M::.- 
 
 
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 3tl(ata, Kew lork 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME SF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE C3IFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
Cornell University Library 
 ND 497.T94H21 
 
 The life of J. M. W. Turner, R. A.; with 
 
 3 1924 008 748 620 
 
W. p^ Cornell University 
 Wj3 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924008748620 
 
THE LIFE OF J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. 
 
THE LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. 
 
 BY 
 
 PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON, 
 
 rching and etchers,""" thought 
 'modern frenchmen," etc., etc. 
 
 AUTHOR OF " ETCHING AND ETCHERS,""" THOUGHTS ABOUT ART,'' 
 
 " 11 serait inutile d'etre un excellent esprit et un grand peintre, si *on ne 
 mettait dans son osuvre quelque chose que la rdalic^ n'a pas. C'est en quoi 
 rhomme est plus intelligent que le soleil, et j'en remercie Dieu." 
 
 Fromentin. 
 
 WITH NINE ILLUSTRATIONS, 
 ETCHED BY A. BRUNET-DEBAINES. 
 
 SEELEY, JACKSON, & HALLIDAY, 54, FLEET STREET. 
 LONDON. MDCCCLXXIX. 
 
 [ The Right of Translation a Reserved. ] 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I HAVE been the more willing to write a biography of 
 Turner that it is impossible to study him without en- 
 countering the greatest of all problems in art criticism 
 the relation of art to nature. Of all landscape-painters 
 he is at once the most comprehensive in his study of 
 nature and the most independent of nature, the most 
 observant of truth and also, in a certain sense, the most 
 untrue. This double life of Turner, as observer and 
 artist, compels us to distinguish between art and mere 
 observation from the very beginning, under peril of fall- 
 ing into snares which the subject itself has laid for us. 
 We must understand that art and nature are not the 
 same world, but two worlds which only resemble each 
 other and have many things in common. Turner, with 
 the instinct of genius, understood this from the first. 
 
 Turner is a most instructive subject for the student of 
 art, because he is always and above all things the artist. 
 With all his study of objects and effects, he was never a 
 naturalist. The real motive of every one of his compo- 
 sitions is to realise some purely artistic conception, not 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 to copy what he saw ; consequently.he lived in a state of 
 mental activity and feeling, which cannot be in the least 
 understood until we know what the artistic intelligence 
 is, and what are its necessities, its purposes, and its 
 aspirations. If Turner went frequently to nature for 
 material, he went to the works of great artists who had 
 preceded him that he might profit by their example, and 
 though he had so much originality as to astonish the 
 public of his time, the painter never lived who was more 
 thoroughly imbued with the great artistic traditions. He 
 educated himself, not by copying the famous masters, 
 but by a series of experimental pictures in which he 
 ■purposely worked under their successive influences, and 
 -when he passed from these exercises to experiments for 
 which .there was no precedent, these new experiments 
 -were not undertaken for the imitation of nature, but for 
 ■the extension of the possibilities of art. If there is any 
 ■reader to whom this distinction is not sufficiently clear, I 
 may make it a little clearer by observing that the essen- 
 tially artistic elements of a picture may be comprised 
 under the two heads of feeling and composition, neither 
 of which is to be found in external nature, though it 
 suggests both to the human spirit. -Composition includes 
 all colour arrangements, all combinations of light and 
 shade, all groupings and contrasts of selected and modi- 
 fied forms. Feeling, in art, expresses itself always by 
 the alteration of nature, by exaggerating and diminish- 
 ing, by selecting and rejecting, by emphasis and accent. 
 The art of a man of genius like Turner has much more 
 in common with music than with photography. Even 
 the enemies of painting, those who are hostile to it be- 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 cause they cannot understand it, do at least understand 
 so much of it as this, that it is intensely artificial, that it 
 is not nature. 
 
 ' I know nothing of painting,' wrote Byron to Murray 
 from the city of Titian and Giorgione, ' and I detest it, 
 unless it reminds me of something I have seen, or think 
 it possible to see, for which reason I spit upon and abhor 
 all the saints and subjects of one half the impostures I 
 see in the churches and palaces : and when in Flanders I 
 never was so disgusted in my life as with Rubens and 
 his eternal wives and infernal glare of colours, as they 
 appeared to me, and in Spain I did not think much of 
 Murillo and Velasquez. Depetid upon it, of all the arts 
 it is the most artificial and unnatural, and that by which 
 the innocence of mankind is most imposed upon. I 
 never yet saw the picture or the statue which came 
 a league within my conception or expectation.' 
 
 Now, although Byron had much genius and some 
 literary education, he was, as regarded the plastic and 
 graphic arts, a thorough British barbarian, who detested, 
 abhorred, and spat upon (the expressions are his own) 
 the refinements which were beyond the limits of his 
 comprehension, so that when he speaks of painting he 
 speaks with the animosity of an enemy and the contempt 
 of a man of rank and reputation who cannot imagine 
 that anything may possibly be above him. But with 
 all his coarseness and violence, with all his blindness to 
 the beauty of painting, he sees one thing which its 
 warmest admirers too frequently fail to see — he sees 
 that it is intensely artificial, that it is something widely 
 dilTerent from nature. He makes no blundering con- 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 fusion between art and nature, but sets himself on the 
 side of nature against art, and in the next sentences of 
 the letter just quoted alludes to mountains, seas, rivers, 
 horses, a lion, a tiger, and two or three women that went 
 as far beyond his expectation as pictures and statues 
 fell short of it. We may safely follow Byron in keeping 
 this distinction clear. 
 
 Another matter which we ought to understand before 
 entering upon such a study as this is the proper function 
 of the writer upon art. In my view, it is first to inform 
 himself as well as he can, and then to say what he 
 thinks with the most fearless candour, but without the 
 slightest pretension to authority. I should be sorry to 
 see English criticism, on any side of an artistic question, 
 arrive at that cowardly condition too often visible on 
 the Continent, when writers dare not venture to say 
 what they think about artists of established reputation 
 for fear of imperilling their own, and when the whole 
 ingenuity of a writer on art is devoted to a search for 
 new excellencies in the consecrated masters, even in 
 their most trifling works, or in doubtful works attri- 
 buted to them, and in the weakest and worst passages 
 of those works. But whilst claiming the right to say 
 what I think, without any diminution of strength 
 of expression from deference to the opinion of others 
 I repudiate all intention of speaking ex cathedra with 
 any affectation of infallibility, because in matters of art 
 criticism authority has little foundation beyond simple 
 self-assertion. You can prove scientific matters posi- 
 tively, but the scientific element is not the soul of art, 
 and when you come to consider the really artistic 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 element which is the soul of art, you will find that it 
 perpetually eludes the measuring-tapes of positivism. 
 What, for example, are the artistic merits of Turner? 
 Truth of form ? Certainly not ; his merits were in fine 
 arrangements of forms and colours, blended into those 
 admirable unities which constitute his pictures. 
 
 But who in the world can prove that he was a fine 
 composer, or a fine colourist ? that his arrangements 
 were good? that his pictures are admirable unities? 
 Nobody can demonstrate these things, which in their 
 very nature are as incapable of demonstration as the 
 beauty of an air in music ; and yet these things are the 
 very essence of art. The writer on art can therefore 
 never speak with the authority which belongs to the 
 teacher of science, who announces what he can prove, 
 and what the hearer can verify for himself. But if a 
 prudent writer on art renounces the claim to authority, 
 he may still hope to deserve the credit which belongs to 
 utility. His opinions, if expressed candidly, may be of 
 some value as a contribution to that general enlighten- 
 ment which constitutes public opinion. The march of 
 Humanity is like a procession by torchlight, in which 
 men see their way by the light given by others and also 
 hold up torches of their own. This is especially neces- 
 sary in artistic matters, where so much is artificial, and 
 where natural truth, even when it is perfectly ascertain- 
 able, is such an insufficient guide. 
 
 I owe much to my predecessor Mr. Thornbury, whose 
 life of Turner, though hastily written, is full of interest- 
 ing material. I have not thought it right to take all 
 the plums out of Mr. Thornbury's book, which will still 
 
X Preface. 
 
 be consulted by those who are interested in Turner, 
 but I thought there was room for another biography- 
 executed more at leisure. I have taken my time about 
 this, and brought it gradually to its present form, 
 believing that it omits nothing of essential importance. 
 Mr. Ruskin's enthusiasm for Turner has also been a 
 valuable help to me ; perhaps all the more valuable that 
 I do not fully share it. I do not, like Mr. Ruskin, con- 
 sider Turner a being of unequalled intellect and the 
 greatest painter of all time; I consider him a man of 
 genius who may be ranked along with other men of 
 genius, but no more. Comparisons, in these matters, 
 are seldom profitable or appropriate ; but the intelligent 
 reader will not misunderstand me when I place Turner 
 side by side with Shelley. They were two of the most 
 poetical, the most learned, and least material of poets 
 each in his own sphere. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Genius and eccentricity. — The birthplace of a landscape-painter. — 
 Turner's birth and circumstances. — Condition of landscape art. — 
 Early educational influences.- -Turner at school. — Paternal en- 
 couragement. — Beginnings in art. — Early study of architecture. — 
 Academic training. — Early practice in portrait-painting. — A pro- 
 fessional commencement.— Turner's luck in life .... 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The young artist. — Dr. Munro. — Girtin and Cozens. — Turner's early 
 work in oU. — Love and disappointment. — Absence of female in- 
 fluence. — A dual life. — Turner a drawing-master . . . -32- 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Turner comes of age. — First northern tour. — Dr. Whitaker. — Turner 
 elected A.R.A. — His diploma picture. — New and Old Gothic. — 
 Professional position in 1800 49, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Kilchurn Castle. — Topography. — Turner's dream pictures. — The 
 topography of poets 65. 
 
xii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Turner elected R.A. — First continental excursion. — Turner and his 
 father. — Pictures of 1806 and 1807. — Turner takes to etching. — 
 Turner as an engraver in mezzotint. — The Liber Studiorum . . 88 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Turner a professor of perspective. — The Trafalgar picture. — First visit 
 to Petworth, 1809. — Pictures of 181 1. — Turner as ■■<. writer on art 
 and nature. — Turner as an observer and critic . . . .118 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 He removes to Queen Anne Street, 1812. — Excursion to Devonshire, 
 1812. — Turner's poetry. — Turner's prose ..... 131 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Turner at Twickenham. — English coast scenery. — Crossing the Brook. 
 — Distances in elder art. — The fascination of the remote. — A second 
 possibility of marriage, 1815.— Dido building Carthage.— Other 
 classical pictures.— Turner and Scott.— Oil pictures of i8i8. — 
 Pictures of 1819.— Rome from the Vatican.— Whitaker's History of 
 Richmondshire 
 
 148 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Transition to colour.— Turner as a traveller.— His system of study . 175 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Rivahy with Wilson.— The Bay of Baife.- The Rivers of England.— 
 Provincial Antiquities. — England and Wales. —The Ports of 
 England.— The ' Cologne.'— Works from sketches by others.— 
 
 Separate plates.— Transactions with Cooke Pictures exhibited in 
 
 1827 
 
 196 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Journey to Italy, 1828. — The Polyphemus.— Death of Turner's 
 father.— The illustrations to Rogers.— Scotland revisited, 1830 . 219 
 
Contents. xiii 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Rivers of Frnnce.— Turner's architecture. — Inaccuracy of other 
 artists. — The Rivers of France — colour. — The Rivers of France — 
 Tumerian charm 236 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. — Turner's technical carelessness. — The 
 Golden Bough. — The Venice pictures. — An American criticism. — 
 French enthusiasm. — Illustrations to Milton. — Mercury and Argus. 
 — The Phryne. — Turner and Mr. Bohn — Switzerland and Italy. — 
 The Agrippina. — Illustrations to ' The Epicurean ' . . . 257 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The Temeraire. — The Bacchus and Ariadne. — The Snovi'-stonn. — 
 The Slave-Ship. — Latter years of Turner. — Pictures of 1842. — Ten- 
 dency to the formless. — Dregs of life. — Last excursion on the Con- 
 tinent. — Disabled. — Turner's death. — Funeral at St. Paul's. — 
 Turner's care for his own fame. — Rivalry vifith Claude . . . 282 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Celebration by Mr. Ruskin. — Ruskin's ' Modern Painters.' — Mr. 
 Ruskin's literary powers. — Mr. Ruskin and the English public. — Mr. 
 Ruskin not the discoverer of Turner. — Criticism and art in words. 
 — The love of effect. — Circumstances of Turner's death. — Mr. 
 Ruskin's estimate of Turner. — Turner and Pre-Raphaelitism. — The 
 criterion of truth. — Distinction between nature and art. — Turner's 
 position in art. — Mystery. — Turner's colour. — Turner's imagination. 
 — Taste. — Resume. — Danger of Turner- worship. — Past and future 
 of landscape-painting 311 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Turner's character and habits. — Turner's manners. — Religion and 
 morality. — Temperance and intemperance. — Turner's generosity. — 
 Turner's will. — Works of art left to the nation. — Conclusion . . 358 
 
 Note. — Mr. Ruskin's Teaching 389 
 
 General Index 391 
 
 Index to Turner's Works alluded to 396 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM TURNER'S SKETCHES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 In an Alpine Valley - .... 94 
 
 Houses on a Southern Shore - - - 178 
 
 Ruined Castle - - - 184 
 
 Boats at Sea in a Breeze . . - . 204 
 
 Rome, Church and Convent of the Quattro Coronati - 220 
 
 City on one of the Rivers of France - - 236 
 
 French Boats near Shore, with a Lowering Sky - 240 
 
 Old Town on the Loire - - - - 254 
 
 Venice ... ... ... 266 
 
THE LIFE OF J. M. W. TURNER, R.A. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Genius and Eccentricity. — The Birthplace of a Landscape-Painter. — 
 Turner's Birth and Circumstances. — Condition of Landscape Art. — 
 Early Educational Influences. — Turner at School. — Paternal Encourage- 
 ment. — Beginnings in Art. — Early Study of Architecture. — Academic 
 Training. — Early Practice in Portrait-Painting. — A Professional Com- 
 mencement. — Turner's Luck in Life. 
 
 The curiosity which desires to know all that can be 
 known about great poets who have enchanted the world 
 for us, is often doomed to two very different kinds of 
 disappointment. Either there is very little to be ascer- 
 tained about the poet which the admirer of his genius 
 would greatly care to know, or else the personal character 
 and history of the poet himself seem inferior to the ideal 
 of him which is suggested by the noble beauty of his 
 works. We are unreasonable in our expectations of 
 general perfection in those who have much delighted us, 
 and enlarged our experience of sublime or sweet emotion. 
 We forget too easily that what seems to us so admirable 
 and wonderful in them, the divine creative power, is 
 often a very costly gift to the mortal who has received it 
 at his birth ; that it tyrannises over him until most of his 
 
 I 
 
2 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 faculties are absorbed in it, and that it entirely destroys 
 that happy equilibrium which enables men to do,- under 
 all circumstances, what public opinion would decide to 
 be precisely reasonable and becoming. The old popular 
 belief in the eccentricity of genius, which sometimes took 
 the form of unsympathising sarcasm or half-contemp- 
 tuous banter, and sometimes, in kinder souls, was the 
 origin of an especial indulgence for many errors and 
 shortcomings, had deeper foundations in the constitution 
 of human nature than certain unimaginative persons of 
 our own generation appear willing to admit. The opinion 
 which tends to prevail at the present day is a reaction 
 from the opinion of our forefathers. They believed that 
 genius implied, if it did not authorise, an independence of 
 common rules which Society would be little disposed to 
 tolerate in people of ordinary endowment. We, on the 
 contrary, like our men of genius to be exactly like other 
 respectable people, both in education and in habits of 
 life, and we like it to be supposed that they can readily 
 conform in all respects to the exigencies of established 
 usage. It is quite true that they do not declare war against 
 Society with the fierce disdain of Byron or the indignant 
 revolt of Shelley, nor do they generally affect any 
 peculiarity of costume ; and yet the greatest of them still 
 cherish, though in unobtrusive ways, the independence 
 dear to their kind. It is needless to mention names, but 
 if the reader will think over the short list of men of real 
 genius in the present age, he will at once perceive that 
 their conformity to usage is only external ; that their 
 contact with the ordinary world is, as Stuart Mill said, 
 
Genius and Eccentricity. 3 
 
 slight and at long intervals, and that there are lives as 
 quietly devoted to high pursuits as that which was led on 
 the mount which reflects itself in the little mere of 
 Rydal. 
 
 The life of Turner, which I am now to relate, is the 
 life of a man of genius ; and it so happens that certain 
 influences, more or less obvious or subtle, conspired 
 together to push this man outside the ordinary round of 
 English existence, and to make him what is called 
 eccentric. It would be well, perhaps, if we knew exactly 
 what we mean by eccentricity, when we apply it to such 
 a life as his. Do we mean that the eccentric man has no 
 centre, or that his centre does not happen to coincide 
 with ours ? If we mean the first we imply censure, for 
 every man's efforts ought to be centred on a chief pur- 
 pose and limited by the circumference of a conscious 
 self-restraint ; but if, in calling any one eccentric, we 
 mean only that his centre does not happen precisely to 
 coincide with ours, then we simply state a fact which 
 implies no more moral condemnation than if we said 
 that the circle of his horizon was not what we see from 
 our own windows. The existence of Turner had two 
 centres, like an ellipse, and to these he remained true to 
 the end of his days. He had the passion for art — that 
 is, for expressing himself in art — and he had the far 
 commoner passion for accumulating money. Round 
 these two centres his existence moved with the regu- 
 larity of the ' unhasting, unresting ' stars. The ultimate 
 results were a great fame and a great fortune, and such 
 a colossal '(euvre' as no other landscape-painter ever left 
 behind him, if both quantity and quality are considered. 
 
 I — 2 
 
The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 The celebrity of the great artist is still increasing steadily. 
 Every year adds to the number of those who are culti- 
 vated enough to understand him, and who can, at least 
 in some degree, measure the breadth of the abyss which 
 separates such performance as his from commonplace 
 work in art. 
 
 The Muse of Painting, if we may imagine- such a 
 sister amongst the immortal nine, would scarcely, per- 
 haps, if the matter had been left to her own wisdom, 
 unaided by the counsels of Minerva, have chosen for 
 the birthplace of the prince of landscape-painters the 
 street where he first saw light. She might have chosen 
 rather, if only partially wise, some beautiful city, had 
 there been any such in the eighteenth century upon the 
 earth, whose fair palaces of marble rose in purest per- 
 fection above groves of the oriental plane, on the last 
 wave of green land between the purple mountains and 
 the cerulean southern sea. In such a birthplace the 
 marvellous child might have inhaled beauty like the air, 
 and as he grew from infancy to youth, from youth to 
 manhood, might have accumulated in his memory a 
 great store of wonderful unpainted pictures, to be realised 
 by him afterwards in his art, when the skill in it came 
 to him with time. Or, again, had the Muse been utterly 
 unwise and left to her own unwisdom, she might have 
 placed the child far away from all cities whatever, in the 
 heart of some lovely land in the happiest of climates, 
 where, day by day, the warm sun awakened a sparse 
 Arcadian population, nestling here and there in the 
 windings of their sweet vales. A foolish Muse might 
 have fancied that the lovelier the land round about the 
 
The Birthplace of a Landscape-Painter. 5 
 
 child, the fairer would be his performance ; that if his 
 eyes were saturated with beauty through every sunny 
 day and every moonlight night, he would produce beauty 
 by necessity, as a barrel will yield you wine if it has 
 been filled with it after the vintage. 
 
 But however Providence acts with us, whether it be by 
 determining specially where a child is to be born.or simply 
 by so arranging matters that there is a certain proportion 
 of babies of genius, whose faculties will be developed if 
 circumstances happen to be propitious, and will remain 
 forever undeveloped if circumstances are unfavourable, the 
 plain fact is that Turner was born in a situation really 
 much better for him than those which we have just been 
 imagining, or than any other which we should have been 
 likely to imagine. It is, I know, a common error to con- 
 clude that circumstances have been favourable when men 
 have achieved their success by vigorously contending 
 against them, but in this instance there is little danger of 
 our falling into that mistake. Landscape-painting is the 
 most recent of the fine arts, yet it is already old enough 
 for us to have ascertained the social conditions which pro- 
 duce it. We know, for example, quite positively that 
 uneducated persons who live in the midst of beautiful 
 scenery are entirely insensible to its beauty. If we try to 
 find out, by talkirig with them, what their impressions 
 and sentiments really are, the result is always the same : 
 they always show that what they mean by a beautiful 
 country is a country where the land is productive, and 
 that an ugly country, in their language, means simply a 
 poor one. In those exceptional cases, where the rustic 
 mind may have some dim, unuttered sentiment of natural 
 
The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 beauty, it remains satisfied with the sight of the natural 
 objects themselves, and never attempts to express its 
 feeling about them in works of art. Theodore Rousseau 
 was one day painting a study of an oak-tree from nature, 
 when a peasant accosted him and asked, with the usual 
 disdain which rustics have for landscape-painters, what 
 was the use of making an ' image ' of the tree, since he 
 could look at the tree itself if he cared to see it? This 
 is exactly the rustic opinion about the uselessness of' 
 landscape art, when by accident the bucolic mind be- 
 comes aware that such an art exists. We may conclude, 
 therefore, at once, that a landscape-painter must either 
 be born in a town or else under the influences of a town. 
 The next question is, whether it will be an advantage to 
 him, as a landscape-painter, that he should see much 
 human or architectural beauty in the town, such as was 
 visible in the most glorious cities of Greece or Italy 
 when men's bodies and surroundings looked their best, 
 when beautiful costumes were often to be seen, and yet 
 more beautiful nakedness, and when the poor man might 
 lounge in the sunshine, and feast his eyes with the glory 
 of palaces and temples, and radiant, god-like images, on 
 which no soot-specks fell ? Here, again, the true answer 
 to the question is not the answer which would naturally 
 first occur. When the beauty of cities and of human 
 life in them is sufficiently perfect to satisfy the taste of a 
 town-born artist, he will probably paint the figure, and 
 feel but little inducement to indulge the landscape 
 passion, if even it could become strong enough under 
 such circumstances to produce any conscious longing 
 The city, then, where the landscape-painter is born, 
 
Turner's Birth and Circumstances. 
 
 ought not to be very beautiful ; it ought rather to be 
 decidedly unsatisfying to the artistic sense, and the 
 people in it ought not to be beautiful either. It would 
 be well, too, if it were vast, so that the young genius 
 should not escape from it too easily into the country, but 
 be tormented with that aching of the heart which is the 
 nostalgia of the lovers of Nature. Besides these con- 
 ditions there is one which is absolutely essential — the 
 child must be so situated that it will meet with the work 
 of some previous landscape-painter ; for art is always in 
 great part a tradition, even when practised by the most 
 original geniuses. There has never been an instance of 
 a great artist suddenly arising in a community outside 
 of artistic tradition. We speak loosely of artists who 
 have lived in isolation, but the really isolated artist has 
 never existed. This is so true that it is true even of the 
 specialties of art. An accomplished landscape-painter 
 could never be formed where there had not been a pre- 
 vious gradual development of landscape-painting to pre- 
 pare the way for him, and educate him, even although 
 the community were rich in sculptors and figure-painters. 
 
 The early circumstances of Turner were apparently 
 unfavourable, but in reality most favourable, to his de- 
 velopment. He was the only son of a London barber, 
 and born in a narrow central street called Maiden Lane, 
 which many of my readers will no doubt have visited 
 for its connection with his name. The date of his birth 
 is the 23rd of April, 1775. 
 
 It was a great thing for him that the place of his birth 
 should be a city, and a large ugly English city, where 
 works of art might be seen occasionally, but where the 
 
•8 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 sense of beauty could never be satisfied by the aspect of 
 the streets and people. Equally favourable were the 
 social circumstances of his birth. He was born exactly 
 in that rank of society where artistic genius had, at that 
 time, the best chance of opening, like a safely-sheltered 
 flower. To perceive the full truth of this, we have nothing 
 to do but imagine him born in anyother than the humbler 
 middle class. If his father had been a little lower in the 
 world, the boy would have been fixed down to some kind 
 of humble labour from his childhood, and held down to 
 it afterwards by want ; this at least is so probable as to 
 be almost a certainty, for Turner's genius discovered 
 itself very gradually, and he had no explosive originality 
 at the beginning. But what is quite a certainty is, the 
 stifling of his gift in any English family of that time which 
 had the slightest pretension to aristocracy. If Turner had 
 been what is called a gentleman, he would have been 
 exposed to influences which are as deadly to artistic 
 genius as an unbreathable gas is to the animal organism. 
 Without any open discussion of the subject, without so 
 much as one act of rebellion on his part, he would have 
 known, by the subtle instinctive perception of youth, that 
 the pursuit of art involved a mysterious degradation, and 
 in some vague, undefinable way, was disapproved of with 
 wonderful unanimity by the public opinion of his class. 
 The gentry of that time were of two kinds, the educated 
 and the uneducated ; the latter in strong majority. But 
 it so happened that the education which was given to such 
 as knew anything at all, left them as ignorant of the fine 
 arts as their untaught, rustic brothers, whilst it gave them 
 in addition, the pride of classical learning, from the serene 
 
Condition of Landscape Art. 
 
 height of which it seemed to them that the fine arts were 
 farther than ever beneath them. The calm conviction of 
 the classically educated gentleman that he knew every- 
 thing compatible with the noble life, and that all studies 
 but his own were degrading, was more deadly to artistic 
 genius in his class than the simple stupidity of a purely 
 animal existence. So effectually did the prejudices of the 
 age repress the artistic sympathies, that even its brightest 
 and clearest intelligences were unable to understand 
 painting. Byron scorned it utterly, as became a well- 
 educated nobleman ; Scott, having a kinder and less 
 scornful disposition, did not express any open contempt 
 for it, but there is not a trace of evidence in his volumin- 
 ous writings that the influences of painting had ever been 
 really felt by him, or had any share in his education. The 
 ideas about art and artists which prevailed in the 
 England of our grandfathers were simply these. It was 
 believed that painting had a practical use in handing 
 down to posterity the likenesses of important people, and 
 artists were considered to be clever workmen who gave 
 proof of a certain utility to society in doing this. Besides 
 this appreciation of portraits, there existed a futile kind 
 of connoisseurship, which the higher intelligence of the 
 time despised without trying to substitute anything 
 better for it, and ' Dutch drolleries ' or ' conversation 
 pieces ' afforded some amusement in drawing-rooms. 
 Beyond these ideas the general mind of the age was a 
 perfect blank, so far as the art of painting was concerned ; 
 and it was not possible that the gentry of that day should 
 think of it as a medium for the expression of noble 
 imagination, or rare knowledge, or great thoughts. 
 
10 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Perhaps the lower middle class, in which Turner was 
 born, had not any clearer understanding of the subject, 
 but at any rate it was not prevented from touching 
 brushes and colour by the dread of losing its gentility. 
 William Turner, the artist's father, had used a soft 
 badger-brush for daily lathering of people's chins, and • 
 did not see any reason why his son should not use a 
 tool not much unlike it upon canvas. The father had 
 earned his living by manual labour of a skilful descrip- 
 tion, and so, in another way, might the son. It was of 
 course impossible for Turner's father, or for any one else, 
 to foresee the future greatness of his child ; for he was 
 not precocious, as Landseer was, in the kind of art which 
 he afterwards pursued. The elder Turner probably 
 looked upon painting simply as a profession which 
 might turn out to be lucrative, if the youth came to be 
 skilful in portraiture. 
 
 The date of Turner's birth, as well as the locality of 
 it, was highly favourable to the career he had before him. 
 The whole art of landscape-painting had been prepared 
 for the arrival of a great genius, who, after mastering 
 all that had been done already, should extend its bound- 
 aries in the realm of nature ; and yet at the same time 
 the art was still young enough to leave ample scope for 
 originality. Claude Lorrain had opened men's eyes to 
 the beauty of rich sylvan masses, to the poetry of far 
 faint distances, and to the glory of the summer light on 
 golden southern afternoons. He had shown, too, what 
 a charm might be given to landscape-painting by taste 
 and skill in composition, by a musical sense of harmony 
 in forms and tones. But Claude, fortunately for his 
 
Condition of Landscape Art. ii 
 
 successors, had never been an exhaustive genius, had 
 never been tormented by that restless spirit of discovery 
 which takes the freshness from so many fields. The 
 other well-known landscape-painters, Poussin and Sal- 
 vator, had opened other ranges of feeling than the 
 amenity of Claude, but they had contented themselves 
 with a very limited expression. It was much, however, 
 for a successor that the notion of a possible sublimity 
 in pure landscape should have been already exemplified 
 and received. When Turner began to work, the two 
 ideas that landscape might be beautiful, as in Claude, or 
 sublime, as in Salvator Rosa, were so familiar to the 
 general mind that every tolerably educated person had 
 associated one of these names with the loveliness of 
 nature, and the other with its wild grandeur. If the 
 novelists of those days had to describe some rich and 
 pleasant scene under a mellow light, they said_Jh_at it 
 was such a scene as Claude would have loved to depict ; 
 and if they wanted to convey an appalling sense of 
 savageness when the story led them into a rocky country, 
 they invoked the name of Salvator. Besides these two 
 leading notes of beauty and sublimity, a third note had 
 been already struck in the older landscape, that of 
 homely, rural peace. Cuyp had painted the quiet Dutch 
 meadow-lands in their own sunshine, and had proved 
 that no scenery is so humble as to be beneath the atten- 
 tion of an artist. A whole company of clever Dutchmen 
 had painted their muddy seas, flat shores, and more or 
 less picturesque shipping. All these men, true pioneers 
 of the free modern art which makes the whole visible 
 world its studio, had gone before Turner in their several' 
 
12 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 directions, and cleared his various paths. The technical 
 art of painting was also prepared by former experience, 
 so that he had simply to learn it, and was not called 
 upon to invent it. Hundreds of able men had used oil- 
 colour soundly and well before the birth of Turner, who, 
 indeed, never equalled the best of them in the handicraft 
 of their common art. In water-colour his position was • 
 more fortunate still, for his predecessors taught him the 
 safe beginnings of a good method, and led him just up 
 to that point in education from which a man of genius 
 can go forward by himself and brilliantly complete his 
 art. Paul Sandby and Cozens prepared his way, doing 
 all for him that was necessary at the time, and inducing 
 him to adopt simple methods and quiet cplouringj^more 
 favourable to ultimate mastery than the showy tricks 
 and glaring pigments which have since become so 
 general. 
 
 The art of painting, when in its perfection, is always 
 composed of three elements. It is one of the forms of 
 poetry, but besides that it is a science and a handicraft. 
 The science is the knowledge of the appearance of 
 things, the handicraft is the workmanlike use of colour. 
 Turner was born with the poetic faculty, but this would 
 have been sterile without teachers who could help him in 
 his advance to skill and knowledge. The circumstances 
 of his education were in many ways strongly in his 
 favour, and when we know what he did in his maturity, 
 and how his youth was passed, we can easily trace the 
 influence of his different early studies and occupations 
 in the remarkable catholicity of his taste and the variety 
 of his performance. His mind was like a garden in 
 
Early Educational Influences. 1 3 
 
 which many seeds were sown at the right time, some by 
 his father's care, but many others also by mere accident, 
 and as the soil was very fertile and rich, most of them 
 grew up vigorously in due season. There was not much 
 order in Turner's knowledge at first, but he endeavoured, 
 with partial success, to introduce some orderly arrange- 
 ment at a later period of his life. 
 
 The first influence is exercised by the father and 
 mother. In Turner's case that of the mother can only 
 have been hereditary, through the blood, for she became 
 insane and was removed from his father's house. Even 
 while she remained there the incipient evil declared 
 itself in her violent temper. It is said that she belonged 
 to a family of squires, the Marshalls of Shelford Manor 
 Nottingham ; but she was born at Islington, and was 
 probably, even before her marriage, in a comparatively 
 humble rank of life, notwithstanding her descent from 
 Shelford. The question whether Turner's mother was, 
 or was not, what we mean in English by the word ' lady,' 
 has an interest for us with regard to him which is quite 
 independent of genealogy, though genealogy is interest- 
 ing also. A lady is a woman who clearly understands, 
 and consistently practises, the refinements of a highly- 
 civilised existence ; and the most real distinction be- 
 tween a lady, and a woman who is not a lady, is that 
 one is more civilised than the other, and more de- 
 termined to preserve the habits of a high civilisation, 
 both in her own person and in all those over whom she 
 has authority. These habits are not simply habits of 
 expense ; it is cheaper to remain sober than to get 
 drunk, and yet it is more ladylike to be sober. It does 
 
^14 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 not cost more money to speak good English than bad, 
 or to be gentle than rude ; yet a lady always, from pre- 
 ference, speaks correctly and has gentle manners. It so 
 happens by the force of circumstances that there are 
 more ladies in the upper classes than in the lower, and 
 that there is a severer public opinion in the upper classes 
 about most of the things which, taken together, consti- 
 tute civilisation, because it is a fault in rich people (who 
 have such great facilities) not to be clean, and cultivated 
 and polite, when it may only be a misfortune in poor 
 ones. There is, then, really such a thing as ladyhood, 
 and it is one of the strongest of civilising influences. 
 Turner, there is reason to believe, notwithstanding the 
 position of his mother's ancestry, never came under that 
 influence, and the want of it may have been the great 
 reason why he was never a perfectly civilised man. We 
 know really nothing about his mother, except that she 
 had a bad temper, that her home was an unhappy one, 
 that she became insane and was removed from it. Of 
 his father we know more. William Turner, the barber, 
 was a Devonshire man who had settled in London. His 
 great characteristics appear to have been the especial 
 virtues of the middle class, industry and economy. In 
 teaching his son these two things he helped him in the 
 artistic career itself, for without the most persistent 
 industry the painter would never have mastered his 
 art, and without the strictest economy in early years 
 he would never have been able to pursue it with 
 sufficient independence for the attainment of greatness. 
 Thus William Turner gave his son both a sword and 
 a shield for the battle of life, and if we were writing 
 
Turner at School. 15 
 
 an allegory we might say that on the sword was en- 
 graven the word Diligentia, and on the shield Parsi- 
 monia. Few young men need these virtues so much as 
 a young painter, for his art bristles all over with diffi- 
 culties, and until fame is won he may at any time be 
 compelled to abandon it from sheer necessity, against 
 which there is no defence but thrift. Happily for 
 Turner his father cared also for his education, and sent 
 him to school at Brentford when he was ten years old. 
 The boy went to school afterwards in London, and lastly 
 at Margate. What this school education did for him 
 may not appear much if we look at it as men of very 
 advanced culture look upon education, for it is certain 
 that Turner showed few signs of literary training. He 
 never, in after-life, knew any language at all. He did not 
 know any foreign language, and he never mastered his 
 native tongue. There is nothing surprising in this. The 
 whole class to which Turner belonged was then, and is 
 still, very imperfectly acquainted with the nobler half of 
 the English tongue. ' The ignorance in this department,' 
 says Professor Seeley, ' of those who leave school at four- 
 teen or sixteen, is deplorable. It is far more than a mere 
 want of precision in the notions attached to words. It is 
 far more also than a mere ignorance of uncommon and 
 philosophical words. There is a large class of words in 
 the language, originally perhaps philosophical, but which 
 have passed so completely into the common parlance of 
 well-educated people that they cannot now be called 
 philosophical, but which remain to the class I speak of 
 perfectly obscure. The consequence is that such people, 
 in reading not merely abstruse books, but books in the 
 
1 6 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 smallest degree speculative or generalising, constantly 
 mistake the meaning of what they read. It is not that 
 they understand their author imperfectly ; they totally 
 misunderstand him, and suppose him to say something 
 which he does not say. It is no wonder that such per-, 
 sons have no turn for reading.' This is quite a true 
 account of the condition of literary culture in the class 
 which is educated as Turner was in those three schools 
 which he attended in his boyhood. English is not 
 really taught in such schools, and the boys have 
 not the time which would be necessary to the 
 mastery of any other language, so they leave with- 
 out knowing any language whatever. In a few very 
 rare cases a taste for literature stimulates them to 
 learn English in after-life ; but the true, strong phalanx 
 of the class goes at once energetically into business, and 
 remains for ever totally incapable either of using the 
 higher English itself, or of understanding it when used 
 by others. And in addition to the general unculture of 
 his class Turner had a personal difficulty, in his own 
 mental idiosyncrasy. He might have been taught English 
 by a very patient and able master, entirely devoted to 
 him, but the master would have found the work of in- 
 struction a heavy undertaking. The truth is that Turner 
 was one of those persons who seem born to be illiterate, 
 He had not the literary faculty. To the end of his life 
 he was never sure of getting safely to the end of a written 
 sentence. He never was able to spell. And still, not- 
 withstanding this candid admission of his deficiency, we 
 think it evident that his schooling must have established 
 a wide difference between him and a lad who has never 
 
Turner at School. 17 
 
 been taught anything at all, such as a Suffolk ploughboy 
 before the invention of School Boards. His years of 
 schooling did not make him a linguist, but it is highly 
 probable that they conveyed a good many facts to his 
 mind, and a certain quantity of legends and traditions, 
 which, to a poetical temperament like his, are quite as 
 valuable as facts. Some of the great classical traditions 
 must have reached him in this way ; he must have heard 
 of Greece and Rome, and been brought nearer to antiquity 
 than those disinherited ones who live exclusively in the 
 present. He must have learned, too, that England is 
 not the world. It requires little knowledge of geography 
 to be aware that the Alps exist, that there are such lakes 
 as Como and Lucerne, such rivers as the Seine and the 
 Loire ; and yet this knowledge, inevitable as it seems to 
 all educated persons, is by no means universal, even now. 
 If Turner had never been sent to school at all, it is quite 
 possible that he might have remained ignorant, that his 
 curiosity might never have been awakened. His father 
 came from South Molton, a Devonshire village. If he had 
 remained there, and not cared to educate the child, the 
 boyish imagination of Turner would never have wan- 
 dered over the noblest scenery of Europe. It is the 
 dreams of youth which become the realities of manhood. 
 Let us not, then, undervalue the schoblirig which opened 
 wide fields for dreaming to a boy of such an imaginative 
 terriperament. 
 
 The future landscape-painter was fortunate in the 
 localities of two out of his three schools — Brentford, by 
 one of the richest parts of the Thames, then much less 
 populous than it is now, and Margate, on the sea-shore. 
 
 2 
 
i8 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Think of the difference between two such places as these 
 and a place like Rugby, for example, where Dr. Arnold 
 could find absolutely nothing to gratify his instinct for 
 natural beauty ! I have no desire to attach an exag- 
 gerated importance to the circumstances of my hero's 
 youth, and should prefer, if possible, to steer clear of 
 that ancient error of biographers which prophesies after 
 the event, and shows how the kind gods watched over the 
 great man's infancy, and led him from strength to strength. 
 But without idealising the story of a life, we may and 
 must attribute an enormous importance to the influences 
 which affected its earlier years. The power of such in- 
 fluences depends on the inborn susceptibilities. When 
 the idiosyncrasy is keenly alive to external nature, the 
 scenes amidst which youth is passed leave their impress 
 to the close of life. Every reader of these pages who 
 has the "landscape instinct knows this by his own ex- 
 perience. He remembers every hill and every hollow in 
 the land of his boyhood, and if, luckily, there was a 
 stream there, he remembers every sleepy pool and every 
 babbling shallow. Even the very stones are like friends 
 to him, and he pardons the hardness of their hearts. In 
 the case of Turner, we know quite certainly that he 
 became a great painter of sea and river, especially of the 
 sea-coast, and of stately and noble rivers, such as the 
 Seine and the Loire. It is, therefore, a probability 
 which closely approaches certainty, that the Thames at 
 Brentford, and the sea and coast at Margate, were not 
 without influence upon his destiny, in determining the 
 tendency of his affections. It is known, too, that he be- ' 
 gan to draw by instinct in his school-days, and that he 
 
Paternal Encouragement. ig 
 
 tried to imitate what he saw. There is a story that his 
 first artistic attempt which attracted the notice of his 
 father was a copy of an heraldic Hon, which he had 
 made from memory, having seen the original in the 
 house of one of his father's customers. This beginning 
 is interesting as a proof that, even in boyhood, he felt 
 some reliance upon the faculty which was the mainstay 
 of his future work, for without memory a painter of land- 
 scape effect is like a carpenter without wood. 
 
 The elder Turner at once perceived that there were 
 artistic faculties in his boy ; and instead of doing all he 
 could to thwart them, as is the usual habit of parents, he 
 determined to encourage them, and give his boy what- 
 ever help might be attainable. Surely this circumstance, 
 that his father was a friend and not an enemy to his 
 genius, counts for much amongst the many favourable 
 powers which ,led Turner to wealth and fame. The 
 ather was relatively an enlightened person with regard 
 to the fine arts. It was a great thing at that time, when 
 the English school was so little encouraged, to know 
 that Art was alive in England, and to be at all hopeful 
 about the future career of a young man who dedicated 
 himself to such a pursuit. Even in our own day, when 
 so much noise has been made about modern art by 
 picture-dealers and writers in the newspapers, there are 
 still millions of people in the country who are either 
 entirely ignorant of its existence, or else consider you 
 eccentric and unpractical if you take any interest in it. 
 The older Turner, like the Florentine barber in Romola, 
 lived in a centre of culture, and though Maiden Lane is 
 not in appearance more beautiful or artistic than some 
 
 2 — 2 
 
20 The Life of J. M. W. Ttirner. 
 
 street in Manchester or Birmingham, it is even yet, and 
 was far more decidedly at that time, much closer to the 
 artistic centre of England. It is known positively that 
 Stothard went to get his hair cut by the barber in Maiden 
 Lane, and that the barber and his client talked together 
 about art, for William Turner said to Stothard, ' My son 
 is going to be a painter.' The barber's shop was near 
 Somerset House, and not very far from the studio of 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds. It is not unreasoaable to suppose 
 that, at a time when artists lived much nearer to Covent 
 Garden than they generally do at the present day, the . 
 elder Turner would be brought into contact with others 
 besides Stothard. A contemporary of the artist, whose 
 name has not been preserved, said that the boy began 
 his professional career very early, by hanging little water- 
 colour drawings round the entrance to his father's shop, 
 the prices being duly marked upon them, and not 
 exceeding three shillings for each separate work of art. 
 Supposing this to be true, and it is quite according to 
 the character of both father and son, who knew the 
 value of three shillings, we consider that it was an 
 excellent thing for the young artist. It was certainly a 
 very humble kind of publicity, and yet sufficient for a 
 stimulus, and much more encouraging than being refused 
 at the Academy exhibition. Not all the Academicians 
 united had power enough to close that other little 
 exhibition round the barber's door. If there were a few 
 sales, they must have been an immense encouragement 
 to a poor boy— quite enough to keep up an ardent 
 interest in his work. 
 
 About this time he copied Paul Sandby, thus laying 
 
Beginnings in Art. 2r 
 
 the foundation of his own future excellence in water- 
 colour much more securely than if he had tried to copy 
 one of our brilliant modern water-colour men. He also 
 began to work seriously from nature, no longer as a 
 schoolboy amuses himself with sketching, but in the 
 temper of an incipient artist. A boyish friendship with 
 Girtin, the young genius who might have been a rival if 
 he had lived past early manhood, strengthened young 
 Turner in his artistic determinations, by preserving him 
 from too much solitude in his pursuit. Girtin and Turner 
 worked together at the trade of colouring prints : dull 
 work, perhaps, for two great geniuses as those boys really 
 were, and yet excellent practice for beginners in the 
 technical business of water-colour. Neither of the two 
 friends was likely so far to forget the culture of his own 
 abilities as to settle down permanently to the mechanical 
 handicraft of art without aspiring to higher things, so 
 they both, in times of comparative liberty, made simple 
 landscapes in the topographic fashion of those days. 
 From the age of thirteen, when Turner left the last of 
 his three schools, he pursued the practical work of art, 
 in one way or another, almost without intermission till 
 old age. 
 
 The boy did not, at this time, remain exclusively in 
 London. He went to Bristol occasionally to visit a 
 friend of his father, a Mr. Harraway, for whom he drew 
 his own portrait. In London he was never without useful 
 help, both in instruction and employment. Porden, an 
 architect, employed him to add water-colour backgrounds 
 to his architectural designs. When these happened to 
 be country houses, Turner would have a certain limited 
 
22 TJte Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 scope for the exercise of his talent in landscape, and we 
 find that he availed himself of such opportunities very 
 willingly, and was highly appreciated by Mr. Porden, 
 who offered to take him as an apprentice without the 
 usual premium. One of his educators was a perspective 
 draughtsman, Thomas Malton, who lived in Long Acre. 
 Turner afterwards said that he learned perspective from 
 Malton, but Malton complained of his pupil's incapacity, 
 and took him back to his father's house as unteachable. 
 On a second trial Turner got on no better, and was 
 again returned upon his father's hands. There is nothing 
 in this which need surprise us in the least. The science 
 of perspective, as taught geometrically by Malton, 
 lies quite outside of the purely artistic powers, and 
 Turner's genius was essentially and exclusively artistic. 
 Scientific perspective is a pursuit which may amuse or 
 occupy a mathematician, but the stronger the artistic 
 faculty in a painter the less he is likely to take to it, for 
 it exercises other faculties than his. Besides this, he 
 feels instinctively that he can do very well without it. 
 He learns natural perspective mainly by the eye, and 
 when he works from imagination he simply sees the 
 objects in his own mental vision, and draws them as he 
 sees them, very much as they would appear to him in 
 nature. The failure of the young Turner to learn 
 scientific perspective is therefore quite in harmony with 
 what we know of his intellectual constitution, and need 
 not surprise us more than his life-long difficulty about 
 language. 
 
 The young artist at this time was brought into still closer 
 connection with architecture. He had already, as we have 
 
Academic Training: 23 
 
 seen, worked industriously upon architectural drawings, 
 by surrounding the buildings with sky and landscape of 
 his own, and in this he had given satisfaction to his em- 
 ployers. A step further in the same direction might 
 make him an architectural draughtsman, and possibly, in 
 the future, an architect. His father decided that this step 
 should be taken, and the boy was placed, at the age of 
 fourteen or fifteen, in Mr. Hardwick's office. This may 
 be considered one of the most fortunate circumstances of 
 his life. The architectural labours, which he went through 
 with his usual diligence, must have been useful to him 
 afterwards when he introduced architecture into his works, 
 which he did very frequently ; but besides this Mr. Hard- 
 wick had a lively appreciation of artistic talent, saw evi- 
 dence of it in his young pupil, and said that he ought to 
 go and study at the Royal Academy. There are differ- 
 ences of opinion amongst landscape-painters about the 
 utility of Academic training to an artist who desires to 
 pursue their branch of the profession. Some landscape- 
 painters say the Academic training is of little use to them, 
 or that it is certainly not so useful as studies from land- 
 scape-nature out of doors ; others believe that the work 
 done in Academies, though it has so little apparent con- 
 nection with landscape, is a better preparation for the 
 future work of a landscape-painter than the premature 
 study of trees, and hills, and water. There are reasons in 
 favour of the latter opinion which are not obvious at first 
 sight, but they are of a kind which the most intelligent 
 artists are the most likely to estimate justly. There is an 
 almost universal illusion that landscape-painting is com- 
 paratively easy, an illusion which is based upon the truth 
 
24 The Life of J. M. W. Ttirner. 
 
 that accurate drawing is not essential to a landscape- 
 painter. There are, however, other qualities than mere 
 accuracy in good landscape-painting, and other difficul- 
 ties in the representation of nature than a simple definition 
 of its forms. The greatest difficulty of this branch of art 
 may be expressed in a single word — complexity. The 
 complexity of natural landscape is such that it cannot be 
 understood, and therefore cannot be interpreted, without 
 powers both of analysis and of synthesis which a young 
 student is not likely to have acquired. A young student, 
 in the presence of landscape-nature, is bewildered by the 
 intricacy and abundance of the material before him ; he 
 requires a simpler model to begin with, for he ought to 
 pass from the simple to the complex ; and besides sim- 
 plicity in the model, he requires permanence of effect. 
 In a climate so changeable as that of England, not 
 only do the effects change from hour to hour, and 
 in distant scenery from minute to minute ; but there is 
 never any probability that if you go to a place on three 
 successive days, exactly at the same moment, you will 
 find your first effect again. Every one knows how 
 entirely different a place looks at different times, but the 
 landscape-painter alone feels this changeableness as an 
 inconvenience to his studies. To the mature and accom- 
 plished artist, who works from memory, aided by rapid 
 notes, the changeableness of nature is an additional 
 source of interest in his observations ; to the beginner, it 
 is one of the most serious hindrances which can be 
 imagined. Now the study of the human figure, as it is 
 pursued everywhere in academies, avoids both these dif- 
 ficulties of complexity and changeableness, whilst it 
 
Early Study of Architecture. 25 
 
 thoroughly educates the eye to the perception of line, 
 projection, and colour. It does not educate the special 
 faculty of the landscape-painter, which is a peculiar kind 
 of memory, but it prepares him for his future work by a 
 steady training in the elementary business of art ; and 
 thus, by giving him the knowledge and power which all 
 painters must have in common (knowledge of objects and 
 power to represent them), leaves him free, in after-years, 
 to concentrate his attention more especially upon the 
 particular culture which will be needed for his own 
 career. This, I believe, is a fair statement of the advan- 
 tages of Academic study to a landscape-painter, so far 
 as it goes ; yet it might be carried farther without 
 exaggeration. No one who is practically acquainted 
 with the subject will deny that a figure, placed in a cer- 
 tain light, is as much an object under an effect as a near 
 mountain in clear weather ; it is, therefore, an initiation 
 in the laws of effect as well as in those of form and 
 colour. Still more decidedly may effect be studied in a 
 gallery of statues, which is sure to exhibit permanently 
 many of the most delicate phenomena of light and 
 shade. You have not, it is true, in living figures or 
 statues, those sudden and surprising revolutions of 
 colour, which are produced in mountain scenery by 
 changing effects of light ; and it is better, in the early 
 study of phenomena so difficult to account for, that the 
 mind should not find itself confronted, just at first, by 
 almost insoluble problems. What we maintain is, that 
 Academic study is the best general initiation in the art 
 of painting, because it gives the best opportunities for a 
 rational advance in study, from the simple to the com- 
 
26 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 plex, from what is permanent enough to be copied quietly 
 to what is so transient that it can only be rendered with 
 the help of the memory. To be a pupil of the Royal 
 Academy was, therefore, the best thing which could 
 have happened to Turner in his youth, even though 
 he was not to be a figure-painter in after-life. It 
 may be regretted, perhaps, that the Academy did not 
 take more pains to impress upon the minds of its pupils 
 the necessity, or at least the desirableness, of painting 
 their pictures so as to make them last : but neither 
 Turner nor Reynolds learned their suicidal habits in tech- 
 nical matters from Academic tradition : it was their own 
 fatal ingenuity in after-life which led them to discover the 
 arts by which a picture may be so painted that it will be- 
 come a ruin during the lifetime of the artist. The 
 Academic tradition of oil-painting is safe enough, so far 
 as permanence is concerned. A few well-known and 
 verypermanent pigments are commonly used by students, 
 most of them being the cheap and durable earths ; nor is 
 there anything in the Academic manner of using them 
 which necessarily leads to the destruction of the work. 
 But why need we argue in generalities with reference to 
 the technical education of an artist whose works are here 
 to bear testimony themselves ? Turner began by paint- 
 ing soundly in oil ; his unsound work belongs to his full 
 maturity. Weknow on excellent authority — the authority 
 of the owner — that the portrait which Turner painted of 
 himself, at the age of seventeen, is still in a perfect state 
 of preservation. The pigments used in that portrait, and 
 the manner of applying them, were: alike in accordance 
 with the Academic tradition of the time. Another 
 
Early Practice in Portrait-Painting. 27 
 
 portrait of himself, about the same age, in the National 
 collection, is also preserved. We believe, then, that 
 although the Academy neither did nor could do anything 
 to develop the wonderful poetic power which astonished 
 the world much later, it carried forward Turner's early 
 education in a practically safe way, and taught him more 
 than he would have learned by continuing to copy Paul 
 Sandby, or by making sketches of landscape-nature with 
 no better guidance than his own imperfect knowledge. 
 
 A very distinguished living landscape-painter, whose 
 works have deservedly won public favour by their union 
 of a fine sentiment for wild northern scenery with un- 
 common executive skill, earnestly recommended one of 
 his less skilful brethren to make portraits frequently, in 
 order to gain more strength and facility in the representa- 
 tion of objects. The artist who gave this advice had 
 himself painted portraits exclusively for many years, and 
 attributed much of his skill in landscape to this early 
 practice in what may seem a totally different branch of 
 art. The advice was good for the reasons we have given 
 in favour of figure-study generally. The art of painting 
 combines two things, the representation of objects and 
 the representation of effects. A head is a good object to 
 study, because its forms are not accidental, but organic, 
 and because in hair, flesh, and eyes, it presents quite 
 different textures, besides whatever textures of dress 
 there may happen to be about and below the neck. A 
 head may also be well seen as the artist returns to his 
 work day after day, and it may be seen exactly under 
 the same effect of light. It is, at the same time, though 
 an organised object, free from the inconvenience of 
 
28 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 intricacy. The structure of it, so far as it concerns an 
 artist, is simple and easily understood, after a little study 
 of anatomy. On the whole, a human head is the best 
 object to study which is readily accessible everywhere, 
 and this is the reason why it has been recommended, 
 even for the advancement of landscape-painters. 
 
 Turner, with his usual good fortune, which generally 
 led him to do the right thing at the right time, was 
 admitted to the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds, to paint 
 there from that great master's works. At that time he 
 probably intended to be a portrait-painter, for portrait 
 was then the only really lucrative branch of art, and it is 
 very possible that if Reynolds had lived a few years 
 longer, his great personal influence would have kept his 
 young pupil on the path which he himself had so suc- 
 cessfully followed. But it so happened that when Turner 
 entered the President's studio, Sir Joshua was approach- 
 ing the sad close of his labours and his life, so that his 
 personal influence was not continued long enough to 
 make Turner definitively a portrait-painter. 
 
 Another happy circumstance of Turner's early career 
 was that in those days a veryyoung artist had some chance 
 of getting a picture into the Academy exhibition, which is 
 always an immense encouragement in itself, quite indepen- 
 dently of sale. The ninety years which have elapsed since 
 Turner's boyhood have multiplied the number of artists 
 in England so enormously, that few young men in the 
 present day can hope to see their names in the Academy 
 Catalogue. Turner's first picture was exhibited in 1 787, 
 he being then twelve years old. The subject of this picture 
 was Dover Castle. After this beginning he knew that the 
 
Early Practice in Portrait-Painting. 29 
 
 road to fame was open to him, if he had genius and 
 industry. Of genius there was not as yet, nor for long 
 afterwards, the slightest visible evidence, but the habit 
 of industry was already formed. He kept to his early 
 practice of washing in skies and backgrounds for archi- 
 tects. After some years he began to receive certain 
 commissions for topographic drawings, or, in other 
 words, he began to get paid for doing exactly the kind 
 of study which at that time of his life would be the best 
 preparation for his future work in landscape. This topo- 
 graphic business took him to many interesting places, 
 and amongst others to Oxford. The natural vigour of 
 his constitution, one of the many blessings which were 
 favourable to his career, made him a pedestrian from 
 the very beginning, and led him into the habit of taking 
 memoranda as he walked. In this way he began quite 
 early in life to accumulate that prodigious mass of ob- 
 servations which provided the material for his artistic 
 productiveness. His comparatively humble birth, and 
 the simple way of living to which he had always been 
 accustomed, made him contented with whatever accom- 
 modation he chanced to find upon the road. He had 
 never been spoiled by luxury, he had no gentility to 
 maintain ; wherever he went he carried with him the 
 one comfort money cannot procure, the regularity of 
 healthy sensation, the strength of his vigorous youth. 
 There are many situations in life apparently much more 
 fortunate than that of this poor young artist, but there 
 are few in reality so enviable. Entirely free from the 
 time-wasting obligations of people in the upper classes 
 of society, happy with small gains, receiving constant 
 
30 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 and sufficient encouragement, the future lying before 
 him like the vast distances in the real world of his wan- 
 derings, his whole heart in the study of his profession, 
 this young favourite of Nature and of Fortune began 
 his great career. 
 
 There are people stupid enough to wonder how a 
 poor barber's son could ever be a favourite of Fortune, 
 as if the capricious goddess had no other gifts to bestow 
 than money and money's worth. Her gifts are only 
 good for their utility to the life and the work that has 
 to be done in it. With the wealth of Sir George 
 Beaumont, Turner nfight have been an artist like Sir 
 George Beaumont, and gone on to the end of his days 
 plotting where to put his brown tree. Even a little 
 learning in Greek and Latin might have been the total 
 destruction of his genius, by giving him the pride of 
 scholarship and closing his eyes to nature and to art. 
 In this case, then, both poverty and ignorance may have 
 been gracious gifts of Fortune. Nor was she really 
 unkind to him in giving for the residence of his soul 
 that uncomely face and body. Man is an intelligence 
 served by organs, and few intelligences have been better 
 or more regularly served in this way than that of 
 Turner. It is the simple truth that his legs were more 
 useful to him than a pair of horses. His eyes were so 
 good that when he painted he would throw a sketch on 
 the ground, or anywhere, and work easily from it if only 
 it happened to be the right side up. His nervous 
 system was so sound that he could work anywhere and 
 everywhere, and he was perfectly indifferent to those 
 arrangements for comfort which artists usually consider 
 
Turner's Ltick in Life. 31 
 
 essential, and which really are essential to them. His 
 small hand was so delicate that it could draw with a 
 degree of executive refinement which astonishes even 
 opticians, the most refined of all workmen in the pure 
 handicrafts. His arm was so steady that he habitually 
 painted on upright canvases without a mahl-stick, which 
 all other painters find to be necessary. His constitu- 
 tional strength was such that he could work fifteen 
 hours at a stretch without weariness, and his digestion 
 so vigorous that all extremes of living were alike to 
 him. It is true that he was short and plain, but stature 
 and beauty were entirely unnecessary to his v/ork. He 
 was tall enough to paint a large picture, and handsome 
 enough to be himself paintable in the freshness of his 
 youth. Had he been physically more attractive he 
 might have been conscious of the advantage, as he was 
 afterwards conscious of his disadvantage in this respect ; 
 and he might have felt, like other handsome men of 
 genius, a desire to show himself to people, and shine in 
 society, which would probably have been a great hin- 
 drance to his progress, if not absolutely destructive to 
 his originality. Such as Nature made him, and as 
 Fortune placed him, he was exactly so constituted and 
 so situated that his success in art, and his happiness in 
 it, became necessary consequences of that harmony 
 which has been considered the highest of earthl^ felici- 
 ties, the harmony between constitution and conditions. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The young artist. — Dr. Munro. — Girtin and Cozens. — Turner's early work 
 ill oil. — Love and disappointment. — Absence of female influence. — 
 A dual life. — Turner a drawing-master. — He comes of age. — First 
 northern tour. — Dr. Whitaker. — Turner elected A.R.A. — His diploma 
 picture. — New and old CXthic. — Professional position in 1800. 
 
 When as yet a mere boy, at an age when others are 
 preparing for some remotely future career, at an age 
 when many have not yet even made up their minds as 
 to the nature of their life's occupation, Turner was 
 already actively engaged in his profession. At fifteen 
 he exhibited his view of the Archbishop's^ Palace at 
 Lambeth, and studied the same year at Eltham and 
 Uxbridge with a view to next year's exhibition. A year 
 later, with that readiness to seize upon an impression 
 which he retained to the close of life, we find him 
 drawing the Pantheon after the fire, which was exhibited 
 in 1792, the artist being then seventeen years old ; and 
 it may be observed that in a study of his at Malmesbury 
 Abbey, for a drawing which was exhibited that year, he 
 had taken note of a shadow playing on tree-trunks in 
 the same spirit of observation which characterises the 
 memoranda of his fullest maturity. Another of Turner's 
 great permanent characteristics is visible at a very early 
 
The Young Artist. 33 
 
 period of his career. No landscape-painter was ever so 
 wide in range as he was. The exact opposite of Con- 
 stable, whose art was the expression of intense affection 
 for one locality, Turner took an interest in the whole 
 world of landscape, and, therefore, was of necessity a 
 traveller as well as a sketcher or maker of memoranda. 
 Now we have only to inquire into the occupations of his 
 earliest professional years to see at once that he got 
 into the habit of travelling, and had full opportunities 
 for indulging his instincts in that direction, at an age 
 when most young men are confined by school or ap- 
 prenticeship. He began by travelling in England and 
 Wales, and had studied a great variety of scenery before 
 his twentieth year. In 1793, being then eighteen, he 
 was sent by one of his employers. Walker, the publisher 
 of the ' Copper-plate Magazine,' to Kent, Staffordshire, 
 Derbyshire, and Cheshire. His drawings were engraved, 
 even at that early stage in his career — an immense en- 
 couragement to a young artist, from the publicity which 
 engraving gives, and its consequent chances of fame. 
 The exhibitions of the Royal Academy were open to 
 him from his boyhood, and this encouraged him to 
 work in colour, and not to confine himself to simple 
 chiaroscuro drawing for the engravers. Before he was 
 twenty he had penetrated into Wales, very probably 
 from Bristol, and had drawn the river Monach, near the 
 Devil's Bridge, in Cardiganshire ; he had also drawn at 
 Tintern and Great Malvern. In 1794 he exhibited five 
 works, but the next year he exhibited eight, and the 
 year following eleven. At twenty he had drawn 
 Lincoln, Peterborough, and Cambridge, besides views 
 
 3 
 
34 "The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 in Denbighshire, Monmouthshire, and Cardiganshire. 
 At twenty-one he had visited the Isle of Wight, besides 
 Salisbury, Ely, and Llandaff. His first Continental ex- 
 cursion did not take place until some years later, but 
 the Rhine and the Alps could be waited for with patient 
 hope by a youth who had England and Wales for his 
 sketching-ground, with all their rivers and hills. 
 
 Every one who takes an interest in Turner knows 
 that when a young man he used to go with his friend 
 Girtin to sketch at Dr. Munro's house in the evenings, 
 and that the two young artists received as payment for 
 their labours the sum of half-a-crown each, and their 
 suppers. This may seem a small matter to us who 
 think of Turner as an artistic Croesus, but it was a plea- 
 sant help to him at that time, not only for the half- 
 crown, the value of which it is certain that he fully 
 appreciated, but for the kind encouragement given by 
 Dr. Munro, for the pleasant fellowship with Girtin, and 
 for the frequent opportunities of studj'ing works by pre- 
 vious artists, of which Dr. Munro had been an intelligent 
 (Collector. There were several Gainsboroughs in the 
 ' house, and many water-colour drawings by the early 
 men, Paul Sandby and others, whom Turner was des- 
 tined to leave so far behind, that they seem to us at this 
 distance to belong almost to the pre-historic ages of the 
 world. Dr. Munro had also a collection of drawings by 
 the old masters, including Canaletti, who may even then 
 have led young Turner's thoughts towards Venice, which 
 he illustrated much later with such magnificent unreality. 
 But of all the works of art belonging to Dr. Munro at 
 this time, it is likely that the water-colours of Cozens 
 
Dr. Munro. 35 
 
 would influence both Girtin and Turner the most de- 
 cidedly, both because they were nearest to them in the 
 history of art, and because Cozens was an artist of deep 
 feeling, with a remarkably fine sense of what was noble 
 and large in landscape, and a seriousness, sometimes 
 amounting to solemnity, which would inevitably have 
 great influence over two such minds as those of Turner 
 and Girtin. Even Constable, who was so differently 
 constituted, and who chose a path in art so different 
 from the broad tranquillity of Cozens, admired him with 
 such enthusiasm that, as his friend Leslie tells us, he 
 said that his works were poetry, and his genius the 
 greatest which had ever applied itself to landscape. 
 Leslie had such admiration for Cozens that he said there 
 could be no improvement upon him ' when at his best.' 
 Of the two young men who studied Cozens together 
 Girtin is most generally regarded as his immediate suc- 
 cessor, because he died so early, and so did not come 
 down to the quite modern time, as Turner lived to do. 
 Those evenings at Dr. Munro's are, therefore, curiously 
 historical, and especially interesting to all who care for 
 water-colour painting, and its wonderful development in 
 England. Cozens was there, not in the flesh, but in the 
 spirit, which expressed itself with a poet's sweetness in 
 his drawings ; Girtin was there, in the delicate early 
 bloom of his short life, destined like Shelley and Keats 
 to few years of labour in his art, and yet to immortal 
 fame. Turner was there in the strength of his youth, 
 having already well and vigorously begun the most 
 productive career in the history of landscape art. 
 
 The writer of these pages well remembers that he first 
 
 3—2 
 
36 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 heard of Girtin from Leslie, who possessed a few works 
 of his, and greatly valued them. In the ' Handbook for 
 Young Painters,' Leslie spoke of Girtin with his usual 
 appreciation, and gave a very beautiful engraving from 
 a poetical evening scene of his on one of the Highland 
 lakes. In the same work he gave a fine Italian subject 
 by Cozens — a wood, with stone-pines rising above it 
 against the evening light, and a vast, monotonous build- 
 ing, with many windows — a monastery, perhaps, or 
 convent. Both are evidently the works of poets, but as 
 we have been so much familiarised with lake scenery by 
 more recent artists, the Cozens seems the more original 
 of the two. If, however, we take the trouble to place 
 ourselves, by a little mental effort, as far back as Girtin's 
 time in the history of English art, setting aside all that 
 has since been done for the illustration of Highland 
 scenery, we shall at once perceive that it needed the in- 
 stincts of genius to see what he saw in it, and to interpret 
 it with a sentiment so exquisite. Leslie considered his 
 style to be one of more equally sustained excellence 
 than that of Cozens, for though Girtin died very early 
 (at the age of twenty-seven), his mental health remained 
 good to the last, ' and he continued to draw till within a 
 few days of his death, though he was so debilitated that 
 he could scarcely hold his pencil.' He acquired the 
 power of a master very soon, and exercised it so much 
 that the quantity of good work he left behind him is 
 surprising to artists, especially when they know that 
 some of his valuable time was thrown away upon a 
 panorama of London. ' Sobered tints of exquisite 
 truth,' said Leslie, ' and broad chiaroscuro, are the pre- 
 
Girtin and Cozens. 37 
 
 vailing characteristics of Girtin. Turner had the 
 deepest respect for Girtin's genius, and an especial affec- 
 tion for some golden effects of his ; he believed, too, 
 that the premature death of his gifted young friend had 
 removed from his path the most dangerous of all his 
 rivals, though it is likely that if the life or death of 
 Girtin could have depended upon Turner's decision, 
 affection would have prevailed over ambition, and they 
 would have contended in friendly rivalry for the suffrages 
 of the public, without jealousy in the heart of either. 
 Notwithstanding Turner's warm admiration for his 
 friend, whom he sincerely believed to be superior to 
 himself in certain qualities, it may well be doubted 
 whether Girtin would ever have displayed such various 
 and great powers as Turner afterwards developed. It 
 seems much more probable that he would have ranked 
 with such an artist as David Cox (forcible in execution 
 and grand in sentiment, but of narrow intellectual 
 range), than with such an unprecedentedly comprehen- 
 sive artistic intellect as Turner's. 
 
 The two friends worked from nature together by the 
 Thames as early, it is believed, as the year 1789 ; and 
 they were companions at Mr. Henderson's, as well as at 
 Dr. Munro's, in pleasant evening work. They did not, 
 however, visit the Highlands together, though Leslie 
 says that Girtin was known to have paid a visit to the 
 lakes of Scotland, and Turner was drawn to them also, 
 the year before Girtin died. 
 
 Although Turner's professional business in early life 
 was to draw topographic views for the publishers, he 
 was, as we have seen, an accepted exhibitor at the 
 
38 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Royal Academy, and this encouraged him to paint in 
 oil. His first oil-picture seems to have been done in 
 1 795) fro"i one of his sketches of Rochester, taken two 
 years before ; but there is another account, which affirms 
 that Turner's first attempt in oil had for its subject a 
 sunset on the Thames, near Battersea, which had been 
 jeen by the artist on the previous day, when Bell, the 
 engraver, was with him, and that Bell was also present 
 when the attempt in oil-painting was made. The two 
 accouiits fix the beginning of Turner's career as an oil- 
 painter in the same year, 1795 ; and they may possibly 
 be reconciled by supposing that the sunset at Battersea 
 was the first landscape experiment in oil, and the Ro- 
 chester the first picture. It is evident, however, that 
 neither of these is to be considered an absolutely first 
 attempt in oil-painting, for Turner was now twenty, and 
 he had painted his own portrait in oil, with considerable 
 power, at the age of seventeen — the portrait which we 
 all know in the National Gallery. We ought not to 
 forget, either, that Turner had been a pupil of Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, and had painted in his studio at the 
 age of fifteen. It is probable, also, that his training as 
 an Academy student would include some practice in oil, 
 so that neither the Rochester nor the Battersea sunset 
 could be considered the work of a novice, though the 
 artist who painted, them had hitherto done much more 
 in water-colour, and had not applied his knowledge of 
 oil-painting to landscape. The technical history of 
 Turner's youth may be told accurately in a few words. 
 At the age of seventeen he was a fairly good painter in 
 oil, but in a heavy though safe manner, and had over- - 
 
Turner's Early Work in Oil. 39 
 
 come all the first difficulties in the career of a portrait- 
 painter. When he abandoned the intention of making 
 portraiture his profession, and took to landscape, he 
 worked in water-colour, in which he had acquired con- 
 siderable skill at an early age. At the age of twenty 
 he began to try to express in oil the knowledge of land- 
 scape which he had acquired with pencil and water- 
 colour. At the age of twenty-two he was able to paint 
 landscape in either of the two mediums, but remained 
 for a long time more addicted to water-colour, and used 
 it in preference all his life for work intended to be en- 
 graved. In later years he painted much in oil, but the 
 influence of his water-colour practice is evident in nearly 
 all his pictures ; in many of them it is even painfully 
 evident, so that Constable, not unjustly, called them 
 'large water-colours.' What interests us for the pre- 
 sent is that Turner's whole career was foreshadowed 
 in everything before the expiration of his minority. 
 Whilst yet a minor he was a painter in water-colours, a' 
 painter in oils, a considerable traveller within the limits 
 of his native island, and his works were already engraved.', 
 At twenty he was not preparing for life, but really lived 
 already, and had entered thoroughly upon his career, 
 not in a vague, general way, but in all its several depart- 
 ments, except etching on copper and engraving in 
 mezzotint, whilst even for these his early use of the pen 
 and the wash of neutral tint was the best of all possible 
 preparations. 
 
 Turner's destiny in another very important matter 
 appears to have been settled for him at the very thresh- 
 old of manhood. It is a commonplace that marriage 
 
40 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 affects the fate of a man more than anything else 
 except the circumstances of his birth; but in the 
 ordinary walks of life the chances are generally that the 
 consequences of marriage \yill be favourable. A man is 
 tied to his shop or his office, and does not feel more 
 fastened down to his counter or desk because he has a 
 wife to welcome him at home when the slavery of the 
 day is over. In ordinary occupations the work to be 
 done has a definite character, and requires the simple ■ 
 application of ordinary abilities and common industry ; 
 it is not a succession of hazardous enterprises, under- 
 taken with the whole energy of extraordinary faculties. 
 The life of a painter like Turner is really a succession 
 of hazardous enterprises, in which he risks his time and 
 genius, just as a poet does when he composes works 
 without any certainty of sale. For these great attempts, 
 many of which were failures at the time from the worldly 
 point of view, he needed absolute personal independence 
 and the most perfect privacy. His sense of the import- 
 ance of this privacy was so strong that he would admit 
 nobody into his painting-room, and he liked to be in 
 places where nobody could possibly find him. But, 
 besides privacy, he valued liberty; the liberty of the 
 artist, the liberty to make an excursion when he felt it 
 to be necessary or simply helpful to his work. Marriage 
 would have been perilous to this kind of independence ; 
 and if Turner had been married early in life it is pos- 
 sible that he might have contented himself with being 
 happy, if he had found happiness, and abandoned the 
 ambition to become great. His fate was settled other- 
 wise; an early disappointment made him give up all 
 
Love and Disappointment. 41 
 
 thoughts of marriage, and left all his peculiarities, in- 
 cluding the peculiarity of being a genius, full liberty to 
 develop themselves without restraint. 
 
 In those early days, when Turner's professional work 
 was that of a topographical draughtsman, when he in- 
 creased his income by practising as a drawing-master, it is 
 related that he loved the sister of one of his old school- 
 fellows, and that they were engaged to be married ; but 
 that the marriage never took place because, during a 
 long absence of Turner's, his letters were intercepted by 
 the young lady's stepmother, who disliked the match. 
 When Turner came back he found his betrothed en- 
 gaged to another, to a man for whom she had no affec- 
 tion, and yet she would not break off this new engage- 
 ment because the wedding-day was very near at 
 hand, and she believed that matters had gone too far 
 for her to retreat with honour. Notwithstanding 
 all that Turner could say or do to prevent it, the 
 sacrifice was consummated ; and he remained single 
 all his life in consequence of this bitter disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 The tradition is, that Turner's absence lasted two 
 whole years ; but it is difficult to believe this. We 
 know very little of the circumstances, for we do not 
 even know exactly what Turner was doing at the time, 
 nor where he was during his absence ; but it seems in 
 the highest degree improbable that, as a young lover, 
 he would have endured to be separated from his 
 betrothed for two whole years, or anything like it : such 
 a pedestrian as he was then would have walked, rather, 
 across the distance which divided them. But this is one 
 
42 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 of those stories, half-legendary already, which one 
 cannot wholly believe nor yet quite disbelieve. At the 
 same time, from their very lack of substance, such 
 stories are difficult to criticise. When there are dates, 
 for example, the critic has some ground to go upon, for 
 he can ascertain from other sources what the subject of 
 the history was doing at the time fixed ; but here we 
 have no date, except a supposition that the event may 
 have happened some time about 1796. Again, it is 
 said that Turner went abroad to study his art, and that 
 this absence on the Continent was the cause of the 
 separation : but the catalogues of the exhibitions 
 mention no Continental work of Turner until the year 
 1803, when he was twenty-eight years old. We may, 
 however, admit as highly probable that Turner may have 
 had a disappointment of this kind in his youth, since 
 few men remain confirmed old bachelors unless they 
 have had one or more such disappointments. And 
 although this legend is alike without names and without 
 dates it is circumstantial enough not to be wholly dis- 
 regarded, and is said to have come from the nameless 
 lady herself, through friends or relatives of hers. What 
 we positively know is, that Turner remained a bachelor, 
 and apparently in a more decided spirit than that of 
 Etty, who passed through a succession of unfortunate 
 attachments and disappointments. It is said that the 
 girl whom Turner loved condemned herself to the life- 
 long misery of an ill-assorted union ; but we know that 
 the painter entered upon half a century of celibacy — of 
 celibacy without chastity — a life in which he formed 
 indeed connections with the other sex, but connections 
 
Absence of Female Influence. 43 
 
 of a kind which could do nothing for the elevation of his 
 mind or for the removal of his defects. 
 
