must have been in those days), 'to the left hand, and 
 delineate what he views here, joining it properly to what he had done before ; 
 and, lastly, do the same by what is to be seen upon his right hand, laying down 
 everything exactly, both with respect to distance and proportion. 
 
 " ' The best artists of late, in drawing their landscapes, make them shoot 
 away, one part lower than another. 
 
 " ' Those who make their landscapes mount up higher and higher, as if they 
 stood at the bottom of a hill to take the prospect, commit a great error ; the 
 best way is to get upon a rising ground, make the nearest objects in the piece 
 the highest, and those that are further off to shoot away lower and lower, till 
 they come almost level with the line of horizon, lessening everything propor- 
 tionably with its distance, and observing also to make the objects fainter and 
 
SHIPWRECK ON THE COAST OE 
 NORTHUMBERLAND. 
 
 FROM THE ENGRAVING BY J. BURNETT. 
 
Turners Tours and l-Vater-Colours. 33 
 
 less distinct the further they are removed from the eye. He must make all his 
 lights and shades fall one way, and let everything have its proper motion ; as 
 trees shaken by the wind, the small boughs bending more, the larger ones less ; 
 water agitated by the wind, and dashing against ships or boats, or falling from 
 a precipice upon rocks and stones, and spirting up again into the air and 
 sprinkling all about ; clouds also in the air, now gathered with the wind, now 
 violently condensed into hail, rain, and the like, always remembering that, 
 whatever motions are caused by the wind must be made to move all the same 
 way, because the wind can blow but one way at once.' 
 
 " Such was the state of the public mind and of public instruction at the 
 time when Claude, Poussin, and Salvator were at the zenith of their reputation ; 
 such were the precepts which, even to the close of the century, it was necessary 
 for a young painter to comply with during the best part of the years he gave to 
 study. Take up one of Turner's views of our Yorkshire dells, seen from about 
 a bank's height of expanse above the sweep of its river, and, with it in your 
 hand, side by side, read the old ' Encyclopaedia' paragraph.'' 
 
 We have not one of these " Views of our Yorkshire dells" to present to our 
 readers. The " Shipwreck" is probably the earliest of his works, of which we give 
 a plate. This scene, as it happens, is on the coast of Yorkshire, and it shows 
 (far too powerfully for our purpose) the enormous gulf which separates him, 
 even at an early period of his career, from the students of the Encyclopedia. 
 
 But short as was the time taken by Turner to mount so far above all con- 
 temporary notions of and aims in art, his work in that period was long and 
 unceasing. 
 
 " Art is long and time is fleeting," is a modern translation of an old truth 
 which Turner seems to have carried at his heart always, from the days when he 
 wandered as a boy over England, to that on which he saw his last sunset at 
 Chelsea. Not remarkable in his appearance, and passing from place to place 
 silently, he was yet ever to be traced as " the man who had always a pencil in 
 his hand." 
 
 F 
 
34 Turners Tours and Water-Colours. 
 
 In 1790, when fifteen, Turner exhibited his first water-colour ; in 1797, when 
 twenty -two, his first oil picture ; and during this short period of three years, he 
 had walked and sketched in Kent, Essex, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Cam- 
 bridgeshire, Worcestershire, Surrey, Cheshire, Lincolnshire, Somersetshire, 
 Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Flintshire, Herefordshire, Cardigan- 
 shire, Monmouthshire, Denbighshire, Shropshire, Glamorganshire, Staffordshire, 
 and other shires. He had exhibited thirty-two drawings at the Royal Academy, 
 and twenty of his drawings had been engraved in magazines. Is it much to be 
 wondered at, if at the end of this time he had eclipsed his contemporaries ? The 
 sheer hard work is enough to account for it. He pressed into these three years 
 the labour of many of their lives. 
 
 The mass of sketches and drawings, complete and incomplete, left to the 
 nation, and ranging over the whole period of Turner's life, would, no doubt, 
 yield, on careful study, a minute history of Turner's progress as a water-colour 
 artist, and very interesting would it be so to trace the gradually increasing 
 knowledge of nature, the slow acquirement of power over materials, the thousand 
 discoveries of new methods and tricks of effect, the growth of artistic feeling, 
 the dawn of colour, and every other subtle gradation by which he rose from a 
 student to be the greatest landscape painter of any time, from a topographic 
 draughtsman to the prophet of nature ; but we have neither space nor power 
 for the task. Mr. Ruskin has done much, but what a proof is it of the infinity 
 of this man, that the long labour of another, perhaps as great as a critic as he 
 was as an artist, should have left his subject unexhausted. 
 
 We must hasten on from the student to the master, and must take up his 
 water-colour drawing at the date of our last example of his oils. Imagine then 
 Turner to have wandered half over England, to have then visited Yorkshire in 
 1797, and gained the first great impulse to his art by his wanderings over the 
 wolds and by the lakes, to have gained the full honours of the Academy as a 
 consequence, to have published nearly his whole series of the " Liber Studi- 
 oruin," to have received his second great impulse by his visit to France and 
 
Turners Tours and Water-Colours. 35 
 
 Switzerland in 1802, to have painted his " Shipwreck," his "Jason," his " Crossing 
 the Brook," his " Building of Carthage," to have achieved triumphs in every 
 branch of landscape painting, to be forty-four years of age. Yet there is still 
 more knowledge for him to acquire, more power to be gained, fresh victories to 
 be won in new fields. 
 
 In 1819, he for the first time visited the Rhine and Italy, and the effect of 
 this tour upon his genius seems to have been to develop greatly his powers as a 
 eokrarist and his love of light. Henceforth he scarcely paints a dark picture, 
 and yellow is the prevailing colour in his drawings, as greys and browns had 
 been in earlier days. " More light" is his constant cry until his death. 
 
 Probably one of the fruits of his tour of 1819 was the drawing from the 
 engraving of which our illustration of "The Rhine, Nieuwied and Weissenburn," 
 is copied. It is a very beautiful example of his simpler style of composition. 
 The arrangement, the duplication in the middle distance of the sail forms in 
 the foreground, the bed of rushes balanced on the right by the boat and 
 its reflection, remind one somewhat of the composition of the " Flint Castle" ot 
 the Liber, though the light and shade is much more strongly contrasted in 
 the latter, and the chiaroscuro is reversed, the water being used for shade 
 in the Flint Castle, and for light in our illustration, the place of the light 
 lower sky in the Flint Castle being taken by the dark hill sides in the 
 Nieuwied. If the sketch for this drawing was taken on the spot it was 
 probably finished at home, for surely that very English-looking sportsman 
 who has just shot, or is about to shoot one of those ducks, was never sketched 
 on the banks of the Rhine. Yet how finely these figures are introduced; 
 how they break up the uninteresting foreground; how valuable they are for 
 light and shade. Take away the white dog, or replace it with a black one, and 
 the drawing is spoilt. 
 
 The original drawing is, we believe, one of the grand series of sketches 
 on the Rhine in the possession of Mr. Fawkes, of Farnley Hall, near Leeds. 
 
 In this sketch it is evident that Turner strove for little else than to give 
 
36 Turners Tours and Water-Colours. 
 
 a faithful " view" of the ordinary aspect of the place represented ; the peaceful 
 river with its rushes and its boats, the quiet villages, the tranquil mountains ; 
 there is no striving after extraordinary effects ; as a diplomatist or warrior 
 can be masterly in inaction, so Turner could be masterly in simplicity. If we 
 compare this drawing with the " Dido building Carthage," it seems a wonder 
 that the two should be drawn by the same hand ; but if it seems a wonder 
 that the artist of those hard dull early sketches could develop into the 
 painter of the " Carthage," it seems little less so that the same man should 
 afterwards spend months in making quiet drawings like this of new places. To 
 a man like Martin, such simple patient quiet labour might have been insufferable 
 after the painting of " Belshazzar's Feast" and other gorgeous falsities, but to 
 Turner nothing was tedious that was true. His mind might revel in working 
 out the glorious visions of its fancy, but it loved also to drink in and dwell 
 upon the wondrous works of nature. It liked well to command the powers 
 of its imagination, but it loved to serve humbly at the feet of truth. When 
 he was only known as a student he was a great artist, and when he was 
 known as a great artist he was still a student. 
 
 As a contrast to this unambitious but masterful sketch, we give one of 
 the most elaborately finished drawings he ever drew, also taken from the 
 Rhine, his drawing of Heidelberg. But before we consider it, it may be as 
 well to saj' something of his method of water-colour drawing, or rather to let 
 Mr. Ruskin say it for us : 
 
 " The large early drawings of Turner were sponged without friction, 
 or were finished piece by piece on white paper; as he advanced he laid the 
 chief masses first in broad tints, never effacing anything, but working the 
 details over these broad tints. While still wet, he brought out the soft lights 
 with the point of a brush ; the brighter ones with the end of a stick, often, 
 too, driving the wet colour in a darker line to the edge of the light, in order 
 to represent the outlines of hills. 
 
 " His touches were all clear, firm, and unalterable, one over the other. 
 
NEUWIED AND WEISSENTHURN. 
 
 FROM THE ENGRAVING BY R. BRANDARD. 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
Turners Tours and Water-Colours. 37 
 
 Friction he used only now and then, to represent the grit of stone or the 
 fretted pile of moss ; the finer lights ho often left from the first, even the 
 minutest light, working round and up to them, not taking them out, as 
 weaker men would have done. 
 
 " He would draw the dark outlines by putting more water to wet brushes, 
 and driving the colour to the edge to dry there, firm and dark. He would 
 draw the broken edge of clouds with a quiver of his brush, then round the 
 vapour by laying on a little more colour into parts not wet, and lastly dash 
 in warm touches of light when dry on the outside edges. 
 
 " In his advanced stage, and in finished drawings, he no doubt damped, 
 and soaked, and pumped on his paper, so as to be able to work with a wooden 
 point. The superfluous colour he would remove, but he never stifled or 
 muddled one tint with another ; nor would he use friction so as to destroy 
 the edge and purity of a colour. His finer vignettes (as for his Milton) 
 are on smooth cardboard, his coarser ones on sheets of thin drawing paper; 
 and in some of his sketches he would colour on both sides, so that the 
 paper could never have been soaked. There is no doubt, too, that besides 
 his work on wet paper with wooden point, and his wonderful method of 
 taking out high lights with bread, he had many secrets of manipulation, as, 
 for instance, in imitating the dark broken edges of waves. In an Italian 
 drawing that Mr. Alhiutt now possesses, there is an evident intentional 
 graining given to a large block of stone in the right foreground by the 
 pressure of a thumb in half-wet colour. You can still see the impression of 
 the pores of the painter's skin. 
 
 " The painting exhibited by Turner in 1805, ' The Battle of Fort Rock 
 in Val d' Aosta,' combines all the painter's peculiarities. There are lights 
 bluntly wiped out of the local colour of the sky, and sharply and decisively 
 on the foreground trees ; others scraped out with a blunt instrument while 
 the colour was wet, as in the moss on the wall and part of the fir-trees on 
 the right-hand bank ; lights scratched out, as in one of the waterfalls ; others 
 
38 Turner s Tours and Water-Colours. 
 
 cut sharp and clean with a knife from the wet paper, as in the housings of 
 the mules on the mountain road ; and then, for texture and air, there has 
 been much general surface-washing." 
 
 Surely all the resources of Turner's skill were demanded to produce the 
 wonderfully elaborate and complex drawing of Heidelberg. It certainly must 
 have tested most severely the patience and skill of Mr. Prior, from whose 
 marvellous engraving our print is taken. Turner appears to have tried to 
 concentrate into one drawing the whole spirit of Rhine scenery, and the 
 whole of his power and knowledge as an artist, — the mountain, the bridge, 
 the castle, the church, the river, the storm, the sunshine, the mist, the rain- 
 bow, and even the costume and the habits of the people. Compare it with 
 the simple sketch of Nieuwied, and it is like the most elaborate sonata heard 
 after a ballad. The one is the melodious expression of one thought, the 
 other the exquisite harmonies of a myriad. Divide the "Heidelberg" as you 
 will, you still obtain a lovely series of pictures ; and yet there is no crowding 
 in the drawing, and the unity of the composition is perfect. Multitudinous 
 and various in the extreme, there is no confusion ; complex as the effects 
 are, their causes are distinctly traceable : there is not a pin's point that does 
 not do its duty. And here we have only black and white, instead of the 
 infinite beauty of colour. How perfect the tonality of the colour must be, 
 the engraving is sufficient proof. The scale of the chiaroscuro ranges from 
 the almost total blackness of the shade in the foreground to the perfect 
 whiteness of the horse in the river, and yet there is no violent contrast; the 
 lights and darks are so broken up that the whole picture is luminous, the 
 very storm-cloud is translucid, the deep shade of the foreground is illuminated 
 with figures. The pure white bridge, which with its reflection crosses the 
 river like a marble chain, is yet full of subtle gradations of whiteness ; 
 the bridge is whiter than its reflection, the bridge itself is not so white 
 as the lights in the foreground, while every arch by its reflection is as it were 
 the frame of a little picture of land and river beyond, separately wonderful 
 
HEIDELBERG. 
 
 FROM THE ENGRAVING BY T. A. PRIOR. 
 
Turner's Tours and Water-Co lours. 39 
 
 for light and shade, but all subordinate to the general effect. But if the 
 tone of the picture is perfect the composition of it is little less so. Filled 
 with a thousand objects of interest, no one is brought into undue prominence ; 
 each keeps its place, and adds to the general effect without specially attracting 
 notice. 
 
 It is impossible to look at it except as a whole ; it needs an effort to detach 
 one's attention from the entire composition to examine the details, and yet 
 every detail is worthy of the closest attention, and the obscurest corners of this 
 wonderful drawing are filled with the most elaborate work. To persons unac- 
 customed to observe either nature or paintings minutely, Turner's drawings 
 contain so many things that they have never seen before that it is no wonder 
 that they appear unreal, but the more they are studied the more one sees how 
 real they are, and after a little while instead of failing to find nature in Turner, 
 one cannot look at nature without finding Turner. We once heard a person 
 express his opinion that the bridge in this drawing was an " unintelligible 
 jumble, of which no one could make head or tail," but after being persuaded to 
 look at it intently for a few minutes, he expressed another opinion, and that was 
 that " what struck him most in it was its elaborate distinctness." 
 
 It may be a relief to the reader now for a little while to turn attention from 
 the artist to the man. Here is an account of him in 1812, during one of his 
 Devonshire tours, given by Mr. Cyrus Redding, which, though showing him a 
 man of much mental and bodily power, gives one no notion of the com- 
 bined vigour and grace of mind which was required to produce even some 
 of his less remarkable works. So he was to live and die, — a rough, sailor- 
 like man, whose outward and visible signs in no way expressed his inward 
 invisible grace. Stored up within him, like a sweet kernel in a rough rind, 
 were fancy, imagination, tenderness, tears, the sad philosophy of a solitary 
 soul brooding without aid from any on the melancholy facts of human history, 
 the grand poetic heart which made music of its sorrow for the pleasure of the 
 world, the intense child-like love of nature which made storm and sunshine, 
 
4° Turners Tours and IVater-Colours. 
 
 mist and rainbows, his chosen friends and companions, nay, his brothers, — 
 all this within, and without but a clay figure, scarcely recognizable from a 
 bargeman's, through which none of that fine soul could ever find its way 
 save at rare intervals, such as the death of a friend, when convulsed with 
 the shock of grief as with an earthquake, the hard rind would bo riven 
 and the sensitive soul would flash in tears upon the astonished sight. 
 
 " The unprepossessing exterior, the reserve, the austerity of language, 
 existed in Turner in combination with a powerful, intelligent, reflective mind, 
 ever coiled up within itself ; he had a faculty of vision that seemed to 
 penetrate the sources of natural effect, however various in aspect, and to 
 store them in memory with wonderful felicity. His glance commanded in an 
 instant all that was novel in scenery, and a few outlines on paper recorded 
 it unintelligibly to others. He placed these pictorial memoranda upon 
 millboard, not larger than a sheet of letter-paper, quite a confused mass ; 
 how he worked out the details from such sketches seemed to me wonderful. 
 His views around Plymouth, in the engravings from his pictures, were 
 marvellously varied in effect, as well as faithful representations. His first 
 sketches showed little of the after picture to the unpractised eye ; perhaps 
 he bore much away in memory, and these were only a kind of shorthand, 
 which he deciphered in his studio. 
 
 " We once ran along the coast to Borough, or Bur Island, in Bibury Bay. 
 There was to be the wind-up of a fishing account there. Our excuse was to eat 
 hot lobsters, fresh from the water to the kettle. 
 
 " The sea was boisterous, the morning unpropitious. Our boat was Dutch 
 built, with outriggers, and undecked. It belonged to a fine old weather-beaten 
 seaman, a Captain Nicols. 
 
 " Turner, an artist; a half Italian, named Demaria; an officer of the army; 
 Mr. Collier, a mutual friend ; and myself, with a sailor, composed the party. 
 The sea had that dirty, puddled appearance which often precedes a hard gale. 
 We kept towards Kame Head, to obtain an offing, and when running out from 
 the land the sea rose higher, until off Stokes Point it became stormy. 
 
Turners Tours and Water-Colotirs. 41 
 
 " We mounted the ridges bravely. The sea in that part of the Channel 
 rolls in grand furrows from the Atlantic, and we had to 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 b}' 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 ballast in the bottom of the boat, and 
 keep him down with a spar laid across him. Demaria was silent in his sufferings. 
 In this way we made Bur Island. The difficulty was how to get through the 
 surf, which looked unbroken. At last we got round under the lee of the island, 
 and contrived to get on shore. All this time Turner was silent, watching the 
 tumultuous scene. The little island, and the solitary hut it held, the bay in the 
 bight of which it lay, and the dark, long Bolthead to seaward, against the rocky 
 shore of which the waves broke with fury, made the artist become absorbed in 
 contemplation, not uttering a syllable. While the shell-fish were preparing, 
 Turner, with a pencil, clambered nearly to the summit of the island, and seemed 
 writing rather than drawing. How he succeeded, owing to the violence of the 
 wind, I do not know. 
 
 " He probably observed something in the sea aspect which he had not 
 before noted. We took our picnic dinner and lobsters, and soon became merry 
 over our wine on that wild islet. Evening approached ; the wind had rather 
 increased than diminished in violence. The landsmen did not approve of a 
 passage back that must run far into the night, if not the morning. 
 