 Fortunate in so many things, Turner was lamentably 
 unfortunate in this ; that throughout his whole life he 
 never came under any ennobling or refining feminine 
 influence, either in marriage or out of it. His mother 
 was bad-tempered, and finally even insane, having to be 
 separated from her husband, and placed in seclusion. 
 The best hope for him, after this first misfortune, lay in 
 a happy marriage with some cultivated lady, or at least 
 with some woman who had a delicate, feminine sense of 
 what was becoming. In early life, considering his own 
 humble position in society, he was not likely to make 
 what is called by worldly people ' a good match,' but he 
 might have met with a girl who had a natural good 
 taste and refinement, as many have who are not exactly 
 ' ladies' in the conventional sense of the word. This 
 chance he lost for ever by his absolute renunciation of 
 all ideas of marriage. There still remained for him one 
 possibility. One of his mistresses might, by chance, 
 have been a superior person : this has happened occa- 
 sionally in such connections, though rarely : it happened, 
 for example, in the connection between Shelley and 
 Mary Godwin, which was not at first a marriage in any 
 sense but their own ; and it happened also in the case of 
 Byron and the Countess Guiccioli. Both these ladies, 
 though their conduct was not moral, were persons of 
 culture and refinement, who kept their lovers up to a 
 better and higher kind of life than they would probably 
 have followed without them. This is especially true of 
 the Countess Guiccioli, who partially reformed Byron 
 
44 The Life of J. M. W. Tiirnei'. 
 
 by making his life relatively decent and respectable in 
 comparison with what it had been before she knew him. 
 Mary Godwin did not reform Shelley, merely, because 
 he did not need that kind of reforming, but she gave 
 him intellectual companionship. Turner, as great a 
 poet as either of these two, though he expressed himself 
 in a different medium, never knew, during the whole 
 course of his life, what it was to have such companion- 
 ship as that with any woman. He had not even, so far 
 as we know, any intimate friendship with a lady able to 
 encourage and understand him — such a friendship, I 
 mean, as that which subsisted between the younger 
 Ampere and Madame Rdcamier. It is probable, how- 
 ever, that female influence of an elevating kind is of far 
 greater value to a writer than it could ever be to a 
 painter. The benefit of it is to stimulate the faculties by 
 a constant interchange of thought, and so to refine a 
 man's thinking on the subjects which occupy his mind 
 before he attempts to give them a direct literary ex- 
 pression ; so that, when he comes to write, his ideas 
 have already had the benefit of friendly discussion 
 with an intellect equal in rank, perhaps, to his own, but 
 having different perceptions, being of another sex. One 
 of the best known instances of this benefit to a writer is 
 the case of John Stuart Mill, who so warmly and can- 
 didly acknowledged it. But now let us try to imagine 
 how a similar feminine influence could operate upon the 
 producing faculties of a painter. Clearly as we see how 
 Shelley or Mill may have gained by it, we can only 
 obscurely perceive any possible benefit to the work of a 
 painter like Turner from previous friendly discussion 
 
Absence of Female Influence. 45 
 
 with any lady, however cultivated. A painter's inten- 
 tions cannot be discussed until they are already in great 
 part realised, — we can criticise the finished picture, we 
 cannot criticise the intended picture, because we cannot 
 foresee the relative importance which its parts will have 
 when the whole work is finished. The criticism of un- 
 finished works is often so little applicable, that instead 
 of helping the artist it only irritates him. The colouring 
 of a picture in its early stages is often not merely 
 different from what it is intended to be ultimately, but 
 just the opposite, because a colour is prevented from 
 looking crude when painted upon its complementary. 
 The only real help which a painter gains whilst a work 
 is in progress is from his brother-artists, and even they 
 are very likely to misunderstand his purposes. An 
 eminent contemporary, who greatly enjoyed and valued 
 the society of ladies, and lived in it willingly during his 
 hours of leisure, absolutely excluded them from his 
 painting-room, even those of his own household. The 
 only use of feminine influence to a painter is a general 
 effect upon his mind — a refining effect, if the lady is 
 more refined than the artist with whom she lives. But 
 who in the world, masculine or feminine, had ever more 
 refined perception of landscape beauty than Turner had ? 
 Could any refinement of feminine perception have added 
 to Ids refinement 1 No ; the gain which he might have 
 derived from marriage might have been an infinite gain 
 to himself in many ways, but it is not likely that it 
 would have been a gain to his art. It is highly impro- 
 bable that he would have painted better if married, and 
 it is possible that the cares of a family might have pre- 
 
46 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 vented him from executing those important works which 
 the public did not encourage, but which are now the 
 very corner-stones of the great edifice of his fame. 
 
 After his first attachment, and the bitterness of dis- 
 appointment which succeeded to it, Turner became two 
 men in one. There is nothing very unusual in a duality 
 of this kind, for many men find it a convenience to 
 separate themselves from themselves, and be at one time 
 the man of business, or the official, and at another the 
 private gentleman untrammelled by business or offi- 
 cialism. What is striking, however, in the case of 
 Turner, is the very strong contrast between the two 
 natures which dwelt together in him, and which were 
 alike just as much his own as two houses belonging to 
 the same proprietor, and used for alternate habitation. 
 We have plain proof in his works that his artist-nature 
 was one of ineffably exquisite refinement. It has been said 
 of him that his mind was as nearly as possible like those 
 of Keats and Dante intermingled : in such a comparison 
 one might feel inclined to substitute Shelley for Keats, 
 but it may be quite safely asserted, that only amongst 
 the most ethereal poets can we find a spirit of such 
 delicacy as his. At the same time he had another 
 nature, which was something between those of a common 
 sailor and a costermonger : by which I mean, that he 
 was externally coarse, and had an appetite for low 
 pleasures, with a passion for small gains. The poet's 
 nature did not raise or refine the other, nor did the other 
 perceptibly degrade that of the poet. The combination 
 was not a mixture, and the central self of personality, 
 the conscious Ego, whatever that may be, passed from 
 
The Drawing Master. 47 
 
 one to the other quite easily down to the very close of 
 life ; as a pedestrian may take the road or the footpath 
 at will when both run parallel along the whole course 
 of his journey. The mystery of this is beyond all pos- 
 sible explanation ; our nature is not sufficientlyunderstood 
 by us for such things to be clear except as simple facts. 
 A character like Turner's would be rejected at once, in 
 fiction, as untrue, but as a real existence it is undeniable. 
 We shall have to recur to this subject towards the close 
 of our biography, for the present we leave it and continue 
 the story of the Life. 
 
 It is possible even, that if Turner had been pressed 
 hard by the necessities of providing for a family he 
 might have remained a drawing-master, for he had some 
 success in that capacity in early life, and was fairly well 
 paid for his lessons to amateurs and in schools. Little 
 is known of his methods of instruction, but we may pre- 
 sume that at the early age of twenty-one he would teach 
 more explicitly, and more graciously, than on the few 
 occasions in mature life when he conveyed any practical 
 instruction to others. It is evident that the kind of art 
 he practised in early life was much more traditional and 
 communicable than the extraordinary and unprecedented 
 manner which expressed the fulness of his genius. 
 When a young man, he did little more than repeat what 
 had been done before by other topographical draughts- 
 men, applying a traditional method to new subjects ; 
 and as the method had been taught to him, so it might 
 be to others after him. But he was not one of those 
 artists who are fitted by nature to make teaching the 
 business of their whole lives. Although, at a later 
 
48 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 period, he became Professor of Perspective to the Royal 
 Academy, and took great pains to fulfil the duties of his 
 office, he was not gifted for a professor's work. Art is 
 always difficult to explain, and Turner had not the kind 
 of intellect which analyses things in such a way as to be 
 favourable to clear expression in words ; nor had he, at 
 any time, that command of language which is necessary 
 to lucid exposition. Besides this difficulty, which was a 
 part of his very peculiar idiosyncrasy, it happened with 
 Turner, as it has happened with many other artists, that 
 as soon as he began to feel his own power his art became 
 nothing but a series of experiments, often very audacious, 
 which it would have been injudicious to communicate to 
 pupils, even if it had been possible. Hence, although 
 he began his career as a teacher, and seems, from the 
 increase of his charges, to have succeeded well in that 
 profession in early life, we learn without surprise that he 
 did not retain his hold upon it, and that more com- 
 municative teachers were preferred by the ladies and 
 gentlemen of his time. The absorption in his own art 
 unfitted him more and more for the business of the 
 drawing-master. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Turner comes of age. — First northern tour. — Dr. Whitaker. — Turner 
 elected A.R.A. — His Diploma Picture. — New and Old Gothic. — Pro- 
 fessional position in 1800. 
 
 In 1796, when Turner was twenty-one years old, he 
 went to live in rooms of his own in the lane at the end 
 of Hand Court, for quietness. He exhibited much this 
 year, including subjects from Salisbury, Westminster, 
 Staffordshire, Wales, the Isle of Wight, and the sea. 
 From this time it becomes more difficult to know with 
 certainty from his exhibited works where he had been 
 the year previous, because he has already begun to 
 accumulate memoranda, and makes use of his earliest 
 stores. Thus, in 1796 he exhibits drawings of Salisbury 
 and Ely Cathedrals, and of fishermen at sea; and the 
 next year he exhibits other drawings of the same cathe- 
 drals, and another drawing of fishermen. This may 
 have been merely a recurrence to material already accu- 
 mulated, but on the other hand, when we meet with 
 some place in his drawings which he has not previously 
 illustrated, we may conclude that in all probability he 
 had visited it the year before. Up to the exhibition of 
 1798 he shows nothing from Yorkshire, but in that year 
 he has several Yorkshire subjects ; therefore we may 
 
 4 
 
so The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 conclude that he first visited that county, afterwards so 
 great a favourite of his, in the year 1797. In that year 
 he exhibited the little picture called Moonlight, a study 
 at Millbank, which is now in the National Gallery, and 
 is interesting as being the first of his works in oil which 
 were exhibited at the Royal Academy. The picture is 
 dull and heavy, and shows not the least trace of genius, 
 yet it has always been rather a favourite with the writer 
 of this biography for its truthtojiaturevij:L-2Jie-tiliQ&-, 
 All the ordinary manufacturers of moonlights — and 
 moonlights have been manufactured in deplorably large 
 quantities for the market — represent the light of our 
 satellite as a blue and cold light, whereas in nature, 
 especially in the southern summer, it is often pleasantly 
 rich and warm. Turner did not follow the usual receipt, 
 but had the courage to make his moonlight warm, 
 though he had not as yet the skill to express the in- 
 effably mellow softness of the real warm moonlights in 
 nature. 
 
 The year 1797 must have been one of the happiest of 
 Turner's early life. For the first time he got fairly into 
 the north of England, and became acquainted with a 
 kind of scenery which he loved for ever after. The 
 catholicity of his taste in the choice of subject was 
 already one of the marked characteristics of his mind ; 
 yet although he could find something to interest him, 
 anywhere, he found in Yorkshire, in the closest proximity 
 to each other, those elements of interest which are often' 
 so widely apart that even the audacity of an artist cannot 
 venture to bring them together. In the Highlands of 
 Scotland we have mountains but no architecture ; in Lin- 
 
First Northern Tour. 51 
 
 colnshire architecture but no mountains ; whilst through 
 all the lovely reaches of the Thames you may seek in vain 
 amongst its richest meadows for monastic remains like 
 those of Fountains, Rivaulx, Kirkstall, or Bolton. There 
 are castles on the southern coast, but where on the chalk 
 cliffs will you find another Whitby ? There are hills in 
 Surrey, but what are the little southern heaths in com- 
 parison with the bleak vastness of a Yorkshire moor, 
 where no sound is to be heard but the whistling of the 
 wind and the whirr of the heath-cock's wings ? In the 
 close proximity of quite different material, the hilly parts 
 of Yorkshire are a paradise to an artist of such various 
 taste as Turner's. In an hour's walk he may pass there 
 from the fertility of Arabia Felix to the stony desolation 
 of Arabia Petraea ; the hills are lofty enough to give 
 him some foretaste of Highland sublimities, and the 
 vales are rich enough to remind him of the old pastorals, 
 if his feelings are still attached to them by the ties of 
 artistic tradition. 
 
 But not only did Turner visit Yorkshire in 1797. The 
 taste for travel was already too strong in him to be 
 satisfied without seeing everything within his reach ; so 
 as he thought that the English lakes and the extreme 
 north of England were not very far out of his way, 
 he determined to see these also, and penetrated into 
 Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Northumberland. The 
 results of this excursion are partly visible in the next 
 Academy Exhibition, to which the young artist sends 
 monastic ruins and valleys of Yorkshire, mountains 
 and lakes from Cumberland and Westmoreland, and 
 baronial castles from Northumberland, still standing by 
 
 4—2 
 
52 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 sea or river. In the same year, as if to show that his 
 interest in quiet southern scenes had not been diminished 
 by any new-born enthusiasm for the sublimities of the 
 north, he sends to the Academy A Sttidy in September 
 of the Fern-House, Mr. Lock's Park, Mickleham, Surrey. 
 Castles and abbeys he has seen in all their grandeur, 
 yet still thinks that the fern-house in Mr. Lock's park is 
 worth drawing and exhibiting also. This is most charac- 
 teristic of Turner, and we shall find him throughout his 
 career always ready to turn from great things to little 
 things, his power of taking an interest in what he saw 
 being always active, and neither deadened by too much 
 stimulus nor atrophied by the insufficiency of it. 
 
 The year 1798 is not so rich in engravings from Tur- 
 ner's works as others before and after it. In that year 
 the plates of Sheffield and Wakefield appeared in the 
 ' Itinerant,' two towns which were less unpicturesque 
 then than now. Both of them have good scenery very 
 near at hand, but they have been spoiled for the painter 
 by their very prosperity during the last seventy-five 
 years. It was part of Turner's professional business at 
 that time to illustrate towns, and he had done a good 
 deal in that line, no doubt very conscientiously, but his 
 tastes were already too exclusive for him to settle down 
 to a regular trade of that kind. In 1799 the list of his 
 exhibited works includes subjects from Wales and Nor- 
 thumberland, as well as two from Salisbury, which he 
 often recurred to in early life ; but this year he is am- 
 bitious, and paints a marine picture of the Battle of the 
 Nile, mentioned in the catalogue with a quotation from 
 ' Paradise Lost,' that well-known passage where the 
 
Dr. Whiiaker. 53 
 
 angels turn artillerymen, which is usually considered 
 one of the blemishes of the poem. Turner seems to 
 have been reading Milton at that time, for he quotes him 
 again, apropos of Harlech Castle, an evening drawing of 
 which is one of his contributions to the Academy. The 
 3'^ear before he quoted chiefly from Thomson's 'Seasons;' 
 this year he quotes them once, apropos of Warkworth 
 Castle, Northumberland. It may be observed in this 
 place that Turner's fancy for quoting poetry varied 
 greatly in different years. One year he would quote 
 rather extensively, and at another not at all. For ex- 
 ample, in 1799 he enriches the Academy Catalogue with 
 no less than thirty-seven lines of poetry from various 
 authors, but in 1801 he does not quote a syllable. At a 
 later period he makes the fatal discovery that a painter 
 may conipose his own bits of poetry and quote himself, 
 but of this peculiar development of the Turnerian genius 
 we shall have more to say in due time. 
 
 In 1799 Turner began the series of nine annual illus- 
 trations to the ' Oxford Almanac,' and it is probably in 
 this year that he made the acquaintance of Dr. Whit- 
 aker, author of the 'History of Whalley.' Although 
 Dr. Whitaker's name is perfectly well known in the 
 north of England, and to readers in other parts of the 
 island who take an interest in the history and antiquities 
 of Lancashire and Yorkshire, we may explain for others 
 who have not been led to any special study of those 
 ■counties, that the learned Doctor had a strong interest in 
 the localities which he knew best, which, happily for pos- 
 terity, led him to write three of the best local histories 
 ■which have ever proceeded from the affectionate industry 
 
54 The Life of J. M. W. Ttir7ier. 
 
 of an archaeologist. These three histories had for their 
 subjects the parish of Whalley, the district of Craven, 
 and a part of Yorkshire about Richmond, known to 
 local antiquarians as Richmondshire. Dr. Whitaker 
 was Vicar of Whalley at the time that he wrote the his- 
 tory of that remarkably extensive and interesting parish, 
 and it so happens that his son, who is now about to pub- 
 lish a new edition of the work, is also Vicar of Whalley, 
 and to him I am indebted for a few details about Turner. 
 He believes, but is not certain, that the young painter's 
 first introduction to Dr. Whitaker was through Mr. 
 Edwards, the Halifax publisher, when the Doctor was 
 approaching the close of his labours as the historian of 
 Whalley. Turner's new patron employed him to make 
 designs for several of the plates which were to illustrate 
 his work ; and the young artist executed his task con- 
 scientiously, but with so little talent of any obviously 
 visible kind, that Dr. Whitaker's fidelity to him, in sub- 
 sequently commissioning the drawings for the ' History 
 of Richmondshire,' has always seemed to me remarkable 
 as an evidence of his perspicacity. Few who had known 
 Turner from such illustrations as his Whalley Abbey, 
 Clitheroe, and Browsholme, would have entertained the 
 slightest hope that he could ever produce such designs 
 as those in the 'History of Richmondshire;' but it is 
 possible that Dr. Whitaker may have watched Turner's 
 development in other publications. Between the 'Whal- 
 ley' and 'Richmondshire' appeared Dr. Whitaker's 
 ' History of Craven,' and to this Turner contributed an 
 architectural subject. His connection with these his- 
 torical works was of use to him, by making him more 
 
Dr. Whitakar. 
 
 intimately acquainted with places and people in a very 
 interesting part of the north of England. The old man- 
 sion of the Whitakers, the Holme (familiar to the present 
 biographer from his infancy), is situated in one of the 
 most beautiful scenes of Lancashire which still remain 
 unspoiled by the manufactures. Near Burnley the vale 
 is broad, and is occupied by the noble demesne of Towne- 
 ley, which sweeps up the great waves of land before and 
 behind the Hall, and fills all the hollow between them 
 with rich meadows and a park full of sylvan beauty; but 
 as you go from Towneley to the Holme the valley rapidly 
 narrows, till at last it becomes a gorge or defile, with 
 bold steep slopes which end in rugged cliffs of perpen- 
 dicular rock, as high as the sea-cliffs on the wild York- 
 shire coast. On each side of the glen there are gullies 
 or ravines formed by the watercourses, and at the foot 
 of one of thse ravines stands the old house yet, much 
 altered and enriched, but still preserving its main 
 features. It is just one of those regions which Turner 
 would have illustrated nobly in his maturity. 
 
 With his usual wonderful good luck, our hero wasj, 
 elected Associate of the Royal Academy at the early; 
 age of twenty-four. A landscape-painter in the present 
 day, aged twenty-four, and able to do just what Turner 
 could do then — that is, to paint his diploma picture of; 
 Dolbadern Castle, North Wales — might possibly, no doubt, 
 be elected Associate ; but the chances are so much 
 against him that he would be just as likely to be made 
 a Knight of the Garter. The competitors of Turner 
 were much weaker, no doubt, than the competitors of a 
 young aspirant in the present day, so that victory was 
 
5 6 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 easier for him ; but the best part of his luck consisted in 
 this, that in 1800 the Academy had not yet become an 
 exclusive club of figure-painters, so that landscape had a 
 fair chance of recognition. In the present day almost 
 all the Academicians and Associates are figure-painters, 
 and their almost invariable custom is to elect men who 
 follow their own branch of the profession. There is no 
 written rule against the election of a landscape-painter, 
 and at exceedingly rare, and ever rarer intervals, a land- 
 scape-painter of extraordinary merit, in his full maturity, 
 is made an Associate, in order to prove that the Academy 
 is not absolutely intolerant of such artists. But in our 
 day a landscape-painter has not the faintest chance of 
 being elected an A.R.A. to encourage him and help him 
 whilst the difficulties of his career loom still like moun- 
 tainous steeps before him. It was in this that Turner 
 was so fortunate. The right to a good and secure place 
 on the Academy walls was given to him when he was 
 striving hard with all the energy of youth ; the Associ- 
 ateship came like a fair wind to a little boat that is fight- 
 ing against the tide, and not hke a breeze to a ship in 
 port. 
 
 The subject of Turner's diploma picture was Dolbadern 
 Castle, inNorth Wales. The castle is a simple round tower 
 by the shore of the smaller of the two lakes of Llanberis, 
 and within a short walk of Llanberis itself, at the foot 
 of Snowdon. Very likely many readers of these pages 
 may have seen the little castle, and sketched it, for it is 
 rather a popular subject for a sketch. Those who know 
 the place will remember its marked and peculiar geolo- 
 gical character (blue slate), which no landscape-painter 
 
His Diploma Picture. 57 
 
 before our generation would have recognised. One of the 
 most curious things in the historyof landscape-painting is 
 the persistence with which the artists, and the public who 
 admired them, remained blind to the facts of the earth's 
 structure, even to the visible, obvious, most striking and 
 external facts, until there was a definite science of geo- 
 logy, with a scientific nomenclature. Turner's Dolbadern 
 is merely a brown picture of the Wilson class, with some 
 feeling for the sublimity of an isolated tower amidst 
 mountain scenery, but no delight in, nor observation of, 
 the especial character of landscape round Llanberis. It 
 would indeed, in the last years of the eighteenth century, 
 have been a proof of almost unimaginable audacity in a 
 young artist to venture to paint blue slate. Wilson, 
 whose name so naturally suggests itself to us in con- 
 nection with Llanberis, which is near the little estate that 
 saved him from utter indigence at last, never ventured 
 to paint the real scenery of Wales^ though he loved it, 
 and drew some consolation from the solemnity of it at 
 the close of life. It might almost be supposed that the 
 painters of those days foresaw the artistic difficulties and 
 dangers which were likely to be, and which in fact have 
 been, opened like pitfalls to imprudent artists by the free 
 access to the whole of nature which is claimed by the 
 modern spirit. Turner, at Dolbadern, was still in the 
 spirit of the elder artists, to whom art seemed much 
 more distinct from nature than it seems now to their 
 successors. They looked upon the painted world on 
 canvas as a world in itself, and they were cautious about 
 introducing into the painted world the material of the ' 
 dangerously various reality. It may have been a result 
 
S8 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 of this early caution in accepting nature as good material 
 for art, that Turner, to the end of his days, considered 
 art and nature as two entirely distinct things, or cate- 
 gories of things, in which he differed from the modern 
 English realists who succeeded him, and whose main 
 purpose was, in the most literal sense, to hold the mirror 
 up to nature. 
 
 About this time Turner's name becomes associated 
 with that of the famous author of ' Vathek ;' for he 
 went to Fonthill in 1799, and made several sketches of 
 the Gothic Abbey there, which Mr. Beckford was then 
 building, and in which (as Scott did afterwards at 
 Abbotsford) he made the perilous experiment of a 
 romance in stone and lime. Beckford's stone romance 
 included the wonderful tower, of which the impossible 
 ideal, with eleven thousand stairs, existed already in his 
 story of 'Vathek ;' but the tower fell down long ago, 
 and the Fonthill collections are dispersed, and the fame 
 of Beckford's heap of gold has faded before the lustre 
 of bigger heaps which have been accumulated since his 
 time. So passes the glory of the world ! But when 
 ' England's wealthiest son ' was building his tower by 
 sunlight and by torchlight, gangs of workmen succeeding 
 each other without intermission— for there were no genii 
 to add nightly cubits to this edifice in the region of 
 reality — the young artist who quietly looked on was 
 himself laying the foundations of a more durable 
 monument. 
 
 The year after his visit to Fonthill, Turner studied 
 Gothic of a more authentic character at York, a better 
 place for an artist at the beginning of this century than 
 
Nezv and Old Gothic. 59 
 
 (thanks to the improvements of Philistine corporations) 
 it has since become. There he sketched the noble 
 IMinster, which Etty afterwards loved more passionately 
 than ever building was loved before ; and before leaving 
 Yorkshire he sketched both Kirkstall and Bolton, which 
 he made good use of afterwards when his powers as an 
 artist were much more fully developed. Kirkstall is in 
 these days better in a drawing than in the reality, for the 
 modern industrial life of Leeds has come so very near it 
 that the visitor cannot exclude it and get back to the 
 tranquil old monastic life without an effort of the ima- 
 gination of which few visitors are capable. Even in 
 Turner's day the modem world could not be entirely 
 excluded from the scene, though he acknowledged its 
 presence only by a single building on the other side of 
 tlie weir, carefully screened by massive trunks of trees. 
 Bolton" Abbey is still so preserved from the too im- 
 mediate contact of manufacturing modernism that it is 
 yet possible to dream there of the past, though even 
 Bolton itself is now dangerously near to the factories, 
 and you may reach them from the inn there in a dis- 
 quietingly short time on horseback. Turner had ever 
 afterwards the most intense affection for Bolton Abbey 
 and its neighbourhood, and for the river Wharfe, which 
 flows through the sweet meadows in the vale and makes 
 a beautiful curve round the site of the Abbey itself. 
 Who that has once followed the Wharfe from the narrow 
 glen below Barden Tower, past the Strid, the Abbey, 
 and the bridge, and down for a few miles till it becomes 
 broad and sleepy above the weir at Burley, can wonder 
 that an artist like Turner should have loved it .' In 
 
6o The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 later life all that land became consecrated for him by 
 one of the most affectionate friendships that ever cheered 
 the solitude of a bachelor's existence. Farnley Hall is 
 near the Wharfe, and Mr. Fawkes of Farnley made 
 Turner so happy there that the place was dearer than 
 home to him. He was a hard worker, and, like all hard 
 workers, capable of thoroughly forgetting work and 
 heartily amusing himself. His favourite recreation was 
 fishing. The Wharfe is a very good stream for the 
 angler between Bolton Abbey and Farnley Hall ; so 
 that Turner may have had an angler's attachment for it 
 as well as a painter's. Besides the Wharfe, and the 
 sweet vale in which Bolton Priory lies nestling, there 
 was a strong attraction for a Londoner in the hills 
 whence the young stream flows. There are many bold 
 hills in Yorkshire, but few strike the eye and awaken the 
 imagination more than the heights about Barden Tower, 
 because their wildness is such a contrast after the rich 
 peace of the sacred vale. All Turner's drawings of that 
 land show how strongly its hill-forms affected him. See 
 the Bolton Abbey in Rogers, for example, and the other 
 illustration to ' The Boy of Egremond,' the Strid, in 
 which the steepness of the hills is well remembered, 
 whilst the true character of the stream at that place is 
 neglected or forgotten. 
 
 We may take note at this time of one or two changes 
 of London residence. The reader may remember that 
 in 1796, when Turner was twenty-one years old, he went 
 to live in rooms of his own at the end of Hand Court, 
 Maiden Lane. In 1800 he went to live in Harley Street, 
 and either in that year or the next, for there are different 
 
Professional Position in 1800. 6r 
 
 accounts of this removal, he removed to 75, Norton 
 Street, Fitzroy Square. His flittings appear to have 
 been tJie consequences of professional promotion. At 
 every decided step in advance he took a different 
 habitation. This is rather curious, indicating, as it does, 
 how entirely he lived in his professional life. 
 
 It is not very easy for us, at this distance of time, to 
 realise to ourselves quite accurately the professional 
 position of Turner in 1800, for either we are likely to 
 overrate it (from the power of his name upon us now), 
 or else we may even under-estimate it from the contrast 
 between the sort of work that he did then and the won- 
 derful performance of his full maturity. Another diffi- 
 culty is that there is not a single artist now living in Eng- 
 land, or in Europe, who occupies exactl}- the same posi- 
 tion which Turner occupied at the very beginning of 
 this century. He was not yet considered a great artist, 
 and did not deserve to be so considered ; but on the 
 other hand, he was looked upon as the best man for a 
 certain class of illustrative work which was in demand, 
 and in much greater demand than it is now. The 
 English form of the spirit of the classical Renaissance 
 was just giving way to that first interest in the work of 
 the middle ages which found its literary expression, later, 
 in the romances of Sir Walter Scott, and so strongly 
 coloured what is distinctively the literature of the nine- 
 teenth century, that it is scarcely possible to find an 
 English author living in it, from Byron downwards, 
 whose works are not tinged, at least in parts, with the 
 lisht of the mediaeval Renaissance. Turner was not 
 naturally a medisevalist ; his modes of thought, and his 
 
62 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 early training, led him rather to the kind of classicism 
 which has prevailed in the education of modern painters. 
 These artists have been much withdrawn from mediaeval 
 influence by a very simple and intelligible cause. The 
 mediaeval artists could invent noble architecture and 
 beautiful decoration, but they could not draw the figure. 
 Painters went necessarily and inevitably to those pre- 
 decessors who understood the human form. The Greeks 
 understood it ; even the Romans understood it also ; the 
 whole of what we call the classical world understood it, 
 and the whole of what we call the mediaeval world re- 
 mained in ignorance of it. For this reason the culture 
 and tradition of modern art are a classical culture and 
 tradition. It may still be doubted whether Turner, had 
 he been left to follow his own instincts without reference 
 to the demands of publishers or purchasers, would ever 
 have painted Gothic architecture at all. Amongst the 
 pictures which he consciously intended to be his great 
 masterpieces, and which he undertook without reference 
 to the immediate demand, Gothic architecture does not 
 occur, whilst classical architecture is of frequent occur- 
 rence. But although Turner's tastes or instincts did not 
 lead him directly to Gothic architecture, he was brought 
 to it indirectly by his love of English landscape, and his 
 generally comprehensive interest in human work of all 
 kinds. When he sat down to sketch a scene with an 
 ordinary house in it, he would not omit the house ; he 
 never omitted anything that had human interest ; much 
 less, then, would he omit an object so full of human in- 
 terest as a Gothic castle or abbey. He drew such 
 medizeval remains in a painstaking and prosaic way at 
 
Professional Position in 1800. 63 
 
 the beginning (as at Whalley, for example), but as he 
 improved in the knowledge and treatment of landscape 
 he perceived more clearly how much might be done with 
 Gothic architecture as picturesque material, and he drew 
 it better, in combination with the surrounding landscape, 
 than any other artist of his time. In this way he came 
 to have a safe little professional speciality. Whenever 
 a publisher wanted a good drawing of an English abbey, 
 or castle, or cathedral, he knew that young Mr. Turner 
 would do it for him in a satisfactory way, with all its 
 landscape or street surroundings. But whilst Turner 
 could draw mediaeval architecture, he was not a medise- 
 valist. He would study a ' gentleman's seat ' with as 
 much complacency, and as faithful care, as Salisbury 
 Cathedral or Fountains Abbey. He had none of those 
 intense repugnances which prevent many young artists 
 from earning their living, but would draw anything that 
 came in his way. This comprehensiveness, or tolerance, 
 gave him a safe position in the pecuniary sense, though 
 his earnings were not great ; and we have seen that on 
 the artistic side his qualities, though far from brilliant as 
 yet, were sufficiently visible to procure him regular ad- 
 mission to the Academy exhibition, and to get him 
 elected Associate at a remarkably early age. We have 
 not in these days any young artists in Turner's position, 
 because his trade of drawing mediaeval buildings has 
 been almost annihilated by photography. Yet it was 
 the engravings from these drawings which first made 
 Turner known, and which kept him safe from want at a 
 time when his pictures were not saleable. In 1800 his 
 name was already strong enough for a publisher to ven- 
 
64 TJu Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 ture upon separate engravings from his works. The first 
 were the Matcsoleum at Brocklesby, and Dunster Castle 
 from the south-west. From that date single plates ap- 
 peared at intervals till his death, and after it. In the 
 present day the print-publisher would not invest capital 
 in laboured engravings from the works of a landscape- 
 painter such as Turner was in his early manhood. The 
 pictures which the print-sellers of these days cause to be 
 engraved are almost exclusively incident pictures, or 
 pictures which appeal to deep-seated national sentiments 
 of loyalty or religion. 
 
 In the year 1800 Turner seems to have thought it 
 necessary, as an Associate of the Academy, to send 
 something of a higher character than usual to its exhi- 
 bition, so he exhibited The Fifth Plague of Egypt, a 
 tiresome brown picture of a class which would soon 
 become intolerable if we were compelled to see many of 
 them. The other works exhibited by him that year 
 were all from Fonthill, except a view of Caernarvon 
 Castle. About this time in his life Turner seems to 
 have thought it necessary to send one ambitious Biblical 
 picture to each exhibition, for in 1801 he attempts no 
 less a subject than The Army of the Medes destroyed in 
 the Desert by a Whirlwind (ixom. Jeremiah), and in 1802 
 he paints The Tenth Plague of Egypt. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Kilchum Castle. — Topography. — Turner's dream pictures. — The topo- 
 graphy of poets. 
 
 It was probably in the year 1801, Turner being then 
 twenty-six years old, that he went to Scotland for the 
 first time in his life ; saw Edinburgh, the Falls of Clyde, 
 and Loch Lomond, and penetrated into the Western 
 Highlands, where he made a study of Kilchurn Castle 
 and the mountains at the head of Loch Awe. The 
 picture oi Kilchum was exhibited in 1802, and enhanced 
 the artist's reputation ; its chief interest for us just at 
 present is, that it marks more definitively than any other 
 work of that time his complete deliverance from topo- 
 graphy, and his artistic independence of the fact Dol- 
 badern is inaccurate also, but it is so in quite a different 
 way. In the Dolbadern the artist works traditionally, 
 and has the elder landscape-painters in his mind all the 
 time that he is painting, but in the Kilchtcrn he is abso- 
 lutely delivered from tradition. He is delivered at the 
 same time, and quite as absolutely, from the topographic 
 slavery of his youth. The KilcJmrn is neither an imita- 
 tion of Wilson nor a copy of the actual scene in nature. 
 It is a Turner, and nothing but a Turner. 
 
 There is no scene in Europe more familiar to mc than 
 
 S 
 
66 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 the head of Loch Awe, where Kilchurn Castle is situated. 
 I have hved there for years, and know the topography 
 of the place quite thoroughly, with that minuteness which 
 is only possible to a resident who takes the keenest 
 interest in the neighbourhood where he lives, and makes 
 landscape-painting his main occupation, and walking and 
 boating his amusements. This close intimacy with the 
 place permits me to appreciate the exact degree in which 
 Turner's topography is a deviation from the topography 
 of the actual world ; and the reader will perhaps think 
 it not too great a demand upon his patience if I make 
 the difference as clear as I can in this instance, for it is 
 of the very utmost importance to our understanding of 
 Turner's mature work, occurring as it does quite early in 
 his manhood, and fixing the date of his emancipation 
 from reality. Turner's view of Kilchurn is taken from 
 the shore of the river Orchay, at a little distance above 
 the castle, and it includes as material, 1st, the river, with 
 its right and left banks; 2nd, Kilchurn Castle; 3rd, a 
 glimpse of the lake ; 4th, a great mass of mountain, 
 which Turner calls the Cruachan Ben Mountains ; 5 th, a 
 mountainous distance. We will examine these parts of 
 the composition one after another. 
 
 I. The River. — The Orchay flows past Dalmally till 
 it comes to within a short distance of Kilchurn ; but it 
 does not go directly to the castle, it leaves Kilchurn on 
 the left and falls into Loch Awe above it. The Orchay, 
 when it gets into the neighbourhood of Kilchurn, finds 
 itself in a genuine alluvial plain, not of great extent, yet 
 having all the characteristics of such a plain. The 
 reader who understands the action of rivers guesses at 
 
Kilchtirn Castle. 67 
 
 once that in such a place the level of the water will be 
 two or three yards lower than that of the land, and that 
 on one side at least the bank will be perpendicular, and 
 more or less undermined by the water. In the Orchay 
 it so happens that the steep cutting is on the Kilchurn 
 side, where the river comes within sight of the castle. 
 This expression, ' within sight,' is somewhat inaccurate ; 
 for when you are in a boat on the river you cannot see 
 the castle at all, at the spot from which (according to 
 the perspective of the walls) Turner's view must neces- 
 sarily be taken. He, therefore, entirely altered the cha- 
 racter of the river and foreground. He ignored the 
 existence of the flat plain through which the river cuts 
 its way, and gave wavy land instead of it, without any 
 steeply-cut banks at all. By this sacrifice (a sacrifice, 
 please observe, not of some unimportant fact, but of 
 essential local character) he made the river artistically 
 -manageable, which in nature it is not, and he contrived 
 so that it should lead the eye to the castle. Before 
 quitting the river, I may observe that Turner introduced 
 three boats, that the boats are managed by Highlanders 
 in kilts, and that two out of the three have sails. Now, 
 of course I cannot prove that no sails were used on 
 Loch Awe in Turner's day, but I do not believe that he 
 ever saw one there. When I lived there, nothing as- 
 tonished me so much as the entire absence of any 
 nautical instinct or knowledge in the inhabitants. The 
 oldest men told me that no one ever used a sail on 
 Loch Awe, because of the violent gusts of wind, and I 
 believe that this extreme caution had come down to the 
 people from their ancestors. The simple explanation of 
 
 s— 2 
 
68 
 
 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 the sails in Turner's picture is, that he wanted them to 
 cut the base-line of his mountain, and throw the moun- 
 tain further back. 
 
 2. The Castle. — Turner's alterations in the castle seem 
 more difficult to explain than those in the structure of the 
 earth. Turner's Kilchurn is not the real Kilchurn at 
 all ; and the difference between them seems much more 
 
 due to simple carelessness than to any artistic craft. 
 The castle in the. picture is certainly a much clumsier 
 and less interesting object than it is in the reality. 
 Few of the Highland castles have any architectural 
 interest ; but Kilchurn is one of the best of them, owing 
 to the happy disposition of its principal and minor 
 masses. There is a square keep, to begin with, at the 
 east angle (the angle nearest to the spectator in Turner's 
 picture), with round corner turrets, resting on well- 
 moulded corbels. Turner simply ignores the separate 
 existence of this keep, and merges it in the general 
 
Kiichiirn Castle. 
 
 69 
 
 mass of the castle. As to the corbel-turrets, he omits 
 them altogether, though he must have been aware of 
 their importance to architectural character. At the 
 northern angle of the real castle there is a small round 
 tower, or turret, like the tourelles so common in French 
 chateaux. This was never as high as the keep, nor even 
 as the chimneys. Turner omits it altogether, or supposes 
 it, like the keep, merged in the common mass, and as 
 
 high as the keep itself. A very important characteristic 
 of the Scottish castle and French chateau is the relative 
 importance of their chimneys. At Kilchurn there are 
 several chimneys still in good preservation, four of them 
 being very conspicuous, and three out of the four are 
 striking objects from the point of view chosen by Turner; 
 yet he gives nothing recognisable as a chimney in all 
 his building. To the left hand the artist draws a lower 
 or minor mass of building, and inserts a semi-circular 
 projection in the middle of it, like the semi-circular 
 
The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 towers in Roman city walls. There is nothing of this 
 kind in the reality. A very important picturesque cha- 
 racteristic of Kilchurn Castle is the magnificent abundance 
 of ivy on the side of the ruins towards the lake. A 
 great mass of this is visible from the place where Turner 
 sketched, on the left-hand corner of the building. There 
 is no ivy whatever on Turner's Kilchurn. It may be 
 objected that the ivy has grown since then, but the 
 thickness of its trunks, which are colossal, is evidence of 
 its great age. The reader will please to observe, that in 
 these deviations from the truth the artist has in every 
 instance sacrificed not only fact but character. Not 
 only does his castle fail to recall such details as the 
 placing of the windows — though even this affects cha- 
 racter, for the regularity of the windows in Kilchurn, 
 which Turner has neglected, is an important architectural 
 characteristic — not only does the artist omit little details, 
 but he iitterly despises the most important features of the 
 building, its great keep, its minor towers, its turrets, and 
 its chimneys. He is supposed, indeed, to have drawn a 
 certain building, but he draws it in such a manner as to 
 mark his complete indifference to everything in it that 
 is interesting, either from the picturesque point of view 
 or the architectural. 
 
 3. The Mountain. — It is not so easy to fix upon points 
 of comparison between a mountain drawing and the 
 reality, as it is to criticise a drawing of architecture ; but 
 there are certain features which can be fixed upon even 
 in a mountain. I may begin by saying quite plainly, 
 that from the point of view chosen by Turner, a point of 
 view definitively fixed for us by the perspective of the 
 
Kilchurn Castle. /r 
 
 castle walls (it is lucky that we have this pour nous 
 orienicr), there is no mountain to be seen bearing the 
 most distant resemblance to that which he gives us. 
 That side of Loch Awe is separated from Loch Etive 
 by a chain of mountains terminating in Ben Cruachan. 
 You have Ben Cruachan, with its base in the Pass of 
 Brandir, then Ben Vorich, then Ben Anea, and after that 
 the mountains of Glen Strae.* With these last we have 
 nothing to do now because Turner has his back to 
 them. A man drawing Kilchurn from Turner's place 
 can see Ben Anea easily by turning his head to the 
 right. The mountain before him, on the other side 
 Kilchurn Castle, is not Ben Cruachan but Ben Vorich. 
 As for Cruachan, he is completely hidden behind Vorich, 
 and as much invisible as if he were in Greenland. The 
 latter, then, is the mountain (in nature) that we have to 
 deal with now. 
 
 Ben Vorich, as seen behind Kilchurn, slopes towards 
 the lake at an angle of thirty degrees near the water, 
 and of twenty degrees higher up the slope. It has no 
 peak. It is richly wooded up to a height of about one 
 thousand feet. 
 
 Turner's mountain slopes towards the lake at an angle 
 of seventy degrees near the water, and at an average 
 angle of thirty degrees higher up. It has a peak. It is 
 not wooded at all. 
 
 * With regard to this bit of geography the reader is respectfully requested 
 not to go by the maps, unless he has the Ordnance Survey. The other 
 maps generally give the right situations of Scottish towns and villages, but 
 are utterly untrustworthy as to the physical geography of the country. I 
 have never seen a map of Scotland which put the mountains in their right 
 places, or which gave an accurate shore-line of the lakes. Ben Vorich is 
 not to be confounded with Ben Voirlich. 
 
72 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Ben Vorich does not, from that point, present a very 
 broken outline. It has some variety in it, but it is not 
 much broken. 
 
 The outline of Turner's mountain is wild and rugged 
 in the extreme, from the peak down to the precipice. 
 
 The conclusion to which this comparison forces us is 
 that Turner substituted some other mountain for that 
 which is really visible behind Kilchurn. If he drew 
 anything in nature, we may have to go some distance to 
 seek it. 
 
 There are only two mountains near Loch Awe which 
 could have offered even a distant suggestion of the 
 Turner mountain. One is Ben Anea, which from a 
 certain place on the Orchay appears by an effect of per- 
 spective to have a sort of pretension to a peak ; but 
 Ben Anea is hemmed in by other mountains, and does 
 not descend precipitously to the lake. Turner's moun- 
 tain is precipitous, and clear of others on the left-hand 
 side. Ben Cruachan has a real peak, and is isolated 
 just on that side. I conclude, therefore, that the moun- 
 tain in Turner's picture is suggested by Ben Cruachan. 
 
 Now, the nearest place from which the peak of Ben 
 Cruachan ceases to be eclipsed by the head of Ben 
 Vorich is nearly three miles from Kilchurn by water, 
 and a good deal further by land. Turner must, there- 
 fore, have combined sketches taken at a distance of 
 three miles from each other in one picture. 
 
 When we arrive at the place where the peak is about 
 as much disengaged as it is in Turner's picture, we get 
 a view of Ben Cruachan, which has indeed some very 
 slight and distant resemblance to Turner's mountain ; 
 
Kilchurn Castle. 
 
 72, 
 
 but we observe that the artist has no more cared to 
 preserve even the character of the mountain than he did 
 
 
 SRrrcB OF BEN CBUACUAH AFTiff TUBWER. 
 
 that of the castle. The real Ben Cruachan is not very- 
 rugged, except just about the summit, and even there 
 
 BUT rmiAcain, ehoisi s tdphgraphtc DB/iwiNG. 
 
 the ruggedness of it is much reduced by distance. 
 There are a few humps, or bosses, on its side, it is true. 
 
74 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 but by far the most characteristic feature is the vast 
 curving slope from the shoulder down to the loch. The 
 average inclination of this is not so great as might be 
 imagined, for it does not exceed twenty degrees. It 
 was neither striking enough nor entertaining enough to 
 suit Turner, who broke it up into ruggedness above, 
 and finished it with a sheer, precipice below. In- the 
 reality you cannot see Ben Cruachan from this point 
 without seeing Ben Vorich also, and the latter interferes 
 considerably with his greater neighbour. Turner ignores 
 Ben Vorich altogether, giving him no separate individu- 
 ality, though some of the mountainous masses to the 
 right may be supposed, by our charity, to belong to him. 
 The reader will see from my topographical drawing, 
 that the mass of Ben Vorich makes the peak of 
 Cruachan look insignificant. 
 
 We may observe, lastly, that although the real Crua- 
 chan is wooded up to a certain height, say from 300 to 
 1000 feet. Turner's mountain is not wooded at all. 
 
 4. The Remote Distance. — It is difficult, of course, 
 with an artist who takes his materials wherever he likes, 
 to fix upon mountain outlines in nature and say that he 
 meant to draw those more than any others ; but if 
 Cruachan affords any indication, these distant hills must 
 be the moorland on and about Craiganunie. I need 
 hardly observe that they are pure invention. Craig- 
 anunie does not, from any point of view, take those out- 
 lines, nor outlines of that character. 
 
 In order to make this distance visible from his point 
 of view near Kilchurn, Turner has entirely removed 
 some wooded land which would have hidden it. Never- 
 
Kilchuni Castle. 75 
 
 theless that wooded land is very good for artists, with 
 its grand old Scotch firs and its rocky foregrounds, and 
 it is one of the most characteristic parts of the innme- 
 diate neighbourhood of Kilchurn. 
 
 If the reader has had the patience to follow me at- 
 tentively through this analysis he will at least be quite 
 convinced of one thing, that so early as 1802, when 
 Turner was only twenty-seven years old, he had already 
 absolutely abandoned everything of the nature of topo- 
 graphic fidelity. The difference between his treatment 
 of landscape and faithful portraiture is not the difference 
 between one kind of topography and another ; it is the 
 difference between a certain kind of truthfulness and the 
 total abandonment of that particular kind of truthful- 
 ness. It is as if a writer of travels were to say to him- 
 self, ' Hitherto I have endeavoured to tell the truth 
 about the places which I have seen, but from this day 
 forwards, although remaining an honourable person in 
 the ordinary intercourse of life, I shall consider myself, 
 whenever I sit down to write my travels, at perfect 
 liberty to say what is not true, and to omit what is true, 
 just as it may suit my convenience and seem to me 
 likely to astonish, or amuse, or in any way charm or 
 delight, my readers.' Had there been any endeavour, 
 in Turner's case, to preserve some particular kind of 
 local truth — to preserve, for example, the truth of local 
 character merely, whilst abandoning particular facts — 
 the case would have been a change of principle as to 
 truth, but not an abandonment of principle. What 
 Turner really did, however, was not to emancipate him- 
 self partially ; he emancipated himself entirely ; and 
 
76 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 after having been in his youth a describer of what he 
 had seen, he became henceforth just as much an author 
 of fiction as a poet in words or a novelist. 
 
 The distinction between Turner's treatment of natural 
 material and that of the majority of landscape-painters 
 will better be understood by an example. As we have 
 been talking about Kilchurn, it will be a saving of 
 trouble to the reader if I describe another view of the 
 same place. In the Royal Collection at Osborne there 
 is a picture of it in water-colour by Mr. G. H. Fripp, 
 v/hich was engraved by Mr. Wallis for the Art fournal. 
 It appeared in that periodical for February, 1868. The 
 view here is in a different direction, but the treatment 
 of the two artists may be very closely compared. Mr. 
 Fripp's picture includes the castle, the alluvial plain of 
 the Orchay, Ben Anea, and the mountains of Glen 
 Strae. It is not by any means a strictly accurate piece 
 of topography, Mr. Fripp having used his liberty as an 
 artist in various ways, which we will indicate very 
 shortly ; but he has been extremely careful to preserve 
 what seemed to him all the most important truths of 
 local character, so that any one who loved the place 
 might find in the picture at least all those features 
 which he would be likely to remember and to recognise. 
 The feelings of attachment to locality, which are often 
 so inextricably mingled with our admiration for natural 
 beauty, are hurt and wounded by Turner's indifference 
 to everything that we know and love ; but in Mr. Fripp's 
 work they find a succession of satisfactions. The castle 
 is not minutely accurate ; the nearest corbel-turret is 
 omitted, perhaps by the fault of the engraver, but we 
 
Kilchurn Castle. yj 
 
 find all the principal features — the keep, the gables, the 
 chimneys, the staircase turret, the heavy masses of ivy, 
 the rock on which the castle stands. This is not simply 
 a castle quelconqiie ; it is Kilchurn Castle, and no other. 
 In the landscape we have the same degree of fidelity to 
 all the leading features. There is the alluvial plain, 
 with its stunted trees, scattered near the Orchay, but 
 gathering into a little wood behind Kilchurn itself. 
 There is the bay of Kilchurn between us and the 
 castle ; and across the lake, to the left, the Goose's Rock 
 which projects into the water, with the trees about it. 
 Mr. Fripp has not omitted the solitary farm-house near 
 the Goose's Rock (see 'Painter's Camp,' p. 105, cheap 
 edition), nor has he forgotten the picturesque rocks and 
 trees on his own side of the lake, but has used them in 
 his foreground. As I wander into Mr. Fripp's distance 
 up Glen Strae, I remember many a real wandering in 
 that region, and feel grateful to the artist for enabling 
 me to live past days over again. 
 
 With so much local fidelity, what, then, is the artistic 
 liberty used by Mr. Fripp, of which we spoke a little 
 time since ? In what does his manner of treatment 
 differ from the strict topographic truth } 
 
 It differs, first, in being more concentrated than the 
 natural scene. Interesting material, on the right hand 
 and on the left, is brought nearer together, so as to get 
 it into the picture. For example, the Goose's Rock, 
 which is interesting, is outside the picture to the left, but 
 it is brought in to add interest. Another alteration is 
 that all the mountains are made higher, and their lines 
 steeper, than in nature : the difference of steepness be- 
 
78 The Life of J. M. W. Turiier. 
 
 tween a line in the picture and the same h'ne in nature is 
 from fifteen to twenty degrees. In all probability Mr. 
 Fripp exaggerated height and steepness unconsciously, 
 for artists do so almost invariably in consequence of the 
 vivacity of their own impressions. The truth is, that 
 although the mountains at the head of Loch Awe strike 
 the imagination very powerfully, they are not preci- 
 pitously steep. The angle of their outline in nature 
 seldom exceeds thirty degrees. In Mr. Fripp's picture 
 it reaches about fifty degrees. Another very decided 
 difference between Mr. Fripp's work and nature is, that 
 he remarkably exaggerates ruggedness. The slopes of 
 Ben Anea are not, in nature, very rugged ; on the con- 
 trary, that mountain is somewhat remarkable for the fine 
 rdunding of its principal parts. Mr. Fripp prefers rug- 
 gedness to roundness (thinking it more picturesque) and 
 hews the surface of the mountain into steps and preci- 
 pices ; for which, indeed, there is an excuse in nature, 
 for the rock is often visible, but no more. The other 
 mountains are treated on the same principle. The fore- 
 ground is true to local character, but is simply used as 
 material, the rocks and trees being put where they suit 
 the artist's convenience. 
 
 Such is the exact degree in which Mr. Fripp will 
 deviate from nature in his drawing, and in this degree of 
 deviation he resembles the majority of our more con- 
 scientious artists. They alter nature in order to make 
 their work look more pictorial, but they do not, as a 
 general rule, abandon the endeavour to render local 
 character to the best of their ability. There are great 
 differences in their success, and differences in the license 
 
Kilchurn Castle. 79 
 
 they allow themselves : but the general feeling amongst 
 artists is, that when a picture is called by the name of a 
 place, it ought to bear some resemblance to that place. 
 One or two of the most earnest young English artists 
 have gone further than this, and attempted genuine 
 portraiture, trying to draw things really and truly as 
 they are. They met with an unforeseen difficulty in the 
 constitution of the human mind. All men when they 
 are struck by anything in nature exaggerate it. I mean, 
 that they see the real thing in nature bigger and more 
 important than it really is. The consequence of this 
 is, that a representation of the thing which only gives the 
 true importance of it relatively to other objects, is at 
 once rejected as inadequate. There is a wide distinction 
 between the really apparent size of objects and the size 
 which we imagine them to appear. The first can be 
 measured scientifically at any time with the utmost 
 accuracy, and precisely stated in terms of degrees and 
 minutes, just as we can measure the exact inclination of 
 a mountain slope ; the second is purely a mental im- 
 pression.* We admit then, and consider it a settled 
 question, that pure topography is not to be expected 
 from an artist, and we will even admit that such devia- 
 tions as those of Mr. Fripp are lawful ; because though 
 he may not care for truth of minute detail, he does 
 evidently care for truth of character, and try to preserve 
 it. But what are we to say of Turner .' Is his system, 
 
 * The reader is referred to an article on this subject in the Portfolio for 
 1875, page 76. The reasons for the inadequacy of pure topography have 
 also been explained in my ' Thoughts about Art,' in the chapters on 
 ' Painting from Nature,' ' The Place of Landscape-painting amongst the 
 fine Arts,' and ' The Observation of Nature.' 
 
8o The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 or his absence of system, compatible with the degree 
 of veracity we have a right to expect from an artist ? 
 
 There is certainly a moral question here which 
 deserves a little consideration. An artist sells a picture 
 as being representative of a certain place, and on 
 examination it turns out that the picture does not 
 resemble the place, and that it is a mere fancy of the 
 painter's. If it were perfectly understood that no re- 
 semblance was attempted, there would be no deception. 
 If you order a picture of Adam and Eve in Paradise 
 you know, without being told, that the figures are not 
 portraits of Adam and Eve, but that they are either pure 
 inventions or studies from Academy models ; but if the 
 subject of the picture were Prince Albert and Queen 
 Victoria you would expect some degree of likeness, and 
 consider yourself unfairly treated if they were not recog- 
 nisable. There is a moral question, also, about the 
 naming of pictures after places. It is done to profit by 
 the interest which people take in places that they have 
 heard of or read about, and it is not strictly honest to 
 sell to them as portraits of places designs which are ail 
 but imaginary. Turner was an excellent man of busi- 
 ness in his own way, and he knew that people liked to 
 fancy that they were looking at the portrait of some 
 definite place, and not at a mere ' composition.' The 
 temper of the public on this subject is well understood 
 by experienced artists. One successful old painter said 
 to me, ' If I paint a landscape and call it a composition, 
 people are not satisfied and think it too artificial, because 
 they are aware that it is composed ; but if I call the 
 same picture by the name of some place that they can 
 
Kilchurn Castle. 8i 
 
 find on the map, they are satisfied and look upon it 
 with perfect faith, as a true representation of nature.' 
 
 There is, however, a certain remote relation between 
 such a work as Turner's Kilchurn and the place it pro- 
 fesses to represent. It bears about the same relation to 
 reality that our dreams do when we dream of some 
 place that we have visited. We then see places oddly 
 jumbled together, and our memory, retentive enough of 
 certain things, entirely omits others of equal or still 
 greater importance. You maj'- dream, for example, if 
 you have been reading about Mont Blanc and St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, that you see St. Paul's in the valley of 
 Chamouni with Mont Blanc for a background, but that 
 the Cathedral has neither dome nor belfry, just as 
 Turner's Kilchurn had neither chimney nor turret ; and 
 you may perhaps see in your dream, without surprise, 
 the waters of Lake Leman within a mile of the Mer de 
 Glace. If Turner had simply visited Kilchurn without 
 making a sketch, and afterwards made this picture of it 
 from memory, intending it to be accurate, we should say 
 that his memory was singularly defective. The experi- 
 ments of M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran in the ' Education de 
 la M6moire pittoresque ' have produced results with 
 which no effort of Turner's memory, of which we have 
 any evidence, will bear the slightest comparison.* This 
 
 * M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran was teacher of drawing at the Ecole Im- 
 periale de Dessin in Paris in the time of Louis Napoleon, and he made a 
 remarkable series of experiments upon his pupils to ascertain how far the 
 artistic memory may be cultivated. His account of these experiments was 
 published in a pamphlet (Bauce, 13 Rue Bonaparte, 1862). They astonished 
 the most experienced artists, who saw them subjected to the most rigorous 
 proof, in which invention was allowed to take no liberties. In Turner's 
 work you never can disentangle memory and invention, so that it is really 
 
 6 
 
82 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 work of Turner's is not remembering, it is dreaming, 
 and drawing or painting the dream. 
 
 At length, then, after examining Turner's work and 
 comparing it with nature and with the work of another 
 artist, we have arrived at this conclusion, that in the 
 year 1802 he had begun to paint his dreams. This is 
 worth all the trouble we have taken about it, because the 
 general belief is that Turner did not become a dreamer 
 till a much later period. 
 
 And now let us ask, What are the nature and qualities 
 of the dream ">. Is it mere confusion, or is it orderly 
 with an order of its own, which is not the order of 
 reality 1 The answer is, that the dream has great order 
 and unity. Even the treachery of the artist's memory 
 has helped the unity of the impression. A believer in 
 the infinite perfection of Turner's mental faculties might 
 affirm that he remembered everything, but purposely re- 
 jected what he did not consider necessary to his artistic 
 intention. This would be a simple assertion which can 
 be made of any one, and which, in the case of Turner, 
 is without the slightest evidence in its support. It is a 
 theory which may be eagerly accepted by those who 
 have a blind faith in the genius of the artist, but when 
 you come to examine his genius according to the methods 
 of scientific criticism you will not accept such a theory 
 
 impossible to ascertain with precision whether his memory was accurate or 
 not. He may have remembered accurately and been unfaithful to his 
 accurate recollection, as he was to the facts themselves when they lay before 
 him whilst he studied from nature. On the other hand, his memory itself 
 may have been treacherous. My own belief is that he was too imaginative 
 to have an accurate memory. I believe that accuracy is compatible with 
 imagination, only when the feelings are not concerned, and feeling is always 
 present in Turner's work. 
 
Turner s Dream Pictures. 83 
 
 so easily; certainly not until you are convinced that 
 there is strong evidence in its favour. The real opera- 
 tion of Turner's intellect upon his materials appears to 
 have been a selection, both by the fidelities of his 
 memory and by what I have just called its treacheries. 
 I may illustrate this by a piece of advice which was given 
 to me by a distinguished critic of literature. ' Take as 
 many notes as you like,' he said, ' but never refer to 
 them, except by the memory, when you are actually 
 writing. Your memory will select for you those which 
 you ought to use, and reject for you, without any con- 
 scious trouble on your part, those which would only be an 
 encumbrance to your work.' Without stopping to con- 
 sider whether this was good or bad advice (it would not 
 be good in all cases), I may say that it describes very 
 accurately the operation of the imaginative intellect in 
 art. The imaginative memory retains what is necessary 
 to its work, and drops what is unnecessary. In the case 
 of the picture before us we must not allow ourselves to 
 be misled by the mere title. The artist calls his work 
 Kilchurn Castle to catch the public ; it is the tradesman, 
 and not the poet, who names the picture. Kilchurn had 
 not yet become so famous as Wordsworth and Scott 
 made it afterwards, but it had already a romantic 
 interest from the story of the ' Bridal,' and an interest of 
 locality from its fine situation in the Highlands, which a 
 few English tourists had already begun to explore. The 
 real motive of the picture was not Kilchurn, but the play 
 of clouds about the crest of a Highland mountain, wJiieh 
 mountain signified little. The mountain is any moun- 
 tain you please ; it resembles Ben Lomond nearly as 
 
 6—2 
 
84 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 much as Ben Cruachan : the castle is any castle you 
 please ; it resembles Ardhonnel more closely than Kil- 
 churn, though Turner probably never saw Ardhonnel. 
 The clouds play about the granite peak, a shower falling 
 here from their trailing fringes, a sunbeam flashing there 
 on the toppling silvery billows which are their everchang- 
 ing summits, a level wreath of white vapour clinging in 
 the shelter of the peak itself, great volumes rolling and 
 surging in the abyss of the deep corrie, and on the steep 
 stony sides of the mountains the purple shadows fall, 
 vast and swift, veiling each of them its hundred acres of 
 desolation. What has all this to do with the presence, 
 or the absence, of tower or turret in the dismantled ruin 
 below .' Who thinks of man's work when he witnesses 
 the majesty of the storms on the everlasting mountains 1 
 The clouds played so for unnumbered centuries before 
 the little feudal fortress was built, and they will play just 
 as merrily when every vestige of it shall have utterly dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 Let us think then of Turner henceforth simply as a 
 poet who is not to be bound down by topographic facts 
 of any kind. We shall find evidence, as we proceed, 
 that he did not pay deference, either, to the higher 
 scientific conditions of pictorial truth : but this is a part 
 of our inquiry which it is better to reserve until we are 
 brought to it by the story of his life. 
 
 He paid as much attention to truth of all kinds as 
 poets generally do. He lived in a world of dreams, and 
 the use of the world of reality, in his case, seems to have 
 been only to supply suggestions and materials for the 
 dreams. 
 
The Topography of Poets. 85 
 
 Had he lived till these days and been acquainted with 
 our contemporary literature he might fairly have said, 
 'Why do literary men find fault with me for my free 
 use of the poetic license ? They take just as great 
 liberties themselves. Talk of my Kilchurn, indeed ! 
 what do you say to Mr. Matthew Arnold's Church of 
 Broil f Mr. Arnold tells us over and over again that 
 the Church of Brou is in the mountains, close to the 
 pine-forests.' 
 
 ' Clad in black, on her white palfrey, 
 
 Her old architect beside, 
 There they found her in the mountains, 
 Mom and noon and eventide. 
 
 There she sate, and watched the builders 
 Till the church was roofed and done ; 
 
 Last of all, the builders reared her 
 In the nave a tomb of stone. 
 
 Upon the glistening leaden roof 
 Of the new pile, the sunlight shines. 
 The stream goes leaping by. 
 The hills are clothed with pines sun-proof, 
 'Mid bright green fields, below the pines. 
 Stands the church on high. 
 What church is this, from men aloof? 
 
 'Tis the Church of Brou. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 On Sundays, at the matin chime. 
 The Alpine peasants, two and three. 
 Climb up here to pray ; 
 Burghers and dames, at summer's prime. 
 Ride out to church from Chambery, 
 Dight with mantles gay. 
 But else it is a lonely time 
 Round the Church of Brou. 
 
 » * * * 
 
 So rest, for ever rest, O princely pair. 
 
 In your high church, 'mid the still mountain air.' 
 
86 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 The poem from which these iextracts are made is 
 very beautiful, and I would not have it otherwise than 
 as it is; yet what amazing topography, especially 
 amazing in dealing with a subject which is strictly 
 historical and strictly local ! The church of Brou is not 
 in the mountains at all, but in the low country, six miles 
 from the first rise of the Jura hills, and the scenery about 
 it is that of the great plain of La Bresse. I know the 
 church well. There is no leaping stream near it, nor 
 are there any sun-proof pines. There is no climbing up 
 to it, the road is good and nearly level. The church 
 does not stand on high. The tomb of the Duchess 
 Marguerite is not 'in the nave' at all, it is on the right- 
 hand side of the choir. So far from being aloof from 
 men, the church is within half-a-mile of an ancient town 
 (Bourg en Bresse), which has now ii,ooo inhabitants, 
 with an old church of its own ; and it so happens, that 
 while that of Brou was building there was a bishop at 
 Bourg, and the old church there was a cathedral. It is 
 not probable that the burghers and dames came from 
 Chambery to service at Brou, seeing that Chambery is 
 more than a hundred kilometres from Brou — too much 
 for a Sunday morning's ride. 
 
 This is but one instance of topographic inaccuracy in 
 poetry ; any habitual reader of the poets could find many 
 others. Why, then, do we exonerate the poet and blame 
 the landscape-painter } The reason is, that we have not 
 yet fully conceived how identical the two artists are. 
 
 So soon as Turner reaches perfect manhood he be- 
 comes the poet, as much as the necessity for earning a 
 living will allow him. He is not always quite so careless 
 
The Topography of Poets. 87 
 
 of local truth as he was at Kilchurn ; he knows his public 
 and his employers, knows that they will expect the 
 Tower of London to be different from the dome of St. 
 Paul's, and makes his subjects just topographic enough 
 to pass for likenesses when the places are too well 
 known. But he hated being ' mappy,' as he called it in 
 his rough, unliterary v/ay, and left that industry to 
 others. It is certain that he would have abominated 
 the work of our severely literal school, if he had lived to 
 see it. 
 
 Most landscape-painters, as they advance in life, be- 
 come more and more careless about portraiture of 
 places ; but what is surprising in Turner is, that he 
 should have made the choice between art and nature at 
 so early a period of his career. It is wonderful, too, that 
 a man should love nature as he did, be continually ob- 
 serving her, really know more about natural phenomena 
 than any of his predecessors, and yet coolly and de- 
 liberately prefer his own dreams to the beautiful and 
 interesting places which he travelled so far to see ! It 
 seems as if he travelled because he could not do without 
 the suggestion, the stimulus, of fresh scenes and places ; 
 but also as if his mind, when once fecundated by the 
 sight of nature, must produce fruit of its own kind, and 
 in its own way. It is said that each mind lives in its 
 own world ; how true this is of Turner ! how true it is 
 that every one of his pictures or designs is chiefly in- 
 teresting for us as a new glimpse of that enchanted land 
 which belonged to him and to him only, into which we 
 can only enter by his permission, and with his guidance, 
 out of which he himself could never escape ! 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Turner elected R.A. — First continental excursion. — Turner and his father. 
 — Pictures of 1806 and 1807. — Turner takes to etching. — Turner as an 
 engraver in mezzotint. — The Liber Studiorum. 
 
 When Turner exhibited his Kilchurn at the Royal 
 Academy his name, for the first time, appeared in the 
 glory of full capitals, with every syllable of his three 
 Christian names before it. In 1801 he had been plain 
 W. Turner, A. ; in 1802 he became JOSEPH MAL- 
 LORD WILLIAM TURNER, R.A. 
 
 He was only twenty-seven years old, a ' mere land- 
 scape-painter,' as critics and historical painters used to 
 say, earning his living mainly by humble industry in the 
 business of illustration, and yet he became a full Acade- 
 mician at that early age. His election is the more re- 
 markable that he had done nothing whatever to bring 
 it about, except his fair hard work in his profession. 
 He was absolutely incapable of social courtiership in 
 any of its disguises. He gave no dinners, he paid no 
 calls, he did nothing to make the Academicians believe 
 that he would be a credit to their order in any social 
 sense. Even after his election he would not go to thank 
 his electors, in obedience to the established usage. ' If 
 they had not been satisfied with my pictures,' he said to 
 
Tnrner Elected R.A. 89 
 
 Stothard, ' they would not have elected me. Why, then, 
 should I thank them ? Why thank a man for perform- 
 ing a simple duty?' His views on this subject were 
 clearly wrong ; for the rules of good manners very fre- 
 quently require us to thank people for performing simple 
 duties, and the Academicians were not under any obli- 
 gation to elect the young painter so soon : but how 
 completely Turner's conduct in this matter proves that 
 he can only have been elected on his merits ! It is 
 unnecessary to repeat what has been already said about 
 Turner's good fortune in living at a time when the 
 Academy would receive landscape-painters. His eleva- 
 tion to the full membership was of immense value to 
 him in his career, and he knew this so well that he 
 remained deeply attached to the Academy all his life. 
 He was Associate or member of it for a full half century, 
 and during fifty years was only three times absent from 
 its exhibitions. The Academy had been kind to him 
 from boyhood, an alma mater from the first ; and now 
 in the strength of his manhood she opened wide for him 
 the gates of her Temple of Fame. 
 
 It may be a convenient help to the memory to join 
 the election to the full membership with the abandon- 
 ment of topographic truth in art. The coincidence is 
 very close. The year when Turner appeared as Royal 
 Academician was the very year in which he exhibited a 
 picture conceived in absolute disdain of topographic 
 truth. From that time forwards he may have admitted 
 some recognisable measure of such truth, to conciliate 
 publishers or buyers, but his own mental emancipation 
 from it was complete. 
 
90 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Let it not for one moment be supposed that, from the 
 point of view of the higher, art-criticism, I, or any one 
 else, would blame Turner for emancipating himself in this 
 way. There is no doubt a certain feeling of disappoint- 
 ment when we come to reahse the almost incredible 
 degree of his unfaithfulness to topographic fact, espe- 
 cially if we have a strong attachment to places and a 
 feeble interest in art. But the artist in Turner gained 
 wondrously by the liberation which sacrificed the topo- 
 grapher. From the time of his early maturity he be- 
 came, above and before all other things, artist. It is 
 not even accurate to say that he deserted one order of 
 truth for another, that he quitted topography for the 
 rendering of scientific truth of aspect ; for although 
 there is much truth in his works, he never hesitated to 
 become utterly unscientific when his artistic instincts 
 suggested that kind of unfaithfulness. It is not now 
 the time or place to apply this kind of criticism ; but 
 we shall have to apply it later. For the present it 
 is enough to say, that the young Academician had 
 a temper as scornfully independent in his work as 
 in his social relations, that he painted what suited 
 him just as it suited him, and that the impulse to 
 follow his own genius became stronger and more irre- 
 sistible as he grew older. His temperament was full of 
 audacity, self-centred, self-reliant, eager for success and 
 fame, yet scornful of popular opinion — a contradiction, 
 if it is one, very common in the characters of artists and 
 men of letters, yet seldom so strikingly visible as in 
 Turner ; for no man ever loved fame and money more 
 than he did, and no man ever condescended less to the 
 
First Continental Excursion. 91 
 
 opinion universally received amongst the vulgar, that art 
 is the imitation of nature. 
 
 Great Britain is an excellent country for a landscape- 
 painter ; but it is a country which, from its very nature, 
 excites an Englishman's curiosity to see what lies out- 
 side of it. It is difficult, after seeing our sublime little 
 northern mountains, to repress the desire for mountain 
 scenery of a yet sublimer order ; it is difficult, after fol- 
 lowing our comparatively short rivers, to avoid dreaming 
 of those vaster arteries of the Continent which flow for 
 two hundred leagues. Everything that England has 
 awakens the desire to see something which she has not. 
 After seeing Westminster Abbey one desires to visit 
 Rouen, Amiens, Rheims, Chartres, and Beauvais ; after 
 standing under the dome of St. Paul's we should like to 
 see St. Peter's at Rome. The Englishman has so much 
 in his own island that he is educated into longing for 
 more and grander things of the same kind ; and it so 
 happens that there is nothing in England except our 
 ships and seaports, of which some finer, or at any rate 
 bigger, specimen cannot be found on the Continent. 
 For most things we are like children who have ridden 
 on ponies, and conceived from that experience a peculiar 
 passion for tall horses. Of course such an artist as 
 Turner, with his intense appreciation of vastness, was 
 not going to be confined all his life to the limits of 
 our insular scenery. His first raid upon the Con- 
 tinent immediately followed the first exhibition in 
 which he had borne the full honours of the Academy : 
 let us remember this, for it is important. The whole of 
 Turner's Continental work was done in his maturity. 
 
92 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 and consequently after his emancipation from topo- 
 graphy. 
 
 His first impression of Calais was strong enough to 
 suggest a very strong picture, the Calais Pier, with 
 French Poissards preparing for Sea — an English Packet 
 arriving, which has been etched not long since, on a 
 great scale, by Mr. Seymour Haden. Luckily this work 
 is now the property of the nation, for it is the first mani- 
 festation of the full energy there was in Turner's genius 
 ' — of its energy, but not as yet by any means of its sense 
 of beauty. The picture is full of life and motion, but 
 the colouring of it is conceived as if it were intended to 
 be etched, and not intended to be exhibited perpetually 
 as a work in colour. The light-and-shade, too, seems to 
 have been designed for the etcher, with his simple broad 
 distinctions and vigorous darks, rather than for the 
 engraver, with his subtle translations of delicate tones. 
 Still it is already master's work, and if it had been ex- 
 hibited two years earlier the Academical election would 
 have seemed more the acknowledgment of success and 
 less the intelligent anticipation of it. Another important 
 result of this Continental tour was The Festival upon the 
 Opening of the Vintage of Macon. As the sense of power 
 had revealed itself in the Calais Pier, so the sense of 
 beauty had its satisfactions in the Macon Vintage. It is 
 a graceful composition, full of the sentiment which we 
 call classic, with its noble river-divided landscape, its 
 elegant trees, its pleasant slopes of land and joyous 
 animated figures. It is, in short, a beautiful fancy with 
 much southern poetry in it, carrying us half-way to the 
 Virgilian dreamland, but it is not Macon. The real 
 
First Continental Excursion. 93 
 
 scenery of Macon is interesting to the intelligent travellerr 
 but it is in the highest degree embarrassing to the artist, 
 and cannot be treated pictorially without the free use of 
 the artist's license, about which Turner had no scruple. 
 Not only did Turner permit himself the widest depar- 
 tures from fact, but he also (as at Kilchurn) neglected 
 important truths of character. In the country near 
 Macon one of the most striking peculiarities is the per- 
 fect flatness of the land on the left bank of the Sa6ne,. 
 and the boldness of the slopes on the right, yet this 
 strong contrast is not given. The river is a Turnerian 
 river, but not the Sa6ne near Macon ; the vine-lands 
 are Turnerian, they are not the vine-lands of the Ma- 
 connais. 
 
 From eastern France our hero crossed over into- 
 Switzerland, and seems to have made a halt at Bonne- 
 ville, on his way to Chamouni — a longer halt than pass- 
 ing tourists usually make there, for he got materials for 
 two pictures, one of the little town with Mont Blanc, 
 and the other of the Chateau de St. Michel, at Bonne- 
 ville. He went on to the Mer de Glace, drawing the 
 glacier and source of the Arveiron ; crossed the Alps 
 till he got into the Val d'Aosta, and drew there also. 
 Of his thoughts and impressions during this first journey 
 among scenery which must have greatly excited him we 
 know nothing but what may be gathered from his- 
 sketches. We have no ample correspondence, like 
 Byron's letters from the Continent, giving the succes- 
 sive impressions of scenes when first visited. The feeble- 
 ness of Turner's literary faculty, and the defects of his 
 education, made writing irksome to him, whilst his total 
 
94 The Lije of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 ignorance of foreign languages must have kept him, 
 when abroad, in too isolated a position for any profit- 
 able intercourse with the inhabitants. The man wlio 
 could turn either the French or the Italian name for the 
 beautiful valley just mentioned into such a wonderful 
 muddle as the 'Valley of d'Aoust' seems a hopeless 
 student of languages, yet he printed it so in the Academy 
 Catalogue. He writes Macon, the town, with the cedilla 
 (Magon), as if it were the French for mason ; a mistake 
 which nobody with an ear could commit, after having 
 been at the place and heard its name pronounced. He 
 'writes Arveiron, ' Arveron/ but this is more excusable, 
 as it is a common English error, or abbreviation. The 
 incapacity of Turner in all that constitutes literary 
 power, even of the very humblest order — the power of 
 the emigrant who can write an interesting letter to his 
 relations. in the old country, the power of the traveller 
 who can keep an intelligible journal — was an incapacity 
 so complete that the biographer has no materials for 
 the history of the artist's mind except his sketches and 
 paintings and the dates on them. What he thought, or 
 whether ■ he thought at all, is a mystery to us : all we 
 know is, that he received a succession of landscape im- 
 pressions, which immediately transformed themselves in 
 his brain till they became dreams, and that these dreams 
 either bore some resemblance to the places, or did not, 
 just as it happened. At the same time we are not to 
 forget that excursions such as this Continental journey 
 had their real utility for Turner, but a strange kind of 
 utility. They gave materials for new dreaming. The 
 picture of the Macon vintage is unlike the reality, and 
 
First Continental Excursion. 95 
 
 yet in some strange, unaccountable way, was suggested 
 by the reality. So with the mountains. It is probable 
 that Turner never painted a portrait of any mountain 
 whatever: his way of treating Ben Cruachan (wholly 
 arbitrary) is his way of treating Alp or Apennine ; and 
 yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that his 
 travelling was of no use to him, that he learned nothing 
 from the mountains in Argyllshire or Savoy. On the 
 contrary, where another artist would have spent his 
 time in the unintelligent copyism of particular facts, 
 such as the shape of this or that rocky pinnacle or but- 
 tress (a shape which would be altered past recognition 
 by walking a mile in either direction), Turner was im- 
 buing his mind with those great laws of structure which 
 govern every hill of one class and every mountain of 
 another. All that this proves is, that his mind acted as 
 the most elevated minds generally do act. The small 
 mind learns painfully the particular fact, and feels lost 
 if the memory fails to retain it; the large mind notes 
 the fact, but at once passes beyond, to the principle, and 
 after that holds the fact with a somewhat loose and 
 careless grasp. Emerson says that in youth we remem- 
 ber painfully the very words of some great man whom 
 we admire ; but that when our minds have grown larger 
 we become indifferent to this kind of accuracy, being 
 ourselves capable of thinking the thoughts over again, 
 in our own way. This was Turner's habit with regard 
 to Nature. He did not care to remember so as to quote 
 Nature word for word, but he put himself as nearly as 
 possible in harmony with Nature, so that he might be 
 
96 The Life of J. M. W. Tur7ter. 
 
 able at any time to create natural beauty over again in 
 his own way. This is the sort of relation, and the only 
 sort, which subsisted between the great natural universe 
 and the little Turnerian one. From the date of his election 
 as Academician, Turner fed himself at the everlasting 
 and inexhaustible banquet of natural beauty, but only 
 as an original poet may freely pasture his mind on the 
 literature of other ages. In this free spirit he travelled ; 
 never resting long in one place, , and never, or hardly 
 ever, doing more than sketch with the pencil-point, 
 altering everything that he sketched. On his return to 
 London, after every such excursion, it is doubtful whether 
 he ever possessed one accurate study the more, and it 
 cannot be proved that he had any accurate recollection 
 of a single scene that he had passed through. The real 
 gain to him was of a different order. After a sea voyage 
 he had the marine element in his mind ; after wandering 
 through Alpine valleys he came back with an Alpine 
 education, knowing how a snowy crest shines in the 
 sunset, how a glacier creeps down to a valley, and a 
 waterfall leaps from a cliff. 
 