 " Some one proposed we should walk to Kingsbridge and sleep. Captain 
 Nicols declared he would return ; his boat would defy any sea. We ought not 
 in good fellowship to have separated; when it was low water we could reach the 
 mainland over the sands. We left the boat, and the captain with his man set 
 sail back alone, and was obliged to run off the coast nearly to the Eddystone to 
 make the Sound. Some of the men-of-war there were firing guns, to give notice 
 that they were dragging their anchors. We slept at Kingsbridge. Turner and 
 
4 2 Turners Tours and Water-Colours. 
 
 myself went early the next morning to Dodbrook, to see the house in which 
 Dr. Wolcot (Peter Pindar) was born, of which the artist took a sketch. We 
 walked a good part of the way back. The next day we spent at Saltram. 
 Though full of paintings by the great masters, and many landscapes of Zucca- 
 relli, I could not extract a word about them from Turner. 
 
 " Stubbs' ' Phaeton and Runaway Horses,' in the billiard-room he hardly 
 noticed, except with the word ' fine.' The room in which I slept was hung 
 with Angelica Kauffman's man-woman paintings. As we were retiring to bed, 
 I directed his attention to them as he passed my room to his own ; I received a 
 ' Good night in your seraglio' (harem). 
 
 " On looking at some of Turner's subsequent works, I recently perceived 
 several bits of the scenery we had visited, introduced into fancy pictures. 
 Meeting him in London one morning, he told me that if I would look in at his 
 gallery I should recognize a scene I well knew, the features of which he had 
 brought from the west. I did so, and traced, except in a part of the front 
 ground, a spot near Newbridge, on the Tamar, we had visited together. It is 
 engraved, called, ' Crossing the Brook,' and is now in Marlborough House. 
 
 " I was present at Devil's Point when he sketched the Sound, Mount 
 Edgecombe, Trematon Castle, Calstock, and scenes on the Tamar. We once 
 passed an entire night together in a country inn with a sanded floor, where no 
 beds were to be had, not far from the Duke of Bedford's cottage on the Tamar. 
 Most of our party went three miles to Tavistock. I volunteered to remain. 
 
 " They were to rejoin us after breakfast the next day. Turner got some 
 bread and cheese and porter for supper, which I did not relish, but by an 
 after-thought procured some bacon and eggs ; and after sitting conversing till 
 midnight with a fluency I never heard from Turner before or afterwards, he 
 leaned over the table and fell asleep. I placed three chairs in a line, and 
 stretching myself over them, got three or four hours' rest : quite enough to be 
 fresh to start with my companion at daybreak to explore some sweet spots 
 in the neighbourhood, and return to breakfast before our friends rejoined us. 
 
f 
 
Turner s Tours and Water-Colours. 43 
 
 " Turner said he had never seen so many natural beauties in such a 
 limited spot of country as he saw there. He visited Mount Edgecumbe two 
 or three times. 
 
 " I have a pencil sketch of his, which is a view of Cawsand Bay from 
 the heights, with the end of a seat, a bottle of wine, table, and the men-of- 
 war at anchor below. I value it as a relic of a great man, though a mere 
 scrawl. 
 
 " I was one of a picnic party of ladies and gentlemen, which he gave in 
 excellent taste, at Mount Edgecumbe. There we spent a good part of a fine 
 summer's day. Cold meats, shell-fish, and good wines abounded. The donor 
 of the feast, too, was agreeable, terse, blunt, almost epigrammatic at times, 
 but always pleasant for one not given to waste his words, nor studious of 
 refined bearing. We visited Cothele on the Tamar together, where the furniture 
 is of the time of Henry VII. and VIII. 
 
 " The woods are fine, and the views of some of the headlands round which 
 the river winds are of exceeding beauty. In one place he was much struck, 
 took a sketch, and when it was done, said, ' We shall see nothing finer than 
 this if we stay till Sunday, because we can't.' 
 
 " It was the last visit he paid to the scenery of the Tamar before he 
 quitted the west. It was to the honour of several of the inhabitants of 
 Plymouth that boats, horses, and tables were ready for his use during the 
 time he remained. Everybody felt that in paying him attention they were 
 honouring a most extraordinary genius, whose artistic merit had not been 
 exaggerated. 
 
 " I remember one evening on the Tamar, the sun had set, and the shadows 
 become very deep. Demaria, looking at a seventy-four lying under Saltash, 
 said, ' You were right, Mr. Turner ; the ports camiot be seen. The ship is one 
 dark mass P 
 
 " ' I told you so,' said Turner, ' now you see it all is one mass of shade !' 
 " ' Yes, I see that is the truth, and yet the ports are there.' 
 
44 Turners Tours and Water-Colours. 
 
 " ' We can take only what we see, no matter what is there. There arc 
 people in the ship : we don't see them through the planks.' 
 " ' True,' replied Demaria. 
 
 " There had been a discussion on the subject before between two 
 professional men, in which Turner had rightly observed, that after sunset, 
 under the hills, the portholes were undiscerniblc. We now had ocular proof 
 
 of it." 
 
 This is, on the whole, the best sketch we have anywhere seen of the artist as 
 a man, other accounts of him are split up into anecdotes, but here we have a 
 rough sketch of him, his habits and surroundings, the impression he made on 
 others, the way he looked and behaved when free of restraint and in the prime 
 of life. A good-natured rough sort of man, who cared nothing for hard weather 
 or hard living, shrewd and self-concentrated, not given to speech, but sensible 
 when he did speak, listening more than he spoke, and observing more than he 
 heard, a man possibly of far greater attainments than one would give him 
 credit for, but when we have said this we have said all or nearly all. 
 
 We have now only to look at his works to see what a vast difference 
 there was between the man that he was, and the man that he appeared. 
 Such a man as Mr. Cyrus Redding so pleasantly describes might indeed be 
 a good artist ; a man capable, for instance, of drawing Dover and Hastings 
 as beautifully as he has done in the drawings from which our illustrations of 
 those places are taken ; he was evidently just the man to do it, though we 
 fancy that if we could present the original drawings instead of the black 
 and white translations, there would be delicacies and subtleties perceptible, for 
 which we should scarcely have given Mr. Bedding's companion credit. But 
 turn from these to the " Heidelberg," and who could believe that a man 
 of so rough and unrefined an exterior could have conceived it. Most men 
 have depths to which the common world do not penetrate, but this man 
 in that wonderful being of his had worlds undiscovered, peopled with 
 thoughts uneonjectured and visions not hinted at. Each fresh work was a 
 revelation. 
 
Turner s Tours and Water-Colours- 45 
 
 It is easy to try to get rid of the difficulties arising from the difference 
 between a man and his works by describing his personality as double, making 
 him to be half man, half artist — a sort of spiritual Centaur, scarcely to be 
 thought of as a man, and this duality is apparent in Turner to a greater 
 degree than perhaps in any other painter or poet, but such attempts merely 
 state difficulties without solving them. The artist is, after all, part of the man, 
 not an excrescent or alien part of him; he is not a hybrid, but a homogeneous 
 whole, and though an artistic temperament may and must to a great degree 
 modify a man's moral and intellectual conditions, it does not stifle or alter a 
 man's individual character. In Turner's case, however, it actually appears, 
 though falsely, to have done so ; for, with the exception of noble impulses, and 
 one long settled plan of magnificent charity, his individual character seems 
 as though dwarfed to the standard of a common labouring man. That his art 
 in any way tended to do this, we do not in any sense believe ; instead of this, 
 we believe that it was the only way in which the man himself showed in his 
 proper magnificent light. Physical disabilities were his evil, and Art his good 
 genius. If he had been gifted with an ordinary amount of verbal expression, 
 and common power of communicating his thoughts to others ; if he had had 
 the power of inspiring personal interest ; if he had had a less lopsided education, 
 so that he could have moved like an ordinary intelligent being amongst his 
 fellows, and have entered into their lives and enjoyed their confidence and 
 sympathy like other men ; then indeed, if he had still refused this fellowship, 
 and had shut himself up from the world, and sought to develop himself in nothing 
 but painting, his art would have much to answer for ; but in that case his art 
 would probably have suffered, and not have been the pure unselfish thing that 
 it was, and he himself would have been a worse man. But we believe that if he 
 was so cut off from the world, it was none of his fault ; he struggled for light, 
 he loved his fellow-men, he longed to be one of them, but he could not, in any 
 other than a merry-making, jovial, hail-fellow-well-met kind of way ; he had 
 no bridge that would carry him over on a higher level to his fellow-men. He 
 
46 Turner s Tours and Water-Colours. 
 
 thought of politics, but his mouth was shut ; he pondered on time and fate and 
 eternity, but his tongue was tied ; he conceived of love and sympathy, but he 
 had no means for their communication. He was, however, fond of seeing 
 people merry and convivial, and here there was a bridge — he could eat and he 
 could drink, and so it became that social dinners and suppers were the only 
 entertainments that ho could enjoy, the only opportunities of society which he 
 loved to indulge in. But on the other hand was his art : did he see beauty 
 he could paint it ; his love, to which all other channels were shut, found ample 
 scope for all its emotions in the boundless variety of nature ; she sympathised 
 with him, and he could express his love for her and hers for him as no one else 
 could, and even his thoughts of man's sad history he could think out and realize 
 in painted poetry. Milton was a blind poet, and Turner was a dumb painter, 
 but there was this difference, Milton had seen the glories of the world in his 
 youth ; but Turner had been dumb from his birth, and had never known what it 
 was to express the emotions and thoughts of his heart in fitting speech, or the 
 pleasure and profit of converse with other minds; both men were pitiable, but 
 Turner far more so. They were both poets, philosophers, and artists, but 
 Turner could only communicate with his fellow-men in a language which was 
 imperfectly understood, which allowed of no response, nor admitted of any 
 after elucidation. 
 
 This dumb artist, then, was like a tree whose roots are in a cellar, and which 
 has grown sideways through a chink ; one branch — his art alone — has light and 
 heat, and with gratitude to the special favour it grows, till of itself it exceeds in 
 size and beauty many a perfect tree ; but the other branches, where are they ? 
 They grow perhaps in the sickly shade a little while and die, some scarce start 
 at all, and the tree viewed altogether is unsightly and misproportioned. But is 
 it the fault of the tree that its seed was so sown, or is it the fault of the one 
 glorious branch that the rest are stunted ? is not that branch rather the only real 
 manifestation of the tree, and is it not enough to redeem it ? 
 
 There are therefore two things we think clear : first, that Turner, the man, 
 
LAKE OF ZURICH. 
 
 FROM THE ENGRAVING BY T. A. PRIOR. 
 
Turners Tours mid Water-Colours. 47 
 
 is not to be divided from Turner, the artist, but that his art is the only full and 
 fair expression of the man, the only means by which what he was was reveal- 
 able to his fellowmen ; and second, that Turner, the man, was not sacrificed to, 
 but redeemed by, his art. 
 
 If therefore we wish to know what Turner was, we should not trust even to 
 Mr. Redding, or be too much biased by other stories we shall have to relate, 
 but should turn rather to his Liber Studiorum, to his " Ulysses," or even to the 
 beautiful drawing of Zurich, which forms our next illustration. 
 
 This drawing is specially remarkable as a typical instance of the way 
 Turner used masses of figures to break up light. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 TURNER'S OIL-PAINTINGS. 
 
 SECOND PERIOD, 1820-35. 
 
 CCORDING to Mr. Buskin, Turner's pictures of this period are 
 distinguished by delicate deliberation of handling, cheerful 
 moods of mind, brilliant colour, defiance of precedent, and effort 
 at ideal composition. 
 In 1821 Turner was absent from the walls of the Academy, and his picture 
 of 1322, "What you Will," was not important, but in 1823 he again surprised 
 the world, by his wonderful picture of the " Bay of Baia3," a picture still so 
 lovely, as it hangs on the walls of the National Gallery, that at a little distance 
 it is almost difficult to believe that it is a mere wreck of what it was, but 
 unfortunately a very little examination shows what ravages time, exposure, 
 neglect and chemical change have wrought. Messrs. Redgrave write sadly 
 of it. 
 
 After describing the revolution in art caused by the application by Turner 
 to oil of the effects he had learnt in his water-colour practice, Messrs. Redgrave 
 contrast the picture of the " Shipwreck," with the " Bay of Baire." " In the 
 former," they write, "the principle is dark, with a very limited proportion of light ; 
 in the latter light, with a very limited proportion of dark. Again, in the former 
 the work throughout is painted solidly, and with a vigorous and full brush, the 
 sky is solid, the sea is solid and opaque in its execution, even in the darks much of 
 it being laid on boldly with the knife. With the single exception of the red jacket 
 
Second Period-~-i$>20 to 1835. 49 
 
 of the man at the helm, the few patches of colour that break the solemn 
 monotony of the storm are not glazed, but mixed as opaque tints. 
 
 " Though the scheme of the picture has relation to the Dutch School, it is 
 not Dutch, either in execution or finish, but simple, massive, and large. In 
 " The Bay of Baiaj," on the contrary, the whole scheme of the picture is 
 light ; instead of the keeping being the result of contrasts of different planes, it 
 consists of infinite gradations of delicate tint ; the hills and distant bay are 
 scumbled into a misty haze ; the foreground has been painted white, or in a very 
 light hue, and broken up into delicate tints, finished with refined diaphanous 
 glazings of colour. The wcedage, leafage, and flowers have been painted white, 
 or approaching to it, and have their gorgeous hues given by glazing with colour 
 unmixed with white. 
 
 " The shadows and the principal darks of the foreground were liquid and 
 dark, with the brown amber of rich asphaltum. Were ! yes, alas ! were, for the 
 picture is now but a wreck of what it was. In 1S23, when it hung on the walls of 
 the Royal Academy, we well recollect it as a vision of glorious beauty. Now time 
 has worked its evil will upon it, aided by the neglect of its author, the system 
 of painting he adopted, and the treacherous pigment used for the darks. The 
 aerial blue of the far-off bay and the hills that marge its shores, are here and 
 there dark with discoloured patches ; the middle distance has been tampered 
 with, the hand of the restorer is visible. The bright lines on the foliage and 
 flowers of the foreground have proved as evanescent as the things they represent, 
 the crimson drapery of Apollo hangs like a rent and faded rag, and the darks, 
 strengthened with asphalte, are cracked and blackened as if the breath of a fur- 
 nace had passed over them. 
 
 " Wonderful tints here and there speak to the eye, as rare music does to 
 the ear, showing through the faded glazings with which they were once enriched, 
 like the hues of life lingering on the face of death. It is but the wreck, the 
 beautiful wreck, it is true, of a picture that is past." 1 
 
 1 Century of Painters, Vol. II. p. 112. 
 
 H 
 
5o Turners Oil-Pictures. 
 
 We doubt whether any of Turner's pictures can properly be said to be 
 cheerful. The quiet spontaneous subjective joy expressed by that word 
 does not, we think, rightly apply to the mood in which one of his pictures 
 with which we are acquainted was painted, perhaps excepting " Crossing 
 the Brook." But, objectively, " The Bay of Baise," " Childe Harold's 
 Pilgrimage," " Caligula's Palace and Bridge," " The Golden Bough," and 
 other glorious visions of this period are cheerful, if by that word we mean 
 the reverse of gloomy. Sad sentiment still remains, but the pictures themselves 
 are bright, glorious and unclouded, irradiated with sunshine and decked with 
 all the hues of heaven and earth. Turner seems to have thought principally 
 of beauty when painting them, the sensuous loveliness of nature. He had 
 before exerted, and he will again exert, his powers in representing the force, 
 the majesty, the terriblcness, and the melancholy of nature; but now for a 
 time he seems to have given himself up to represent its pleasure, — cloudless 
 skies, sun's rays unshorn by mist, and the utmost luxuriance of vegetation. 
 All this certainly, but cheerfulness nowhere. Passion of heated climes, but 
 no gentle love ; Boecacio's " Birdcage," but no talc of domestic life. Snakes 
 trail among the leaves of the Eden of the "Bay of Baise," and in the very 
 centre of his exquisite dream of the " Golden Bough " lies the Lake of 
 Avernus. Even in other such seemingly happy scenes, as " Childe Harold's 
 Pilgrimage " and " Caligula's Palace and Bridge," half the beauty is gained 
 from ruins, and the sentiment is bitter reflection. 
 
 Certainly, however, Turner seems to have had more pleasure in painting- 
 after his visit to Italy in 1819. Sad thoughts, though underlying, arc not on 
 the surface ; he revels in his mastery over his materials, he no longer follows 
 patiently in the steps of other artists or even of nature ; he feels his full 
 power and throws off all restraint of other minds. Daring before, his confidence 
 in his own powers knows no bounds ; he paints by inspiration, scorning all 
 models; and after many brilliant successes and some failures, his daring and 
 his success culminate in that most magnificent of all his works, his " Ulysses 
 deriding Polyphemus" (1829). 
 
Second Period — 1 8 20 & 1 83 5 . 51 
 
 It would be mere waste of time to describe a work which is so generally 
 known and which can be seen by all at the National Gallery, but there is 
 a story told of it and the artist which is too good to omit. 
 
 " There can be, of course," says Mr. Thornbury, " no doubt that Turner 
 selected his subject from the ninth book of the ' Odyssey,' yet, with 
 his usual secretive sort of fun, he loved to mystify busybodies and dilettantes 
 about it. 
 
 " His friend, the Rev. Mr. Jndkins, who is neither a busybody nor a 
 dilettante, but a friend of Constable's, and a very clever landscape artist, was 
 one day dining with Turner at a large party. A lady sitting next to the 
 clerical artist, with the curiosity traditionally supposed to be peculiar to her 
 sex, was full of the glories of the ' Polyphemus,' the wonder of the last 
 exhibition. It was one perpetual whisper, ' Wine ? No, thank you ; but oh, 
 Mr. Judkins, do you — what do you think of Mr. Turner's great picture ? 
 And — a very little, if you please, — don't you now think it is a sweet picture ? ' 
 &e. &c. 
 
 " Turner, glum and shy, opposite, is watching all this. He sees where 
 the lady's eyes fall after she addresses her whispers to Mr. Jndkins. His 
 little beads of eyes roll and twinkle with fun and slyness across the table ; 
 he growls, ' I know what you two are talking about, Judkins — about my 
 picture.' 
 
 " Mr. Judkins suavely waves his glass, and acknowledges that it was. The 
 lady smiled on the great man. 
 
 " ' And I bet you don't know where I took the subject from ; come now — bet 
 you don't.' 
 
 " Judkins blandly replied, ' Oh ! from the old poet, of course, Turner ; from 
 the ' Odyssey,' of course.' 
 
 " ' No,' grunted Turner, bursting into a chuckle ; 1 Odyssey ! ' not a bit 
 of it. I took it from Tom Dibdin. Don't you know the lines : 
 
 " ' He ate his mutton, drank his wine, 
 And then he jjohed his eye out?'" 
 
52 Turners Oil-Pictures. 
 
 " The lines may be in Dibdin. I never could find them ; but such is the 
 mystifying fun Turner was so fond of." 1 
 
 Although the picture of the "Golden Bough" is not such a crowning 
 example of genius as the " Ulysses," it would be difficult to find a picture 
 more illustrative of Turner's second style. It is painted in a very light key, its 
 colour is glorious, it is veiled in his own peculiar mystery, both of subject and 
 execution ; it expresses, as Mr. Ruskin says, " the infinite redundance of natural 
 landscape," as it never had been expressed before, " the treatment of the masses 
 of mountains" being "wholly without precursorship in art;" 2 it is peculiarly 
 representative of a state of mind in which the artist revelled in the exercise of 
 sheer power and visions of the purely beautiful, and its composition and its 
 figures arc eminently Turneresque. 
 
 Turner may have had some deep meaning to express, but the meaning 
 is as unfathomable as the Lake Avernus itself. The Golden Bough, we are told, 
 when plucked from the Tree of Proserpine, enabled mortals to enter the 
 dominions of Pluto with impunity, and there is a white figure on the left, with a 
 bough in one hand and a sickle in the other, and there is a reclining female 
 figure in the middle, either of which may be meant for Proserpine, or for the 
 Cumrean Sibyl. We have examined authorities for the story of which this is an 
 illustration, in vain, but we think that it matters little what the story is, and 
 should have been as well content if the picture had had no name. It needs 
 none ; it tells no story but that of beauty. 
 
 The following description of this picture was written by Mr. Burnet, the 
 careful and artist-like critic, of Turner, the engraver of Wilkie and 
 biographer of Rembrandt, in whose death we lost almost the last link 
 between the English art of the present day and that of Turner's youth : 
 " This is one of those compositions that Turner took delight in painting — 
 a great expanse of country, which his knowledge of aerial perspective, and 
 
 ' Thornbury's Life of Turner, Vol. I. p. 317. 
 
 2 Modern Painters, Vol. IV. p. 298. 
 
THE GOLDEN BOUGH. 
 
 FROM THE ENGRAVING BY J. T. WILLMORE, A. R. A. 
 
Second Period — 1 820 to 1 83 5 . 53 
 
 his refined taste for delicate colour enabled him to execute with all the 
 breadth inherent in similar scenery of nature. The principal mass of light is 
 composed of the gentlest tones, gradually advancing from the distance, defined 
 only by the opposition of warm and cool tints of yellow and blue, spread out 
 with the greatest preservation to the breadth of light, and strengthened towards 
 the foreground by the reds and browns of the figures and shadows ; the dark 
 green pine, with its warm-coloured stem, rising up against the sky, gives a 
 firmness to the foreground, and the most retiring quality to the distant objects. 
 "No painter has equalled Turner in giving such scenes with the luminous character 
 of nature, or imitating her tenderest tones of atmospheric colour." ' 
 
 It may be remarked, however, that this was not the first picture painted by 
 Turner which had for its subject the mystery of the " Golden Bough," for in 
 1800, or thirty-four years before, he appears, according to Mr. Thornbury, to 
 have painted " The Meeting the Cumsean Sibyl near her Cave at Lake 
 Avernus, before he enters Hell to pluck the mystic Golden Bough, in order 
 that, armed with that Talisman, he may consult his dead Father, Anchises." 
 
 But it must not be supposed that because we have dwelt on certain bright, 
 sunnv, rainbow-hued, ideal compositions as most typical of this period of his art, 
 that he relinquished other styles and other subjects at this time. Indeed, there is 
 nothing more puzzling than the great variety of the moods which affected his 
 genius throughout his wholo life. Mr. Ruskin, by the aid of intense study, has 
 been able to put down certain milestones in his career ; that is, he has been able 
 to determine certain periods when fresh impulses have been given to Turner's art, 
 fresh methods of painting started, and the prevailing tone has changed, but that 
 is all. There is something all through his later stages to remind us of his earliest 
 styles, something almost from the first foreshadowing his latest. Nearly at the 
 commencement of his second style, viz., in 1822, his only exhibited picture 
 that year, " What You Will," is said (we have not seen it) to be the first example 
 
 1 Turner and his Works, by Burnet and Cunningham, p. 107. 
 
54 Turners Oil-Pictures. 
 
 of his latest, while in 1835 his picture of " Line-fishing off Hastings," now in the 
 South Kensington Museum (Sheepshanks Collection), though so far as the 
 method is concerned unmistakeable as to date, is yet just such a coast scene as 
 he always loved to draw, and undistinguishable in style, when engraved, from the 
 " Dover" and " Hastings" of which we have given illustrations, and which were 
 drawn about 1822. He never appears to have quite relinquished any of his 
 stjdes or habits. He began to study, and never left off studying. He began as 
 a topographical artist, and he sketched places from nature up to his death. He 
 painted "Fishermen at Sea" in 1796, and "Whalers" in 1846. His "Army of 
 the Medes destroyed in a Desert by a Whirlwind," exhibited as early as 1801, is 
 the prototype of the latest and wildest freaks of his imagination. His two 
 " Temples of Jupiter," of 1816, are bnt the germs of his " Ancient and Modern 
 Italy " and " Ancient and Modem Rome," of 1838 and 1839, and even his 
 attempts at figure painting, beginning with " The Holy Family," in 1803, only 
 ended with his life. We might go on multiplying instances, but it is enough to 
 prove how various was the web of his genius, and that he never dropped a 
 thread. In 1833 a new thread was set, for in that year he exhibited his first 
 picture of Venice. 
 
 In Venice, Turner's genius seems to have found its last home. It had 
 sprung into being amongst the Fells of Yorkshire ; it had wandered all over 
 England ; it had crossed to France and Switzerland, Germany and Italy, never 
 losing its love for one in painting the other; almost, as Mr. Ruskin implies, 
 spoiling pictures of foreign scenes by affectionate recollections of home, and 
 scenes of home by decking them with foreign glories ; but it had lived long 
 nowhere, since its youth it was a wanderer. But in Venice it found a place 
 where it conld rest and dream undisturbed — a city which suggested no home 
 memories to traverse its thought ; it was distinct, unique, and yet so blended 
 together his earliest love, architecture ; his latest, colour ; and those lifelong- 
 darlings of his heart, the cloud, the mist, and the sea, that there was no sense 
 of strangeness in its novelty, no solitariness in its solitude, no bereavement in its 
 isolation. 
 
Second Period — 1820 /<? 1S35. 55 
 
 "Turner, from this time" (1833), says Mr. Thornbury, "painted many 
 pictures of Venetian scenery, never seeming to tire of the enchantment of the 
 sea Cybele." How should he tire of what was to his art an earthly paradise — a 
 dream-land of all that was most ethereal in nature, where there was more light 
 and colour and mist and water than any other spot on the face of the globe '! 
 Much has been said of Turner's habit of whitening the buildings of Venice, and 
 his want of rightly appreciating its architecture, and no doubt Turner took 
 liberties with Venice which no other man could dare do, or be justified in 
 doing ; but, as Leslie truly says, " Others may have painted with more truth 
 many of its lesser facts, but lie alone has given the great facts that are the 
 prevailing associations with Venice." 
 
 For instance, there is a fine picture of " Venice," by Bonington, in the 
 wonderful collection of pictures made by the late Mr. Munro, of Novars and 
 Hamilton Place, and now in the possession of his brother-in-law, Colonel 
 Butler- Johnstone. This picture is, besides being a fine work of art, a picture 
 that represents the most obvious facts of Venice with far greater accuracy 
 than most of Turner's, but still it is a view of Venice and nothing more ; it 
 faithfully gives the well-known buildings, the forms and colours of the boats, 
 it has a Venetian sky, and the water is the water of a Venetian canal; it 
 expresses all this, but it does not express the one great fact which Turner 
 never failed to express— viz., that Venice is the City of the Sea. It was 
 to express this fact, we think, that Turner whitened his buildings till they look 
 as though they had risen like Venus from the foam of the waves. For this 
 reason, also, he seems to have preferred to paint Venice from a distance, as in 
 that glorious " Approach to Venice," of which we give an illustration elsewhere, 
 in his " Going to the Ball," his " Returning from the Ball," his " Sun of Venice 
 going out to Sea," and many other pictures, of which it may be said, that they 
 are all light, and air, and water; where the distant city looks like a mirage of 
 mist-like towers, where the boats skim over the water like clouds, and their sails 
 are woven of the rainbow. 
 
5 6 Turner s Oil-Pictures. 
 
 The "Grand Canal, Venice," of which a representation is given, was painted 
 in the year 1834. From the engraving, it appears to have heen bought by the 
 Mr. Munro before mentioned, who was a great collector of Turner's pictures 
 and drawings, and one of his kindest friends and patrons. Mr. Munro, however, 
 must soon have parted with this picture, for in 1860 it was purchased by Mr. 
 Gambart, at the sale of Mr. Burnett's pictures, for £2,520. In 1862 it was in 
 the possession of Mr. John Hugh, of Manchester. 
 
 This is a scene on the Grand Canal, and one of his earliest Venetian pictures. 
 It is therefore more realistic than his later ones ; but still here the " wateriness," 
 so to speak, of the place is most distinctly emphasized. Water washing both 
 sides of the picture occupies the whole of the foreground, and retreats, together 
 with an infinite perspective of shipping, into the extreme distance. Buildings on 
 each side take up but a little part in the picture ; the sky above and the water 
 below monopolize nearly four-fifths of the space, while the central point of 
 interest is the shipping — shipping, except one or two gondolas, not for the 
 navigation of canals, but of the sea. 
 
THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE. 
 
 FROM THE ENGRAVING BY W. MILLER. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TURNER'S "LIBER STUDIORUM" AND THE ENGRAVINGS 
 FROM HIS WORKS. 
 
 INCE the year 1794, when the first engraving after Turner 
 appeared in the " Itinerant,'' up to the present clay, the British 
 public have had almost uninterrupted opportunities of studying 
 Turner's art by means of engravings. The list of his engraved 
 works, so carefully compiled by Mr. Stokes, but which for all his labour is yet not 
 quite perfect, contains the enormous number of seven hundred and forty-five 
 plates, published and unpublished, excluding the " Liber Studiorum." A complete 
 set of the " Liber" ought to contain seventy-one published plates; and there are 
 twenty unpublished. Altogether we may estimate at over seven hundred the 
 number of plates engraved in his lifetime from his works. 
 
 On the whole, we think there can be no doubt that in his choicest oil paint- 
 ings Turner's reached its highest point ; his water-colour drawings contain, 
 on the other hand, his most faultless work ; but it is by engravings from his 
 drawings and pictures that he is most widely known. Only very rich men can 
 afford to keep his pictures, only rich men can possess a good drawing, but it is 
 only very poor men who cannot afford to possess, and cannot easily procure, 
 some good engravings from his pictures. In these, of course, much is missed, all 
 colour and much of force and tone, but yet there is scarcely even an inferior 
 engraving from Turner which does not bear the stamp of the artist, something 
 
 I 
 
5 8 Turner s Liber Studiorum and the 
 
 which does not make it more valuable as an art-study than any engraving from 
 any other landscape artist. 
 
 Turner's works were not " profitable " to the engraver in one sense. They 
 taxed his power to the utmost; there was no easy work in them, no patches 
 which could be expressed by conventional lines, no possible lightening of the 
 toil by machine-like expedients. Each stroke of the graver required sepa- 
 rate thought, and had to express something expressible only by a particular and 
 unpractised line, each pin's point had to be made a separate study of. But 
 " profitable " surely in nearly every sense in which profit is really worthy. 
 Turner may be said to have educated a separate school of copper-plate en- 
 gravers, whose works are remarkable, among landscape engravers, not less for 
 laboriousness than for brilliance of effect, not less for absence of conventionalism 
 than for minute finish, not less for their complete novelty than for their perma- 
 nent value. Miller, Pye, Brandard, Lupton, Goodall, Willmore, Prior, not to 
 mention any others, have all produced engravings after Turner, to which it 
 would be difficult to find rivals in any age or country. 
 
 Not "profitable" for the artist either in one sense hinted at before, viz., 
 that more of the artist's own effect was lost by the transmission into black and 
 white than in the case of any other artist. In the matter of mere colour, which 
 is a loss to all artists, he lost more than others, for his pictures were woven of 
 colour. Moreover, the balance of contrasting effects necessary to a picture, and 
 usually kept by the mere opposition of light and dark, was in Turner's pictures, 
 especially his later ones, kept mainly by the opposition of hot and cold colour. 
 Such effects are quite untranslatable into black and white. But profitable to the 
 artist yet in many respects, for often half the effect of one of his pictures was more 
 admired, being more easily understood by the public, than the whole. The actual 
 loss of effect was thus, in many cases, an actual gain in appreciation, for as the 
 only way to teach the meaning of a poet to an uneducated intellect is to make 
 a homely paraphrase of his glorious language, so a rendering in black and white, 
 which robs one of Turner's poetical pictures of more than half its beauty, is often 
 
Engravings from his Works. 59 
 
 the only way of making any portion of that beauty apparent to an ignorant 
 eye. Strong meat is not good for babes, and little profit will a man without 
 either a naturally artistic temperament or a cultivated artistic taste, derive 
 from prolonged contemplation of some of even the best of Turner's pictures. 
 The beauty of the composition, the exquisiteness of the drawing, the magic 
 of the aerial perspective, will be lost upon him ; the obvious inaccuracy of the 
 figures, the blaze of unaccustomed hues, will be all that he will carry away, 
 but if shown an engraving of the same picture, he will feel, if he does not 
 understand, the very beauties which he missed of seeing in the picture. 
 
 We believe it is not yet an entirely exploded idea that Turner " owed " a 
 great deal to his engravers, that by some wonderful magic they made something 
 out of what was an unintelligible jumble of colour; that, in fact, there was much 
 more in the engravings than there was in the pictures, and that Turner got 
 credit for genius which properly belonged to his copyists or translators. Now, if 
 there is one thing true about Turner, it is that his pictures contained more than 
 could ever be expressed by, or compressed into, an engraving; that his work 
 was too fine and subtle in a mere mechanical sense for any possible imitation, 
 and that the most exquisite of all engravings from him was, as it were, but a 
 dilution of, or a selection from, the original picture, containing no beauty not 
 found in the picture. It may be said that, as nature was more full than Turner, 
 so Turner was fuller than his engravers. Turner could not paint the whole of 
 nature, but he painted much more than was visible to the common eye ; the 
 engravers could not represent the whole of Turner, but by a second process, as 
 it were, of reduction, they interpreted him, and nature too through him, to all. 
 
 It is impossible to estimate the silent work which, for the last three-quarters 
 of a century, the engravings from Turner's works have been doing in educating 
 the mind of England to a proper appreciation of landscape beauty. We have 
 heard much said lately as to the newness of this national love for beautiful 
 scenery, and there was certainly little or none of it a century ago. It was 
 perceptible neither in our poets nor our painters. A sort of sham love of nature, 
 
6o 
 
 Turner s Liber Studiorum and the 
 
 under the title of the picturesque, was, indeed, to be found both in art and 
 literature. In Turner's youth this sham picturesque was at the height of its 
 reign ; but it was soon to fall, for both authors and artists had, in searching after 
 it, come in contact with nature herself, and had infused some true feeling into 
 their works. Wilson among painters, and Mrs. Radcliffe among writers, are 
 representatives of this transitional state ; the ideal of their landscapes is 
 conventional and unreal, but their broad effects are studied from nature. Mrs. 
 Radcliffe drove about England in a post-chaise, and, when she halted, wrote 
 magnificent descriptions of Italian scenery. Wilson painted ruins from a Stilton 
 cheese, but he threw over it the rays of the real sun. The reign of nature had 
 begun, though the works of both artist and author were spoilt by falseness of 
 intention. 
 
 The three men who were finally to upset the sham picturesque, and to be 
 the first prophets in modern times of the true glories of nature, Scott, Words- 
 worth, and Turner, were born within six years of one another. When we 
 consider and wonder at the marvellous way in which the true love of nature 
 has spread itself among all classes, we must not leave out of our calculations 
 the effect which must have been produced by Turner with his thousands of 
 engravings. Byron, Keats, and Shelley, and many others, have supplemented 
 the labours of the other poets, but no one at all comparable in the number of 
 his engraved works, or the strength of his genius, has supplemented Turner's 
 labour. Thanks to Mr. Rnskin, Turner is now appreciated at his true worth as 
 an artist ; but, in considering his many claims on our admiration, one of the 
 greatest, viz., the effect of the engravings from his works in educating the 
 present generation to love and appreciate the beauty of nature, is almost lost 
 sight of. We think of the beauty of his works as though it were a recent 
 revelation ; we view him as the greatest landscape painter that ever lived, but 
 one not to be understood of the vulgar, little thinking that, for the last half 
 century and more he has by means of these engravings been a living power 
 among the people, vulgar and refined. 
 
Engravings from his Works. 61 
 
 Down to 1807, when the first part of the " Liber Studiornm " was published, 
 he being then thirty-two years of age, fifty-seven plates from his drawings had 
 been published, but these were all architectural or topographical, to illustrate 
 magazines, books, and the " Oxford Almanack." Turner supplied the drawing 
 for the top of this almanack for the nine years following, 1799, 1801, 1802, 1804, 
 1805, 180G, 1R07, 1808, 1811. A characteristic story is told of him with regard 
 to one of his Oxford drawings, which we may as well introduce here, though the 
 date of it is not precisely known. " Wyatt, the framemaker, of Oxford," say 
 Messrs. Redgrave, " had employed this painter to make some drawings of 
 Oxford, which obliged him to sit in the public street. The price to be paid for 
 the work was a liberal one ; but, as annoyances and hindrances took place from 
 the curiosity of spectators, before Turner began the drawing of Christehurch, he 
 made Wyatt obtain for him the loan of an old post-chaise, which was so placed 
 in the main street that Turner could work from the window ; and when the 
 drawing was paid for, the painter insisted on receiving three shillings and 
 sixpence which he had disbursed for the use of the old vehicle." To the last he 
 was very particular in exacting any sums which he had disbursed for travelling 
 expenses or for carriage, in addition to the price of his pictures, however 
 disproportionate the additional sum might be to the rest of the amount due, and 
 many stories are told of this nature, some adducing them as instances of his 
 meanness, and others of the rigid sense of justice which regulated all his 
 business transactions. 
 