 When Turner became an Academician he took his 
 old father away from his business of barber, and gave 
 him a home in his own house. It is said that he was 
 kind and respectful to the old man, invariably ; which 
 we may easily believe, though there have been stories 
 to the contrary, originating in the simple habits of both 
 father and son. It seemed to both of them perfectly 
 natural that the elder man, having now much time on 
 his hands, should occupy himself in little tasks which 
 ■would save a shilling here and there ; but if the painter 
 
Turner and his FatJier. 97 
 
 readily consented to this, was it not the most delicate 
 conduct possible under the circumstances ? Old William 
 Turner had been industrious and economical all his life, 
 and, like all old men who have been accustomed to 
 work for a living, he felt the need of useful occupation. 
 It is said that he acted as porter at his son's gallery, 
 would stretch canvases for him, and do other little 
 things, in all which there is certainly no real humilia- 
 tion, but simply the gratification of an old man's wish to 
 be useful. The relation between father and son is indeed 
 quite the prettiest part of the life-story we have to tell. 
 The artist was never hindered by his father, but aided 
 by him in all possible ways with tender parental care 
 and sagacious foresight. The son, on his part, was dutiful 
 and filial to the last, taking the old man to his house, and 
 drawing closer the bond of affection as the social distance 
 between them became wider. Thus it is precisely when 
 the painter wins the full honours of the Academy, 
 honours which give a recognised and envied position in 
 London society, that he takes his father home. A 
 meaner nature would have tried to keep the old man at 
 a safe distance. Few readers of this biography can have 
 failed to meet with instances of professional men, bril- 
 liantly successful in the world, whose humble parents 
 are never by any chance to be met with in their houses, 
 and are never mentioned by them. Thackeray had 
 certainly met with such instances, and was thinking of 
 them when he described Sepio : ' He prances about the 
 park on a high-bred cock-tail, with lacquered boots and 
 enormous high heels ; and he has a mother and sisters 
 somewhere — washerwomen, it is said, in Pimlico.' 
 
 7 
 
98 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 The house to which Turner took his father from 
 Maiden Lane was No. 64, Harley Street. The artist 
 went to hve there in the year 1 803. In that year he 
 e:j^ibited, amongst his other contributions to the 
 Academy, an indifferent figure picture, A Holy Family, 
 in which the early influence of Reynolds is very distinctly 
 visible. 
 
 For the next three years there is hardly anything to 
 tell of Turner's life beyond the mere catalogue of his 
 pictures, and it would encumber the pages of this bio- 
 graphy to give the titles of them all. The Sun Rising 
 through Vapour, which now hangs with the Claudes in 
 the National Gallery, was exhibited in 1807 at the 
 Royal Academy, and the Goddess of Discord in tlie 
 Garden of the Hesperides appeared in the British Insti- 
 tution the year before. Both these are notable pictures, 
 but the Hesperides landscape has a certain fixed place 
 in Turner's history as an artist which gives it a speeiSjl 
 importance. It was a very ambitious picture, and in it' 
 he attempted to combine, and to reconcile, something 
 of his knowledge of mountain-form recently acquired 
 amongst the Alps with his knowledge of landscape 
 tradition learned from the old masters in picture-gal- 
 leries. All artists attempt the reconciliation of some 
 sort of tradition with what they learn from nature ; but 
 in our day we very seldom see a painter of any consider- 
 able power hampering himself with the orthodox classi- 
 cism. If any classicism pervades some portion of the 
 art of to-day, it attempts to show how much better we 
 understand classic feeling than our orthodox predeces- 
 sors did, instead of following blindly in their footsteps. 
 
Pictures of 1806 and 1807. 99 
 
 A modern critic, ignorant of Turner's real history, and 
 finding himself for the first time before this Hesperides 
 landscape of his, would say that here was a man still 
 bound in the chains of tradition, yet struggling towards 
 the truth of nature ; a follower of the ancients, for whom 
 there was some faint hope that in a remote future he 
 might come to see the world with the open eyes of a 
 modern. All this would be a complete mistake. In 
 1806 it is evident that Turner could have drawn moun- 
 tain forms better than this if he had chosen ; for he 
 drew them better in 1801 with no other experience than 
 a little knowledge of Scotland. His picture of Kilchurn, 
 with all its topographic inaccuracies, was (for that time) 
 a very remarkable instance of mountain truth, and the 
 artist cannot have been made more ignorant of such 
 truth by his experience of the Continental mountains. 
 The Garden of the Hesperides is full of what seems ignor- 
 ance of natural form and colour too, and yet it cannot 
 have been ignorance. It was a return to the traditions 
 of the picture-gallery, for which, let us bear in mind, 
 Turner does not seem at any time of his life to have 
 felt any hearty aversion. It pleased him to turn his 
 back temporarily upon Nature, and fabricate a classical 
 picture in browns and greys, with impossible geology, in 
 the style of the old masters. • There is no denying that 
 the picture has considerable majesty, a kind of simple 
 grandeur which the old painters cared for more than 
 truth, and it is painted with a power which already rivals 
 theirs ; but it cannot give much satisfaction to any 
 lover of natural beauty. ^ The next year's picture, the 
 Swi Rising through Vapour, is a direct return to nature, 
 
 7—2 
 
100 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 and is the first decided expression on an important scale 
 of Turner's master-passion in his art, the love of light 
 and mystery in combination. Although Turner was 
 only thirty years old when this picture was painted, it is 
 quite mature in treatment throughout, and the proof 
 that he himself believed it to be so is, that he selected 
 it as one of his two representatives in the contest with 
 Claude, which he certainly would not have done if the 
 work had retained the slightest trace of youthful inex- 
 perience. The foreground is rich in fishing-boats and 
 figures. In the distance are mighty ships of war, floating 
 on a glassy sea. The sun is struggling through the 
 mist, and lighting a few scattered clouds towards the 
 zenith. Much of the foreground is occupied by a fish- 
 ing-boat ashore and a group of fisherwomen on the 
 sands, who are cleaning and selling fish. The whole 
 scene is of a kind which must have been very familiar 
 to Turner (more familiar than any gardens of Hesper- 
 ides) _; for he liked to be with fishermen and sailors, and 
 was an early riser, who had often seen the sun in the 
 east through the mists of an English sea. 
 
 We now come to a new scheme of Turner's, which he 
 began to realise in the year 1807. Clever painter as he 
 was already, he did not yet earn very much money by 
 the direct sale of his pictures ; some of the best of which, 
 though exhibited in the Academy and appreciated by 
 his brother artists who elected him, returned to his 
 hands after the close of the exhibition, and remained 
 for long afterwards in his own keeping. He therefore 
 determined to do what many artists are doing at the 
 present day — he determined to appeal to the general 
 
Turner takes to Etching. lor 
 
 public through the medium of etching ; but as the effect 
 he sought required chiaroscuro of a very complete kind, 
 both in fulness and in delicacy, he thought it desirable 
 to add mezzotint to his etchings. 
 
 It so happens that these two kinds of engraving are 
 the most opposite that can be imagined, and therefore 
 the most naturally complementary of each other. Etch- 
 ing depends on lines, mezzotint on shades. In etching 
 the darks are drawn, and every touch is so much added 
 darkness to the work. In mezzotint the dark is removed 
 to make light, and every stroke is so much added light- 
 ness. The faults of etching, considered as a representa- 
 tion of nature, are too much hardness of line, and too 
 little delicacy of distinction in shades. These faults can 
 be overcome, but not easily. Turner did not choose to 
 take the trouble to overcome them. He was always a 
 rapid worker, and liked expeditious methods. It is said 
 that at one time of his life he admired the foliage of a 
 brother landscape-painter, and asked to be allowed to 
 see him work. After watching the painter for a short 
 time he thanked him, but said that his manner would be 
 useless to himself, merely from its incompatibility with 
 rapid execution. Turner, indeed, seems to have shared 
 Landseer's opinion, that speed was a good thing even 
 from the artistic point of view, or at any rate he may 
 have perceived that it had an important pecuniary value, 
 and was necessary to enable him to earn his bread in 
 the beginning of his career. Now painting of any kind, 
 whether in water-colour or oil, is a rapid process in 
 comparison with highly-finished etching in complete 
 chiaroscuro. Turner had been accustomed to paint 
 
102 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 quickly, and he wished to etch quickly also. There 
 was one way in which this could be done, namely, by 
 etching all the organic lines and markings, and leaving 
 the rest of the work, the fine shading, to the mezzotinter. 
 With characteristic shrewdness he adopted this method, 
 and thereby disembarrassed himself of at least three- 
 quarters of the work to be done. In this way he reduced 
 etching to a comparatively simple process, easily learned 
 by any one who was already able to draw ; and as he had 
 a remarkable sense of the value of lines, partly a natural 
 gift, and partly the result of incessant sketching with 
 the pencil-point, the consequence was that he produced 
 etchings with hardly any preliminary apprenticeship, 
 which in their own peculiar kind as landscape markings 
 for mezzotint have never been surpassed, and are not 
 very likely to be in the future. The critics, however, 
 who entirely neglected these works for many years, and 
 did not recognise their merit until it was pointed out to 
 them, are in the present day going into the opposite 
 extreme, and praising Turner as a master of etching, 
 just as if he had practised the complete art — as Raj on 
 doe.s, for example. This is only one of the innumerable 
 instances of that rencMrissement in eulogy which attends 
 a great reputation. When it becomes fashionable to 
 admire what a famous man has done, people seek dis- 
 tinction for themselves in praising him, and the art of 
 discovering new merits in his works becomes a part of 
 the critic's trade. At this stage in the history of a great 
 renown, the critic whose convictions are based upon 
 accurate knowledge finds himself so much left behind 
 that anything he has to say seems pale and tame in 
 
Turner takes to Etching. 103 
 
 comparison with what others have already said, and so 
 he is either reduced to complete silence, or else made to 
 appear by contrast, something like a defamer of the 
 illustrious dead. At whatever risk of this imputation, 
 let me say plainly that Turner never in his whole life 
 attained any technical power in etching beyond the very 
 simplest rudiments of the art, and that he is not to be 
 compared for one moment, as an executant, with the 
 really accomplished etchers of the present day. There 
 does not pass a month without the publication of some 
 etching in the Portfolio which Turner could not have 
 executed. He had just one kind of skill in etching, that 
 of laying organic lines well which were to be mezzotinted 
 afterwards. He could do this with singular strength 
 and determination, putting very high powers of mind 
 into his work, and proving the value of the etched line, 
 as a skeleton to be covered with subsequent shading, 
 better than any other etcher whom I could name. But 
 I think that the fashionable enthusiasm for Turner's 
 work becomes a downright superstition when it takes his 
 etchings, without the mezzotint shade which he always 
 intended to add to them, as models of what etching 
 should be when nothing is to be left to mezzotint. 
 
 It does not seem very wonderful, when we know how 
 simple was the kind of etching which Turner practised, 
 that he should have mastered so rapidly the limited 
 portion of the art which he intended to make use of ; 
 but I have always thought it very remarkable that he 
 should have been able to make himself a good mezzo- 
 tint engraver with the very limited amount of practice 
 which he gave to it. He does not seem to have liked 
 
I04 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 the work of mezzotinting, for he did very little of it, and 
 yet the little he did was good. The process was too 
 tedious for him : the slow working from dark to light 
 may be borne by the patience of an engraver ; but it is 
 not an artist's process, as etching is. The consequence 
 was, that Turner generally left the mezzotinting to pro- 
 fessional men, such as Charles Turner, Lupton, and 
 others ; nor did he always execute even the etching 
 himself, as the engravers could do it for him from his 
 own drawings. What he did invariably was an original 
 drawing in brown, with pen-work for his organic mark- 
 ings, and shadings washed with a brush. From these 
 drawings the engravers worked. 
 
 The whole scheme of the Liber Studiorum was sug- 
 gested, as every reader of this biography is probably 
 already aware, by the Liber Veritatis of Claude; but 
 there is an essential difference between the intention of 
 the two works, which a just critic would never overlook. 
 Claude made drawings in brown of his pictures as they 
 successively left his easel, just as David Roberts used to 
 make memoranda with pen and ink to preserve for him- 
 self a record of his entire ceuvre, and also to serve for 
 reference in case of dispute about the authenticity of 
 pictures attributed to him. In doing this, Claude had 
 no notion of making a loud appeal to the public. His 
 Liber Veritatis was a private possession, made public 
 long afterwards by the engravings of Earlom, but not 
 intended for publicity. The Liber Studiorum, on the 
 contrary, was a direct appeal to the public to judge 
 between its author and the famous landscape-painter of 
 Lorraine. Another difference between the two schemes 
 
TJie Liber Studiorum. loj 
 
 was, that Claude had no design of proving to the world 
 how varied were the resources of his genius. He simply- 
 kept a memorandum of each of his pictures separately, 
 without reference to the others ; but Turner had a great 
 comprehensive plan, according to which every plate in 
 his magnum opus was to form part of an important whole, 
 so that the work, when completed, might be an epitome 
 of the Turnerian universe. The contest is, therefore, one 
 between a living man consciously resolved to exhibit his 
 powers to the very best advantage, and a dead man who 
 had no idea that there was ever to be a contest at all, 
 and had done his work for his own private satisfaction. 
 This is the first, but not the last of Turner's plans, which 
 reveal to us the intensely ambitious character of his 
 mind. It is probable that no artist ever lived who had 
 a higher opinion of his own powers, or who thought more 
 about his own fame. Those comparisons which modest 
 people are anxious not to suggest, this artist deliberately 
 invited. At a later time he gave directions that two of 
 his pictures should be hung side by side with two pictures 
 of Claude, and at the early age of thirty we find him 
 determining to build himself a monument, so devised 
 and so entitled that no instructed person shall ever be 
 able either to see it or hear of it without thinking of 
 Claude's Liber Veritatis. Little as the English artist 
 knew of Latin, he found or borrowed erudition enough 
 to call his publication a Liber instead of a Book — a 
 Liber Studiorum instead of a Book of Studies. The 
 suggestion of Claude's title is so exact that it is imitated, 
 not only in the language and grammatical form, but 
 even in the number of the syllables. 
 
io6 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 In Turner's scheme there was a comprehensive large- 
 ness, not less characteristic of his mind than the self- 
 assertion which challenged the most famous landscape- 
 painter of the past. He divided his studies into six 
 divisions : Historical, Pastoral, Elegant Pastoral, Moun- 
 tain, Marine, and Architectural. This is in the highest 
 degree interesting, as evidence that the artist was him- 
 self perfectly conscious of the range and variety of his 
 genius. It was very like Turner, too, not to be able to 
 get through such a limited piece of literary work as the 
 naming of his divisions without a blunder of some kind ; 
 so we find that one of his divisions is ' Pastoral,' and 
 another ' Elegant Pastoral,' as if the second were not a 
 subdivision of the first. It is like dividing the civihsed 
 world into Americans, Europeans, and Frenchmen. 
 What Turner originally intended may have been to 
 separate the classical pastoral in his works from the 
 wilder modernism in which he was one of the earliest 
 discoverers or innovators ; but when we come to ex- 
 amine the works themselves, we find that if such an 
 intention existed it must have been forgotten in the 
 execution. Nor ham Castle, for example, is ' pastoral,' 
 but Raglan Castle is ' elegant pastoral.' A Bridge with 
 Cows is pastoral, a Stone Bridge with Goats is elegant 
 pastoral. Chepstow Junction of tlie Severn, is classed 
 amongst the elegant subjects, whilst a scene of water- 
 cress gathering near Twickenham is not. On the other 
 hand, there is a reason why Solway Moss should not be 
 elegant ; it is too wild and northern, so it is put amongst 
 the simple pastorals, with the Farmyard with Pigs and 
 the Hedging and Ditching. We can see a reason for the 
 
T]ie Liber Studiorum. 107 
 
 classification in some instances, but not in all. It is 
 probable that if the series of plates had been carried 
 out to the full extent which Turner intended, the 
 classical subjects, for which he had always a predilec- 
 tion, would have been more numerous amongst those 
 which he called ' elegant.' In the title of another of his 
 sections there is a certain want of correspondence with 
 part of the contents. What he calls ' History,' includes 
 legendary subjects, such as j^saciis and Hesperia, Jason, 
 and Procris and Cephalus, and one illustration of a poem 
 which is certainly not historical, namely, the Faerie 
 Queetie: few Biblical subjects are also included in this sec- 
 tion, and they seem rather strangely associated with those 
 which we have just mentioned. It is difficult, when we 
 look over the list of subjects, to understand how Turner 
 intended the plates to be parts of a great whole, though 
 his attempted classification proves that the intention was 
 certainly in his mind. The artist's chief purpose would 
 appear to have been variety, and yet even this purpose 
 might have been more fully attained from the sketches 
 and studies in his possession ; for the mountain subjects 
 are nearly all from Switzerland and Scotland, with 
 nothing from Northern England, or Wales. It is very 
 curious that, with Turner's classical tastes, there should 
 be nothing classical amongst his architectural subjects in 
 the Liber, unless Greenwich Hospital \% to be considered 
 so. He draws a crypt, a castle on the Irish coast and 
 one on the Rhine, two continental cities and one English 
 town, with two British abbeys, a cathedral, and the in- 
 terior of a church, but never a Greek temple, or Roman 
 aqueduct, or arch of triumph. 
 
io8 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Turner managed the publishing business of the Liber 
 Studiorum himself, and not so skilfully as a clever pub- 
 lisher would have managed it. The plates were not issued 
 with that degree of luxe which is necessary to make a 
 work of art look its best. The paper took the impres- 
 sions well, but was not rich enough in quality to make 
 the margins handsome, whilst each number of five plates 
 was stitched in a dark blue cover, very inferior to the 
 tasteful covers which are used for such publications in 
 the present day. Seventy-one plates being published at 
 the price oi£i'j los. for the whole work, and one of these 
 plates being a gift of the artist to his subscribers, it follows 
 that the cost of each subject was five shillings exactly. 
 Turner, with that desire to get as much money as pos- 
 sible into his own pocket, which always characterised 
 him, and often led him to overreach himself in his un- 
 willingness to let others make profit out of his work, 
 spoiled the commercial chances of this publication by 
 refusing the usual share of profits to the trade. It is 
 true that these profits always appear enormous at first 
 sight, and it seems pleasanter to an artist to receive all 
 the money which the public lays out upon his engravings 
 rather than let fifty per cent, of it go to the wholesale 
 and retail printsellers ; but as it happens that the trade 
 finds purchasers where the artist himself cannot find 
 them, the result of publishing through the trade is in- 
 variably better for him in the end. Turner not only em- 
 ployed the engravers himself at the very moderate price 
 of eight guineas a plate, so long as they would work for 
 liim at that rate,* but he got up the numbers in his own 
 
 * The prices paid to engravers were first five guineas, then eight guineas, 
 and afterwards ten guineas or twelve guineas. 
 
The Liber Studiorum. 109 
 
 house with the help of a female servant, who is said to 
 have robbed him of many proofs when she had to stitch 
 the numbers. As Turner was his own publisher we sup- 
 pose that he must have had the trouble of collectings 
 money from his subscribers, and of keeping the accounts 
 relating to his publication down to the smallest detail. 
 The first number appeared in 1807, and its successors 
 followed irregularly until 18 16, when the publication 
 finally came to a standstill for want of encouragement, 
 and because the artist had found more profitable work 
 to do. The sale of the earlier numbers appears to have- 
 been larger than that of the later ones. 
 
 Now that Turner has become one of the greatest 
 names in art, people eagerly contend for fine proofs of 
 the Liber Studiorum, some of which have been sold for 
 as much as £2.0 each, whilst a perfect copy of the whole 
 work, composed of choice proofs selected from different 
 copies, is now worth a small fortune. Prints, however, do 
 not improve by keeping ; and these proofs, which now 
 sell for so much to connoisseurs, are not better in any 
 way than those other proofs which the same class of 
 connoisseurs thought so worthless in the first quarter of 
 this century that hundreds of them were used for lighting 
 fires. The Liber was neglected then, because Turner, 
 though an artist of reputation, had not yet become 
 splendidly famous ; and it is sought after now because- 
 his name adds lustre to a collection of prints. It may 
 be doubted whether the change shows any decided im- 
 provement in public taste. It is certainly very doubtful 
 whether, if works of exactly equal merit were now pub- 
 lished for the first time by an unknown artist, they 
 
no The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 would repay the cost of engraving. Unhappily, in the 
 fine arts, the splendour of the name, and not the quality 
 of the work, determines the pecuniary result. Within 
 quite recent years the pictures of Jules Dupre have risen 
 to forty times their original value, and some of Miiller 
 and David Cox to eighty or a hundred times. The 
 Liber Studiorum has risen almost in the same proportions 
 for some states of the plates, though even yet a purchaser 
 who buys to gratify his artistic taste only, and does not 
 care to contend with rich people for rarities, may pro- 
 cure fair impressions of separate plates at a moderate 
 expense.* 
 
 The commercial side of art is always variable and un- 
 satisfactory to all, except those who make a profit out 
 of it. The artistic merits and qualities of a print remain 
 the same as long as the ink and paper last, whatever 
 Fashion may have to say on the subject. We may 
 therefore leave dealers and collectors to settle the cur- 
 rent value of the Liber Studiorum plates from year to 
 year, whilst we turn to the consideration of them from 
 the artistic point of view. 
 
 We are all familiar with a most ungraceful little word, 
 which it is almost impossible to introduce into writing of 
 any literary pretension, but which so happily describes a 
 
 * It is difficult to understand on what principle the dealers now regulate 
 the value of ordinary impressions of the Liber Studiorum plates. The 
 writer of this note bought a good impression of the Little Devil's Bridge of 
 one well-known dealer for £i 8j., and afterwards sent it to another well- 
 known dealer to see what he would offer for it. The answer was, ' It is 
 worth only a few pence.' This is a matter of perfect indifference when we 
 buy only for artistic qualities ; but collectors may do well to be careful. 
 Caveat emptor I 
 
TJie Liber Studiorum. 1 1 1 
 
 common fault of common art that it is never likely to fall 
 entirely into disuse. The ungraceful little word is 'nig- 
 gling.' Well, the qualities of the Liber Stttdiorum are ex- 
 actly the opposite of all which that word implies. Turner 
 was in 1807 already so completely the accomplished 
 master in art that he possessed to the full what Reynolds 
 called the genius of mechanical performance. We should 
 not use ' mechanical ' in that sense to-day, because, to us, 
 it conveys the idea of a machine's action rather than an 
 artist's ; the word we should use would be ' technical :' 
 but we know what Reynolds meant, and if we did not 
 his own explanation would make it clear to us. ' This 
 genius,' he said, 'consists, I conceive, in the power of 
 expressing that which employs your pencil, whatever it 
 may be, as a whole : so that the general effect and power 
 of the whole may take possession of the mind, and for 
 a while suspend the consideration of the subordinate 
 and particular beauties or defects.' 
 
 This is exactly the opposite of ' niggling,' which means 
 a childish trifling over parts, and Turner in the Liber 
 Studiorum followed the precept of Reynolds. None of 
 the engravings after Turner have more of what artists 
 call ' breadth ' than those in the Liber, and few are so 
 consistent in their simplicity and in the omission of 
 useless material. The predominant feeling in these 
 compositions is very serious; in many of them it is 
 tragic or gloomy, and the light-and-shade is generally in 
 a lower key than in the artist's later work in oil or 
 water-colour. The work with the etching-needle, repre- 
 senting Turner's pen-markings on his drawings, is full of 
 a masculine economy and strength, like the words of a 
 
112 TJte Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 speaker who says little, but always to the purpose ; but 
 it is not pretty nor amusing, like the clever playing with 
 the same instrument in the hands of some modern 
 Frenchmen. The Liber shows a good deal of the in- 
 fluence of Cozens and Girtin, both in feeling and in 
 method of using shade, and behind these there is the 
 influence of Claude ; but the sentiment is profounder 
 than that of Claude, and the passion for natural truth is 
 stronger than it was in him. In two or three of the 
 grandest and most solemn plates in the series it has been 
 believed, perhaps with reason, that the artist was working 
 under the influence of Titian. 
 
 The finest collection of Liber Studiorum impressions 
 ever seen together was exhibited by the Burlington Fine- 
 Arts Club in the year 1872, and the catalogue of that 
 exhibition affords some interesting fragments of informa- 
 tion about the progress of the work in the hands of Tur- 
 ner and his engravers. Although the artist was his own 
 publisher, he at first made use of his engraver, Charles 
 Turner, in that capacity, until there occurred a rupture 
 between them, due to the hardness and severity of the 
 painter. Although, as we have seen, the price asked for 
 the whole work was £iy los., the early numbers were 
 charged to subscribers at the rate of 15^. for prints and 
 ;^i 5j. for proofs. These prices were afterwards altered 
 to one guinea for prints and twice as much for what the 
 artist was pleased to call proofs. ' It is to be feared,' 
 says the author of the Burlington Catalogue, ' that the 
 difference between these two classes of impressions con- 
 sisted wholly in the price.' The confused way in which 
 the whole work was issued appears to have been still 
 
T}ie Liber Studioruiii. 113 
 
 further complicated by something like downright dis- 
 honesty. ' I am sorry too,' observes Mr. Thornbury, ' to 
 say that there can be no doubt, from years of investiga- 
 tion by Messrs. Pye, Stokes, and other collectors, that 
 Turner often took out the thickened letters of the plates 
 in the bad third state and engraved open letters higher 
 up in the plate : in fact, he sold sham proofs, having 
 private marks and scratches to indicate to himself the 
 various states.' If he did this, he is of course inexcus- 
 able ; but as the plates had been worked upon by himself, 
 he may have thought them as good as new. Mezzotint 
 wears away fast in the printing, and if a plate has just 
 been refreshed by added labour it may be equal to its 
 earliest state if the artist has been happy in his additions. 
 This may be an artistic excuse, but it is not a commercial 
 one, because the commercial sense of the word ' proof is 
 an early impression before the plate has been refreshed 
 by any restoration whatever, whether successful in the 
 artist's opinion or the contrary. The reader would be 
 unjust, however, if he inferred that Turner had no con- 
 science. He was grasping, and yet curiously conscien- 
 tious in his own way, and according to his own notions 
 of what was honourable and just. 
 
 Amongst Turner's notes on the margin of the engra- 
 vers' proofs we have some interesting bits of his mind, 
 showing both his faculty as a critic and his temper. The 
 Dunstanborough Castle was engraved by Charles Turner, 
 who permitted himself the facility of a little aquatint. 
 The painter, of course, detected this at a glance, and 
 wrote coldly and severely. — ' Sir, you have done in aqua- 
 tint all the castle down to the rocks ; did I ever ask for 
 
 8 
 
114 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 uch an indulgence ?' This is very like one of the Duke 
 of Wellington's laconic reproofs, and seems rather hard 
 when addressed to a brother-artist who, on the whole, 
 did his work faithfully and well, especially when we con- 
 sider that aquatint was not formally excluded from the 
 Liber, but was employed occasionally, as, for instance, 
 in the entire sky of the classical composition calle4 the 
 Bridge. One very important characteristic of Turner's 
 marginal remarks is, that they prove him to have been 
 quite clearly conscious of what he was doing, and of the 
 artistic reasons for doing it : in other words, they prove 
 that he had the conscious critical faculty, and that he 
 exercised it on his own works and on the engravings 
 from them. For example, on the Morpeth he writes : ' I 
 think the whole sky would be better a tone lighter, be- 
 sides the light clouds,' and then comes the reason, 'w^^'c^ 
 -will make the hill more solid' Here we have him antici- 
 pating a result quite consciously. So on the margin of 
 the Dunblain Abbey he writes : ' The sky must be much 
 lighter and clearer, and until it possesses both the other 
 parts have not their value.' The reader will observe the 
 Turnerian grammar in the last sentence, possesses being 
 used for is ; or else the writer has forgotten that he has 
 used adjectives in the comparative degree, and is now 
 thinking of the substantives lightness and clearness. In 
 the note upon a touched proof of the Little Devil's Bridge 
 Turner says : ' A slight indication of a ray of bursting 
 light under the bridge would improve that part, and a 
 few sharp white touches upon the leaves marked X, 
 becatise they are now two black spots without connection 
 with th£ .'items of the trees! Here again the reason is 
 
The Liber Studionim. I IS 
 
 given, and this time it is to prevent scattering, that great 
 enemy of artistic unity. Curiously enough, on another 
 touched proof of the same plate the artist had written : 
 ' Be careful about the distance. It wants air and light 
 scraping to render it like the place.' This is the only 
 indication I remember of any anxiety on Turner's part 
 to secure a likeness to the place. We remember how he 
 treated Kilclmrn. Raglan Castle, in the Liber Studiorum, 
 fared no better. The plate is so unlike Raglan that the 
 compiler of the Burlington Catalogue says, 'There seems 
 to be no warrant for giving the name Raglan Castle to 
 this subject ; it is said to have much more resemblance 
 to Berry Pomeroy.' 
 
 We know on the authority of Mr. Ruskin that the 
 author of the Liber Studiorum disliked the sale of sepa- 
 rate plates, because in his own mind there was a certain 
 connection of significance between the subjects. After 
 mentioning the castle and abbey subjects, Mr. Ruskin 
 says : ' These are his types of human pride. Of human 
 love : Procris dying by the arrow ; Hesperie by. the 
 viper's fang ; and Rizpah, more than dead, beside her 
 children. Such are the lessons of the Liber Studiorum. 
 Silent always with a bitter silence, disdaining to tell his 
 meaning when he saw there was no ear to receive it. 
 Turner only indicated his purpose by slight words of 
 contemptuous anger when he heard of any one's trying 
 to obtain this or the other separate subject as more 
 beautiful than the rest. ' What is the use of them,' he 
 said, ' but together .'' 
 
 Surely there was little reason in this case either for 
 bitter silence or contemptuous anger. Those hidden 
 
 8—2 
 
Ii6 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 meanings which it appears that Turner often intended to 
 attach to his drawings or pictures have little to do with art, 
 and might be much better expressed in a few words of 
 written English than by any quantity of landscape design. 
 Any versifier of ordinary skill could compress all the 
 ' lessons' of the Liber Studiorum into a couple of sonnets, 
 and the sonnets would not be very valuable to humanity 
 for such wisdom as they might contain. We all know 
 that strong castle and fair fame will alike fall ultimately 
 into ruin, that death and decay are everywhere, and 
 that bones will ever be found bleaching on the moun- 
 tains. We all know that love has often been inter- 
 woven with the most pathetic sorrow ; that it has often 
 been associated with sad tragedies. So far as the 
 knowledge of these things can be of use to our 
 minds it is already familiar enough, having been 
 the frequent theme of poets and moralists since 
 the days of the ancient Hebrews, and any longer or 
 deeper dwelling on such subjects would only make us 
 morbid, like the Trappists, who enliven their days of 
 taciturnity by the salutation, ' Fr^re, il faut mourir !' and 
 the answer, ' Mourir il faut, fr^re !' The suggestion of 
 ideas of this kind, which Turner bitterly despised the 
 public for not understanding, is no doubt to some 
 degree within the province of landscape art, which 
 resembles music in its appeal to those who are sus- 
 ceptible to its influences ; but it is in the nature both 
 of landscape art and of music to express moods 
 rather than thoughts, and it is unreasonable to be 
 angry with people when they do not read thoughts 
 in a language less adapted to their expression than 
 
TJie Liber Studiorum. W] 
 
 the poorest of spoken dialects. It is probable that 
 much of Turner's contempt for the public may have 
 been due to an exaggerated conception, very common 
 with illiterate men, of the value and originality of such 
 thoughts as he tried to express. It would have been 
 easy, had he condescended to do so, to make his 
 thoughts clear enough by the mere titles of his drawings ; 
 but he seems to have enjoyed, in a bitter way, the satis- 
 faction of hinting at obscure meanings and then de- 
 spising his fellow-countrymen for not following him. 
 The real cause of this temper was simply want of in- 
 tellectual culture, which would have made him perceive, 
 that when a moralist desires to read solemn lessons on 
 the fate of nations landscape design is an inadequate 
 means of expression. Such culture would also have 
 made Turner aware that there was no novelty in his 
 choice of subjects. Many painters before his time had 
 sought in ruin and decay the elements of pictorial solem- 
 nity, whilst such motives as .^Esacus and Hesperie, 
 Cephalus and Procris, and Rizpah, are in the regular 
 repertory of figure-painters, so that it would be im- 
 possible to ascertain who first painted them, or to fore- 
 tell the time when artists will finally reject them as 
 outworn. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Turner a professor of perspective. — The Trafalgar picture. — First visit to 
 Petworth, 1809. — Pictures of 181 1. — Turner a.=i a writer on art and 
 nature. — Turner as an observer and critic. 
 
 In the year 1808 Turner added the mysterious letters 
 ' P. P.' to his Academical honours. These have puzzled 
 some of his admirers in the provinces and foreign parts, 
 but they mean nothing worse than ' Professor of Perspec- 
 tive.' The choice of the new Professor was at the same 
 time wise and not wise. Turner was utterly incompetent 
 to explain anything orally to an audience, but he was 
 exceedingly conscientious, and did all he could by 
 elaborately prepared illustrations on a large scale to make 
 the principles of the science intelligible to his pupils. It 
 has been wittily observed that the artist never practised 
 what he professed. Certainly the perspective in his 
 pictures is not faultless, but there is as much of it as we 
 need. Nothing is more tiresome than an absolute 
 scientific accuracy in these things ; and we may be sure 
 that it was as far from Turner's essentially artistic nature 
 as that other kind of accuracy, the topographic, against 
 which he rebelled so energetically. 
 
 The Professor was very conscientious about his work, 
 making careful illustrative drawings, and taking much 
 
Turner a Professor of Perspective. 119 
 
 pains to be understood, but he had the defect of a bad 
 delivery. His fellow-Academicians may have made him 
 a Professor because he drew what were supposed to re- 
 present Carthaginian temples in certain pictures of his, 
 involving the more obvious application of perspective ; 
 but the real truth is, that when it came to practice he dis- 
 carded theory altogether, and used a perspective of his 
 own in a wilful manner, infringing the mathematical rules. 
 He even maintained in his own laconic speech the neces- 
 sity for such deviations. G. Barret had once drawn a 
 temple in a landscape of his by rule, and Turner said, 
 ' You will never do it in that way.' His own cannot be 
 defined without illustrations which it is not worth while 
 for such a purpose to engrave ; but it may be said with 
 perfect truth that, although possessing accurate know- 
 ledge, he preferred taste to knowledge, and knowingly 
 refused to follow science whenever his artistic judgment 
 suggested the policy of a deviation. There was nothing 
 exceptional in this lordly way of dealing with perspective, 
 for he was equally arbitrary in every other department of 
 his art : in topography, as we have already seen ; in the 
 drawing of forms of all kinds, which he always forced into 
 the shapes that he wanted ; in light and shade, which in 
 his works is generally beautiful, but very seldom scienti- 
 fically true ; and finally, in colour, where he permitted 
 himself all manner of violence and aberrations. 
 
 The newly-appointed Professor of Perspective per- 
 mitted himself the luxury of a suburban house at the end 
 of the Upper Mall, Hammersmith. From that time till 
 his death he seems always to have had two residences, 
 and sometimes three, but they were never very remote 
 
I20 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 from each other. He may have thought them useful as 
 a means of escaping from visitors, to work in undisturbed 
 privacy. One biographer writes as if the Harley Street 
 residence had been abandoned when the Hammersmith 
 house was taken, but the Exhibition Catalogue gives both 
 houses at the same time. 
 
 About this time, 1808, it is probable that Turner 
 painted the big picture of Trafalgar which is at Green- 
 wich Hospital. This has always been an intensely un- 
 popular picture with sailors, and it has little artistic merit 
 to compensate for its want of naval knowledge. The 
 artist seems to have been so entirely absorbed by his 
 wish to represent the apparent confusion of a great sea- 
 fight, that he forgot the true sequence of events, and 
 forgot, at the same time, to charm the lover of art by 
 that subtle artistic arrangement which great artists have 
 usually thought necessary even when representing the 
 wildest actual disorder. The picture was, therefore, in a 
 double sense a failure. It was painted for George IV., 
 who, perhaps, may not have liked it, as he generously 
 presented it to Greenwich, the worst place in the world 
 to hang Turner, whether good or bad ; for, even if suc- 
 cessful from the artistic point of view, any work of his 
 would inevitably be too arbitrary and inaccurate to bear 
 the acute professional criticism of sailors. 
 
 In 1 809 Turner seems to have gone to Petworth for the 
 first time. Lord Egremont was one of the very few mem- 
 bers of the aristocracy who appreciated either Turner or the 
 other great contemporary English painters. It is probable 
 that this Earl, whom we may call a noble earl in a sense very 
 different from the conventional one, had a character above 
 
First Visit to Petworth, 1809. 12 1 
 
 the vanity of caring to look well in the sight of posterity ; 
 but it so happens, from his great kindness to men of 
 genius whose names are immortal in the history of 
 English art, that he himself has become immortal also. 
 Lord Egremont's nature was at the same time highly re- 
 fined in its perception of artistic beauty, and unaffected 
 to the extreme of simplicity in the ordinary intercourse 
 of life. Turner had these two qualities also ; he had the 
 most delicate perceptions united to the plainest manners. 
 All witnesses seem to agree that Turner and the great 
 Earl got on quite well together ; and this is in favour of 
 Turner, not because Lord Egremont was a man of rank, 
 but because he was a man of great discernment, and 
 therefore not likely to tolerate about him any artist, 
 whatever might be his professional ability, who had not 
 the qualities of simplicity and genuineness. All who 
 knew Turner personally appear to be agreed that, 
 although he was not what is called a gentleman in the 
 society sense of the term — not having the grace and 
 polish which are necessary to that character — he still had 
 good manners in his own plain way, and a good deal of 
 delicate tact, often under apparent roughness. When 
 Turner was at Petworth, his habit was to work very 
 assiduously in the morning, and as he rose very early, it 
 was easy for him to get a great deal done in these hours 
 of privacy ; but later in the day he would amuse himself, 
 especially in fishing, so that the other guests imagined 
 that he led quite an idle life. It is curious, in illustration 
 of these habits of his, that his first picture of Petworth 
 should be entitled in the catalogue, ' Petworth, Sussex, 
 the seat of the Earl of Egremont — Dewy Morning' In 
 
122 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 1810 the three works exhibited by Turner were all views 
 of seats — two from Lowther Castle, and the third this 
 view of Petworth. 
 
 The next year, amongst nine works exhibited, we 
 only find one gentleman's seat, but there are three 
 pictures from ancient mythology or poetry, and, 
 one of the three is the Apollo and Python. Nothing 
 could be more characteristic of Turner than to paint, 
 the same year, Apollo slaying Python with his Arrows, 
 and Somer Hill, near Timbridge, the seat of W. F. Wood- 
 gate, Esq. Most artists, when they have once begun to 
 paint such highly classical subjects as those in which far- 
 darting Apollo is an actor, begin to entertain feelings of 
 contempt for the common world of reality ; but Turner is 
 just as ready to portray whatever beauty there may be 
 about Mr. Woodgate's country house near Tunbridge as if 
 he had never painted either deities or dragons. His mind 
 recurs also to Whalley Bridge, in Lancashire, which he 
 paints with the remains of the Abbey, and enlivens with 
 dyers who are washing and drying cloth. The same year 
 one of his pictures illustrates flounder-fishing, and another 
 crab-collecting on the shore at Scarborough. He also 
 exhibits a picture of Chickens, showing a tendency to 
 study poultry, which is not uncommon with landscape- 
 painters. 
 
 It was observed, with reference to Turner's notes on 
 the Liber Sticdiorum proofs, that they gave evidence of 
 his conscious exercise of critical reason and judgment. 
 His notes on his own private memoranda occasionally 
 prove that he thought out his composition consciously, 
 and fully understood the importance of those little con- 
 
Turner as a Writer on Art mid Nature. 123 
 
 trivances and artifices which, however trifling they may 
 appear to people who are not artists, are never foolishly 
 despised by those who are. Mr. Thornbury selects as an 
 instance of these notes one about bargemen hanging 
 clothes : ' Bargemen hanging clothes on the shrouds — to 
 avoid long lines.' Turner wrote this to remind himself 
 afterwards that by hanging clothes on the shrouds of 
 their barges, the men afforded him an opportunity, as an 
 artist, of interrupting the long lines of the shrouds, which 
 he thought might be inconvenient in the intended future 
 composition. The reader will observe that the reason is 
 given here just as it was in the notes on the Liber proofs. 
 Turner also attempted to reason out for himself a theory 
 of reflections in water, but not quite successfully, because 
 the subject itself is difficult and obscure, and also because 
 Turner's use of language was defective. It may be worth 
 our while to examine his attempt at theory. 
 
 ' Reflections not only appear darker, but larger than 
 the object which occasions them, and if the ripple or 
 hollow of the wave is long enough to make an angle 
 with the eye, it is on these undulating lines that the 
 object reflects, and transmits all perpendicular objects 
 lower towards the spectator ; but in receding lines, as 
 well as objects, rules seem to lose their power, and those 
 guides that enable us to find some cause for near objects 
 lose their power, or become enfeebled by contraction in 
 remote ones. It has been asserted that all appear equal 
 from the base line of 'the water ; but these axioms I 
 dissent from. It is true, that by placing the eye equal 
 to the water, it comes up to the rules laid down ; but 
 when the water is ruffled on which all things are to be 
 reflected, it is no longer in right angles, but according to 
 
124 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 the elevation of the spectator, becomes more or less an 
 angle of incidence. If the undulating surface of the 
 liquid did not, by current or motion, congregate forms, 
 there would be no difficulty in simplifying the rules.' 
 
 It is always difficult to criticise theories which are 
 badly expressed, because we have to deal with two 
 entirely different things at the same time — what the 
 writer said, and what he meant to say. The first sen- 
 tence, ' Reflections not only appear darker, but larger 
 than the object which occasions them,' is far from being 
 universally true, though the statement is universal. For, 
 to begin with, reflections are not always darker than the 
 things reflected ; that depends upon the state of the 
 water and of the atmosphere immediately above the 
 water. If the water is muddy in broad daylight, or if 
 there is a thin stratum of mist on the surface, the re^ 
 flection will be paler than the object. Again, reflections 
 do not of necessity appear larger than the things reflected. 
 When the water is perfectly calm the inverted image is 
 of precisely the same size as the object ; when there is 
 ripple the image is elongated, but it is not widened, 
 except under peculiar circumstances which we have not 
 space to explain. Turner then says, ' If the ripple or 
 hollow of the wave is long enough to make an angle 
 with the eye, it is on these undulating lines that the 
 object reflects and transmits all perpendicular objects 
 lower towards the spectator.' This is true ; but there is 
 no necessity for the conditional, because all ripples 
 whatever, be they but the eighth of an inch in height, 
 are long enough to ' make an angle with the eye, and do 
 
Turner as a Writer on Art and Nature. 125 
 
 elongate reflections of perpendicular objects.' The next 
 
 sentence is not very clear, but the writer seems to have 
 
 intended to say that rules of a trustworthy kind have 
 
 not yet been found, by the guidance of which an artist 
 
 might manage reflections of receding lines and objects 
 
 on the principles of nature, whatever those principles 
 
 may be. The truth is, that in the present state of 
 
 artistic and scientific intelligence there are many visible 
 
 facts in such reflections which cannot be satisfactorily 
 
 accounted for ; we can therefore only paint things as 
 
 they appear to us, without waiting for a complete theory 
 
 of the subject. We now come to difficulties of another 
 
 kind, due to Turner's strange use of words : ' It has been 
 
 asserted that all appear equal from the base line of the 
 
 water ; but these axioms I dissent from.' All what ? 
 
 Can he mean all reflections ? Does the ' base line of the 
 
 water ' mean the exact level of the water ? If it does, 
 
 the answer is simple — a human eye placed exactly on the 
 
 level of the water sees no reflections whatever. The 
 
 next sentence is unintelligible : ' It is true, that by 
 
 placing the eye equal to the water it comes up to the 
 
 rules laid down.' How an eye equal to water can come 
 
 up to rules laid down we do not pretend to understand. 
 
 ' When the water is ruffled on which all things are to be 
 
 reflected, it is no longer in right angles, but according to 
 
 the elevation of the spectator becomes more or less an 
 
 angle of incidence.' The water is no longer in right 
 
 angles with reference to what? Of course every one 
 
 who has read an elementary treatise on optics knows 
 
 that there is always an angle of incidence, when the rays 
 
 of light rebound from the reflecting surface to the eye of 
 
126 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 the spectator, and there is sure to be an angle of inci- 
 dence in any case where there is a reflection at all, 
 whether the surface is ' ruffled ' or quite smooth. The 
 final observation is at the same time more intelligible 
 and more profound than those we have just examined. 
 ' If the undulating surface of the liquid did not, by- 
 current or motion, congregate forms, there would be no 
 difficulty in simplifying the rules.' Certainly, if there 
 were neither current nor motion on the surface we 
 should have perfectly calm water, like a flat looking- 
 glass ; and optical writers have fully explained for us 
 the theory of the looking-glass, which is thoroughly 
 understood. The difficulty lies entirely in the laws of 
 ripple or disturbance of surface, of which nobody but an 
 artist ever seems to know anything at all, whilst the 
 most accomplished landscape-painters know very little 
 that can be unreservedly and unquestionably stated. 
 
 I have quoted and criticised Turner's written observa- 
 tions on this subject, because his works prove him to 
 have been a great discoverer in this department of 
 natural truth, and it is interesting to see in how much 
 mental confusion and uncertainty he was groping his 
 way where not a living creature could enlighten him. 
 The varied studies of modern landscape-painters have 
 made water phenomena much better known, though not 
 much more clearly accounted for, than they were in the 
 beginning of this century, and the students of the future 
 will find a mass of suggestion and example in the art of 
 the nineteenth century which Turner could not find in 
 that of preceding times. The water-painting of Claude, 
 though very successful in rendering two or three common 
 
Turner as a Writer on Art and N attire. 127 
 
 aspects of nature, was so narrowly limited in its range 
 that little was to be learned from him, though that little 
 was of great value as a foundation. Ruysdael was 
 equally narrow. Something more might be got from 
 the Dutch marine-painters, but even their knowledge of 
 water was as nothing in comparison with the variety of 
 Turner's discoveries. Of all that he found out, what 
 pleased him best appears to have been the long-drawn 
 confusion of reflection upon a rippled surface, and he 
 liked this so well that it became a mannerism in his 
 later works. It is still, however, a great exaggeration of 
 the truth either to say directly, or to convey the im- 
 pression indirectly, that Turner had exhausted the 
 phenomena of nature even in such a department of 
 study as water-surfaces only. Some of the common 
 appearances of water have not been illustrated by him 
 in any work known to me, either in the original or in an 
 engraving ; and from some of the more complex and 
 remarkable phenomena of water-surfaces he may have 
 abstained from prudence, knowing that it was impossible 
 that the general public should understand them. Mr. 
 Leslie, in his Handbook for Young Painters, mentions 
 some effects on water which (though after the death of 
 Turner) he had never met with in pictures, and then 
 observes : ' The truth is, we go on painting the things 
 that others and ourselves have painted before, and do 
 not look out for the art nearly as much as we should 
 do.' One reason for this may be, that the class of 
 critics who are called 'connoisseurs' always compare 
 art with previous art, and treat discoverers scornfully, as 
 ignorant innovators who do not know what is allowable 
 
128 '' The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 in painting and what is inadmissible. This traditional 
 spirit in the public and its guides did much to embitter 
 the career of Turner, though he succeeded in spite of it ; 
 and it kept down Constable's professional income so 
 effectually, that he could not have maintained his family 
 without private means. 
 
 Everything that can throw light upon Turner's habits 
 of thought is interesting to us, so we may remark that 
 he did not make notes exclusively of what attracted his 
 attention as an artist, but jotted down all sorts of little 
 odd facts in archaeology and geography. His mind was 
 not so much confined to art as we are apt to imagine, 
 from his want of success in other directions, that it must 
 have been. He had a lively curiosity, and that dis- 
 position to accumulate facts which is said to be peculiarly 
 characteristic of Englishmen. Mr. Thornbury says, ' He 
 takes notes like a spy or a pilot, and of things, too, that 
 seem quite out of his province.' In this way he gra- 
 dually accumulated a general store of odds and ends, 
 which gave him what is called information and made 
 him able to talk agreeably whenever it pleased him to 
 break through his habit of taciturnity. Mr. Cyrus Red- 
 ding was Turner's companion on a tour for a day or 
 two, and says that he spoke remarkably little, using 
 habitually very few words ; but on one occasion they sat 
 up late together in an inn, and then Mr. Redding tells 
 us that Turner showed that he had a certain power of 
 laconic criticism. ' I found the artist could, when he 
 pleased, make sound, pithy, though somewhat caustic, 
 remarks upon men and things, with a fluency rarely 
 heard from him.' Some of the best notes on the 
 
Turner as an Observer and Critic. 129 
 
 character of Turner's conversation in his maturity are to 
 be found in the reminiscences of the artist given by Mr. 
 Trimmer's eldest son to Mr. Thornbury for his bio- 
 graphy. Turner and Howard, the Academician, stayed 
 together at Heston, whereof the elder Mr. Trimmer was 
 Rector, and the two painters had professional conversa- 
 tions, which sometimes degenerated into disputes. On 
 one of these occasions Howard maintained that artists 
 ought to paint for the public, but it is interesting to 
 learn that Turner took the opposite view, and maintained 
 that ' public opinion was not worth a rush, and that one 
 should paint only for judges.' Mr. Trimmer confirms 
 what others have said about the great landscape- 
 painter's extreme sensitiveness to the ignorant and 
 illiberal criticisms upon his works which used to appear 
 in the newspapers of his day. ' I have seen him almost 
 in tears,' Mr. Trimmer says, ' and ready to hang himself 
 though still only valuing their opinions at their worth. 
 It is curious that the artist, so little communicative to 
 people generally, should have been quite freely com- 
 municative in his friendly private intercourse with the 
 Rector of Heston, especially when we remember that 
 the Rector belonged to the category of amateurs, for 
 whom as a class Turner cherished feelings of uncon- 
 querable aversion. He appears to have given a good 
 deal of practical art instruction to this clerical friend of 
 his, who, in return, tried to teach the painter to read 
 Latin — a hopeless undertaking, of course. With regard 
 to Turner's estimate of ancient and modern artists, Mr. 
 Trimmer says that he never appeared illiberal when 
 speaking of the great masters ; that he spoke most en- 
 
 9 
 
130 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 thusiastically of Gainsborough's execution and Wilson's 
 tone, plainly thinking himself their inferior ; and that, 
 on one occasion, before a picture by Vandevelde, he said, 
 in answer to some one who observed that he could go 
 beyond that, ' I cannot paint like him.' On the other 
 hand, with regard to contemporary landscape-painters, 
 Mr. Trimmer is inclined to believe that he considered 
 most of them to be beneath criticism, and that he hardly 
 did justice to whatever merits they possessed. It is 
 quite possible that Turner may have abstained on prin- 
 ciple from the criticism of living artists in conversation, 
 knowing that his opinion would carry great weight with 
 those who appreciated his genius, and fearing to do an 
 injury to men who had difficulties enough to contend 
 against. Although Turner could say sharp things when 
 he chose, he had not the habit, unfortunately very com- 
 mon amongst artists, especially unsuccessful ones, of 
 expressing scorn for the work of others. All who knew 
 him are agreed upon this. They all agree, too, in de- 
 scribing his conversation as remarkably laconic. In this 
 respect he seems to have resembled a distinguished 
 artist whom we have recently deplored, the late 
 Frederick Walker, who had the same reserve, the same 
 disinclination to talk about art and artists, and whose 
 intimate friends never heard him criticise a contem-^ 
 porary. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 He removes to Queen Anne Street, 1812. — Excursion to Devonshire, 1812. 
 — Turner's poetry. — Turner's prose. 
 
 In 181 2 Turner removed from Harley Street to 47, 
 Queen Anne Street, West, which will always be in- 
 timately associated with his name. Here he had not 
 only a studio to paint in, but also a gallery for the 
 private exhibition of his pictures, a place which he kept 
 in a condition little worthy of the treasures which it 
 contained. I never visited the house in Queen Anne 
 Street during Turner's life, but I well remember visiting 
 it with Mr. Leslie after his death, when everything 
 remained just as the departed genius had left it. There 
 were about ninety pictures in the gallery then, in a won- 
 derful state of neglect, the frames looking as if they had 
 never been gilded. Mr. Leslie told me that he had 
 known the house forty years, that during the whole time 
 it had never received one touch of paint or repair, and 
 that the papers had never been renewed. There was no 
 picturesque magnificence about the house, such as artists 
 often like when they can afford it. Turner does not 
 seem to have had that delight in seeing varied colours 
 and forms which tempts artists like Fortuny to fill their 
 
 9—2 
 
132 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 studios with Oriental tissues and strange vases from be- 
 yond the sea, or carvings of other and more imaginative 
 times than ours. On the other hand, Turner seems to 
 have been equally indifferent to classic elegance in the 
 interior of his house. Though his art education and his 
 predilections were classical, he did not care to surround 
 himself with the beauty either of antiquity or the 
 Renaissance. We do not know that this was in conse- 
 quence of any conscious determination : it seems more 
 probable that early habits of simple and economical 
 living may have led the artist to refuse himself beautiful 
 things, simply because such an outlay of money seemed 
 an extravagance ; and it is perfectly possible that a man 
 of Turner's habits might fancy that he could not afford 
 such a thing as a marble statue, or an ebony cabinet 
 delicately carved and inlaid with malachite or lapis 
 lazuli. But there is also another consideration which 
 may better excuse the meagreness of the great land- 
 scape-painter's surroundings, and his apparent indif- 
 ference to those things of beauty which, as a poet has 
 told us so exquisitely, can give endless pleasure to their 
 possessors. Turner was one of the most imaginative 
 men who ever existed, and such men are often singularly 
 independent of what is visible. ' Certain localities,' 
 says Emerson, 'as mountain-tops, the sea-side, the 
 shores of rivers and rapid brooks, natural parks of oak 
 and pine, where the ground is smooth and unencum- 
 bered, are excitants of the Muse. Every artist knows 
 well some favourite retirement. And yet the experience 
 of some good artists has taught them to prefer the 
 smallest and plainest chamber, with one chair and table, 
 
He Removes to Queen Anne Street, 1812. 133 
 
 and with no outlook, to these picturesque liberties.' In 
 Turner's house, however, there was not even this austere 
 poetry of asceticism, which gives nobility to the cell of 
 the monk and the tent of the traveller or soldier. There 
 was no poetry in the place whatever, and it was this 
 which jarred upon my feelings. A place may be bare 
 and simple, yet affecting in the extreme. The remark- 
 able simplicity of Goethe's study and bed-chamber is 
 affecting in itself. In the study ' no arm-chair is to be 
 seen, no sofa, nothing which speaks of ease. A plain 
 hard chair has beside it the basket in which he used to 
 place his handkerchief.' Of the bedroom, Mr. Lewes 
 says, ' a simple bed, an arm-chair by its side, and a tiny 
 washing-table with a small white basin on it, and a 
 sponge, is all the furniture.' We like this absence of 
 material luxury in the personal belongings of a great 
 man, but then in Goethe's house the staircase and recep- 
 tion-rooms made a thousand appeals to the mind. 
 There were the Olympian gods, there was a colossal 
 bust of Juno, there were cartoons, sketches of great 
 masters, and etchings, a collection of gems, another of 
 bronze statuettes, lamps, and vases. There were portrait 
 busts of illustrious contemporaries. In Turner's house 
 there was little to show that he cared for any other art 
 than his own, and not much evidence that he cared even 
 for that, since he treated his own pictures with less 
 care for their appearance and preservation than the 
 humblest picture-dealer will give to his least valuable 
 merchandise. But beside this absence of suggestion and 
 of association with past art, the interior of Turner's house 
 had the defects of ordinary English middle-class in- 
 
134 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 tenors without their qualities. It had their tastelessness 
 but not their tidiness ; it was as dull as the dullest of 
 them, but not so clean. 
 
 I remember that, as we were looking at a picture 
 evidently painted under the influence of Stothard, Mr. 
 Leslie said that he had happened to see Turner at work 
 upon it, and had made the observation, ' So you are 
 imitating Stothard !' ' Yes,' was the answer ; ' and I 
 wish I could paint like him : he is the Giotto of Eng- 
 land.' The comparison seems to refer to the beautiful 
 purity and simplicity of Stothard's art ; but it scarcely 
 does justice to the Englishman, who was much more 
 advanced and developed as a painter than the contem- 
 porary of Dante. It is interesting, however, as evidence 
 that Turner could admire heartily, and has the same 
 value in this respect as his expression, ' I can't paint 
 like him,' with reference to Vandevelde. 
 
 Some amusing anecdotes have been told of Turner in 
 his house in Queen Anne Street ; how he resented 
 intrusion, and did not hesitate to show it ; how difficult, 
 almost impossible, it was to get the least glimpse of his 
 painting-room ; how little disposed he was to offer hospi- 
 tality, except to one or two old friends, and then how 
 very simple and primitive was his style of living. The 
 one absorbing interest of his life was the passion for his 
 art ; and he liked to work in perfect solitude, because 
 the presence and conversation of another might have 
 disturbed the action of the imagination by making his 
 hold upon imaginative conceptions more uncertain and 
 precarious. But besides this reason for liking to be 
 alone, there were others connected with the technical 
 
He Removes to Queen Anne Street, 1812. 135 
 
 side of art. The execution of modern painters is 
 generally nothing but a series of experiments, many of 
 which are failures, and have to be removed from the 
 canvas. Turner's execution, notwithstanding its extreme 
 rapidity, was experimental in many ways, and utterly 
 unsafe, as is decisively proved by the non-durability of 
 his pictures. If purchasers and critics had been admitted 
 into his painting-room, they would have seen experi- 
 ments of which it was as well that they should remain 
 ignorant. Amongst others, they would have seen the 
 indiscriminate use of oil and water-colour in the same 
 work. An artist still living, whose name I could give, 
 had permission many years ago to visit the gallery in 
 Queen Anne Street, accompanied by a friend. Turner 
 was not in the gallery, and did not show himself, so they 
 supposed him to be out of town. Being left alone, the 
 two friends amused themselves by examining the tech- 
 nical work in the pictures, and one, which was unfinished, 
 had an especial interest for them in this respect. There 
 were some masts and rigging in this work, very freely 
 drawn, so one of the visitors exclaimed, ' I am certain 
 that's water-colour,' and wetting his finger he rubbed it 
 along one of the masts, which immediately disappeared. 
 At that moment the imprudent visitors heard Turner's 
 growling voice in the- next room, and, filled with dis- 
 may, fled from the house precipitately, but unhurt. In 
 this gallery he gave a very rough reception to a relative 
 of his mother who came to make his acquaintance. 
 On the whole, the house in Queen Anne Street was 
 decidedly not a safe place to venture into during the 
 lifetime of its master. 
 
136 The Life of J. M. W. Tzimer. 
 
 Turner spent a great part of his time in his studio, 
 working from early morning until night, and wasting as 
 little time as possible on the luxuries and ceremonies of 
 existence ; but although he was in the most complete 
 sense of the expression a studio-painter, and did not be- 
 long at all to that school of rustic artists who live in the 
 presence of Nature, still he felt now and then a longing 
 for that fair world which is not visible in Queen Anne 
 Street, and so he took sudden flights, according to his 
 caprice, to some beautiful part of Great Britain or the 
 Continent. His way of travelling was independent and 
 peculiar. The increase of his means did not develop in 
 his character any latent desire for luxury. He could be 
 happy still, as he had been in his youth, with nature ■ 
 and his art, living easily in poor inns when better 
 accommodation was not to be had, and leading the cheer- 
 ful life of a pedestrian blest with excellent health and 
 very economical habits. He was not unsociable when 
 he met with kindness on his travels ; but he well knew 
 that more work, and better, could be done in solitude 
 than in society. In 18 12 he went to Devonshire, a 
 county which he particularly admired, and it was on that 
 occasion that he met with Mr. Cyrus Redding, whom we 
 have already quoted. During this tour the artist gave 
 ample evidence of his independence of comfort, studying 
 effects quite calmly in an open boat on a stormy sea 
 when others were sea-sick, sketching when he landed in 
 a violent wind, supping contentedly on bread and cheese 
 and porter, sleeping in a place where there were no beds 
 by the simple expedient of laying his head on the table, 
 and fresh the next morning for new wanderings. The 
 
Excursion to Devonshire, 1812. 137 
 
 uncommon strength and soundness of his nervous sys- 
 tem was proved by an unusually severe test. He was on 
 Mount Edgecumbe with some friends, and engaged in 
 conversation, when a battery of twenty-four pounders 
 opened fire quite suddenly only four or five feet above 
 the heads of the party. Although quite unprepared for 
 the concussion. Turner was not startled by it in the 
 least. It was one of the great advantages of his singu- 
 larly perfect organisation, that whilst possessing all that 
 extreme delicacy of perception which is necessary to an 
 artist, and possessing it in a most exceptional degree, he 
 had none of that nervousness with which men of genius 
 are so often tormented and distressed. For all artistic 
 purposes his nerves were as delicate as those of Shelley, 
 whilst for the uses of common life they were as strong 
 as the nerves of a common sailor. Few, indeed, are the 
 common sailors who would not betray at least some 
 symptom of surprise if a battery of cannon thundered 
 unexpectedly over their heads. 
 
 Another peculiarity of Turner's was brought out 
 during this tour, and on the yery day when the incident 
 of the cannon . occurred. Notwithstanding his habitual 
 solitude and parsimony, he could be hospitable when it 
 seemed to him that the occasion required it, though it 
 must be admitted that such occasions seem to have been 
 of very rare occurrence. However, it did so happen in 
 the year 1812 that Turner actually invited a party of 
 ladies and gentlemen to a picnic in Devonshire, and 
 that he provided everything, including wines, on a liberal 
 scale, whilst he acted his part of host in quite a becom- 
 ing manner. Leslie, in his Autobiography, tells a story 
 
138 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 of a dinner at Blackwall, where there was a large party 
 and a heavy bill. Chantrey sat at the head of the table 
 and received the bill, so he handed it to Turner for a 
 joke, as Turner had a reputation for parsimony ; but in 
 this instance the great landscape-painter did not act up 
 to his reputation, for he insisted upon paying the whole, 
 and did so en grand seigneur. It is evident, however, 
 that these rare anecdotes of Turnerian hospitality would 
 not be so well remembered if they were not in contra- 
 diction to the ordinary habits of the man. 
 
 The pictures exhibited in 1812 included the Hannibal 
 and his Army crossing the Alps, which was remarkable, 
 amongst other reasons, for a quotation from a manuscript 
 poem entitled ' Fallacies of Hope,' the first sample of this 
 poem which Turner offered to the appreciation of a dis- 
 cerning public. He had discovered quite a new and ingeni- 
 ous means of achieving poetical renown, namely, through 
 the medium of the Royal Academy Catalogue. In this 
 way the specimens of Turnerian verse, which were printed 
 from time to time, attained quite a considerable circula- 
 tion ; but the effect upon the literary world can hardly 
 have been such as the poet must have desired. The at- 
 tempt was itself a remarkably apt illustration of that very 
 common fallacy of hope which leads people, without the 
 feeblest literary faculty for either prose or verse, to 
 imagine that they can construct a poem. 
 
 The composition entitled ' The Fallacies of Hope ' 
 may have existed at one time, or it may have been only 
 a project ; nothing- remains of it now except the few 
 extracts in the Exhibition Catalogues. The painter left, 
 
Turner's Poetry. 139 
 
 however, a good many fragments of other poems amongst 
 his sketches and papers, for the habit of making poetical 
 attempts was very persistent with him, notwithstanding the 
 wretchedness of the results. It might be possible, indeed, 
 if it were worth the expense, to make up a small volume 
 of Turnerian poetry which might bear as a motto on its 
 title-page one line of the poet himself — 
 
 ' Lead me along with thy armonuous verse.' 
 
 Such a volume would contain some of the most re- 
 markable specimens of grammar, spelling, and construc- 
 tion, that could be offered as exercises for correction to 
 little boys at school. 
 
 ' Hill after hill incessant cheats the eye 
 While each the intermediate space deny.' 
 
 ' To form the snares for lobsters armed in mail, 
 But man more cunning over this prevai/.' 
 
 ' From his small cot he stretched upon the main, 
 And by one daring effort hope to gain 
 What hope appeared ever to deny.' 
 
 ' The floating sea-weed to the eye appears, 
 And, by the waving medium, seamen steers.' 
 
 ' Here roars the busy mell called breaks. 
 Through various processes o'ertakes 
 The flax in dressing, each with one accord 
 Draw out the thread and meet the just reward.' 
 
 ' Have we not soil sufficient rich ?' 
 
 ' Or sulphurous cloud at open east foretels 
 Where atmospheric contraries doth dwell.' 
 
 The above extracts exhibit the Turnerian knowledge 
 of grammar. The spelling is generally better than might 
 be expected in such ' armonuous verse.' The versifica- 
 
140 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 tion, on the other hand, is perfectly amazing. There is 
 never any certainty when two or three verses have been 
 got through in the proper number of syllables that the 
 one which follows will not be a slough of confusion. 
 
 ' Fain would I offer all that my power holds 
 And hope to be successful in my weak attempt 
 To please. The difficulty great, but, when nought 
 Attempted, nothing can be wrought." 
 
 The first line here would pass if we pronounced power 
 as a word of one syllable. The second line has two 
 syllables more than its share ; omit ' my weak ' and it 
 becomes readable, though prosaic. The third is peculiarly 
 awkward to read, and has one syllable de trap. The 
 fourth has only eight syllables instead of ten. Still, if we 
 do not count syllables, the mere roughness of the passage 
 is permissible enough ; indeed, it reminds me strongly of 
 some of Robert Browning's reflections. 
 
 All these defects of versification, though they may make 
 a poet unreadable, are not in themselves enough to prove 
 that he might not ultimately have done good work. A 
 far greater evidence of incapacity is the poverty of the 
 versifier in ideas, and the laborious dulness of his thinking. 
 There is not one ray of that poetic intelligence which 
 makes things new and fresh for us. In a word, the 
 written poetry of Turner is not only destitute of literary 
 craft and skill, but it is bite. It is below the ordinary 
 level of taste and intelligence amongst boys in English 
 grammar-schools. Imagine a versifier stupid enough 
 to write such rubbish as the following ! 
 
Turner's Poetry. 141 
 
 ' To guard the coast their duty, not delude 
 By promises as little heeded as they're good : 
 When strictly followed, give a conscious peace 
 And ask at the eve of life a j ust release. 
 But idleness, the bane of every country's weal, 
 Equally I'liervates the soldier and his steel.' 
 
 ' Where the soft .... flowing gives renown, 
 'Mid steep worn hills and to the low sunk town. 
 Whose trade has flourished from early time 
 Remarkable for thread called Bridport twine.' 
 
 The bathos of this poetry is such that the most affect- 
 ing subjects move us only to laughter when Turner deals 
 with them. Here is a description of a death by light- 
 ning, which finishes so that one cannot think of the sub- 
 ject seriously : 
 
 ' Dark indeed 
 Died the smitten wretch, not doomed to bleed. 
 The current dread charred with the veins 
 Sulphurous and livid, still the form retains. 
 Most dreadful visitation 1 Instantaneous death 
 Of supreme goodness allows the fleeting breath 
 To fall, apparently without a thought of pain.' 
 
 It is difficult to make out the grammar of the last two 
 lines and a half. Is it the instantaneous death of supreme 
 goodness which allows the breath to fall, or is it instan- 
 taneous death which allows the breath of supreme good- 
 ness to fall, and who is supposed to have been at all likely 
 to think about pain ? Is it death, or goodness, or the 
 breath ? 
 
 Another peculiarity of Turner's poetry is a sort of 
 thunderous grandeur, often coming with the most comic 
 effect immediately after a very matter-of-fact passage : 
 
142 The Life of J. M: IV. Turner. 
 
 ' If then my ardent love of thee is said with truth, 
 Agents the demolition of thy house, forsooth, 
 Broke through the trammels, doubts, and you, my rhyme, 
 Roll into being since that fatal time. ' 
 
 The meaning of the hnes about house property is not 
 very clear, though one has a vague notion that something 
 unpleasant has occurred, but the last line seems very 
 sublime. The idea of the poet's rhyme rolling into being 
 after the fatal time of that affair about the house-agents 
 has in it an undeniable grandeur. There is a very striking 
 passage about the ancient Romans in connection with a 
 road of theirs near Salisbury. The second line of it 
 might be most appropriately quoted with reference to the 
 Coliseum, the Arena at Nlmes. and many other relics of 
 antiquity : 
 
 ' Then the famed .... street appears a line, 
 Roman the work and Roman the design. 
 Opposing hill or streams alike to them ; 
 They seemed to scorn impediments ; for when 
 A little circuit would have given the same. 
 But conquering difficulties cherished Roman fame. ' 
 
 Turner never did anything worse than his poetry, 
 except his prose. Yes, after fairly weighing the faults of 
 both, we are driven to the conclusion that the necessity 
 for some degree of attention to metre was an advantage 
 to him in literary composition. Amongst the verses you 
 will find a line occasionally which may fairly stand com- 
 parison with the more turgid ones in Thomson's ' Seasons,' 
 or another line of a pedestrian kind, which is as good as 
 the prosaic ones in. Wordsworth's ' Excursion.' 
 
 J ' The straining vessel to its cordage yields, 
 
 i 
 
 So Britain floats the produce of her fields.' 
 
Turner's Poetry. 145 
 
 2. ' Another guards the passage to the main.' 
 
 3. ' As morning fogs that rising tempt the breeze.' 
 
 4. ■ And barren left through all the varied year.' 
 
 5. ' The parching heat of summer's solstice o'er.' 
 
 6. ' A gloomy lurid interval succeeds.' 
 
 7. ' Or on the blasted heath or far-stretch'd down.' 
 
 o I ' While the fierce archer of the downward year 
 " ( Stains Italy's blanched banier with storms.' 
 
 These are not bad lines, taken separately, and if Turner 
 had always kept up to their level he might have been a 
 respectable mediocrity in versification, like many other 
 artists who have tried their hands at poetry for amuse- 
 ment. The reader has probably, by this time, had enough 
 of Turner's verse, and may find it a relief to see a speci- 
 men of Turnerian prose— not merely a letter to a friend 
 accepting an invitation to dinner, but a philosophical 
 piece about morality and art. Let him study it as long 
 as he may think it worth his attention, and he will find 
 it utterly impossible, I will not say to understand the 
 whole, but to understand one single sentence in the 
 paragraph : 
 
 ' They wrong virtue, enduring difficulties or worth in 
 the bare imitation of nature, all offers received in the 
 same brain ; but where these attempts arise above me- 
 diocrity it would surely not be a little sacrifice to those 
 who perceive the value of the success to foster it by 
 terms as cordial that cannot look so easy a way as those 
 spoken of convey doubts to the expecting individual. 
 For as the line that unites the beautiful to grace, and 
 these offerings forming a new style, not that soul can 
 guess as ethics. Teach them of both, but many serve as 
 
144 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 the body and the soul, and but presume more as the 
 beacon to the headland which would be a warning to 
 the danger of mannerism and the disgustful.' 
 
 Of Turner's correspondence very little is in existence, 
 and little can have been worth preserving. He could, 
 write a simple note, especially to an intimate friend ; 
 and though his spelling was always uncertain, he some- 
 times, by happy accident, could get through a few sen- 
 tences without a blunder. Like most uneducated men, 
 he disliked letter-writing, and he carried this dislike to 
 a degree involving positive discourtesy to others. He 
 received a good many dinner invitations, and though 
 not what was called a diner-out, was on the other hand 
 frequently disposed to profit by that rule of society which 
 allows a bachelor to receive hospitality without return- 
 ing it ; so that although nobody could be sure he would 
 accept an invitation, nobody, on the other hand, could 
 be certain that he would invariably prefer his bachelor's 
 fireside. His dislike to the trouble of letter-writing 
 made him treat invitations in a very peculiar manner, 
 and in a manner which only very kind and indulgent 
 friends would have put up with. Sometimes he answered 
 them, but he did not by any means consider it an obliga- 
 tion to do so ; and he would go to dine, or determine at 
 the last minute not to go, just as we go to the theatre, 
 without writing anything to the provider of the enter- 
 tainment. Whenever he went beyond a simple note his 
 letters were ill-spelled and ungrammatical. 
 
 This criticism of Turner as a writer may here come to 
 an end. Enough has been said to prove the truth of an 
 
Turner's Prose. 145 
 
 assertion made at the beginning of this biography, to 
 the effect that he did not know the English language. 
 His unsuccessful attempt to learn Latin with Mr. Trim- 
 mer is a proof that he did not know Latin. His 
 outrageous spelling of French names is equally good 
 evidence that he never mastered French, and there is 
 not a trace of proof that he ever knew any other tongue. 
 The plain truth is, that he never possessed any language 
 whatever. Hundreds of foreigners can write better 
 English than he could. There are English letters on 
 my table from Dutchmen at Amsterdam, at the Hague, 
 at Leyden, which are far superior in grammar, spelling, 
 and construction, to anything that Turner could compose 
 after living in London for fifty years, with access to the 
 best society in England. 
 
 Is there any use, it may be asked, in dwelling upon 
 these weak points of a great genius ? Would it not 
 be at once more agreeable and more becoming to 
 veil them gently in forgetfulness ? Perhaps it might, 
 but surely the agreeable and the becoming are not the 
 only purposes of biography. When we study the life of 
 a man who is famous for what he has done, it is good 
 for us to have no illusions about the range of his powers 
 or the degree of his cultivation. The quotations which 
 have been made will quite certainly prevent any reader 
 from forming in his own mind the image of an ideal 
 Turner and worshipping it. Beyond this benefit, which 
 is not to be despised, we have the other advantage of 
 knowing how completely, in Turner, the man was sacri- 
 ficed to the artist, as gardeners sacrifice certain fruit- 
 trees to their fruit. The pruning was not done inten- 
 
 10 
 
146 TJie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 tionally in his case. One dominant faculty absorbed all 
 the sap of his intelligence, and left him as inferior to the 
 mass of educated men in common things as he was 
 superior to them in the perception of natural beauty. 
 It may be a consolation to mediocrities to reflect that if 
 they cannot paint they would infinitely outshine Turner 
 at a grammar-school examination ; but, without desiring 
 to soothe the jealousies of artists who spell better than 
 they paint, we may surely affirm that it remains, and 
 must ever remain, an open question whether, if you 
 compare Turner with what we call an educated gentle- 
 man, the sum of superiorities will not be on the side of 
 the gentleman. The case of Turner is just one of those 
 cases which confirm an old prejudice against artists, as 
 craftsmen who have developed a special skill at the cost 
 of more necessary knowledge and accomplishments. It 
 throws, too, a very strong light upon the question whether 
 artistic genius is a special faculty or an exceptionally 
 high condition of all the faculties. I think that the case 
 of Turner proves artistic genius to be a special faculty 
 only. If all his mental powers had been of a high order 
 ha would have written his native language easily and 
 correctly as a matter of course, and even composed good 
 poetry, since he had feeling and imagination. On the 
 other hand, his career proves conclusively that literary 
 talent and the sort of education which fosters it are not, 
 as so many believe, absolutely essential to the attain- 
 ment of distinction and success in life. The lesson which 
 such men leave to us, when we understand both their 
 excellence and their deficiency, is not to humiliate our- 
 selves, not to lose our self-respect in their presence, and 
 
Turner's Prose. li,'] 
 
 on the other hand not to attach too much importance to 
 our own superiorities over them, since they have done so 
 easily without our accomplishments. It is probable that 
 every reader of these pages is greatly superior to Turner 
 in what is held to be the education of a gentleman — 
 why, then, should he humble himself before Turner as a 
 sort of demigod ? At the same time it is impossible to 
 forget that this unpolished and illiterate being had the 
 rarest gifts of nature of a special kind, and cultivated 
 them, by incessant industry, to the uttermost ; all which 
 is a clear proof that the knowledge of language is not 
 necessary to the exercise of high faculties. 
 