 In 1807, the year of his " Country Blacksmith " — a picture which was painted 
 in imitation of Wilkie, and has had more written about it than it deserves, in 
 consequence of an unfounded attack with regard to it made upon the artist 
 by the elder Cunningham, renewed by the younger, and disproved conclusively 
 by Messrs. Redgrave 1 — and of his " Sun rising through Vapour," appeared the 
 first number of the " Liber Studiorum." 
 
 1 As this controversy is ended, we think it quite needless to do more than refer to it thus 
 generally. The whole history of it is to be found in Messrs. Redgrave's " Century of Painters." 
 
62 
 
 Turner's Liber Studiorum and the 
 
 The title of this wonderful work would be of itself sufficient to show that it 
 was designed in rivalry of Claude's " Liber Veritatis," but no fair comparison can 
 be instituted between the two series, for, as Mr. Wornum says, the views of the 
 " Liber Studiorum " " are not mere memoranda and sketches of pictures, as Claude's 
 arc" (Claude's "Liber" was a mere sketchy record kept by him of the pictures 
 he painted, so that spurious ones might be known, and genuine ones identified 
 by reference to it), "but very careful elaborations of light and shade effects, 
 executed in mezzotint on copper, and printed with brown ink." 
 
 The drawings for the " Liber Studiorum" were commenced when Turner was 
 staying with his friend Mr. Wells. One of the pleasantest pictures we have of 
 Turner is that drawn by the tender hand of Mrs. Wheeler, the daughter of 
 Mr. Wells, which was contributed by her to Mr. Thornbury when engaged upon 
 his life of Turner. That lady writes, 1 " In early life, my father's house was his 
 second home, a haven of rest from many domestic trials too sacred to touch 
 upon. Turner loved my father with a son's affection ; to me he was as an elder 
 brother. 
 
 " Turner's celebrated publication, the ' Liber Studiorum,' entirely owes its 
 existence to my father's persuasion, and the drawings for the first number were 
 made in our cottage at Knockholt. He had for a long time urged upon Turner 
 the expediency of making a selection from his own works for publication, telling 
 him that it would surely be done after his death, and perhaps in a way that 
 might not do him that justice which he could ensure for himself. After long 
 and continued persuasion, Turner at length gave way ; and one day, when he 
 was staying with us in Kent (he always spent a part of the autumn at our 
 cottage), he said, ' Well, Gaffer, I see there will be no peace till I comply; 
 so give me a piece of paper. There, now rule the size for me, and tell me what 
 I am to do.' 
 
 "My father said, 'Well, divide your subject into classes — say Pastoral, 
 
 Tbornbury's Life of Turner, Vol. II. p. 55. 
 
Engravings from his Works. 63 
 
 Marine, Elegant Pastoral, and so forth,' which was accordingly done. The first 
 drawings were then and there made, and arranged for publication. This was 
 in the autumn of 1806. I sat by his side while these drawings were making; 
 and many are the times when I have gone out sketching with him." 
 
 This is a pleasant beginning. We regret that all the history of the " Liber" 
 is not equally so, but from one cause and another, the progress of the work gave 
 little pleasure or profit to those who were engaged on it ; and though nothing is 
 a greater proof of his industry and genius than this, and though he spent upon 
 it great time and care, it was a source of trouble and mortification, almost from 
 beginning to the end. The method of publication— he published it himself— 
 was bungling ; he perpetually quarrelled with his engravers ; it did not sell well, 
 and finally, worst of all, the only traces of dishonesty in Turner's career were 
 shown with regard to these unfortunate plates. 
 
 The " Liber" was published in numbers, each containing five engravings, and 
 Mr. Thornbury states, that for the earlier numbers he employed Mr. Lewis, and 
 paid him so badly that the result was a quarrel which lasted fifteen years. 
 However, the only plate of the " Liber" engraved by Mr. Lewis (according to 
 Mr. Stokes) was the " Goats on a Bridge," in the ninth number, published in 
 April 1812. The first four numbers appear to have been engraved by Mir, 
 Charles Turner, who was paid eight guineas a plate, but this pay was not 
 sufficient to prevent quarrels. He struck after the first twenty plates or so for 
 higher terms, ten guineas a plate, but he had agreed to do fifty at the lower 
 rate, and Turner, according to Mr. Thornbury, could not understand this desire 
 to break the contract, and (an atmospheric effect which Turner himself alone 
 could have painted) "flew into an inarticulate, whirlwind of rar/c, the result of 
 which was that the painter and engraver never spoke for nineteen years." This 
 was indeed a terrible result, but what less could one expect from an " inarticu- 
 late whirlwind?" we only wonder they were not dumb for life. 
 
 Turner then employed many other engravers, Say, Dawe, Dunkarton, 
 Hodgetts, Easling, Annis, Clint, Lupton, and Reynolds, making, with himself, 
 
64 Turner s Liber Sttidiorum and the 
 
 Charles Turner, and Lewis, twelve engravers in all. Of the 71 published plates, 
 Charles Turner engraved 23; Turner himself and Say, each 11; Lupton, Dun- 
 karton, and Dawe, each 4 ; Hodgctts and Easling, 3 ; Reynolds and Clint, 2 ; 
 Lewis and Annis, 1 ; and of the remaining two, one was the joint production of 
 Annis and Easling, and the other (the frontispiece) of Turner and Easling. 
 
 Turner's skill as an engraver was great, and his knowledge of engravers' 
 effects unrivalled, his long practice in sketching in black and white, or with 
 neutral tints, having made him a perfect master of chiaroscuro and tonality. The 
 engravings of the " Liber " executed by his own hand are the best of the series, 
 and lie so altered and directed the engraving of the others that the engravers 
 may be said to have been little more than his own tools. The etched lines in 
 all except two are done by him ; and here, for the better understanding 
 of the peculiar combination of etching and mezzotint adopted by Turner, to 
 imitate Claude's " Liber Veritatis " — that is, drawing's in pen and ink, with 
 sepia washes, — we will quote one of the greatest modern authorities in etching 
 and engraving, Sir. Hamerton : — 1 
 
 " Turner was a first-rate etcher au trait, but he did not trust himself to 
 carry out chiaroscuro in etching, and habitually resorted to mezzotint for his 
 light and shade. His etchings were always done from the beginning with 
 reference to the whole arrangement of the chiaroscuro, and he never laid a line 
 without entire understanding of its utility and effect." . . . . " When etching 
 and mezzotint are used in combination on the same plate, the etching is done 
 first, and in simple lines, which are bitten in more deeply than they would be if 
 the plate were intended to remain a pure etching ; then the plate is roughened 
 all over with a tool on purpose, and which produces bar — that is, a raising of 
 little points of copper. These little points, which are raised by millions, all 
 catch the ink in printing, and would yield an intense black if they were not 
 removed. They are accordingly partially removed with the scraper when lighter 
 
 Etching and Etchers, by Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Macmillan, 18GS. P. 80, &c. 
 
Engravings from his Works. 65 
 
 darks arc required, and the lighter the passage the more the bur is cleared awa}', 
 till finally, in high lights, it is removed altogether, and the plates in these places 
 
 are burnished The etcher for mezzotint is satisfied with selecting and 
 
 laying down the most necessary and expressive lines, the great guiding lines, 
 and does not trouble himself about shading, except so far as to leave the plate in 
 
 a condition to be shaded properly in mezzotint The power of Turner 
 
 as an etcher was his power of selecting main lines, and drawing them firmly and 
 
 vigorously. In this respect no landscape etcher ever surpassed him 
 
 As a mezzotint engraver Turner ranks exceedingly high, but his merits in that 
 art are rather beyond our present purpose. One thing, however, cannot be 
 outside of our province, the possibility which etching possesses of happy combi- 
 nation with mezzotint, and of which Turner so gladly and successfully availed 
 himself. It is certainly a fortunate quality in an art to be complementary of 
 another art, so that the two produce results of remarkable value at a minimum 
 cost of labour. The great freedom and force of the etched line, its immense 
 power of firm and rapid indication, are exactly the qualities in which mezzotint 
 is most deficient; and though etching can by shading, especially if helped by 
 drypoint work, arrive at chiaroscuro not less rich and perfect than that of a 
 mezzotint engraver, it achieves this at an expense of toil and effort which it is 
 not an exaggeration to estimate at three times the labour which he gives for the 
 same result. It is very curious that, in spite of the value now attached to the 
 pnnts in the ' Liber Studiorum,' this marriage of two arts so naturally comple- 
 mentary has not been more frequently repeated. The combination of 
 etching with mezzotint may, however, as art culture advances, become sufficiently 
 popular to be employed in landscape illustration on a more extensive scale ; and 
 if this should ever be, the etcher of the future will have the advantage of 
 models in the etchings of Turner of which it is not too much to say that, on all 
 technical points, in the application of artistic judgment to method, they are so 
 sound and safe as to be beyond criticism." 
 
 As this volume contains no specimen of the " Liber Studiorum," it is perhaps 
 
 K 
 
66 Turner s Liber Studiorum and the 
 
 out of place to write more, or to write as much respecting it, and we must refer 
 our readers to Messrs. Ruskin and Hamcrton for further remarks respecting 
 these wonderful efforts of Turner's genius, which even as they are, without the 
 other plates which were to finish the series, furnish an almost complete epitome 
 of landscape art. As studies of composition and chiaroscuro, and as examples of 
 power of representing by a few lines or strokes an " intense sense of the nature 
 of things," such as the solidity of rocks, the toughness of timber, the lightness of 
 leaves, the buoyancy and strength of boats, they are altogether unequalled. 
 
 And yet it did not " pay," and would not pay now, if a new Turner were to 
 arise to finish the series. The high prices which the plates fetch now being due. 
 as Mr. Hamcrton rightly remarks, "not to any appreciation of their (the plates') 
 quality as art, but to the fame which Turner acquired in other ways, and chiefly 
 by popular engravings from his water-colour drawings. When Turner finished the 
 publication he sold complete sets for fourteen guineas ; now a good collection is 
 worth from £200 to £500, and Mr. Thornbury says that a complete set, that is, 
 we suppose, one containing the twenty unpublished plates, is worth £3000 or 
 more, and that a single unpublished plate has sold for £20. Mr. Charles 
 Turner, the engraver, actually used proofs to light fires, so little value had they 
 in former days. 
 
 We should like to pass over, if we could, the saddest part of the " Liber" 
 history, and on the whole perhaps the saddest part of Turner's, but for truth's 
 sake it is necessary to say that Turner used his great knowledge and skill to 
 conceal the imperfections caused by the wear of his plates. When one was worn 
 he would introduce a tree, alter a light effect into a dark one, and play other 
 skilful but not honest tricks to keep the plate workable, and not only did he do 
 this, but he took out the thickened letters of plates in a bad state, and engraved 
 open letters higher up, thus passing oft' bad impressions for proofs. The 
 complete sets which he sold are therefore composed of plates in a variety of 
 different states, some being worn out and bad, and others fresh and beautiful. 
 " In a set purchased by Mr. John Pye, the engraver," writes Mr. Wornum, " the 
 
Engravings from his Works. 67 
 
 earlier plates were invariably bad ; the middle ones tolerably good, but towards 
 the end several were proof impressions, and in an excellent state." 
 
 As it was to the engravings from his works that Turner owed his fame, so 
 it was to these engravings that he owed the greater part of his wealth. He 
 could scarcely ever have been termed an unsuccessful man, if we speak in a 
 pecuniary sense. His " Liber," though not successful altogether, must yet have 
 paid on the whole, and the sums which he got for lending drawings to be 
 engraved, and for the drawings themselves, must have poured like a constant 
 stream of money into his pockets. Turner, however, although he made his 
 fortune by means of them, appears to have looked upon engravers and publishers 
 as his natural enemies. We have seen that when he was his own publisher, he 
 quarrelled with an engraver for demanding more for engraving part of the series 
 than the price originally agreed upon, but when he had to supply a large series of 
 drawings to be engraved, and had agreed to do them at so much a-piece, we find 
 him doing just what his engraver did, viz. : making a fierce stand with his 
 publisher for higher prices before he has finished, and threatening to commence 
 a rival work if he does not obtain " his terms." This was in the case of the 
 " Southern Coast," for which he executed forty drawings. 
 
 Another constant source of quarrels was the large number of proof im- 
 pressions from each plate which Turner demanded. In the case of the " Southern 
 Coast" he insisted on having twenty-five sets on India paper. Why he demanded 
 so many, except in the mere spirit of acquisitiveness and love of making a good 
 bargain, it is hard to say, for he never used them or touched them, but stored 
 them up in Queen Anne Street, where they were found at his death, a ton load, 
 it is said, much spoilt by damp. 1 
 
 Altogether Turner's character does not show in a favourable light in con- 
 nection with print publishers ; it is evident that he thought of them as Egyptians 
 
 ' It is singular that, after having been thus hoarded in a useless heap by Turner, they should now, 
 in accordance with the decision in the great Turner Will case, have come into the possession of a 
 gentleman who treats them in a similar way, paying, however, we trust, more regard to their 
 preservation . 
 
68 Turners Liber Studiorum and the 
 
 whom it was only right to spoil ; they were to him like a red rag to a mad bull, 
 and we dare say that they did much to deserve his wrath. They probably 
 thought themselves justified in paying him as little as they could, and he in the 
 manner of geniuses thought he ought to be paid according to his own estimate 
 of the value of the work, regardless of the success or failure of the undertaking. 
 It is an endless fight this between brains and capital, and the brains never gain 
 much respect from the conflict. As for Turner, he shows to such singular dis- 
 advantage in every story connected with engravings that we are thankful to 
 think that Mr. Ruskin, who knows so much more than any one else about it 
 is able after all to write from his heart that " Turner never broke a promise 
 or failed in an undertaken trust." We believe this to be literally true, but 
 nevertheless, after the stories connected with the " Liber," there seems a slight 
 smack of special pleading about it. 
 
 When writing of the "Liber " just now we mentioned the great mastery 
 possessed by Turner over engravers' effects, and it was shown no less in the 
 engravings from his other works. Probably no painter ever took so much pains 
 with, or exercised so much authority over his engravers as Turner did. He would 
 cover the margin of the proofs with pencil memoranda and instructions to the 
 engravers, and would sometimes alter the composition so much that it would 
 scarcely be taken for an engraving from the picture. He would heighten 
 mountains and diminish clouds, put in figures and trees, and in fact treat it 
 much as an author would treat the proof of a book, not careful to preserve the 
 language of the original manuscript, but only to make the work as good as 
 possible. 
 
 We believe that the engraving of the "Approach to Venice," 1 of which wo 
 give a carbon photograph, was much altered from the picture, which Mr. Ruskin 
 calls " one of the most beautiful bits of colour ever done by any man, by any means, 
 at any time." We may speak of the engraving in similar terms, for it seems to 
 us to be one of the finest pieces of landscape engraving in the world. We 
 
 1 Exhibited at tho Royal Academy, 1844. 
 
THE APPROACH TO VENICE. 
 
 FROM THE ENGRAVING BY R. WALLIS. 
 
Engravings from his Works. 69 
 
 know of nothing to equal the infinite suggestiveness of the distant city, the 
 marvellous mystery of the whole effect, the perfection and complexity of the 
 chiaroscuro ; and yet with all its mystery and complexity nothing can exceed 
 the precision with which the smallest detail is brought out. Every square inch of 
 it will repay the most careful study, and every minute of such study will reveal 
 some new exquisite wonder, some reflection unobserved, some ripple unnoticed. 
 Here we have as much of the infinity of nature as it is possible to express in so 
 many square inches of black and white. It is one of those few landscape en- 
 gravings which it is possible to gaze at with rapturous admiration and delight. 
 Great in its dexterity as the engraving of the " Heidelberg" is, this far surpasses 
 it in general effect, and it has a soft delicious beauty which is all its own. Its 
 delicacy is scarcely of this world, it is eerie. It seems like the approach to the 
 " City of the Blest" rather than to a city of mortals; the gondolas glide with the 
 gentleness of ghosts, and the city has an impalpability as of a disembodied spirit. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin further says of this picture, " 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 the strange mirageful, wistful way in 
 the sea-mist, rosy ghosts of houses without foundations ; the blue line of poplars 
 and copse about the Fusina marshes shows itself just in that way on the horizon; 
 the flowing gold of the water, a 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. Take it all in all, I think this the best Venetian picture of Turner's which 
 is left us." 
 
 Wallis, the engraver, one of the very best of Turner's engravers, is probably 
 well known to most of our readers by his exquisite vignette of " Tornaro's brow" 
 in Rogers' " Poems," if not by many others of his beautiful plates. 
 
 We are reminded that we have said no word respecting Turner's illustrated 
 
70 Turner's Liber Stiidionim, etc- 
 
 books, S'i numerous and beautiful, but we have no space for the purpose, and 
 must again refer our readers to Mr. Ruskin. 
 
 Turner's illustrations to Rogers' " Italy and Poems," and to the " Rivers of 
 France," appear to us to be the most beautiful of any, those to " Milton" and the 
 " Epicurean " the least so, indeed, but for a certain weird power of imagination 
 these latter would be nearly worthless ; but they were completely out of Turner's 
 line, and he only did them to order. Nevertheless the conception of some of the 
 " Milton" drawings is fine enough. 
 
 The other illustration which we give in connection with this chapter on 
 engravings is Mr. John Pye's " Ehrenbreitstein." This picture is said to have 
 been painted for the express purpose of being engraved by Mr. John Pye, who 
 devoted ten years of his life to it. Turner consented to its being engraved on 
 condition of receiving twelve pounds for the copyright, a very moderate sum, it 
 would seem. It was then bought by Mr. Bicknell for £401, and sold in 1863, 
 or nineteen years afterwards, for £1,890. 
 
 This picture is, we are told, a typical instance of Turner's principle of mis- 
 representing facts for the purpose of representing a larger truth. The view is far 
 from being topographically accurate ; the rock is heightened, the foreground is 
 a pure fiction, and the tomb of Marceau is not in its proper place, but the result 
 is a truer impression of the place than could be gained by the most accurate 
 study from a particular point of view. We shall reserve our remarks on this 
 question for the next chapter. The town on the right is Coblentz. 
 