 10—2 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Turner at Twickenham. — English coast scenery. — Crossing the Brook. — 
 Distances in elder art.— The fascination of the remote. — A second possi- 
 bility of marriage, 1815.— Dido building Carthage.— Other classical 
 pictures. — Turner and Scott. — Oil pictures of 1818. — Pictures of 1819. — 
 Rome from the Vatican. — Whitaker's History of Richmondshire. 
 
 One of Turner's important changes of residence took 
 place probably in 1813, when he bought a house at 
 Twickenham, called Sandycombe Lodge, which he kept 
 till 1826. In speaking of this acquisition as involving a 
 change of residence, we mean simply that the artist 
 changed his country-house, for he had no intention of 
 abandoning his house in town. Turner was too keen a 
 man of business not to know that a town-house was a 
 convenience which in his case paid for itself, and he 
 does not seem at any time to have had that intense 
 passion for the country which makes some lovers of 
 nature feel miserable in a street. He could, in fact, live 
 anywhere ; yet he had his preferences, and Twickenham 
 appears to have been one of them. When Turner pur- 
 chased the little place there was a small house upon it, 
 but he was not satisfied with this, and erected another 
 in its place, which he designed himself. He was also 
 the architect of his own doorway in Queen Anne Street. 
 
Turner at Tzvickenham. 149 
 
 The house at Twickenham was called Solus Lodge at 
 first, but perhaps the proprietor thought this only too 
 characteristic, so he changed it to Sandycombe. Mr. 
 Trimmer knew Turner at this place, and believed that 
 his residence there had an influence upon some of his 
 important compositions which bear no reference, in their 
 titles, to any English scene. Twickenham is so near to 
 Richmond that Turner received the influence of Rich- 
 mond scenery to the full, and Mr. Trimmer seems to be 
 right in the supposition that the character of the artist's 
 classical compositions was affected by this neighbour- 
 hood. 
 
 In 181 3 he painted the Thames at Kingston Bank, 
 and he made a picture of Richmond Hill, which was 
 exhibited in 18 19. He had a boat at Richmond, 
 and Mr. Trimmer said that he painted from nature on 
 large canvases in this boat, a practice exceedingly rare 
 with him. His other means of locomotion for sketching 
 excursions in the country consisted of a horse and gig 
 — an old bay-horse, neither tall nor swift, which served 
 him as a model for both the horses in the well-known 
 picture, A Frosty Morning. Turner seems to have 
 driven about a good deal in a leisurely fashion, stopping 
 to sketch when he found anything of interest. He 
 seems to have liked the pony whilst it lived, and to 
 have appreciated its good qualities, for he used to say 
 that it could climb the hills like a cat and never get 
 tired, and after the animal's death he gave it honourable 
 burial within the precincts of his garden. It had rather 
 a sad end, by strangulation in the night, having en- 
 tangled itself in its fastenings, which were chains, used 
 
ISO Tlie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 in consequence of its untowardness. Man and horse do 
 not seem to have got on well together, notwithstanding 
 much affection on the human side ; which, as usual in 
 such cases, met with no return. Turner does not seem 
 to have suffered from unrequited affection, but he grieved 
 when the object of it was gone. 
 
 All the pleasant scenery about Twickenham and 
 Kingston was far less built upon in Turner's time than 
 it is now, and the railways had not yet deprived it of 
 the character of rustic peacefulness ; but whatever may 
 have been its charms in those days, they were quite in- 
 sufficient to bind down Turner for long. He was at the 
 same time one of the most constant of artists, and one 
 of the most various in his affections. A place that he 
 had loved once he loved always, but he never seems to 
 have had any disposition to anchor himself and his art 
 together in some one pleasant haven never to leave it 
 more. The Thames was very wqjl to boat upon, and to 
 be sketched occasionally, and the gig with the old pony 
 might be useful rather frequently in the fine weather; 
 but Turner could no more be kept within the limits of 
 such citizenish excursions than Byron could be bound 
 down to the immediate neighbourhood of Newstead 
 Abbey. A list of his works during the time he had 
 Sandycombe Lodge shows how little the Twickenham 
 influences had done to settle him. Even when his pur- 
 chase was quite recent he seems to have been generally 
 thinking of something else. In 1814 he exhibited 
 Dido and yEneas leaving Carthage on the morning of 
 the Chase, and Apuleia in search of Apuleiiis. His 
 only traces of Thames influence in these pictures are. 
 
Crossing tlie Brook. IS I 
 
 that in the first there are stone pines, which Turner may- 
 have been led to like by the Scotch firs at Richmond, 
 and in the second there is a river with a bridge of seven 
 arches. 
 
 Turner was led about this time to work heartily and 
 hopefully at a kind of scenery which he always very 
 much liked — the English coast scenery. A very able 
 engraver, Mr. W. B. Cooke, undertook a laborious and 
 costly publication of plates from the southern coast, and 
 Turner did forty of the drawings, beginning with St. 
 Michael's Mount, Poole, Land's End, Weymouth, Lul- 
 vvorth Cove, and Corfe Castle. By the time the forty 
 drawings were finished in 1826 the artist had explored 
 the coast, at least at intervals, from Ramsgate to Land's 
 End. He did these drawings at first for most moderate 
 prices, not more than £"] los. each ; they attracted his 
 attention closely to coast scenery, and one consequence 
 of this direction of his studies was a picture of Bligh 
 Sand, near Sheerness, with Fishing-boats trawling — cloudy 
 sky. This picture was exhibited in 18 15, a very prolific 
 exhibition year for Turner, including two of his best- 
 known and most important pictures — Crossing the Brook, 
 and Dido bidlding Cartilage, both of which were be- 
 queathed by him to the nation. 
 
 Crossing the Brook is a piece of Devonshire scenery, 
 with a vast expanse of distance, and one or two tall 
 pine-trees in the foreground. It is interesting as evidence 
 how very little material from nature Turner needed for 
 a work of art, that the most important tree in this 
 picture was painted from a slight pencil sketch, not of 
 
152 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 large dimensions, which was reproduced in the Port- 
 folio for November, 1877, page 175. The manner in 
 which Turner dealt with this sketch is a good instance 
 of his great power, for the tree is very strongly painted ; 
 not that it looks at all like a study from nature, but 
 rather like a bold attempt to appropriate the merits of 
 Claude. The execution is indeed founded quite frankly 
 upon Claude, especially in the artifice by which the 
 farther masses of foliage are separated from the trunk 
 and branches, and made to appear more distant than 
 they would have appeared in a literal interpretation. 
 Although it is perfectly true that the effect of binocular 
 vision can never be given on a flat surface, except by 
 the help of the stereoscope, it is also true that there are 
 artifices in painting which do to some extent compensate 
 for this deficiency, and the chief of these artifices is the 
 exaggeration of distance between near objects, such as 
 the farther and nearer branches of a foreground tree, 
 none of which can really be very remote from the spec- 
 tator. The artist, however, may wish to make the 
 spectator feel as if the air circulated amongst the leaves, 
 and as if he could put his arms round the trunk if he 
 went up to it ; and to do this he may have recourse to 
 certain tricks of the craft, which are allowable when the 
 reason for them is understood. 
 
 Crossing the Brook is one of the- most important 
 pictures in the career of Turner, and it may be well to 
 remember the date of it. This-picture marks the transi- 
 tion from his earlier style to that of his maturity. If 
 the reader will take the trouble the'next time he visits 
 
Crossing the Brook. 1 53 
 
 the National Gallery to compare it with Turner's work 
 in 1803 or in 1806, dates at which he was already quite 
 a powerful and successful painter, he will see great 
 changes both in purpose and in style. Calais Pier was 
 painted in 1803. It is magnificently composed, and full 
 of all kinds of energy, manifesting the giant strength of 
 Turner's mind and hand, but it is heavily painted and 
 opaque. So great, indeed, are the impediments to a 
 full enjoyment of the work created by these defects, 
 that the merits of it may be more distinctly perceived 
 in Mr. Seymour Haden's etching than in the presence 
 of the picture itself, and most distinctly of all in the 
 earlier states of the etching, when it is least encumbered 
 by labour. This is so for a very simple reason. Mr. 
 Haden has a well-grounded preference for open work in 
 etching, and likes to suggest light and shade rather than 
 to realise it. This etcher's taste of his led him to 
 eliminate three-quarters of the blackness there is in the 
 picture, and all its opacity, preserving only its glorious 
 composition and energetic movement. This unfaithful- 
 ness to the letter that killeth secured the far higher 
 fidelity to the spirit which giveth life, but by disengaging 
 the spirit it has proved how much the genius of Turner, 
 in 1803, was encumbered by traditions inherited from 
 his predecessors. Even in 1806 there is no visible 
 progress towards any self-disengagement or emancipa- 
 tion. The Goddess of Discord in the Gardens of the Hes- 
 perides is almost as heavily painted as the Calais Pier, 
 and as much wanting in the charms of light and colour. 
 In all such work as this nothing is really luminous, and 
 
154 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 colour appears only in certain portions of the work 
 instead of pervading it ; as, for example, in the fish of 
 the Calais Pier, or a piece of drapery in the later 
 picture. There are hundreds of old pictures, often by 
 famous men, which are popularly supposed to be works 
 in colour, but which in reality are nothing but simple 
 monochromes in grey or brown, with a little colour here 
 and there to prevent them from being avowed mono- 
 chromes. By means of this artifice a painter who does 
 not feel that he has very much colouring power may 
 gradually work his way from monochrome to real colour, 
 and conceal the steps of the transition from the observa- 
 tion of all who are not acquainted with the technical 
 craft of painting, (j Now, the picture of Crossing the Brook 
 is scarcely, even yet, a work in full colour ; for it does 
 not go beyond the colour-range of the Dutch landscape- 
 painters, with their greys and quiet greens for the earth, 
 and pale blues for the sky ; but there is an essential 
 difference between this picture and the two before criti- 
 cised, which is, that such colour as there is in it pervades 
 the whole work. The light, too, is equally pervading. 
 The canvas is lighted from side to side and from top to 
 bottom. There are critics who consider this to be one 
 of Turner's greatest works, but here they are in error. 
 The full splendour and power of his art were yet to 
 come, and this sober but admirable picture only cleared 
 his way, as a successful experiment, to an art which had 
 no precedent. One very essential thing in this experi- 
 ment remains to be mentioned. This picture proved to 
 Turner that he could paint a distance better than any 
 master who had preceded him, and this, in the literal 
 
Distances in Elder Art. ISS 
 
 as well as the figurative sense, ' opened for him new 
 horizons.' 
 
 It would be premature, in this place, to occupy the 
 reader's time with a dissertation on the distances which 
 Turner painted afterwards, but there cannot be a doubt 
 that the success of the experiment in Crossing the Brook, 
 of which he must have been fully conscious, was the 
 victory which nerved him for contests with difficulty in 
 this department of landscape-painting such as no artist 
 had ever attempted before him. The landscape-painters 
 of other times had indeed frequently tried to get truth 
 of tone in distances, and had succeeded ; but their 
 distances are always comparatively simple in treatment, 
 even when the material in them is most diversified ; and 
 they appear generally to have laboured between these two 
 alternatives, either that they had to simplify nature, thus 
 losing its infinity, or else sacrifice truth of aspect to truth 
 of fact, informing you truly enough what villages, houses, 
 and fields existed ten miles from the spectator, but 
 failing altogether to convey the appearances with which 
 the effects of atmosphere and light must have clothed 
 those various objects. - — 
 
 As an example of simplification I may mention one 
 of the best-known Claudes in the Louvre, with the title 
 Ulysses restores Chryseis to her Father; and as an example 
 of minuteness without truth of effect, the very remarkable 
 landscape seen through the arcade in the Van Eyck of 
 the Louvre, La Vierge au Donateur. There is great 
 truth of tone in the Claude, and I do not dispute the 
 possibility of the effect, but everything shows that 
 Claude considered simplification an essential quality in 
 
IS6 The Life of J. M. W. Tunier. 
 
 the painting of distances. Not only are the hills flat 
 patches of almost equally tinted paint, but even their 
 outlines have a corresponding want of variety. Follow 
 the line of the highest mountain, and you will scarcely 
 find more thought or design in it than would be neces- 
 sary to make the outline of a thimble or a sugar-loaf ; 
 whereas in nature, however much the mass of a mountain 
 may be obscured by mist, and its modelling flattened, 
 the outline, if traceable at all, is sure to retain its 
 character. The distinction in tone between a hill on a 
 misty morning and the sky behind it may be so faint 
 that nothing but the most delicate art can render it ; yet 
 at the same time the line, if line it can be called, will be 
 full of subtle incidents and changes, difficult indeed to 
 follow, but not to be omitted without falsity any more 
 than you could copy poetry whilst omitting to write out 
 the words. When we turn to the Van Eyck, and look 
 through the three arches of his arcade, we see a complete 
 epitome of all that he considered noble or interesting in 
 landscape; a broad river with islands and a fortified 
 bridge, a city with churches on one of its banks and the 
 faubourgs of the city on the other ; in the di.stance there 
 is a chain of mountains, the whole being very probably a 
 reminiscence of the scenery about Lyons, or, at least, an 
 invention suggested by that scenery. Now in this early 
 landscape we have plenty of detail, for nothing is slurred 
 over, either from negligence or in obedience to any 
 theory of simplification ; the artist has done his utmost in 
 every way, and carried as well as he could, even to the 
 snowy mountains, the shining crown of his earthly land- 
 scape, the same exquisite and loving finish that he 
 
Distances in Elder Art. 157 
 
 bestowed on the pearls of the heavenly diadem which 
 the angels bear to the Virgin. But the details of the 
 landscape, though numerous, are too clearly defined. 
 The artist does not lose and find them as the eye loses 
 and finds details in nature ; he sees a certain quantity of 
 them, which he sets before us in order like pretty objects 
 in a shop-window : in fact, his arcade does strikingly 
 resemble such a window, with models set behind it and 
 carefully coloured. These, then, are the two main 
 divisions of old landscape distances, the simplified and 
 the minutely detailed : but besides these there was some 
 clever distance-painting occasionally, in Dutch art, which 
 deserves separate mention. Of Ruysdael's mountain 
 distances little is to be said that is favourable. They 
 are not so well coloured as those of Claude (being really 
 nothing but disguised monochrome), and they are not 
 superior to his work in knowledge ; but there are flat 
 distances in Dutch art, including some by Ruysdael, 
 which show almost a modern sense of extent of country 
 and play of wandering light* Such, then, had been the 
 artistic experiments made by others in this direction 
 before Turner came, and his own early efforts showed 
 little improvement upon his predecessors. It has been 
 remarked before, that whereas with most men the 
 maturing of the faculties leads from imagination to 
 reason, from poetry to prose, this was not the case with 
 Turner, who became more and more poetical as he 
 advanced in life ; and this might in some measure 
 
 * There is a fine example of this in the National Gallery now (Wynn- 
 EUis collection), the large Ruysdael, with a church and an expanse of open 
 country beyond. 
 
158 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 account for his ever-increasing tendency to desert the 
 foreground, where objects are too near to have much 
 enchantment about them, in order to dream, and make 
 others dream, of distances which seem hardly of this 
 world. 
 
 The fascination of the remote, for minds which have 
 any imaginative faculty at all, is so universal and so 
 unfailing, that it must be due to some cause in the depths 
 of man's spiritual nature. It may be due to a religious 
 instinct, which makes him forget the meanness and 
 triviality of common life in this world to look as far 
 beyond it as he can to a mysterious infinity of glory, 
 where earth itself seems to pass easily into heaven. It 
 may be due to a progressive instinct, which draws men 
 to the future and the unknown, leading them ever to fix 
 their gaze on the far horizon, like mariners looking for 
 some visionary Atlantis across the spaces of the weari- 
 some sea. Be this as it may, the enchantments of land- 
 scape distances are certainly due far more to the 
 imagination of the beholder than to any tangible or 
 explicable beauty of their own. It is probable that 
 minds of a common order, which see with the bodily 
 eyes only, and have no imaginative perception, receive 
 no impressions of the kind which affected Turner ; but 
 the conditions of modern life have developed a great 
 sensitiveness to such impressions in minds of a higher 
 class. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to name 
 any important imaginative work in literature, produced 
 during the present century, in which there is not some 
 expression proving the author's sensitiveness to the 
 poetry of distance. I will not weary the reader with 
 
The Fascination of the Remote. 159 
 
 quotations, but here is just one from Shelley, which owes 
 most of its effect upon the mind to his perception of two 
 elements of sublimity — distance and height; in which 
 perception, as in many other mental gifts, he strikingly 
 resembled Turner. The stanza is in the ' Revolt of 
 Islam : ' 
 
 ' Upon that rock a mighty cokimn stood, 
 
 Whose capital seemed sculptured in the slcy. 
 
 Which to the wanderers o'er the solitude 
 Of distant seas, from ages long gone by, 
 Had made a landmark ; o'er its height to fly 
 
 Scarcely the cloud, the vulture or the blast, 
 Has power — and, when the shades of evening lie 
 
 On earth and ocean, its carved summits cast 
 
 The sunken daylight far through the aerial waste. ' 
 
 This was written in 1817, just about the time when 
 Turner was passing from his early manner to the sub- 
 limities of his maturity ; and there is ample evidence, of 
 which more may be said later, that Turner and Shelley 
 were as much in sympathy as two men can be when one 
 is cultivated almost exclusively by means of literature 
 and the other by graphic art. But however great may 
 have been the similarity of their minds, whatever suscep- 
 tibility to certain impressions they may have had in 
 common, the two arts which they pursued differed 
 widely in technical conditions. It may, or it may not, 
 be as easy to write verses as to paint when both are to 
 be supremely well done, but it is certain that poetic 
 description requires less realisation than pictorial, so that 
 less accurate observation will suffice for it, and an inferior 
 gift of memory. In the whole range of the difficulties 
 which painters endeavour to overcome there is not one 
 which tries their powers more severely than the repre- 
 
,i6o TJie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 sentalion of distant effects in landscape. They can never 
 be studied from nature, for they come and go so rapidly 
 as to permit nothing but the most inadequate memor- 
 anda ; they can never be really imitated, being usually 
 in such a high key of light and colour as to go beyond 
 the resources of the palette, and the finest of them are so 
 mysterious that the most piercing eyesight is baffled, 
 perceiving at the utmost but little of all that they con- 
 tain. The interpretation of such effects, however able 
 and intelligent it may be, always requires a great deal of 
 goodwill on the part of the spectator, who must be con- 
 tent if he can read the painter's work as a sort of short- 
 hand, without finding in it any of the amusement which 
 may be derived from the imitation of what is really 
 imitable. For all these reasons it would be a sufficiently 
 rash enterprise for an artist to stake his prospects on the 
 painting of distances ; but there is another objection even 
 yet more serious. Such painting requires not only much 
 goodwill in the spectator, but also great knowledge, 
 freedom from vulgar prejudices, and some degree of 
 faith in the painter himself. When people see a noble 
 effect in nature there is one stock observation which they 
 almost invariably make : they always say, or nearly 
 always, — ' Now, if we were to see that effect in a picture 
 we should not believe it to be possible.' One would 
 think that, after such a reflection on their own tendency 
 to unbelief in art and to astonishment in the presence of 
 nature, people would be forewarned against their own 
 injustice; but it is not so. They will make that obser- 
 vation every time they see a fine sunset or a remarkable 
 cloud in the natural world, and remain as unjust as ever 
 
A Second Possibility of Marriage, 1815. i6r 
 
 to the art which represents phenomena of the same 
 order. Turner had to contend against this disposition 
 to deny the truth of everything that is not commonplace. 
 He was too proud and courageous to allow it to arrest its 
 development, and would not submit to dictation from 
 any one as to the subjects of his larger pictures. He 
 knew the value of money, and would work very hard to 
 earn it, but no money consideration whatever was per- 
 mitted to interfere between him and the higher mani- 
 festations of his art. His oil-pictures, by their very 
 unsaleableness, gave him much artistic liberty, which he 
 made use of to the utmost. If Royalty and the aristocracy 
 had bought them the artist would have got rich earlier, 
 but would have been less master of himself. 
 
 It is said, that in the year 1815 Turner might possibly 
 have been married to a young lady who was a relation 
 of his friend Mr. Trimmer, but, unluckily, he felt too 
 timid to propose, though he wished the lady ' would but 
 waive bashfulness, or, in other words, make an offer in- 
 stead of expecting one.' She did not break through 
 the decorum of her sex, and Turner never mustered the 
 degree of assurance which is so common a characteristic 
 of masculine humanity, so the end of it all was that he 
 simply remained a bachelor. This is an odd instance of 
 those unrealities, so nearly realised, the marriages that 
 might have been. Perhaps the lady had a happy 
 escape, for with all our admiration for Turner we may 
 frankly confess that he had become by this time too 
 much accustomed to his own way of life to adapt it 
 readily to feminine exigencies. He was not the sort of 
 person to associate well with anybody. His temper, ia 
 
1 62 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 this respect, is well illustrated by a little incident which 
 occurred to him on a sketching excursion with a friend. 
 They had but one palette between them, so it was settled 
 that each should use half of it, an arrangement which 
 answered pretty well for some time ; but at length Turner 
 perceived, or fancied that he perceived, something like 
 an encroachment on his half, when he growled out 
 angrily, ' Keep to your own messes ! ' Imagine such a 
 temper in the partnership of marriage ! 
 r The most important picture exhibited in 1815 was 
 Dido building Carthage, or the Rise of the Carthaginian 
 Empire. This is one of Turner's best-known works, and 
 is likely ever to remain so, because it has been hung 
 near a Claude, according to the directions in the will, 
 and so everybody tries to make up his mind as to 
 whether it deserves such good company or not. This 
 comparison it will be more convenient to postpone until 
 our biographical narrative has come to an end. The 
 Dido owes its origin to various causes,— to the painter's 
 early architectural studies, to his assimilation of Claude's 
 artistic ideas, and to an interest in Carthage, of a very 
 peculiar kind. Leslie hit the mark in a single sentence 
 when he said that the picture made him feel as if he 
 were in a theatre decorated with the most splendid of 
 drop scenes. Yes, that is true ; and the only intelligible 
 utility of such works is that they are a portable kind of 
 decoration. It is conceivable that a rich man, having a 
 magnificent room, might like to have such a canvas as 
 this to give a pompous air to one of the walls of it, but 
 it is difficult to imagine how it could give him any deeper 
 or more delicate aesthetic satisfaction. As for intellectual 
 
Dido Building Cartlmge. 163 
 
 satisfactions, the thing is an intellectual misconception 
 and mistake. It belongs to the old erroneous school of 
 false history-painting, in which nothing is worth criticising 
 but the technical workmanship in composition and ex- 
 ecution. The representation of history so remote that 
 we have scarcely any data for anything can never be 
 very interesting. Turner's Carthaginian pictures were 
 painted before the days of universal archaeology, and he 
 knew notliing even of the little that is ascertainable. It 
 might have been worth his while to go as far as Tunis 
 and imbibe at least the spirit of the Carthaginian scenery, 
 as he imbibed that of the Roman Campagna. They 
 who have been where Carthage once stood tell us that 
 the landscapes are fine in character, with the lake of 
 Tunis, the distant azure mountains, the scattered woods 
 of olive and other trees, the vast plain, not unrefreshed 
 with verdure. Then you have the fine North African 
 atmosphere, with its perfect light, through which the 
 colour shows itself, pure and intense, like sapphires and 
 emeralds through clear glass. Turner did not concern 
 himself, in this instance, with local beauties or character- 
 istics, but invented a place which might have belonged 
 to some English nobleman in the Georgian era with a 
 fancy for stone and mortar andia^taste for classic temples 
 in his grounds. We feel, of cpurse, the skill of the 
 practised composer; the material is so arranged as to 
 keep well together, but the lighting is impossible. Mr. 
 Leslie pointed out that the shadows from the projecting 
 pieces of scaffolding to the left fell in a direction only 
 possible with a sun much higher than that in the picture. 
 He was right in this criticism, and might have extended 
 
 II— 2 
 
164 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 it not only to other details, but to large masses, especially 
 the mass of architecture to the right, above the arch of 
 what looks like a sewer in the corner. All that is lighted 
 as if the sun were fifty degrees (of the circle of the 
 horizon) farther to the left. With the luminary where he 
 is, the piece of architecture in question would have 
 reposed in a broad, unbroken penumbra. The sky is 
 heavy and rather unpleasantly opaque, but that may be 
 due to chemical alteration in the pigments, for Turner 
 used them without regard to permanence. 
 
 The first price Turner asked for this picture was ;£'Soo 
 but he did not find a purchaser, and feeling rather in- 
 dignant at this raised the price enormously afterwards 
 by a process of successive doubling. He could do so with- 
 out imprudence, as, in fact, he had determined to keep 
 the work until his death. This determination was put to 
 a very severe test some years later, when several gentle- 
 men who admired Turner (Sir Robert Peel, Lord Har- 
 dinge, and others) offered ;£'5ooo for this and another 
 picture of Carthage, in order to present them to the 
 National Gallery. Turner was pleased by this offer, but 
 adhered to his original intention. 
 
 In 1 8 16 he was still in the classic vein, and exhibited 
 two pictures of the Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, in 
 the Island of .^gina, which he had never visited. The 
 material was supplied by a sketch taken by Mr. Gaily 
 Knight. 
 
 The next year Turner returns to Carthage, and ex- 
 hibits a large picture, entitled The Decline of the Cartha- 
 ginian Empire. The work was accompanied by both 
 prose and verse in thfe Academy Catalogue : 
 
Turner and Scott. 165 
 
 ' 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 the insidious conqueror's grasp resign'd ; 
 While o'er the western wave th' ensanguined sun 
 In gathering haze, a stormy signal spread. 
 And set portentous.' 
 
 The second Carthage was a much worse picture than 
 the first, going still more into the accumulation of bad 
 architecture, whilst the colouring is quite inferior, except 
 in the sky. It has always seemed wonderful to me that 
 Sir Robert Peel and his friends, with their excellent 
 intentions towards the artist on the one hand, and the 
 nation on the other, should have selected these par- 
 ticular pictures to immortalise him and benefit our- 
 selves ; and I heartily endorse Mr. Ruskin's estimate. 
 ' It is, in fact, little more than an accumulation of Aca- 
 demy students' outlines, coloured brown.' 
 
 Turner was brought back to less ambitious, but really 
 much better material, by a tour in Scotland in the year 
 i8i8. He was associated with Sir Walter Scott in the 
 production of the Provincial Antiquities, and visited the 
 localities in his company. The great novelist had a keen 
 enjoyment of the things in nature which were the raw 
 material of Turner's art ; he delighted in natural land- 
 scape ; and no artist ever had a stronger passion for 
 romantic old buildings, especially when the interest of 
 them was enhanced by associations of history and 
 legend : yet, notwithstanding what was up to this point 
 
i66 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 a community of tastes, Sir Walter could not really enter 
 into the mind of Turner, because, whilst delighting in 
 nature, he had no understanding of graphic art. The 
 enjoyment of what he saw : the heather on the moor, 
 the grey walls of an ancient peel, the silvery birch and 
 glittering rivulet in the dell, — -this enjoyment, of which 
 the refreshment is so often communicated to us in his 
 works, was entirely disconnected in his mind from the 
 kind of knowledge, far more painfully acquired, which 
 is the foundation of the art of painting, and he lived in 
 a state of happy ignorance about the subject. He was 
 never tormented, like Goethe, with the longings of a 
 painter or draughtsman, and had never gone through 
 those practical studies which open the eyes of an 
 amateur, even when they do not enable him to overcome 
 the difficulties of art. He would have preferred, as an 
 artist, Mr. Thomson of Duddingstone, the clergyman 
 and landscape-painter, but ' supposed he must acquiesce ' 
 in the selection of Turner, ' because he was all the 
 fashion.' This did not prevent Scott from using a few 
 complimentary phrases about Turner's genius, phrases 
 which are customary in speaking of eminent artists and 
 do not indicate any reality of admiration. ' The Author 
 of Waverley' must have had little conception of the 
 splendid position which Turner was destined to occupy 
 in the artistic history of England ; and one cannot help 
 thinking with a touch of sadness of these two men, 
 temporarily associated together and nearer to each other 
 as artists than Sir Walter could be aware. Lockhart, on 
 the other hand, seems really to have appreciated Turner, 
 even at that comparatively early date, which was before 
 
Oil Pictures of \Z\Z. 167 
 
 the pi-oduction of his most delightful works ; for Lock- 
 hart said, even then, ' The world has only one Turner, 
 and spoke of him as ' a great genius,' and called his 
 drawing ' magnificent delineation.' 
 
 The Provincial Antiquities of Scotland include three 
 Edinburgh subjects and two of Dunbar, with views of 
 Roslin, Stirling, Crichton, Borthwick, and Tantallon 
 Castles, as well as Linlithgow Palace. The series 
 finished with the Bass Rock. The drawings were well 
 engraved by the best landscape-engravers of the day, 
 who afterwards did so much to disseminate the works of 
 Turner. 
 
 This year, 18 18, was not a brilliant period for Turner's 
 work in oil. The artist was like a ship in stays : the 
 impulse from one tack had exhausted itself, the impulse 
 of the next was only just beginning. There are no 
 pictures at this period with the massive but cumbersome 
 strength of the Calais Pier and the Shipwreck ; there 
 are none with the grace of a later time. Besides the 
 difficulty attendant upon a change in style amounting to 
 revolution, there was another which lay deep in the 
 inmost nature of the man. Turner never acquired that 
 delicate critical faculty which limits an artist to what he 
 can do thoroughly well ; his mind was too luxuriant in 
 its fruitfulness to bear with the restrictions which the 
 true classical temper imposes upon itself He would 
 never have endured to confine his efforts to some narrow 
 specialty of his art, even with the certainty of a sus- 
 tained and unquestionable excellence. He could not, 
 like Meissonier, have deliberately resolved to paint only 
 one sex, and adhered to his resolve. Like all men of 
 
}68 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 immense range, he was constantly incurring new risks 
 in coping with new difficulties. So many things in- 
 terested him that he was always tempted to express his 
 interest about them in his art — having no other suffi- 
 cient outlet, since literary expression, eagerly desired, 
 was denied to him ; and so his work as a painter, 
 instead of being pushed steadily in a safe technical 
 direction, became the vehicle of feelings and ideas 
 which had little to do with landscape-painting. For 
 example : the whole series of his Carthage pictures was 
 suggested, not by a landscape-painter's healthy desire to 
 paint the scenery about Tunis, but by patriotic interests 
 and anxieties in the great struggle between England 
 and Napoleon. He did not, perhaps, accept the Gallic 
 theory that England was the modern Carthage, destined 
 to destruction by the enemy which called itself the 
 modern Rome, but he had a foreboding that it might be 
 so — that the greatness of his country might bring down 
 upon it the fate of those whom relentless Envy pursues 
 to a final, irremediable overthrow ; and this idea im- 
 pelled him to paint repeatedly a vanished city, of which 
 he knew neither the architecture nor the site. A pecu- 
 liar misfortune attended most of his patriotic pictures. 
 The Trafalgar was an impossible medley of masts and 
 sails, which no seaman can endure and no artist would 
 ever imitate ; but he painted it from a sense of patriotic 
 obligation — one of the false motives that sometimes in- 
 trude upon the domain of art. The same patriotism 
 produced a Waterloo in the exhibition of 1818, a picture 
 which only served to exhibit the artist's figure-painting 
 to painfully manifest disadvantage. Turner has often 
 
Pictures <?/ 1819. 169 
 
 been unfairly criticised for the figures in his genuine 
 landscapes, where, with few exceptions, they serve their 
 purpose admirably. It would be difficult to name 
 another landscape-painter who has used the figiirine, I 
 will not say better, but so well. His groups form an 
 integral part of the scene, and keep their places quite 
 harmoniously with the trees and buildings, so that we 
 do not desire to have them elsewhere, and it is only an 
 imperfectly-educated criticism which dwells upon their 
 faulty drawing. But in such a picture as the Waterloo 
 that faulty drawing becomes insupportable. The reason 
 for Turner's failure in this instance is obvious. The 
 human interest is too overpowering here, the landscape 
 interest insufficient. It is a figure-painter's subject, a 
 subject for Detaille or de Neuville, not for him who, 
 after wandering in the tranquil paradise of Claude, was 
 destined to open for us a fairer Eden of his own. 
 
 In the exhibition of 18 19 Turner reverts to more 
 artistic motives. One of his pictures bore the title 
 (which looks, indeed, as if it had been written by a sailor) 
 Efitrance of the Meuse — Orange Merchant on the Bar, 
 going to pieces ; Brill Church bearing S.E. by S., Maren- 
 shtys E. by S. ; but the real suggestion of the picture 
 would only occur to a colourist. The artist had a fancy 
 for painting oranges bobbing about in sea-water, hence 
 the picture. The other work, Richmond Hill on the 
 Prince Regenfs Birthday, had its origin in a rare and 
 sudden sympathy with popular jollification, when happy 
 Londoners, rejoicing that so good a prince should have 
 been born to rule over them, danced with their Amandas, 
 or walked the smiling mead, according to the Thom- 
 
I/O The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 sonian verse. The following quotation accompanied the 
 picture in the Royal Academy Catalogue : 
 
 ' Which way, Amanda, shall we bend our course ? 
 The choice perplexes. Wherefore should we choose ? 
 All is the same with thee ; say, shall we wind 
 Along the streams ? or walk the smiling mead ? 
 Or court the forest glades ? or wander wild 
 Among the waving harvests ? or ascend. 
 While radiant summer opens all its pride. 
 Thy Hill, delightful Shene?' 
 
 How remote this poesy appears to us to-day 1 Not 
 less remote these smiling meads and forest glades of 
 Turner, missing alike the enchantment of imagination 
 and the refreshment of reality. Leslie judged rightly 
 when he said of Turner, ' Neither has he expressed the 
 deep, fresh verdure of his own country ; and hence he is 
 the most unfaithful (among great painters) to the essen- 
 tial and most beautiful characteristics of English mid- 
 land scenery. Constable said to me, " Did you ever see 
 a picture by Turner and not wish to possess it ?" I 
 forget the reply, but I might have named his view from 
 the terrace at Richmond ; from which, with the exception 
 of the general composition, every beauty of that noble 
 landscape is left out. I remember, in a summer of 
 unusual drought, when the trees became embrowned and 
 the grass was burnt up, that the colour of the woods and 
 meadows seen from Richmond approached to that of 
 Turner's picture ; but I never remember to have met 
 with trees of such forms as those which he has placed in 
 its foreground in any part of the world.' 
 
 In 1819 Turner went to Rome, one result of which 
 excursion was the extraordinary picture, exhibited in the 
 
Rome from the Vatican. 171 
 
 \following year, and still to be seen at the National 
 Gallery, of Rome from the Vatican. Raphael and the 
 
 |Fornarina are in the immediate foreground, and some 
 pictures are lying about on the floor and against the 
 balustrade. The artist's intention may here have borne 
 some reference to his own honours. He figured in the 
 Catalogue for 1820 as ' Professor of Perspective and 
 Member of the Roman Academy of St. Luke,' so we 
 have both pei'spective and Rome in the picture. It is a 
 frank violation of common rules which every artist 
 ought to know and observe, especially the capital rule 
 that perspective which appears exaggerated is to be 
 avoided, and that interiors are to be represented as if 
 the wall behind the artist were removed, so that he could 
 place himself at a convenient distance, like a spectator 
 at the theatre. The objects in Turner's foreground come 
 forward too near to the footlights, the floor of the loggia 
 slopes like the floor of a ship's cabin in a storm, and it is 
 impossible to look at the picture without unpleasant 
 sensations. One cannot imagine a Sovereign Pontiff 
 walking along the floor of that corridor ; it is only fit for 
 slaters or sailors. Equally wonderful is the arch through 
 which we get the view of Rome. It goes over our heads 
 like the Milky Way, and looks so prodigious in com- 
 parison with its next neighbour that few would imagine 
 the two to be really of the same size. Turner's most 
 enthusiastic admirer confesses that this is ' a challenge 
 to every known law of perspective to hold its own, if it 
 could, against the new views of the professor on that 
 subject.' This may be the language of facetious criticism, 
 but it expresses a known fact. Turner really did reject 
 
172 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 the laws of perspective, though it was his office to uphold 
 them. 
 
 A very slight suggestion or indication was enough to 
 stimulate the imaginative faculty in Turner, and this 
 may sometimes have been rather a misfortune, as it 
 made him only too wiUing to work from memoranda 
 supplied by others. In our own day artists use photo- 
 graphy, and they use it much more than is generally 
 supposed ; in 1820 they had not that resource, but there 
 was the camera-obscura. Harewell's ' Picturesque Tour 
 in Italy ' was illustrated by Turner from camera-obscura 
 sketches. He got his own material in the north of 
 England for Dr. Whitaker's ' History of Richmondshire.' 
 If the reader will go back to the year 1799 {^Portfolio, 
 vol. vii. p. loi), he will see the beginning of Turner's 
 connection with Dr. Whitaker and his works. After a 
 long interval, the painter and archaeologist were again 
 associated together in their labours. Each of the three 
 districts — Whalley, Craven, and Richmondshire — is an 
 inexhaustible mine for a landscape-painter ; but when 
 Turner was illustrating the two first he w:as as yet very 
 little of an artist in the higher sense of the word : he was 
 a painstaking and tolerably accurate topographer, and 
 little or nothing more. In the interval between the 
 Craven and the Richmondshire he became more of an 
 artist and less of a topographer than any of his brethren. 
 It is difficult, in the history of the arts, to point to a 
 more surprising transformation. It is as if some pain- 
 fully dry chronicler of common events had won the 
 power and achieved the liberty of a poet. Never was 
 caterpillar so humble changed into such a brilliant 
 
Whitaker's 'History of Richmondshire' 173 
 
 butterfly ! The difference between Turner's earliest and 
 his later work for Dr. Whitaker is, therefore, not to be 
 attributed to any finer character in the scenery, but to 
 the revolution in the mind of the artist. A painter of 
 the second rank keeping nearly on the same level, would 
 have made far more of Whalley and Craven, and less of 
 Richmondshire. 
 
 Messrs. Longman gave Turner the landscape depart- 
 ment, and they employed Buckler for the architectural 
 subjects. I do not know the details of the business 
 matters connected with this publication, but it appears 
 that it cost ;^ 1 0,000 ; and I have been informed that by 
 far the greater part of this considerable sum went into 
 Turner's pocket. I think there must be some error 
 here. There are only twenty drawings in the Richmond 
 Series, which the artist began in 1 820, a date at which 
 the highest prices he received for drawings had not 
 exceeded ;^ioo. The probability is, that the ;£■ 10,000 
 included the cost of engraving ; and it does not seem 
 impossible to bring out the whole work, including the 
 letterpress, for that sum. However this may have been, 
 the originals were afterwards sold ; and one of the 
 principal purchasers was Mr. John Marshall, of Leeds. 
 These works were kept at Halsteads, on Ullswater, by 
 his son, Mr. William Marshall, who used to tell anecdotes 
 about them which have not been preserved, unluckily 
 for the interest of this narrative, Wordsworth being one 
 of the audience. The subjects were not selected by 
 Turner in an independent-artist fashion, but were chosen 
 for him by a little company of gentlemen who made 
 a tour for the purpose. The members of this pleasant 
 
174 TJie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 little society were Dr. William Turner, ' Old Tate,' the 
 celebrated Master of Richmond Grammar School, and 
 Mr. William Whitaker. 
 
 A very amusing anecdote has been told, with full 
 details, about Turner being mistaken for a Jew. It has 
 been said, that when he went to Yorkshire to illustrate 
 the ' Richmondshire ' he brought a letter of introduction 
 from a publisher in London to one in Yorkshire, telling 
 him, in conclusion, to remember that Turner was a great 
 }&^, the consequence being that he was treated as if he 
 belonged to the Jewish religion. The incident really 
 occurred ; but the person who made the mistake was a 
 lady, Mrs. Whitaker (wife of the historian), who was 
 Turner's hostess at that time. She had heard that the 
 artist was a Jew, took it literally, as was very natural, 
 and treated him as an Israelite indeed, possibly with 
 reference to church attendance and the consumption of 
 ham. One cannot help feeling for Mrs. Whitaker, who 
 must have needed all the tact of a lady to extricate her- 
 self from such a position ; but it is impossible to regret 
 her b^vue. It is one of the very finest and most perfect 
 Mvnes committed in the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, the only one quite equal to it being that of the 
 Empress Marie Louise, when she told a distinguished 
 statesman that he was one of ' les plus grandes ganaches 
 de I' Empire,' believing that ganache meant a Nestor, wise 
 in council. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Transition to colour. — Turner as a traveller. — His system of study. 
 
 Turner was an exhibitor at the Academy for the space 
 of sixty years, with only four exceptions— 1805, 1821, 
 1824, and 1848. The first of these omissions may be 
 attributed to the necessity for earning money in early 
 life by other means than the painting of important oil- 
 pictures, and the last was due to declining health and 
 power; but that of 1821 has been considered, perhaps 
 justly, to indicate a pause in his career as a painter when 
 a new conception of his art was taking possession of his 
 mind. He had given up topography long before, as we 
 have seen with reference to the Kilchurn, but the evolu- 
 tion from chiaroscurist to coloutist was not accomplished 
 so soon. The most famous of the earlier pictures, those 
 solid, substantial pictures which are so strikingly unlike 
 the manner of his full maturity, were painted simply on 
 Dutch principles in grey and brown, with a patch of red 
 here and there, to make people believe that it was colour. 
 In Crossing the Brook we have yellow greys and quiet 
 greens managed with the taste of a colourist who does 
 not yet venture to employ the full force of his palette. 
 The difference between Crossing the Brook and the 
 
176 Tlie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Garden of the Hesperid.es (which was exhibited at the 
 British Institution in 1806) is, in principle, absolute ; the 
 later picture is colourist's work in quiet hues, the earlier 
 is not colourist's work at all. This great transition having 
 been accomplished, a farther step had to be taken, of 
 greater difficulty than the first. To borrow a comparison 
 from the war between Russia and Turkey, I may say that 
 he had passed his Danube, but that in the mysterious 
 distance the Balkan mountains lay still to be traversed. 
 Here, then, he paused, exhibiting nothing in 1821 ; in 
 the following year an unimportant picture called What 
 you Will : in 1823, a great experiment in the new style ; 
 and in 1824 nothing again. This may be an appropriate 
 time for pausing in the narrative of the Life to consider 
 Turner's various methods of studying from nature, of 
 which we have said little hitherto. 
 
 The reader may have felt some surprise at the cursory 
 way in which the painter's art-travels have been passed 
 over, the reason for this being simply our ignorance of 
 any events which may have happened to him. No 
 traveller has left less in the way of written memoranda 
 or correspondence. His poverty in language amounting 
 to absolute destitution in foreign tongues, and the un- 
 communicativeness of his character made his intellect 
 useless for the study of human nature beyond the limits 
 of his own country. He was the exact opposite of 
 such men as Ticknor and Crabb Robinson, who always, 
 in every foreign city, fell into the very midst of the most 
 cultivated society, and heard all that was most interest- 
 ing. Intellectual tastes, and enlightened interest in 
 foreign politics and literature, would have been quite in- 
 
Turner as a Traveller. 177 
 
 compatible with the immense amount of professional 
 labour that he went through ; and as for thrilling adven- 
 tures, we only remember that he once slipped on a very- 
 steep slope of rock, or debris, in the Isle of Skye, and 
 saved himself by clinging to one of the rare tufts of grass 
 which are able to grow in such places. Some artists 
 have passed through stirring scenes, and participated in 
 them ; the recently published autobiography of Etex, 
 the sculptor (who did two of the groups on the Arc de 
 Triomphe) is as full of change and interest as ' Gil Bias ' 
 or ' Don Quixote,' with duels, difficulties, disguises, 
 glimpses of the highest society and the lowest, sudden 
 contrasts of splendour and poverty, rapid changes of 
 scene and circumstance, visions of womanly beauty, of 
 manly courage, and incidents of pleasure and peril. The 
 life of Goya was a wild romance ; even the lives of 
 Fortuny and of Regnault are as interesting as the 
 tragedies of Shakespeare. These artists were mingled 
 with the boiling tide of humanity, and had their share 
 of that stimulating commotion which is the intensifica- 
 tion of existence. Turner knew too well the productive 
 value of solitude and peace to expose himself to useless 
 adventures, and he wandered about the Continent, so 
 lately desolated by the most terrible of modern con- 
 querors, in a spirit of perfect artistic tranquillity, con- 
 scious indeed of the miseries of humanity, and partially 
 saddened by them, yet steadily minding his own busi- 
 ness, which was to observe how cities, and rivers, and 
 •distant mountains, would combine into beautiful com- 
 positions. He had visited Rome in 1813, he revisited 
 it in 1 8 19, and saw the Rhine in the same year, but we 
 
 12 
 
178 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 have no traveller's reminiscences to enliven our bare 
 statement of the fact. The best account of Turner's 
 impressions as a traveller is to be found in the vast 
 collection of sketches bequeathed by him to the National 
 Gallery. 
 
 Turner's system of study from nature was from the 
 first adapted to the habits of a tourist who never re- 
 mained long in one place. Some of his studies are 
 elaborate ; but it is a kind of elaboration due rather to a 
 perfect command of means, and great practice, than to 
 much time spent upon any one particular sketch. He 
 was always a painter from memoranda, and his sketches, 
 whether slight or elaborate, are really memoranda, and 
 no more, except in a very few instances, when he tried 
 for imitative quality in drawings of still life. 
 
 The collection of his sketches, now belonging to the 
 nation, is so considerable, that students may find in it 
 abundant examples of the various kinds of work which 
 he did in the presence of Nature. Some of these sketches 
 have been copied for this biography with sufficient 
 accuracy as to form, and the reader may judge from 
 them of the degree of elaboration which Turner usually 
 considered necessary. 
 
 The character of Turner's drawings varies considerably 
 at different periods, and during different tours. Some- 
 times the pencil is cut broad at the end, and the sketches 
 are very comprehensive in treatment ; at other times a 
 harder pencil is used, and it is sharpened to a fine point. 
 The papers vary also, being sometimes white, and at 
 other times grey, of various tints and textures. Then, 
 again, the relations vary between the line and the wash 
 
vS 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 U I' 
 
 ~1 ' *w 
 
 4 ' 
 
 ■: Ik:' 'U 
 
 
 
 -^1 -^ 
 
 
 ";t 
 
 '■»¥'**/ ■ J'' ^ ' 
 
 
His System of Study. 179 
 
 in the degree of importance given to the one or to the 
 other. 
 
 But whatever may be the differences between Turner's 
 ways of sketching, he was always equally decided ; he 
 always evidently had determined beforehand exactly the 
 kind of work, and pretty nearly the quantity of it, that he 
 intended to put into his sketch. His ideas are perfectly 
 clear, and his intentions settled. His interpretation of 
 Nature is always carried up to a predetermined point, 
 and no farther. Less consummate artists often find 
 themselves led beyond what they at first intended by the 
 interest of the subject and the pleasure of study, so that 
 they do not know when and where to stop. In Turner's 
 sketches, without any exception known to me, there is 
 absolute self-control. He never finishes to his utmost 
 unless it be to mark some particularly interesting portion 
 of a sketch, and then the finish is knowingly restricted to 
 that portion, and the rest is loosely indicated. He is not 
 at any time the slave of Nature or her echo, but always 
 her interpreter. In a certain sense his sketching is 
 intensely conventional. I do not mean that he always 
 followed ancient recognised methods, for he was an 
 audacious innovator ; I mean, that he worked as if draw- 
 ing, relatively to Nature, were understood to be a summary 
 and artificial method of interpretation. This may have 
 been partly due to his love of rapidity. No one can look 
 over the national collection of Turner's sketches without 
 perceiving that he cultivated rapidity as an art, that he 
 consciously applied his mind to those artifices which 
 economise time, and which consequently enable an artist 
 to get much from Nature in one sitting. This habit of 
 
 12 — 2 
 
i8o The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 economy in time is often much increased by practice in 
 noting down very transient effects, so that the methods 
 which an artist has invented for this purpose may be 
 used by him for things less transient when he is in a 
 hurry. Having sketched clouds quickly because they 
 retain their forms only for a few seconds, he may some- 
 times apply similar methods to trees and cities, when 
 the diligence only allows him ten minutes to make his 
 sketch. Many things conspired to teach Turner the art 
 of using time to the best advantage. The effects which 
 he cared to paint were generally transient, and his eager 
 search for new impressions prevented him, when on his 
 travels, from remaining more than an hour or two on one 
 spot. So far as we can judge, the time given to his 
 sketches from Nature varied from three or four minutes 
 to as many hours. The most elaborate of them were 
 retouched in the house afterwards, but it is probable that 
 he never, or hardly ever, gave more than one sitting to 
 the same sketch in the presence of Nature, at least 
 during his foreign tours. He had several distinct 
 methods of sketching at command, to be used according 
 to circumstances, and was perfectly master of each of 
 them ; so that whenever one seemed likely to take too 
 much time, another might be immediately adopted. 
 Exceedingly unmethodical in the ordinary habits of his 
 life, he was methodical in the extreme when wording 
 directly from Nature ; and this is the more remarkable 
 that he was not methodical when painting in his studio 
 at home. The difference may be explained by the 
 difference of leisure. In the studio he had time to try 
 experiments ; but there was no time for experimen- 
 
His System of Study. i8l 
 
 talising on the road, with the inn to be reached at 
 night. 
 
 The following classification will, it is believed, be 
 found to include all the different kinds of sketches and 
 studies which Turner usually executed from Nature. 
 
 I. Lead pencil on white paper. — Many of these pencil 
 studies are done with the point of a hard pencil, kept 
 well sharpened, especially for architectural material. 
 Shade is either not indicated at all, or very slightly, the 
 studies of this class being strictly notes of form. Even 
 form, however, is far from being complete ; there is only 
 just as much of it as the artist thought indispensable. 
 For example : in architecture, when details were re- 
 peated in the building. Turner would often draw one of 
 them carefully, and indicate the rest ; and in landscape 
 he would indicate foliage in a summary way by loops. 
 In these pencil studies Turner never came nearer to 
 imitation than the very simplest etching. Sometimes the 
 loops would be rejected for a comprehensive sketching of 
 masses, with a slight indication of shade, consisting 
 generally of a few diagonal lines kept well open. The 
 reader may judge of the more complete pencil studies by 
 referring to the sheep and the pine-tree on pages 174 and 
 175 of the Portfolio for 1876, and to the landscape on 
 page 189. He will see at once, that notwithstanding 
 Turner's great knowledge of light and shade, he was 
 very sparing of it in sketches of this class, yet he often 
 made use of them afterwards for the most elaborate 
 works in water-colour or oil. There are instances in 
 which shade is just indicated with a slight rubbing. He 
 seems to have had recourse to pencilrsketching at all 
 
1 82 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 periods of his life ; but rarely to have practised highly- 
 finished pencil drawing, as the old figure-painters used 
 to do. The reason for this is, that when he had time 
 for elaboration he took up colour. Pencil, in his system, 
 was simply used for memoranda, unless in some early 
 work. 
 
 2. Broad lead pencil oti buff paper, white lights in body 
 colour, yellow occasionally used. — An early series of 
 sketches in Scotland are done in this manner. These 
 sketches are remarkable for breadth carried to excess, 
 for they contain hardly any information, about matters of 
 detail of the kind that a painter needs. The finality of 
 them is such that they look as if the artist*had no other 
 object than their production, and was fully satisfied with 
 broadly-shaded, but really very empty, spaces. These 
 Scottish drawings are rather large, which makes us more 
 alive to their want of detail. 
 
 3. Black and white chalk on grey paper. — Turner seems 
 to have been rather fond of black and white chalk early 
 in the century, but he afterwards preferred body-colour 
 for lights, except in correcting proofs of engravings. He 
 used chalks magnificently, but with the utmost careless- 
 ness as to preservation. ' These drawings,' says Mr. 
 Ruskin, in speaking of a fine series of them, ' were on 
 leaves of a folio book, which, for the most part, is dashed 
 over with such things on both sides of its thin, grey 
 leaves ; the peculiar ingenuity of the arrangement being 
 that each leaf has half of one sketch on its front and half 
 of another on its back, so that, mounting one whole 
 sketch must generally hide the halves of two. The 
 further advantage of the plan is that the white chalk 
 
His System of Study. 183 
 
 touches, on which everything depends, rub partly off 
 every time the leaves are turned ; besides that a quantity 
 of the said chalk, shattered by Turner's energetic thrusts 
 with it, is accumulated in a kind of Alpine debris in the 
 joints, shaking out, and lodging in unexpected knots of 
 chalk indigestion whenever the volume is shut ; and, to 
 make the whole thing perfect, the paper is so thin and 
 old that it will hardly bear even the most loving handling, 
 much less the rack and wear of turning backwards and 
 forwards on a mount, if attached by one edge.' 
 
 There are some noble studies of boats of this class, 
 executed with great simplicity and directness of method, 
 but with consummate knowledge. Turner does not 
 seem to have troubled himself much about fixing, which 
 lowers the whites. Neither did he care to finish his 
 chalk drawings very far. 
 
 4. Black chalk on grey paper, with white lights in body- 
 colour. — An example of this is one of his studies in 
 Savoy, that of Vareppe, executed in 1802. It is sketched 
 first in lead pencil, slightly, on dark-grey paper, almost 
 brown, then drawn boldly in black chalk, and finally 
 touched with brush-white. 
 
 5. Pen sketches on grey paper, with white lights in 
 chalk. — Some of the sketches in France in the middle 
 time of the artist's career were done in this manner. 
 The ink is black, and the handling very swift and light. 
 Neither this combination nor the preceding one is, how- 
 ever, technically harmonious. Chalk and pen-work do 
 not go well together, neither do black chalk and brush- 
 whjte. A better combination is the following : 
 
 6. Pe7z sketches on grey paper, with white lights in 
 
1 84 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 body-colour. — Many of Turner's best and most rapid 
 sketches are done in this manner, which is valuable for 
 its permanence and precision. Nothing can be clearer 
 than a pen line in good black ink, and the point of the 
 brush can lay the body-colour in the smallest touches 
 and sparkles. The paper which Turner preferred for 
 this sort of sketching was of a blue grey, and he liked 
 (without using it exclusively) the kind which has a blue 
 fibre in grey pulp. 
 
 7. Pencil sketches on grey paper, with white lights in 
 body-colour. — The pencil used is generally hard and 
 pointed-, and the same method is follov/ed as in the 
 pencil sketches on white paper. Some of these studies 
 on grey paper are very elaborate, noting down abundant 
 details of cities, etc., with numerous touches in white to 
 explain them more clearly ; but they do not attempt 
 any complete expression of light and shade. There is 
 a very fine general view of Rome in the national collec- 
 tion of this class. 
 
 8. White paper with aflat wash of grey. On this a 
 drawing in black chalk coloured aftertvards in water- 
 colour, with lights obtained either by scraping or by body- 
 colour. — At first sight the student is likely to imagine 
 that these studies are done on paper that was grey when 
 manufactured ; but the work of the penknife shows that 
 the paper was really white and tinted by Turner him- 
 self This combination of methods is excellent for its 
 economy of time. The forms are got rapidly in 
 chalk, and an artist so skilful in water-colour as Turner 
 was would add the washes in ati hour. The sketches 
 of this class are large, and very bold in treatment ; and 
 
His System of Study. 185; 
 
 there is nothing in the national collection which proves- 
 more decidedly the colossal strength of Turner's mind 
 and hand when he was excited by the sublimity of 
 Nature, and utterly heedless of the public. The flat 
 wash differs in tint in the different drawings. Some- 
 times it is dark, and so warm as to be almost brown ; at 
 others, it is a yellowish-grey, the tint being chosen so as 
 to do the most it can towards advancing the drawing. 
 The work of the penknife and the brush for lights is- 
 also far from being uniform. For example: there is a 
 noble sketch of the Old Devil's Bridge, St. Gothard, 
 which is especially remarkable for the work of the pen- 
 knife in the foaming torrent. The St. Gothard, with 
 the bit of yellow sky at the top of the drawing, and 
 rising clouds amongst the pines in the chasm, is also a 
 most noble specimen of the same kind of work, and a 
 great example of sublimity in colouring. I use the 
 word colotirifig, and not colour, intentionally here, because 
 these sketches are really coloured drawings. For 
 breadth of handling in the application of the washes on 
 the drawing I may mention the Mer de Glace, Chamouni , 
 and Mer de Glace, Aiguille Charmoz, especially the 
 latter. In these two sketches the high lights are in 
 body-colour. In the Source of the A rveiron the lights 
 are obtained in that way, and with the knife also. 
 
 9. Water-colour on tinted papers. — Turner was very 
 fond of tinted papers for water-colour sketching, and 
 used them of various kinds, a cool blue-grey predomin- 
 ating. The following brief descriptions of a few ex- 
 amples will show how he dealt with them : 
 
 Bonneville, Savoy. Firmly drawn in lead pencil first 
 
1 86 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 the drawing left very visible, especially in the fore- 
 ground. Washed in water-colour and heightened with 
 body-colour lights. 
 
 Rome, the Alban Mount. Dark grey paper, black 
 pencil ; abundant washes in water-colour with a full 
 brush. 
 
 Studies at Marly and Rouen. Dark grey -brown 
 paper ; pencil sketch washed with half-colour tints, 
 rapidly dashed on with a full brush ; lights in body- 
 colour. 
 
 Rome. Pearly-grey paper ; drawing with the point of 
 a hard pencil ; water-colour employed delicately and 
 partially, especially in the distances. Retouches in 
 opaque colour. 
 
 Rome, St. Peter's. Pearly-grey paper, the first draw- 
 ing in hard pencil ; the second with the brush point, 
 introducing much golden colour under the arches. 
 
 Honfleur. Blue-grey paper ; all organic lines and 
 markings in indelible brown ink, afterwards washed over 
 in water-colour.* 
 
 Effects of Sky and Sea. Some studies of sky and 
 sea are done in bold touches and washes with a full 
 brush, there being no preparatory markings with the 
 pencil. 
 
 A series of late Sketches of Venice. There is an 
 astonishing Venetian Series in the national collection 
 much more Turnerian than natural, but extremely in- 
 teresting on account of the plain evidence they give 
 about the principles of his later manner in water-colour, 
 
 * Turner often used penwork under water-colour, as he did etcliing under 
 mezzotint. 
 
His System of Study. 187 
 
 more visible in sketches than in more highly-finished 
 drawings. The paper is a mauve-grey,, the pencil work 
 pale, so as to become invisible under the wash ; and the 
 wash itself is very broad, and in very pure colours. On 
 this comes a second drawing with the point of the 
 brush, the vermilion lines characteristic of Turner's late 
 manner being added in this way. Besides these, there 
 are skilful touches in thick colour, or with a brush that 
 is nearly dry. In all these Venice subjects the colouring 
 is as brilliant as the hues of sunset, and the city is like 
 a vision in the western sky, a city of crimson, gold, 
 violet, and vermilion, floating over a sea of emerald. 
 The real power of these sketches is in the skies, which 
 are generally possible. The rest is not possible. 
 
 10. Sketches in water-colour on white paper. — This 
 may be separated into two subdivisions. In one of 
 them the work in pencil is intentionally hard, decided, 
 and visible to the end ; in the other it is faint and pur- 
 posely overpowered by the water-colour. For instance, 
 in a study of Vesuvius from Naples, firmly drawn 
 throughout in hard pencil, the water-colour work is 
 carried very far in the mountain, and in some buildings 
 of the foreground, biit the rest is left frankly in pencil. 
 On the other hand, there are two superb studies of 
 Tivoli, in which the pencil has been used as little as 
 possible, so that it becomes invisible under the broad 
 energetic washes. These Tivoli subjects are remarkably 
 fine examples of Turner's skill in pure transparent 
 water-colour, the lights of which are all reserved in the 
 white paper. He disliked the employment of body- 
 colour in principle, though he used it freely when the 
 
The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 paper itself would not supply the light. There is a 
 grand energetic, study of the Campagna, with snowy 
 mountains in the distance. The foreground is yellow, 
 with violent marks of the brush-handle, and also of the 
 artist's thumb, all proving that he was in a state of 
 high excitement. Another of the Campagna, with a 
 foreground of red and dark green, is carried farther 
 in colour than most studies of this class. A third of 
 these Campagna subjects may be mentioned for its 
 extreme delicacy of tone ; it shows the meanders of the 
 Tiber and a fortified bridge. The same bridge supplied 
 subjects for several rapid pencil sketches on white 
 paper. If the reader cares to see admirable examples 
 of extreme economy of labour and paint in water- 
 colour, he should study Turner's fishes on white paper, 
 his perch, tench, and trout, drawn with the pencil and 
 coloured with a wondrously small allowance of colour, 
 but most brilliantly. Turner made fine studies of birds 
 on the same principle, the markings of the plumage as 
 elaborate as in Bewick, but always very light and open. 
 The above classification of Turner's studies from 
 Nature will be found to include most of them, as he 
 became addicted to certain habits of work, and remained 
 faithful to them, at certain periods, long enough for the 
 production of studies in sets and series. My classifica- 
 tion does not, however, pretend to be exhaustive : I 
 know that there are studies by Turner which it does not 
 comprehend : but it is comprehensive enough to meet 
 the reader's needs without wearying his patience. A. 
 few words remain to be said about the relation of these 
 studies to Nature itself. 
 
His System of Study. 189 
 
 Turner differed from most landscape-painters in his 
 condition of mind in the presence of Nature. The ordi- 
 nary landscape-painter is truthful in his studies — truthful 
 at least, so far as the illusions of an artist will allow him ; 
 but he often permits himself some poetical reverie in 
 the studio. Turner may have tried also to be truthful 
 as a raw beginner ; but the work of his maturity in the 
 presence of Nature is true to nothing but his own emo- 
 tions. There is a passage of Mr. Ruskin on this subject 
 which I will quote with the ungracious intention of ex- 
 pressing dissent from it : ' Turner's decision came chiefly 
 of his truthfulness ; it was because he meant always to 
 be true, that he was able always to be bold. And you 
 will find that you may gain his courage if you will 
 maintain his fidelity.' About the decision of Turner 
 there cannot be two opinions, it is as evident as the 
 decision of Napoleon, and as wonderful ; but it did not 
 come of truthfulness, it was not due to any fidelity to 
 what he saw : it was due, on the contrary, to his audacious 
 preference of his own fancies to the facts of the external 
 world. There can be no doubt that Turner passionately 
 enjoyed the beauty of the world, and deeply felt the in- 
 fluence of its sublimity, but he cared no more about the 
 truth than Victor Hugo cares. We have already seen 
 what ' Turnerian Topography ' really was in our analysis 
 of Kilchurn, and it is unnecessary to say more about it 
 here except that nobody can place the slightest trust in 
 the topographic fidelity of any sketch of Turner's. Now 
 in studies of landscape, true topography and accurate 
 drawing are inseparable. If the drawing is accurate, 
 true topography will come of itself, and the absence of 
 
190 TJie Life of J. M. W. Tui'ner. 
 
 topography in Turner's work is associated with a reck- 
 less inaccuracy in design. 
 
 Passing now from drawing to colour, let me explain" 
 what Turner's colouring was and was not. It was not 
 an imitation of Nature except in certain studies, chiefly 
 of still life, done very conscientiously for discipline. It 
 was really a long series of experiments on the play of 
 colours themselves. Here is an anecdote in illustration 
 of his conception of colouring. He was staying once in 
 a friend's house at Knockholt, where there were three 
 children. The late Mr. Cristall, a friend of Mr. Samuel 
 Palmer, was also a guest at Knockholt at the same time, 
 and he witnessed the following incident, which he after- 
 wards narrated to Mr. Palmer. Turner had brought a 
 drawing with him of which the distance was already 
 carefully outlined, but there was no material for the 
 nearer parts. One morning, when about to proceed 
 with this drawing, he called in the children as collahora- 
 teiirs for the rest, in the following manner. He rubbed 
 three cakes of water-colour, red, blue, and yellow, in 
 three separate saucers, gave one to each child, and told 
 the children to dabble in the saucers and then play 
 together with their coloured fingers on his paper. These 
 directions were gleefully obeyed, as the reader may well 
 imagine. Turner watched the work of the thirty little 
 fingers with serious attention, and after the dabbling 
 had gone on for some time, suddenly called out, ' Stop 1' 
 He then took the drawing into his own hands, added 
 imaginary landscape forms, suggested by the accidental 
 colouring, and the work was finished. On another occa- 
 sion, after dinner, he amused himself in arranging some 
 
His System of Study. 191 
 
 many-coloured sugar-plums on a dessert plate, and when 
 disturbed in the operation by a question, said to the 
 questioner, ' There ! you have made me lose fifty guineas !' 
 What relation had sugar-plums to landscape-painting ? 
 Simply this, that a landscape might have been after- 
 wards invented in the same colour-arrangement. The 
 sugar-plums would have been disguised in landscape 
 forms in Turner's arbitrary way. Without wishing to 
 prove too much by a couple of anecdotes,* I do think 
 that every candid reader will agree with me that we have 
 here a mind seeking colour combinations _/<?;' themselves, 
 without reference to the truth of Nature. 
 
 Many of Turner's studies have convinced me that 
 this condition of mind, as a colourist, was habitual with 
 him. The drawings for the ' Rivers of France ' are 
 glaringly false in colour, considered with reference to 
 Nature, and the later drawings of Venice are outrageous ; 
 but if we look upon them as simple experiments in the 
 juxtaposition of hues we shall understand them better. 
 I am familiar enough with French rivers, under all 
 natural effects, but I never yet saw one of their bridges 
 dashed with the Turnerian vermilion. The plain truth 
 is, that when Turner thought that a streak of vermilion 
 or a blot of cobalt would help the brilliance of his draw- 
 ing he set it there, as a jeweller sets a red stone or a 
 blue one. 
 
 Another result of examining Turner's studies is. that 
 we see both the extent of his knowledge and the limits 
 of it; we see especially his independent power of dis- 
 
 * These anecdotes may be relied upon. They were kindly communicatect 
 to me by. Mr. .Samuel Palmer. 
 
192 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 covery. The fourth volume of De Saussure's great 
 original book, ' Voyages dans les Alpes,' was published 
 in 1796, with many engravings. De Saussure was rich 
 as well as learned, and employed, no doubt, the best 
 engraving talent to be had at that time in Switzerland. 
 The plates are large — so large that many of them are 
 twice folded in a quarto volume ; and they are engraved 
 with much labour and care. They really do express 
 the most perfect mountain-knowledge which had been at- 
 tained up to the end of the eighteenth century. They 
 really give evidence of much deeper mountain lore than 
 any which had been attained by the old masters ; but 
 compare them with the incipient Alpine work of Turner, 
 •done in the first years of the succeeding century, and 
 what are they? Nothing but old maps, in which de- 
 fective outlines surround spaces filled with emptiness. 
 Turner's drawings of the Alps, even the early ones, are 
 as much beyond those engravings which the learned and 
 admirable De Saussure approved and published, as 
 Greek figure-sculpture was beyond Gothic. The evi- 
 dence of Turner's knowledge is not less abundant and 
 convincing than the evidence of his wilful inaccuracy. 
 But although his studies prove that he knew much, they 
 do not prove that he knew everything. He was not 
 learned in sylvan lore. It is surprising that so great a 
 landscape-painter should have studied forest scenery so 
 little. He drew some trees elegantly, but clearly pre- 
 ferred buildings as subjects of study ; and there is no 
 evidence that he had the sylvan sense, the delight in 
 forest scenery, which has animated the genuine sylvan 
 painters, such as Theodore Rousseau, for example. This 
 
His System of Study. 193 
 
 may have been due to his passion for great spaces ; he 
 may have felt confined and imprisoned in the woods. 
 But besides this, he took comparatively little interest in 
 rustic subjects. There are painters now living — Hano- 
 teau is one of them — whose knowledge of rustic material 
 is much closer, more intimate, more affectionate than 
 Turner's. With an immense and unwearied industry, 
 Turner accumulated thousands and thousands of memo- 
 randa to increase his knowledge of what interested him, 
 especially in the mountains, rivers, and cities of the Con- 
 tinent, and the coasts of his native island. Amidst all 
 this wealth of gathered treasure his imagination reigned 
 and revelled with a poet's freedom. With a knowledge 
 of landscape vaster than any mortal ever possessed 
 before him, his whole existence was a succession of 
 dreams. Even the hardest realities of the external world 
 itself, granite and glacier, could not awaken him ; but 
 he would sit down before them and sketch another 
 dream, there, in the very presence of the reality itself 
 Notwithstanding all the knowledge and all the ob- 
 servation which they prove, the interest of Turner's 
 twenty thousand sketches is neither topographic nor 
 scientific, but entirely psychological. It is the soul of 
 Turner that fascinates the student, and not the material 
 earth. 
 
 There are a few little details and anecdotes about 
 Turner's practice as an artist which I have thought it 
 better not to scatter through the volume, as they illustrate 
 each other when taken together. The instrument he 
 most commonly used in sketching was the lead-pencil_ 
 A friend of his, travelling in the Jura, came to an inn 
 
 13 
 
194 Tlie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 where Turner had entered his name in the visitors' book,, 
 and, to make sure of the painter's identity, asked the- 
 innkeeper what sort of a man he was. ' A rough, 
 clumsy man,' was the answer ; ' and you may know him 
 by this — he has always a pencil in his hand' When 
 sketching from nature in the Val d'Aosta with Mr. Munro, 
 Turner was vexed with himself for having used colour 
 instead of the pencil, with which (as he observed) he 
 would have got much more in the time. Mr. Cyrus- 
 Redding, who saw Turner at work, speaks of the rough- 
 ness of his sketches, which were in pencil, and remarks 
 that many of his finest pictures were painted from rough 
 pencil memoranda. There is, indeed, quite a special 
 science or art of taking memoranda, which Turner 
 thoroughly understood. A painter who is conversant 
 with the materials of nature, can paint from very slight 
 memoranda, if only they are of the right kind. Mr. 
 Redding gives us another interesting scrap of infor- 
 mation about Turner's way of making a sketch. ' He- 
 sketched the bridge, but appeared, from changing his 
 position several times, as if he had tried more than one 
 sketch, or could not please himself as to the best point.' 
 It is probable that the real explanation of this would be 
 that Turner collected into one and the same sketch a 
 good deal of material which lay scattered arqund him im 
 various directions, for he never troubled himself about 
 drawing a scene as it appears from a single point of 
 view. Mr. Redding speaks also of the confused nature 
 of Turner's memoranda, taken on paper not bigger than) 
 a sheet of letter-paper. The only instance of his painting 
 directly from nature in oil-colour occurs in some sketches- 
 
His System of Study. 195 
 
 on canvas done at Richmond in his boat. There are 
 about forty of these studies. 
 
 An interesting detail about his taste in scenery is that 
 he declared he had ' never seen so many natural beauties 
 in so limited an extent of country as he saw in the 
 vicinity of Plymouth.' He was especially pleased with 
 Mount Edgecumbe. Though rarely communicative 
 about his impressions in the presence of nature, Turner 
 once talked with a Mr. Rose, of Jersey, about scenes 
 which he had visited ; but Mr. Rose, unluckily, did not 
 make a memorandum of his observations. Turner men- 
 tioned the Fall of Foyers in Scotland, the Pyrenees, 
 and the French river Ranee, which he recommended 
 as rich in picturesque scenes. 
 
 13—2 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Rivalry with Wilson. — The Bay of Baia;. — The Rivers of England. — Pro- 
 vincial Antiquities. — England and Wales. — The Ports of England. — The 
 'Cologne.' — Works from sketches by others. — Separate plates. — 
 Transactions v^ith Cooke. — Pictures exhibited in 1827. 
 
 In the year 1822 Turner had a scheme which may be 
 mentioned as an illustration of his character, both be- 
 cause it exhibits his love of important enterprises and 
 because it shows that tendency to put himself in direct 
 rivalry with deceased artists of reputation which, through 
 life, was one of the peculiarities of his ambition. He 
 had a conversation in the month of June with Messrs. 
 Hurst and Robinson, successors of the well-known 
 Alderman Boydell, in the course of which they en- 
 couraged him to have an important plate engraved from 
 one of his pictures, by promising that if he undertook 
 this at his own risk, and sold copies of the engraving to 
 no one but themselves for the space of two years, they 
 would take five hundred impressions. In a letter, dated 
 June 28th, 1822, Turner enters into this plan, and pro- 
 poses to combine it with a scheme of his own, which was 
 to issue four important plates from his pictures, to place 
 himself as a painter in rivalry with Wilson, and at the 
 same time to place the engraver whom he would employ 
 
Rivalry with Wilson. ig7 
 
 in rivalry with Woollett. The letter is clearer and more 
 business-like than many of his compositions ; but there 
 is one of his curious phrases which, at first sight, does 
 not seem very intelligible. He says : ' The pictures of 
 ultimate sale I shall be content with." What are 'pictures 
 of ultimate sale,' and why is Turner content with them ? 
 The answer, I imagine, must be that he was to take his 
 chance of selling the pictures ultimately if he painted 
 them for the present purpose of being engraved. Turner 
 mentions ' four subjects to bear up with ' — namely, 
 ' Niobe, Ceyx, Cyledon, and Phaeton.' These are all 
 well-known works by Wilson. By ' Ceyx ' Turner means 
 the Ceyx and Alcyone, and by ' Cyledon ' he means the 
 Celadon and Amelia. It is interesting to note that he 
 speaks of both Wilson and Woollett as ' powerful anta- 
 gonists,' and says : ' If we fall, we fall by contending with 
 giant strength.' This is clear evidence that, when quite 
 in his maturity Turner looked up to Wilson instead of 
 considering him an inferior, and that his own project of 
 contending against him was accompanied by certain 
 misgivings. He proposed, as a first picture, either his 
 Hannibal or the Morning of the, Chase ; and his calcula- 
 tion was that, with the pictures still to be painted, the 
 whole project might be realised in five or six years. 
 He expressly excepted the Carthage from a possible 
 list. The plan was never realised ; and it is said 
 that Messrs. Hurst and Robinson offended Turner by 
 trying to bargain with him for the two Carthage pic- 
 tures at a time when his own price was a thousand 
 guineas each. 
 
 In that year, 1822, the prices received by Turner for 
 
198 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 his water-colours were not very considerable.(? He got 
 eight guineas each for the Coltie, Rochester, and Norhani, 
 and ;^85 for three drawings on the Rhine. But the im- 
 portance of a work to the artist himself is not to be 
 measured by the price paid for it. That drawing of 
 Norham Castle is said to have been always regarded by 
 the artist as the turning-point of his success. 
 : Nothing of importance was exhibited in 1822, but in 
 the following year a great picture appeared at the 
 Academy, The Bay of Baice. The full title in the 
 Academy Catalogue was the Bay of Baice, with Apollo 
 and the Sybil. 
 
 ' Waft me to sunny Bail's shore. ' 
 
 Although connected with the name of a locality, 
 this picture really belongs almost as completely to the 
 realms of imagination as those pure inventions with 
 fanciful titles which amused or perplexed the critics. It 
 is a poetical scene, with a fine expanse of land and 
 water, the land scenery being more than usually elaborate 
 and full of rich invention. The gay delight in the beauty 
 of ' sunny Baise,' which is expressed in the motto, is 
 visible also in the painting, which has been executed 
 with evident enjoyment. This is really a picture after 
 Turner's ow;n heart, with plenty of light, plenty of space 
 for the eye to wander over, endless detail to amuse and 
 occupy his inventive faculty, ahd just a bit of mythology 
 to take the subject out of the common world. Besides, 
 although the Bay of Baiae is a real locality, it has been 
 celebrated long ago in the Horatian verse, and is there- 
 fore sacred to the classic muse. The Cumaean Sibyl, 
 
Tlie Bay of Baice. 199 
 
 who is seated with Apollo under the shade of the tall 
 pine-trees, is famous in old poetry and in the art of the 
 Italian Renaissance. Notwithstanding his lack of scholar- 
 ship, one of Turner's strongest characteristics was a taste 
 for associating his work with places and personages of 
 historical or legendary interest, and there were certain 
 stories of antiquity which took root in his mind very 
 strongly. That about the Cumaean Sibyl, beloved by 
 Apollo, was one of them. It suited Turner by its sad 
 poetical ending; for if the Sibyl had yielded there would 
 only have been an addition to the liaisons of the gods, 
 and she would have lived on joyously in perpetual youth, 
 but being obdurate she slowly decayed and finally be- 
 came only a voice. There is no telling what analogies 
 may have been suggested to Turner's mind by the story 
 of the Sibyl, but it is quite possible that he may have 
 followed out some analogies for himself, in his own 
 obscure way. 
 
 The picture was painted lightly and easily, with a 
 •degree of refinement far surpassing the early work of the 
 master ; but it was not soundly painted as to the 
 materials, for the delicate colouring has not stood well 
 -everywhere. In some parts it is cracked, in others the 
 relations of the most aerial tints have evidently somehow 
 ^one wrong ; though what they were, as the painter laid 
 them, it is not now possible to determine. 
 
 In 1824 Turner exhibited no oil picture either at the 
 Royal Academy or the British Institution. He seems 
 to have been much occupied at this time of his life by 
 ■drawing for the engravers. His ' Rivers of England ' 
 -was brought out in that year by W. B. Cooke. These 
 
20O The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 engravings were in mezzotint by Reynolds, Lupton, 
 Bromley, Jay, Phillips, and Charles Turner. The title 
 given to this publication was far too comprehensive for 
 what it really included, as some of the most important 
 amongst English rivers are omitted. There is no illus- 
 tration of the Thames, the Mersey, or the Severn ; 
 whilst there are subjects on such little known streams as 
 the Eamont, the Coquet, the Colne, and the Okement. 
 The truth is, that the ' Rivers of England ' can only be 
 considered as a small portfolio of subjects which happen 
 to be mere streams, and several of them are so treated 
 as to be rather illustrations of buildings than of rivers. 
 The noble Brougham Castle would come grandly in a 
 collection to illustrate mediaeval castles, and the Kirk- 
 stall Abbey might belong to a portfolio of ecclesiastical 
 architecture. The sixteen subjects are treated with 
 careful attention to light and shade, of which some of 
 them are remarkably fine examples. 
 
 In 1825 Turner was still actively occupied with his 
 publications, or with illustrations to publications under- 
 taken by others. We have already mentioned his 
 journey to Scotland in 1818, when he got materials for 
 the ' Provincial Antiquities.' This publication did not 
 appear until 1826, when it was published in two volumes, 
 with descriptive letterpress by Sir Walter Scott. Mr, 
 Thomson, of Duddingstone, drew some of the illustra- 
 tions. A much more important work employed Turner 
 at this time, and at intervals for twelve years afterwards 
 — namely, the ' England and Wales,' including towns, 
 remarkable buildings, and beautiful scenery. Altogether, 
 the work includes ninety-nine subjects which were pub- 
 
Etigland and Wales. 201 
 
 lished, and two of which the plates were never finished. 
 More than thirty towns are illustrated in the series, and 
 more than twenty castles, as well as many abbeys and 
 priories, and two cathedrals — Ely and Durham. There 
 are several marine subjects, and four lakes are included 
 — namely, Keswick, Llanberis, Ulleswater, and Winder- 
 mere. Important, however, as the work unquestionably 
 is, it cannot be considered, in any complete sense, repre- 
 sentative of England and Wales. It was evidently not 
 conceived as a whole, but merely got together from 
 materials which Turner happened to possess in his port- 
 folios. An artist might illustrate England and Wales 
 in a hundred plates, but he could do it only by carefully 
 selecting subjects representative of whole classes — a 
 hamlet, a village, a town, a city, a cathedral, a country 
 church, an old hall, a castle, and so on, amongst the 
 works of men ; and a lake, a stream, a river, a mountain, 
 etc., amongst the works of nature. That would be the 
 illustration of the country by typical subjects ; but you 
 find nothing of the kind in this important work of 
 Turner's. The subjects seem to be chosen by pure 
 accident. There is a plethora of castles and abbeys, and 
 only one mountain, drawn for its own sake — namely, 
 Penmaen Mawr ; whilst we have not a single example of 
 English forest scenery, nor even of an English trout 
 stream. A foreigner, glancing over the engravings,, 
 might admire the talents of the artists, but would get a 
 most imperfect idea of England and Wales. This is 
 only one amongst several examples of Turner's too com- 
 prehensive titles. They were generally too comprehensive 
 or ambitious, as we have seen already in ' The Rivers of 
 
202 TJie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 England,' which is as if one were to call half-a-dozen 
 cockboats the British fleet. At a later period Turner 
 called a more important work ' The Rivers of France ;' 
 but you may look through it from beginning to end 
 without finding a single subject either on the Rhone or 
 the Garonne. 
 
 The ' England and Wales ' series occupies an inter- 
 mediate position between Turner's early, topographic 
 work, and that in which he drew in complete indepen- 
 dence of the natural scene. Too many of the subjects 
 were taken from definite buildings and places to permit 
 the artist a quite absolute liberty. He could not make 
 the cathedrals of Ely and Durham mere piles of imaginary 
 architecture, like that which he composed for his pictures 
 -of ancient Carthage ; and it was necessary that Blenheim 
 House should be clearly recognisable by persons who 
 take an interest in historic habitations. It is impossible 
 to look over the index to the ' England and Wales ' with- 
 out seeing at a glance that, from the business point of 
 view, it is a continuation of the topographic labours of 
 the artist's youth, that the appeal to public interest is far 
 more dependent upon locality than upon landscape 
 character. At the same time Turner put as much art 
 into his subjects as he possibly could, and elevated some 
 prosy English towns into the region of Turnerian poetry. 
 He was by no means over-paid for his labours, as he 
 received only twenty-five guineas for each of his drawings 
 .and thirty proofs of the engraving. The drawings have 
 since risen in the market to eight or ten times their 
 original value. In 1824 Mr. Tomkinson had given 
 Turner fifty guineas for two drawings in continuation of 
 
The Ports of England. 20J5 
 
 his ' Southern Coast,' so that this price seems to have 
 been his rule about that period of his life. 
 
 In 1826 Turner issued the prospectus of his series, 
 ' The Ports of England,' a prospectus so unskilfully 
 worded that it must have been Turner's own work. It 
 begins as follows : ' Under the patronage and dedicated, 
 with permission, to His Most Gracious Majesty George 
 the Fourth. PORTS OF England, from original draw- 
 ings by J. M. W. Turner, Esq., R.A. To be engraved in 
 highly-finished mezzotints by Thomas Lupton. Size of 
 the plates, 9 inches by 6J, and to be printed on small 
 folio. Price of the work : Prints, 8j. 6d.; proofs, I2J. 6d. ; 
 proofs on India paper, 14.?.' 
 
 Anybody would conclude from this announcement 
 that the whole work was to be had for Ss: 6d. ; but as 
 the artist further explains that it was to be issued in 
 parts, and that twelve parts were to form a volume, and 
 says that at the completion of each volume handsome 
 letterpress was to be published, which leads us to infer 
 that there were to be several volumes, the bewildered 
 reader soon begins to doubt the possibility of getting so 
 limitless a work for such a limited sum of money. Not 
 a word is said about the expected extent of the under- 
 taking ; it might have gone on, for anything the reader 
 was told to the contrary, until all the ports of England 
 had been illustrated in their minutest details. The space 
 which ought to have been occupied by a clear explana- 
 tion of the project, was taken up with appeals to the 
 patriotic sentiments which might induce Englishmen to 
 become subscribers. The style and language resemble 
 those of a civic speech-maker when he proposes a naval 
 
204 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 toast. Notwithstanding this magniloquent call upon 
 national feeling in others, the artist's own enthusiasm for 
 his subject was not sufficient to sustain him through 
 prolonged labours. The work never got beyond twelve 
 plates, bearing about the same relation to the ports of 
 England that a former imperfect series had borne to her 
 rivers. The plates were re-published in 1856 by Mr. 
 Gambart, with letterpress by Mr. Ruskin, who observes 
 that Liverpool, Shields, Yarmouth, and Bristol are absent 
 from the series, whilst it includes some of the least im- 
 portant of English watering-places. There is a slight 
 difference in title between Turner's prospectus and Mr. 
 Ruskin's publication. Turner had called his work the 
 ' Ports,' Mr; Ruskin, or Mr. Gambart, decided to call it 
 the ' Harbours ' of England. The size of the plates is 
 not precisely what Turner at first intended them to be ; 
 they are generally from half an inch to an inch longer. 
 He got over the artistic difficulty of dealing with piers 
 and rows of houses, by giving great importance to turbu- 
 lent seas crowded with ships and boats in motion. The 
 ships were especially useful, because their sails could be 
 made to hide an uninteresting town, or break a mono- 
 tonous front of cliff. But this is only one of many 
 artifices to which Turner had recourse in this series in 
 order to overcome the natural untowardness of his sub- 
 jects. I do not know any connected set of his works in 
 which he made so much use of the weather. This may 
 have been partly in sympathy with sailors, who, whether 
 in port or at sea, are always thinking about the wind ; 
 but it was probably much more because he found it con- 
 venient to veil what was uninteresting, and exhibit to 
 
The Ports of England. 205 
 
 better advantage the more available portions of his sub- 
 jects by means of the resources which bad weather 
 placed at his disposal. Besides this, he had great spaces 
 that wanted furnishing, and he furnished them in the 
 upper parts of his drawings by means of rain-clouds, and 
 in the lower by means of waves and shipping. These 
 plates constitute an excellent set of examples in the art 
 of furnishing ; even the old Dutchmen, who were very 
 clever in that department, never went so far. Take, for 
 instance, the view of Deal. The plate contains about 
 fifty-six square inches of engraved surface ; in this the 
 view of Deal measures five and a half inches long by half 
 an inch high, consequently it occupies two square inches 
 and three quarters of engraved surface. The foreground 
 is composed of two big waves with the trough of the sea 
 between them, and there is a group of fishing-boats to the 
 left, which, were it not for the comfort of knowing that 
 Deal was within sight, might just as well be in the midst 
 of the German Ocean. And please observe that this is 
 not called a sea subject, but a port. Here is the most 
 serious objection to the treatment adopted, that it is not 
 in poetic harmony with the title. Instead of feeling the 
 comfort of sheltered havens, where ships may quietly 
 ride at anchor whilst the sea is raging outside, we are 
 kept tossing uncomfortably on tumultuous waves amidst 
 a jumble of pitching boats and flapping sails. So it is in 
 nine subjects out of twelve. In the remaining three (the 
 Plymouth, Falmouth, and Scarborough) we really feel in 
 port. The Scarborough, judiciously placed by Mr 
 Ruskin at the close of the series, is like peaceful music • 
 It is even more restful than any music, for it does not 
 
2o6 Tlie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 move and pass, but quietly is what it is, and stays with 
 us. Painting may even excel nature in the expression of 
 repose, for in nature there is no perfect rest, and not for 
 long will the evening light linger on the castled cliff, or 
 the ' old grey church on the shore.' 
 
 Turner could paint repose admirably when he liked, 
 and his great picture in the Exhibition of 1826 was a 
 magnificent example of it. I well remember the pro- 
 found impression which I received from that noble work 
 on seeing it for the first time in 1857, at the Manchester 
 Art Treasures Exhibition. The title was simply, 
 ^fologne — the Arrival of a Packet-boat — Evening, but 
 there were such unity and serenity in the work, and such 
 a glow of light and colour, that it seemed like a window 
 opened upon the land of the ideal, where the harmonies 
 of things are more perfect than they have ever been in 
 the common world. I remember reading, with a young 
 man's indignation, a stupid criticism of this picture by 
 Monsieur W. Burger, in which he declared that every- 
 thing in the picture was uniformly coloured like the yolk 
 of an egg. He would have admired it more, very likely, 
 if he could have seen it on the walls of the Royal 
 Academy, when Turner had temporarily hidden its 
 glowing light and colour under a wash of lamp-black, in 
 order that it might not spoil the effect of two portraits 
 by Lawrence, between which it happened to be placed. 
 ' Poor Lawrence,' he said, ' was so unhappy ! It's only 
 lamp-black. It will all wash off after the Exhibition !' 
 Was there ever a more exquisitely beautiful instance of 
 self-sacrifice ? It is not as if Turner had been indifferent 
 to fame, for he was anxiously careful about everything 
 
The ' Cologne! 207 
 
 that could affect his reputation, and here we see him 
 voluntarily exposing himself to harsh criticism for having 
 painted a foul, ill-coloured sky, when that very sky was 
 one of the most splendid pieces of harmonious colouring 
 in the whole range of landscape art. Unluckily for our 
 estimate of Turner's unselfishness, there are counter- 
 anecdotes about his eagerness to crush his neighbours by 
 heightening the intensity of his colours. 
 
 I need hardly observe that M. Burger's assertion about 
 the uniform colouring, like yolk of egg, is due, first, to 
 his national antagonism to English art, and, secondly, to 
 his personal incapacity to see variety in colour. The 
 Cologne, though harmonious, is not uniform in its hues. 
 There is not only a golden glow in it, there are exquisite 
 passages of rose and violet in the tender transitions of 
 its evening lights and shadows. The picture was well 
 described by an excellent writer in the Manchester 
 Guardian : 
 
 ' It represents,' he said, ' the Rhine under the walls of 
 Cologne, with the "Treckschuyt" arriving, and taking up 
 its berth for landing the passengers. The river is placid, 
 and scarce rippled by the slowly-moving " Treckschuyt," 
 as she makes her way past the picturesque craft beside 
 her. On the right are the walls, with a tower and spire 
 breaking their line, and running up to a postern, backed 
 by a taller tower. In the foreground some balks of 
 timber, and the spider-like arms of a couple of those 
 fishing-nets, which tourists by the Rhine and Moselle 
 know so well, reflected in the wet sand, and casting their 
 evening shadows as well as their reflexions. In the dis- 
 tance you catch a glimpse of the distant bridge of boats. 
 The sky is being rapt through that rosy change which 
 
208 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 precedes the dying of twilight into dark. The sun is not 
 seen in the picture, but a cloud lies between it and the 
 spectator ; and from behind this the broad-slanting rays 
 strike on town and tower, and shoot down to the stream, 
 flinging on its unruffled face and on the rounded sides of 
 the "Treckschuyt" the shadows of intercepting edifices ; 
 while from the lighted water a glow strikes back into the 
 •cool violet shadows cast by wall and steeple, and fills 
 them with reflected light.' 
 
 This picture was sold at Mr. Wadmore's sale, in 1854, 
 for two thousand guineas to Mr. John Naylor ; and Mr. 
 Ruskin afterwards sent a pang of regret through the 
 •whole art-world of England by announcing that it had 
 been utterly destroyed in a railway accident ; a calamity 
 which in reality happened to some other pictures, not by 
 Turner, but belonging to the same owner. 
 
 The incessant industry of the great painter still 
 applied itself abundantly to the work of book illustration. 
 In those days photography was not actively supplying 
 artists with material, which, however imperfect it may be, 
 is, at least, impartial, and not distorted by passing 
 through another mind. In those days a landscape- 
 painter must either travel to the places he had to illus- 
 trate, or else do what he could with material supplied by 
 others, such material being usually sketches rather than 
 studies. It is ^ways unsatisfactory to work from a 
 sketch made by another person ; for a sketch is a 
 selection, and we cannot select by deputy. If the tra- 
 veller who made it was an artist, he altered nature to suit 
 the needs of his own individual talent ; and if he was an 
 amateur, he may have missed important points from 
 
Works from Sketclies by OtJters. 209 
 
 imperfectly trained observation. In either case, the 
 material is scarcely to be relied upon. The sketches 
 of travellers — of African travellers, for instance — are 
 constantly made up into showy book illustrations by 
 clever men who know how to make the best of any 
 material ; but in these cases the work so done is usually 
 anonymous, and the clever men who do it have not 
 to maintain a great and peculiar artistic reputation. 
 Turner was in a different position. He could not simply 
 mend, complete, amplify, a sketch in its own way, he 
 was compelled by his own fame to transform it into 
 something entirely different, into something that the 
 public might at once recognise as a Turner. He did 
 this by giving skies and water of his own invention, by 
 composing all movable things according to his own taste, 
 and bydrawing the rest over again with Turnerian altera- 
 tions and exaggerations in the recognised Turnerian man- 
 nerism. That we may not have to recur again to this 
 subject, I will mention, in this place, the principal works 
 in which Turner made use of sketches taken by others. 
 They began with Hakewill's ' Picturesque Tour of Italy, 
 published by Murray in 1820, from Mr. Hakewill's 
 camera-obscura sketches. In 1825 Murray's octavo 
 edition of Byron, in eleven volumes, included several 
 illustrations by Turner, some of which were from sketches 
 by Mr. Allison ; and in 1833 appeared Finden's ' Illus- 
 trations to Byron,' including works by Turner from 
 sketches by Reinagle, Allison, and Page. A complete 
 edition of Byron's works, with Moore's Biography, ap- 
 peared in seventeen volumes in 1834 ; and Turner con- 
 tributed to it the same number of illustrations, several of 
 
 14 
 
2IO TJte Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 which were of places that he had never seen — such as 
 Athens, Parnassus, Scio, St. Sophia, the Plain of Troy^ 
 and Corinth — the materials being supplied by Page, 
 Barry, and Little. But by far the greatest of Turner's 
 undertakings in working up other men's memoranda was 
 the series of his illustrations to the Bible. He never 
 visited Palestine, yet illustrated Jerusalem, Bethlehem,. 
 Nazareth, Mount Lebanon, the Dead Sea, and many 
 other places, his providers being Mr. Barry, Sir A. 
 Edmonstone, Sir Robert Kerr Porter, Messrs. R. Cock- 
 rell, C. J. Rich, J. G. Wilkinson, Gaily Knight, Major 
 Felix, and the Rev. R. Master. There is also a set of 
 views in India — seven in number — chiefly among the 
 Himalaya mountains, from drawings by Lieutenant 
 White. I need hardly observe that the mere variety of 
 the hands which supplied Turner with all these materials 
 is in itself a source of difficulty and embarrassment. 
 Artists of the present day are much happier with photo- 
 graphs, whose peculiarities and imperfections are always 
 the same, and may be thoroughly understood and regu-. 
 larly allowed for. 
 
 To all these various publications, which were spreading 
 the name of Turner more and more amongst the public,, 
 may be added the plates, published separately and at 
 irregular intervals, from the beginning of the century till, 
 the artist's death. Some of those were in mezzotint by 
 Lupton, Charles Turner, and others ; but the majority 
 were in that modern style of landscape engraving which 
 is familiar to every reader, and which, with all its faults,, 
 unquestionably marks the highest point of perfection 
 attained hitherto in the complete interpretation of land- 
 
Separate Plates. 2 1 1 
 
 scape art on metal. It is not pure burin-work, but a 
 mixed style, including a great deal of etching, much work 
 with the point, and not a little ruling ; but, taken as a whole, 
 in the hands of the marvellously skilful men who used it 
 — such men as Miller, Cooke, Goodall, Jeavons, Heath, 
 Higham, Allen, Willmore, and Wallis — it interprets 
 landscape painting more completely than any other 
 method. Mezzotint can render the tones of light and 
 shade with unsurpassable accuracy, but it is never so 
 lucid and luminous as engraving, and consequently its 
 effects of atmosphere can never be so pure. Independent 
 etching, as I have frequently had occasion to observe else- 
 where, may suggest delicate distinctions of tone, but does 
 not so surely render them as engraving does, and is there- 
 fore not so well adapted for the interpretation of skies. 
 The influence of Turner upon engraving might supply a 
 subject for a separate essay. He educated a whole 
 school of engravers, and a very remarkable school it was ; 
 he educated them first by showing them the most subtle 
 and delicate tonality in his pictures, and afterwards by a 
 strict supervision of their work as it proceeded. His best 
 qualities as a teacher came from his union of extreme 
 delicacy with force ; his worst fault, his most evil influence, 
 came from his reckless desire for brilliance, which made 
 him always ready to destroy the tranquillity of a plate if 
 he thought that it did not look effective enough. This 
 was the same spirit, acting in another direction, which 
 made him so determined to make his pictures brillianf, 
 at all costs, on the walls of the Academy ; but there, he 
 could achieve it with the help of chrome, and cobalt, and 
 vermilion. On a dull plate he had no resource but that 
 
 14 — 2 
 
212 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 of glittering lights, which he scattered in profusion ' like 
 stars on the sea.' 
 
 Turner's transactions with his engravers, and with the 
 publishers of his prints, were not always perfectly 
 agreeable. Amongst other evidences of this, we have a 
 long letter from Mr. W. B. Cooke, dated the first of 
 January, 1 827, and proving by its contents that the hope- 
 ful and cheerful associations of New-year's Day had not 
 power to overcome the engraver's sense of injury and 
 wrong. The facts appear to have been as follows : 
 Turner agreed to make the South Coast drawings for 
 £7 \os. each, and for the first four numbers of the work 
 that was what he received. Afterwards an agreement 
 was made, by which Turner was to receive £\'}, 2s. 6d. 
 for each drawing in a future ' Coast.' He seems to have 
 understood that this increase of price was to have a 
 retroactive effect, that he was to receive a balance on the 
 drawings already done and paid for — drawings which 
 belonged to the first division of the work called the 
 ' Southern Coast.' This Mr. W. B. Cooke did not under- 
 stand to be their agreement at all, and the result was a 
 tempest, the great painter loudly declaring that he would 
 have his terms, and would oppose the work by doing 
 another 'Coast.' Mr. Cooke admitted that he had agreed 
 to pay ten guineas for each drawing after the fourth 
 number, and affirmed that he had faithfully adhered to 
 this agreement ; which must have been true, as he had 
 Turner's receipts to prove it. At the time this quarrel 
 broke out the work had been finished upwards of six 
 months, and the painter had had his money. It is evi- 
 dent by a quotation from a previous letter that the cor- 
 
Transactions with Cooke. 213 
 
 respondents had not been on quite pleasant terms before. 
 ' Do you imagine,' wrote Turner, ' I shall go to John 
 o'Groat's House for the same sum I receive for the 
 Southern part ?' Mr. Cooke complains at the end of his 
 letter that he regrets the time he has bestowed in endea- 
 vouring to convince Turner calmly, since he had met with 
 such hostile treatment in return. 
 
 The clear result of the correspondence is, that there 
 had been three distinct prices. The first agreement was 
 to give Turner £"] los. each for the drawings of the 
 Southern Coast ; the second agreement was to pay him 
 ten guineas for each drawing after the fourth number ; 
 the third agreement was to pay him twelve and a half 
 guineas each for drawings to belong to a future coast 
 series of the same kind from the northern scenery of 
 Great Britain, since John o'Groat's House is in a very 
 northerly situation. Turner's conduct in the matter is 
 one of the most singular instances of confusion in a 
 matter of business that can be imagined. Stated plainly, 
 it amounts to this : that, on the strength of the third 
 agreement, he applied the terms of the second agreement 
 to the first. He quotes Mr. Cooke's promise to give 
 twelve guineas and a half for the future coast drawings as 
 a reason why there should be a balance still due to him 
 — a balance of two guineas — on the earliest drawings of 
 all. There is no reason to suspect Turner of dishonesty ; 
 it is a case of mental confusion in a grasping tempera- 
 ment. Avaricious and grasping people often make mis- 
 takes in pecuniary transactions, but it may be observed 
 that a sure instinct always preserves them from making 
 such mistakes against themselves. The transaction has 
 
214 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 an interest for posterity in the light it throws on Turner's 
 prices. He is fifty years old ; he has been a Royal 
 Academician for twenty years ; he has painted many 
 important pictures, including three or four unquestion- 
 able masterpieces ; and he is haggling and quarrelling 
 with an engraver about a miserable balance of forty 
 shillings a-piece on some of his best drawings 1 He looks 
 with the same eagerness after a guinea or two wherever 
 he thinks he can establish a claim to them. Cooke de- 
 clares that Turner gave him a drawing of Neptune's 
 Trident as a present ; but Turner demands the return of 
 it, and charges two guineas for the loan. This appears 
 almost inconceivably mean ; but we must remember two 
 things which may partially excuse Turner : first, that his 
 mind was subject to confused changes and irregularities 
 about all transactions from its own want of method and 
 clearness ; and, secondly, that to charge for the loan of a 
 drawing was an old habit with him, contracted in early 
 life, when it had been one of the chief sources of his in- 
 come as a drawing-master. He fancied he had lent the 
 drawing, and charged for it as a matter of course, just as 
 a boat-keeper at Richmond will make you pay when you 
 have had one of his boats. 
 
 Let us return to the exhibited pictures. There is an 
 attempt at wit, by the mixture of incongruous nautical 
 and artistic ideas, in the title of the finest picture on the 
 list for I S27 — Now for the Painter ! — Passengers going 
 on Board ; the word painter here meaning a rope, 
 though, seeing how . few people understand nautical 
 terms, the majority of the public would, of course, take 
 it to mean le peintre rather than la corde. This was 
 
Pictures Exhibited in 1827. 21 J 
 
 Turner's fun, and it is not at all impossible that he may 
 have intended a little bit of self-glorification at the same 
 time. ' Now for the painter ! Now, see what a real 
 painter, 3.pictor eximius, can do ! You have been look- 
 ing at the attempts of my weaker brethren ; now it is my 
 turn, so just look at meP Whatever may have been the 
 defects of our hero, bashfulness and false modesty were 
 not amongst them. Like a certain famous artist who 
 died recently, and who calmly entitled himself ' the 
 master painter of Ornans,' Turner believed in his own 
 powers, as we should probably believe also if we pos- 
 sessed them. The title was originally suggested by one 
 of Callcott's, Letting go the Painter. The picture after- 
 wards became the property of Mr. Naylor, and was 
 exhibited, along with his other Turners, in the Art 
 Treasures at Manchester in 1857. It was described at 
 the time by the able writer in the Manchester Guardian^ 
 from whom I have already quoted ; and I quote him 
 .again in the present instance because he wrote from a 
 fresh impression. He says : 
 
 ' The picture is by much the most powerful example 
 cif Turner's sea-painting here exhibited, and, indeed, 
 ■one of the very finest seas we have ever seen from his 
 hand. It shows what an immense advance he had by 
 this time made upon the work of those days when Van 
 de Velde furnished his ideal of marine painting. Here 
 is liquidity and lustre, as well as true drawing of waves. 
 His seas reflect, as well as rock, the craft that roll and 
 pitch upon them as naturally as ever. We may see, too, 
 how much larger and grander his ocean has grown — 
 how much more awful in its expression of power is even 
 
2i6 TJie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 this quiet and harmless channel sea, than the storm- 
 lashed surf which is grinding the Minotaur to splinters.' 
 
 The same writer had an interesting paragraph on an- 
 other of the pictures exhibited in 1 827 — Mortlake Terrace, 
 Seat of William Moffat, Esq. — Summer Evening : 
 
 'He had exhibited a picture of the same place the 
 year before, with an effect of Early Summer Morning — 
 both, probably, records of a happy day. The day that 
 closed as this picture represents should have been a 
 happy one. The broad light of the evening sun still 
 lies upon the river, and casts the lengthening shadows 
 of the limes over the golden sward, where a garden- 
 chair and a portfolio speak of the artist who has just 
 left the spot, and the gilded barges and glancing 
 wherries tell of holiday-makers upon the river, and the 
 dog has wakened from his doze in the sun to leap upon 
 the parapet and bark at the passing boats. This dog is 
 one of the often-quoted examples of Turner's reckless 
 readiness of resource, and carelessness as to means of 
 effect. There was no dog in this picture originally. 
 Turner thought, or somebody suggested to him, that a 
 dark object on the parapet would throw back the dis- 
 tance, and enhance the aerial effect of the whole picture. 
 So Turner cut out this dog in black paper and stuck him 
 on the wall, and, satisfied with the effect, either forgot how 
 it was produced, or did not think it worth while to replace 
 his paper dog with a painted one, and there the paper 
 dog remains to this day.' 
 
 There is an instance, I believe, in one of his water- 
 colours, of a glorious setting sun, which on examination 
 turns out to be nothing but a common red wafer. I 
 need scarcely observe that in such cases ithe adjunct. 
 
Pictures Exhibited in 1827. 217 
 
 from its harmony with its surroundings, and the rdle it 
 is made to play, becomes just as much a part of the 
 picture as if it were a pigment applied with the brush. 
 
 Amongst the pictures exhibited in 1827 was Port 
 Ruysdael. It is scarcely necessary to observe that there 
 is no such place as Port Ruysdael, yet Turner gave the 
 title to two of his pictures ; first to this, and at a much later 
 period of his life to another, which was exhibited at the 
 Academy in 1844. It is the later of these pictures which 
 was etched for the Portfolio (it appeared in August, 
 1875), the original being in the National Gallery. In 
 his note on that work, Mr. Wornum said, ' The Port 
 Ruysdael oi 1827 was of the same size (three feet high 
 by four feet wide), and was bought by Mr. Elhanan 
 Bicknell for three hundred guineas ; it was sold at his 
 sale many years afterwards, in 1863, for the large sum 
 of ;£'i99S ; proving to him, like many other of Turner's 
 works, a very good investment for his family.' It is 
 very probable that, besides the convenience of having a 
 name of some sort for an imaginary seaport, Turner 
 may have intended to honour the memory of his pre- 
 decessor in art. He was not one of those artists whose 
 high opinion of themselves prevents them from respect- 
 ing others ; on the contrary, he had a rather surprising 
 degree of respect for several old masters whom we con- 
 sider much inferior to him. He saw qualities in their 
 works which were by no means easy to imitate, and he 
 readily overlooked what our critical fastidiousness con- 
 siders to be their defects. Very few modern landscape 
 painters admire Ruysdael much. The continental 
 critics are loud in his praise, of course, being always 
 
.218 Tlie Life of J. M. W. Turmr. 
 
 ready to sing hymns of eulogy to any god who has his 
 place on the artistic Olympus. 
 
 In 1828 Turner exhibited another of his Carthage 
 pictures, Dido directing the Equipment of the Fleet; or, 
 the Morning of the Carthaginian Empire. This picture 
 was originally painted for Mr. Broadhurst, but is now in 
 the Turner Collection of the National Gallery. It is 
 simply one of those compositions of imaginary architec- 
 ture, with water, in which the painter occasionally in- 
 dulged himself. The same year he exhibited two pictures 
 of marine subjects, much more within the range of our 
 English tastes and sympathies. East Cowes Castle, with 
 the regatta beating to windward, and the same place 
 with the regatta starting from their moorings. His 
 fourth picture that year was Boccaccio relating the Tale 
 of the Birdcage, and it was with reference to this picture 
 that I narrated, in one of the early chapters of this 
 biography, an anecdote which Leslie told me in Turner's 
 house in Queen Anne Street. Leslie accused him of 
 imitating Stothard, which Turner at once admitted, 
 saying that he wished he could paint like him, and call- 
 ing him ' the Giotto of England.' The comparison, like 
 all such comparisons, will not bear investigation ; but it 
 is interesting as an expression of Turner's admiration 
 for a contemporary, and the confession that the picture 
 was not original in manner may partly account for the 
 fact that it is one of the painter's failures. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Jouvney to Italy, 1828.— The Polyphemus.—' Death of Turner's father.— 
 The illustrations to Rogers.— Scotland revisited, 1830. , 
 
 Turner went to Italy again in 1828, and we know by 
 a letter from him to his friend Jones, the Academician, 
 that he had spent nearly two months on the way, and in 
 settling to work in Rome. The letter is dated October 
 13th, so it is probable that he left London in the latter 
 half of August. He seems to have delayed most in the 
 south of France, and to have suffered so much from the 
 heat at Nismes and Avignon that it brought on tem- 
 porary debility, relieved afterwards by sea-bathing when 
 he reached the Mediterranean. There is an interesting 
 paragraph in the letter about the scenery of the Cornice, 
 with a pleasant bit of playfulness about Chantrey, whom 
 Turner loved. 
 
 ' Genoa, and all the sea-coast from Nice to Spezzia, is 
 remarkably rugged and fine ; so is Massa. Tell that fat 
 fellow, Chantrey, that I did think of him then (but not 
 the first or the last time), of the thousands he had 
 made out of those marble craigs, which only afforded me 
 a sour bottle of wine and a sketch : but he deserves 
 everything which is good, though he did give me a fit of 
 the spleen at Carrara.' 
 
220 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 On the 6th of November he dates a letter to Chantrey 
 from No. 12 Piazza Mignanelli, and begins as follows : 
 
 ' My dear Chantrey, — I intended long before this 
 (but you will say, fudge) to have written ; but even now, 
 very little information have I to give you in matters of 
 art, for I have confined myself to the painting depart- 
 ment at Corso ; and having finished one, am about the 
 second, and getting on with Lord E.'s, which I began 
 the very first touch at Rome ; but as the folk here talked 
 that I would show tliem not, I finished a small three- 
 feet-four to stop their gabbling : so now to business.' 
 
 The rest of the letter is occupied with accounts of 
 other artists' doings, and there is a hit at Gibson's VeniLs 
 and Cupid. 
 
 ' The Venus is a sitting figure, with the Cupid in at- 
 tendance ; and if it had wings like a dove, to flee away 
 and be at rest, the rest would not be the worse for the 
 change.' 
 
 I have remarked elsewhere that we have seldom any 
 materials from which to construct an account of Turner's 
 artistic expeditions. He wrote few letters ; he did not 
 date his sketches, nor even always write upon them the 
 names of the places where they were taken ; he kept no 
 journal of his travels, and he was almost invariably 
 alone ; so that the want of material from his own hand 
 is not supplied by another. The glimpse that we get of 
 him in Rome is interesting as a proof that he not only 
 sketched but painted pictures there : he began one for 
 ' Lord E.,' ' but as the folk here talked that I would show 
 them nof, I finished a small three-feet-four to stop their 
 gabbling.' Here is evidence that he did not let people 
 
Journey to Italy, 1828. 221 
 
 see his works in an unfinished state ; in which he was most 
 wise. The preparations on a canvas may be intentionally- 
 just the opposite of the ultimate result ; it is said that 
 Cuyp's golden light was laid in with silvery grey, and 
 that the finest flesh colour of a great Venetian was first 
 prepared in green. The studio haunter comes and criti- 
 cises ; mentally, if not orally, he thinks, ' That sky is 
 dreadfully cold in colour,' 'that flesh is ghastly:' the 
 painter knows what he is thinking, and must either 
 endure it in silent vexation, or else take the trouble to 
 explain his processes, which seems as if he were apolo- 
 gising for what is really his own superiority of skill and 
 knowledge. Turner had not the sort of temper either to 
 bear with the criticism of Ignorance, or to excuse him- 
 self for offending it ; so he bolted his door and worked 
 in protected peace. He will throw a sop to Cerberus, a 
 picture finished on purpose, and give the ' folk ' ' a small 
 three-feet-four to stop their gabbling.' By this he means 
 a canvas measuring four feet by three, not such a very 
 small size ; and with these dimensions to guide us, we 
 can fix upon the picture alluded to. It must have been 
 the View of Orvieto, now in the National Gallery, which 
 exactly measures four feet by three, and was exhibited 
 at the Academy in 1830.* 
 
 We have a means of guessing the date of the painter's 
 return to England. In the Academy Exhibition of 1829 
 there was a picture entitled Messieiirs les Voyageurs on 
 
 * Mr. Wornum described it as a brilliant landscape, with a town in the 
 distance, and women washing at a fovmtain in the foreground ; but he said 
 it was painted in Rome in 1829. This appears to be a mistake, as the 
 letter to Chantrey was written early in November, 1828, and it speaks of 
 the picture as already finishe(}» 
 
222 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 their return from Italy {par la diligence) in a Snowdrift 
 upon Mount Tarra, 27.nd of January, 1 829. This was- 
 very probably a recollection of an incident witnessed by 
 the artist at that place and time ; the travellers are ' on 
 their return from Italy,' and it is probable that Turner 
 was amongst them. 
 
 All the results of this residence in Rome were not 
 immediately visible ; the impressions received there re- 
 mained in Turner's memory, and afterwards ripened inta 
 two or three of his finest pictures. The more immediate 
 results were the View of Orvieto and a composition 
 entitled Palestrina, which was exhibited in 1830 with 
 the following quotation from the painter's poem, the 
 famous manuscript, ' Fallacies of Hope :' 
 
 ' Or from yon mural rock, high-crown'd Prsneste, 
 Where, misdeeming of his strength, the Carthaginian stood. 
 And marked, with eagle eye, Rome as his victim.' 
 
 Whilst painting pictures of more or less importance. 
 Turner continued his minor labours of illustration. 
 From 1828 to 1837 he contributed drawings to the 
 'Keepsake,' and in 1829 he made drawings of Font- 
 hill for the ' Anniversary.' That year was a great one 
 in the history of his art, for he exhibited the splendid 
 Polyphemus picture, and also the Loretto Necklace, which, 
 without being one of the greatest of his works, deserves 
 mention both for its beauty and for an unfortunate 
 change of intention. The title is attached to a little 
 figure-incident in the foreground, a necklace given by a 
 peasant to a girl who is seated by his side, Loretto being 
 visible in the middle distance, on a hill, and the sea in 
 the remote distance. The striking peculiarity of the 
 
The PolypJiemiis. 223, 
 
 picture is a great tree, and Mr. Ruskin says of this : ' It 
 has evidently been once a graceful stone-pine, of which 
 the spreading head is still traceable at the top of the 
 heavy mass ; the lower foliage has been added subse- 
 quently, to the entire destruction of the composition.' 
 
 The great picture, Ulysses deriding Polyphemus, is a 
 work of higher aim and of more unquestionable achieve- 
 ment. It has been very freely criticised, and it belongs, 
 to a class of compositions which may easily be pulled 
 to pieces by matter-of-fact people ; but the impression 
 which it makes as a whole is an impression of extra- 
 ordinary splendour and power, and it is mere folly to- 
 weaken our own sense of its magnificence by a sceptical 
 analysis of its materials, and of the sources from which 
 the artist may possibly have derived them. The ships,, 
 it is said, are not such as the ancient Greeks ever used ; 
 to which it may be answered, that it does not signify in 
 the least whether they are archffiologically authentic or 
 not. Any schoolboy, in these days, can ascertain in 
 half an hour, from modern books of reference, the pre- 
 cise truth about some special matter of this kind, with 
 an accuracy far surpassing that of either Shakespeare or 
 Paul Veronese. It has been said that the properties in 
 the picture remind one of the opera, which is rather a 
 compliment than the reverse, for the last time I saw an 
 ancient Greek ship come sailing on an opera stage in a 
 ballet, it was as carefully archaeological as a picture by 
 Alma Tadema. The artifices of composition are obvious 
 enough ; the ships arranged to the right, so as not to 
 interfere with the trail of sun reflection on the water ; 
 the advancing rocks, to bring the forms of the land 
 
224 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 down picturesquely to the sea ; the mountainous shore, 
 for the statuesque figure of Polyphemus to recline upon ; 
 the high deck of the ship's poop, as a pedestal for 
 Ulysses to stand upon — all is artificial ; all except the 
 sky, which is a reminiscence of pure nature, and so 
 magnificent that it would be hard to find its equal 
 amongst the most glorious triumphs of art. And yet, 
 in order that there might not be a too absolute disso- 
 nance between the naturalness of the sky and the arti- 
 ficial character of the other material in the picture, 
 Turner has recalled human beliefs and the old Grecian 
 time, even amongst the evanescent splendours of the 
 clouds ; for he who looks at that rising sun may dimly 
 discern, through the mists of this world's atmosphere, 
 the swift horses of Apollo as they begin eagerly their 
 course in heaven. The confines, too, of earth and sky 
 are purposely mingled in the morning mist ; and the 
 Cyclops himself is made so grandly vague by it, that we 
 hardly know if he be an earthly giant on his island hill 
 in the ^gean sea, or an angry god obscure in the clouds 
 of Olympus. 
 
 We have to return now from the dreams of Turnerian 
 art to the sad realities of an existence which did not 
 •escape from the usual sorrows of human life. Turner's 
 father died in 1830, and in him the painter lost his 
 nearest friend and the only relation with whom he kept 
 up any intercourse. After this date, then, we are to 
 think of Turner as a singularly isolated human creature, 
 dependent upon a very few friends for such society as 
 he possessed, and having no home, if by 'home' we 
 understand anything more than a material building of 
 
Death of Turners FatJier. 225 
 
 bricks, with the wooden furniture inside it. The loss to 
 the painter must have been inexpressible, for he loved 
 his father deeply in his own quiet, undemonstrative way. 
 The old man had given up his barber's shop more than 
 thirty years before, and had lived with his son ever since, 
 finding many little occupations, and making himself use- 
 ful in various ways, either by acting as keeper of his 
 son's gallery in Queen Anne Street, or by stretching 
 and preparing canvases, or by looking after the bit of 
 garden at Twickenham, and the frugal household affairs. 
 It requires little stretch of imagination to realise the 
 tranquil, affectionate life which father and son led 
 together during those long years, and the dreadful void 
 which the old man's departure must have left in the daily 
 existence of his son. No more to find him in the garden ; 
 no more to eat the simple meal with him ; no more to 
 have him there in an evening when the long day's work 
 was over, to tell him of professional successes, of growing 
 fortune, and extending fame ; never again to be en- 
 couraged by his confidence, or rewarded by his fatherly 
 joy and pride ; and instead of all these solaces and con- 
 solations to find only vacancy, an empty chair, a chilling 
 solitude, was not that enough to pain a heart less tender 
 than that of Turner, which, if it loved seldom, loved ever 
 faithfully and well ? Remember that the old man had 
 always, from the first, done all he could to help his gifted 
 child, and nothing whatever to hinder him ; that, instead 
 of being alarm,ed by Heaven's great gift of genius, and 
 hostile to it, as mediocrity so often is, he had welcomed it 
 with joy and gladness, and watched it as a gardener might 
 watch some marvellous, miraculous flower, and protected 
 
 15 
 
226 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 it against the hardships of the common world, and 
 watered it with all necessary knowledge. It was he who 
 had first said, ' William is to be a painter !' And before 
 he was laid in his grave in St. Paul's, Covent Garden, hard 
 by the narrow street where he had followed his humble 
 profession, his ' William ' had painted the Ulysses ! 
 
 The painter afterwards composed an inscription for his 
 father's monument : 
 
 IN THE VAULT 
 
 BENEATH AND NEAR THIS PLACE 
 
 ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS OF 
 
 WILLIAM TURNER, 
 
 MANY YEARS AN INHABITANT OF THIS PARISH, 
 
 WHO DIED 
 
 SEPTEMBER 2 1 ST, 1830. 
 
 TO HIS MEMORY AND OF HIS WIFE, 
 
 MARY ANN, 
 THEIR SON, J. M. W. Turner, R.A., 
 
 HAS PLACED THIS TABLET. 
 AUGUST, 1832. 
 
 Internal evidence, if all other were wanting, would 
 prove this to be a Turnerian composition. The pleonasm 
 in the second line, and the omission in the eighth, could 
 have occurred to nobody but the author of the ' Fallacies 
 of Hope,' in the arrangement of carefully-chosen words 
 to be chiselled on enduring marble. It may, however, be 
 suggested in Turner's defence, that it is possible to be 
 beneath us without being near to us. New Zealand is 
 beneath us, but not near ; and what of the southern con- 
 stellations ? 
 
 It was in the year 1830 that Rogers' ' Italy ' first ap- 
 peared with Turner's illustrations, and his ' Poems ' were 
 
Tlie Illustrations to Rogers. 227 
 
 published four years later, illustrated in the same manner. 
 These editions were splendid examples of the degree of 
 perfection then attained by Englishmen in the various 
 arts which combine to produce the livre de luxe. They 
 could not have been produced at the beginning of the 
 century, and fine copies of them will ever remain a monu- 
 ment of English genius and taste in combination with 
 various kinds of artistic and mechanical skill. Very ill- 
 natured things have been said about Rogers for wishing 
 to get down to posterity by Turner's assistance, and there 
 are some clever epigrams on the subject ; but it may be 
 observed that in this instance there were two persons in 
 one — a singularly intelligent lover of art and a maker 
 of elegant verses, the lover of art being quite as 
 much interested in the matter as the poet, or versifier, 
 whichever we may decide to call him. It maybe argued, 
 further, that there is really more modesty than pride in 
 permitting one's verses to become mere letterpress to 
 accompany such an overwhelming artist as Turner. The 
 result has certainly been to keep Mr. Roger's poetry in 
 existence, and to give it a sort of immortality ; but it is 
 an immortality which few would envy. The pride of a real 
 poet is to think that his verses will endure by their own 
 vitality, and we learn- without surprise that Lamartine 
 was vexed when his exquisite poem ' Le Lac ' was set to 
 music, although the music was exquisite too, and that a 
 famous English poet of the present day unwillingly sub- 
 mitted to illustration in the supposed interest of his pub- 
 lishers. 
 
 Turner has seldom been so perfectly the poet as in the 
 illustrations to Rogers. The vignette form may have 
 
 1 5—2 
 
228 Tlie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 aided him here, as it is more poetical in itself than the 
 picture bounded by four hard straight lines with as many 
 right angles at the corners, but the vignette cannot make 
 a poet, though it may be convenient for one. It answers 
 to some pretty lyrical form in literature, which charms 
 us in the songs of a true singer, and leaves us perfectly 
 indifferent in the attempts of the incapable. Of all 
 artists who ever lived I think it is Turner who treated 
 the vignette most exquisitely, and if it were necessary to 
 find some particular reason for this, I should say that it 
 may have been because there was nothing harsh or rigid 
 in his genius, that forms and colours melted into each 
 other tenderly in his dream-world, and that his sense of 
 gradation was the most delicate ever possessed by man. 
 If you examine a vignette by Turner round its edges, if 
 you can call them edges, you will perceive how exquisitely 
 the objects come out of nothingness into being, and how 
 cautiously, as a general rule, he will avoid anything like 
 too much materialism in his treatment of them until he 
 gets well towards the centre. There is some inequality in 
 the beauty of the vignettes, they are not all of them equally 
 exquisite ; but even the least poetical are still very far 
 removed from the prose of art, whilst it is simply impos- 
 sible to find in them any careless neglect of those subtle 
 artifices of arrangement which Turner understood better 
 than any other landscape painter. Comparisons in art are 
 usually profitless, but they may be sometimes instructive 
 when the works to be compared are of the same class. I 
 will not compare Turner's art in the composition of the 
 vignette with that of Stothard, because Stothard was not 
 a landscape painter, and he had not naturally the faculty 
 
Tlie Illustrations to Rogers. 229 
 
 which arranges things most happily in vignettes ; it is 
 enough to say that Stothard's contributions to the illus- 
 trated edition of Rogers, though often graceful and 
 charming, look like patches on the page, and the patches 
 are sometimes awkwardly shaped, whilst Turner's never 
 seem to be shaped or put on the paper at all, but we 
 feel as if a portion of the beautiful white surface had in 
 some wonderful way begun to glow with the light of 
 genius. We feel this quality in the Turnerian vignettes 
 most strongly when we compare them with works of the 
 same class, and nearly the same date, such as the vignettes 
 to Burns by Mr. D. O. Hill, which were published in 
 1835. I am not so ungracious as to mention Mr. Hill 
 only to sacrifice his reputation to the fame of a greater 
 than he. His vignettes have often given me pleasure, 
 for which I am not ungrateful. They are poetic in feel- 
 ing, and he had many of the qualities of a landscape 
 painter, such as a love of luxuriance in vegetation, a fine 
 sense of distance, an enjoyment of light, and a proud 
 affection for Scottish lowland scenery which made his 
 heart sensitive to its rich beauty. His engravers were as 
 skilful as those who worked from Turner, being in some 
 cases the very same men ; still the result is invariably 
 heavier, and the talent of the one artist seems over- 
 burdened by mere matter, whereas the genius of the 
 other uses material nature only for artistic and spiritual 
 ends. 
 
 I have not space for any minute analysis of Turner's 
 vignettes, but cannot leave them without saying a few 
 words more. They may be divided into landscape sub- 
 jects, marines, architecture, and supernatural inventions. 
 
230 Tlie Life of J. M. W. Turtier. 
 
 The vignette of Derwentwater is one of the best of the 
 pure landscapes. The sky, with great pale clouds and 
 the sun in his splendour lighting their edges, is one of 
 the most perfect of all Turner's skies for its delicate 
 truth of pale tones. The treatment of the landscape 
 material is arbitrary, of course ; the islands are arranged 
 at the artist's pleasure, the forms of the hills are entirely 
 altered, a dark mass being enormously exaggerated to 
 show what Rogers called 'the tumbling tide of dread 
 Lodore ;' but the vignette is an exquisite idealisation of 
 a lake. The bits of Alpine scenery in ' Jacqueline ' and 
 'The Alps at Daybreak' are especially admirable for 
 their expression of that shadowy vastness which so 
 strongly impresses us in the loftiest ranges. I have 
 heard artists affirm that even a large picture can give 
 no idea of a lofty mountain, yet the vignette of the 
 Garonnelle, with the Alps of Piedmont in the distance, 
 gives me such an idea quite perfectly, and it is only 
 three inches high. This is due, not to truth of por- 
 traiture, which Turner always neglected, but to his know- 
 ledge of mountain structure and effect. Any one who 
 knows the Alps can see at once that these really are 
 Alps, twelve thousand feet high at least, though a Cum- 
 berland hill seen near would have its sky line quite as 
 high on the paper. One of the finest of the marine 
 subjects is Columbus discovering land, and here again 
 we have clear evidence that a great scale is not necessary 
 to the production of a great effect. The line of sea 
 horizon is only about an inch and a quarter long in the 
 engraving, yet from the effect chosen in water and sky it 
 conveys an awful idea of the vastness of the deep. The 
 
The Illustrations to Rogers. 231 
 
 figure in its simple grandeur, with the old ship for a 
 pedestal, is one of Turner's rare successes in figure con- 
 ception. There are two particularly successful instances 
 of the treatment of architecture : one a building seen from 
 outside, Greenwich Hospital ; the other the interior of an 
 imaginary Gothic chapel with banners and tombs. The 
 Greenwich is another excellent instance of largeness ex- 
 pressed on a small scale. The vastness of the building 
 is intentionally exaggerated, and it is made to look 
 prodigious. Who would believe that the twin towers, with 
 the domes, are only an inch high on the paper ? Their 
 real measurement is rather less, being nine-tenths of an 
 inch exactly. Within that little space you have columns 
 on columns, cornices, architraves, attics, dome, and lan- 
 tern, all drawn with the most exquisite care, and there is 
 a delicate play of light and shadow along the whole front 
 of the building. A very grand bit of supernaturalism is 
 that of the armed phantoms passing across the sky after 
 sunset. 
 
 ' Slowly along the evening sky they went, 
 As on the edge of some vast battlement ; 
 Helmet and shield, and spear and gonfalon. 
 Streaming a baleful light that was not of the sun !' 
 
 The verses are impressive, but the drawing is much 
 more impressive than the verses. The last rays of the 
 afterglow are in the sky ; the ships are motionless on the 
 dark ocean ; on the high poop of one of them stands a 
 little human figure, and before him passes the strange 
 procession of giant shapes, half mingled with low vapour, 
 through which a solitary star shines dimly. The 
 superiority of the drawing to the verses is due, I believe 
 
232 The Life of J. M. W. Titrner. 
 
 to the greater resources of mystery which the painter had 
 at his disposal. The sense of mystery can be conveyed 
 in words, but not easily in a few lines. 
 
 In 1830 Turner exhibited nothing but Pilate washing 
 his hands before the multitude, which was one of the 
 painter's failures, as the reader may well imagine from 
 the subject. It is in the national collection, and the 
 canvas measures nearly four feet by three. 
 
 In the same year the painter revisited Scotland, being 
 commissioned by Mr. Cadell, the publisher, to make 
 twenty-four drawings in illustration of Scott's Poetical 
 Works. Amongst these are two or three celebrated 
 ones. The Loch Corriskin, Skye, is a scene of extra- 
 ordinary desolation, which Turner felt profoundly, not- 
 withstanding his love for the richer beauty of the south. 
 He drew the precipices and the gloomy lake with great 
 fidelity to the character of the place, which had deeply 
 impressed him. Turner is reported to have said that he 
 nearly lost his life at Loch Corriskin by slipping down a 
 precipice, but saved himself by grasping two tufts of 
 grass ; a proof that Scott had used a poet's license in 
 the well-known verses in ' The Lord of the Isles :' 
 
 ' On high Benmore green mosses grow, 
 And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe ; 
 
 And copse on Cruchan-Ben ; 
 But here — above, around, below, 
 
 On mountain or in glen, 
 Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower. 
 Nor ought of vegetative power, 
 
 The weary eye may ken. ' 
 
 The Melrose is a beautiful piece of lowland river 
 scenery, the broad Tweed flowing through the plain, the 
 
Scotland Revisited, 1830. 233 
 
 Eildon hills in the distance. The river is treated with 
 excellent taste, the character of its shore line being at 
 the same time graceful and very carefully studied ; the 
 hills are drawn with the greatest delicacy, and retain 
 their true hill character, not being turned into moun- 
 tains. This is the scene that Scott loved better than any 
 other scene on earth ; these are the hills and this the 
 river which agitated him with profound emotion when 
 he came back a shattered creature, insensible to the 
 charms 0/ every land but this, from that weary voyage 
 to Italy. 
 
 The foreground in the Melrose is one of the most un- 
 fortunate in Turner's compositions. A cart and two 
 horses are set just upon the lower boundary line of the 
 drawing to tell against the space of shining river, and 
 throw it well back, and keep it down in the plain ; but 
 the cart is much too conspicuous in itself, and too ugly, 
 and it composes with nothing whatever. The little 
 picnic party to the right is not so objectionable. It is 
 highly probable that these figures of gentlemen taking 
 their ease, with bottle, provision-basket, and newspaper, 
 may have been suggested by the party from Abbotsford, 
 for Lockhart tells us that during Turner's visit at the 
 house, Sir Walter and his friends accompanied him on 
 excursions in the neighbourhood, in quest of subjects 
 for his pencil. 
 
 ' On several such occasions,' said Lockhart, ' I was 
 of the party, and one day deserves especially to be 
 remembered. Sir Walter took Turner that morning, 
 with his friend Skene and myself, to Smailholm Crags ; 
 and it was while lounging about them, while the painter 
 
234 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 did his sketch, that he told Mr. Skene legends of the 
 place. 
 
 ' He then carried us to Dryburgh, but excused him- 
 self from attending Mr. Turner into the enclosure. Mr. 
 Skene and I perceived that it would be better for us to 
 leave him alone, and we both accompanied Turner.' 
 
 This desire on Scott's part for a moment of solitude at 
 Dryburgh reminds us that in 1830 he was a saddened 
 man ; that she whom he called ' My Charlotte, my thirty 
 years' companion,' was already lying in the family grave 
 under the ruin ; that for four years he had maintained a 
 gigantic effort to pay his debts, and that little strength 
 remained to support him under a mountain of afflictions. 
 He could be submissively courageous even yet, but the 
 end of his labour was at hand, and it is likely that whilst 
 Turner was sketching Dryburgh the Last Minstrel was 
 looking forward to his long rest in that place which so 
 many of us have since visited for his sake. 
 
 Amongst other drawings made during this excursion 
 was one of Abbotsford, and I well remember both the 
 intensely romantic feelings which the engraving from 
 it used to awaken in me long ago, and the extreme dis- 
 appointment produced in me, as in many others, by the 
 building itself — a disappointment partly due to the 
 exaggerated descriptions of Sir Walter's home as a 
 romance or poem in stone and mortar, but due also in 
 great measure to Turner's exalting and ennobling 
 imagination. In his drawing Scott's country-house 
 became a fairy castle of vast size in a beautiful domain 
 on the side of a noble stream ; in reality Abbotsford is 
 only a fantastic residence, imposing neither by its size 
 
Scotland Revisited, 1830. 235 
 
 nor by its architecture, whilst the Tweed near the house 
 would be but a very ordinary stream if it had not been con- 
 secrated for us by the affection of an immortal genius. 
 
 Besides the twenty-four drawings to illustrate Scott's 
 poems, Turner undertook, for the same Edinburgh 
 publisher (Mr. Cadell), a series of illustrations of his 
 prose works. The main distinction between the two 
 undertakings is that the poems kept the artist entirely to 
 local subjects in the northern parts of our own island, 
 from Staffa and Loch Corrjskin for ' The Lord of the 
 Isles,' to the Junction of the Greta and Tees in illustra- 
 tion of ' Rokeby ;' whereas, on the other hand, the range 
 of the prose works was much wider, and here Turner 
 could have recourse to his own accumulations of British 
 and Continental studies, and even materials supplied by 
 others. A good many of his French studies came in 
 conveniently, and ,after making four illustrations of 
 Jerusalem for Finden's Bible, it was not difficult to make 
 a fifth for a new purpose. There were forty illustrations 
 to the prose works, in all, and of these twenty-three are 
 foreign, and only fourteen Scottish.* 
 
 * There has been some confusion of dates about Turner's visits to Scot- 
 land. A lady in Jersey, whose name is not given, said in a letter, dated 
 Sept. 23, 1831, ' Mr. Turner is returned from Scotland, where the weather 
 has been very boisterous, and his health not improved by the excursion. ' 
 Probably, in consequence of this letter, Mr. Thornbury says, ' In the autumn 
 of 1831 Turner was employed by Mr. Cadell to make a collection of twenty- 
 four sketches for a new edition of Scott's poems, the publisher to retain the 
 drawings.' On the other hand, Lockhart fixes Turner's visits to the scenes 
 of Scott's poetry, in company with Scott himself, as having occurred in 
 1830, which is evidently the correct date, as Sir Walter quitted Scotland for 
 Italy in the autumn of 1831, and had been unwell from the beginning of the 
 year. It is possible, but I have at present no evidence on the point beyond 
 the anonymous Jersey lady, and her evidence comes to us at second-hand 
 through Mr. Thornbury, that Turner may have visited Scotland again in 1831. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The ' Rivers of France.' — Turner's architecture. — Inaccuracy of other 
 artists. — The rivers of France — colour. — The rivers of France — Tur- 
 nerian charm. 
 
 The famous work, the ' Rivers of France,' which in its 
 latest edition was called Liber Fluviorum by Mr. Bohn, 
 the publisher, was at first issued in three successive 
 years under the title ' Turner's Annual Tour.' It was 
 published ' for the proprietor ' by Moon, Boys, and 
 Graves, but before the work was completed the title of 
 the firm had changed to Hodgson, Boys, and Graves. 
 The title-page of each year's issue was adorned with a 
 vignette, and the three vignettes are amongst the most 
 beautiful which Turner ever produced. The drawings 
 engraved in the body of the work are all oblong, and the 
 engravings generally measure five inches and a half by 
 rather less than four inches. The proportion may be 
 noticed for its avoidance of the long panoramic form, 
 which is very tempting for its convenience in the repre- 
 sentation of river scenery in lowland countries. How 
 far this choice of shape may have been Turner's decision, 
 or that of his publishers, who would naturally like a 
 shape going conviently into a book, I am unable to 
 inform the reader, but the matter is of more importance 
 
TJie Rivers of France. 237 
 
 than at first sight may appear. The nearer a shape 
 approaches to the square form, the more a landscape- 
 painter is tempted to exaggerate the height of things to 
 fill up his composition and get things in, on each side ; 
 the more, on the contrary, the shape of the drawing is 
 extended in horizontal length, the less this temptation 
 will be felt. 
 
 It is said that Turner was associated for three succes- 
 sive seasons with Mr. Leitch Ritchie, who wrote the 
 letterpress which now accompanies the illustrations to 
 the ' Rivers of France,' but that their tastes were very 
 dissimilar in everything except art, so that they travelled 
 very little together. All that Mr. Ritchie had to say 
 about Turner's ways of work was, that he noticed his 
 wonderful exaggerations ; for example that he would 
 elevate the stunted cone of a village church into a tall 
 steeple when it suited his purpose. If Mr. Ritchie had 
 known Turner's habits as we know them, this would not 
 have excited his surprise. He used to banter Turner 
 about it afterwards in London, but without offending 
 him, for the landscape-painter had his retort about 
 literary license. Mr. Ritchie had attempted to identify 
 Gilles de Retz with Blue Beard, by insisting that his 
 beard was so intensely black as to have a shade of blue. 
 ' This,' said Mr. Ritchie, ' tickled the great painter hugely, 
 and his only reply to my bantering was, his little sharp 
 eyes glistening the while, " Blue Beard ! Blue Beard ! 
 Black Beard !" ' This is all we learn from Turner's 
 travelling companion about his ways of work on the 
 French rivers, and it is not much. 
 
 The reader may remember Lord Byron's letter in 
 
238 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 answer to Mr. Bowles about artificial things in poetry, in 
 which he so stoutly maintained that artificial things have 
 a poetry of their own. Thomas Campbell had written 
 a vivid account of his emotions on witnessing the launch 
 of a ship of the line. Bowles asserted that Campbell's 
 ship derived all its poetry, not from art, but from nature, 
 and was dependent for it upon the waves and wind.s. 
 To this Byron vigorously replied, that the ship of the 
 line conferred its own poetryon the waters and heightened 
 theirs ; after which, extending the argument from ships 
 to other artificial things, he went on to speak of build- 
 ings on land as increasing the poetry of the land. 
 
 ' Am I to be told,' he asked, ' that the nature of Attica 
 would be more poetical without the art of the Acropolis? 
 of the temple of Theseus ? and of the still all Greek and 
 glorious monuments of her exquisitely artificial genius ? 
 Ask the traveller what strikes him as most poetical — the 
 •Parthenon, or the rock on which it stands ? the columns 
 of Cape Colonna, or the Cape itself? the rocks at the 
 foot of it, or the recollection that Falconer's ship was 
 bulged upon them ? There are a thousand rocks and 
 capes far more picturesque than those of the Acropolis 
 and Cape Sunium in themselves ; what are they to a 
 thousand scenes in the wilder parts of Greece, of Asia 
 Minor, Switzerland, or even of Cintra in Portugal, or to 
 many scenes of Italy, and the Sierras of Spain ? But it 
 is the "art" the columns, the temples, the wrecked 
 vessel, which give them their antique and their modern 
 poetry, and not the spots themselves. Without them the 
 spots of earth would be unnoticed and unknown.' 
 
 I am not aware that Turner ever expressed opinions 
 
The Rivers of France. 239 
 
 such as these in words, but there are a thousand evidences 
 in his numerous drawings that he agreed heartily with 
 Byron in looking for the poetry of his subjects much 
 more to man and man's works than to nature. Few 
 landscape-painters have drawn so many buildings, and 
 few painters of water have been so much disposed to 
 crowd it with ships and boats. I will not go so far as to 
 say that pure nature had no interest for him, but I think 
 there is abundant evidence that it was unsatisfying to 
 his mind. It would be easy to give rather a long list of 
 compositions by Turner, in which there is no landscape 
 whatever, but there is scarcely a single drawing or 
 picture by him which does not contain either a boat, or 
 a building, or a figure. One of the first things that 
 strikes us on looking through the ' Rivers of France,' is 
 how much less Turner seems to have cared for the 
 rivers themselves than for the human works which are 
 connected with them. The following analysis may throw 
 some light upon his taste. 
 
 There are sixty plates in all, without counting the 
 vignettes, and amongst these sixty plates I find fifteen 
 with castles or chateaux in them, fifteen with cathedrals 
 or important churches, twenty-two with at least one 
 bridge, and of these there are six with two bridges. 
 There are, also, half-a-dozen subjects of seaports with 
 shipping and boats in abundance. You may even find 
 that number of compositions without either water or 
 landscape, the river being out of sight and the land all 
 covered with buildings. The Boulevard des Italiens, 
 for example, is given as an illustration of the Seine, 
 which is like giving Regent Street as an illustration of 
 
240 Tlie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 the Thames. At Orleans the place near the cathedral 
 is preferred to the Loire, and in several other towns the 
 artist willingly leaves the river for the streets. In the 
 whole of the sixty plates there is not one without a 
 building of some kind, and there is not a foreground 
 without figures, nor a reach of water without boats. Men 
 and their works are indeed so constantly predominant in 
 these designs, that, to find the refreshment of pure nature, 
 we must quit the encumbered earth and take refuge in 
 the clouds of heaven. 
 
 Now, the theory of Byron and the practice of Turner 
 assert a truth, which is that man's work maybe poetical, 
 but they assert it too strongly in assigning to natural 
 beauty an entirely inferior position. There is such a 
 thing as the real landscape instinct, which is quite closely 
 connected with poetic emotion, and there is a rich 
 abundance of beauty in pure nature for its satisfaction. 
 It is this instinct which is not satisfied with Turner's 
 ' s'election of subjects on the French rivers, for they do 
 not always flow through tov/ns, under bridges, by castles 
 and cathedrals. They pass through leagues and leagues 
 of the sweetest rural scenery, where he who is indifferent 
 to landscape beauty will find nothing whatever to in-' 
 terest him, but where the true lover of nature will be 
 quietly gratified by a constant succession of beautifully 
 grouped trees, or varied forms of shore, changing from 
 the mountains of the Upper Loire to the coteaux of the 
 vine-lands and the flat Dutch-looking distances, of the 
 plains. After floating for hours through these great 
 spaces of rural France, when you are beginning to weary 
 a little of river, and trees, and sky, you catch sight of 
 some town in the distance with its nlrl rlnnr^ii ^,. ;„ ^^j-g 
 
TJie Rivers of France. 241 
 
 cases, its cathedral, and then a fresh reach of the river 
 discloses a bridge of many arches and a jumble of roofs 
 and chimneys half hidden by the trees of the public 
 walk. It is then that you feel the value of the town as an 
 ornament to the river, and when you have been all day 
 alone with nature you are not sorry to communicate 
 again with humanity, to see the groups of people about 
 the wharf and boats, and gratify your love of architec- 
 ture or your feeling for the picturesque by a hunt after 
 the remains of the middle ages. Such are the pleasant 
 experiences of artists who love the water ; they see 
 nature, and they see cities also, but they see them in due 
 proportion. Now it seems on looking through these 
 sixty plates from Turner as if, instead of leading us 
 from town to town along the broad, beautiful water-way 
 of the river, he had got into a diligence in one town and 
 out of it at the next, like a traveller ' doing ' the principal 
 localities. Daubigny, who had not Turner's magnifi- 
 cence of conception, loved nature with a more intimate 
 affection, and passed days and nights on the Seine in a 
 combination of hut and boat, rudely enough contrived, 
 yet a treasure for a student of river scenery. He was 
 not a great genius like Turner, but he really loved the 
 river, and in return for this simple devotion he was re- 
 warded by an insight into its own natural beauty, which 
 was wanting in the illustrious Englishman.* 
 
 * The following quotation from Mr. J. L. MoUoy's ' Autumn Holiday on 
 French Rivers' gives an excellent idea of vifhat I mean. It is rather 
 long, but so good and true, and so strikingly apropos of our present subject, 
 that the reader will thank me for not abridging it : — 
 
 ' Then, far ahead, in a haze of sunset, rose up the indistinct outline of 
 Blois. 
 
 ' It was at such times we realised how grand was the Loire — the river of 
 
 16 
 
242 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 What Turner cared for was the picturesque aspect of 
 a French town taken as a whole, with its bridge, and 
 towers, and multitudinous roofs. I cannot think that he 
 took any very deep and serious interest in architecture 
 for itself, though he liked it as an element of the pic- 
 turesque. The front of Rouen Cathedral is very mag- 
 nificent and impressive, and it is the most favourable 
 example of architecture in the volume ; but in other sub- 
 jects, such as the castle of Amboise, the inaccuracies are 
 of a kind which convinces me that the artist was thinking 
 only of his poetical effect, and did not really care about 
 architectural construction. As nothing is more unprofit- 
 able than generalities in criticism, we will direct our 
 
 ancient cities. Beautiful as the Seine was — in many respects far more so 
 than the Loire — it fell far short of the latter in expanse. Here was some- 
 thing of the breadth and distance of the sea. I feel the difficulty, the im- 
 possibility even, of describing the effect it produced on us. 
 
 ' To come out of the solitariness of the river, let the boat drift with the tide, 
 and turn round to watch the gradual unfolding of thest cities, was in its way 
 akin to the feeling of hearing for the first time one of the great symphonies of 
 Beethoven. And there is nothing fanciful in this comparison ; it is the 
 simple expression of the thought which occurred at the time. Many will 
 understand how things,, apparently opposite, and without any material con- 
 nection, will, under certain influences, recall and suggest one another. 
 Weber, from only seeing the tables, chairs, and benches of a cafJ, piled up 
 to the ceiling, composed one of his grandest triumphal marches. On days 
 when the rain fell thick and heavy he wrote his most joyous music, on 
 sunny days the saddest. 
 
 ' I remember one of us saying that evening, as we looked at Blois, that it 
 was like a peal of old bells, when they clang all together. 
 
 ' Most of our readers will probably have seen all these towns and many 
 parts of the Loire. But it will have been by diligence or rail, shooting 
 suddenly from a tunnel into the heart of the city, and with passing glimpses 
 of the river : for no steamers can ascend above Tours — and Gien, Orleans, 
 Beaugency, Blois, and Amboise, are accessible by land only (except in small 
 boats). In no way but the way we travelled is it possible to see what these 
 filaces really are, and how they are inseparable from tlie rivers^ 
 
Turner's Architecture. 243 
 
 attention more especially to Amboise. In the first of the 
 two subjects, the two big round towers, for which the place 
 is celebrated, are greatly exaggerated as to height, which 
 deprives them of much of their massive character. It is 
 plainly impossible to drive a carriage up the inside of 
 Turner's towers, but it can be done in one of the real 
 ones. In the reality, there is an old palace apparently 
 built on the top of a very strong feudal castle.* Turner 
 has been faithful to the idea just so far as this, but all 
 his architectural details are wrong, even big details — 
 wrong every, one of them ; and this inaccuracy is still 
 more evident in the illustration called the Chdteau of 
 Amboise, where the architecture is conspicuous, and re- 
 quired care. What surprises me, even yet, after long 
 familiarity with Turner's ways of work, is his disdain, not 
 of the ugly truths which artists often avoid, but of the 
 beautiful truths which the artistic temperament usually 
 delights in. The real Chateau of Ambrose is not only dif- 
 ferent from Turner's, but certainly more beautiful than his, 
 and far more picturesque. 
 
 The reader may remember that in my criticism of 
 Turner's Kilchurn Castlef I pointed out his omission 
 of important architectural features, such as the corbelled 
 turrets at the corners. In the Chiteau of Amboise it is not 
 so much omission that one has to complain of, as wilful 
 or involuntary misrepresentation. I can give a parallel 
 instance from literature. M. Louis Enault says that the 
 English inscribe in letters of gold on the front of their 
 museums, ' A thing of art is an endless joy.' Of course 
 
 * It is really btiilt upon a rock, encased in walls with towers. 
 t See page 68. 
 
 1 6 — 2 
 
244 l'^ Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 we recognise what he means ; he means the immortal 
 verse of Keats, which was inscribed at one end of the 
 Art Treasures' Exhibition at Manchester ; and the 
 Frenchman's line contains a sort of muddled reminiscence 
 of everything in the original, but on the whole the 
 English reader may still prefer, ' A thing of beauty is a 
 joy for ever.' Well, Turner's drawing of Amboise pro- 
 duces exactly that effect upon me. ' It may be an im- 
 provement, but I cannot help preferring the real thing. 
 
 I will mention two instances more. In the view of the 
 Pont Neuf, at Paris, the tower of St. Jacques de la Bou- 
 cherie is brought in at the left by a permissible violation 
 of strict topography which would have kept it out of the 
 drawing. As the artist had gone somewhat out of his 
 way to adorn his subject with the tower, it is natural to 
 expect that he would look at it, yet his drawing gives 
 evidence of the most perfect indifference to its archi- 
 tecture. It is rather a large object in the drawing, it is 
 a very important object, it is quite near enough for its 
 general character to be seen plainly and its details mys- 
 teriously, yet neither character nor detail is given, and a 
 grossly commonplace piece of nineteenth century Gothic 
 is substituted for one of the most perfectly beautiful, one 
 of the most exquisitely elegant masterpieces of the 
 middle ages. Not much is seen of the towers of Notre 
 Dame, but the little we do see abounds in architectural 
 errors. A draughtsman so careless about noble archi- 
 tecture was not likely to pay more attention to that 
 of streets and houses, and, provided that he got an effect 
 of quantity and mystery, he attempted little more. Still, 
 it is difficult to avoid a feeling of surprise at Turner's 
 
Ttirnei^'s Architecture. 245 
 
 indifference to blocks of building which have an especial 
 picturesque interest. Trees grow now on the point of the 
 island between the two halves of the bridge, and hide 
 the houses at the Place Dauphine from the point of view 
 in Turner's sketch ; but when he drew it, either there were 
 no trees at all, or else he removed them on purpose. In 
 either case one is surprised at his neglect of the houses, 
 because, as every Parisian artist knows, they are quite 
 remarkably picturesque, with their cumbrous roofs over- 
 burdened with dormer windows and chimneys. Of course 
 the houses were there in Turner's time, and long before, 
 according to the poet : 
 
 ' Ces deux maisons, Ventre Sainct Gris ! 
 Je les cognois, diet Henry Quatre, 
 Icelles sont du vieulx Paris !' 
 
 Another of the Parisian subjects affords a good oppor- 
 tunity for testing the draughtsmanship of the artist, 
 because the materials in it are familiar. In the Hdtel 
 de Ville and the Pont d'Arcole we have three well-known 
 buildings— I. Part of the old H6tel de Ville — 2. The 
 Church of St. Gervais — 3. The Pump in the river. The 
 absence of refinement, of truth, and of precision, in 
 Turner's representation of these buildings is decisive, and 
 settles the question. If the reader will compare Turner's 
 Hotel de Ville with a photograph of the real on e, he will 
 see that the landscape-painter's interpretation entirely 
 loses the elegance of the original. The Pump was 
 a very picturespue object (a tower between two wings, 
 the whole erected on a great intricate wooden scaffolding, 
 through which the water flowed), and it was etched by 
 Mdryon with great delicacy and truth. If the reader has 
 
246 The Life of J. M. IV. Turner. 
 
 an opportunity for comparing the etching with the 
 engraving after Turner he will see the difference. I 
 should not find fault with minor inaccuracies if truth of 
 character were preserved ; but it is not preserved in these 
 instances. The elegance of the tower of St. Jacques and 
 the H6tel de Ville is as much sacrificed as their details. 
 The real Pump was picturesque, with a certain purity 
 and stateliness which M^ryon gave ; Turner made it 
 picturesque in quite another way, and a much coarser 
 and ruder way. 
 
 By the common consent of humanity a fault is half 
 excused, and more than half excused, when it is known 
 to be general. If all Cretans were liars, a Cretan of 
 ordinary virtue would have been a liar like the rest of 
 his countrymen ; and for a Cretan to tell the truth he 
 would have needed, not ordinary commonplace virtue, 
 but that exceptional virtue of the saint or hero which we 
 admire when we meet with it, but expect from no ordi- 
 nary mortal. To be quite fair towards Turner we ought 
 to take into account the general state of the art he 
 practised. Of the accomplished artists of his time 
 Turner was, I quite believe, the most inaccurate, and the 
 most ready to shut his eyes to truths which did not 
 interest him ; but if you examine the work of his con- 
 temporaries with any strictness, you will find the same 
 indifference, in minor degrees, without the compensation 
 of that exquisite charm which has made Turner's work 
 immortal. If the reader should happen to have the 
 opportunity of comparing an engraving from Stanfield's 
 Verrex in the Val d'Aosta with Harding's drawing of 
 the same place (both exactly from the same point of 
 
Inaccuracy of other Artists. 247 
 
 view), he will see to what extent those artists considered 
 themselves at liberty to treat buildings as they pleased, 
 for one, or both, must be wrong in every detail.* Tur- 
 ner's carelessness of architectural truth goes farther, no 
 doubt, but it is the same thing in principle. It has been 
 said that picturesque drawing and architectural drawing 
 are so distinct that the one disqualifies for the other, and 
 when inaccuracy has become a habit it cannot be cured 
 at a moment's notice, merely because the artist happens 
 to be drawing some very beautiful object, like the tower 
 of St. Jacques de la Boucherie. But the true philosophy 
 of the subject goes deeper than this practical side of the 
 question. It has been stated by Joubert, in one of his 
 profound sentences : — ' The poet's subject,' he says (and 
 a painter like Turner is just as much a poet as any maker 
 of verses), ' should present to his genius a region of fan- 
 tasy which he can expand or contract at pleasure. Places 
 tJiat are too real, and persons that are too historical, im- 
 prison his mind and confine his movements.' Such an 
 object as the tower of St. Jacques, or a wing of the H6tel 
 de Ville, is too real to be dealt with by so poetic an artist 
 as Turner, because he must either think of its own 
 beauty too much, or else represent it unsatisfactorily. I 
 do not think that a faithful representation of the tower 
 of St. Jacques would have spoiled that particular draw- 
 ing, but I am quite convinced that the objective spirit 
 
 * A very able artist, who has drawn architecture in Italy, France, and 
 elsewhere, for half a century, wrote to me as follows about the drawing of 
 Venetian architecture by Turner, Stanfield, and Prout : ' However charm- 
 ing and talented their works may be in a picturesque sense, they are all, 
 and without one exception that I can now call to mind, clumsily, heavily, 
 and incorrectly drawn so far as architectural form and beauty are concerned. 
 Architects, I believe, are unanimously of this opinion. 
 