EHRENBREITSTEIN. 
 
 FROM THE ENGRAVING BY J. PYE. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 TURNER'S OIL- PICTURES. 
 
 THIRD STYLE, 1835-45, AND LAST WOHKS. 
 
 R. RUSKIN thinks the works of Turner during this period often 
 
 years, from 1835 to 1845, distinguished by " swiftness of handling, 
 
 tenderness and pensiveness of mind, exquisite harmony of colour, 
 
 and perpetual reference to nature only, issuing in the rejection 
 
 alike of precedents and idealism." 
 
 It was in the first year of this period that Turner exhibited the picture of 
 
 which we have last spoken in the preceding chapter, and whicli forms the subject 
 
 of our last plate. It was described in the Academy catalogue " The Broad 
 
 Stone of Honour (Ehrenbreitstein), and Tomb of Marceau ; from Byron s 
 
 ' Childe Harold,' " and to this description was appended the following quotation : 
 
 " By Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground, 
 There is a small and simple pyramid 
 Crowning the summit of the verdant mounds. 
 Beneath its baso aro heroes 1 ashes hid, 
 Our enemy's ; but let not that forbid 
 
 Honour to Marceau 
 
 Ho was freedom's champion ! 
 
 Here Ehrenbreitstein, with her shattered wall, 
 
 Yet shows of what she was." 1 
 1 The following note of Byron's respecting this place may be interesting to some : " Ehren- 
 
72 Ttirners Oil-Pictures. 
 
 Whatever doubt men may entertain as to whether Turner was justified, in 
 this and other pictures, in what may be inaccurately called misrepresenting facts 
 in order to improve the composition, there can be but one opinion as to the 
 result, viz. that he did improve the composition and make his pictures beautiful. 
 To those who give Turner no other motive for this misrepresentation, we would 
 urge simply that a picture should be beautiful, and that beauty is a higher aim 
 for an artist than topographical accuracy. With those who do not recognise 
 any higher truth in landscape art than topographical accuracy, and who 
 think that any deviation from it implies a want of veracity, it is useless 
 to argue — for them a photograph representing a squinting countenance 
 to the life would be a finer work of art than a portrait which expressed 
 the man's whole character, and left out the squint. But for those who 
 do recognise a deeper truth in all things than is apparent on the surface, 
 we would urge that the character of a place or a landscape is only to be 
 revealed by much the same process as that employed by a first-rate portrait 
 painter. As a squint or an accidental gash across the lip will sometimes entirely 
 prevent a countenance in its ordinary aspect from showing any thing of the real 
 truth that is the man, so will an ugly block of buildings or a dead tree be 
 sufficient to mar the whole true spirit of a place or scene. We are now only 
 writing of what may be called the portraits of places, but when there are other 
 ideas to be represented, when a picture like this of Ehrenbreitstcin is intended to 
 represent not only the natural character of a place, but its history and associa- 
 tions, it is simply impossible to express the truth in the artist's mind without 
 
 breitstein, i. e. 1 The Broad Stone of Honour,' one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, was dis- 
 mantled and blown up by the French at the truce of Leobcn. It had been, and could only be, 
 reduced by famine and treachery. It yielded to the former, aided by surprise. After having 
 seen the fortresses of Gibraltar and Malta, it did not much striko by comparison ; but the situation 
 is commanding. General Marceau besieged it in vain for somo time ; and I slept in a room where 
 I was shown a window at which he is said to have been standing, observing the progress of the 
 siege by moonlight, when a ball struck immediately below it." 
 
Third Style — 1835 to 1845. 73 
 
 deviation from the actual facts. To object to this would be to object altogether 
 to the employment of imagination in landscape art, and to reduce it to an 
 almost mechanical reproduction of obvious facts. Now Turner had imagination 
 to a far greater extent than any other landscape painter that ever lived, and 
 it is this which, more even than his unapproached skill, raises him so high above, 
 not only most artists, but most men. It is apparent in some degree in his 
 merest sketches, but it is only found in its highest manifestation in his oil- 
 pictures. For Turner to have spent all his time in taking the most accurate 
 "views" of places from- particular spots would not only have been destructive 
 of high beauty in his works, but would have been a shameful neglect of the 
 rarest and noblest qualities of his mind. 
 
 It is a very rare thing for a landscape artist to have imagination of a high 
 kind, and the reason of it is not, we think, far to seek. Landscape art is the 
 art least favourable for the display of imagination, and though in Turner's hands 
 it yielded astonishing effects, they were produced only by enormous labour 
 and the entire concentration of a very powerful mind that was debarred any 
 other outlet. Had Turner had the faculty of expressing his thoughts by words, 
 it is doubtful whether he would have expressed so many by his brush ; he 
 would probably have written better verses and have painted worse pictures. 
 Turner is the only instance of a man with a mind of the first class who has 
 devoted its whole power to landscape art. Other landscape painters have 
 painted poetical pictures, but he alone has painted poems. 
 
 It is greatly on account of this rarity of the phenomenon of imagination 
 in landscape art that Turner is so misjudged and misunderstood. In poetry 
 and figure painting and sculpture everybody is accustomed to see particular 
 facts treated as subordinate to the general impression to be conveyed. With 
 a strange misapprehension of the real truth of things such sacrifices of ex- 
 ternals are called " licenses ;" but no license is allowed to the landscape 
 painter, except of a trivial kind; he may indeed make his trees of an im- 
 possible colour to harmonize with an impossible sky, and the treatment will 
 
74 Turners Oil- Pichires. 
 
 be condoned as artistic ; but if he dares to suppress accidental facts in order 
 to express an eternal truth, he is condemned at once. A landscape artist 
 may be allowed to be sentimental, but it is too bad for him to be a poet. 
 
 We insert here part of what Mr. Thornbury calls an " ingenious defence," 
 by Mr. Ruskin, of Turner's habit, or rather necessity, of deviating from 
 local facts, in order to express a larger local truth than could be represented 
 by the exact delineation of a particular scene — how, to use a homely image, 
 he boils down a day's impressions into a small drawing of a part of a valley. 
 
 " There is nothing in this scene, taken in itself, particularly interesting 
 or impressive. The mountains are not elevated or particularly fine in form, 
 and the heaps of stones which encumber the Ticino present nothing notable 
 to the ordinary eye ; but, in reality, the place is approached through one of 
 the narrowest and most sublime ravines in the Alps, and after the traveller, 
 during . the early part of the day, has been familiarized with the aspect of 
 the highest peaks of the Mount St. Gothard. Hence it speaks quite another 
 language to him from that in which it would address itself to an unprepared 
 spectator; the confused stones, which by themselves would be almost without 
 any claim upon his thoughts, become exponents of the fury of the river by 
 which he journeyed all day long ; and the defile beyond, not in itself narrow 
 or terrible, is regarded, nevertheless, with awe, because it is imagined to 
 resemble the gorge that has just been traversed above ; and, although no 
 very elevated mountains immediately overhang it, the scene is felt to belong 
 to, and arise in its essential characters out of, the strength of those mightier 
 mountains in the unseen north. 
 
 " Any topographical delineation of the facts, therefore, must be wholly 
 incapable of arousing in the mind of the beholder those sensations which 
 would be caused by the facts themselves, seen in their natural relations to 
 others ; and the aim of the great inventive landscape painter must be to 
 give the far higher and deeper truth of mental vision, rather than that of 
 the physical facts, and to reach a representation which, though it may be 
 
Third Style — 1835 t° I <H5- 75 
 
 totally useless to engineers or geographers, and, when tried by rule and 
 measure, totally unlike the place, shall yet be capable of producing on the 
 far-away beholder's mind precisely the impression which the reality would 
 have produced, and putting his heart into the same state in which it would 
 have been had he verily descended into the valley of Airlo." 
 
 And this is how Turner altered the facts of the valley in order that his 
 sketch might express the essential truth of the local scenery: "There are 
 a few trees rooted in the rock on this side of the gallery, showing by 
 comparison that it is not above four or five hundred feet high. These trees 
 Turner cuts away, and gives the rock a height of about a thousand feet, so 
 as to imply more power and danger in the avalanche coming down the 
 couloir. 
 
 " Next he raises, in a still greater degree, all the mountains beyond, 
 putting three or four ranges instead of one, but uniting them into a single 
 mossy bank at their base, which he makes overhang the valley, and thus 
 reduces it nearly to such a chasm as that which he had just passed through 
 above, so as to unite the expression of this ravine with that of the stony 
 valley. The few trees in the hollow of the glen he feels to be contrary in 
 spirit to the stones, and fells them as he did the others ; so also he feels 
 the bridge in the foreground by its slenderness to contradict the aspect of 
 violence in the torrent. He thinks the torrent and avalanches should have 
 it all their own wa) r hereabouts, so he strikes down the nearer bridge, and 
 restores the one further off, where the force of the stream may be supposed 
 less. Next, the bit of road on the right, above the bank, is not built on a 
 wall, nor on arches high enough to give the idea of an Alpine road in 
 general; so he makes the arches taller, and the bank steeper, introducing, as 
 we shall see presently, a reminiscence from the upper part of the pass. 
 
 " I say he thinks this, and introduces that ; but, strictly speaking, he 
 does not think at all. If he thought, he would instantly go wrong ; it is 
 only the clumsy and uninventive artist who thinks. All these changes come 
 
76 Turners Oil- Pictures. 
 
 into his head involuntarily an entirely imperative dream, crying, ' Thus it 
 must be.' " 
 
 This doing right without knowing it is the peculiar prerogative of genius ; 
 but we think Mr. Ruskin wrong in saying that it is only clumsy, uninventive 
 artists who think. There are conscious geniuses as well as unconscious. 
 Sophocles made much the same remark about iEschylus as Buskin of Turner ; 
 but Sophocles, though he thought, was not a clumsy or an uninventive artist. 
 Wordsworth, a great favourite of Mr. Ruskin, surely was neither clumsy nor 
 uninventive, and was he always right without thinking ? whereas, it has been 
 said of Byron, that " he did not think, thoughts came to him." To a great 
 extent however, we agree with Mr. Ruskin, There arc certain motions of the 
 imagination which are perfectly imperceptible, and the highest and only inimi- 
 table work of a genius is performed by a process which, to what we ordinarily 
 mean by thought, is as a flash of lightning to the Indian's process of making a 
 light with two pieces of stick. That Mr. Ruskin is right in the main there can 
 be no doubt, but he is far too hard on the thinkers. 
 
 But to continue. In 1836, or the year after the " Ehrenbreitstcin," appeared 
 the " Mercury and Argus," of which we also give a plate. This picture is a very 
 favourite one of Mr. Ruskin, who refers to it very frequently to illustrate the 
 rare qualities of Turner's work. It is thus described by Mr. Wornum : — 
 
 " This is a brilliant sunny landscape with a view of the sea or some lake in 
 the background, and somewhat similar in composition to the ' Loretto Necklace ; ' 
 a pile of buildings on elevated ground to the right, and a solitary tree, very 
 prominent in the middle foreground, being the principal features of both 
 pictures. In the immediate foreground, to the right, is a rivulet, with cows 
 browsing on its banks and drinking in its waters ; the two figures seated 
 together in conversation are Mercury and Argus; the transformed Io, the object 
 of Argus's solicitude is seen tied to a tree, browsing before him. 
 
 " When Io was transformed by Jupiter into a white cow, Juno asked for 
 her as a present, and, having obtained her, set the all-seeing Argus, the hundred- 
 
Third Style — 1835 to 1845. 77 
 
 eyed, to watch over her in the grove of Mycenas. Jupiter, pitying the condi- 
 tion of Io, sent Mercury to liberate her, but Argus proved so watchful, that 
 Mercury found that the only way to release Io was to kill Argus. Io wandered 
 away, and finally, in Egypt, received back from Jupiter her original shape, and 
 became the mother of Epaphus. Juno, to commemorate the hopeless fate of 
 Argus, transferred his one hundred eyes to the tail of her peacock." 
 
 Of the truth of Turner's tone we have already written so much that we 
 cannot afford space for Mr. Kuskin's remarks on the tone of this picture,' nor 
 can we, for the same reason, indulge our readers with what he has written 
 respecting it in his chapter on "Truth of Space;" 2 but as we cannot for our- 
 selves speak as to its colour, we extract the following passage : — 3 
 
 " In the 1 Mercury and Argus,' the pale and vaporous blue of the heated 
 sky is broken with grey and pearly white, the gold colour of the light warming 
 it more or less as it approaches or retires from the sun ; but, throughout, there 
 is not a grain of pure blue ; all is subdued and warmed at the same time by the 
 mingling grey and gold, up to the very zenith, where, breaking through the 
 flaky mist, the transparent and deep azure of the sky is expressed with a single 
 crumbling touch ; the key-note of the whole is given, and every part of it passes 
 at once far into glowing and aerial space." 
 
 Of the truth of this description the reader who has not seen the picture 
 cannot of course judge for himself, and therefore cannot obtain the access of 
 enjoyment which would otherwise result from reading it, but the beautiful 
 ■drawing and moulding of the foreground is perceptible in our illustration, 
 which in this respect is scarcely inferior to the" picture, and he will therefore 
 thoroughly appreciate the following quotation : — 4 
 
 " It will be found in this picture (and I am now describing nature's work 
 and Turner's with the same words) that the whole distance is given by retire- 
 ment of solid surface ; and that if ever an edge is expressed, it is only felt for 
 
 1 Modern Painters, Vol. I. p. 142. 2 Idem, p. 195. 3 Idem, p. 163. 4 Idem, p. 313. 
 
78 Turners Oil '- Pictures. 
 
 an instant, and then lost again, so that the eye cannot stop at it and prepare for 
 a long jump to another like it, but is guided over it, and round it into the 
 hollow beyond; and thus the whole receding mass of ground, going back for 
 more than a quarter of a mile, is made completely one, no part of it is separated 
 from the rest for an instant, it is all united, and its modulations are members, not 
 divisions of its mass. But those modulations are countless ; heaving here, 
 sinking there; now swelling, now mouldering; now blending, now breaking; 
 giving, in fact, to the foreground of this universal master precisely the same 
 qualities which we have before seen in his hills, as Claude gave to his foreground 
 precisely the same qualities which we had before found in his hills— infinite 
 unity in the one case, finite division in the other." 
 
 Finally, we cannot resist the temptation of quoting what Mr. Ruskin has 
 said of the effect of the (humanly speaking) infinite knowledge displayed in this 
 and other of the fullest works of Turner : — 1 
 
 " It is not until we have made ourselves acquainted with these simple facts 
 of form as they are illustrated by the slighter works of Turner, that we can 
 become at all competent to enjoy the combination of all, in such works as the 
 ' Mercury and Argus,' or ' Bay of Baias,' in which the mind is at first bewildered 
 by the abundant outpouring of the master's knowledge. Often as I have paused 
 before these noble works, I never felt on returning to them as if I had ever 
 seen them before ; for their abundance is so deep and various, that the mind, 
 according to its own temper at the time of seeing, perceives some new series of 
 truths rendered in them, just as it would on revisiting a natural scene : and 
 detects new relations and associations of these truths which set the whole picture 
 in a different light at every return to it. And this effect is especially caused by 
 the management of the foreground : for the more marked objects of the picture 
 may be taken one by one, and thus examined and known ; but the foregrounds 
 of Turner are so united in all their parts that the eye cannot take them by 
 
 1 Modern Painters, Vol. I. p. 318-9. 
 
Third Style — 1835 to 1845. 79 
 
 divisions, but is guided from stone to stone and bank to bank, discovering truths 
 totally different in aspect according to the direction in which it approaches them, 
 and approaching them in a different direction, and viewing them as part of a 
 new system every time that it begins its course at a new point. One lesson, 
 however, we arc invariably taught by all, however approached or viewed, that 
 the work of the Great Spirit of Nature is as deep and unapproachable in the 
 lowest as in the noblest objects ; that the Divine mind is as visible in its full 
 energy of operation on every lowly bank and mouldering stone as in the lifting 
 of the pillars of heaven and settling the foundation of the earth ; and that to the 
 rightly perceiving mind there is the same infinity, the same majesty, the same 
 power, the same unity, and the same perfection, manifest in the casting of the 
 clay as in the scattering of the cloud, in the mouldering of the dust as in the 
 kindling of the day-star." 
 
 In the next year's Exhibition Turner exhibited four pictures, two of which, 
 the "Apollo and Daphne" and the "Hero and Leander," are now in the national 
 collection ; and the next year, 1838, appeared three masterpieces of colour and 
 composition, " Phryne going to the Bath as Venus," now in the National Collec- 
 tion, and the two Italies, Modern and Ancient, purchased by Mr. Munro, and 
 now in the possession of Colonel Butler-Johnstone. 
 
 The " Phryne" is remarkable for its gorgeous colour, the magnificence of the 
 composition, and the excessive carelessness with which the figures are drawn. In- 
 deed, they can be scarcely said to be drawn at all, and their shadows are a brilliant 
 scarlet. Perhaps Turner's eccentric carelessness in his later pictures as to what 
 portion of the face he placed the eyes, and how long or of what shape he made 
 the legs of his figures, is the greatest stumbling-block to a popular appreciation 
 of some of his finest pictures, one of which this " Phryne " undoubtedly is. 
 The popular mind does not know much about the ramification of trees, and is 
 not greatly exercised in the perspective of clouds ; but it does know that eyes 
 are generally on a level in the human face, and that legs are not more than 
 twice as long as the rest of the body. Scarlet shadows may be defended, but 
 
80 Turners Oil- Pictures. 
 
 to defend such wilful ill drawing is a task to which even Mr. Ruskin is not 
 equal. But what is true, and what the popular mind cannot understand, is, that 
 a landscape may yet be worthy of the highest admiration, despite the worst 
 figure-drawing that even Turner could be guilty of. Take a converse case, and 
 little or no outcry would be raised. Sir Joshua Reynolds, for instance, drew 
 foliage and trees as badly as Turner drew figures ; but the popular mind can 
 understand that trees arc, in a portrait, subsidiary to the face, and that the 
 intention of a portrait is no whit marred by vile foliage so long as it is 
 subordinate and appropriate in colour. To imagine, however, that it is possible 
 for any picture to be painted in which the figures introduced are not the most 
 important items, is a task beyond the popular human mind. But so it is. 
 Turner, in such pictures as the " Phiyne," thought entirely in landscape ; — in 
 trees and architecture and sunlight, and only used figures to express the other- 
 wise inexpressible, being careful above all things not to spoil the effect of the 
 landscape, but to incorporate the figures with it ; in fact, he introduced them in 
 much the same spirit as Sir Joshua would introduce a landscape to show 
 that its owner was a landed proprietor. And for his purpose no landscape 
 painter that ever lived could use figures with such effect. In the " Phryne " 
 itself, Turner, with a few touches, in total disregard of anatomy, has produced a 
 troop of dancing girls with waving drapery, which, for expression of frivolity, 
 luxury, and abandonment, could scarcely be surpassed. But it is seldom that 
 even critics take the trouble to seek out the artist's aim, or to judge him by 
 that ; and for the popular mind, an eye in the middle of a cheek is quite enough 
 to damn the most lovely landscape that ever was painted. 
 