248 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 which would have enabled Turner to draw architecture 
 faithfully, would have destroyed in him that imaginative 
 spirit which produced the Turnerian wo:;d of dreams. 
 It is true that M^ryon was a poet in his way also, and 
 that he saw very clearly, and was on the whole a fairly 
 faithful draughtsman, but the cases are quite different. 
 M^ryon's gift was a sensibility to emotion in the presence 
 of certain buildings, and a power to communicate that 
 emotion by a very clear representation of them, in which 
 his own passion betrayed itself more by subtle modula- 
 tions of line, and by a certain morbid intensity of per- 
 ception, than by any very manifest unfaithfulness ; 
 Turner's poetry was not in clearness at all, but in con- 
 fusion and mystery, and the object at all times had less 
 hold upon his memory and imagination than the effect. 
 
 To understand the impossibility of an accurate Turner, 
 the reader has only to realise to himself what accuracy 
 really is. It involves the complete suppression of feeling 
 and imagination in the artist, and no imaginative artist 
 will do anything so suicidal as to suppress his own 
 imagination. Again, to require of Turner that he should 
 be accurate in his representations of architecture, would 
 be to require of him the subordination of his own art to 
 another art, the effacement of himself in the presence of 
 any builder who happened to have erected a church 
 steeple. The slightest reflection will convince us that a 
 genius like Turner's is far too strongly personal for such 
 humility as this. Again, we are much too apt to associ- 
 ate memory and imagination together in our minds, as 
 if one never weakened the other. We forget Pope's 
 doctrine, which is the true one : 
 
Inaccuracy of other Artists. 249 
 
 ' Where beams of warm imagination play, 
 The memory's soft figures melt away.' 
 
 The imagination substitutes fresh images for those which 
 a good memory, without imagination, would retain. 
 
 Since the whole influence of common custom amongst 
 artists, and of Turner's own imagination, made him a 
 glaringly inaccurate architectural draughtsman, it may 
 be asked why he drew really existing architecture at all. 
 Why did he not confine himself simply to pure inventions 
 like the architecture in his Carthages, which never existed 
 in any country under the sun, and which no builder will 
 ever be extravagant enough, or so misguided, as to erect 
 in stone and mortar ? The answer is of a double cha- 
 racter. In the first place, Turner felt a certain emotion 
 in the presence of architecture which operated upon his 
 mind, and tempted him to make drawings in which the 
 buildings which he admired occupied a very important 
 place. Besides this. Turner was a keen man of busipess, 
 and he knew that the sale of a set of engravings was 
 much safer when they bore the names of places that 
 tourists had seen, or might possibly hope to see ; places 
 not avowedly in dreamland, but actually mentioned in 
 the map. As for his inaccuracies, they might puzzle a 
 solitary traveller now and then, but people are usually 
 so wonderfully unobservant that they cannot detect 
 them. Before the invention of photography, the most 
 absurdly inaccurate engravings and lithographs of public 
 buildings were bought in thousands, and carried away 
 contentedly by travellers, who were satisfied so long as 
 a tower did not look like a dome, nor an obehsk like a 
 factory chimney. 
 
2SO The Life of J. M. W. Ttirner. 
 
 It would be of little use to enter into an elaborate 
 dissertation on the colouring of the drawings for the 
 ' Rivers of France,' but I may make a few brief observa- 
 tions, founded upon a close acquaintance with the country 
 itself. 
 
 Every land has certain special characteristics in its 
 ■colouring, and we may judge, to a great extent, of an 
 artist's affectionate intimacy with his subject by the 
 fidelity with which he recalls these special characteristics. 
 Now I do not recognise this kind of fidelity in Turner's 
 colouring of French scenery. It seems to me that he 
 •coloured according to his own general conceptions of 
 what would be harmonious, with little or no reference to 
 the natural quality and effects of French landscape. 
 The drawings are brilliant, and often crude in their 
 iDrilliance ; they are never simply natural. Here, again, 
 as in the matter of architectural form, the intensely 
 stroiig personality of the artist subordinated truth to 
 imagination, and led him to substitute what he imagined 
 for what he saw. The drawings were seldom, it is be- 
 lieved, coloured in the presence of nature ; Turner's more 
 usual custom having been to sketch from nature in pencil 
 and dash the colour on his sketch afterwards ; but how- 
 ever this may have been, we know the result, which is 
 rather the play of a man of genius with his materials 
 than the sober endeavour to render the real aspects of 
 the country. If the reader will imagine Turner as a 
 supremely clever executant in water-colour, who played 
 with his orange and purple, his redand green, his washes 
 of cool grey to refresh the eye, and his touches of burn- 
 ing scarlet to excite it, just as a musical composer will 
 
Tlie Rivers of France — Colour. 251 
 
 combine the effects of the various instruments in an 
 orchestra, he will, I sincerely believe, not be very far 
 from a just appreciation of his work. I will go even a 
 little farther and venture upon the assertion that it is 
 only the minor colourists who are quiet-minded enough 
 or humble enough, for fidelity. All the splendid 
 colourists, the men who dazzle and astonish and win 
 great reputations for their colour-power, are utterly 
 audacious in their manner of dealing with the truth of 
 nature. They go beyond it to play their own mighty 
 music. We all know the Rubens colour, with its regular 
 set scale of tints, so admirably and truly analysed by 
 Fromentin. Turner was more various, but not less per- 
 sonal, and if I were asked whether his colour reminded 
 me of France, I should answer, No, not of France, but of 
 Turner. And if the inquirer pushed his examination so 
 far as to ask whether the Turnerian colour seemed to me 
 a compensation for the colouring of nature, I should 
 answer that the two appeal to different sentiments, that 
 Turner's work is a display, an exhibition of power and 
 dexterity, calling for admiration, whereas the compara- 
 tively humble artists who touch our hearts by reminding 
 us of the scenes and effects we thoroughly and inti- 
 mately know, make little display, and are seldom ex- 
 tolled for genius, but find their way to our affection. 
 The reader will please remember that I am speaking 
 here of colour, and, for the moment, of colour only. 
 Well, in two words, the drawings for the ' Rivers of 
 France ' seem to me astonishing curiosities.* No one 
 
 * In the chapter on Turner's studies I went into the subject of his 
 colouring, and explained how he coloured with a view to obtain certain 
 chromatic results rather than truth to nature. It is, unfortunately, not 
 
25,2 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 but their author could have done them, but they are 
 simply the play of a consummate artist with the materials 
 in his colour-box. This free way of playing with chro- 
 matic elements is the true sign of a great colour-faculty, 
 and the only way. to produce splendid results, but though 
 originally suggested by nature, it leaves nature out in 
 the cold. 
 
 After having denied the truth of Turner's architecture, 
 and the truth of his colour also, I may be suspected 
 of saying favourable things merely by way of compensa- 
 tion, and to reconcile myself in some measure with 
 English public opinion, which left him to sell his draw- 
 ings for a few pounds each and now purchases them 
 at the rate of twenty guineas the square inch. Be 
 this as it may, the truth must be told on both sides. After 
 all the deductions of criticism the charm of the work 
 remains. It is with these drawings as with the romances 
 of Sir Walter Scott : a time comes in the life of every 
 intelligent reader when he perceives that Scott was not 
 and could not be, really true to the times he represented, 
 except when they approached very near his own ; but 
 a student of literature would be much to be pitied 
 who was unable to enjoy ' Ivanhoe' after this discovery. 
 So when we have found out the excessive freedom which 
 Turner allowed himself; when we have discovered that 
 he is not to be trusted for the representation of any 
 
 possible to maintain any argument about colour by giving examples, because 
 if reproductions were given an opponent could answer (probably with truth) 
 that the reproductions were not like the originals. If the reader could be 
 with me with the originals before us I would soon show him what I mean. 
 Turner as a colourist was splendid and powerful, but utterly unfaithful. 
 
The Rivers of France — Turncrian Charm. 253 
 
 object, however important — that his chiaroscuro, though 
 effective, is arbitrary, and his colour, though brilliant, is 
 false ; when we have quite satisfied ourselves, in a word, 
 that he is a poet, and not an architectural draughtsman, 
 or an imitator of nature, is that a reason why we should 
 not enjoy the poems? There is a wide difference, I 
 grant, between the pleasure of real belief and the plea- 
 sure of confessed imagination : the first belongs to ima- 
 ginative ignorance, and is only possible for the uncritical ; 
 the second belongs to a state of knowledge, and is only 
 possible for those in whom the acquisition of knowledge 
 has not deadened the imaginative faculties. Show the 
 ' Rivers of France' to a boy who has the natural faculties 
 which perceive beauty, but who is still innocent of criti- 
 cism, he will believe the drawings to be true, and think 
 as he dreams over them that a day may come when he 
 will visit these enchanting scenes. Show them to a real 
 critic, and he will not accept for fact a single statement 
 made by the draughtsman from beginning to end, but he 
 \irill say, ' The poetic power is here,' and then he will 
 yield to its influence, and dream also in his own way — 
 not, like the boy, in simple faith, but in the pleasant 
 make-belief faith which is all that the poet asks of us. 
 
 ' Who believes me shall behold 
 ***** 
 
 Only believe me. Ye believe ? 
 
 Appears 
 Verona ' 
 
 The worst passages in Turner, as in Milton and 
 Wordsworth, are the matter-of-fact passages, where the 
 poetic faculty has not acted with sufficient energy to fuse 
 
254 -The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 the material. In landscape-painting, this danger is 
 greatest in proximity to the foreground, and in the 
 ' Rivers of France ' the foregrounds are often prosaic and 
 unpleasant when the material is of an inconvenient kind, 
 such as angular steps, logs of wood, and pieces of barren 
 shore which had to be covered with figures to hide their 
 want of interest. The distances are always poetical, full 
 of exquisite invention of distant detail, and of minute 
 beauties in which the spectator is constantly making 
 fresh discoveries. The town subjects, in which there is 
 little or no distance, are the least satisfactory. The St. 
 Juliaiis, Tours, in which all the material is matter-of- 
 fact — a church quite near, a diligence with horses and 
 people — is a subject unsuited to Turner's genius, pain- 
 fully exhibiting his deficiencies as a draughtsman ; the 
 distant view of Rouen, with its vastness of extent and 
 mystery of distance, full of minute indications, all of 
 which set the imagination to work immediately, is, on the 
 contrary, precisely one of those subjects in which he has 
 had no rival. Some of the finest things in the volume 
 are amongst the simplest ; the Clairmont, {or example" 
 with its chateau perched on a rocky height with a fine 
 hollow of wooded land behind it. All is simple in this 
 composition ; the land is in large masses, the boats are 
 few, and there is a single star in the calm evening sky. 
 In every instance where a long sweep of river has been 
 attempted the result is a striking success, that being one 
 of the characteristics of French scenery by which Turner 
 was most powerfully impressed. His drawing of the 
 forms of land, coteaux and plains, is always beautiful, 
 though the height of the coteaux is generally ex- 
 
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 ^'ihi 
 
 zSiicssr . -Tig.. m 
 
 '^^:^ 
 
 iui^. :g^ 
 
 i^ 
 
 
 «^^W^^: 
 
 
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TJie Rivers of France — Tumerian CJiarin. 255 
 
 aggerated, and nothing can surpass the exquisite sense 
 of mystery with which Turner finds the outline of a 
 remote rise of land and loses it again. His use of cloud, 
 of smoke or steam from chimneys or boats, is admirable,, 
 both near and in the distance, and he avails himself of it 
 in the most cunning manner to lighten masses which 
 might otherwise appear heavy or monotonous. Sky and 
 water, under very varied effects, are never less than 
 exquisite. The system of light-and-shade, as usual with 
 Turner, is delicate and subtle, but arbitrary. He will 
 observe most minute distinctions of tone and rely far 
 , more upon them than on vulgar oppositions of black and 
 white ; but at the same time he will not be bound by 
 scientific truth. Shadows are cast just where he wants 
 them, whether there is any luminary to cast the shadows 
 or not, and when the luminary is there it generally 
 throws the shadow in quite impossible positions. 
 
 Turner understood some aspects of French scenery 
 with peculiar sympathy and felicity, but there is much in 
 French landscape character which lies outside of Turner's 
 range, and has been discovered gradually by the affec- 
 tionate explorations of the native painters. The chief 
 distinctions between his work and theirs may be ex- 
 pressed as follows. He was interested chiefly in towns 
 and in landscape distances ; they avoid the towns (with 
 a few exceptions) and attach themselves to rustic sub- 
 jects, the main interest of which lies either in the fore- 
 ground or in the middle distance. They have also a 
 certain simplicity and earnestness of sentiment which 
 were generally wanting in Turner, who loved elabora- 
 tion, quantity, and brilliance. Turner's view of France 
 
256 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 is the view rather of a traveller than a resident. The 
 view taken by the French landscape-painters themselves 
 has, in almost all cases, been curiously (if I may use the 
 word in this uncommon application) residential. One of 
 the best of them, who lives within a morning's drive of 
 one of the finest parts of the Loire, never paints the Loire 
 and its magnificent distances at all, but confines himself 
 to the little rustic bits within a mile of his own house, 
 which is in a retired part of the country, buried in dense 
 woods. This is what I call the residential spirit 
 in an artist. It acts, to the letter, on Longfellow's 
 advice : 
 
 ' That is best which lieth nearest : 
 Shape from that thy work of art.' 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. — Turner's technical carelessness. — The Golden 
 Bough. — The Venice pictures. An American criticism. — French enthu- 
 siasm. — Illustrations to Milton. — Mercury and Argus. — The Phryne. — 
 Turner and Mr. Bohn. — Switzerland and Italy. — The Agrippina. — 
 Illustrations to ' The Epicurean. ' 
 
 It is not necessary to mention every one of Turner's 
 pictures in the course of this biography, which, if that 
 were done, would be likely to become a catalogue. I 
 may also be pardoned for not saying much about pictures 
 which leave me simply indifferent, such as the Caligula's 
 Palace and Bridge, -which, in spite of its fine trees and 
 bright effect of sunshine behind architecture, is too 
 obviously artificial, too devoid of any true inspiration, 
 for much zesthetic satisfaction or enjoyment. This 
 picture was exhibited in 1831, and it belongs to the 
 somewhat undecided time in which the artist's genius 
 had not yet delivered itself from what may be called the 
 piled-up sublimities. In 1832 the painter exhibited a 
 much more memorable work, entitled Childe Harolds 
 Pilgrimage (Italy). The conception of this picture was 
 very broadly comprehensive. Turner set himself the 
 difficult, yet not impossible, task of representing, in a 
 single important work, a risumi of what was most char- 
 
 17 
 
258 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 acteristic of Italian scenery. Such a scheme, notwith- 
 standing its difficulties, was far better adapted to the 
 imaginative intellect of the artist than the representation 
 of particular localities. It gave his inspiration free play, 
 entirely emancipated him from even the slight restraint 
 of his own kind of topography, and left him face to face 
 with a problem which he was more competent to deal 
 with than any other artist. The allusion to ' Childe 
 Harold ' refers particularly to the twenty-sixth stanza of 
 the fourth canto, which was quoted in the Academy cata- 
 logue : 
 
 ' And now, fair Italy ! 
 Thou art the garden of the world, the home 
 Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree ; 
 Even in thy desert, what is like to thee ? 
 Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste 
 More rich than other clime's fertility ; 
 Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced 
 With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced. ' 
 
 Turner's conception of this typical Italy included a 
 mountainous distance, the distances in Italy being very 
 generally mountainous ; an interesting middle distance, 
 with hill and wood and water, plenty of buildings, partly 
 ruinous, in memory of the past ; and a foreground, with 
 a stone-pine which struck the artist as the most charac- 
 teristic Italian tree, and figures enjoying the sweet warm 
 southern evening, in the southern manner, with dancing 
 and festivity in the open air. This picture belongs to a 
 category of works which it is perfect folly to criticise ; for 
 the critical spirit, however useful and even necessary may 
 be the services which it renders, is always a spirit of 
 reserve, of caution, of investigation, whilst to enjoy great 
 
Turner's Technical Carelessness. 259 
 
 poems we need simply to tune our feelings into unison 
 with those of the poet himself, and let them vibrate sym- 
 pathetically as the strings of a piano vibrate in answer to 
 the notes of a violinist. The motive of the picture was 
 not to astonish by grandeur, but to charm by what is 
 loveliest in landscape ; and so there is in it little or 
 nothing of sublimity except the moderate sublimity of 
 the hill to the left, whose summit is crowned with build- 
 ings, and the quiet kind of sublimity which belongs to 
 ruin always. Soft outlines melting in the distant atmo- 
 sphere ; gentle curves of earth everywhere ; rich masses 
 of remoter foliage, and luxuriant vegetation in the fore- 
 ground ; these of themselves would suggest ideas of 
 beauty, but they are sustained and accompanied by the 
 tenderest, most delicate execution, and by a fortunate 
 sureness of taste in the treatment of every detail. Un- 
 happily, the picture is far from being in a satisfactory I 
 material condition. ^_^ 
 
 Turner's disregard for the permanence of his work was 
 simply absolute ; he seems to have been indifferent 
 to that most valuable of all sciences for a painter, the 
 knowledge of pigments in their material effects upon 
 each other. His work gained greatly in refinement as 
 he advanced in art, but it lost in material substance, so 
 that the heavy early pictures, the brown and grey works 
 executed when the painter was as yet only feeling his 
 way timidly to colour, are often the best preserved. In 
 later life he got into a fatal way of treating oil as if it 
 had been water-colour, with a recklessness of everything 
 but the immediate effect, which it would be difficult to 
 parallel in the history of the great old masters, though 
 
 17 — 2 
 
26o The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 several moderns have been equally reckless, if reckless in 
 other ways. Turner's technical sins may be classed in 
 two categories : he did not care what colours he used, 
 and he did not care about the material consequences of 
 his manner of using them. He would employ pigments 
 which are known to be unsafe, and he would lay his 
 tints on the canvas without taking into consideration 
 results which may be predicted with all the certainty of 
 science. The art of painting a picture which shall last 
 five hundred years is by this time clearly understood ; the 
 permanent pigments are known, and so are the fugitive 
 and mutually destructive pigments ; we are able, also, 
 to calculate with certainty on many effects of method in 
 painting — we know that a thin coat of paint which per- 
 fectly conceals what is beneath it when it is first laid on 
 will in course of time no longer do so with the same com- 
 pleteness ; and although we may not be able to deter- 
 mine beforehand all the innumerable and highly complex 
 effects of technical imprudences, we can at least avoid 
 them. 
 
 Most unfortunately for Turner, and for all who value 
 his art, he could not endure the slight restraints which 
 technical wisdom imposes upon a painter. He gave his 
 genius libre carrikre, as if pigments had required no 
 more care in their management than washes of Indian 
 ink ; and by one of the strangest contradictions ever 
 exhibited by inconsistent human nature, at the very 
 time when he was beginning to form great projects for 
 the establishment of his posthumous fame, he refused to 
 take the simple, easy, and well-known precautions which 
 would have secured the permanence of those very works 
 
The Golden Bough. 261 
 
 on which his fame depended. The Childe Harold pic- 
 ture has gone to pieces. The changes in certain por- 
 tions of the work are painfully evident, and although it 
 may still be enjoyed, it is only with that melancholy 
 pleasure that we take in spoiled and ruined things which 
 have once been ineffably exquisite. — 
 
 A picture of less importance, but not entirely dis- 
 similar in character. Lake Avernus, the Fates and the 
 Golden Bough, was exhibited in 1834, and afterwards 
 purchased by Mr. Vernon, who bequeathed it to the 
 nation along with the other pictures in his gallery. 
 Here, too, we have an Italian scene, with a stone-pine 
 in the foreground, water and richly-wooded land in the 
 middle distance, and pale hills or mountains far away. 
 The subject is from the sixth book of the ^neid in the 
 page following the universally known bit : 
 
 ' Facilis descensus Avemo ; 
 Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis : 
 Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, 
 Hoc opus, hie labor est. ' 
 
 The golden bough was a branch which, when plucked, 
 enabled the bearer to visit the infernal regions safely 
 and come back to the light of the day. 
 
 ' Latet arbore opaca 
 Aureus et foliis et lento vimine ramus, 
 Junoni infemse dictus sacer ; hunc tegit omnis 
 Lucus et obscuris claudunt convallibus umbriE, 
 Sed non ante datur telluris operta subire, 
 Auricomos quamquis decerpserit arbore fetus.' 
 
 Turner liked to give a poetical association to his pic- 
 tures, and in this instance he was more than usually 
 
262 Tlte Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 happy, for The Golden Bough is as pretty a title as a 
 landscape-painter could find, whilst Avernus is, at the 
 same time, interesting for its natural beauty and curiosity, 
 and just a little awful for its mythological attributes, 
 even yet not wholly incredible by the cultivated imagi- 
 nation. The painter, however, so treated his subject 
 that the pale blue waters of Avernus, sleeping so calmly 
 in their deep basin, scarcely recall to us, as we see them 
 in the picture, that dark river Acheron, from which they 
 were believed to rise. The only motive of the painter 
 appears to have been beauty ; the beauty of a fair Italian 
 landscape, idealised to the utmost \yY the power of his 
 own genius. The pictures of this class are, I believe, 
 the most perfect and complete expression ever given by 
 Turner to his sense of charm and loveliness in landscape, 
 as distinguished from his sterner delight in the sublime. 
 No one who has not tried to paint, and tried seriously 
 and long, can estimate justly the delicacy of tone and 
 colour in these pictures, the exquisiteness of the tran- 
 sitions in the lightest passages, and the sustained refine- 
 ment which could carry the artist safely over twenty or 
 thirty square feet of canvas, when the slightest failure 
 would have shown as an intolerable blot upon his work. 
 If at this time of his life, when he had formed his own 
 style, and overcome the difficulties of execution, Turner 
 could have been wisely directed in the knowledge which 
 ensures the permanence of a picture, and encouraged 
 to produce an important but limited series of great 
 works to illustrate what had most impressed him in all 
 Europe, as the Childe Harold and The Golden Bough 
 illustrate the landscape of Italy, he would have left 
 
Tfte Venice Pictures. 263 
 
 behind him the most magnificent of monuments and the 
 best expression of his genius. _^ _ 
 
 Mr. Vernon, who bought The Golden Bough, also 
 bought a picture of Venice in the same Academy 
 Exhibition, Venice; the Canal of the Ciudecca, and he 
 possessed another Venice of Turner exhibited in 1833. 
 These Venices were afterwards succeeded by many 
 others, for as Turner grew older, his increasing taste for 
 brilliant colour led him to think more and more of that 
 splendid city which excels all others so especially in her 
 colouring. A city of rose and white, rising out of an 
 emerald sea against a sky of sapphire, here, in a few 
 words, are the chief elements of Venetian colour. It 
 may interest the reader to see some notes by an ob- 
 servant writer who has lived much in Venice, but whose 
 impressions are quite independent of Turner's, to whom 
 he never refers, and whose work is probably all but 
 unknown to him. M. Henry Havard, in his book on 
 Amsterdam and Venice, has many descriptions of the 
 city on the Adriatic from various points of view, descrip- 
 tions always full of colour. Here are three or four of 
 them. 
 
 I. Venice from a Distance. — Searching along the hori- 
 zon, trying to penetrate the haze, we try to distinguish 
 the marvellous city from the clouds in which she lies 
 hidden. Suddenly above the green waters, in front of 
 the blue mountains whose feet are lost in mist, we see 
 her rise. She glitters in the midst of the islands which 
 surround her. Her palaces of blue and white seem to 
 float on the Adriatic. She reminds us of a necklace of 
 pearls lying on a cloth of emerald velvet. 
 
264 The Life of J. M. W. Tw-ner. 
 
 2. A Nearer View. — The forms do not yet appear 
 with clearness and precision ; there are no exact out- 
 lines, nothing but patches of rose and white which are 
 relieved against a blue horizon of an exquisite softness- 
 and on the green waves which become silvery in the 
 sunshine. 
 
 3. Nearer Still. — As we approach, all this delightful 
 chaos becomes less confused ; the campaniles detach 
 their delicate profiles and the domes their obesity ; the 
 lace-like balconies and oriental roofs of the palaces are 
 cut out more clearly, the outlines are more plainly visible, 
 but the tones remain unchanged. The city preserves 
 her tints of white and rose, the sky and sea their tints of 
 blue and green. 
 
 The next description brings us within the city, and 
 we see the great boats with their coloured sails, the 
 stone quays, and the marble bridges, the red campaniles, 
 the rose-coloured brickwork and the white marble, all 
 close at hand. ' It is a marvellous concert of the richest 
 colours, a clashing of the liveliest and most joyous 
 tints.' 
 
 In the notes supplied by Mr. William Wyld for his 
 biography in the Portfolio published in 1877, he 
 gave a short description of Venice without having read 
 M. Havard's book, and the two descriptions coincide 
 exactly. After mentioning the advantages of splendid 
 costume enjoyed by the Venetian painters as a daily 
 spectacle in the public places, he went on to say : 
 
 ' Then they had, too, the lovely Italian skies, and the 
 shining silvery and rose-coloured palaces glancing in the 
 
TJie Venice Pictures. 265 
 
 sun, which, with the emerald waters beneath, were always 
 in readiness as backgrounds to their compositions.' 
 
 Most of Turner's Venice pictures are attempts to 
 convey, not exactly the sensation of colour given by 
 Venice itself, but an equivalent sensation ; and although 
 the Venices purchased by Mr. Vernon are already a 
 wild extravagance in comparison with the sober but 
 prosaic work of Canaletto, they were afterwards sur- 
 passed in their own direction by his latest Venices. He 
 began to exhibit Venetian subjects in 1833, and con- 
 tinued, with intervals, till 1845. The whole of these 
 pictures belong to his late manner, and some amongst 
 them to his latest. The characteristics which they have 
 in common are splendour of colour and carelessness of 
 form ; the colour being in most instances really founded 
 upon the true Venetian colour as we have just seen it 
 repeatedly described, but worked up to the utmost bril- 
 liance which the palette would allow, the forms simply 
 sketched, exactly on the principles of the artist's own 
 free sketching in water-colours. To get the brilliance 
 the painter is believed to have adopted the following 
 method, which has been used with success in copying 
 his pictures of this class. It is believed, and with proba- 
 bility, that he first blocked out the picture almost entirely 
 in pure white, with only some very pale tinting just to 
 mark the position of the objects, and that this white 
 preparation was thick and loaded from the beginning. 
 On this he afterwards painted thinly in oil or water- 
 colour, or both, so that the brilliance of the white shone 
 through the colour and gave it that very luminous quality: 
 
266 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 which it possesses. This is simply a return to the early- 
 Flemish practice of painting thinly on a light ground, 
 with this difference, however, that Turner made a fresh 
 ground of his own between the canvas and his bright 
 ■colours, and that the modelling of the impasto with the 
 brush was done in this thick white. The result was to 
 unite the brilliance of water-colour to the varied and 
 rich surface of massive oil-painting. 
 
 The Venice pictures exhibited in the Academy from 
 1833, and now in the National Gallery, number in all 
 eleven canvases. One of the finest of these. The Sun of 
 Venice going to Sea, was etched by M. Gaucherel for the 
 Portfolio in 1874, and published in the November number 
 of that year. The etching has the spirit of the original 
 picture, and is an excellent reminder for those who have 
 seen it, but it can, of course, give no idea of the brilliant 
 colour which is the principal artistic motive of the paint- 
 ing, and which is concentrated in the painted sail of the 
 fishing-boat. An etching of The Approach to Venice, by 
 M. Brunet-Debaines, appeared in the Portfolio for Sep- 
 tember, 1875. The subject is a view of the canal of the 
 Giudecca, with Fusina in the distance. The reader may 
 judge from this etching how Turner treated the materials , 
 of Venice, the spaces of the water, the boats, and the 
 buildings. The sense of space and distance on water 
 surface is admirably expressed in this subject ; the boats 
 are made to serve the artist's purpose in composition, 
 both by the way he has placed them and by their 
 reflections, and the buildings are treated in Turner's 
 usual arbitrary manner with his disdain of architecture 
 and topography. Some confusion has been created by 
 
sf- 
 
The Venice Pictures. 267 
 
 giving the title The Approach to Venice to a drawing 
 from which a picture was painted which is called San 
 Benedetto, whilst there is another picture called The 
 Approach to Venice, which is in a state of ruin from 
 technical causes. Whilst describing the San Benedetto 
 picture, Mr. Ruskin says first that the title is a mistake, 
 as no such church could be included in the view, and 
 then he proceeds to recognise a general truth of Venetian 
 character in it : 
 
 ' The buildings on the right are also, for the most part, 
 imaginary in their details, especially in the pretty bridge 
 which connects two of their masses : and yet, without one 
 single accurate detail, the picture is the likest thing to 
 what it is meant for — the looking out of the Giudecca 
 landwards at sunset — of all that I have ever seen. The 
 buildings have, in reality, that proportion and character 
 of mass, as one glides up the centre of the tide stream : 
 they float exactly in that strange, mirageful, wistful way 
 in the sea-mist — rosy ghosts of houses without foun- 
 dations ; the blue line of the poplars and copse about 
 the Fusina marshes shows itself just in that way on the 
 horizon ; the flowing gold of the water, and quiet gold of 
 the air, face and reflect each other just so ; the boats rest 
 so, with their black prows poised in the midst of the 
 amber flame, or glide by so, the boatman stretched far 
 aslope upon his deep-laid oar.' 
 
 The success of Turner's later method of colouring has 
 been questioned by some critics, who seem to be especially 
 offended by the crudeness of the whites. The following 
 may be taken as a fair example of these criticisms ; it is 
 from an American writer who has travelled a good deal 
 in Europe : 
 
268 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 ' In these pictures Turner appears to have departed 
 from all those qualities which make his water-colours 
 so valuable. There is nothing of Nature in them. 
 Occasionally some familiar object is suggested ; but there 
 is no certainty, even after close study, of the motive, and 
 scarcely of the form. With many, the time chosen — 
 especially in the Venetian pictures — is when the sunlight 
 is strongest, and we naturally fly from its glare. If his 
 ambition were to rival Nature's intensest light, he has, 
 as all painters must, signally failed. The pictures present 
 glaring white surfaces, spotted with positive colours, laid 
 on with a dash of the brush or the fingers, with little or 
 no attention to form ; an intense blue for the upper sky, 
 but all colour opaque, and the canvas so heavily loaded 
 that in many places the paint has dried, cracked, and 
 dropped off. . . . We want luminous and liquid air, and 
 not plain white or blue paint, which Turner has given. 
 His skies are spotty and hard. They do not illuminate. 
 The bright atmospherical colours should appear of pris- 
 matic tenderness of outline and texture, as in the rain- 
 bow, arching space. Solid pigments will not express 
 the qualities of either sky, flesh, or water.' 
 
 Is this criticism just ? It is, I think, not a bad piece 
 of criticism. The writer has something to say, and does 
 not simply confine himself to condemnation without 
 giving his reasons. His eyes have been really offended 
 by the style of painting which I have just endeavoured 
 to describe, and he states the reasons for the offence. 
 His feeling is one which I constantly observe in people 
 who have some taste for art, but do not easily read its 
 strongest language. For many years such people kept 
 etching in a state of profound unpopularity because they 
 were offended by its strength of expression, and even at 
 
Ah American Criticism. • 269 
 
 the present day they are angry at what is really the 
 most powerful work. They look upon the fine arts as an 
 imitation of nature, not as an utterance of human genius; 
 and when the utterance reaches a certain pitch of inten- 
 sity it seems to them a bad imitation — coarse and harsh 
 and crude. The right theory was stated by Burger in 
 1863, when he said : 
 
 ' In the works which interest us the authors substitute 
 themselves, so to speak, for nature. However common- 
 place the natural material may be, their perception of it 
 is special and rare. When Chardin has painted a glass, 
 it is Chardin whom we admire in the glass which he has 
 painted. It is the genius of Rembrandt which we admire 
 in the profound and singular character which he has im- 
 pressed upon the head, whatever it may have been 
 which served him for a model. We think, " Ah ! did 
 they see like that, and how simple or how fantastic it is 
 in expression and execution !" ' 
 
 Now the mistake of the American critic is to have 
 condemned the Venetian pictures of Turner because 
 they are not imitations of nature. The question is not 
 whether they are close imitations of nature, but whether 
 they have the art-power of conveying a profound im- 
 pression, and that they unquestionably have. 
 
 Some years ago several eminent French etchers came 
 over to London for the purpose of executing plates from 
 pictures in the National Gallery. They were all men of 
 considerable experience in art, perfectly familiar with 
 the old masters, and with as much modern art as may be 
 seen in Paris ; some of them were painters as well as 
 etchers, and therefore practically acquainted with the 
 
270 TJie Life of J. M. IV. Turner. 
 
 use of oil colour. Thus prepared, and eager to make 
 acquaintance with our national collection, they went to 
 Trafalgar Square. It would be difficult to exaggerate 
 the effect which the Turner pictures produced on their 
 minds. It was not mere critical approbation, not merely 
 the respectful attention usually given to a great master, 
 it was the passionate enthusiasm with which highly 
 educated and very sensitive persons acknowledge a new, 
 strange, irresistible influence in the fine arts, the sort of 
 enthusiasm which was awakened by the verses of Byron 
 and the violin-playing of Paganini. All these French- 
 men, whatever had been their previous speciality in art — 
 whether they had been etchers of the figure, or of archi- 
 tecture, or of landscape — asked to be employed in the 
 interpretation of Turner ; and the pictures which they 
 most desired to etch were not those of what has been 
 considered his sober, and sane, and orthodox time, but 
 such things as the later Venices and those daring experi- 
 ments in light and colour which have so often been 
 spoken of as little better than the freaks of a gifted mad- 
 man. Here, then, is evidence, if all other evidence were 
 wanting, that these pictures have the one great power of 
 all genuine works of art, as distinguished from simple 
 imitations of nature, the power which excites and arouses 
 the artistic susceptibilities. 
 
 Again, the offensiveness of what may be called tech- 
 nical excesses, such as excessive loading, for example, 
 or the excessive fulness or richness of a glaze, seems to 
 diminish in exact proportion to the artistic culture of the 
 spectator. I mean that the partially cultivated spectator, 
 such as the critic quoted above, will be offended by a 
 
Illustrations to Milton. 271 
 
 loading, and see in it nothing but thick paint, when a 
 trained eye like that of M. Gaucherel or M. Brunet- 
 Debaines will not be offended at all. I believe the reason 
 to be that the one stops at the mere paint and the other 
 goes at once far beyond it, to the artistic conception 
 which the paint is intended to convey. 
 
 In 1835 appeared Macerone's edition of Milton, in 
 seven volumes, and Tegg's one-volume edition of the 
 poems, in foolscap octavo. Turner illustrated the poems 
 for these editions with seven vignettes, which are gene- 
 rally considered, and rightly, amongst the least success- 
 ful of his inventions. There is a certain materialism in 
 Milton himself which a critical reader has considerable 
 difficulty in reconciling with the nature of his subject, 
 and yet it is easier to do this in reading a poem than in 
 looking at a drawing, for the imagination is less exact- 
 ing about material possibilities than the eye. One of 
 the most unfortunate of the vignettes was the Mustering 
 of the Warrior Angels, a mixture of unaccountable as- 
 tronomy and bad figure-drawing, all rendered with that 
 entire unsatisfactoriness which is the consequence of 
 setting every natural law and possibility at defiance. 
 Another lamentable attempt was The Temptation on the 
 Pinnacle, a most difficult subject to treat, and treated in 
 such a manner that one cannot venture to describe the 
 drawing as it really is. These failures are the more pro- 
 voking that Milton abounds in fine subjects for an 
 imaginative landscape-painter. How suggestive, for ex- 
 ample, are the lines : 
 
 ' Far off from these, a slow and silent striam, 
 Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls 
 Her watery labyrinth.' ^ 
 
272 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 And those, again, which follow almost immediately : 
 
 ' Beyond this flood a frozen continent 
 Lies, dark and wild, beat with, perpetual storms 
 Of whirlwind and dire hail.' 
 
 The best of the illustrations to Milton are the St. 
 Michael's Mount, with the shipwreck of Lypidas, and 
 the Ludlow Castle, with the rising of the water nymphs. 
 Here the painter was brought down to the real earth 
 and to his native land, and gained strength accordingly. 
 
 It was a custom of the classical school of landscape- 
 painters to take subjects from the legends of antiquity, 
 partly, no doubt, for the practical purpose of giving 
 titles to their pictures, and also because the legends are 
 in themselves poetical, and lend some poetry of associa- 
 tion to the landscape with which the craft of the painter 
 lias connected them. Claude was fond of doing this, as 
 we all know from the Claudes in our own National 
 Gallery, almost all of which are associated with ancient 
 legend or history. The story of Cephalus and Procris 
 is a good one for this purpose, because the unhappy 
 accident which ended fatally for Procris took place in a 
 wood, and Claude delighted in sylvan subjects. The 
 story of Mercury and Argus is, perhaps, even more 
 available for the landscape-painter, as the cow, lo, must 
 be introduced, and a cow is a landscape-painter's animal. 
 Claude painted a picture of Mercury and Argus which 
 was one of a pair, the other being Juno entrusting to 
 Argus the guardianship of To, and amongst Claude's 
 etchings is one of Mercury and Argus, rather a pale 
 etching, with a temple to the right, and a distant view of 
 
Mercury and Argus. 275 
 
 a bay with hills beyond it, seen between two groups of 
 trees. 
 
 Besides these works of Claude there are others in 
 illustration of the same subject by the old painters ; for 
 example, Rubens painted it four times, as his taste for 
 landscape and the naked figure, and his skill in both, 
 gave him an interest in putting the two together. These 
 examples, but especially that of Claude, may have in- 
 duced Turner to try his strength on the same story ; 
 and whatever may be said of the cow and figures, it 
 would be difficult, in elder art, to find it illustrated with 
 such poetic feeling and such a happy mixture of natural 
 and artistic beauty. It is to be regretted that the pic- 
 ture, which was purchased by Mr. Naylor, is not in the 
 National Gallery, but it is widely known through the 
 engraving, one of the most luminous of the larger plates 
 ever executed from Turner's pictures. This work pro- 
 duced such a strong impression on Mr. Ruskin- that he re- 
 ferred to it no less than nine times in ' Modern Painters.' 
 Like Rubens, Turner introduced a rivulet in his land- 
 scape, finding its way over the irregular ground. This 
 stream is well described by Mr- Ruskin in a few words : 
 
 ' In coming down to us, we see it stopping twice in two 
 quiet and glassy pools, upon which the drinking cattle 
 cast an unstirred image. From the nearest of these the 
 water leaps in three cascades into another basin close to 
 us ; it trickles in silver threads through the leaves at its 
 edge, and falls tinkling and splashing (though in con- 
 siderable body) into the pool, stirring its quiet surface, at 
 which a bird is stooping to drink, with concentric and 
 curdling ripples, which divide round the stone at its 
 
 18 
 
274 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 farthest border, and descend in sparkling foam over the 
 lip of the basin.' 
 
 The picture was one of the richest and fullest of those 
 produced in Turner's complete maturity, the quantity of 
 detail in it was immense, but detail fused and harmonised 
 into unity. The sun is the centre of the picture, or 
 nearly so, and the light brilliant. Great importance is 
 given to foliage, especially to one great tree, which 
 has the Turnerian pear-shape. I may observe that 
 about this time of his career Turner had a fancy for a 
 great tree, sometimes very much isolated. He probably 
 found it convenient to throw back the sky and distance ; 
 and, by his system of aerial perspective, which confined 
 the extreme darks to the immediate foreground, a tree 
 did not cut so crudely against the sky as it does in 
 ordinary drawing or in photographs. Turner had also; 
 as I have explained elsewhere with reference to the fir 
 on the left In Crossing the Brook, certain artifices in the 
 treatment of such material which mitigated what might 
 have been objectionable without them. Not only was 
 the tree generally nearer in tone to the sky than it would 
 have been in nature, but the branches farthest from the 
 spectator, and consequently nearest to the sky, were 
 made still paler in proportion as a compensation for 
 stereoscopic effect, which painting cannot render. The 
 general result of this artifice was that, however isolated 
 a tree may be in one of Turner's landscapes painted in 
 his maturity, it is never by any chance like an object 
 appliqiii, but forms an integral part of the material be- 
 tween the spectator and the horizon. 
 
Tlie PJiryne. 275 
 
 A magnificent instance of his treatment of trees when 
 his art was fully developed is the picture of Phryne going 
 to the Public Bath as Venus. I well remember how the 
 combined grace and energy of the branch drawing in 
 this picture seemed to me, before I knew the Forest of 
 Fontainebleau, an idealisation of sylvan beauty beyond 
 the possibilities of nature ; and how, when I came almost 
 directly from Fontainebleau to the National Gallery, I 
 found in the picture the power, the freedom, the elegance 
 which astonish us in the noblest Fontainebleau trees, and 
 give the visitor to that wonderful place an entirely new 
 conception of what sylvan magnificence may be. It is 
 useless to expatiate farther upon the subject, for no con- 
 ception of the trees in the Phryne can be given without 
 illustration, and even that, on a reduced scale, would be 
 inadequate, as the picture itself is more than six feet 
 high, and drawn with such delicate modulation in all its 
 curves that every inch of it is a study. Again, the most 
 subtle etching or engraving would fail to render adequately 
 the play of light in the foliage and amongst the branches, 
 not to speak of the elaborate distances which are as full 
 of material as they can be. The Phryne is certainly 
 one of the very greatest pictures of Turner's full matu- 
 rity. It was first exhibited in 1838, and shows signs 
 of over-ripeness in the figures more than in anything 
 else. 1 .^ 
 
 The decay of Turner's art was of a character quite 
 peculiar to him. He is the only painter whose scheme 
 of colour in the decline of life had a morbid tendency to 
 white and scarlet — white for the light, scarlet for the 
 shade — a combination as unnatural as it is glaring. You 
 
 18—2 
 
2^6 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 may see this already in the figures of the Phryne, and to 
 some extent they undoubtedly spoil the picture, but they 
 will not prevent a cultivated critic from enjoying the 
 work as a whole. Something, too, may be said in favour 
 even of the figures themselves, defective as they may be. 
 Their faults are of a kind which the popular eye easily 
 detects, their merits are evident only to a few. They 
 are well composed, they take their place in the picture, 
 and add to the impression of life and splendour which is 
 already partly created by the architecture of the baths. 
 Besides this, as Mr. Ruskin has remarked, ' The infini- 
 tudes of gradation, and accurately reflected colour, 
 which Turner has wrought into these strange figure 
 groups, are nearly as admirable as the other portions 
 of the work.' 
 
 In 1838 an incident occurred which throws some light 
 both on Turner's policy in mattei's of business, and on 
 the degree of success which attended one of the most 
 important series of engravings from his works. In the 
 biographical sketch by Mr. Alaric Watts, which was pub- 
 lished in Bohn's edition, an account is given of a transac- 
 tion in which Turner bought up a series of copper-plates 
 — those of the ' England and Wales ' — in order to prevent 
 them from passing into the hands of a pubhsher,whomight 
 have worn them out and issued impressions of a quality 
 injurious to the painter's reputation. The ' England and 
 Wales ' series had not been a commercial success, so the 
 work was brought to an abrupt conclusion in 1838, and 
 it was decided to sell off the stock and copper-plates, and 
 balance the accounts. The whole was offered to Mr. 
 Bohn, the publisher, for ^^3000, and he offered ^2800, 
 
Turner and Mr. Bohn. 277 
 
 but would not go any farther, so it was decided to put 
 the property up to auction. ' After extensive advertising,' 
 says Mr. Watts, ' the day and hour of sale had arrived, 
 when, just at the moment the auctioneer was about to 
 mount his rostrum, Mr. Turner stepped in, and bought it 
 privately, at the reserved price of .£^3000, much to the 
 vexation of many who had come prepared to buy portions 
 of it.' Turner met Mr. Bohn at the sale, and told him, in 
 his gruff way, that he had taken care to prevent him from 
 selling cheap prints from the coppers, adding the expres- 
 sion of a general determination, ' No more of my plates 
 shall be worn to shadows.' Mr. Bohn replied that his 
 chief object was not the coppers, but the large printed 
 stock. ' Oh 1 very well ; I don't want the stock, I only 
 want to keep the coppers out of your clutches.' So far 
 mollified, the great artist positively went so far as to in- 
 vite Mr. Bohn to breakfast the next morning, with a view 
 of doing business. The publisher kept the appointment 
 at nine, but there was no breakfast, and Turner asked as 
 much for the impressions alone as he had just given for 
 the impressions and coppers both together. This Mr. 
 Bohn thought unreasonable, so he left the stock on the 
 painter's hands. It remained at Queen Anne Street till 
 after Turner's death, eating up interest and slowly 
 deteriorating. 
 
 It is said that Turner visited Switzerland in 1838 ; but 
 I am, as usual, unable to give the reader any details of 
 his tour. The effect of Switzerland on his mind is much 
 more visible in his sketches and water-colour drawings 
 than in his oil pictures. In the whole catalogue of pictures 
 exhibited by him at the Royal Academy and the British 
 
278 Ttie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Institution I only find three Swiss subjects : we all know 
 how much more numerous are his Italian pictures. Not- 
 withstanding the magnificence of Swiss scenery, it is not 
 generally popular amongst artists, and a very experienced 
 London picture-dealer told me that it is not popular 
 amongst the purchasers of landscapes. In most cases a 
 painter may shrink from Swiss scenery, simply because 
 he finds a difficulty in dealing with its vastness ; but 
 vastness was one of Turner's strong points in art, and he 
 drew mountains with great knowledge. The lake of 
 Lucerne is said to have been one of the places which 
 gained the strongest hold upon his affections, yet I 
 believe he only exhibited one oil picture of it in the 
 whole course of his life. The historic traditions of Italy 
 seem to have drawn him strongly to Italian material, and 
 the traditions of landscape art may have had the same 
 effect. Claude, whom Turner imitated and emulated, 
 painted Italian scenery, and so did the other classical 
 landscape painters, but they never painted Switzerland. 
 In 1838 and 1839 Italy was quite predominant in Turner's 
 mind. In 1838 he exhibited Ancient Italy — Ovid 
 banished from Rome, and Modern Italy — the Pifferari. 
 In 1839 he followed up the idea by painting ancient and 
 modern Rome under the following rather elaborate 
 titles : 
 
 ' Ancient Rome. — Agrippina Landing with the Ashes 
 of Germanicus. The Triumphal Bridge and Palace of the 
 Ccesars restored. 
 
 ' " The clear stream, 
 Aye, the yellow Tiber glimmers to her beam 
 Even while the sun is setting." 
 
Tlie Agrippina. 279 
 
 ' Modern Rome. — Campo Vaccina. 
 
 ' " The moon is up, and yet it is not night ; 
 
 The sun as yet divides the day with her." — Lord Byron.' 
 
 Besides these pictures there was one in illustration of 
 Ovid {Pluto carrying off Proserpine),a.nd one representing 
 Cicero at his villa. 
 
 An etching, with aquatint, of the Agrippina was pub- 
 lished in the Portfolio for February, 1 878, and by its help 
 the reader may easily follow what I have to say of the 
 picture. It is fine composition of its class, giving a grand 
 idea of the enormous palace of the Csesars, in which 
 Tiberius and Augusta remained invisible whilst the 
 people of Rome received Agrippina with the most touch- 
 ing demonstrations of sympathy and sorrow. The archi- 
 tectural invention in the palace is not very elaborate, and 
 it may be open to the criticism of architects, but the ideas 
 of vastness, majesty, and a haughty domination are con- 
 veyed very impressively. The smaller masses are not 
 altogether so fortunate ; they have an arranged look, like 
 
 the architecture in Martin's pictures ; and one of them, 
 
 « 
 that above the bridge, is in very bad perspective. The 
 
 scene is lighted by slanting rays of sunset, which, with 
 
 the cast shadows and the mist in the atmosphere, afforded 
 
 Turner an opportunity for one of his poetical effects of 
 
 light, shadow, and reflection. 
 
 The picture will not bear historical criticism. From 
 
 the title which Turner gave it, he evidently believed (or 
 
 supposed, intentionally, for his own convenience) that 
 
 Agrippina landed at Rome. She really landed at 
 
 Brundusium, and travelled to Rome by the Appian Way, 
 
28o The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 along which Dmsus, with Claudius and the children of 
 Germanicus, who were in "Rome, went as far as Terracina 
 to meet her. The whole description, as given by Tacitus, 
 implies an imposing entry into Rome by land on an in- 
 comparably vaster scale than the few groups of figures in 
 the picture. Turner, with his half-a-dozen people on the 
 right, his four boats on the left, with people in balconies 
 and on shore, renders the human interest of the scene so 
 inadequately, that we are driven to imagine it over again 
 for ourselves with the help of the Roman historian. 
 There have been two great spectacles in modern times 
 which may help us to some conception of the real event. 
 When Nelson's remains were brought home to England 
 from Trafalgar, when the body of Napoleon was brought 
 to Paris from St. Helena, popular emotion in England 
 and France did not express itself by loitering groups on 
 the shores of the Thames and the Seine. The tide of 
 humanity came out like a flood, by thousands and tens of 
 thousands, filling the public place from side to side, 
 the long avenue from end to end. Yet there was a 
 •poignancy of interest in the ancient event not equalled in 
 either of the modern ones. Nelson died prematurely, but 
 was not the victim of a murderer ; Napoleon's ashes were 
 not carried in an urn by a never-injured Josephine. 
 Show us, O painter ! the bereaved wife as she came 
 ' bearing the funeral urn,' and the multitude in their fresh 
 emotion, strangers and kindred, men and women, recentes 
 in dolore. 
 
 In 1839 Turner illustrated Moore's novel, 'The Epicu- 
 rean,' with four vignettes. The Garden, The Ring, The 
 Nile, and The Chaplet. The Ring may be dismissed at 
 
Illustrations to ' Tlie Epicurean' 281 
 
 once as a wild fancy of a man swinging in the void, 
 surrounded by diabolical apparitions, a subject author- 
 ised by the story, but not well chosen for illustration ; 
 The Cltaplet is an interior of an Egyptian temple, not 
 without sublimity ; The Nile is an impressive moonlight 
 scene on the river, with massive temples, stairs, and ter- 
 races ; and The Garden is an attempt to realise the beauty 
 of a garden of the Epicureans at Athens, with a lake 
 down in the hollow, and a view of Athens, with the 
 Acropolis beyond. There are statues in the garden, 
 and boats full of pleasure-seekers on the lake ; the whole 
 scene glowing and glittering in the sunshine of a summer 
 afternoon. This vignette and that of The Nile are quite 
 sufficient evidence that, in spite of the failure with the 
 Milton vignettes three years before, Turner still retained 
 his remarkable skill in dealing with this kind of design. 
 The vignette of The Garden, which only measures three 
 and a half inches by four, is a striking example of the 
 power by which Art can sometimes concentrate its 
 materials. There is enough in it to fill a large drawing, 
 and as for the expression of the artist's conception ■ 
 (which is the chief purpose of art), this is quite effectual. 
 It transports us, I will not say to the real Athens, but to 
 the Turnerian Athens, just as well as a large picture. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The Temeraire. — The Bacchus and Ariadne. — The Snow-storm. — The 
 Slave-Ship.— Latter years of Turner.— Pictures of 1842.— Tendency to the 
 formless. — Dregs of life. — Last excursion on the continent. — Disabled.- — 
 Turner's death.— Funeral at St. Paul's. — Turner's care for his own fame. 
 — Rivalry with Claude. 
 
 The great work made public in 1839 was the Timiraire 
 The entry in the Academy Catalogue is as follows : 
 
 ' The fighting Temiraire tugged to }ier last berth to be 
 broken up, 1838.' 
 
 ' "The flag which braved the battle and the breeze 
 No longer owns her." ' 
 
 It is unnecessary to dwell upon the obvious wilfulness 
 in the lighting of this picture. With the sun and moon 
 where they are, it would not be possible for the vessels 
 to be so lighted ; but this may be granted as a painter's 
 license. Evidently Turner's object in this arbitrary light- 
 ing was to give the Temeraire a sort of ghostly, unearthly 
 look, as if already more a melancholy vision of the past - 
 than any present reality. Turner, with his love of the 
 sea and shipping, and his strong national feeling, took a 
 deeply pathetic interest in the old war-vessels of the 
 heroic time, the glorious days of Nelson ; and we who of 
 late years have seen so complete a revolution in the 
 building of war-ships — a revolution unfavourable alike to 
 
TJie T^mt'raire. 283 
 
 seamanship and to art — may admit that there were rea- 
 sons for such regrets as Turner's deeper than any that he 
 himself was aware of. Not only have the beautiful old 
 war-ships almost entirely disappeared, but they have left 
 no inheritors of their beauty. The same revolution which 
 has replaced the proud castle of the middle ages by the 
 low and ugly earthworks of modern fortification, has 
 substituted for the glorious battle-ship, with her high 
 freeboard, her tiers of guns, and magnificent display of 
 canvas, a variety of inventions in which beauty is super- 
 seded by grim utility and seamanship by machines. War- 
 ships in these days are not towed to their last rest at sun- 
 set, but suddenly sent to it by a thrust of a consort's snout. 
 The picture is, both in sentiment and execution, one 
 of the finest of the later works. The sky and water are 
 both magnificent, and the shipping, though not treated 
 with severe positive truth, is made to harmonise well with 
 v4he rest, and not stuck upon the canvas, as often happens 
 in the works of bad marine painters. The sun sets in 
 red, and the red, by the artist's craft, is made at the same 
 time both decided in hue and luminous — always a great 
 technical difficulty. Golden sunsets are easy in com- 
 parison, as every painter knows. This picture has 
 more than once been associated by critics with the 
 magnificent Ulysses deriding Polyphemus, which was 
 painted ten years earlier. Both are splendid in sky 
 and water, and both are florid in colour.' Mr. Rus- 
 kin's opinion is that the period of Turner's central 
 power, ' entirely developed and entirely unabated, begins 
 with the Ulysses and closes with the Thn^raire! This 
 
284 Ttie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 decade had been a time of immense industry for Turner. 
 In that space he had made more than four hundred 
 drawings for the engraver, had exhibited more than fifty- 
 pictures in the Royal Academy, and had executed besides 
 some thousands of sketches, and probably many private 
 commissions which cannot easily be ascertained. It was 
 the decade during which he united a sufficient substance 
 with poetry; after 1839 he retained poetic power, but 
 his works became unsubstantial. 
 
 Mr. Thornbury, in his biography of Turner, informs us 
 that the subject of the Teineraire was suggested to Tur- 
 ner by Stanfield. 
 
 'In 1838 Turner was with Stanfield and a party of 
 brother-artists on one of those holiday excursions in 
 which he so delighted, probably to end with whitebait 
 and champagne at Greenwich. It was at these times 
 that Turner talked and joked his best, snatching now 
 and then a moment to print on his quick brain some 
 tone of sky, some gleam of water, some sprinkling light 
 of oar, some glancing sunshine cross-barring ""a sail. 
 Suddenly there moved down upon the artists' boat the 
 grand old vessel that had been taken prisoner at the 
 Nile and that led the van at Trafalgar. She loomed 
 pale and ghostly, and was being towed to her last 
 moorings at Deptford by a little fiery, puny steam-tug. 
 
 ' " There's a fine subject, Turner," said Stanfield.' 
 
 After the close of the Academy Exhibition of 1839, 
 Turner decided never to sell the Thniraire. The picture 
 was on what he called his two-hundred-guineas' size of 
 canvas, and an amateur would willingly have given more 
 than twice that sum, but Turner resolutely refused. He 
 
The Bacchus and Ariadne. 285 
 
 probably intended the picture for the Turner-room in the 
 National Gallery, as soon as he perceived its relative 
 importance amongst his works. 
 
 Turner generally relied on his own resources even for 
 the arrangement of his figure groups, but in the circular 
 picture of Bacchus and A riadne, which he exhibited in 
 1840, he frankly borrowed the principal figures from the 
 noble picture by Titian. Little else need be said of the 
 work, which is defective both in drawing and composi- 
 tion. The figures, though perhaps not quite so shapeless 
 as those entirely invented by Turner, are less easily 
 excused— perhaps because they remind us too directly of 
 their too magnificent prototypes, and the composition is 
 unsatisfactory because so obviously artificial. 
 
 It is unnecessary to dwell upon failures of this descrip- 
 tion, but this instance arrests one's attention, because it 
 follows so immediately after the triumph of the T^meraire. 
 The painter had often done work in former years which 
 fell far below the level of his best, and this in a life of 
 such incessant industrial production was inevitable ; but 
 former failures had always been succeeded by splendid 
 recoveries of power, and were due far more frequently to 
 an unlucky choice of intractable or uninteresting subject 
 than to weakness in the artist himself. Now, however, 
 at the age of sixty-four, the great painter really entered 
 upon the period of his decline ; a decline of which it may 
 be truly said, that although it afforded ample opportuni- 
 ties for the cruelties of criticism, it proved, far more than 
 the cautious advance of his early manhood, the essenti- 
 ally pictorial quality of his mind. For what in his last 
 years did he retain, and what did the enfeebled hand 
 
286 Tlie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 surrender ? He retained colour, reflection, mystery — the 
 qualities which only the most cultivated care for or ap- 
 prehend ; he lost the firm grasp of objects, which is, I 
 will not say the infancy, but the early manhood of the 
 pictorial art. The aspects of things are of far more con- 
 sequence to a painter than the realities, and the more he 
 works the less the actual substance affects him. For any 
 one who understands what painting is, how it deals with 
 appearance and not with substance, and how necessary, 
 in order to paint well, it is to see the appearance and 
 the appearance only, the later pictures of Turner are full 
 of pathetic interest, and are far indeed from being either 
 ridiculous or contemptible. I do not pretend that they 
 always render the real appearances of nature, for they 
 fall short of them in many ways, but they always aim at 
 the appearance and never at the fact. Colour and shade, 
 light and reflection, are the old painter's latest impres- 
 sions and recollections of that world of mystery and 
 beauty in which he had worked incessantly for fifty 
 years. His Very earliest work had been as matter-of-fact 
 as possible ; his latest is a vision of phenomena scarcely 
 more substantial than the tail of a comet, the arch of a 
 rainbow, or the crimson gleaming of the aurora borealis. 
 Let it not be supposed that those works of Turner's 
 decline, however they ma}' have exercised the wit of 
 critics and excited the amusement of visitors to the 
 exhibition, were ever anything less than serious per- 
 formances for him. "Y^i^ Snow-storm, for example (1842), 
 afforded the critics a precious opportunity for the 
 exercise of their art. They called it soapsuds and white- 
 wash, the real subject being a steamer in a storm off a 
 
TJie Snoiv-storm. 287 
 
 harbour-mouth making signals and going by the lead. 
 In this instance nothing could be more serious than 
 Turner's intention, which was to render a storm as he 
 had himself seen it one night when the ' Ariel ' left 
 Harwich. Like Joseph Vernet, who, when in a tempest 
 off the island of Sardinia, had had himself fastened to the 
 mast to watch the effects. Turner, on this occasion, ' got 
 the sailors to lash him to the mast to observe it,'* and 
 remained in that position for four hours. He did not 
 expect to escape, but had a curious sort of conscientious 
 feeling that it was his duty to record his impression if he 
 survived. The picture, then, was serious in purpose, and 
 not an invention, but a recollection of real nature. 
 Turner was much hurt by the soapsuds and whitewash 
 criticism. ' He was passing the evening at my father's 
 house,' says Mr. Ruskin, ' on the day this criticism came 
 out ; and after dinner, sitting in his arm-chair, I heard 
 him muttering low to himself at intervals, " Soapsuds and 
 whitewash !" again, and again, and again. At last I went 
 to him, asking " why he minded what they said ?" Then 
 he burst out : " Soapsuds and whitewash ! What would 
 they have ? I wonder what they think the sea's like ? I 
 wish they'd been in it." ' 
 
 The Rev. W. Kingsley said that his mother, who had 
 been in such a scene on the coast of Holland, was much 
 struck with the truth of the Snow-storm when she first 
 saw it in Turner's private gallery. I may bear witness 
 to it also, having often been in rough weather at sea, and, 
 on one occasion, in a real winter tempest, when the 
 
 * His own words to the Rev. W. Kingsley. 
 
The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 maintopmast was carried away and the sea-water swilled 
 down into the engine-room, as nearly as possible ex- 
 tinguishing the fires. Being interested in art, and proof 
 against sea-sickness, I have always employed such times 
 in diligent observation of natural phenomena, and can 
 say with truth that Turner's Snow-storm has always 
 interested and never offended me ; and that although it 
 is not possible to imitate such phenomena as a Dutch 
 painter would imitate a bucket of water, still, if not 
 imitated, they are fairly and intelligently interpreted in 
 the picture, however absurd it may appear to those who 
 have no experience of the fury of nature or the difficulty 
 of art. It may be answered that a painter has no right 
 to attempt such impossible subjects ; but who are we, to 
 define and limit his right to paint ? Effects which can- 
 not be imitated may still, as in this instance, be inter- 
 preted ; and a little knowledge, a little indulgence of 
 goodwill on our part, a little help from our own memory 
 and imagination, will complete what the artist of neces- 
 sity left imperfect, and make us feel with him the grisly 
 jiffildness of grim winter on the sea. 
 
 Another important sea picture of Turner's latter years 
 was the Slave-Skip, exhibited in 1840, with the following 
 title in the Academy Catalogue : 
 
 ' Slavers throwing overboard tlie Dead and Dying. 
 Typhoon coming on. 
 
 ' Aloft all hands, strike the topmasts and belay ; 
 Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edge clouds 
 Declare the Typhoon's coming. 
 Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard 
 The dead and dying — ne'er heed their chains. 
 Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope ! 
 Where is thy market now ? ' — MS. Fallacies of Hope. 
 
Tlie Slave-ship. 289 
 
 This picture became the property of Mr. Ruskin, who 
 wrote a fine description of the sea as Turner here repre- 
 sented it, and referred to the picture eleven times in 
 ' Modern Painters.' He afterwards sold it, and it went 
 to America. After being exhibited in New York in 
 1876, where it 'failed to make the impression expected,'* 
 it went to Boston, where it created a great sensation 
 and stirred up an eager and vehement controversy. A 
 Boston correspondent was so kind as to send me some 
 of the long letters published during this period of active 
 hostilities, which proved that our American cousins can 
 take a very lively interest in artistic matters. The fol- 
 lowing opinion, expressed by an intelligent ind accom- 
 plished American artist, Mr. George Inness, is interesting 
 for its frankness : 
 
 ' Turner's Slave-Ship is the most infernal piece of 
 clap-trap ever painted. There is nothing in it. It 
 has as much to do with human affections and thought 
 as a ghost. It is not even a fine bouquet of colour. The 
 colour is harsh, disagreeable, and discordant.' 
 
 This is severe, and I think its severity is partly due to 
 reaction against Mr. Ruskin's eloquent praises. On the 
 other hand, I have observed that some Americans seem 
 to think it a sort of duty to admire Turner, and to be- 
 come enthusiastic about even his least important works. 
 May I venture to observe, both to American and English 
 readers, that nobody is under any obligation to admire 
 either the late or the early works of Turner, that they 
 
 * This phrase is quoted from ' Harper's New Monthly Magazine.' 
 
 19 
 
290 TJte Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 are as much open to criticism as those of any other 
 artist, and that the best way to judge them fairly is to 
 look at them as if they had never been either praised or 
 censured. The warm controversy at Boston about the 
 Slave- Ship was caused by a feeling of rebellion in some 
 minds, too independent to accept dictation from an 
 English critic, whilst others defended the picture as the 
 work of a man of genius who had been roughly treated 
 by the press. An antagonism of this description is good 
 for the fame of an artist, because it makes everybody 
 talk about him, but truth disengages itself only when the 
 noise has ceased and the smoke of the battle has passed 
 away. It is not of the least use to argue about colour. 
 From Mr. Ruskin the colour of the Slave-Skip calls forth 
 no harsher criticism than that he thinks ' the two blue 
 and white stripes on the drifting flag of the Slave-Ship 
 in the least degree too purely cold,' and he elsewhere ex- 
 pressly approves of its strongest passages. It is one of 
 those compositions in which Turner used the most bril- 
 liant of all his pigments. A lurid splendour was his pur- 
 pose, and he hesitated at nothing for its attainment. It 
 is hardly possible for any painter to deal with vermilion 
 and lemon-yellow, in any quantity, without falling into 
 some degree of crudity. If you compare even the 
 Tein^raire with the rich deep harmonies of Titian and 
 Giorgione, you will feel it to be relatively crude. But 
 are fiery sunsets never to be painted ? 
 ...--Form may be argued about more positively. The 
 wave forms in the Slaver are original, but they are, I be- 
 lieve, carefully observed. The comparatively flat or 
 simply swelling space between the ridges of broken sea I 
 
Latter Years of Turner. 291 
 
 have often seen in nature, and the sudden leaping of the 
 spray is no doubt also a reminiscence. The introduc- 
 tion of the sharks, manacles, and human hand and leg, 
 was artistically awkward to manage, and is so horrible 
 that the mind revolts from these details. The thorough- 
 ness of study in the sky may be judged of by the rain- 
 cloud engraved from it by Mr. Armytage, under the title 
 Tfte Locks of Typhon* Our sense of the delicacy of this 
 piece of work may be heightened by the exquisiteness of 
 the engraver's performance, but the painter must have 
 worked delicately also. 
 
 The personal history of Turner during the latter years 
 of his life is almost entirely devoid of interest. He lived 
 exclusively for his art, unless we except his friendships ; 
 but even these, though warm, were not the occupation 
 of every day, like his painting. He seems to have been 
 glad to meet his friends occasionally, but not to have 
 been dependent upon social intercourse as a daily neces- 
 sity. The loss of Chantrey was a bitter grief to Turner. 
 He had a fraternal and playful affection for 'that fat 
 fellow' as he called him, and the sculptor's sudden death in 
 November, 1841, left a great void in Turner's existence. It 
 is said that when Chantrey lay dead his friend called' to 
 pay him a last visit, and finding Jones the Academician 
 (whom he also loved) in the chamber of death, wrung 
 his hand in silence and marched out of the house. The 
 shock occasioned by this event probably did Turner 
 harm, by putting him into low spirits, and predisposing 
 him to morbid influences. He was very ill in the spring 
 
 * Published in the fourth volume of ' Modem Painters.' 
 
 19 — 2 
 
292 TJie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 of 1842, and was shaken by his illness, and had after- 
 wards to live by rule. 
 
 The death of Wilkie had evidently impressed him 
 also, for in 1842 he exhibited a picture, entitled Peace — 
 Burial at Sea, now in the National Collection, to com- 
 memorate Wilkie's funeral, which had taken place in 
 June, 1 841, off Gibraltar, but at a distance from the 
 shore. This picture was etched for the Portfolio by 
 M. Brunet-Debaines.* It is square in shape, but in an 
 octagon frame. Mr. Wornum tells an anecdote about 
 Stanfield, who visited Turner's studio whilst the picture 
 was on the easel, and rather complained about the black- 
 ness of the sails ; to which the painter answered, ' If 
 there were anything to be had in nature blacker than that 
 I'd use it.' There can be no doubt of the substantial truth 
 of the anecdote, but I remember (and made a note of it 
 at the time) that Mr. Leslie told it me, with a slight 
 difference, in Turner's Gallery in Queen Anne Street. 
 He said that Stanfield's criticism was made in the 
 Academy on a varnishing-day. ' You're painting the 
 sails very black,' said Stanfield, and Turner answered, 
 ' If I could find anything blacker than black I'd use it.' 
 My impression is that this little colloquy was heard by 
 Mr. Leslie himself. He was much impressed by Turner's 
 remark, as indicative of his sorrow for Wilkie, and his 
 determination to put the picture as much as possible in 
 mourning. 
 
 In the same year (1842) Turner exhibited his Napo- 
 leon at St. Helena under the title, War — t/te Exile and 
 
 * This etching was published in that periodical for February, 1874. 
 
Pictures of 1842. 293 
 
 t/te Rock Limpet. Napoleon is contemplating a limpet 
 and supposed to be pronouncing the following lines from 
 the ' Fallacies of Hope :' 
 
 ' Ah ! thy tent-formed shell is like 
 A soldier's mighty bivouac, alone 
 Amidst a sea of blood .... 
 . . . but you can join your comrades.' 
 
 This suggested to Punch ' The Duke of Wellington 
 and the Shrimp (Seringapatam — Early Morning),' with 
 the supposed quotation : 
 
 • And can it be, thou hideous imp 
 That life is, ah ! how brief, and glory but a shrimp !' 
 
 During these latter years of Turner's career as a 
 painter, the wits amused themselves rather freely at his 
 expense. It is said that he was acutely sensitive to these 
 attacks, which is to be regretted, but I do not think the 
 writers in Punch deserve any serious blame for the way 
 in which it pleased them to exercise their talents. They 
 laughed at Turner, it is true, but they laughed good- 
 humouredly, and without malice. It is quite undeniable 
 that there is a ludicrous side to some aspects of Turner's 
 art, if you choose to see it ; and although no critic with 
 good feeling would laugh at an old painter's work if he 
 knew that the jokes really wounded him, ridicule is 
 generally a permissible weapon in art-criticism. Though 
 Turner could joke with his friends, he resembled Milton 
 in his lack of that keen sense of the ridiculous which 
 saves from so many errors. It is hard to say why 
 Napoleon, looking at a rock-limpet, should make us 
 laugh, but there is a difificulty about taking Turner's 
 picture seriously. Another odd instance of the mistakes 
 
294 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 he sometimes made in dealing with the outer world was 
 the picture of the Bavarian Waihalla, and what he did 
 with it. The King of Bavaria had erected a building by 
 the Danube, in the Doric style of architecture, to contain 
 busts of eminent Germans. This temple of fame was 
 opened in 1842, and Turner seems to have been im- 
 pressed by what seemed to him King Ludwig's happy 
 idea, so, by way of rewarding that sovereign, he painted 
 a picture of the scene, packed it up in a case, and sent it 
 to His Majesty as a free gift. The King, on receiving 
 the picture, did not at all know what to make of it, and 
 probably thought the painter was mad, or making game 
 of him, so he ungratefully ordered it to be packed up 
 again immediately, and sent back to the artist. Turner 
 was never patronised by royalty, and this was the only 
 occasion on which he himself attempted to patronise 
 royalty. I need hardly observe that nobody with any 
 talent for guessing the probable condition of another 
 man's mind would have committed such a mistake as 
 that. Considering what an outrage against topography 
 and local truth the picture is, the King of Bavaria was 
 the very last sovereign in the world to whom it could 
 prudently be offered. It was inevitable that he should 
 judge the work by its resemblance to a place which he 
 knew intimately, and which the painter had never seen. 
 As for the artistic charms of the Turnerian imagination, 
 nobody but the initiated could be expected to appreciate 
 them. This is but one instance the more of the great 
 truth that imaginative artists ought not to deal with 
 places that are too real. 
 
 The titles of Turner's later pictures are sometimes in 
 
Tendency to tlie Formless. 295 
 
 themselves a clear indication of the direction of his 
 artistic thinking. For example, in the year when he 
 exhibited the Walhalla there were two other pictures by 
 him, entitled Shade and Darkness and Light and Colour. 
 It is evident from these titles that the painter's attention 
 was much more occupied by light and shade and colour 
 than by the subjects of the pictures. This is what I 
 have already remarked elsewhere with reference to the 
 condition of Turner's mind in its latter years. It certainly 
 lost its hold of substance, of objects, but it retained its 
 hold of the artistic qualities of nature. It no longer 
 valued form — -or perhaps I ought to say that it was no 
 longer capable of dealing with natural form — but colour 
 and light it valued and appreciated still.* 
 
 The tendency to paint the formless was manifested in 
 another of the later pictures, Rain, Steam, and Speed — 
 the Great Western Railway. The title sufficiently in- 
 dicates the intention of the artist, which was evidently to 
 give the idea of ' Rain, Steam, and Speed,' much more 
 than the portrait of a steam-engine or a view of the 
 Great Western Railway. A painter who tries, to express 
 mental conceptions instead of copying matter always 
 expose himself to harsh treatment from a large class of 
 critics, whose conception of art is realisation, and who 
 have no indulgence for the art which does not realise. 
 
 * The full titles of the pictures mentioned in the above paragraph were. 
 Shade and Darkness — The £vemng of the Deluge, and, Light and Colour 
 (Goethe's theory) — The Morning after the Deluge — Moses "writing tlie Book of 
 Genesis. Turner's exegesis seems to be at fault here, as Moses did not 
 write the Book of Genesis on the morning after the Deluge. The titles of 
 these pictures were accompanied by quotations from the unpublished ' Fal- 
 lacies of Hope.' 
 
296 TJw Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Here is a specimen of this kind of criticism from an 
 American book with reference to this very picture : 
 
 'The bridges are mere ghosts of substance. Both 
 earth and water are equally destitute of quality. The 
 sky is far more solid than the stonework. It has no 
 luminosity whatever, but is actually falling to pieces 
 from its own weight of paint. Even the locomotive, 
 which should have the appearance of metal at least, is a 
 mere phantom. The ironwork, which naturally suggests 
 strength and opacity, is made of a thin glazing of black. 
 In short, the artist has reversed the first principles of 
 painting, leaving solids transparent, and making liquids- 
 solid, and pitching all upon so high a key as to offend 
 the eye.' 
 
 I do not for a moment doubt the perfect honesty of 
 this criticism, and it would be good criticism if it were 
 true that the purpose of art is the imitation of nature. The 
 plain truth is, that such things as locomotives and railways 
 are absolutely inadmissible in painting of a high order 
 except on condition of being sketched with what looks 
 like an appearance of carelessness or ignorance. Turner's 
 picture may offend some people by its scorn of material 
 truth, but it would have offended every real judge of art 
 far more if it had condescended to a slavish imitation of^ 
 rails and a locomotive. I do not make this assertion as 
 a mere guess or supposition. The experiment has been 
 tried — I have seen it tried — by an English painter of 
 eminence, who is now a Royal Academician. At a 
 time when English art was looking out in various 
 directions for new and unhackneyed material, this painter 
 thought he would try what could be made of the rail- 
 
Dregs of Life. 297 
 
 ways, and very wisely, instead of trusting to the opinion 
 of others, he put the question practically, by painting a 
 locomotive from nature with as much care as if it had 
 been a horse. The result was an interesting piece of 
 handicraft, for a locomotive is a most difficult thing to 
 paint : but the experiment settled the question for me ; 
 it convinced me that the hard materialism of mechanical 
 things, by its incompatibility with sentiment, is unsuitable 
 for fine art, and of the two steam-engines I infinitely 
 prefer Turner's. I remember another case in point. 
 Daubigny the landscape-painter was a very clever etcher, 
 and yet, in one of his plates in the ' Voyagfe en Bateau,' 
 he represented a railway train with the most careless 
 inaccuracy. I can only say that his drawing was good 
 enough for such material ; it gave a notion of the train's- 
 length and speed, and that was about enough. 
 
 It is unnecessary to say anything of the very latest of 
 Turner's pictures. All those exhibited after 1845 belong^ 
 not merely to a period of decline, but to a state of senile 
 decrepitude. It is, therefore, both a waste of time and 
 an offence against decency to criticise them with the 
 frankness which we rightly use in speaking of work 
 done in the maturity of the human faculties ; and as 
 criticism which is not frank can serve no useful 
 purpose, it is better to pass by these 'dregs of life 
 and lees of man' in melancholy and respectful silence. 
 The titles of the very latest pictures, those exhibited 
 in 1850, have a certain interest from their fidelity ta 
 classic subjects of the old-fashioned kind, that belonged 
 to the landscape art which preceded Turner, and oa 
 which his own was founded. We find him still, in 1850, 
 
298 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 thinking about ^neas, and Dido, and Mercury, still 
 quoting verses from the ' Fallacies of Hope,' in which old 
 Troy is mentioned. One of the subjects is Mercury sent 
 to admonish yEneas ; another, ^neas relating his Story to 
 Dido ; and a third, Tlie Departure of the Trojan Fleet. It 
 is remarkable, too, that with a melancholy dwelling on 
 death natural to one who felt his strength ebbing away 
 from him. Turner should have exhibited in that last year 
 a picture entitled Tlie Visit to the Tomb. 
 