 Strangely enough, the three pictures of this year are still in excellent 
 preservation, the Modern and Ancient Italies particularly. By the kindness 
 of their present possessor, we had an opportunity of examining them, and they 
 appear as fresh as when they left the easel — a result greatly due, no doubt, 
 to the care that has been taken to keep them from air and dirt. In these 
 pictures the figures are clearly subsidiary, both in aim and execution, to the 
 
I 
 
Third Style— 1 83 5 & 1 845. 81 
 
 composition, and have little or no importance except to serve for points of light 
 and shade, and to give an interest (artistically speaking) to the scene. 
 
 We have, however, seen no pictures by Turner which are more splendid in 
 execution than these. The historical contrast is not a very true or a very deep 
 one, but there is a true contrast of composition and colour. Looking at them we 
 felt as we have only felt before when looking at the "Temeraire" — what Turner's 
 pictures, in his finest period in point of colour, must have been when fresh. It 
 is impossible to form any notion from our illustrations, good as they are, of their 
 brilliance, their transparency, or, still less, the lightness of the key in which they 
 are painted. " It will hardly be credited," says Mr. Euskin, " that the piece of 
 foreground on the left of Turner's 1 Modern Italy,' represented in the Art Union 
 engraving as nearly coal-black, is, in the original, of a pale, warm grey, hardly 
 darker than the sky." 
 
 For splendour of colour and brilliance of light these two magnificent 
 pictures may rank with the finest of Turner's compositions. We, however, 
 much prefer the " Modern Italy," the splendid distance of which Turner never 
 excelled. The temple above the arch on the right is the Temple of Vesta, at 
 Tivoli. The country in the distance is the Campagna ; in the foreground, on 
 the left, a monk is receiving the confession of a woman ; and on the left some 
 Pifferari, — mountain shepherds, who play upon the bagpipes, and come to Rome 
 at Christmas to pay homage to the Virgin, — are seen, and a religious procession. 
 
 Amongst the conglomeration of buildings in the " Ancient Italy " may be 
 recognized the Pons Sublicius, the Temple of Vesta, and the Mausoleum of 
 Augustus, now the Castle of St. Angelo. Of this picture Mr. Wornum says, 
 " In this composition, ho [Turner] has placed the point of sight under the sun, 
 so that the lines of the buildings and their shadows terminate at one place, 
 thereby giving the greatest simplicity and effect to the perspective." Very 
 simple, truly — simple as only a great artist could dare to be. 
 
 Next year appeared one of the greatest of all his pictures ; the last picture, 
 says Mr. Euskin, which Turner ever executed with his perfect power — that is, 
 
 M 
 
82 
 
 Turner s Oil-Pictures. 
 
 he explains, that he could have done over again then all that he had done 
 before, but that " when he painted the ' Sun of Venice,' though he was able to 
 do different, and in some respects more beautiful things," he could not have 
 done works requiring his ancient firmness of hand, undimmed sight, and perfect 
 faculties. 
 
 The "Temeraire" is perhaps the best known of all Turner's works, and 
 therefore least needs description ; moreover it is, like the " Crossing the 
 Brook," a picture which appeals to all. In these two paintings — one the 
 most perfect work of his earliest, as the other of his latest style — he touched, 
 as he rarely did, the common heart of mankind. If we could select two of 
 Turner's works to be saved from the ravages of time, we should choose these ; 
 if we had any fear for his future reputation, we should still think it safe 
 as long as these were preserved. Luckily, they are likely to last. The early 
 one was, indeed, painted before he played tricks with colours, but it must have 
 been by a mere chance that the " Temdraire " was painted safely and firmly ; it 
 is still uncracked and fresh. 
 
 Apart from particular associations, there is an eternal pathos in an old ship 
 being tugged to its last berth in calm water at sunset. It is not necessary to 
 tell the story of how the good ship was captured from the French at the battle 
 of the Nile, and broke the line of the combined fleets at that of Trafalgar, 
 sailing next to Nelson's ship, the " Victory ; " — how Collingwood, the commander, 
 tried to pass the " Victory," but was hailed by Nelson himself to keep back, and 
 how " two hours later she lay with a French seventy-four-gun ship on each side 
 of her, both her prizes, one lashed to her mainmast and one to her anchor." It 
 is not necessary to tell that her battered hulk is a type of the old sailing oak 
 man-of-war so soon to be replaced by iron sides and steam propellers, and that 
 the picture is a poem realizing the thought of the " old order" which " changeth, 
 giving place to new." It is a poem without all this, though all this adds an 
 additional interest and pathos to it in our eyes. But if it lasts, as we hope it 
 will, till it is as old as the oldest pictures are now — till steam gives way to 
 
Third Style — 1835 t° 1 845- 83 
 
 something swifter, and iron to something stronger, or even till we fight with 
 " airy navies," or till war shall be no more, and 
 
 " The kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law," 
 
 it will still tell its tale, and still move hearts with solemn pity, and eyes with 
 joy, at its simple pathos and its might of colour. 
 
 This was almost the last " English " picture which Turner painted. They 
 had been scarce for many years. Venice, as we have said before, was the last 
 home of his genius. He exhibited no less than fifteen Venetian pictures in the 
 next seven years, one of which, " The Approach to Venice," we have already 
 mentioned. 
 
 His hand failed, but it did wonders yet. We have not space to mention 
 half the beautiful pictures which he painted after the " Temeraire," but we must 
 say a word about one or two. 
 
 The most notable picture of 1840 was the " Slave Ship" purchased by 
 Mr. Buskin, and till lately in his possession. (It was sold at Christie's this 
 year (1869) for £2,042.) This fortunately has stood well, and has been care- 
 fully preserved. The sea is magnificent, but most terrible, as it should be. Mr. 
 Ruskin thinks it the noblest sea over painted by him or any man. The near 
 waves are full of corpses of black men, and the whole picture is lit up with a 
 lurid sunset. Though much abused at the time, it is undoubtedly one of the 
 finest of Turner's imaginative pictures. But we must leave our readers to seek 
 in the writings of its late owner a further account of the wonders of this picture. 
 
 There are three of Turner's latest pictures which give to us as great as, and 
 a rarer pleasure than, almost any other of his works — pictures which are often 
 passed by with a pitying smile or a sneer. 
 
 The first of these, in point of time, is the " Burial of Wilkie," described in 
 the Academy catalogue of 1842 as " Beace — Burial at Sea : — 
 
 " ' The midnight torch gleamed o'er tho steamer's side, 
 And Merit's corse was yielded to the tide.' 
 
 — MS. Fallacies of Hope." 
 
84 Turner's Oil-Pictures. 
 
 Not even the " Temeraire" itself to our mind excels tins pictvtre in genuine 
 pathos. If Turner ever entertained a spirit of ungenerous rivalry towards 
 Wilkie, and we do not think that he ever did, this painting makes ample 
 amends. If Turner could not express his sorrow in words — and surely the lame 
 verses appended to this picture are sufficient proof of this — he could do so as no 
 other man ever could with a brush and colours. It is a picture to stand before 
 with uncovered head, so deep, so reverent is the grief in every touch. 
 
 The next of the three is that marvellous painting of " Rain, Steam and 
 Speed," a picture which we think is the greatest for the quality of mystery 
 ever painted by Turner; and the nearest approach to the expression of pure 
 ideas by the medium of landscape art that was ever accomplished. It is not, we 
 believe, unimpaired by time, but it will still repay long study. Without this it 
 is useless to approach it. At first sight its mystery completely puzzles the sight 
 as the actual scene of which it is a representation would do, but like that actual 
 scene, if we stand before it till our eyes get acclimatized to the atmosphere of 
 mist and rain, slowly and by imperceptible degrees the prospect clears and 
 clears, till there is not the smallest speck in the picture from the hare which 
 rises before the train to the bathers on the farther shore, which does not become 
 distinctly intelligible. This is, indeed, one of the " more beautiful" things which 
 it was reserved for his failing strength to accomplish. 
 
 The third and last of these later pictures to which we would direct atten- 
 tion is the last picture exhibited by him at the British Institution, almost the 
 last splendid flare in the socket of this grand genius — the " Queen Mab's Cave," 
 which, as well as the " Burial of Wilkie" and the " Bain, Steam and Speed," is 
 in the National Gallery. 
 
 Now his hand and sight had failed almost entirely, but " in their ashes 
 lived their wonted fires." For subtle power of colour we know nothing by any 
 artist's hand which can equal this wild incoherent work. No description of it 
 will avail, its beauty and wonders are among those things which can only be 
 felt. The moment we begin to think about it, or to attempt to account for any 
 
THE FIGHTING TEMERAIRE. 
 
 FROM THE ENGRAVING BY J. T. WILLMORE, A.R.A. 
 
Third Style — 1835 & 1845. 85 
 
 part of it, we are lost, but it is not a less glorious work for that. Its colour is 
 ineffable, its fancy and grace inimitable, and the combination of infinite know- 
 ledge and failure of expression, of unequalled power gone to ruin, of exquisite 
 delicacy and feeble handling, make it one of the most piteous works that was 
 ever done. The decay of this great mind and skilful hand was attended by 
 much of the glory of nature's dissolution ; in his last pictures we see, as we 
 see in nature itself, the strange pathetic incongruity of death and beauty, the 
 morbid, lovely lines of autumn, the fitful glories of the sunset. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 CONCLUSION. TURNER'S LIFE. 
 
 E left Turner at the end of the second chapter just entering 
 into manhood. Since then we have hcen considering the artist 
 and his works almost exclusively. It is now time to say in 
 conclusion a few words about the man. 
 It is the same with most artists and men of mind, viz., that their lives are 
 comparatively barren of incident and full of work ; but in Turner's case this is 
 true to an even unusual extent. He was an artist, and to outward appearance 
 little more. In a recent article upon Byron in the " Examiner," it is stated that 
 men of genius give so much of their being to their works that they leave only 
 the rags and tatters of it for themselves ; and this is true of Turner, who can 
 scarcely be said to have had an existence independent of his art ; all his powers 
 were employed in its service, all his noblest aspirations found in it their 
 only expression ; such few friends as he had were intimately connected with it, 
 fellow artists and patrons. He had no wife, and, except his father, no relations 
 with whom he kept up any intimacy. 
 
 His father, the thrifty barber, lived with his son till his death in 1830 ; and 
 after his retirement from his trade, became the artist's devoted servant, opening 
 his gallery and grinding his colours. He was as eccentric as his son. Having 
 to come up of a morning from Twickenham to Queen Anne Street, to open 
 Turner's gallery, he, with his ingrained thriftiness (which, be it observed, was 
 shown as much in his son's cause as it had ever been in his own), was much 
 
Turners Life- 87 
 
 troubled in his mind as to the cost of the journey, and the jovial little man grew 
 sad and melancholy ; but one day his ancient spirits returned, and his grey eyes 
 twinkled with their accustomed joyfulncss. He had solved the great problem ; 
 he had found a market gardener, who was willing to give him a lift to town on 
 the top of his vegetables for the small recompense of a daily dram ! 
 
 Turner and his " dad " lived together till the old man's death, the natural 
 relation between them being as it were reversed, the father being the servant, 
 and the son the master ; but there is no reason to believe that there was any 
 want of proper feeling in Turner towards his parent ; they were both eccentric 
 and economical, and this arrangement was one which employed them both 
 in spheres suitable to their talents and dispositions, with the least possible 
 expenditure of capital. If the father was the son's servant, he at least was a 
 willing one, and there is no word of any misunderstanding between them. In 
 1830 the old man died, and was buried in St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden. 
 The following epitaph was written by his son : — 
 
 In the Vault 
 Beneath and near this Place 
 Aee deposited the Remains of 
 WILLIAM TURNER, 
 Many yeaes an Inhabitant of this Parish, 
 Who died 
 SEPTEMBER 21st, 1830. 
 To his Memory, and of his Wife, 
 MARY ANN, 
 Their Son, J. M. W. TURNER, R.A., 
 Has placed this Tablet, 
 August 1832. 
 
 Turner's disposition was not, as we have before pointed out, one which 
 easily made friendships, or delighted in the ordinary pleasures of societv, 
 but he nevertheless had some good friends, all the truer and stauneher for their 
 
88 Turner s Life. 
 
 rarity. These were principally, however, artists and patrons (we wish there were 
 some other word). Amongst his most intimate friends may be mentioned the 
 ■Rev. Mr. Trimmer, Sir Francis Chantrey, George Jones, K.A., Mr. Fawkes, of 
 Farnley Hall, near Leeds, Mr. Munro, of Novars, Mr. Puskin, Mr. Stokes, and the 
 Earl of Egremont. Of the last-named eccentric nobleman, at whose seat of Pet- 
 worth, in Sussex, the artist spent much time, there are many amusing anecdotes 
 in connection with Turner. 
 
 In the society of such men, where Turner was at ease, he is represented as a 
 blithe and gay companion, brimful of spirits. With children he was uniformly 
 tender and kind. 
 
 To young artists at the Academy he was ever ready with valuable hints, 
 though expressed in such a terse queer way that they were often useless. He 
 was upright and just, he never spoke ill of any one, not even of a brother artist. 
 Many stories are told of his small meannesses, but they are rebutted by tales of 
 great generosity and gratitude. There are anecdotes of his love of eclipsing the 
 works of other artists on the walls of the Academy by sudden crafty expedients 
 of colour, but there are others of his covering his glorious effects with lampblack 
 for the very opposite purpose, and even of assisting bitter enemies with valuable 
 suggestions. Let us take two good opposite stories; the first is told by Mr. 
 Leslie, but we reprint them both from Mr. Thornbury's book. 
 
 "In 1822, when Constable exhibited his 'Opening of Waterloo Bridge,' it 
 was placed in the School of Painting, one of the small rooms at Somerset House. 
 A sea-piece by Turner was next to it ; a grey picture, beautiful and true, but 
 with no positive colour in any part of it. Constable's picture seemed as if 
 painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times into the 
 room while he was heightening with vermillion and lake the decorations and 
 flags of the city barges. Turner stood behind him, looking from the 'Waterloo' 
 to his own picture, and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than 
 a shilling, on his grey sea, he went away without a word. The intensity of the 
 red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of his picture, caused even the ver- 
 
Turners Life. 89 
 
 million and lake of Constable to look weak. I came into the room just as 
 Turner left it. 
 
 " ' He has been here,' said Constable, ' and fired off a gun.' On the op- 
 posite wall was a picture by Jones, of 1 Shadrach, Meshaeh, and Abednego in the 
 Furnace — 
 
 " ' A coal,' said Cooper, ' has bounced across the room from Jones's picture, 
 and set fire to Turner's sea.' The great man did not come again into the 
 room for a day and a half; and then, in the last moments that were allowed for 
 painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his picture, and shaped it 
 into a buoy." 
 
 Turner and Constable were not good friends, but Turner could be generous 
 to Constable. Look first on that story and then on this : — 
 
 " Once Constable was pacing impatiently before a picture, the effect of 
 which somehow or other did not please him. It was true to rules, but still 
 there was something wanting (perhaps a mere red cap, a blue apron, or a 
 tree stem), yet what it was he could not for the life of him tell. There was 
 a line too much or too little in the composition, that was certain; a speck 
 of colour redundant or deficient, that was evident. At that moment Turner 
 entered. 
 
 " ' I say, Turner,' cried Constable, ' there is something wrong in this 
 picture, and I cannot for the life of me tell what it is. You give it a look.' 
 
 " Turner looked at the picture steadily for a few moments, then seized a 
 brush, and struck in a ripple of water in the foreground. 
 
 " That was the secret — the picture was now perfect, the spell was com- 
 pleted. The fresh, untired eye of the great magician had seen the want at a 
 glance." 
 
 We could fill many more pages with anecdotes about this great artist, but 
 they are so contradictory that they do little to increase our knowledge of his 
 character. The man was great within, and these occasional flashes of a whim or 
 a humour are of little value except for amusement. Mr. Ruskin names the fol- 
 
 N 
 
90 Turner s Life. 
 
 lowing as the main characteristics of Turner : — Uprightness, generosity, tender- 
 ness of heart (extreme), sensuality, obstinacy (extreme), irritability, infidelity. 
 
 Not a very brilliant list of qualities these, though redeemed by the three 
 great virtues of uprightness, tenderness, and generosity, but it is noteworthy 
 that his defects were just such as would bo born and nourished by his ill- 
 nurtured, unfriended youth, and his extremely sensitive and secretive dis- 
 position. 
 
 A passionate being, with no outlet in the ordinary channels of social inter- 
 course and domestic affection, and with no opportunity of cultivating high 
 and pure principles by intercourse with noble men and women, is almost sure to 
 sink into sensuality ; and that Turner did so there is no doubt, and to sensuality 
 of a gross kind. We would not undertake his defence in this respect, we would 
 only offer what we think is its explanation, and without defence or judgment 
 pass on. 
 
 Whatever causes may have led to the formation of this strange character, 
 the result is a bundle of paradoxes. He was mean in little things, and gene- 
 rous in great ones ; given to self-indulgence in low pleasures, and capable of the 
 greatest sacrifices for noble ends ; an intellectual giant, without the commonest 
 power of verbal expression ; averse from society, and yet fond of convivial 
 meetings; of a most melancholy disposition, and yet full of mirth and humour; 
 obstinate as a Turk with men, and yet tender as a woman with children ; 
 suspicious of mankind, and yet capable of the deepest affection for indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 One of the most puzzling paradoxes respecting Turner was the great fame 
 which he enjoyed during his life, which has justly been called one of uninter- 
 rupted and unexampled success, and the equally certain fact that he was never 
 estimated at his true worth, and in his later years became a common butt for 
 all rising wits to shoot their arrows at. 
 
 The fact is that a great genius, though he will often be popular, will be so 
 not on account of what are really the superlative merits of his works, as for some 
 
Turners Life. 91 
 
 lower attractive qualities which they happen to contain. Turner's fame was 
 made not by his drawings, but by the engravings from them ; he became popular 
 not because he was recognized as the greatest landscape painter that ever lived, 
 but because he had a facility which no other man had for making drawings 
 that engraved well, and the public had a passion at that time for engravings of 
 scenery, whether good, bad or indifferent. The reputation thus gained would 
 have been more than sufficient for most men, and the sums of money thus pro- 
 duced would have made them bear the neglect of their more ambitious works 
 with comparative indifference, but no money could compensate the solitary 
 genius of Turner for the want of appreciation of his noblest qualities. He 
 had the genius almost of a Shakespeare, but his fame was not of much more 
 value than that of a Tupper. This was the true gall of his life, — what use 
 to hoard mounds of money, and to have his sketches bought up greedily when 
 his " Temeraire" left the exhibition unsold, and his " Snowstorm" was derided 
 as " soap-suds." Of all men none demands so much, and obtains so little, true 
 sympathy as a great genius. No wonder he was obstinate and irritable — ob- 
 stinate, because so unable to make others see that he was right; irritable, 
 because the slave of publishers and the butt of fools. 
 
 Turner spent the last years of his life at an obscure cottage at Chelsea, 
 where he lived with a woman of the name of Booth. In the vicinity he was 
 well known by the nicknames of " Puggy Booth" and " Admiral Booth," but he 
 carefully kept his retreat a secret from his friends. 
 
 In this little cottage at Chelsea, one bright winter's morning, with the sun 
 shining upon his face as he lay in his bed, this great artist died. The day of 
 his death was December 19, 1851. 
 
 His gallery at Queen Anne Street was in a most deplorable condition, full 
 of dust and dirt , neither wind nor waterproof ; the pictures hanging on the walls 
 were half spoilt with damp and neglect, many of them had to be extensively 
 repaired before they could be exhibited. 
 
 The noblest dream of Turner's life was to found a charity for " male 
 
9 2 
 
 Turners Life. 
 
 decayed artists," and it was doubtless his intention to leave the bulk of his 
 property to be devoted to this purpose, but his will was so confused and badly 
 worded that it frustrated this its main object, and after a four years' chancery 
 suit, a compromise between all the parties to it had to be arranged, to the 
 following effect : — 
 
 1. The real property to go to the heir-at-law. 
 
 2. The pictures, &c. to the National Gallery. 
 
 3. £1000 for the erection of a monument in St. Paul's Cathedral. 
 
 4. £20,000 to the Royal Academy, free of legacy duty. 
 
 5. Remainder to be divided amongst next of kin. 
 
 6. The engravings to the next of kin and heir-at-law. 
 
 Thus Turner's main aim was defeated, but we have yet much to be 
 thankful for, in that the efforts of the next of kin to set aside the will altogether 
 (on the ground that the mind of the testator was unsound) happily failed. If we 
 have not " Turner's Gift," the name he designed for his institution, we have at 
 least the Turner Gallery of Pictures and the Turner Drawings, bequests that will 
 preserve his name in deathless honour and provide pure delight and noble in- 
 struction to many generations. 
 
 In conclusion, it may be interesting to our readers to record a few prices 
 recently given for some of Turner's paintings and drawings, facts which speak 
 for themselves as to the present high appreciation of Turner's works. 
 
 The following comparative statement of the prices at which Mr. Bicknell's 
 oil-pictures sold, and the prices for which they were bought, we extract from 
 Messrs. Redgrave's work : * — 
 
 SALE OF ME. BICKNELL'S (OF DULWICH) PICTURES IN 1863. 
 
 Purchased for 
 
 Sold for 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 8. 
 
 d. 
 
 Ivy Bridge, Devon 
 
 Calder Bridge, Cumberland 
 
 283 10 0 
 
 924 
 
 0 0 
 
 288 15 0 
 
 525 
 
 0 0 
 
 * Century of Painters. 
 
Turner s Life. 
 
 93 
 
 The Wreckers ..... 
 Antwerp : Van Goyen Looking for a Subject 
 Helvoetsluys . 
 Port Ruysdael 
 
 Ehronbreitstein on the Rhine 
 Venice, the Giudecca 
 Venice, the Campo Santo . 
 Palestrina 
 
 Purchased for 
 
 £ », a. 
 
 288 15 0 
 315 0 0 
 283 10 0 
 
 315 
 401 
 262 
 262 
 1050 
 
 0 0 
 
 0 0 
 
 0 0 
 
 0 0 
 
 0 0 
 
 £ 
 1984 
 
 2635 
 1680 
 1995 
 1890 
 1732 
 1732 
 1995 
 
 s. d. 
 
 10 0 
 
 10 0 
 
 0 0 
 
 0 0 
 
 0 0 
 
 10 0 
 
 10 0 
 
 0 0 
 
 £3749 10 0 £17094 0 0 
 
 Thus in a few years these pictures increased more than five times in value. 
 
 At the sale of part of Mr. Buskin's collection this year (1869) forty 
 water-colour sketches (not finished drawings) sold for £2112, being an average 
 of nearly £40 a-piece, and his oil-picture the " Slave Ship" sold for £2042. 
 
 On the same day were sold Mr. Dillon's collection of Turner's water-colour 
 drawings. Two sepia drawings, one for the " Liber Studiorum," and the other a 
 companion drawing, sold for 204 guineas and 175 guineas respectively, 
 
 Tho Eddystone Lighthouse 
 Vesuvius in Repose (small) 
 Vesuvius in Eruption (small) • 
 Lake of Nemi ..... 
 Falls of Terni (about tho sizo of a hand) 
 Pendeunis Castle (early) 
 Lulworth Castle 
 View of Poole 
 Rivaulx Abbey 
 Mont Blanc from Aosta 
 Folly Hill 
 
 Landscape, with figures and cattle 
 
 370 
 285 
 230 
 370 
 565 
 50 
 250 
 335 
 980 
 810 
 890 
 1200 
 
 Turner was buried in the catacombs of St. Paul's. This wish of his at least 
 was gratified. The ceremony was attended by nearly all distinguished painters 
 
94 Turners Life. 
 
 and his few personal friends. Nothing at least was left undone which could do 
 honour to his remains, and if his spirit is able to follow and to feel emotion at 
 the work which his labours on earth have accomplished, and are accomplishing, it 
 will see with pleasure that few wishes of his life now remain unfulfilled, and 
 for those that were blasted, there is a surplusage of success in other matters to 
 make fair compensation. We only wish that we had been able to afford more 
 glimpses of the great man's heart, which was, we believe, quite worthy of his 
 genius ; and we trust that we shall not seem to wish to condone his bad quali- 
 ties on account of that genius when we say that the worst things which are 
 reported of him seem to us to be small and inconsiderable specks upon the sun of 
 his glorious life. And it was a glorious life despite the meanness of its outward 
 accidents, for where else can we find more industry and perseverance, more 
 love for things human and divine, a more strict integrity of soul, or a more entire 
 devotion of power to the good of mankind ! It is true that he amassed much 
 worldly lucre, but he did it honestly, and designed it for a noble purpose ; and in 
 like maimer as his few sins sink in our eyes to insignificance when viewed in 
 comparison with the self-abnegation, heroic courage, and deathless industry, 
 which distinguished his career, so does the large fortune which he hoarded sink 
 into mere nothingness in comparison with the pictorial wealth, which he not 
 only amassed, but created. His money has gone away from those for whom it 
 was intended, and decayed artists cannot receive those temporal blessings which 
 Turner intended for them, but his pictures, his drawings remain. These are the 
 true results of his life, his true " fortune ; " and of this magnificent bequest we, 
 the whole world, are the heirs. Let us then be grateful to him as we should 
 be to one of the great benefactors of mankind. 
 
 It is indeed, however, pleasant to think that his personal character was 
 loved by those who knew him, and that in the presence of the pomp with which 
 his ashes were yielded to the dust, tears were shed for him, not as an artist, but 
 as a man. 
 
 We cannot conclude this imperfect memoir better than by the touching 
 
Turners Life. 95 
 
 words of those by whom he was known and loved, and to whom it had been 
 given to see and feel the tenderness that was concealed beneath the rough husk 
 of the outer man. 
 
 Mr. Trimmer, speaking of him as he saw him shortly after his death, writes : — 
 " Dear old Turner, there he lay, his eyes sunk, his lips fallen in. He re- 
 minded me strongly of his old father, whom long years before I had seen 
 trudging to Brentford Market from Sandycomb Lodge, to lay in his weekly 
 supplies. Alas for humanity ! This was the man whom in my childhood I had 
 attended with my father, and been driven by on the banks of the Thames ; 
 whom I had seen sketching with such glee on the river's banks, as I gathered 
 wild flowers, in my earliest years ; who had stuffed my pockets with sweetmeats, 
 had loaded me with fish, and made me feel as happy as a prince. 
 
 " There was written on his calm face the marks of age and wreck, dissolution 
 and reblending with the dust ; this was the man whose worst productions 
 contained more poetry and genius than the most laboured efforts of his brother 
 artists ; who was the envy of his rivals, and the admiration of all whose admira- 
 tion is worth the having ; nor was it without emotion that I gazed upon so sad 
 a sight." 
 
 Mrs. Wheeler (whose reminiscences we have before quoted in connection 
 with the " Liber Studiorum ") writes : — 
 
 " He was a firm affectionate friend to the end of his life ; his feelings were 
 seldom seen on the surface, but they were deep and enduring. No one would 
 have imagined, under that rather rough and cold exterior, how very strong were 
 the affections which lay hidden beneath. I have more than once seen him weep 
 bitterly, particularly at the death of my own dear father, which took him by 
 surprise, for he was blind to the coming event, which he dreaded. He came 
 immediately to my house in an agony of grief. Sobbing like a child, he said, 
 '0, Clara, Clara! these are iron tears ! I have lost the best friend I ever had in 
 my life.' Oh, what a different man would Turner have been if all the good and 
 
96 Turners Life. 
 
 kindly feelings of his great mind had been called into action ; but they L 
 dormant, and were known to so very few. He was by nature suspicious, and 
 tender hand had wiped away early prejudices, the inevitable consequences o 
 defective education." 
 
LIST OF WORKS BY J. M. W. TURNER EXHIBITED 
 
 AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY AND THE 
 BRITISH INSTITUTION. 
 
 ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 1790. 1. View of the Archbishop's Palace, Lambeth. 
 
 1791. 2. King John's Palace, Eltham. 
 
 3. Swakeley, near Uxbridge, the Seat of the Rev. Mr. Clarke. 
 
 1792. 4. Malmsbury Abbey. 
 
 5. The Pantheon — The Morning after the Fire. 
 
 1793. G. View on the River Avon, near St. Vincent's Rock, Bristol. 
 
 7. Gate of St. Augustine's Monastery, Canterbury. 
 
 8. The Rising Squall — Hot Wells, from St. Vincent's Rock. Bristol. 
 
 1794. 9. Second Fall of the River Monach, Devil's Bridge, Cardiganshire. 
 
 10. Porch of Great Malvern Abbey, Worcestershire. 
 
 11. Christ Church Gate, Canterbury. 
 
 12. Inside of Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire. 
 
 13. St. Anselm's Chapel, with part of Thomas-a-Becket's Crown, Canterbury 
 
 Cathedral. 
 
 1795. 14. St. Hugh's the Burgundian's Porch, at Lincoln Cathedral. 
 
 15. Marford Mill, Wrexham, Denbighshire. 
 
 16. West Entrance of Peterborough Cathedral. 
 
 17. Transept of Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire. 
 
 18. Welsh Bridge, Shrewsbury. 
 
 19. View near the Devil's Bridge, with the River Ryddol, Cardiganshire. 
 
 20. A View in King's College Chapel, Cambridge. 
 
 21. Cathedral Church at Lincoln. 
 
 o 
 
98 Turner s Exhibited Works. 
 
 Year of * 
 Exhibition. No. 
 
 1796. 22. Fishermen at Sea. 
 
 23. Close Gate, Salisbury. 
 
 24. St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip's Chapel. 
 
 25. Wolverhampton, Staffordshire. 
 
 26. Llandilo Bridge and Dynevor Castle. 
 
 27. Interior of a Cottage — a Study at Ely. 
 
 28. Chale Farm, Isle of Wight. 
 
 29. Llandaff Cathedral, South Wales. 
 
 30. Remains of Waltham Abbey, Essex. 
 
 31. Transept and Choir of Ely Minster. 
 
 32. West Front of Bath Abbey. 
 
 1797. 33. Moonlight— a Study at Millbank. 
 
 34. Fishermen coming ashore at Sunset, previous to a Gale. 
 
 35. Transept of Ewenny Priory, Glamorganshire. 
 
 36. Choir of Salisbury Cathedral. 
 
 37. Ely Cathedral, South Transept. 
 
 38. North Porch of Salisbury Cathedral. 
 
 1798. 39. Winesdale, Yorkshire — an Autumnal Morning. 
 
 40. Morning, amongst the Coniston Fells, Cumberland. 
 
 41. Dunstanburgh Castle, N.E. coast of Northumberland — Sunrise, after a Squally 
 
 Night. 
 
 42. Refectory of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire. 
 
 43. Norham Castle, on the Tweed — Summer's Morn. 
 
 44. Holy Island Cathedral, Northumberland. 
 
 45. Ambleside Mill, Westmoreland. 
 
 46. The Dormitory and Transept of Fountains Abbey— Evening. 
 
 47. Buttermere Lake, with part of Cromack Water, Cumberland — A Shower. 
 
 48. A Study in September of the Fern House, Mr. Lock's Park, Mickleham, 
 
 Surrey. 
 
 1799. 49. Fishermen Becalmed, previous to a Storm— Twilight. 
 
 50. Harlech Castle, from Trwgwyn Ferry — Summer's Evening, Twilight. 
 
 51. Battle of the Nile, at ten o'clock, when "L'Orient" blew up from the station 
 
 of the gun-boats, between the battery and Castle of Aboukir. 
 
 52. Kilgarran Castle, on the Twyvey — Hazy Sunrise, previous to a Sultry Day. 
 
 53. Sunny Morning — The Cattle, by S. Gilpin, RA. 
 
 54. Abergavenny Bridge, Monmouthshire — Clearing Up, after a Showery Day. 
 
Turners Exhibited Works. 99 
 
 Year of 
 Exhibition No. 
 
 55. Inside of the Chapter House of Salisbury Cathedral. 
 
 56. West Front of Salisbury Cathedral. 
 
 57. Carnarvon Castle. 
 
 58. Morning — From Dr. Langhorne's " Visions of Fancy." 
 
 59. Warkworth Castle, Northumberland — Thunder-storm approaching at Sunset. 
 
 60. Dolbadern Castle, North Wales. 
 
 1800. 61. The Fifth Plague of Egypt. 
 
 62. View of the Gothic Abbey (Afternoon) now building at Fonthill, the seat of 
 
 William Beckford, Esq. 
 
 63. South-west view of the same — Morning. 
 
 64. Carnarvon Castle. 
 
 65. South view of the Gothic Abbey building at Fonthill — Evening. 
 
 66. East view of the same — Noon. 
 
 67. North-east view of the same — Sunset. 
 
 1801. 68. Dutch Boats in a Gale — Fishermen endeavouring to put their Fish on board. 
 
 69. The Army of the Medes destroyed in the Desert by a Whirlwind. Foretold 
 
 by Jeremiah, chap. xxv. vv. 32, 33. 
 
 70. London — Autumnal Morning. 
 
 71. Pembroke Castle, South Wales — Thunder-storm approaching. 
 
 72. St. Donat's Castle, South Wales — Summer Evening. 
 
 73. Chapter House, Salisbury. 
 
 1802. 74. Fishermen upon a Lee Shore in Squally Weather. 
 
 75. The Tenth Plague of Egypt. 
 
 76. Ships bearing up for Anchorage. 
 
 77. The Fall of the Clyde, Lanarkshire — Noon. Vide Akenside's " Hymn to the 
 
 Naiads." 
 
 78. Kilchern Castle, with the Cruchan-Ben Mountains, Scotland — Noon. 
 
 79. Edinburgh New Town, Castle, &c. from the Water of Leith. 
 
 80. Jason. 
 
 81. Ben Lomond Mountains, Scotland — The Traveller. . Vide Ossian's " War of 
 
 Caros." 
 
 1803. 82. Bonneville, Savoy, with Mont Blanc. 
 
 83. The Festival upon the Opening of the Vintage of Macon. 
 
 84. Calais Pier, with French Poissards preparing for Sea — an English Packet 
 
 arriving. 
 
 85. Holy Family. 
 
ioo Turners Exhibited Works- 
 
 Year of 
 Exhibition. 17a 
 
 86. Chateau de St. Michael, Bonneville, Savoy. 
 
 87. St Hughes denouncing Vengeance on the Shepherd of Cormayeur, in the Valley 
 
 of Aoust. 
 
 88. Glacier and Source of the Arveron, going up to the Mer de Glace. 
 1804. 89. Boats carrying out Anchors and Cables to Dutch Men-of-war in 1665. 
 
 90. Narcissus and Echo. 
 
 91. Edinburgh, from Calton Hill. 
 
 1806. 92. Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen. 
 
 93. Pembroke Castle — clearing up of a Thunder-storm. 
 
 1807. 94. A Country Blacksmith disputing upon the Price of Iron, and the Price 
 
 charged to the Butcher for Shoeing his Pony. 
 95. Sun rising through Vapour ; Fishermen cleaning and selling Fish. 
 
 1808. 96. The Unpaid Bill, or the Dentist reproving his Son's Prodigality. 
 
 1809. 97. Spithead — Boat's Crew recovering an Anchor. 
 
 98. Tabley, the Seat of Sir J. F. Leicester, Bart. — Windy Day. 
 
 99. Tabley, Cheshire — Calm Morning. 
 100. The Garretteer's Petition. 
 
 " Aid me, ye powers ! oh, bid my thoughts to roll 
 In quick succession — animate my soul ! 
 Descend, my Muse, and every thought refine, 
 And finish well my long, my long-sought line." 
 
 1810. 101. Lowther Castle, Westmoreland — the seat of the Earl of Lonsdale. X.W. view 
 
 from TJllswater Lake — Evening. 
 