 During the latter years of Turner's life, the only event 
 which broke the monotony of his daily work appears to 
 have been an excursion on the Continent (probably in 
 1843), during which he made his last sketches of a place 
 very dear to him, the glorious lake of Lucerne. I can 
 only repeat, with reference to this excursion, what has 
 already been said about others ; namely, that the absence 
 of correspondence and diaries, and the solitude of the 
 traveller, leave us without material for any narrative. 
 Turner recorded himself in his art, but in his art only, and 
 the sketches of a landscape-painter can preserve little 
 trace of the vicissitudes of his life. It would be simply a 
 waste of space to speculate on travels of which so little is 
 known to us, but we may better understand the peculiar 
 nature of Turner's life on the Continent by a contrast. 
 Think of Byron and Shelley in Switzerland and Italy, 
 always heightening their enjoyment of what they saw by 
 ■conversations with people who could understand them, 
 living with nature and humanity at the same time, 
 writing also their impressions in abundant letters ad- 
 dressed to friends at a distance ; and then think of Turner, 
 old and solitary, going silently from lake to lake, from 
 
Disabled. 299 
 
 city to city, ignorant of the languages of the countries in 
 which he sojourned, shunning his own countrymen when 
 he met them, writing hardly ever, and then so curtly 
 that his letters express no thoughts : and yet he, too, was 
 a poet ; a silent brother of those who wrote ' Childe 
 Harold,' and ' Endymion,' and ' Alastor.' 
 
 One of the pictures of his old age, exhibited in 1844, 
 under the title, Fishing Boats bringing a Disabled Ship 
 hito Port Ruysdael, seems to foreshadow, like the Tknd- 
 raire, that approaching condition of helplessness which 
 Turner looked forward to with a sad foreboding. The 
 evening of his life had begun, and was rapidly deepening 
 towards the night. He kept up, however, pretty well 
 until the year 185 1, when he ceased to exhibit, and no 
 longer attended the meetings of the Royal Academicians, 
 which had formerly been greatly valued by him as an 
 opportunity for the kind of social intercourse most con- 
 genial to his feelings. David Roberts wrote to him, and 
 begged to be allowed to see him, but got no answer to 
 his letter during the space of a fortnight, after which 
 Turner himself called on Roberts at his studio, and pro- 
 mised to call again whenever he came to town.' The fol- 
 lowing is the account of the interview given by David 
 Roberts himself: 
 
 ' I tried to cheer him up, but he laid his hand upon his 
 heart and replied, " No, no ; there is something here 
 which is all wrong." As he stood by the table in my 
 painting-room, I could not help looking attentively at 
 him, peering in his face, for the small eye was brilliant 
 as that of a child, and unlike the glazed and " lack-lustre 
 eye " of age. This was my last look. The rest is soon 
 told. None of his friends had seen him for months ; 
 
300 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 indeed I believe I was the last, together with his friend 
 George Jones, who I afterwards learned had that day 
 also called upon him.' 
 
 A much stranger thing than Turner's absence from the 
 meetings of the Academicians was his absence from his 
 own home. His old housekeeper, Mrs. Danby, was in 
 painful anxiety about the place of his retreat, and dis- 
 covered it by accident. ' One day,' says Mr. Thornbury, 
 ' as she was brushing an old coat of Turner's, in turning 
 out a pocket, she found and pounced on a letter directed . 
 to him, and written by a friend who lived at Chelsea. 
 Mrs. Danby, it appears, came to the conclusion that Turner 
 himself was probably at Chelsea, and went there to seek 
 for him, in company with another infirm old woman. 
 From inquiries in a place by the river-side, where ginger- 
 beer was sold, they came to the conclusion that Turner 
 was living in a certain small house close by, and informed 
 a Mr. Harper whom she and Turner knew. He went to 
 the place and found the painter sinking. This was on 
 the i8th of December, 1851, and on the following day 
 Turner died. 
 
 It is said that he died with the sun of the winter morn- 
 ing shining upon his face. ' The attendant drew up the 
 window-blind, and the morning sun shone on the dying 
 artist.' We naturally seek for some poetic circumstance 
 to accompany the death of a poet, but this ray of morn- 
 ing sunlight is all we have in Turner's case. The history 
 of his last days has the kind of interest which is sought 
 after by novelists rather than that which inspires the 
 most touching verses of the poets. It is a subject for 
 Dickens rather than for the mournful singer of Adonais. 
 
Death. 301 
 
 Turner, with that love of secrecy which had always 
 been one of his characteristics, and which in later years 
 had become a passion, had gone to hide himself in some 
 corner of London, where not one of his friends might 
 find him. He had discovered a small house at Chelsea 
 kept by a Mrs. Booth, and had settled there as a lodger, 
 calling himself Mr. Booth, and in the neighbourhood he 
 was known as ' Admiral Booth,' for the people really 
 believed him to be an impoverished old naval officer. 
 All this is excellent material of the kind that Dickens 
 made use of The rich old man, the famous painter, 
 leaves a home where he could procure for himself all the 
 comforts or luxuries he cared for ; quits the society of his 
 fellows, where his wealth and fame were acknowledged 
 by every one ; hides his wealth under an appearance of 
 decent poverty ; conceals his celebrity under an unknown 
 name ; abandons even the affection of those who had 
 some feelings of attachment towards him, his old house- 
 keeper, the group of his old comrades and friends, and 
 goes to await his end in a hired lodging, to be tended by 
 a woman who was a recent acquaintance, and in whose 
 eyes his principal, perhaps his only merit, was his ability 
 to pay his expenses. What is the use of all the things 
 for which men weary their brains with toil if towards the 
 close of life they are to be cast aside as vanities ? What 
 is the good of troubling ourselves about wealth, and 
 reputation, and friendship, if a day is to come when 
 we shall prefer obscurity to fame, solitude to society, 
 and simplicity to splendour ? 
 
 ' Seeing there be many things that increase vanity, 
 what is man the better ?' 
 
302 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 ' For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, 
 all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a 
 shadow ?' 
 
 The temporary obscurity of the dying man was suc- 
 ceeded by a full glare of publicity for the dead. He was 
 buried in St. Paul's Cathedral with some considerable 
 pomp and ceremony. Many famous painters and men 
 celebrated in other departments of the fine arts, some who 
 loved art and encouraged it, and others who had felt for the 
 great painter some personal affection with which the fine 
 arts had no concern, followed him to his last resting- 
 place. The hearse was preceded to the Cathedral by a 
 long procession of mourning-coaches and private car- 
 riages. When the coffin was taken into the building the 
 choristers chanted the Dead March in ' Saul,' and the 
 service was read by Dean Milman. It appears from the 
 contemporary account in the Times that a considerable 
 crowd was attracted outside by the ceremonial, and about 
 five hundred persons were present in the aisles and the 
 chapel. 
 
 It can matter little where the stiffened hand and the 
 sightless eyes of a dead landscape-painter may rest from 
 their pleasure and their toil. For some, who have loved 
 sylvan nature truly, it may be appropriate that the 
 ' shadows of the silver birk,' or of some other beautiful 
 or noble forest tree of their native land, should ' sweep 
 the green that folds their grave ;' that light and shadow 
 should 'ever wander' over it, that rain should make 
 music in the tree, and the woodbine and eglatere drip 
 their dews, and the brooding bee chaunt sweeter tones 
 
Funeral at St. Paul's. 303 
 
 than calumny. There are many humble nature-loving 
 landscape-painters for whom such a grave would be most 
 fitting ; others should rest beneath the immemorial oaks 
 of Fontainebleau, or in the recesses 
 
 ' Of the deep forest glades of Broceliande, 
 Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps, 
 Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps.' 
 
 For Constable we feel that Hampstead Churchyard was 
 suitable, as he loved the place, but that a quiet church- 
 yard in his own Suffolk would have been more suitable 
 still. Gainsborough sleeps well in the little green at 
 Kew, Millet and Rousseau in a little village cemetery 
 nearest to their own humble Barbizon. Why should not 
 Turner have been laid in some place where Nature is 
 beautiful, and where he had studied lovingly — in that 
 valley of the Wharfe, for instance, which he could never 
 revisit without tears ? The answer to such suggestions 
 is that he lies in the place chosen by himself, the place 
 most suitable to his character, and in reality also to his 
 preferences and pursuits. Of all painters known to us he 
 was, if not the most ambitious, certainly the one whose 
 ambition was the least concealed. To lie under the 
 great Cathedral, by the side of Reynolds, gratified his 
 ambition more than to take his rest in the prettiest church- 
 yard in Yorkshire. Again, he was only occasionally, and 
 as it were by chance, a rustic painter. London was his 
 birth-place, the dome of St. Paul's had been a familiar 
 object to him from his infancy, and he had drawn or 
 painted cities from his earliest youth. Even the very 
 architecture of St. Paul's is in harmony with the painter's 
 
304 TJte Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 classical taste and associations. He drew Gothic archi- 
 tecture when he had to deal with it as a matter of busi- 
 ness in a view of some English or French city, but 
 whenever he had to invent architecture for one of his 
 composed pictures it was invariably classical. 
 
 It is characteristic of Turner's care for his own fame 
 that he left by will a thousand pounds for a monument 
 to himself in St. Paul's. This monument has taken the 
 form of a statue by MacDowell, and it is therefore often 
 laelieved that Turner decreed a statue to himself. There 
 is, however, a shade of distinction between the general 
 preoccupation about a monument and the definite order- 
 ing of a statue, and it is probable that Turner, who had 
 always refused to allow his brother-artists to take his 
 portrait, did not foresee that a statue would be the con- 
 sequence of his bequest. I may observe, too, that the 
 bequest itself implies a curious mixture of modesty and 
 its opposite. Turner was always modest enough to feel 
 strong doubts about the care which others would have 
 for his posthumous fame. He seems to have thought, 
 ^ If I don't take care of my fame myself, by doing all I 
 can to fortify it, nobody else will do so, and it is likely 
 to be extinguished.' This is rather a modest sentiment; 
 but then, on the other hand, it was accompanied by this 
 other feeling about himself, — ' I am great enough to 
 deserve to be remembered, and will take good care that 
 people shall remember me whether they will or not.' He 
 had not the slightest trace of that truest pride, that best 
 dignity which scorns the honour that is not freely given. 
 He clung to fame as all that would remain to him or of 
 him after death, and resolved so to bequeath his posses- 
 
Turner's Care for His ozvii Fame. 305 
 
 sions in pictures and money that they might perpetuate 
 his memory amongst men. Even the charitable project 
 in aid of decayed artists, by which the bulk of his fortune 
 was to give comfort in their old age to his brethren who 
 had been less prosperous than himself — even this charit- 
 able project, which in itself deserves nothing but grati- 
 tude and honour, was tarnished by the donor's perpetual 
 anxiety about the preservation of his name. He ex- 
 pressly stipulated in his will that the charity was to be 
 called ' Turner's Gift,' as if in needless apprehension that 
 the trustees might forget to mention him in connection 
 with it. He was equally careful to stipulate that the 
 pictures he bequeathed to the nation were to be exhibited 
 in rooms of their own, and that these rooms were to be 
 called ' Turner's Gallery.' Again, instead of simply 
 leaving money for a medal to be given for the best land- 
 scape exhibited at the Academy every two or three 
 years, leaving the title of the medal to be fixed by the 
 Academicians, he takes care to settle beforehand that 
 the medal shall be called ' Turner's Medal.' Observe, 
 too, the anxiety to ensure perpetuity to the gifts which 
 bear his name. They were not donations to be once 
 made and then forgotten. The National Gallery is the 
 most permanent exhibition in the country. Unless it is 
 burnt or sacked by Communards of a possible demo- 
 cratic future it will last with the civilisation of England. 
 ' Turner's Gallery ' will thus be visited by unnumbered 
 generations. Again, the project of the charitable gift 
 v/as to endure as long as there were any artists to be 
 helped in their old age. Lastly, the medal is to be given 
 as long as landscapes are exhibited at the Academy. 
 
 20 
 
3o6 TJie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Who does not see that the purpose of the triple scheme, 
 like that of the monument in St. Paul's, is to perpetuate 
 the name of Turner ? 
 
 But there is another clause in the will, of which the 
 intention is equally plain, whilst the conception is more 
 audacious and original. After bequeathing to the 
 Trustees of the National Gallery the two pictures. Dido 
 building Carthage, and the picture formerly in the Tabley 
 Collection, the testator goes on to impose a certain con- 
 dition about the hanging of these works which is, I be- 
 lieve, without a parallel in the history of Art. ' I direct 
 that the said pictures or paintings shall be hung, kept, 
 and placed, that is to say, always between the two pic- 
 tures painted by Claude, the Seaport and MiW This 
 was an error of judgment in many ways. To begin with, 
 it is always a mistake to suppose that two great artists 
 can be compared with anything like a satisfactory 
 critical result, for the simple reason that originality is an 
 essential part of greatness, and that two originalities are 
 not proper subjects of comparison. You may compare a 
 strawberry with another strawberry very reasonably, or 
 a peach with another peach, and give a prize to the one 
 that had the finer flavour, with little misgiving as to the 
 justice of your decision ; but the comparison of peach 
 with strawberry would inevitably be an unsatisfactory 
 exercise of criticism. Amongst painters you might well 
 compare two imitators of one artist, and decide which 
 imitator had mimicked the master most closely. For 
 example, if Turner and Calcott had set themselves the 
 one object of imitating Claude, it would be easy to 
 decide which of the two Englishmen had produced the 
 
Rivalry witli Claude. 307 
 
 cXevQT&x pastiche, and in such a case it would be a reason- 
 able proceeding to hang a Turner and a Calcott on each 
 side of a Claude which had been their model. Turner 
 learned a great deal, no doubt, from Claude, and to 
 some extent he imitated him in his early manhood, 
 whilst he remembered him through life ; the influence of 
 Claude being still quite distinctly visible even in such 
 late works as Bay of BaicB and the Childe Harold. But 
 the essential greatness of Turner lies precisely in what 
 is outside of Claude's range, and cannot be compared 
 with him. It is like comparing Byron with Pope. There 
 zxe parts of Byron's works which may be compared with 
 Pope, and the influence of Pope is visible in the clear, 
 strong language that Byron always preferred ; but you 
 cannot really compare the two men when they are not 
 on common ground. Turner's intention may, however, 
 have been rather to invite comparison between particular 
 work than to suggest a general comparison between the 
 two artists. In that case the error of judgment is still 
 more palpable. Claude's field was a narrow one. 
 Though he lived long, and covered many canvases, he 
 seems to have had but few artistic ideas, and the very 
 paucity of these enabled him to realise them with all the 
 greater perfection. Turner was vast in range and very 
 unequal ; Claude, narrow in range, but remarkably 
 regular in the degree of his technical success. Now, what 
 Turner did was this : he, a man of wide range, attempted 
 to contend with a man of narrow range, on one of the 
 narrow man's own private specialities. He invited a com- 
 parison between his seaport with classical architecture 
 called Dido building Carthage, and Claude's seaport with 
 
 20 — 2 
 
3o8 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 classical architecture, known as the Embarkation of tJie 
 Queen of Sheba.- The mistake of inviting such a com- 
 parison is visible almost at the first glance. The Claude 
 is light, fresh, full of atmosphere, and that lively, inspirit- 
 ing feeling which takes possession of us when a pleasant 
 breeze and transparent waves invite us to sail out upon 
 the sea ; the Turner is heavy, and though, in a certain 
 sense, imposing and magnificent, is entirely wanting in 
 freshness. As to the Tabley picture {TIte Sun Rising in 
 Mist), and Claude's Mill {The Marriage of Isaac and 
 Rebecca), the critic is embarrassed by the impossibility of 
 comparing two absolutely dissimilar works. The Turner 
 is a northern seascape, seen from the shore, near a jetty ; 
 British all through, from the men-of-war in the distance 
 to the fishermen on the sand ; the very atmosphere, 
 which the sun penetrates with difficulty, being foggy and 
 British also : the Claude (notwithstanding Isaac and 
 Rebecca) is in reality an extensive Italian landscape, in 
 clear daylight, with massive and graceful groups of trees. 
 There is not a tree in the Turner, there is not a sail in 
 the Claude. Turner has painted fog, and Claude a clear 
 atmosphere. The sun is in Turner's picture, and it is out 
 of Claude's. So we have to compare sails with trees, and 
 the sea with an inland landscape, and the sun with a 
 summer cloud, and a mill with a man-of-war. May the 
 critics of future generations get much benefit by these 
 comparisons ! 
 
 There is another aspect of this bequest which forces 
 itself upon our attention — its want of modesty. The 
 rank of a painter is not determined by his merit but by 
 his fame, whatever may determine that. The fame of 
 
Rvvaliy with Claude. 309 
 
 Claude was, and is, prodigious. It is not enough to say- 
 that his fame in landscape is equal to that of Raphael in 
 figure-painting, because Raphael has great rivals in his 
 department of art ; and Claude, as a painter of the 
 beauty and amenity of .landscape, had a celebrity which 
 until quite recently was considered to be absolutely 
 above all possibility of rivalry, and which is still so con- 
 sidered by nearly all the connoisseurs of continental 
 Europe. The reader will please to observe that I am 
 speaking, not of merit, which is a questionable and 
 doubtful thing, but of fame, which is an ascertainable 
 thing. For two centuries Claude's position has been 
 considered unquestionable ; his name has been known to 
 every human being who tried to sketch a landscape, 
 however humbly, as that of the supreme sovereign of the 
 art ; it has passed into all literatures, so that every 
 writer who spoke of landscape beauty thought of him as 
 he thought of Salvator in connection with landscape sub- 
 limity. The fame of Claude is, indeed, so closely asso- 
 ciated with landscape throughout Europe, that if. you 
 know anything whatever about art, if you have visited a 
 gallery of any importance, or read the shortest and most 
 meagre history of painting, you are sure to have heard 
 of him as you are sure to have heard of Raphael. Now 
 suppose for one moment that some contemporary French- 
 man, some very able and clever man, were to leave two 
 figure-pictures to the Louvre on condition that they 
 should be hung between two Raphaels, what would all 
 Europe say ? Simply that the Frenchman was mad. 
 And just so M. Viardot, in perfect good faith, takes 
 Turner's bequest as clear evidence of madness. 
 
3IO The Life of J. M. W. Tiirner. 
 
 ' One is still more surprised on seeing this historical 
 landscape of Turner placed between the two finest works 
 of the Lorrainer, the Mill and the Queen of Sheba ; and 
 our surprise redoubles when we learn that the picture is 
 so placed by the order of Turner himself, who required 
 this position for his pictures as the express condition of 
 their entrance into the National Gallery. I will not seek 
 any other proof of the state of insanity in which he 
 ended his life. Everybody knows that pride is the most 
 common cause of madness.' 
 
 This is what comes of measuring yourself with a great 
 established celebrity ; your presumption is considered 
 evidence of insanity. It is certainly clear evidence of a 
 mental condition in which self-admiration had blinded 
 its victim to the true proportions of things. Claude had 
 an incomparably magnificent European position ; Turner 
 nothing but a rising celebrity in his own country. Even 
 at the present day Turner's name has little weight on 
 the Continent, where he is generally considered a more 
 or less successful imitator of the old masters, who 
 became original only when he lost his reason. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Celebration by Mr. Ruskin. — Ruskin's 'Modern Painters.' — Mr. Ruskin's 
 literary powers. — Mr. Ruskin and the English public. — Mr. Ruskin not 
 the discoverer of Turner. — Criticism and art in words.' — The love of effect. 
 — Circumstances of Turner's death. — Mr. Ruskin's estimate of Turner. — 
 Turner and Pre-Raphaelitism. — The criterion of truth.— Distinction be- 
 tween nature and art. — Turner's position in art. — Mystery. — Turner's 
 colour. — Turner's imagination. — Taste. — Resume. — Danger of Turner- 
 Worship. — Past and future of landscape painting. 
 
 I HAVE attempted to mark the distinction between ar- 
 tistic rank, which is simply fame, and merit, which 
 depends upon faculty and labour. I reserve for a later 
 page an attempt to estimate the total value of Turner's 
 work. It has been considered part by part, as he pro- 
 duced it, in the course of this biography. We have still 
 to consider broadly what he performed, and what he left 
 undone. 
 
 Before we come to that I have to repair an omission 
 which was made purposely, in order not to interrupt the 
 course of the narrative. I have observed on several 
 occasions, that in most things which related to his art 
 Turner was one of the most fortunate of men. GooU 
 luck attended him — not always as a man, but almost 
 invariably as an artist — from his earliest youth to the 
 latest decade of his life. His father encouraged instead 
 
312 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 of thwarting his genius in boyhood. The Exhibition 
 Rooms of the Royal Academy were op^n to him from 
 the age of fifteen ; at the age of twenty-five he was made 
 an Associate, and at twenty-seven a Royal Academician. 
 His fame was spread abroad by the most accomplished 
 group of engravers who ever interpreted a landscape- 
 painter. At a very early age he could earn enough to 
 permit him to devote half his time to art for art's sake, 
 in complete independence of the buyer, and before 
 middle life he was independent, if he chose, from January 
 to December. Even the misfortunes which happened to 
 the man were generally favourable to the development 
 of the artist. The failure of his marriage project drove 
 him to a laborious solitude, and left him that liberty of 
 movement which enabled him to ransack Europe for the 
 subjects most favourable to his genius and the advance- 
 ment of his fame. With all his success there was the 
 drawback that a frivolous public and a periodical press, 
 but little instructed in matters connected with the fine 
 arts, permitted themselves to make fun of his originalities. 
 Here, again, the annoyance was followed by a splendid 
 compensation. The sneers of a portion of the public, 
 and the sarcasms of the newspapers, brought a champion 
 into the field who worshipped Turner with a devotion 
 such as no other artist ever excited in his admirers, and 
 who expressed his feelings with an energy and an 
 ability far surpassing the powers of all previous writers 
 upon Art. 
 
 Remember old Montaigne's definition of fame. 'There 
 is the name and the thing : the name is a voice which 
 denotes and signifies the thing ; the name is no part of 
 
Celebration by Mr. Ricskin. 3I3 
 
 the thing, or of the substance ; 'tis a foreign piece joined 
 to the thing, and outside of it' 
 
 The thing in the case of an artist is the mass of his 
 actual production, the voice which denotes and signifies 
 the thing is the voice of the tallcers and writers about 
 Art. 
 
 Every artist knows that there are qualities in his work 
 which would become famous, if only ' the voice' would 
 be good enough to ' denote and signify the thing.' The 
 work is one thing, the fame another, as Montaigne says, 
 and outside of it. ' The name is no part of the thing, or 
 of the substance.' It follows that, after having made the 
 thing, the artistic product, the paintings, the artist has 
 done his part, and has to wait patiently for the ' voice' 
 to ' denote and signify the thing' to the world at large. 
 Some, like Franz Hals, have had to wait two hundred 
 years before the voice spoke audibly ; even the Great 
 Captain and King, William III., remained more than a 
 hundred and forty years in his grave, before Macaulay's 
 splendid eloquence made him shine with his full lustre 
 in the immortalising pages of history. Turner found his 
 Macaulay during his own lifetime. 
 
 Mr. John Ruskin was the only son of a wealthy London 
 wine merchant, who knew Turner, and had bought some 
 of his pictures. He had been educated privately and at 
 Oxford, and his education had included some instruction 
 in practical art, under Harding and Copley Fielding, 
 This simple statement might, however, very easily convey 
 a false impression, because many amateurs have studied 
 water-colour under those masters, without acquiring any 
 very deep insight into artistic matters. Mr. Ruskin had 
 
314 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 a peculiar and very precocious talent of a practical 
 kind, consisting, not in the power of composing brilliant 
 pictures, but in the less ambitious accomplishment of 
 making very precise, delicate, and truthful studies. 
 Armed with this useful talent, and having naturally an 
 intense enjoyment of both nature and art, and the modern 
 landscape-passion in all its energy, Mr. Ruskin travelled 
 in youth and early manhood, observing everything with 
 a keen and intelligent curiosity. He soon became 
 familiar with the principal classes of scenery which 
 Turner had represented, both in Great Britain and on 
 the Continent, and at least equally familiar with the 
 works of Turner's most famous predecessors, which are 
 preserved in the galleries of Europe. The general result 
 of these comparisons and investigations may be briefly 
 expressed in a sentence. The young student and travel- 
 ler became profoundly convinced that Turner's work dis- 
 played an unprecedented fulness of knowledge, whilst 
 that of his predecessors in landscape painting was an 
 effort of at least relative ignorance and incapacity. 
 
 With this conviction, and a strong feeling of indignation 
 at the inadequate manner in which the periodicals of the 
 day treated the. genius of Turner, Mr. Ruskin, at the 
 age of twenty-three or twenty-four, determined to take 
 up the pen in defence of his favourite artist, and to write, 
 in the form of a short pamphlet, a letter to the editor of 
 a Review, about what seemed to him the ' shallow and 
 false criticisms' then current in the newspapers and 
 magazines. Before the letter to an editor had left the 
 desk of the writer, it had expanded itself into a volume, 
 and before the writer had fully accomplished his purpose, 
 
Riiskin's ' Modern Painters' 3 1 5 
 
 the book grew into a great work, in five volumes, accom- 
 panied by various auxiliaries in the shape of pamphlets, 
 lectures, and other minor works. The great work was 
 entitled ' Modern Painters,' but the author's original 
 intention had been to call it ' Turner and the Ancients,' 
 — much more appropriately, as Turner is the only modern 
 painter spoken of at any length, his English contem- 
 poraries, when spoken of at all, being dismissed in a sen- 
 tence or a paragraph, whilst the reader may seek in vain 
 for any account of modern continental art. The change 
 of title was suggested by the desire to obtain a more 
 extensive circulation. Many, it was thought, might like 
 to hear about modern painters, who cared little about 
 Turner and the ancients. 
 
 The book had really two main subjects. It was ai 
 treatise on the aspects of natural landscape, and at the 
 same time a vigorous advocacy of Turner. The first and 
 second volumes were published during the painter's life- 
 time, and probably read by him. Notwithstanding the 
 intensity of his passion for fame, the enthusiasm of his 
 young admirer seemed excessive to Turner, who con- 
 stantly tried to prevent him from writing, from a belief 
 that such excessive praise must hurt the feelings of other 
 artists. The truth is that Turner, all through the book, \ 
 appears as the giant, and other modern painters, however 
 eminent their abilities, are put by his side occasionally, 
 to let us see his superior height and bulk, when compared 
 with ordinary humanity, after which they are unceremo- 
 niously dismissed. I may add that Mr. Ruskin began by 
 publishing his first volume anonymously, not because he 
 shrank from any responsibility, but on account of the 
 
3i6 Tlie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 writer's youth, which, had it been known at first, would 
 probably have brought down upon him the contempt of 
 people who please themselves by assuming that age and 
 wisdom are identical. 
 
 Notwithstanding Turner's objection to being over- 
 praised, it was a most extraordinary piece of good for- 
 tune for him that Mr. Ruskin should have become his 
 advocate. No painter, since the world began, ever had 
 such an advocate before, and there are excellent reasons 
 for believing (I will give some of them shortly) that no 
 painter will ever have such an advocate in the future. ■ 
 
 The reader, after this rather strong expression in Mr. 
 Ruskin's favour, may perhaps conclude that in my 
 opinion he is the best critic who ever was or will be. No, 
 that is not what I mean. Mr. Ruskin shows little of the 
 critic's faculty, and is seldom in the really critical temper 
 for any length of time together ; but he is a splendid 
 artist in words, and down to the present date he is the 
 only artist in words, of any conspicuous power, who has 
 written much, and with his best force, about painting. 
 
 My reasons for believing that in the future no painter 
 will ever have such an advocate again, are founded upon 
 the natural movement (I do not say progress) of the 
 human mind. Without burning enthusiasm a Ruskin is 
 not possible, and enthusiasm itself, in that degree, is pos- 
 sible only in the first freshness of national perception 
 about art. Anything like extensive critical experience 
 kills it. It is absolutely impossible, for example, that a 
 Ruskin should arise in France, because all artistic ques- 
 tions have lost their freshness there from too much dis- 
 cussion, and for the same reason it is now becoming 
 
Mr. Ruskiiis Literary Poivers. 317 
 
 impossible that a second Ruskin should arise in London. 
 But there are other reasons why the appearance of such 
 a writer upon art could only occur at the time and in the 
 place when and where it actually did occur. The English 
 public was at that time admirably prepared by the great 
 authors of the earlier part of the century for the enjoy- 
 ment of first-rate literature, and being, at the same time, 
 with all its faults, essentially the most modest, the most 
 patient, and the most teachable public in Europe, it was 
 quite ready to accept instruction on a subject like art, 
 of which it felt that it knew much less than it did of 
 literature. Again, Mr. Ruskin appealed to the English 
 love of truth. Previous writers upon art had dwelt much 
 less on truth than on style, and on those artifices of 
 arrangement which the ordinary Englishman feels strongly 
 inclined to despise as tricks of trade, about which no one 
 but ' the artist and his ape ' need trouble himself The 
 appeal to the truth of nature would have been met at once, 
 in France, by the answer that art and nature were two 
 entirely different things, and that the artist could at any 
 time escape from the criterion of truth by claiming the 
 artistic license, by virtue of which he is authorised to 
 alter nature in compliance with the exigencies of art. 
 
 The beginning of Mr. Ruskin's advocacy of Turner 
 depended upon himself, but the continuation of it 
 depended on the public. Had the public turned a deaf 
 ear, the new teacher would have turned his attention to 
 other matters, and the first volume of ' Modern Painters ' 
 would have remained alone, a singular monument of a 
 young man's energy and courage. The public, however, 
 listened so willingly, that the first volume, originally 
 
3i8 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 published in 1843, reached its fifth edition in 185 1, and 
 the second, which first appeared in 1846, reached its 
 third edition in 1851. An audience being thus assured, 
 the writer had only to go on, and as he had ample means 
 at his disposal, with perfect freedom from commercial or 
 professional avocations, habits of steady industry, and 
 the strongest possible interest in artistic questions, he 
 made it h*s business to learn and teach what seemed to 
 him the truth about art, and especially to place the fame 
 of Turner on what he considered a sound and unshake- 
 able basis. 
 
 Nothing could have been more prudent in the begin- 
 ning of Mr. Ruskin's long battle on behalf of Turner than 
 the appeal to the English love of truth, a love which is 
 always strong in theory, though in practice it may be' 
 remarked that our countrymen often prefer fiction to 
 truth, and have even a strong tendency to the fictitious, 
 by a certain necessity of their imagination.* Mr. Ruskin's 
 first argument was of this kind : ' You say Turner is not 
 true to nature. I will first give you good evidence that 
 he is true ; that he is truer than Claude and Salvator and 
 Gkspar Poussin ever were ; and then at some future time 
 we will talk about beauty and sublimity.' This line of 
 argument was addressed to a certain state of the public 
 mind, and proved successful. Mr. Ruskin did not succeed 
 in proving that Turner was veracious, but he gave the 
 public some idea of the painter's enormous knowledge. 
 If the public of those days, and the brilliant young 
 Oxonian who addressed them, had really understood the 
 peculiar nature of poetic art, they would both have at- 
 
 * As in legal and constitutional fictions, social fictions, etc., etc. 
 
Mr. Rnskin and tlie English Public. 319 
 
 tached much less importance to truth, and his elaborate 
 investigation of the truth of nature would probably, if 
 undertaken at all, have been undertaken simply as an 
 independent contribution to a new science, the science of 
 natural aspects, with very secondary reference to art. 
 Poetic art is strangely independent both of science 
 and of veracity, and plainly, in its own way, refuses to be 
 tested by science, and even by reason. It is indeed as 
 nearly as possible useless to apply these tests to art except 
 for the critic's own personal education or amusement, as 
 the artist can always so easily escape from them. He 
 has only to say that he did the thing because the picture 
 seemed to require it, and there is an end of reasoning. 
 This was forcibly and justly expressed by Henri Reg- 
 nault in a letter from Rome. ' If one were to reason 
 about painting, one would not dare to do anything. If 
 you choose to reason before the works of the masters, you 
 will find many things which have no raison d'etre, and 
 which are where they are because they do well there. Art 
 should obey sentiment above all, and not fear to set 
 exactness and reason at defiance.' Again, he said with 
 an admirable sense of what art really is : ' Our law, the 
 law for us artists, is not good sense but fancy ; and if 
 something absurd does well, I see no reason why we 
 should decline to make use of it' 
 
 There are passages in Mr. Ruskin's works which seem 
 to- imply that in his own opinion his writings revealed 
 Turner to the world, and these have been answered by 
 the clearest evidence (exceedingly easy to get together) 
 that Turner was a famous and successful man long before 
 the publication of ' Modern Painters.' It may even be 
 
320 T]ie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 shown, by a simple comparison of dates, that Turner had 
 been a Royal Academician about seventeen years when 
 Mr. Ruskin was born, and no artist is ever elected to that 
 rank unless he is highly esteemed by his brethren. Dayes 
 said of Turner in 1804 (fifteen years before Mr. Ruskin's 
 birth) : ' He has overcome all the difficulties of the art,_ 
 so that the fine taste and colour which his drawings pos- 
 sess are scarcely to be found in any other, and are accom- 
 panied with a broad, firm chiaroscuro and a light and 
 elegant touch.' From this and several other opinions 
 which I shall have to quote in reference to another sub- 
 ject, it is abundantly evident that Mr. Ruskin was not the 
 discoverer of Turner ; but at the same time a certain 
 aspect of the matter has to be taken into consideration 
 which may partially explain and excuse his impression. 
 I requested an artist who had known the state of the fine 
 arts in England for more than fifty years to tell me what 
 he believed to be the exact truth about Mr. Ruskin's dis- 
 covery of Turner, and his answer (as nearly as I can 
 remember) was in these words : ' Turner's merits were 
 perfectly well known to artists and to a few amateurs 
 long before the publication of " Modern Painters ;" but in 
 those days the general public never talked about him, 
 whereas since that book came out the general public talks 
 about him, and takes a sort of interest in his work.' 
 
 I have said that Mr. Ruskin was less a critic than an 
 artist in words. This, again, was most fortunate for 
 Turner's fame. Real criticism is seldom attractive read- 
 ing. Poetry and eloquence transport and delight the 
 reader, criticism seldom does anything more than awaken 
 the critical spirit in the reader himself, and one of the 
 
Criticism and Art in Words. 321 
 
 first uses that he generally makes of it is to question the 
 decisions of the writer who is trying to teach him. I ask 
 leave to establish this distinction more at length, because 
 it seems to me one of great importance in art-literature. 
 
 An artist, then, be he poet, painter, orator, musician, 
 or writer of enchanting prose, is a person who, consciously 
 or unconsciously, employs his mental gifts and labour in 
 order to produce emotion by exciting interest and sym- 
 pathy. He does this by using his own imagination to 
 appeal to the imagination of another ; as, for example, 
 when the novelist invents a situation, or the historian 
 realises past events as if he had actually witnessed them. 
 The reader of the novel or history then follows the 
 imagination of the artist by a slighter and easier effort of 
 his own, and his pleasure consists precisely in this arous- 
 ing of his own imaginative faculty which gives him new 
 emotions under a new stimulus. The distinguishing 
 peculiarity of the artistic nature is that it does not hesi- 
 tate to produce emotion by saying what is not true. I 
 will give a single instance, just at present, by way of 
 illustration. 
 
 Leslie, in his autobiography, says that when he and 
 his daughters were at Brighton, Mr. Rogers took them in 
 his carriage to the Dyke. 
 
 ' As we sat in his carriage looking over the vast 
 expanse of country below us, he pointed down to a 
 village that seemed all peace and beauty in the tranquil 
 sunset. 
 
 ' " Do you see," he said, " those three large tombstones 
 close to the tower of the church ? My father, my mother, 
 and my grandfather are buried there." ' 
 
 21 
 
322 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Leslie told me the anecdote himself, and imitated 
 Rogers' tone of voice, which was most pathetic. 
 
 Now the truth was that Rogers had not a single 
 relative in that churchyard, and the only foundation for 
 what he said, as he soon afterwards confessed, was that 
 he would have liked to be buried there himself. 
 
 Somebody, on hearing the story, exclaimed, ' What a 
 lying old rascal !' Rogers was not precisely that. With- 
 out being a great poet he had much artistic feeling, and 
 for a moment he heightened the interest of the peaceful 
 churchyard by going beyond the truth, by leaving the 
 truth behind as insufficient for the degree of sympathy 
 and interest which he desired to produce in his hearers. 
 
 The critical spirit, on the contrary, so far from sacri- 
 ficing truth to feeling, is constantly sacrificing feeling to 
 truth. It does not precisely oppose itself to ideals or 
 deny the value of fiction, but it will have no confounding 
 of ideals with realities, of fiction with fact. Even at the 
 risk of disenchanting you it will plainly tell you where 
 the truth ends and the fiction begins ; in history it 
 accurately distinguishes between legend and the ascer- 
 tainable, in science between what can and what cannot 
 be experimentally verified, and in the fine arts the truly 
 critical spirit takes upon itself the important but little 
 appreciated office of showing what is due to the study of 
 nature, and what has its origin in the embellishments or 
 the errors of individual taste, ignorance, or imagination. 
 Now as the production of sympathy and interest is the 
 purpose of art, and the announcement of plain truth the 
 purpose of criticism, it follows that the artist in words, 
 the poet, the rhetorician, needs the utmost attainable 
 
The Love of Effect. 323 
 
 degree of literary craft and skill, whereas the critic needs 
 only precision in the use of language, simplicity, and 
 clearness. Pages adorned with the most moving elo- 
 quence, the most extensive and various learning, the 
 most exquisite art in the arrangement of words, with a 
 delicate sense alike of their signification and their sound, 
 may still be utterly worthless as criticism from the 
 simple omission of some fact or consideration which a 
 real critic would never have overlooked. And, on the 
 other hand, a wise judgment, the latest result of a life 
 spent in honest thought and laborious investigation, may 
 be delivered in a short sentence of the simplest, the 
 baldest English, of no more artistic value, as language, 
 than the phrases used in the most ordinary conversation. 
 Nay, it may even be less literary than that ; it may be 
 expressed in ungrammatical language or in professional 
 slang, and still be excellent criticism of the very highest 
 value.* 
 
 Now the critical faculty in Mr. Ruskin may have been 
 naturally strong, but as the artist in him was incom- 
 parably stronger, the critical faculty, or the judgment, 
 has been perpetually snubbed, silenced, and set aside by 
 the artist's need of effect. ' English literature,' wrote a 
 sober-minded foreign critic in i86l,t is like a beautiful 
 woman who tries to hide the traces of age beneath the 
 artifices of the toilet. Writers have but one object, to 
 stimulate a dulled and deadened sense. Style and com- 
 position, everything betrays the necessity for striking 
 
 * Such phrases of critical advice as the following may be of inestimable 
 value when rightly applied, ' Don't let your drawing be too tight ;' ' Don't 
 be mappy ;' ' Mind that your work carries across the room.' 
 
 t Edmond Scherer, in the Temp. 
 
 21 — 2 
 
324 TJte Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 effects. The reader's mind is to be kept in a state of 
 incessant expectation and surprise. The study of effect 
 leads to pretension, and pretension to charlatanism. 
 Eccentricity has become a means of attracting book- 
 buyers. There is calculated artifice in the antitheses, 
 so knowingly balanced, of Macaulay ; we find it in the 
 artistic paradoxes of Ruskin, and in the jargon of 
 Carlyle.' 
 
 This is severe, and I should not have used so harsh a 
 term as charlatanism in speaking of these three eminent 
 writers ; but it is simply true that their works are the 
 works of powerful literary artists who like to stimulate 
 and astonish the reader and compel him to give them his 
 attention. Exactly the same may be said of the violent 
 language used by Victor Hugo, and of the calculated 
 brusqueness and crudity of Browning.* 
 
 If the reader is interested in seeing a great literary 
 artist at work for the purpose of producing a very strong 
 effect upon the public mind, let him follow me through 
 the next page or two. He knows already — we all know 
 — how kindly Turner was encouraged when a young man, 
 how well and how early he was received in the Academy, 
 and how he enjoyed the friendship and sympathy of in- 
 telligent men such as Lord Egremont, Mr. Rogers, and 
 many others, at a time when he was in the full enjoyment 
 of his powers. Now it suited Mr. Ruskin's artistic pur- 
 pose — at the close of a lecture at Edinburgh, which was 
 
 * Or of Madame de Stael's perpetual seeking for effect. ' She was 
 always,' said Byron, ' aiming to be brilliant — to produce a sensation, no 
 matter how, when, or where. She wanted to make all her ideas, like 
 figures in the modem French school of painting, prominent and showy — 
 standing out of the canvas, each in a light of its own.' 
 
Tlie Love of Effect. 325 
 
 to be very pathetic and awaken deep feeling in the hearts 
 of his audience — to say, in order to prepare the people 
 for the sad account of Turner's death, that he had in- 
 curred neglect until late in life. Even this mild assertion 
 would have been untrue. The exact truth is, that Turner 
 was not neglected during life, but that in his case, as in 
 many other cases, the fame of the artist when living was 
 less splendid than it has since become. But now ob- 
 serve how Mr. Ruskin ' forces the note.' He does not 
 simply say that Turner was comparatively neglected ; 
 that would not be enough, the audience would feel no 
 thrill. These are the words used : 
 
 ' Imagine what it was for a man to live seventy years 
 in this hard world, with the kindest heart and the 
 noblest intellect of his time, and never to meet with a single 
 •word or ray of sympathy until he felt himself sinking into 
 his grave. From the time he knew his true greatness all 
 tJie world was turned against him : he held his own, but 
 it could not be without roughness of bearing and harden- 
 ing of the temper, if not of the heart. No one under- 
 stood him, no one trusted him, and every one cried out 
 against him. Imagine, any of you, the effect upon your 
 own minds, if every voice that you heard from the human 
 beings around you were raised, year after year, through 
 all your lives, only in condemnation of your efforts and 
 denial of your success.' 
 
 This passage is admirable as an appeal to the feelings. 
 It is the work of a consummate artist in words, and so 
 deeply pathetic, that if well delivered in the lecture-room 
 it must have touched the hearts of men and moistened 
 the eyes of women. I admit and admire its excellence, 
 
326 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 but I say that whilst Mr. Ruskin was writing it and 
 during the whole space of time between the writing and 
 the delivery of the lecture, the critic in him must have 
 been silenced or asleep. 
 
 Many years before Turner died was there not a great 
 meeting at Somerset House, attended by Sir Robert 
 Peel, Lord Hardinge, and many others ? and did not all 
 these gentlemen confer upon Turner the very exceptional 
 and very substantial compliment of subscribing five 
 thousand pounds to buy two pictures of his for the 
 National Gallery ? Did not Archdeacon Fisher, a good 
 judge of landscape, with considerable social influence, 
 declare, so early as the year 1813, that in his opinion the 
 Frost by Turner was the best landscape in the Royal 
 Academy Exhibition ? Did not Lockhart, a very in- 
 fluential Scotchman, express his opinion publicly, a year 
 or two later, that Turner was simply the greatest of all 
 living landscape-painters ? Was not Turner selected to 
 illustrate the greatest contemporary poets ? and did not 
 Scott (who died in 1832) say that Turner was 'all the 
 fashion ;' so much the fashion indeed, that, by sheer 
 weight of reputation, he was imposed on the great 
 novelist against his will ? Did not Constable write on 
 the 14th of January, 1832 : 'I remember most of Turner's 
 early works ; amongst them was one of singular intricacy 
 and beauty ; it was a canal with numerous boats, making 
 thousands of beautiful shapes, and I think the most com- 
 plete work of genius I ever saw' ? We know how passion- 
 ately Constable admired Claude, yet in the very next 
 sentence he calls one of Claude's pictures ' grand and 
 solemn, but cold, dull, and luavy! Had Mr. Ruskin 
 
Circumstances of Turner's Death. 327 
 
 listened to critical suggestions like these, he would have 
 had either to suppress a capital passage (always most 
 painful to an author), or else weaken it to such a degree 
 that all its influence would have been lost. The greatest 
 objection to Mr. Ruskin's system of teaching lies in this 
 nutshell. The artist, in him, is so powerful as to act in- 
 dependently of the critical faculty, whether the critical 
 faculty be in itself positively strong or feeble. Such a condi- 
 tion of mind is often highly favourable to the production of 
 painting or poetry, the function of those arts being not to 
 preach truth, but to produce emotion. In critical writing 
 the case is altered. Here it is not emotional influence 
 that is needed, but a judgment so masterful that it 
 steadily restrains the pen, and a love of truth so watchful 
 that it refuses the aids of exaggeration. 
 
 It is not my intention to enter into an examination of 
 Mr. Ruskin's teaching generally. Such an inquiry would 
 of itself occupy a volume, and it would lead us away from 
 our present subject — the life and genius of Turner. But 
 it is quite within my province to examine a few of Mr. 
 Ruskin's statements about Turner himself, and about the 
 arts which he practised, or which have been used for the 
 dissemination of his works. I have begun with the state- 
 ment that Turner never met with a single word or ray of 
 sympathy until he felt himself sinking into his grave ; 
 that no one trusted him ; that no one understood him. 
 All this was intended to prepare Mr. Ruskin's hearers 
 for a most touching and pathetic account of Turner's 
 death. 
 
 * He received no consolation in his last years, nor in 
 his death. Cut off in great part from all society — first by 
 
328 IJte Life of J. M. IV. Turner. 
 
 labour, and at last by sickness- hunted to the grave by 
 the mah'gnities of small critics, and the jealousies of hope- 
 less rivalry — he died in the house of a stranger — one 
 companion of his life, and one only, staying with him to 
 the last.' See with what admirable art the idea of desola- 
 tion is here conveyed, and what a sad ending it is ! how 
 solitary ! how bereft of human sympathy and kindness ! 
 He dies in the house of a stranger — one companion, and 
 one only, stays with him to the last. He receives nG( 
 consolation. It is a perfect picture ; the scene is admir- 
 ably described in a few pathetic words ; the emotion 
 intended to be excited very probably was excited. But 
 is the picture true ? No, the appeal to the feelings is 
 founded upon a fiction. Turner was not abandoned by 
 his friends — it was he who abandoned them. Many of 
 the Royal Academicians were anxious about him, and, 
 besides the members of his own profession, there were 
 numbers of other people in London who would have 
 been delighted to reader him a service. In spite of his 
 habitual incivility in not answering letters, he was con- 
 stantly receiving invitations. He had a morbid fancy for 
 hiding himself, and would not let anybody know where 
 he really lived. It is true that he died in the house of a 
 stranger, but he did so by the capricious exercise of his 
 own free will. There can be no necessity for a man to 
 die in the house of a stranger in the very city where he 
 possesses an excellent mansion of his own, with money 
 enough to live there in the most perfect comfort, and even 
 luxury. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's pathetic appeals to our commiseration 
 on behalf of Turner have produced some effect on other 
 
Mi: Riiskhi's Estimate of Turner. 329 
 
 writers, and may ultimately create a fabulous legend, like 
 the French legend about Napoleon's poverty at St. 
 Helena. Mr. Thornbury says, 'he left the nation that 
 neglected him ;£'i40,ooo.' If the nation neglected him 
 where did he get the money ? In the very next sentence 
 Mr. Thornbury says that he was not unaccustomed to the 
 society of men of wealth and rank. Good evidence, 
 again, that he was not neglected. 
 
 The same tendency to excessive statement which we 
 have noticed in Mr. Ruskin's description of Turner's 
 melancholy isolation, will be found in his account of 
 Turner's performance as an artist. The simple truth is 
 wonderful enough, but the desire to produce a strong 
 effect upon the reader's mind has generally carried the 
 author of ' Modern Painters' far beyond its boundaries. 
 
 ' J. M. W. Turner is the only man who has ever given 
 an entire transcript of the whole system of nature, and is, 
 in this point of view, the only perfect landscape-painter 
 whom the world has ever seen.' 
 
 An entire transcript of the whole system of nature ! 
 The system of nature is infinite ; man's time and strength 
 in this world are finite. It is not possible for finite man 
 to transcribe infinite nature entirely. The great army 
 of all the artists who have ever lived have still left plenty 
 of fresh material in nature for their successors. But it is 
 quite unnecessary for me to answer the author of 
 ' Modern Painters,' since the author of ' Notes on some 
 of the Principal Pictures exhibited in the Rooms of the 
 Royal Academy' answered him so effectually in the 
 year 1858. 
 
330 Tlte Life of J. M. W. Ttirner. 
 
 'Nobody has ever painted heather yet, nor a rock 
 spotted richly with mosses ; nor gentians, nor Alpine 
 roses, nor white oxalis in the woods, nor anemone nemo- 
 rosa, nor even so much as the first springing leaves of 
 any tree in their pale, dispersed, delicate sharpness of 
 shape. Everything has to be done yet! 
 
 I may be told that this referred specially to the pre- 
 Raphaelite method ; that what the writer intended to say 
 was, that no artist had painted these things with the 
 minute skill and attention of the Pre-Raphaelites, and 
 that the sentence bore no reference to Turner's transcript 
 of nature, which was altogether different. Such an ob- 
 jection falls to the ground at once before Mr. Ruskin's 
 declaration that Turner was himself a Pre-Raphaelite. 
 
 But this is not all. It is evident from some preceding 
 lines of the same note, that in the year 1858 Mr. Ruskin 
 considered even Turner's transcript of natural effects as 
 insufficient, since he was looking forward to a more satis- 
 factory rendering of the transcience of nature by hands 
 trained in thorough Pre-Raphaelite study. After speak- 
 ing of familiar and homely foreground subjects, he con- 
 tinued as follows : 
 
 ' But what shall we say when the power of painting, 
 which makes even these so interesting, begins to exert 
 itself, with the aid of imagination and memory, on the 
 splendid transcience of nature, and her noblest continu- 
 ance; when we have the courses of heaven's golden 
 clouds instead of squares of blue through cottage case- 
 ments ; and the fair river mists, and mountain shrouds 
 of vapour instead of cottage smoke ;— pine forests as well 
 as banks of grass, and fallen precipices instead of heaps 
 of flints. All this is yet to come ; nay, even the best 
 
Mr. Ruskin's Estimate of Ttirner. 331 
 
 of the quiet, accessible, simple gifts of fiature are yet to 
 corned 
 
 We will recur, a little later, to the dogma that Turner 
 was a Pre-Raphaelite ; for the present it is enough to 
 note that although a Pre-Raphaelite, and the very head 
 of Pre-Raphaelitism, he had left so much both of fore- 
 ground detail and distant effect entirely unrecorded. 
 
 Whatever Turner may have left undone, the author of 
 ' Modern Painters ' expressed unbounded faith in all that 
 Turner actually did. 
 
 ' In all that he says, we believe ; in all that he does, we 
 trust. It is therefore that we pray him to utter nothing 
 lightly, to do nothing regardlessly. He stands upon an 
 eminence from which he looks back over the universe of 
 God and forward over the generations of men. Let 
 every work of his hand be a history of the one, and a 
 lesson to the other. Let each exertion of his mighty 
 mind be both hymn and prophecy ; adoration to the 
 Deity, revelation to mankind.' 
 
 This is simply the artistic exaggeration of a teacher 
 who, to make others believe, professes a much more fer- 
 vent faith than that which is fundamentally his own. 
 Even when Mr. Ruskin wrote the first volume of ' Modern 
 Painters,' in the ardour of early manhood, he was not, 
 . in other moods, an absolute believer in Turner's infalli- 
 bility. We know this by the following plain-spoken 
 . criticism of some of Turner's most important works. 
 
 ' The Caligulds Bridge, Temple of Jupiter, Departure 
 of Regulus, Ancient Italy, Cicero's Villa, and such 
 others, come they from whose hand they may, I class 
 
332 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 under the general head of " nonsense pictures.'' TJiere 
 never can be any wholesome feeling developed in these 
 preposteroiis accumulations, and where the artist's feeling 
 fails, his art follows ; so that the worst possible examples 
 of Turner's colour are found in pictures of this class. 
 Neither in his actual views of Italy has Turner ever 
 caught her true spirit, except in the little vignettes to 
 Rogers' poem. The Villa of Galileo, the nameless 
 composition with stone-pines, the several villa moon- 
 lights, and the convent compositions in the Voyage of 
 Columbus, are altogether exquisite ; but this is owing 
 chiefly to their simplicity, and perhaps, in some measure, 
 to their smallness of size. None of his large pictures at 
 all equal them ; the Bay of Baice is encumbered with 
 material, it contains ten times as much as is necessary to a 
 good picture, and yet is so crude in colour as to look un- 
 finished. The Palestrina is full of raw white, and has a 
 look of Hampton Court about its long avenue ; the 
 Modern Italy is purely English in its near foliage ; it is 
 composed from Tivoli material, enriched and arranged 
 most dexterously, but it lias not the virtue of tJte real 
 thing! 
 
 Notwithstanding these criticisms, the rank assigned by 
 Mr. Ruskin to Turner was that of the greatest painter of 
 all time. 
 
 ' We have had, living with us, and painting for us, the 
 greatest painter of all time ; a man with whose supremacy 
 of power no intellect of past ages can be put in com- , 
 parison for a moment' 
 
 The reader will observe that Turner's supremacy is not ' 
 restricted to landscape, his own department of art. He 
 is not the greatest landscape-painter, but the greatest 
 painter. 
 
Turner and Pre-Raphaelitism. 333 
 
 Was he indeed really the Prince of painters, or is this 
 only an artistic exaggeration intended to awaken the 
 reader to a sense of the simple truth by asking him to 
 believe much more ? Is not this an artifice of rhetoric 
 which answers to the common commercial and diplomatic 
 artifice of asking more than one intends to take ? 
 
 It is now time to discuss briefly Mr. Ruskin's affirma- 
 tion that Turner was the true head of Pre-Raphael- 
 itism. 
 
 The difficulty in arguing about this lies in the prudent 
 care with which the leaders of the Pre-Raphaelites always 
 avoided any definition of their doctrines. They very 
 properly confined themselves to their own business of 
 painting, and left the talking to their friends and enemies 
 in the press. Pictures, however, speak in their own way, 
 and the real Pre-Raphaelite pictures, those painted when 
 the sect was still a power and attracting public attention, 
 were as different from Turner's work as it is possible for 
 one kind of art to be from its opposite. It may be worth 
 while to note the principal points of difference, because 
 they will help us to understand still more clearly the 
 peculiarities of Turner's system. 
 
 The Pre-Raphaelite pictures were full of details pain- 
 fully studied from nature, on the principle, apparently, of 
 the most minutely accurate portraiture. Mr. Ruskin 
 himself confirmed this by saying that the one principle 
 of Pre-Raphaelitism was absolute, uncompromising truth, 
 'obtained by working everything, down to the most 
 minute detail, from nature, and from nature only.' He 
 said that every Pre-Raphaelite landscape background 
 was painted to the last touch in the open air from the 
 
334 TJte Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 thing itself, and that every minute accessory was painted 
 in the same manner. 
 
 We may assume, then, that accurate portraiture of 
 objects was a leading Pre-Raphaelite principle. But 
 Turner's principle was to avoid accurate portraiture. I 
 might insist upon the difference of practice between 
 artists who always worked from nature and a painter who 
 never took a picture into the open air, but that is not the 
 essential point. A man might paint from memory, if his 
 memory were excellent, so as to make his work look as 
 if it had been done from nature. He might report 
 nature as Woodfall reported the debates in the House of 
 Commons before shorthand writers took them down on 
 the spot. Turner did nothing of the kind. His paint- 
 ings are not reports, but works of fiction. He would not 
 even condescend to make an accurate portrait of so 
 large an object as a Highland mountain, nor of so in- 
 teresting an object as a feudal castle ; still less would he 
 devote ■ attention to truth of portraiture in matters of 
 minor detail. The popular impression is not always 
 right, but it was right in feeling the vastness of the 
 difference between Turnerian and Pre-Raphaelite work. 
 There is nothing naif in Turner's work ; it is consum- 
 mately artificial, full of all the craft and subtlety of the 
 ripest art, in which truth is constantly sacrificed to beauty 
 and detail to general effect. The Pre-Raphaelites re- 
 jected the subtlety and cunning of the artist's craft to go 
 back to the truth of nature. How far they succeeded in 
 this enterprise we have not to consider, but we may close 
 the subject by remarking that there is a Pre-Raphaelite 
 landscape in the National Gallery, the Jerusalem of 
 
Turner and Pre-Rapliaelitism. 335 
 
 Thomas Seddon. Future generations may conveniently 
 compare that with Turner's work, and see the difference. 
 The Pre-Raphaelite landscape is all clear, measurable, 
 ascertainable fact ; it is full of the most resolute object 
 study, every object a distinct and separate motive for the 
 artist's effort. He paints tree by tree, hillock by hillock, 
 house by house, and in the foreground sheep by sheep 
 and goat by goat. He paints the man in the corner 
 exactly as he would have painted him if there had been 
 no landscape, and the landscape as if there had been no 
 figure. You may remove an object from any part of the 
 work, and the loss will not be felt ; the bits of study are 
 as independent of each other as the short paragraphs of 
 general intelligence in a newspaper. It is, in short, a 
 kind of map, drawn and coloured with the most pains- 
 taking accuracy, and, no doubt, quite closely resembling 
 the unlovely but interesting reality. Precious work of 
 its kind, and work which we may be thankful for, but 
 divided from that of Turner by a gulf as impassable as 
 the abyss between the earth and the sun. The 'Pre- 
 Raphaelite landscape is full of truthful object portraiture; 
 hundreds of different objects are portrayed side by side as 
 accurately as the artist could achieve it by the closest 
 observation on the spot ; in the Turnerian landscapes 
 you cannot find a single accurate portrait of any hill, or 
 tree, or building under heaven. In Seddon's work there 
 is no composition ; in Turner's all the material is 
 arranged in clusters and groups, which again in their 
 urn are grouped together into a pictorial whole. The 
 Pre-Raphaelite works entirely from observation, Turner 
 always from more or less successful invention. Seddon 
 
336 TJie Life of J. M. W. Ttimer. 
 
 does nothing but analyse, Turner synthetises always, in 
 the smallest of his vignettes as in the largest pictures in 
 his gallery. 
 
 It would have been pleasant and satisfactory, had it 
 been possible, to place art criticism on so positive and 
 secure a foundation as that of truth, for the truth of 
 nature is really, in most things, ascertainable by the kind 
 of labour which Mr. Ruskin so courageously bestowed on 
 mountains and vegetation. We should then have had a 
 criterion, and there would have been some possibility 
 that the fame of dead artists, and the incomes of living 
 ones, might have been less precarious, whilst criticism 
 itself might have attained the respectable position of a 
 science. The hope of such a generally satisfactory state 
 of things as this was entertained for a time by many 
 intelligent Englishmen, but it had no foundation in the 
 essential nature of art. 
 
 'We must have the courage to declare,' says J. 
 Milsand, with a just sense of what art is and is not, 
 'we must have the courage to declare, even at the 
 risk of being misunderstood, that truth in the ordi- 
 nary sense of the word will never be the aim of art, 
 that the value which a picture may happen to possess as 
 a means of making us understand the nature of realities, 
 will never have anything in common with its value as a 
 work of art. Let us be on our guard against the notion 
 that truth is the pictorial element of painting ; it is, on 
 the contrary, the side by which pictures address them- 
 selves to the ordinary intelligence, to all the general 
 faculties which the artist possesses in common with other 
 men, but which are not his own soul as an artist, not that 
 part of human nature which he undertakes to express 
 
The Criterion of Truth. 337 
 
 when he takes up his palette. If he teaches us to see 
 better because he himself sees better than we do, we shall, 
 no doubt, be the gainers, so long as he renders us this 
 service without neglecting his special task ; and it is a 
 sort of negative duty for him not to shock our intelligence 
 by remaining below the familiar conception of nature 
 which may be prevalent in his time amongst the public. 
 But as for estimating his merit as an artist according to 
 his instructiveness, as for requiring him to rectify and 
 complete our conceptions, nothing could be more false 
 or dangerous than such a requirement. And this for two 
 principal reasons : the first is, that if his productions are 
 lessons of observation, the effort they require in order to 
 be understood will no longer allow the spectator to be 
 moved ; the second, which is still more serious, is, that 
 the painter himself, if governed by a didactic intention, 
 will no longer be inspired by his own emotions.' 
 
 All this is excellent, especially the concluding sentences, 
 which account fully and sufficiently for the undeniable 
 fact that all scientific illustrations, however admirably 
 executed, however rich in truth, invariably fail to produce 
 in us the pleasure excited by works of art, and also that 
 the nearer a picture approaches to the character of a 
 scientific illustration the less our artistic sense is gratified 
 by it. The disappointment of many young artists of the 
 present generation, who have thrown all their effort into 
 the acquirement and expression of mere knowledge, with 
 the smallest possible effect upon the public mind, might 
 have been prevented if the nature of art, as distinct from 
 science, had been rather better understood. They were 
 truthful and sincere when truth was not always wanted, 
 
 22 
 
338 The Life of J. M. W. Jurner. 
 
 and even sincerity might be out of place. ' What !' the 
 reader may ask in surprise, ' can good art ever be insin- 
 cere ?' Yes, in a certain sense, it undoubtedly can. The 
 artist may set aside or dissemble his personal convictions 
 out of consideration for the charm or power with which 
 he thinks it necessary to endow his work of art. Shall I 
 give an instance ? Byron was a great artist, and now 
 see the contrast between his private opinion as a man, 
 and his published work as an artist. Here it is, in his 
 own words. 
 
 ' I have always had a great contempt for women ; and 
 formed this opinion of them not hastily, but from my 
 own fatal experience. My writings, indeed, tend to 
 exalt the sex ; and my imagination has always delighted 
 in giving them a beau id^al likeness, but I only drew 
 them as a painter or statuary would do — as they should 
 be.' 
 
 This is plain and clear. In this case the artist frankly 
 admits that he was not faithful to his own experience. 
 Raphael admitted as much when he said, that he repre- 
 sented human figures not as they are but as they ought 
 to be, and he admitted it still more frankly by the con- 
 trast between his drawings from nature (plain evidence 
 that he knew what nature was) and the same figures, 
 idealised, in his compositions. 
 
 At the close of Mr. Ruskin's preface to the second 
 edition of his first volume, he says : ' My opponents yield 
 me the field at once. One (the writer for the Athenceuni) 
 has no other resource than the assertion " that he dis- 
 approves the natural style in painting. If people want to 
 
Distinction Between Nature and Art. 339 
 
 see Nature let them go and look at herself. Why should 
 they see her at second-hand on a piece of canvas ?" The 
 other {Blackwood), still more utterly discomfited, is re- 
 duced to a still more remarkable line of defence. " It is 
 not," he says, " what things in all respects really are, but 
 how they are convertible by the mind into what they are 
 not, that we have to consider." ' Mr. Ruskin thought 
 these remarks absurd, and yet the writers in the 
 AtJiencsmn and Blackwood, had grasped two of the 
 greatest principles of sound aesthetics. There is an 
 excellent little poem by Jules Breton, the eminent 
 French rustic painter, which illustrates what ^& Atlu- 
 ncBum said. In this little poem a landscape-painter is at 
 work upon an oak ; a peasant comes to see what he is 
 doing, and laughs at him for being at so much pains to 
 make a sham oak-tree in paint, when anybody can easily 
 get to see a real one. The writer concludes with the 
 lesson that with reference to the art which merely 
 copies nature the peasant was perfectly right. If paint- 
 ing were simply true, and no more, there would be no 
 reason for painting what can be easily seen in nature, 
 and yet how many of the very best pictures have been 
 made from commonplace materials ! Blackwood's line 
 of defence is simply the true description of the mental 
 operation which produces art, and which really and 
 unquestionably does convert things into what they are 
 not I may be excused for introducing a little anecdote 
 as an illustration of what the writer in Blackwood so 
 judiciously observed. I happened to be with a well- 
 known picture-dealer when he gave some friendly advice 
 to a young artist whose works were full of the most 
 
34° TJie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 painstaking fidelity, yet had not the slightest artistic 
 charm. ' You paint things as they are,' he said ; ' and 
 that is a great mistake. All successful artists paint 
 things as they are not' The remark struck me by its 
 boldness, by the speaker's complete emancipation from 
 the common delusion about truth, and all subsequent 
 experience has convinced me that he was right. 
 
 The reader may now reasonably feel disposed to ask 
 me a question of this kind : ' If you reject truth as the 
 test and criterion of art, what other criterion have you ?' 
 The answer, the candid answer, is that there is no posi- 
 tive criterion for the really artistic element in a work of 
 art. Almost everything in a picture may be tested ex- 
 cept its artistic quality, but this subtly eludes all 
 measuring and analysis. You can test truth of various 
 kinds by the help of the sciences, but a picture may have 
 been executed in the strictest conformity to science and 
 still be perfectly worthless as fine art ; and when we come 
 to that artistic element itself which excuses so many 
 errors, and without which all the knowledge in the world 
 is vain, we can only feel its presence for ourselves, we 
 cannot prove it to another. What we really can do is to 
 tell others how the artistic power has affected ourselves, 
 and this is the last and best result of art criticism. It is 
 this which is valuable in Mr. Ruskin's writings about 
 Turner, even in the utmost excesses of his statements. 
 After all deductions, the wonderful fact remains that 
 Turner, during his lifetime, found one admirer, a man 
 of genius, a man of wide culture and very exceptional 
 industry, who seriously believed that his intellect was 
 
Turner's Position in Art. 341 
 
 unequalled, and that he was the greatest painter of all 
 time. 
 
 After this, any more moderate estimate must of neces- 
 sity appear lukewarm and spiritless, but, notwithstanding 
 this unfortunate effect of contrast, we will try to render 
 a candid account of Turner's position in art. 
 
 The first question about any painter — not the highest 
 or most important question, but the first in order — con- 
 cerns his technical excellence. Was Turner an excellent 
 painter, technically? This has been already answered 
 at various times in the present biography. He was ex- 
 cellent in some points, but unequal and unsafe. It is 
 very difficult to classify him justly, he lies so much out- 
 side of the good sound work of the great masters. It is 
 probable that he was himself aware of this, as when he 
 said of Vandevelde : ' I can't paint like him ;' and the 
 desire to execute works in the manner of his celebrated 
 predecessors, which remained with him until his originality 
 had fully developed itself, implies an uneasy preoccupa- 
 tion about his technical powers,, and a wish to ascertain, 
 by experiment, if they were equal to the ambitious task 
 before him. There is a certain satisfaction in seeing 
 work thoroughly well done which the reader must have 
 felt for himself in the presence of the soundest and best 
 work of the old masters, and which Turner's work in oil 
 does not afford.* It seems as if, after having tried to 
 
 * Just as I am finally arranging these sheets for the press a letter reaches 
 me from a very experienced picture-dealer, who writes in the most absolute 
 sincerity, and this is what he says of Turner : 
 
 ' I may be wrong, but I must confess to an increasing love for Corot and 
 Constable. Turner is losing his hold upon me. When I group a few 
 pictures, say Matthew Maris, Troyon, Diar, Millet, Rousseau, James 
 Maris, and Turner, the Turner has the worst of it. That is to say, the 
 
342 TJu Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 paint soundly in early life, he had given up the pursuit of 
 technical soundness in despair and determined to use 
 painting simply as a means of expression for his 
 imaginative powers, leaving its technical quality to 
 chance. ' In our time,' said Fromentin, ' either men 
 paint carefully and not always very well, or else they take 
 no further trouble about it and hardly paint at all. The 
 work is heavy and summary, lively and nigligi, sensitive 
 and rapidly got over, or else it is conscientious, explaining 
 itself everywhere, according to the laws of imitation, and 
 nobody, not even those who practise it, would venture to 
 affirm that such painting is any the better for being scru- 
 pulous.' If you give this admirably candid paragraph 
 the attention it deserves, it will enable you to understand 
 the spirit of Turner's technical practice. He was one of 
 those moderns who ' take no further trouble about it ;' his 
 work was ' sensitive and rapidly got over,' certainly not 
 ' conscientious, explaining itself everywhere according to 
 the laws of imitation.' He painted simply to express 
 himself, heedless of the quality of the expression, just as 
 Scott wrote his novels without stopping to study ' I'art de 
 bien dire.' The whole condition of his mind, as to tech- 
 nical matters, appears to have been a condition of 
 despairing indifference. He used any new colour that 
 the experimentalising ingenuity of modern chemistry 
 could invent for the temptation of an artist. He used 
 
 Turner is crude, violent, and as a bit of work amateurish in comparison 
 with the others. There can be no doubt as to Turner's genius, but his 
 painting is poor in comparison with the great modern masters.' 
 
 The reader will observe how exclusively the objection to Turner, in this 
 quotation, applies to technical power, of which I may observe that picture- 
 dealers, from their constant habit of comparing, are often excellent judges. 
 
Turner's Position in Art. 343 
 
 body-colour and oil in the same works, and when pictures 
 were sent by him from Rome in 1829, he said : ' If any 
 wet gets to them they will be destroyed.' But it is not 
 simply for its want of durability that his painting is un- 
 sound. It has not the firmness and substance of thorough 
 work ; it does not offer to the eye of the spectator that 
 satisfaction which the textures and surfaces of the greatest 
 masters invariably give. Look at a De Hooge, say the 
 Court of a Dutch House, a picture with a good constitu- 
 tion, sound all through, yet painted two hundred years 
 ago. See how brilliant it is ; see how the colours are laid 
 in their places, and how dense and strong is the sub- 
 stance of the paint, yet how light at the same time, and 
 representative of nature ! I am not going to compare 
 Hobbema's simple talent of observation with Turner's 
 imaginative genius, but pray look at Hobbema's ^z'^w?^^ of 
 Middleharnis or his Forest Scene in the National Gallery, 
 and acknowledge the sound quality of the work, quiet 
 enough in colour ; not brilliant like the De Hooge, but as 
 firm in substance. Considered simply as painting, the 
 work of these old Dutchmen is to that of Turner what 
 parchment is to paper. If from Holland you cross over 
 to Italy, and accustom your eyes for an hour to the quiet 
 splendour of Titian — his rich surfaces, his blended colours, 
 laid on a substantial groundwork of safe dead-colour — 
 and then pass to Turner, you will find a difference like 
 that^between tapestry and cotton-print. 
 ( In water-colour the case presents a very different 
 aspect. Turner was unquestionably, in his best time, 
 the greatest master of water-colour who had ever lived. 
 He may have been excelled since then in some special 
 
344 Tlie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 departments of the art, in some craft of execution, or in 
 the knowledge of some particular thing in nature ; but no 
 one has ever deserved such generally high rank as Turner 
 in the art of water-colour painting. His superiority even 
 goes so far that the art, in his hands, is like another art, 
 a fresh discovery of his own. The colour, in his most 
 delicate work, hardly seems to be laid on the paper by 
 any means known to us, but suggests the idea of a vapor- 
 ous deposit ; and besides the indescribable excellence of 
 those parts of Turner's water-colours which do not look 
 as if they were painted at all, there is excellence of 
 another kind in those parts which exhibit dexterities of 
 execution. Nor is the strange perfection of his painting 
 in water-colour limited to landscape ; his studies of still 
 life — birds and their plumage, bits of interiors at Petworth, 
 etc. — are evidence enough that, had he chosen to paint 
 objects rather than effects, he might have been as wonder- 
 ful an object-painter as William Hunt was, though in a 
 different and more elevated manner. \ 
 
 Though Turner was a reckless experimentalist, he was 
 a very brilliant experimentalist, full of ideas and per- 
 petually trying to realise his ideas. In fecundity of con- 
 ception the old Dutchmen and Venetians are not to be 
 compared with him for an instant. The regular old- 
 fashioned system of painting, the system which enabled 
 the old masters to reach such great technical excellence, 
 was first to learn to paint from a clever man, and then 
 to apply the art to five or six subjects, to be repeated in 
 different forms till the artist died of old age. If Turner 
 had done this, if he had restricted himself to a narrow 
 speciality and paid careful attention to technical matters. 
 
Turner's Position in Art. ' 345 
 
 and had a good technical training at the beginning, his 
 work might have been as good as that of any old master, 
 but criticism has little concern with what might have 
 been. As it is, criticism can only say that his experi- 
 ments were always interesting, and often in the highest 
 degree astonishing and wonderful, but seldom quite 
 satisfactory, except in parts. 
 
 I have mentioned, as a reason for this deficiency, 
 which it is useless to try to blink, the wide range of 
 Turner's experiments ; but there is another reason for it. 
 He was always trying to paint the unpaintable, which 
 the Dutch and the Venetians most prudently and care- 
 fully avoided. This tendency was skilfully hit by Punch 
 with the exaggeration which properly belongs to satire, 
 in the following imaginary title for a Turnerian pic- 
 ture : 
 
 ' 34. A Typhoon bursting in a Simoom over the Whirl- 
 pool of Maelstrom, Norway ; with a ship on fire, an 
 eclipse, and the effect of a lunar rainbow. 
 
 ' " O Art, how vast thy mighty wonders are 
 
 To those who roam upon the extraordinary deep ! 
 Maelstrom, thy hand is here." 
 
 From an Unpublished Poem. ' 
 
 Do not let us be so narrow-minded as to forbid an 
 artist to paint the unpaintable if he likes, but let us re- 
 member that when he does so the result must inevitably 
 be a mere sign or substitute for the thing represented, a 
 sort of pictorial algebra. De Hooge could paint a 
 Dutchwoman standing in her backyard, close to her 
 dust-bin, with a degree of pictorial efficiency incom- 
 
346 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 parably superior to that of Turner when he painted the 
 Angel standing in the Sun. Again, the habit of paint- 
 ing unpaintable splendours led Turner into a transcen- 
 dental treatment of common realities, so that he came at 
 last to paint the groups of figures in his foregrounds as 
 if they had been sunset clouds. 
 
 \ There is one point, and one only, in which Turner 
 really did excel the artists of all time, and that is in his 
 appreciation of mystery in nature, and hi^ superlatively 
 exquisite rendering of it. ^ 
 
 If Turner deserves honour for the originality which 
 carried art further than it had ever before been carried in 
 this direction, it is simple justice to add that Mr. Ruskin 
 was the first writer on art who ever explained the value 
 of mystery in painting. He touched upon this subject 
 in the first volume of ' Modern Painters,' especially in the 
 important paragraph which affirms that nature is never 
 distinct and never vacant, and he recurred to it in two 
 chapters on ' Turnerian Mystery ' in the fourth volume. 
 
 Mystery in nature and art may be defined as that con- 
 dition of things in which they are partially seen, suffi- 
 ciently for us to be aware that something is there, but 
 not sufficiently for us to determine all about it by sight 
 alone, unaided by the inferences of experience. A bad 
 painter would either explain too much, from mere know- 
 ledge, or else simplify to get rid of the difficulty ; a 
 painter who knew the value of mystery, and was able to 
 render it, would show just enough of his objects to let 
 the eye of the spectator lose them and find them again 
 as it would in nature with the same uncertainty about 
 what they are. He would render the confusion and 
 
Mystery. 347 
 
 abundance of the signs by which the natural landscape 
 expresses itself to the human eye, not giving more of 
 things than nature gives, and trying, as far as possible, 
 never to give very much less. I may add that it is per- 
 fectly possible (many readers will know this by experi- 
 ence) to have the strongest appreciation of the value of 
 mystery, without being able to give it except under the 
 penalty of feebleness, and it is probably for this reason 
 that so many honest painters have made their work 
 clearer and simpler than nature. Turner could paint 
 strongly and mysteriously at the same time, which gave a 
 great charm to his work for cultivated eyes, though it had 
 the disadvantage of offending the vulgar by not being 
 intelligible by them. 
 