 102. Lowther Castle, North Front, with the River Lowther — Mid-day. 
 
 103. Petworth, Sussex; the seat of the Earl of Egrcmont— Dewy Morning. 
 
 1811. 104. Mercury and Ilerse\ 
 
 105. Apollo and Python. 
 
 106. Somcr Hill, near Tonbridge, the seat of W. F. Woodgate, Esq. 
 
 107. Whalley Bridge and Abbey, Lancashire— Dyers washing and drying cloth. 
 
 108. Windsor Park — with Horses, by the late S. Gilpin, R.A. 
 
 109. November — Flounder Fishing. 
 
 110. Chryses —Pope's "Homer's Iliad," Book I. 
 
 111. May — Chickens. 
 
 112. Scarborough, Town and Castle— Morning ; Boys collecting Crabs. 
 
 1812. 113. A View of the Castle of St. Michael, Bonneville, Savoy. 
 114. View of the High Street, Oxford. 
 
Turner s Exhibited Works. 
 
 101 
 
 1813. 
 
 1814. 
 1815. 
 
 115. View of Oxford, from the Abingdon Road. 
 
 116. Snow-storm — Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps. " Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 117. Frosty Morning. 
 " The rigid hoar-frost melts before his beam." — Thomson. 
 
 118. The Deluge. 
 " Meanwhile the south wind rose, and with black wings 
 Wide hovering, all the clouds together drove 
 
 From under heaven, 
 
 the thicken'd sky 
 
 Like a dark ceiling stood ; down rush'd the rain 
 Impetuous, and continued till the earth 
 No more was seen." — Milton's Paradise Lost. 
 
 Dido and jEneas. 
 
 Bligh Sand, near Sheerness — Fishing- boats trawling. 
 Crossing the Brook. 
 
 Dido building Carthage, or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire. 
 The Battle of Fort Rock, Val d'Aouste, Piedmont, 1796. "-Fallacies of Hope." 
 The Eruption of the Souifrier Mountains, in the Island of St. Vincent, at 
 Midnight, on the 30th of April, 1812, from a sketch taken at the time 
 by Hugh P. Keane, Esq. 
 The Passage of Mount St. Gothard, taken from the centre of the Teufel's 
 
 Briick (Devil's Bridge), Switzerland. 
 The Great Fall of the Reichenbach, in the Valley of Hasle, Switzerland. 
 Lake of Lucerne, looking toward's Tell's Chapel, Switzerland. 
 The Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius restored. 
 
 View of the Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, in the Island of ^Egina, with the 
 Greek National Dance of the Romaika; the Acropolis of Athens in the 
 Distance. Painted from a sketch taken by H. Gaily Knight, Esq. in 1810. 
 1817. 130. The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire. 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 consented 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 th' insidious conqueror's grasp resign'd, 
 While o'er the western wave the ensanguin'd sun 
 
 1816. 
 
 119. 
 120. 
 121. 
 
 122. 
 123. 
 124. 
 
 125. 
 
 126. 
 127. 
 128. 
 129. 
 
102 Turners Exhibited Works. 
 
 Vear of 
 Exhibition. No. 
 
 In gathering haze a stormy signal spread, 
 And set portentous." 
 1 SIS. 131. Raby Castle, the Seat of the Earl of Darlington. 
 
 132. Dort, or Dordrecht — the Dort Packet-boat from Rotterdam becalmed. 
 
 133. The Field of Waterloo. " Last noon beheld them full of lusty life," &o. 
 
 134. Landscape — Composition of Tivoli. 
 
 1819. 135. Entrance of the Meuse. Orange Merchant on the Bar going to pieces ; Brill 
 
 Church bearing S.E. by S., Marensluys E. by S. 
 136. England. Richmond Hill on the Prince Regent's Birthday. 
 
 " WMch way, Amanda, shall we bend our course?" &o. 
 
 1820. 137. Rome from the Vatican. Raffaelle accompanied by La Fornarina, preparing 
 
 his Pictures for the Decoration of the Loggia. 
 1822. 138. What yon Willi 
 
 1S23. 139. The Bay of Baia?, with Apollo and the Sibyl. 
 
 " Waft me to sunny BaiaVs shore." 
 
 1825. 140. Harbour of Dieppe (changement de domicile). 
 
 1826. 141. Cologne. The Arrival of a Packet-boat— Evening. 
 
 142. Forum Romanum, in Mr. Soane's Museum. 
 
 143. The Seat of William Mofifat, Esq., at Mortlake — Early Summer's Morning. 
 
 1827. 144. " Now for the Painter (rope)." — Passengers going on board. 
 145 Port Ruysdael. 
 
 146. Rembrandt's Daughter. 
 
 147. Mortlake Terrace, the Seat of William Moffat, Esq. — Summer's Evening. 
 
 148. Scene in Derbyshire. 
 
 " When first the sun, with beacon red." 
 
 1828. 149. Dido directing the Equipment of the Fleet; or the Morning of the Car- 
 
 thaginian Empire. 
 
 150. East Cowes Castle, the Seat of J. Nash, Esq.— The Regatta, beating to 
 
 windward. 
 
 151. East Cowes Castle, the Seat of J. Nash, Esq.— The Regatta, starting for 
 
 their moorings. 
 
 152. Boccacio relating the Tale of the Birdcage. 
 
 1829. 153. The Banks of the Loire. 
 
 154. Ulysses deriding Polyphemus. 
 
 155. The Loretto Necklace. 
 
 156. Messieurs les Voyageurs, on their Return from Italy (par la diligence), in a 
 
 Snow-drift upon Mount Tarra, 22nd January, 1829. 
 
 * 
 
Turners Exhibited Works. 103 
 
 Year of 
 Exhibition. No. 
 
 1830. 157. Pilate Washing his Hands, St. Matthew, chap. 27, v. 24. 
 
 158. View of Orvieto; painted in Rome. 
 
 159. Palestrina — Composition. 
 
 " Or from yon mural rock, high crowned Prseneste, 
 
 Where, misdeeming of his strength, the Carthaginian stood, 
 
 And marked, with eagle eye, Rome as his victim." — AC. Fallacies of Hope. 
 
 160. Jessica. — " Shylock. Jessica, shut the window, I say." 
 
 161. Calais Sands — Low water, Poissards collecting Bait. 
 
 162. Fish Market on the Sands— The Sun rising through a Vapour. 
 
 163. Funeral of Sir Thomas Lawrence — A Sketch from Memory. 
 
 1831. 164. Lifeboat and Manby Apparatus going off to a Stranded Vessel making signal 
 
 (blue lights) of distress. 
 
 165. Caligula's Palace and Bridge. " Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 166. Vision of Medea. " Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 167. Lucy, Countess of Carlisle, and Dorothy Percy's visit to their Father, Lord 
 
 Percy, when under attainder upon the supposition of his being concerned in 
 the Gunpowder Plot. 
 
 168. Admiral Van Tromp's Barge at the entrance of the Texel, 1645 
 
 169. Watteau — Study by Fresnoy's rules. 
 
 " White, when it shines with unstained lustre clear, 
 May bear an object back, or bring it near." 
 
 Fresnoy's Art of Painting, p. 496. 
 
 170. " In this arduous service (of reconnaisance) on the French coast, 1805, one of 
 
 our cruisers took the ground, and had to sustain the attack of the flying 
 artillery along the shore, the batteries and the Fort of Vimieux, which fired 
 heated shot until she could warp off at the rising tide, which set in with all 
 the appearance of a stormy night." — Naval Anecdotes. 
 
 1832. 171. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage— Italy, 
 
 " And now, fair Italy," &c. — Canto iv. 
 
 172. The Prince of Orange, William III., embarked from Holland and landed at 
 
 Torbay, Nov. 4th 1688, after a Stormy Passage. " The yacht in which his 
 Majesty sailed was, after many changes and services, finally wrecked on 
 Hamburgh sands, while employed in the Hull trade." — History of England. 
 
 173. Van Tromp's Shallop at the Entrance of the Scheldt. 
 
 174. Helvoetsluys— The City of Utrecht (64) going to Sea. 
 
 175. " Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace, 
 
104 Turners Exhibited Works. 
 
 Vear of 
 Exhibition. No. 
 
 and spake, and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, ye servants of the 
 most high God, come forth and come hither. Then Shadrach, Meshach and 
 Abednego came forth of the midst of the fire." —Daniel, chap. iii. v. 26. 
 176. Staffa — Fingal's Cave. 
 
 " Nor of a theme less solemn tells 
 That mighty surge that ebbs and swells, 
 And still between each awful pause, 
 
 From the high vault an answer draws." — Lord of the Ides, canto iv. 
 
 1833. 177. Rotterdam Ferry Boat. 
 
 178. Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace, and Custom House, Venice — Canaletti painting. 
 
 179. Van Goyeu looking out for a Subject. 
 
 180. Van Tromp returning after the Battle of the Dogger Bank. 
 
 181. Ducal Palace, Venice. 
 
 182. Mouth of the Seine, Quille-bceuf.— " This estuary is so dangerous from its 
 
 quicksands, that any vessel taking the ground is liable to he stranded, and 
 overwhelmed by the rising tide, which rushes in in one wave." 
 
 1834. 183. The Fountain of Indolence. 
 
 184. The Golden Bough. " Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 185. Venice. 
 
 186. Wreckers— Coast of Northumberland, with a Steamboat assisting a Ship off 
 
 Shore. 
 
 187. St. Michael's Mount, Cornwall. 
 1X35. 188. Keelmen heaving in Coals by Night. 
 
 189. The Broad Stone of Honour (Ehrenbreitstein) and Tomb of Marceau, from 
 
 Byron's " Childe Harold " 
 
 " By Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground," etc. 
 
 190. Venice — from the porch of Madonna della Salute. 
 
 191. Line Fishing off Hastings. 
 
 192. The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, Oct. 16, 1834. 
 
 1836. 193. Juliet and her Nurse. 
 
 194. Rome from Mount Aventine. 
 
 195. Mercury and Argus. 
 
 1837. 196. Scene — a Street in Venice. 
 
 " Antonio. Hear me yet, good Shylock. 
 
 Shylock. I'll have my bond." — Merchant of Venice, act iii. sc. 3. 
 197. Story of Apollo and Daphne. — " Ovid's Metamorphoses." 
 
Turners Exhibited Works. 105 
 
 Kzbibitlou. No 
 
 198. The Parting of Hero and Leander — From the Greek of MusEeus. 
 
 " The morning came too soon, with crimson'd blush, 
 Chiding the tardy night, and Cynthia's warning beam ; 
 But Love yet lingers on the terraced steep, 
 Upheld young Hymen's torch and failing lamp, 
 The token of departure, never to return. 
 Wild dashed the Hellespont its 'stracted surge, 
 And on the raised spray appeared Leander's fall." 
 
 199. Snow-storm — Avalanche and Inundation; a Scene in the upper Part of Val 
 
 d'Aouste, Piedmont. 
 
 200. Phryne going to the public Bath as Venus— Demosthenes taunted by 
 
 jEschines. 
 
 201. Modern Italy— The Pifferari. 
 
 202. Ancient Italy — Ovid banished from Rome. 
 
 1839. 203. The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, 1838. 
 
 " The flag which braved the battle and the breeze 
 No longer owns her." 
 
 204. Ancient Rome— Agrippina landing with the Ashes of Germanicus. The 
 
 Triumphal Bridge and Palace of the Caesars restored. 
 " The clear stream — 
 Ay, the yellow Tiber, glimmers to her beam, 
 Even while the sun is setting." 
 
 205. Modern Rome — Campo Vaccino. 
 
 " The moon is up, and yet it is not night ; 
 
 The sun as yet disputes the day with her."— Lord Byron. 
 
 206. Pluto carrying off Proserpine. — Ovid's Metamorphoses. 
 
 207. Cicero at his Villa. 
 
 1 840. 208. Bacchus and Ariadne. 
 
 209. Venice— The Bridge of Sighs. 
 
 " I stood upon a bridge, a palace and 
 A prison on each hand." — Byron. 
 
 210. Venice, from the Canale della Giudecca, Chiesa di S. Maria della Salute, &c. 
 
 211. Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying— Typhoon coming on. 
 
 " Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 212. The New Moon; or, " I've lost my Boat, you shan't have your Hoop." 
 
 213. Rockets and Blue-lights (close at hand) to warn Steamboats off Shoal- water. 
 
 214. Neapolitan Fisher-girls surprised Bathing by Moonlight. 
 
 P 
 
io6 Turner s Exhibited Works. 
 
 Exhi"tioD. No. 
 
 215. Ducal Palace, Dogana, with part of San Giorgio, Venice. 
 
 1841. 216. Giudecca, la Donna della Salute and San Giorgio. 
 
 217. Rosenau, Seat of H.R.H. Prince Albert of Coburg, near Coburg, Germany. 
 
 218. Depositing of John Bellini's three pictures in la Chiesa Redentore, Venice. 
 
 219. Dawn of Christianity (Flight into Egypt). 
 
 "That star has risen." — Rev. T. Gisborne's "Walk in a Forest." 
 
 220. Glaucus and Scylla. " Ovid's Metamorphoses." 
 
 1842. 221. The Dogana, San Giorgio, Citella, from the Steps of the Europa. 
 
 222. Oampo Santo. Venice. 
 
 223. Snow-storm — Steamboat off a Harbour's mouth, making Signals in shallow 
 
 Water, and going by the Lead. The author was in this storm on the night 
 the Ariel left Harwich. 
 
 224. Peace. Burial at Sea. " Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 225. War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet. " Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 1843. 226. The Opening of the Walhalla, 1842— " L'Honneui' au Roi di Baviere." "Fal- 
 
 lacies of Hope." 
 
 227 . The Sun of Venice going to Sea. 
 
 228. Dogana and Madonna della Salute, Venice. 
 
 229. Shade and Darkness — the Evening of the Deluge. "Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 230. Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) — The Morning after the Deluge. Moses 
 
 Writing the Book of Genesis. 
 
 231. St. Benedetto, looking towards Fusina. 
 
 1844. 232. Ostend. 
 
 233. Fishing-boats bringing a Disabled Ship into Port Ruysdael. 
 
 234. Rain, Steam and Speed. The Great Western Raihvay. 
 
 235. Van Tromp going about to please his Masters — Ships at Sea, getting a good 
 
 wetting. Vide "Lives of Dutch Painters." 
 
 236. Venice — Maria della Salute. 
 
 237. Approach to Venice. 
 
 " The path lies o'er the sea, invisible; 
 
 And from the land we went, 
 
 As to a floating city, steering in, 
 
 And gliding up her streets as in a dream, 
 
 So smoothly, silently." — Rogers' Italy. 
 
 " The moon is up, and yet it is not night ; 
 
 The sun as yet disputes the day with her." — Byron. 
 
Turners Exhibited Works. 107 
 
 Year of 
 Exhibition. No. 
 
 238. Venice Quay — Ducal Palace. 
 
 1845. 239. Whalers. Vide Beale's " Voyage," p. 163. 
 
 240. Whalers. Vide Beale's " Voyage" p. 175. 
 
 241. Venice — Evening. Going to the Ball. " Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 242. Morning— Returning from the Ball. St. Martino. " Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 243. Venice — Noon. " Fallacies of Hope " 
 
 244. Venice— Sunset. A Fisher. " Fallacies of Hope." 
 184G. 245. Returning from the Ball. St. Martha. 
 
 246. Going to the Ball. St. Martino. 
 
 247. "Hurrah! for the Whaler, Erebus ! another fish ! " Beale's " Voyage." 
 
 248. Undine giving the Ring to Massaniello, Fisherman of Naples. 
 
 249. The Angel standing in the Sun. — Revelation, xix. 17, 18. 
 
 250. Whalers (boiling blubber), entangled in Flaw Ice, endeavouring to extricate 
 
 themselves. 
 
 1847. 251. The Hero of a Hundred Fights. An idea suggested by the German invoca- 
 tion upon casting the bell, in England called " Tapping the Furnace." 
 "Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 1849. 252. The Wreck Buoy. 
 253. Venus and Adonis. 
 
 1850. 254. Mercury sent to Admonish Jimeas. " Fallacies of Hope." 
 255. iEneas relating his History to Dido. "Fallacies of Hope." 
 25G. The Visit to the Tomb. " Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 257. The Departure of the Fleet. " Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 BRITISH INSTITUTION. 
 
 1806. 1. Narcissus and Echo. " Ovid's Metamorphoses." 
 
 2. The Goddess of Discord choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of the 
 Hespcrides. 
 
 1808. 3. The Battle of Trafalgar, as seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the 
 
 Victory. (Height, 7 ft. 4 in. ; width, 9 ft. 3 in.) 
 4. Jason. (Height, 3ft. 8 in.; width, 4ft. 8 in.) "Ovid's Metamorphoses." 
 
 1809. 5. Sun rising through Vapour, with Fishermen landing and cleaning their Fish. 
 
 (Height, 6 ft.; width, 7ft. 6 in.) 
 
10S Turners Exhibited Works. 
 
 Vetr of 
 
 Exhibition. No. , 
 
 1814. 6. Apuleia in search of Apuleius. (Height, 6ft. 10 in ; width, 9ft. 3 in.) "Ovid's 
 Metamorphoses." 
 
 1817. 7. View of the Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius in the Island of iEgina, with the 
 Greek National Dance of the Romaika; the Acropolis of Athens in the Dis- 
 tance. Painted from a sketch taken by H. Gaily Knight, Esq., in 1810. 
 (Height, 5ft. 2 in. j width, 7ft. 2 in.) 
 
 1835. 8. The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834. 
 
 1836. 9. Wreckers on the North Shore. 
 10. Fire of the House of Lords. 
 
 1837. 1 1. Regulus. (Height, 4 ft. 6 in. ; width, 5 ft. 6 in.) 
 
 1838. 12. Fishing-boats, with Hucksters bargaining for Fish. 
 
 183'.). 13. Fountain of Fallacy. (Height, 4 ft. 8 in. ; width, 6 ft. 8 in.) "Fallacies of Hope." 
 
 1840. 14. Mercury and Argus. (Height, 6ft. 3 in.; width, 5ft.) 
 
 1841. 15. Snow-storm, Avalanche, and Inundation in the Alps. (Height, 4 ft. 3 in. ; 
 
 wide, 5 ft. 3 in.) 
 
 16. Blue Lights (close at hand), to warn Steamboats off Shoal-water. (Height, 
 4 ft. 3 in.; width, 5 ft. 3 in. ) 
 1846. 17. Queen Mab's Cave. 
 
 "Frisk it, frisk it, by the moonlight beam." — Midsummer Nights Dream. 
 
 "' Thy orgies, Mab, are manifold." — MS. Fallacies of Hope.