 Mystery, in the art of painting, is most probably a 
 modern object of study and technical ambition. We do 
 not exactly know how Zeuxis and Apelles painted, but 
 any cultivated critic who knows something of Greek 
 sculpture and Greek literature, and of the inferior but 
 still interesting classical, paintings found at Pompeii, 
 will feel perfectly satisfied that however admirable 
 ancient Greek art may have been for its drawing, and 
 perhaps even for colouring of a very simple and elemen- 
 tary kind, it cannot possibly have been mysterious. 
 Clearness, the clear presentation of tangible objects, was 
 the Greek conception of art, and you may look in vain 
 through the ancient art of Egypt, Assyria, China, and 
 Japan, for anything which indicates in the least that the 
 artist regarded the mystery of nature in any other light 
 than as a mere embarrassment to be got rid of by his 
 own clarifying and simplifying conventionalism, as 
 
348 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 muddy water is to be filtered to make it limpid, or as the 
 branches of a pine-tree have to be cleared away before it 
 can be brought to the straightness and smoothness of a 
 mast. Follow the history of art downwards through 
 ancient Rome, through mediaeval Italy, Germany, and 
 France, and see how long you have to wait before any- 
 thing at all resembling the mystery of nature begins to 
 find expression in graphic art of any kind whatever 1 
 Perugino is not mysterious, does not seem to have the 
 least idea that such a quality can ever be desirable, his 
 ideal is a perfectly clear sky with slender trees against it, 
 painted leaf by leaf, and figures with perfect outlines. 
 Van Eyck is clear and positive. Albert Durerhas a 
 strong sense of quantity in nature, but none whatever of 
 mystery, and so it is with all the early German and 
 Italian engravers. The profound and sombre genius of 
 Rembrandt led him to study a certain kind of mystery, 
 that of things half-seen in graduated obscurity, but he 
 knew little or nothing of the mystery of light. Claude, 
 in his turn, having a poetic sentiment, enjoyed the veil- 
 ing of distances by atmosphere, but his conception was 
 always simple, and though in a certain sense his dis- 
 tances may be said to be mysterious, his foregrounds are 
 much less so ; even in spite of his fine sense of richness 
 and intricacy in foliage. Even the grand landscape 
 design of Titian is too affirmative for the evanescence of 
 nature. There is a light sketchiness in the landscape 
 backgrounds of Rubens, and also in those of Watteau, 
 which does duty for mystery, but is not to be compared 
 for fulness of study and knowledge, to the purposeful 
 mystery of Turner, all charged with observation and 
 
Mystery. 349 
 
 meahing. It is then the simple truth, without any 
 exaggeration or hyperbole, that Turner was the first 
 artist who made mystery a special object of effort, and 
 the first also to attain it in perfection. He was certainly 
 conscious of this peculiarity in his art. When a picture 
 of his went to New York to a Mr. Lenox, he asked 
 Leslie how Mr. Lenox liked it. 
 
 ' He thinks it indistinct' 
 
 ' You should tell him,' Turner replied, ' that indistinct- 
 ness is my fault.' 
 
 He said this in a good-humoured way, but with a tone 
 which clearly implied that he considered mystery an 
 integral part of his art, and that whilst choosing to call it 
 a fault, he did so only in condescension to the taste of 
 the purchaser. Mr. Lenox, it may be well to add, soon 
 altered his opinion as he gradually became able to read 
 the mystery of Turner. 
 
 Though certainly not the inventor of Pre-Raphaelitism, 
 and though educated by the influence of the old masters, 
 Turner was a daring innovator in many things, sometimes 
 fortunately, sometimes very much the reverse. An 
 example of this in colour may be selected as one of those 
 very rare artifices of colouring which are positive enough 
 and simple enough to be discussed in art criticism. Mr. 
 Ruskin says of Turner ( ' Modern Painters,' Part IX. 
 Chapter XI.) : 
 
 ' His most distinctive innovation as a colourist was his 
 discovery of the scarlet shadow. " True, there is a sun- 
 shine whose light is golden, and its shadow grey; but 
 there is another sunshine and that the purest, whose 
 light is white and its shadow scarlet." This was the 
 
3 so The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 essentially offensive, inconceivable thing, which he could 
 not be believed in.' 
 
 Now it is quite true that Turner in his later work did 
 actually combine white lights with scarlet shadows, an 
 invention which nobody had ever hit upon before, and 
 therefore, perhaps, in that sense a discovery ; but this 
 invention wa^ certainly not a discovery in nature, where 
 the combination does not exist. Either it was a tech- 
 nical device of Turner's to get a false brilliance, or else 
 he may have been gradually and unconsciously led to it 
 by physical degeneration of the eye. You may watch 
 and wait all your life long to see a natural object which 
 is white in its lights under sunshine and scarlet in its 
 shadows, and you will never see it in this world. It is 
 like watching for the Holy Grail, ' rose-red with beatings 
 in it as if alive.' 
 
 Mr. Ruskin places Turner amongst the seven supreme 
 colourists of the world, the other six being, in his esti- 
 mate, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Corregib,' 
 and Sir Joshua Reynolds. \It is always interesting to 
 know what a critic thinks about the colouring of a 
 painter, but it is not of the slightest use to argue the 
 matter, as excellence in colour cannot possibly be proved 
 by evidence. I should say that Turner's colour was 
 often wonderful, often far below his best, and seldom 
 natural. I should say, too, that he produced fine colour 
 much less habitually than Giorgione, Titian, and Cor- 
 regio, that he was often crude and violent, and occasion- 
 ally hot, heavy, or dull. His unfaithfulness to nature 
 would prove nothing against him as a colourist, but 
 
Tjimet's Colour. 351 
 
 rather imply a possibility in his favour. The colour of 
 the great colourists is really nothing but a sort of visible 
 music which has to be brilliant or harmonious, but which 
 is always sufficiently like nature if it does not offend the 
 spectator. Mr. Ruskin's declaration that colour requires 
 especial veracity is simply one of those paradoxes which 
 he throws up now and then like rockets to prevent his 
 readers from falling into a state of inattention. ' Form,' 
 he says, ' may be attained in perfectness by painters who, 
 in their course of study, are continually altering or 
 idealising it ; but only the sternest fidelity will reach 
 colouring. Idealise or alter in that, and you are lost. 
 Whether you alter by abasing or exaggerating — by glare 
 or by decline, one fate is for you — ruin. Violate truth 
 wilfully in the slightest particular, or at least get into the 
 habit of violating it, and all kinds of failure and error 
 will surround you and hunt you to your fall.' 
 
 This is most effective writing, but as misleading as it 
 is effective. The proof that the colour of the great 
 colourists is not natural is that they are all so unlike 
 each other. If they were all faithful copyists of nature, 
 they would resemble one another exactly as photographs 
 would if photography could render colour. I have said 
 already that colour is visible music ; it is so indeed, and 
 since the colourists are musicians who compose for our 
 eyes, they have the same liberty, the same individuality, 
 as the musicians who write operas and oratorios.* 
 ' Titian and Corregio,' says V^ron, in his admirable 
 
 * It may possibly be due to this affinity between colour and music that 
 all painters (Amaury Duval declares that there is no exception to this rule) 
 love music with a sort of second love. 
 
352 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 volume on ' Esthetics,' ' Rubens and Rembrandt, are 
 no more like each other than Beethoven is like Rossini, 
 or Weber like Mozart, or Wagner like Verdi.' And 
 again, in another place, he says with equal truth : 
 ' There are very different ways of understanding colour. 
 From Rubens to Giorgione, and from Velasquez to 
 Veronese, there are varieties which prove the immense 
 elasticity of the art of painting, and the astonishing 
 liberty of action which genius can assume without chang- 
 ing its object.' There would be no such variety, no 
 such liberty of action, if the colourists only rendered 
 truth. What they really did was to discover, each of 
 them, some pleasant chord or chords of colour of his 
 own, to master these thoroughly by practice, and then 
 go on applying them as long as they had strength to 
 work. Turner's experiments in colour had more to do 
 with art than with nature, and in many of his pictures, 
 especially his later ones, a certain technical purpose 
 manifests itself — the opposition between hot and cold 
 tints in broad masses. A well-known landscape-painter 
 told me that all his own colouring lay finally in the 
 opposition between red and green, almost everything in 
 his works being a passage from one to the other. In 
 Turner the opposition is often between yellow and 
 black, or between scarlet and cold grey. He is said to 
 have declared that yellow was his favourite colour. 
 The greatest technical merit of his colouring is his 
 wonderfully brilliant performance in the upper notes. 
 He carried up more colour into the regions of light than 
 any other painter. An American critic says that 
 ' Turner, being deficient in colour, lacked the first 
 
Turner's Imagination. 353 
 
 element of a painter ;" but the word ' deficient ' seems 
 inaccurate in this case. Turner was empirical, experi- 
 mental, rash, adventurous to temerity, disposed to trust 
 his own genius to any extent in wanderings from the 
 beaten track ; but he can hardly, even in his failures, be 
 called deficient. His artistic nature, with all its errors, 
 was one of the most opulent that ever existed. 
 
 I need hardly dwell upon his imaginative power, which 
 is so evident to any one who can recognise imagination 
 when he sees it that instances are superfluous. Every 
 picture of Turner's, every drawing, almost every sketch, 
 executed after he reached manhood, bears evidence of 
 the action of imagination, which in his works would often 
 amplify a simple theme, or heighten still further the 
 sublimity of a sublime one. There have been few artists 
 of any kind, there has not been one landscape-painter, 
 in whom the action of the imaginative faculty has been 
 so constant ; and it is the more surprising in his case 
 that his production was so enormous. This incessant 
 action of the imaginative faculty made it impossible for 
 Turner to draw the scenes of nature faithfully ; but what 
 his drawings lose in fidelity they generally more than 
 regain in art. 
 
 A quality in Turner's art which has been much less 
 spoken of than his imagination is his taste, which was of 
 exquisite refinement. It was not infallible, there are 
 compositions by him which seem sadly wanting in taste, 
 compositions overburdened with uninteresting material 
 or spoiled by awkward arrangement ; but notwithstanding 
 occasional failures it is certain, so far as anything about 
 such a disputable subject can be, that Turner had a de!i- 
 
 23 
 
354 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 cate and singularly elegant perception of the becoming 
 in the arrangement of his materials, that he gave almost 
 every subject a certain charm, commonly attributed to 
 what people used to call his ' magic pencil,' but in reality 
 due to the fine choice in selection and rejection, watch- 
 fully exercised by a mind of extraordinary refinement. 
 I have not space to give special instances, but I may 
 say generally that (with very few exceptions) the little 
 vignettes seem to me the best examples of taste in all 
 that he did, each a bit of perfected beauty, natural and 
 artificial at the same time. 
 
 ' As some rare little rose, a piece of inmost 
 Horticultural art.' 
 
 , I should say, then, to sum up, that Turner was a land- 
 scape-painter of extraordinary yet by no means unlimited 
 genius, a subtle and delicate but unfaithful draughtsman, 
 a learned and refined but often fallacious chiaroscurist, 
 a splendid and brilliant but rarely natural colourist, a 
 man gifted with wonderful fertility of imagination and 
 strength of memory (though this last is less easy to 
 determine because he altered everything), a student of 
 Nature whose range was vast indeed, for it included 
 mountains, lakes, lowland rivers and the sea, besides all 
 kinds of human works that can affect the appearance of 
 a landscape (castles, abbeys, cities, villages, houses, 
 bridges, roads, etc., etc.), yet not universal, for he never 
 adequately illustrated the familiar forest trees, and had 
 not the sentiment of the forest, neither had he the rustic 
 sentiment in its perfection. I should say that Turner 
 was distinguished greatlj- by his knowledge, but still 
 
R^sumS, 355 
 
 more distinguished by his exquisite taste, and by the 
 singular charm which it gave to most of his works, 
 though not to all of them ; that he was technically a 
 wonderful but imperfect and irregular painter in oil, 
 unsafe and unsound in his processes, though at the 
 same time both strong and delicate in handling ; that 
 he stands apart and alone in water-colour, which in his 
 hands is like a new art ; that he was an excellent line- 
 etcher in preparation for mezzotint, and a good engraver 
 in mezzotint besides ; and that with all these gifts and 
 acquirements he was a very great and illustrious artist, 
 but not the greatest of artists. I believe that his fame 
 will last ; that he was as much a poet on canvas as 
 Byron and Shelley were in written language, and that 
 although it is possible that his performance may be 
 afterwards excelled, it will be very difficult for any 
 future landscape-painter to rival his reputation in his 
 own country. 
 
 The qualities of Turner's art are so various and so 
 great, that there is some danger, especially with the in- 
 fluence of Mr. Ruskin's eloquence and frequent use of 
 hyperbole, of a national idolatry of Turner, like the 
 Roman idolatry of Raphael, or the French idolatry of 
 Claude. Such a result would be a great evil to land- 
 scape-painting in England, and to the aesthetic culture 
 of Englishmen who are not practical artists. Even as it 
 is, the fame of Turner is injurious to English landscape- 
 painters of merit, who, if inferior to him in range of study 
 or strength of imagination, are often in some respects his 
 superiors, and able to render what they love best in 
 nature with a degree of affectionate fidelity which he 
 
 23—2 
 
35^ The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 certainly could not have equalled. With all my admira- 
 tion for Turner I should be sorry to contribute to such a 
 result as this. The fame of Claude, of Poussin, and Sal- 
 vator, arrested the movement of landscape art in France 
 for more than a hundred years, and the regular ' classical 
 landscape ' on those models (or supposed to be on those 
 models) was until quite recently the only landscape re- 
 cognised by the official teaching. Deliverance came at 
 last through the modern rustic school and the sylvan 
 influences of the forest of Fontainebleau. An uncritical 
 adoration of Turner might narrow and falsify English 
 landscape-painting if the natural vigour and independence 
 of the English race did not continually re-assert itself. 
 Let us enjoy what is delightful in his ai't, and admire 
 what is admirable, but let us remember that he belongs 
 already to the past, that he is a dead master, that he will 
 soon be an old master, and that an art which would pre- 
 serve its freshness must work on towards its own future. 
 We have lived in an interesting and exciting time in 
 the history of landscape-painting, a time of discoveries 
 which in the nature of things cannot occur again. 
 Modern landscape was really begun by Claude in the 
 direction of idealism, and by the Dutchmen in the direc- 
 tion of realism. Turner took up the idealism of Claude,, 
 imitated it, or followed it up to a certain point, and then 
 diverged into an idealism of his own, which he applied to 
 a much wider range of material. The Pre-Raphaelites 
 tried the experiment of a new realism, not founded on 
 Dutch work as to its technical principles, yet resembling 
 Paul Potter in the close study of separate details. Con- 
 stable set the example of a resolute naturalism, an ex- 
 
Past and Future of Landscape Painting. 357 
 
 ample which has had immense influence on modern 
 art. I do not see how it can be henceforth possible for 
 landscape-painting to go into any strikingly new direc- 
 tion, except so far as this, that there will always be a 
 certain freshness and novelty in the work of new men of 
 original genius on account of their personal preferences. 
 Turner may be excelled in many ways by some genius in 
 the future, more richly gifted and more thoroughly 
 trained, for though his art was extensive it was not with- 
 out limits, and though his skill was great it was not 
 without imperfection ; but however wonderful may be 
 the work of the future genius, it is most improbable that 
 he will ever win a fame like the fame of Turner. He 
 will not have Turner's opportunities for doing what has 
 not been done before. He will not have a writer of sin- 
 gular eloquence and unlimited devotion to be the priest 
 and prophet of his divinity. He will live in an age of 
 cooled enthusiasms and inherited critical knowledge, 
 which will indispose the public for any eager partisanship 
 in his favour. Even already the first ardour of modern 
 interest in artistic questions has given place to a tran- 
 quil philosophy. There is nothing now in Europe like 
 the warfare between the Classics and Romantics, which 
 agitated all the ilite of Parisian intelligence in 1830, or 
 even like the much feebler excitement which attended 
 the rise of Pre-Raphaelitism in England. There has been 
 some slight commotion about the revival of etching, but 
 that is merely the resuming of a process which had been 
 abandoned. It is becoming more and more difficult to 
 create a sensation in art, and without a sensation such a 
 fame as that of Turner is not possible. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Turner's character and habits. — Turner's manners. — Religion and morality. 
 — Temperance and intemperance. — Turner's generosity. — Turner's will. 
 — Works of art left to the nation. — Conclusion. 
 
 This ends what I have to say of Turner as an artist, 
 but there are some points in his character as a man 
 which cannot be left unnoticed. 
 
 He was one of the most eccentric Englishmen who 
 ever lived, a perfect British original. Emerson says that 
 Nature is at the greatest pains to protect originalities 
 against hostile influences ; and if so, Turner must have 
 been the object of special precautions on her part. The 
 narrowness of his literary education protected him, for 
 foreign languages, whether ancient or modern, expose 
 the mind to the influence of foreign ideas. It was even a 
 protection to his originality not to be able to write 
 better than he did, for he tried hard to write, long and 
 vainly, and if he had succeeded he would have spent much 
 of his energy in verse. It is easier for a painter to live 
 in eccentric isolation than for a man of letters, whose art 
 it is to use and elevate the common language of the 
 world, and who needs even more than others the common 
 culture, the common experience of mankind. In many 
 respects the eccentricities of Turner had an excellent 
 
Turner's Character and Habits. 359 
 
 effect upon his art. Nothing is more astonishing in 
 Turner's life than his prodigious fertility, the enormous 
 quantity of his work, the hundreds and hundreds of 
 pictures that he left behind him, the thousands and thou- 
 sands of drawings and sketches, the mountain of labour 
 represented by the great sum total of his vast and various 
 performance ! Remember, too, that every touch of what 
 bears his name is really and truly his own, that he did 
 not keep a picture manufactory, as Rubens did, with a 
 score of workmen and pupils toiling incessantly under 
 his direction ; that he did not despise detail, but finished 
 all his work sufficiently and much of it minutely ; that 
 he wrought for colour as much as form, tenderly, deli- 
 cately, and therefore (however swiftly) without hurry — 
 and then, after taking all these things into considerations 
 ask yourself how it would have been possible for a man 
 of the world to do with his own fingers such a heap of 
 work as this ! Merely to copy all Turner's works com- 
 pletely, without having any trouble about scheming and 
 inventing them, would occupy a man for a hundred 
 years. He who wrought them could not conform to the 
 customs of ' good society.' He got up early in the morn- 
 ing as labourers and blacksmiths do, he worked at his 
 trade all day, he wasted no time over his simple meals, 
 he embarrassed himself with none of the cares and 
 troubles of a great establishment, and left what Emerson 
 derides as the ' cards, custards, and compliments ' of 
 society to those who value them and have nothing 
 better to occupy their thoughts. He even carried his 
 nonconformity to such lengths that it is wonderful how 
 people tolerated him at all. He seldom answered dinner 
 
360 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 invitations, but went or not, just as he felt inclined at the 
 last moment. He invited nobody to dinner at his own 
 house in Queen Anne Street, and though not quite so 
 stingy as he has been represented, for he would pay a 
 score liberally at an inn (on rare occasions, and partly 
 because it amused him to astonish people) the rule of his 
 life was to shut himself up when at home, and keep his 
 movements secret when he went out. These eccentrici- 
 ties, which look so unsocial, were merely the habits of a 
 workman who protected his own peace. He understood 
 that part of prudence thoroughly. He saved money at 
 first to win his artistic independence, the liberty to paint 
 what he liked and on his own artistic principles ; the 
 habit of saving remained with him afterwards, but he 
 never cared for money in comparison with his art, and he 
 did not, in the real and true meaning of the expression, 
 work for money after he became independent. Most of 
 his eccentricities may be explained by two considera- 
 tions : the first, that the practice of his art was the delight 
 as well as the labour of his life ; the second, that the art 
 he practised is best pursued in solitude. He bolted the 
 door of his painting-room and kept out critics and gossips, 
 surely a wise decision, unless it can be proved that the 
 critics and gossips would have aided him in his labour.* 
 Even when sketching from nature with a friend, he would 
 go apart for privacy and keep the result of his sitting 
 to himself. It is bad enough to be misunderstood 
 when your work is done, without being plagued by other 
 
 * This he carried to such an extent that he never admitted even his 
 friend Mr Hawltes of Famley into his studio, and yet he loved Mr. Hawkes 
 far more than most men love their brothers. 
 
Turner's Cliaracter and Habits. 361 
 
 people's want of apprehension whilst it is in progress. 
 We have evidence that Turner was painfully sensitive to 
 criticism, as many artists are, and that he was tortured 
 by what the newspapers said of him. There was in his 
 mind the apparent contradiction, which has frequently 
 been observed in men of genius, between an eager desire 
 for public reputation and an almost morbid passion for 
 privacy of life. Whilst planning schemes for attaining 
 the utmost possible notoriety, he lived in hiding like an 
 insolvent debtor. 
 
 Although a hard-working man, almost entirely ab- 
 sorbed in the laborious practice of his profession. Turner 
 was not a Philistine ; I mean that he was not illiberally 
 indifferent to other kinds of culture than his own ; on 
 the contrary, there is abundant evidence that he took 
 an interest in literature and science, though his mind 
 was so especially and peculiarly constituted for painting 
 that his pursuit of literature was not practically success- 
 ful, and his scientific studies hardly got beyond the initial 
 stage of intelligent curiosity. Even the titles of his pic- 
 tures are enough to prove some genuine interest in 
 antiquity ; we have already seen how much his mind 
 was impressed by the story of ancient Carthage. An 
 artist who takes a general interest in painting and archi- 
 tecture is sure to be led up to antiquity through art if 
 not through literature, and Turner's acquaintance with 
 ancient subjects was probably due at first to the sugges- 
 tions of the old masters. He had at one time serious 
 thoughts of giving himself classical literary culture, by 
 the help of his friend Trimmer, and had the courage to 
 attack both Latin and Greek, but, as might have been 
 
362 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 anticipated, without success — an inevitable consequence 
 of his strange natural incapacity for languages. His own 
 poetry has been examined at some length in this bio- 
 graphy, and frequently quoted. It gives evidence of a 
 desire for literary activity, which was not accompanied by 
 any natural literary gift ; still, we ought to remember how 
 much writers gain by culture, especially in verse, and we 
 may recall Byron's assertion, that to make really excel- 
 lent verses a man ought to have no other occupation. 
 Turner, like most artists, possessed but few books, but it 
 was his custom to have a volume or two with him when 
 he travelled, and it has been ascertained that his tra- 
 velling companions at one time were Young's 'Night 
 Thoughts,' Izaak Walton, and a translation of Horace. 
 I have mentioned M. Amaury Duval's theory, that all 
 painters without exception have a second love for music, 
 so the reader may be curious to know whether Turner 
 loved music or was indifferent to it. He was at one 
 time an amateur musician, and his instrument was the 
 flute, but I do not know that he ever attained any re- 
 spectable degree of skill. A gamut for a flute was found 
 in one of his note-books, and the flute itself was found 
 in his house after his death. I believe that we shall not 
 be unjust to Turner in considering him a man of one 
 pursuit, who would willingly have extended the range of 
 his culture if he could have found the time, but who did 
 not allow the studies in which he was an amateur to 
 interfere with that one great field of study in which he 
 was so pre-eminently the artist. He had not the facili- 
 ties in various directions which are given by a good 
 ordinary education in languages and science, that general 
 
Tiiniei^s Character and Habits. 365 
 
 education which may not be very much in itself, yet is- 
 to its possessor like a bunch of keys, with which at any 
 time he can open the doors of knowledge. Would Turner 
 have been a greater artist with a better general educa- 
 tion ? The answer is very doubtful. Scholarship and 
 exact science might possibly have weakened within him 
 that visionary faculty which was the true fountain of 
 his art. To see Nature, to dream of what he had seen 
 and transform it as he dreamed, to realise the vision 
 afterwards in colour, this was the occupation of his life ; 
 and though he did not despise other knowledge, he left 
 it to its own students. 
 
 A written portrait of Turner cannot be complete 
 without some account of his manners and his morals. 
 He was a person of unprepossessing appearance, short 
 and thick-set, with coarse features and the general 
 appearance of the skipper of some small merchant craft 
 living on shore in the interval between two voyages. 
 He does not seem ever to have set up for being what is 
 called a gentleman, but had the style and manner of the 
 lower middle class. He had a great difficulty in express- 
 ing himself properly, which made him very reserved, and 
 he was absolutely incapable of saying kind and polite 
 things in an easy and graceful way, though not at all in- 
 capable of doing them. Mr. Ruskin tells a story of his 
 practical kindness in combination with bad manners 
 when out sketching with a friend, who ' got into great 
 difficulty over a coloured sketch. Turner looked over 
 him a little while, then said, in a grumbling way, " I 
 haven 't got any paper I like, let me try yours." Receiv- 
 ing a block-book, he disappeared for an hour and a half. 
 
364 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Returning, he threw the book down, with a growl, say- 
 ing : " I can't make anything of your paper." There 
 were three sketches on it, in three distinct stages of pro- 
 gress, showing the process of colouring from beginning 
 to end, and clearing up e.v&xy difficulty which his friend 
 had got into.' This story exactly coincides with every- 
 thing that we authentically know of Turner ; he was at 
 the same time kind in deed and rude in manner. There 
 was no necessity, after borrowing the block-book, to 
 throw it down with a growl ; he might have handed it 
 back to the lender with a word of thanks. It has some- 
 times seemed to me that many things in Turner's 
 character are only exaggerations of English characteris- 
 tics. The typical Englishman is shy, reserved, fond of 
 privacy ; Turner had these peculiarities in excess. The 
 typical Englishman has plain manners ; Turner's manners 
 were plain to gruffness. The typical Englishman loves 
 money and yet is generous at the same time ; Turner was 
 habitually avaricious, yet could be splendidly liberal when 
 it suited him. It is a well-known peculiarity of the 
 English character to shrink from the expression of noble 
 sentiments, and from all language which by any pos- 
 sibility could be called high-flown ; Turner had this kind 
 of mauvaise honte to such a degree that he could not say 
 the civil things which are usual even amongst English- 
 men, and his conversation had not even that simple kind 
 of elegance which English usages permit. The English- 
 man dresses plainly ; Turner carried this to the extent of 
 shabbiness. English workmen work harder and better 
 than those of other nations ; Turner was pre-eminent for 
 bis power of toil. 
 
Turner's Manners. 365 
 
 Mr. Ruskin has mentioned irritability as one of 
 Turner's characteristics. Here is an instance which 
 seems to prove it. ' On one occasion,' says Mr. Rose, 
 ' I had the audacity to ask him if he painted his clouds 
 from nature. One has heard of " calling up a look," 
 The words had hardly passed my lips when I saw my 
 gaiicherie. I was afraid I had roused a thunderstorm ; 
 however, my lucky star predominated, for, after having 
 eyed me for a few moments with a slight frown, he 
 growled out, " Ho^\■ would you have me paint them ?" 
 then seizing upon his fishing-rod and turning upon his 
 heel, he marched indignantly out of the house to the 
 water's-edge.' There was no necessity for being angry ; 
 the question was not an insult, nor was it even foolish. 
 Some artists (Constable, for example) have painted their 
 studies of skies rapidly in oil ; others have contented 
 themselves with pencil memoranda from nature. Turner 
 was always ready to resent either a question or a request 
 as an unwarrantable liberty. ' Mrs. R— — had a pet 
 spaniel which was one day lying in her lap ; Turner was 
 seated close by, reading ; a sudden impulse induced her 
 to ask him to make a drawing of her favourite. The 
 R.A. opened his eyes with astonishment, at the same 
 time replying, " My dear madam, you do not know what 
 you ask." ' Here is an account of a visit to Turner paid 
 by Dr. Shaw, a relation of his on his mother's side. 
 
 ' Of a sudden the great artist made his appearance. 
 I bowed, not too obsequiously nor too low, putting a 
 question to him immediately after the salutation as 
 follows : " May I ask if you are the Mr. Turner who 
 visited at Shelford Manor, in the county of Nottingham, 
 
■})66 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 in your youth ?" " I am," he answered, in a tone and 
 manner full of dignity, evidently evincing feelings of an 
 untoward nature. He was clearly paving the way for a 
 magnificent outburst of passion — the thunderstorm was 
 gathering. To appease him I became somewhat bland 
 in manner. I tried to throw oil upon the troubled 
 waters. Assuming a manner which perhaps might be 
 ■denominated one of a more winning kind, I said : " May 
 I take the liberty of asking you whether your mother's 
 name was Marshall ?" He replied, in a tone of voice 
 accompanied with the look of a fury, clearly showing 
 that the flash of lightning had appeared to warn me 
 that the storm was about to break. After this I began 
 to feel uneasy. I felt half inclined to say something 
 monstrously uncivil to him for his bearish manners. I 
 waited, however, for him to begin the attack, which soon 
 followed. He drew himself suddenly into the most 
 ■dignified attitude I ever beheld, even from a clever actor 
 or an infuriated duke. His manner was full of majesty, 
 .accompanied with a diabolical look. He said : " I con- 
 sider, sir, that you have taken a most unwarrantable 
 liberty with me by the manner in which you have 
 obtruded yourself upon me." ' 
 
 This was the peculiar character of Turner's irritability 
 — a disposition to resent anything resembling intrusion, 
 and to consider every attempt to open communication 
 -with him as necessarily intrusive. The origin of this 
 state of mind was probably nothing but an early prac- 
 tical wisdom, a keen sense of the value of time, and of 
 the injury inflicted on an industrious man by the inter- 
 ruptions of idlers. We ought to remember that an 
 .artist is not, like a shopman, in the constant habit of 
 talking to people in the way of business; his work 
 
Religion and Morality. 367 
 
 advances best in solitude, and every interruption is a 
 definite injury to him unless it brings with it some ac- 
 ceptable compensation. In Turner the horror of inter- 
 ruption grew to a morbid excess, so that visitors found 
 him irritated beforehand, and the slightest maladresse 
 on their part was enough to kindle his impatience into 
 anger. 
 
 Of Turner's religion I know really nothing, except 
 that (like Milton) he did not generally go to church, 
 though he went there with his friends when he visited 
 them in the country. Mr. Ruskin, who knew him per- 
 sonally, speaks of his ' infidelity' and his ' faithlessness ;' 
 but I am quite unable to give the reader any authentic 
 account of Turner's opinions in detail, and yet a bio- 
 graphy of him cannot be complete without some refer- 
 ence to the subject. His extreme brevity in letter- 
 writing, his reserve in conversation, and his general 
 weakness in those intellectual faculties which express 
 themselves in words, made him a most unlikely person 
 to utter his mind at all copiously on theological subjects, 
 and we must remember that in his day heterodox opinions 
 were less freely circulated than they are now. All we 
 know is that Turner did not profess to be a member of 
 any visible church. Mr. Thornbury, in his biography, 
 said something to the effect that he was oppressed in 
 his latter years by the despairing fear of annihilation ; 
 but I do not know that Mr. Thornbury had any autho- 
 rity for this beyond an induction which may have been 
 erroneous. There are unbelievers (like Theodore Parker) 
 who have the most perfect confidence in a future life, 
 and others who (like Stuart Mill) have not that confi- 
 
368 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 dence absolutely, yet meet their end without despairing 
 fear. Turner may have belonged to one of these cate- 
 gories, though it is not probable that his opinions had 
 any profoundly philosophical character. It is more 
 likely that he simply found difficulties in believing, and 
 stayed away from church without going very deeply into ' 
 theological or philosophical questions of any kind. From 
 what we know of Turner's intellect, it appears to have 
 been entirely incapable of any sustained critical investi- 
 gation. 
 
 I find it difficult to speak of Turner's morality with 
 perfect justice to his memory, not because we have no 
 facts to argue upon, but because he has been unlucky in 
 the publicity given to them, and in a certain inelegance 
 which makes his errors appear more coarse and gross 
 than those of the old Italian masters. We all know the 
 pictures of Titian and his mistress, and his portraits of 
 her, yet nobody talks of the immorality of Titian ; but 
 Turner's domestic arrangements with Mrs. Danby and 
 Mrs. Booth give more acute pain to our sense of pro- 
 priety because they seem more degrading. We all make 
 distinctions of this kind, and we cannot help it. Lord 
 Byron's liaison with the elegant and accomplished young 
 Countess Guiccioli shocks us less than his intimacy with 
 the vulgar Venetian woman who preceded her. In 
 Turner's conduct in this respect there were two offences, 
 one against morality and the other against good taste. 
 I am not going to defend or excuse either of these 
 offences, but in justice to Turner I wish them to be 
 clearly separated. Again, I think it is only fair to point 
 out that Turner has been singularly unfortunate in the 
 
Temperance and Intemperance. 369 
 
 evil reputation which has attached itself, in quite a pecu- 
 liar and especial manner, to his conduct in this respect. 
 I do not know why — except that he was a man of 
 genius and therefore exposed to the envy and malice of 
 his inferiors — Turner should be singled out for especial 
 opprobrium in such a city as London, which is not visibly 
 any more moral since he has been laid in his grave. 
 Unless people are resolutely determined to shut their 
 eyes to what passes continually before their faces, they 
 must be well aware that Turner's conduct, though blam- 
 able, was not very unusual. It is said that he left behind 
 him four illegitimate children, but there is no evidence 
 that he ever seduced an innocent girl or disturbed th*^ 
 peace of a household. 
 
 Turner's way of living was habitually simple and tem- 
 perate, but he drank occasionally more than his usual 
 quantity, and towards the close of his life he is said to 
 have stimulated sluggish or failing powers with frequent 
 glasses of sherry. It is not fair to represent him as a 
 drunken sensualist for this. Thousands of overworked 
 professional men have done as much, to the detriment, 
 no doubt, of their health, and perhaps even in the long- 
 run to the disadvantage of their work as well ; but in 
 such cases let us be charitable, and admit that the habit 
 does not originate in sensuality. When the powers of 
 production fail, the producer too often tries to recover 
 them for the hour that he toils at his task even at the 
 cost of some after depression. Turner's occasional 
 excesses when in perfect health may be explained by 
 the habits of his age. In the days of George the Fourth 
 many Englishmen got tipsy from time to time, and no- 
 
 24 
 
370 The Life of J. M, W. Turner. 
 
 body thought the worse of them, and when they did not get 
 tipsy they drank abundantly still. Mr. Cyrus Redding, 
 who travelled with Turner in Devonshire, said ' he was 
 much attached to vulgar porter, and discarded wine, at 
 least with dinner, although afterwards he would take his 
 glass freely, as was much more the custom in those days 
 than at present.' This, I believe, is a fair and honest 
 way of stating the matter. Few Europeans in those 
 days were water-drinkers. Even the moderate ones, men 
 such as Scott and Goethe, drank in their quiet way 
 enough to astonish a modern teetotaller.* That Turner 
 was never excessively addicted to sensual gratification of 
 any kind is sufficiently proved by the enormous amount 
 of delicate work that he accomplished, and by the singu- 
 larly fine condition of his nervous system. I may remind 
 the reader that Turner painted habitually without a 
 mahlstick, which proves wonderful sureness of hand ; that 
 his work on a small scale is more delicate than that of 
 any other landscape-painter ; and that he could bear a 
 volley from a battery of artillery close to him, and quite 
 unexpected, without betraying the very slightest dis- 
 turbance. He was equal to any kind of travel, walked 
 his twenty miles and more with perfect ease, and was 
 superior to sea-sickness.f This does not indicate habitual 
 
 * ' Lest this statement should convey a false impression I hasten to recall 
 to the reader's recollection the habits of our fathers in respect of drinking. 
 It was no unusual thing to be a ' three-bottle man' in those days in Eng- 
 land, when the three bottles were of port or Burgundy.; and Goethe, a 
 Rhinelander, accustomed from boyhood to wine, drank a wine which his 
 English contemporaries would have called water. The amount he drank 
 never did more than exhilarate him ; never made him unfit for work or for 
 society. ' — Lewes' Life of Goethe. 
 
 t ' The sea had that dirty puddled appearance which often precedes a 
 hard gale. We kept towards Rame Head to obtain an offing, and when 
 
Temperance and Intemperance. 371 
 
 intemperance. We get a glimpse of him on the Margate 
 boat in the biography by Mr. Alaric Watts, which ex- 
 hibits temperance and economy at the same time : 
 
 ' Mr. Turner was very fond of Margate, and in the 
 summer often went there on Saturday morning by the 
 Magnet or King William steamer. Most of the time he 
 hung over the stern, watching the effects of the sun and 
 the boiling of the foam. About two o'clock he would 
 open his wallet of cold meat in the cabin, and, nearing 
 himself to one with whom he was in the habit of chat- 
 ting, would beg a clean plate and a hot potato, and did 
 not refuse one glass of wine, but would never accept two. 
 It need hardly be added that he was no favourite with 
 the waiters.' 
 
 The same economical disposition, combined with tem- 
 perance, may be detected in an item which frequently 
 occurred in his accounts of his travelling expenses under 
 the title ' Boxing Harry,' a piece of slang which Turner, 
 probably picked up from the commercial travellers, and 
 
 running out from the land the sea rose higher, until off Stokes Point it be- 
 came stormy. We mounted the ridges bravely ; the sea in that part of the 
 Channel rolls in grand furrows from the Atlantic, and we had run about a 
 dozen miles. The artist enjoyed the scene. He sat in the stem-sheets 
 intently watching the sea, and not at all affected by the motion. Two of 
 our number were sick. The soldier, in a delicate coat of scarlet, white, and 
 gold, looked dismal enough, drenched with the spray, and so ill that at last 
 he wanted to jump overboard. We were obliged to lay him on the nisty 
 iron ballast in the bottom of the boat, and keep him down with a spar laid 
 across him. Demaria was silent in his suffering. In this way we made 
 Bur Island ; the difficulty was how to get through the surf, which looked 
 unbroken. At last we got round under the lee of the island, and con- 
 trived to get on shore. All this time Turner was silent, watching the 
 tumultuous scene.'— ./!/>-. Cyrus Redding' s Autobiography. 
 
 24 — 2 
 
372 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 which means a meat tea, or the combination of dinner 
 and tea in a single repast, certainly not one of the 
 happiest inventions of economists. 
 
 The best point in Turner's character was his gene- 
 rosity, not in money matters only, but in the general 
 condition of his feelings. It may seem strange that such 
 a quality should have been compatible with what we 
 know of Turner, with his grasping habit in money 
 matters, for he clutched at shillings and sixpences, his 
 gruff manners, and his constant anxiety about his own 
 position in the world of art ; all that can be said is that 
 we have here one of those apparent anomalies in cha^ 
 racter which are not very rare, though they invariably 
 astonish us when they occur. Victor Hugo once ex- 
 plained that the secret of the interest inspired by some 
 of his best-known inventions was, that he purposely 
 endowed repulsive or uninteresting characters with some 
 splendid virtue which overcame the reader's dislike to 
 them, and produced in his mind a glow of reaction in 
 their favour. Turner was a character of this kind. 
 Though unpolished, and even from the point of view of 
 any severe social criticism positively uncivilised, though 
 not (in the social sense) a gentleman, or anything re- 
 sembling a gentleman, Turner had a nobility of heart as 
 much above ordinary gentlemanhood as true poetry is 
 above mere versification. All who knew him are agreed 
 that he never was heard to speak in depreciation of any 
 of his contemporaries, but there are several instances of 
 his kindness in rendering them services, and in saying 
 what could fairly and truly be said in their favour. This 
 reticence is a rare virtue amongst artists, not only be- 
 
Turner's Generosity. 373 
 
 cause they are often (and very naturally) jealous of each 
 other, but because they often conscientiously disapprove 
 of each other's work, believing it to be positively harmful 
 to public taste. Mr. Trimmer once happened to be 
 fishing with Turner, who took with him Campbell's 
 ' Pleasures of Hope.' There were illustrations in the 
 book, and he showed one of them to his companion, say- 
 ing, ' That is pretty.' Mr. Trimmer answered, ' Nothing 
 first rate, is it ?' Turner repeated his word of praise, 
 ' It is pretty, and he is a poor man with a large family.' 
 Observe how carefully Turner avoided saying anything, 
 or even assenting to anything unfavourable to his less 
 fortunate contemporary. Here is another anecdote of 
 his generous recognition of an artist inferior to himself. 
 ' There was a painter of the name of Bird, and when 
 Bird first sent a picture to the Academy for exhibition. 
 Turner was on the hanging committee. Bird's picture 
 had great merit ; but no place for it could be found. 
 Turner pleaded hard for it. No, . the thing was impos- 
 sible. Turner sat down and looked at Bird's picture a 
 long time ; then insisted that a place must be found for 
 it. He was still met by the assertion of impracticability. 
 He said no more, but took down one of his own pictures, 
 sent it out of the Academy, and hung Bird's in its place.'* 
 Now, is not that a lovely little anecdote, a story to be 
 told to the very angels in heaven ? It is as sweet and 
 acceptable to our moral sense as the fragrance of the 
 lily of the valley to our nostrils in the spring. We know 
 how attached Turner was to the Royal Academy, he 
 
 * I give the story in Mr. Ruskin's words. See ' Lectures on Architecture 
 and Painting.' Lecture iii. 
 
374 The Life of J. M. W. Tttrner. 
 
 loved it as people love their families and their homes 
 and Haydon's attack on the Academy so hurt Turner's 
 feelings that he declared Haydon had stabbed his 
 mother. ' He stabbed his mother, he stabbed his 
 mother !' Nevertheless, Turner could so control his own 
 irritability that he did justice to the violent figure-painter, 
 who frankly acknowledged it : ' But Turner behaved 
 well, and did me justice.' 
 
 We may now pass to his actual generosity in money. 
 He was very exacting in money matters, very close, and 
 sometimes almost mean in his closeness, as when he 
 would ask for small advantages when he received con- 
 siderable sums. At the same time, where his affections 
 or his sympathies were touched (and his nature was 
 really rich in both), he could be nobly and effectually 
 generous. The following true story, narrated by Mr. 
 Ruskin, is probably but one example out of many : 
 
 ' At the death of a poor drawing-master, Mr. Wells, 
 whom Turner had long known, he was deeply affected, 
 and lent money to the widow until a large sum had 
 accumulated. She was both honest and grateful, and 
 after a long period was happy enough to be able to 
 return to her benefactor the whole sum she had received 
 from him. She waited on him with it ; but Turner kept 
 his hands in his pocket. " Keep it," he said, " and send 
 your children to school and to church." He said this 
 in bitterness ; he had himself been sent to neither.' 
 
 Mr. Thornbury, in his biography, informs us that 
 Turner once returned to Mr. Charles Heath bills to the 
 amount of £iqoo, because Mr. Heath's affairs were not 
 
Turner's Generosity. 375 
 
 in a prosperous condition. Of course, had Turner been 
 as selfish as most people, that would have been the 
 strongest possible reason for getting the bills discounted 
 at once. But this is a mere trifle to another deed of 
 Turner's, also narrated by Mr. Thornbury, who affirmed 
 that it was ' thoroughly proved.' 
 
 ' An early patron of Turner, when he was a mere in- 
 du.strious barber's son working at three-shilling drawings 
 in his murky bedroom, had seen some of them in a 
 window in the Haymarket, and had bought them. From 
 that time he had gone on buying and being kind to the 
 rising artist, and Turner could not forget it. Years after 
 he heard that his old benefactor had become involved, 
 and that his steward had received directions to cut down 
 some valued trees. Instantly Turner's generous impulses 
 were roused ; his usual parsimony (all directed to one 
 great object) was cast behind him. He at once wrote 
 to the steward, concealing his name, and sent him the 
 full amount; many, many thousands — as much as 
 ;£'20,ooo, I believe. The gentleman never knew who 
 was his benefactor ; but in time his affairs rallied, and 
 he was enabled to pay Turner the whole sum back. 
 Years again rolled on, and now the son of Turner's 
 benefactor became involved. Again the birds of the 
 air brought the news to the guardian angel of the family ; 
 again he sent the necessary thousands anonymously ; 
 again the son stopped the leak, righted himself, and 
 returned the whole sum with thanks.' 
 
 It is also afiSrmed that Turner used to say to one of 
 his intimate friends : ' Don't wish for money ; you will 
 not be the happier ; and you know you can have any 
 money of me you want.' 
 
376 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 He had tenants in Harley Street who had been in 
 arrear for two years, but he would not allow his lawyer 
 to distrain. 
 
 These scraps of anecdote are some evidence of the 
 innate nobility and benevolence of the man ; but since 
 we know the secretiveness of his disposition we may 
 reasonably infer that most of his acts of kindness re- 
 mained unknown to all except the recipients. 
 
 One great project of his is known to us — his scheme 
 for bettering the condition of the unfortunate in his own 
 profession. Though successful in art himself, he had 
 the keenest sense of its difficulty and precariousness ; 
 and whilst he never criticised an unsuccessful fellow- 
 workman, he knew how many artists led lives of constant 
 anxiety, deepening at last into final poverty and failure. 
 Instead of scorning his humbler brethren for their in- 
 capacity to do what he had done, he occupied his 
 solitary musings with the problem how to so order 
 matters that his success might be made to operate as 
 some alleviation of their misfortune. I have already 
 sufficiently drawn attention to the one deduction which 
 may be made from Turner's generosity; there can be 
 no doubt that it was part of a great project for the per- 
 petuation of his name and fame, the bequest to the 
 National Gallery, and the Turner medal, being also part 
 of the same project. But although this desire for fame 
 is visible enough, we ought to remember, in justice to 
 Turner, that it has been shared by many other benevo- 
 ent persons who have not thought it necessary to hide 
 their lights under a bushel. George Heriot, of Edin- 
 burgh, immortalised himself in Heriot's Hospital, Mr. 
 
Turner's Generosity. 377 
 
 Peabody has recently immortalised himself in the ad- 
 mirable and fruitful project which bears his name, and a 
 thousand other benefactors of minor note have preserved 
 their names for posterity in less conspicuous places. We 
 need not then blame Turner because he obeyed the 
 impulses of an instinct which is common to so many, 
 and desired to be remembered with gratitude /or his 
 benevolence, as well as with admiration for his genius 
 as an artist. The benevolence was real ; there can be 
 no doubt that Turner enjoyed a real satisfaction in the 
 conviction that every sovereign he put by would lessen 
 the burden of some future distress. Let us rejoice that 
 his kind heart enjoyed the happiness of this illusion 
 during the long days of his solitary labours. It must 
 have been sweet to Hm, it must have enabled him to 
 look forward to the close of his own life with the enviable 
 assurance that it would be the beginning of a new use- 
 fulness in the world. And why, with a resolution in his 
 mind so long cherished, so firmly rooted there, could 
 not Turner ensure the execution of his desire .? How 
 does it happen that no distress is to be alleviated by the 
 money which he accumulated for the purpose, that there 
 is to be no ' Turner's Gift,' that the old age of unfortu- 
 nate English artists is still to be wretched and uncared 
 for > Was not Turner's intention plain 1 The reader 
 shall judge of this for himself. Here is an extract from 
 his will : 
 
 ' It is my will and I direct that a Charitable Institu- 
 tion be founded for the maintenance and support of Poor 
 and Decayed Male Artists being born in England and of 
 English parents only and lawful issue. And I direct 
 
378 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 that a proper and suitable Building or Residence be pro- 
 vided for that purpose in such a situation as may be 
 deemed eligible and advantageous by my Executors and 
 the Trustees to the said Charitable Institution.' (Here 
 follow directions about the appointment of trustees.) 
 ' And I declare that they shall be at liberty and have 
 power in case they shall think it necessary for the more 
 effectually and better establishment of the (Charitable) 
 Institution to sell only part of the principal of the said 
 Stock for the purpose of building a proper and fit house 
 for the reception of the objects or the said Institution or 
 that the said Trustees shall or may rent a proper house 
 and offices for that purpose as they shall think fit and as 
 shall be allowed by law but so that there shall always 
 remain a sufficient amount of Stock to produce dividends 
 and interest equal to the full maintenance and support of 
 the respective individuals and the houses or buildings 
 and premises before mentioned and which (Charitable) 
 Institution I desire shall be called or designated " Tur- 
 ner's Gift" and shall at' all times decidedly be an English 
 Institution and the persons receiving the benefits thereof 
 shall be English-born subjects only and of no other 
 Nation or Country whatever.' 
 
 Here we have Turner trying to imitate the technical 
 language of the lawyers, and it appears that he was not 
 successful in his imitation, for the lawyers decided that 
 the words which the reader has just been perusing did 
 not convey to their minds the idea that Turner intended 
 to found a charitable institution for decayed male artists. 
 A writer of books may not understand legal mysteries, 
 but he may have an opinion about the intelligibility of a 
 page, and I appeal to the reader whether the above quo- 
 tation does or does not convey the idea that Turner 
 
Turner^s Will. 379 
 
 intended to found some sort of institution to be called 
 ' Turner's Gift,' in which decayed male artists of English 
 blood were to find a refuge in their poverty and distress? 
 Every candid reader going by the plain meaning of the 
 words will at once admit that such was Turner's inten- 
 tion, and he will feel astonished that it was not carried 
 out. Not only was this his intention, but it was his main 
 intention, his great purpose, so far as his money was 
 concerned. The lawyers^ however, decided otherwise, 
 and settled the matter in their own way. They followed 
 the will on three points which were certainly not more 
 plain than the foundation of ' Turner's Gift' They gave 
 the pictures to the National Gallery, a thousand pounds 
 for the erection of a monument in St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 and twenty thousand pounds to the Royal Academy. 
 These were really bequests of Turner's, but then the 
 legal authorities passed over the charitable institution for 
 decayed artists as a thing not really intended by Turner, 
 and did not even attempt a partial realisation of his idea, 
 but decided that the real estate was to go to the heir-at- 
 law and the remainder to the next-of-kin. Such was the 
 result of a great Chancery suit, which occupied four 
 years, during which the lawyers and their clerks indus^- 
 triously covered an enormous weight of paper, which 
 nobody will ever read and which had to be paid for out 
 of the painter's savings, a singular consequence of his 
 own parsimony and love of secrecy which had prevented 
 him from procuring competent legal assistance during 
 his lifetime. 
 
 .After the settlement of the will and the annihilation 
 of Turner's charitable schemes, the most important 
 
380 The Life of J. M. W. Ttirtier. 
 
 matter as affecting the public was the disposal of the 
 pictures left to the nation. They were first exhibited in 
 Marlborough House, and when that residence had to be 
 prepared for the Prince of Wales, rooms for their recep- 
 tion were erected at South Kensington, at a cost of ten 
 thousand pounds. Turner's will had required that rooms 
 should be provided in the National Gallery within ten 
 years after his death, and although during their stay at 
 Kensington the pictures were under the control of the 
 trustees of the National Gallery, and were supposed to 
 belong to it, still they were not actually housed in the 
 same building with the old masters, which was evidently 
 Turner's desire. It therefore became necessary to find 
 room for them in Trafalgar Square, and this was done 
 {October, 1861) in accordance with a plan devised by 
 Mr. Wornum, then the Keeper of the National Gallery, 
 who lodged them to the west of the building, where they 
 were well lighted and could be studied with great facility. 
 Since then the Royal Academy has removed to Bur- 
 lington House, the National Gallery has been greatly 
 enlarged, the pictures have been all re-hung, and a new 
 room has been given to the principal Turners, in which, 
 unfortunately, they are not so well seen as under the 
 former temporary arrangement. A very plain room on 
 the ground-floor has been assigned for the preservation 
 of the drawings, a room which, though sufficiently 
 spacious, is certainly too mean in its appearance to con- 
 tain artistic treasures of such value. Material treasure 
 of greater amount is no doubt lodged in the cellars of 
 the Bank of England, but the fine arts require some 
 degree of elegance in their surroundings, and this room 
 
Works of Art Left to the Nation. 381 
 
 has no more pretension to taste or elegance than a 
 London cellar-kitchen. However, in spite of this un- 
 suitableness of aspect, the place is a safe asylum for 
 these abundant records of Turner's artistic existence, 
 and there they may remain for future generations to 
 refer to them. It is to be regretted that, according to 
 present arrangements, they are not so easily accessible 
 to students as they ought to be. They are only to be 
 seen on special days, with a special order from the 
 keeper. For permanent residents in London this is not 
 a great inconvenience, because they can distribute their 
 work accordingly; but for visitors from the country, 
 and still more from foreign countries, who can only 
 spend a few weeks at a time in London, the present 
 arrangements amount to a practical prohibition of any 
 continuous study, especially if it happens, as it happened 
 in the autumn of 1876, that the keeper is unwell and the 
 director is travelling abroad. The Turner drawings 
 might be, and ought to be, made as accessible to stu- 
 dents as the prints in the British Museum. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin, as one of Turner's executors, asked and 
 obtained permission from the trustees of the National 
 Gallery to arrange the drawings as he thought best for 
 their preservation and for the convenience of students. 
 Nothing could have been better devised, or more ably- 
 carried out, than Mr. Ruskin's plan, and the British 
 public owes great thanks to him for his labour, though 
 perhaps it may be surmised that the British public does 
 not, as a body, take any very enthusiastic interest in the 
 collection. Certainly the keeper of the Gallery is not 
 deprived of his natural rest and sleep by public impor- 
 
382 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 tunity for orders to view the Turnerian treasure. The 
 following is Mr. Ruskin's own account of his labours 
 amongst the immense mass of accumulated material 
 that Turner left behind him. 
 
 ' In seven tin boxes in the lower room of the National 
 Gallery, I found upwards of nineteen thousand pieces of 
 paper drawn upon by Turner in one way or another. 
 Many on both sides ; some with four, five, or six sub- 
 jects on each side (the pencil-point digging spiritedly 
 through from the foregrounds of the front into the 
 tender pieces of sky on the back); some in chalk, which-, 
 the touch of the finger would sweep away ; others in 
 ink, rolled into holes ; others (some splendid coloured 
 drawings among them), long eaten away by damp and 
 mildew and falling into dust at the edges, in capes 
 and bays of fragile decay ; others worm-eaten, some 
 mouse-eaten, many torn half-way through ; numbers 
 doubled (quadrupled, I should say) into four, being 
 Turner's favourite mode of packing for travelling ; 
 nearly all rudely flattened out from the bundles in which 
 Turner had finally rolled them up and squeezed them 
 into his drawers in Queen Anne Street. Dust of thirty 
 years accumulation, black, dense, and sooty, lay in the 
 rents of the crushed and crumpled edges of these flat- 
 tened bundles, looking like a jagged black frame, and 
 producing altogether unexpected effects in brilliant por- 
 tions of skies, where an accidental or experimental 
 finger-mark of the first bundle unfolder had swept it 
 away. 
 
 'About half, or rather more, of the entire number 
 consisted of pencil sketches, in flat oblong pocket-books, 
 dropping to pieces at the back, tearing laterally when- 
 ever opened, and every drawing rubbing itself into the 
 one opposite. These first I paged with my own hand ; 
 
Works of Art Left to tlie Nation. 383 
 
 then unbound ; and laid every leaf separately in a clean 
 sheet of perfectly smooth writing-paper, so that it might 
 receive no further injury ; then^ enclosing the contents 
 and boards of each book (usually ninety-two leaves, 
 more or less drawn on both sides, with two sketches on 
 the boards at the beginning and end) in a separate 
 sealed packet, I returned it to its tin box. The loose 
 sketches needed more trouble. The dust had first to be 
 got off them (from the chalk ones it could only be 
 blown off) ; then they had to be variously flattened ; 
 the torn ones to be laid down, the loveliest guarded, so 
 as to prevent all future friction ; and four hundred of 
 the most characteristic framed and glazed, and cabinets 
 constructed for them, which would admit of their free 
 use by the public. With two assistants, I was at work 
 all the autumn and winter of 1857, every day, all day 
 long, and often far into the night." 
 
 The cabinets constructed for the four hundred draw- 
 ings, which have been framed and glazed, are models of 
 orderly and judicious arrangement, the drawings being 
 at the same time protected from injury and easily ac- 
 cessible. 
 
 So now most things about Turner have been settled 
 in one way or another. ' Turner's Gift,' to begin with, 
 has been settled by simple annihilation of the whole 
 project. The reception of his pictures by the National 
 Gallery has been settled by the assignment of certain 
 rooms, and his drawings honoured by decent burial in a 
 sort of crypt, where, nevertheless, the exceptionally 
 curious student will find them in such order as Turner 
 himself could never have imagined or desired, thanks to 
 the devotion of Mr. Ruskin. Turner's own mortal re- 
 mains lie in the catacombs of St. Paul's, and the morn- 
 
384 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 ment which he decreed to himself has been erected in 
 the form of a statue. 
 
 Some artists, we are informed by Mr. Thornbury, 
 • wished to put a memorial tablet over the door of the 
 house in Maiden Lane, where he was born, but the 
 Board of Works refused to allow it.' 
 
 We have now followed to its last results one of the 
 most remarkable of human lives, and we may ask our- 
 selves, in quiet final reflection upon this great and 
 singular existence, whether it was enviable or not. It 
 had great elements of happiness, but certain other ele- 
 ments, almost equally necessary, were wanting. Seventy 
 years of health, of plain, good, serviceable, robust health, 
 may count for something, for much in the happiness of 
 a human life. Careful habits in money matters and a 
 constantly increasing power of earning money, secured 
 Turner from pecuniary anxiety, one of the most wearing 
 of all mental evils, at a very early age. He was soon 
 independent, and had, what to him was a keen and con- 
 tinual satisfaction, the pleasure of growing gradually 
 richer. He could therefore follow art for itself, with the 
 independence of an amateur united to the . skill of an 
 accomplished artist, and this is a great happiness which 
 makes a man very independent of society. He was re- 
 cognised very early by the Academy, being admitted to 
 its exhibitions in boyhood, to the associateship before 
 youth was past, and to full membership in early man- 
 hood. He was not so fully or generally recognised in 
 his lifetime as he is now, but it is a great mistake to sup- 
 pose that he was always censufed, ridiculed, or neglected ; 
 on the contrary, he enjoyed when living ten times the 
 
Conclusion. 385 
 
 fame of a fairly successful artist, and was far more fortu- 
 nate in this respect than many of his most able prede- 
 cessors. Finally, as we have seen, he had the singular 
 good fortune of being abundantly celebrated by a writer 
 on art, who, though he has not the accuracy of a judge, 
 has a quality incomparably more influential, the eloquence 
 of an advocate, a writer who is alone in his power of in- 
 teresting the general public in matters connected with 
 the fine arts, and whose books have a place in literature 
 for their style, which will make them endure when 
 sounder aesthetic doctrine^ plainly expressed, will be 
 passed over and forgotten. 
 
 But all these elements of good fortune in the life of 
 Turner, health, wealth, and fame, with the happiness of 
 following a beloved art from sunrise to sunset every day 
 and from the dawn to the twilight of existence — all these 
 things were not enough to constitute a happy life. The 
 philosophical reader may answer this with the accepted 
 doctrine that happiness, in all lives, is an unattainable 
 illusion. So it is, no doubt, in any absolute complete- 
 ness, but there are relative degrees of it, and we may 
 say with confidence that Scott, though sorely tried, was 
 a happier man than Byron, and Leslie assuredly a happier 
 man than Haydon. Now, in the ordinary limited sense 
 of the word 'happiness,' as we all understand it, the con- 
 clusion is that Turner, with all his success, never had his 
 fair share of it. His high special culture, his low general 
 culture, were both causes of isolation, for both knowledge 
 and ignorance isolate us, each in its own way. But the 
 greatest hiatus in Turner's life was that he never knew 
 the happiness of marriage, for which his domestic 
 
386 The Life of J. M. TV. Turner. 
 
 arrangements with his mistresses were not and could not 
 be a compensation. Marriage is not essential to happi- 
 ness ; many a not unenviable life has been passed in 
 celibacy ; but soldiers and priests, amongst whom celi- 
 bacy is most general, have constant fellowship with 
 others in their own calling. Turner, with his solitary 
 pursuit, had little of this fellowship ; and a happy mar- 
 riage, had it been his good fortune to make one, would 
 probably have brought him into more natural relations 
 with the human species. With the strong support of a 
 firm and regular home affection, and the constant interest 
 of a legitimate family growing up around him, Turner 
 would have cared less for fame (which, after all, is a poor 
 affair in comparison with these) and he would have been 
 far less sensitive to criticism. He would have thought 
 less about himself and his own greatness, and lived with 
 less eager ambition. The contrast in this respect be- 
 tween Turner's life and that of the late J. F. Millet 
 shows Turner's loneliness in its true light. Millet had a 
 hard fight even for the necessaries of existence, but he 
 lived in perfect dignity in his quiet corner of the little 
 village of Barbizon, sustained by the truest and tenderest 
 affection, or affections, we may well say in the plural 
 seeing that besides his wife he had nine children to love 
 him, and a few dear friends and neighbours. No man 
 could be more respected than Millet was, and he lived 
 surrounded by the influences of a home which, notwith- 
 standing his narrow means, was ten times as cheerful as. 
 any that Turner ever possessed. I have been in both, 
 and have felt in both the indescribable influence of a 
 human habitation, of the things that surround a man. 
 
Conclusion. 378 
 
 and the difference was briefly this. Millet had a home 
 in that humble dwelling on the forest border of Fon- 
 tainebleau, and Turner had no home in that dreary, 
 dirty mansion in Queen Anne Street. And what are 
 wealth and fame as motives for exertion in comparison 
 witli love and duty .■' 
 
 25 — 2 
 
NOTE. 
 
 MR. RUSKIN S TEACHING. 
 
 From a desire to preserve the unity of the Life of Turner, I 
 determined to notice Mr. Ruskin's teaching only just so far as it 
 directly concerned Turner's biography, or the qualities of his art. 
 There are, however, some general doctrines which Mr. Ruskin has 
 proclaimed in comparatively recent times, and which affect the 
 reputation of Turner, by including or by excluding his works, or the 
 interpretations of them, so that, though I did not criticise these 
 general doctrines in the body of my book, it is hardly possible to 
 leave them to work their evil effects on the public mind without 
 some sort of protest. v 
 
 I. In the Lectures delivered at Oxford, and published at the 
 Clarendon Press in 1870, a passage occurs (Lect. V., 129) in which 
 Mr. Ruskin emphatically approves the childish doctrine of Leonardo 
 da Vinci, that the best painting is that which most nearly resembles 
 the reflection of nature in a mirror. The same doctrine is repeated 
 at the end of the lecture on the technics of wood-engraving, when 
 Mr. Ruskin says : ' Understand clearly and finally this simple 
 principle of all art, that the best is that which realises absolutely, if 
 possible. Here is a viper by Carpaccio : you are afraid to go near 
 it. Here is an arm-chair by Carpaccio : you who came in late, and 
 are standing, to my regret, would like to sit down in it.' 
 
 This is a return to the primitive conception of art, and I need 
 hardly observe that it would exclude Turner's works from the rank 
 of what is best, as nothing could be more remote from the reflection 
 in a mirror, or from the realisation which may deceive, than the 
 treatment which Turner applied to the materials which he found in 
 nature. This is true, not only of his landscapes, but even of his 
 
390 Note. 
 
 studies in still life, which are too refined for realisation, and never 
 resemble the reflection of the objects in a mirror. 
 
 2. Mr. Ruskin said in his lecture on the Technics of wood- 
 engraving, ' that fine metal engraving, like fine wood-cutting, ignores 
 light and shade ; and that, in a word, all good engraving what- 
 soever does so.' 
 
 I need hardly observe that this doctrine, if it were true, would 
 exclude from the rank of good engraving the entire series of plates 
 from Turner's works, executed by the most eminent landscape- 
 engravers of this century, for these engravers have never ignored 
 light and shade. Happily, the doctrine is not true. 
 
 3. Mr. Ruskin (who has a bitter enmity against etching) says at 
 the end of his lecture on Design in the German Schools : ' Etching 
 is an indolent and blundering method at the best.' If this were 
 true. Turner would have been an indolent blunderer when he etched 
 the plates in the ' Liber Studiorum.' I need not observe that etching 
 has been practised by some of the most eminent painters who ever 
 lived, and who would not have used a bad process, but I may add 
 that etching is greatly admired and approved of by many most 
 eminent painters who have not time to practise it themselves. I 
 have peculiar opportunities for knowing this through frequent cor- 
 respondence, as Editor of the Portfolio, with many of the greatest 
 artists in the world. Even Mr. Ruskin himself can sometimes for- 
 get his animosity against the art, as for example in the following 
 sentence, which is directly contradictory of the assertion that etch- 
 ing is an indolent and blundering method at the best : ' The etching 
 of G^r6me's Louis XIV. and Molifere is one of the completest pieces 
 of skilful mechanism ever put on metal.' 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Academic study, the best initiation 
 
 into painting, 25, 26. 
 Academy, Turner as an exhibitor 
 
 at, 175. 
 American criticism, 296. 
 Ampere, the younger, 44. 
 Armytage, his engraving from the 
 
 sky in the Slave-Ship, 291. 
 Arnold, Matthew, his topography. 
 
 Aristocracy, its hostility to art, 8. 
 Art, its essence. Preface vii. 
 Art, writer on, his function, Pre- 
 face vi. 
 Artistic nature, the, 321. 
 Arveiron, source of, 93. 
 AthencBum, the, quoted, 338. 
 
 BiCKNELL, Mr. Elhanan, 217. 
 
 Bird, the painter, 373. 
 
 Birthplace of a landscape painter, 
 
 4- 
 BlackivooiTs Magazttie, quoted, 
 
 339. 
 Bohn, Mr., the publisher, and 
 
 Turner, 279. 
 JBonneville, Savoy, 93. 
 Books in Turner's library, 362. 
 Booth, Mrs., 301, 368. 
 Bowles and Byron, 238. 
 Brentford, 18. 
 Bridge, a, with cows, 106. 
 Brou, the church of, 86. 
 JBrowning, his brusqueness, 324. 
 Buckler, 173. 
 Burger, W., a critic, 206. 
 JJumley, its scenery, 55. 
 
 Business, Turner's policy in, 276. 
 
 Byron, 368. 
 
 Byron and the Countess Guiccioli, 
 
 43- 
 Byron on painting. Preface v. 
 
 C ADELL, the publisher, 232 . 
 
 Cardiganshire, 34. 
 
 Carlyle, 324. 
 
 Castles, Scottish, 69. 
 
 Chalk sketching. Turner's, 182, 183. 
 
 Chantrey, Turner's playfulness about, 
 219 ; a letter to, 220 ; his death, 
 291. 
 
 Charm of Turner's Rivers of France, 
 252. 
 
 Chickens, a picture of, 122. 
 
 Claude and Turner, 307. 
 
 Claude, what he discovered, 10 ; his 
 painting of water, 126 ; his 
 picture of Ulysses restoring 
 Chryseis to her Father, 155 ; 
 his choice of legendary subjects, 
 272 ; his choice of scenery, 278 ; 
 his Seaport, and Mill, 306 ; 
 his immense fame, 309 ; Con- 
 stable's criticism of one of his 
 pictures, 326. 
 
 Colour, Turner's transition to, 175 ; 
 Turner's unfaithful, 250 ; vari- 
 ous in the great masters, 351. 
 
 Colouring, Turner's, what it really 
 was, I go. 
 
 Colourists, great, inaccurate, 251. 
 
 Connoisseurs and discoverers, 127. 
 
 Constable, his opinion of Turner, 
 326. 
 
392 
 
 TJie Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Cooke, W. B., the engraver, 151 ; 
 publishes the ' Rivers of Eng- 
 land,' 199 ; his dispute with 
 Turner, 212. 
 
 Cox, David, 37. 
 
 Cozens, 35. 
 
 Craiganunie, 74. 
 
 Craven, 172; Whitaker's History 
 of, 54- 
 
 Criticism, not attractive reading, 
 320. 
 
 Cruachan, Ben, 71, 72, 73. 
 
 Cumberland, ^\. 
 
 Cuyp, II. 
 
 Danby, Mrs., 368. 
 
 Daubigny, 241. 
 
 Decline, Turner's, its character, 
 
 285. 
 De Saussure, his 'Voyages dans 
 
 les Alpes,' 192. 
 Distances of the old masters, 
 
 155- 
 Dreams, resemblance of Turner's 
 
 pictures to, 81 ; Turner's, their 
 
 qualities, 82. 
 Dutch painting, distances in, 157. 
 
 Eccentricity of Genius, 2, 3. 
 
 Edgecumbe, Mount, Turner's ad- 
 miration for, 195. 
 
 Edvifards, of Halifax, publisher, 
 54. 
 
 Egremont, Lord, 120. 
 
 Ely, 34- 
 
 Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, 
 by Claude, 308. 
 
 Engravers from Turner, 211. 
 
 Engravings, first separate firom 
 Turner's works, 64. 
 
 Enthusiasm, killed by extensive 
 critical experience, 316. 
 
 Etching and Mezzotint, loi. 
 
 Etex, the Sculptor, 177. 
 
 ' Faerie Queene,' the, 107. 
 Fawkes, Mr., of Famley Hall, 60. 
 Feminine influence, lack of, in 
 
 Turner's life, 43; its only 
 
 utility to a painter, 45. 
 Figure, study of in Academies, 24. 
 .Figures, Turner's, 276. 
 Figurine, the, Turner's use of, i6g. 
 
 Fisher, Archdeacon, 326. 
 
 Fontainebleau, trees at, 272. 
 
 Foregrounds, often prosaic, 254. 
 
 Forest scenery, slight study of by 
 Turner, 192. 
 
 Fortuny, 177. ' 
 
 Foyers, fall of, 195. 
 
 Franz Hals, 313. 
 
 French scenery. Turner's apprecia- 
 tion of, 255. 
 
 Fripp, Mr., his Kilchurn, 76. 
 
 Fromentin, on modern technical 
 execution, 342. 
 
 Genoa, scenery about, 219. 
 Gibson, his Venus and Cupid, 220. 
 Girtin, 34. 
 
 Goethe, his study, 133. 
 Great Britain, effect of its scenery on 
 our desires, gi. 
 
 Halsteads, on UUswater, 173. 
 
 Hammersmith, Turner's residence- 
 at, 119. 
 
 Hanoteau, rustic painter, 193. 
 
 Happiness, attainable degrees of it, 
 385. 
 
 Hardinge, Lord, 326. 
 
 Hardwick, architect, 23. 
 
 Harley Street, Turner in, 98. 
 
 Hill, D. O., his vignettes, 229. 
 
 Holme, the, seat of the Whitakers, 
 SS- 
 
 Howard, the Academician, 129. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 324. 
 
 Human form, the medizeval ignor- 
 ance of, 62. 
 
 Inness, George, his criticism of the- 
 
 Slave-Ship, 289. 
 Isaac and Rebecca, Maniage of, by 
 
 Claude, 308. 
 Italy, Turner's journey to, in 1828, 
 
 219. 
 
 Jew, Turner mistaken for a, 174. 
 Joubert, quoted, 247. 
 
 Kilchurn Castle, 65, 70. 
 Knockholt, Turner at, 190. 
 
 Ladyhood, 13. 
 
 Lamartine, his poem ' Le Lac,' 227. 
 
General Index. 
 
 393- 
 
 Landscape art, its complexity, 24. 
 Landscape instinct, the pure, 240. 
 Landscape - painting, its probable 
 
 future, 357. 
 Lawyers, the, how they carried out 
 
 Turner's intentions, 378. 
 Lead pencil. Turner's common use 
 
 of, 193- 
 
 Lenox, Mr., purchaser of a picture 
 by Turner, 349. 
 
 Leslie, quoted on water effects, 127 ; 
 his opinion of Turner's Rich- 
 mond Hill, 170. 
 
 Liber \'eritatis, Claude's, 104. 
 
 Literature, English, seeks for strik- 
 ing eiTects, 323. 
 
 Loch Awe, the head of, 66. 
 
 Lockhart, his early appreciation, of 
 Turner, 166 ; his opinion of 
 Turner, 326. 
 
 Macaulay, 313 ; his antithesis, 
 
 324- 
 MacDowell, his statue of Turner, 
 
 304- 
 Maiden Lane, 19. 
 Malton, perspective draughtsman, 
 
 22. 
 Marine painters, the Dutch, 127. 
 Marriage, Turner's renunciation of, 
 
 43- 
 Marriage, a possible, in 181 5, 161. 
 Marriage, 386. 
 Marshall, Mrs. John and William, 
 
 173- 
 Medal, Turners, 305. 
 Meissonier, 167. 
 Memoranda, art of taking, 194. 
 Mer de Glace, 93. 
 Mezzotint and Etching, loi. 
 Mill, Stuart, 367. 
 Millet, J. F., 386. 
 Milsand, J., on truth in art, 
 
 336. 
 Milton, quotations from, $2, 53. 
 'Modem Painters,' Ruskin's, 315. 
 MoUoy, Mr. J. L., quoted, 241. 
 Montaigne, his definition of fame, 
 
 312. 
 Mount Edgecumbe, Turner on, 137. 
 Munro, Dr., 34. 
 Mystery, in art, first explained by 
 
 Ruskin, 346. 
 
 Nayi.or, Mr. John, 208. 
 Northumberland, 51. 
 
 Offence given by strong work,. 
 
 270. 
 Old masters. Turner's opinion of, 
 
 130. 
 Orchay, the river, 66. 
 Orleans, 240. 
 
 Painting, its three elements, 12 ;. 
 the old-fashioned system, 344. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 367. 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 164, 326. 
 
 Pen-sketching, Turner's, 183. 
 
 Pencil - sketching. Turner's, 181, 
 182. 
 
 Perspective, Turner elected Pro- 
 fessor of, 118. 
 
 Picnic, provided by Turner, 137. 
 
 Poetry, Turner's, 139. 
 
 Porden, the architect, 21. 
 
 Portrait, practice of, useful to land- 
 scape-painters, 27. 
 
 Pre-Raphaelite pictures, 333, 334. 
 
 Prose, Turner's, 143. 
 
 Punch, the writers in, and Turner, 
 293- 
 
 Queen Anne Street, Turner's - 
 house in, 131. 
 
 Range, the French river, 195. 
 Rapidity, cultivated by Turner, 
 
 179. 
 Redding, Mr. Cyrus, quoted, 128. 
 Regnault, Henri, 177; on reasoning. 
 
 about painting, 319. 
 Remote, the, its fascination, 158. 
 Reynolds, his habits as a painter, 
 
 26. 
 Richmondshire, Whitaker's History 
 
 of, 54, 173- 
 
 Ritchie, Mr., 237. 
 
 Roberts, David, 299. 
 
 Rogers, the poet, 226 ; anecdote of,- 
 321. 
 
 Rome, visits to, 177. 
 
 Rousseau, Theodore, sylvan painter,. 
 192. 
 
 Ruskin, Mr., his birth and educa- 
 tion, 313 ; less a critic than an 
 artist in words, 316 ; his first- 
 
.394 
 
 TJie Life of J. M. W. Ttirner. 
 
 argument in favour of Turner, 
 318 ; not the discoverer of 
 Turner, 319 ; the greatest ob- 
 jection to his system of teach- 
 ing, 3Z7;'his account of Turner's 
 death, 327, 328 ; his estimate 
 of Turner, 329 ; his profession 
 of faitli in Turner, 331 ; his 
 arrangement of Turner's draw- 
 ings, 381. 
 JRuysdael, 217; his painting of 
 water, 127. 
 
 Sandycombe Lodge, 148. 
 
 Scenery, uneducated persons insen- 
 sible to, 5. 
 
 Scherer, Edmond, on English 
 literature, 323. 
 
 Scotland, Turner's first visit to, 65 ; 
 Turner's visit to in 1818, 165. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 233, 234, 326 ; 
 his appreciation of nature and 
 art, 165, 166. 
 
 Seddon, Thomas, his picture of 
 Jerusalem, 335. 
 
 Shaw, Dr., his reception by Turner, 
 
 365- 
 Shelley and Mary Godwin, 43. 
 Shelley and Turner, Preface viii. 
 .Shelley, quotation from his ' Revolt 
 
 of Islam,' 159. 
 Sincerity, sometimes out of place in 
 
 art, 338. 
 Skye, the Isle of. Turner in, 177. 
 Slave-Ship, 288 ; controversy about, 
 
 290. 
 5tael, Madame de, 324. 
 Stothard, Turner's admiration of, 
 
 134 ; Turner's imitation of, 
 
 218; his vignettes, 229. 
 Swiss scenery, unpopularity of, 278. 
 •Switzerland, a journey to, in 1838, 
 
 279. 
 
 Thomson of Duddingstone, 166, 
 200. 
 
 Thomson, the poet, quoted by 
 Turner, 170. 
 
 Thornbury, Mr., on the public neg- 
 lect of Turner, 329. 
 
 Topography, pure, not to be ex- 
 pected from landscape-painters, 
 79- 
 
 Towneley, demesne of, 55. 
 
 Travel, what. Turner gained by it, 
 96. 
 
 Trees, large isolated. Turner's way 
 of using them, 274. 
 
 Trimmer, Mr., quoted, 129. 
 
 Truth, the English love of, 317. 
 
 Turner, student and artist, Preface 
 iii. ; his self-education, Preface 
 iv. ; advantages of his birth, 7 ; 
 his mother, 13 ; his ignorance of 
 languages, 15 ; benefits of his 
 school education, 17; in an 
 architect's office, 23 ; a pupil 
 of Sir Josliua Reynolds, 28, 38 ; 
 his first picture in the Academy, 
 28; his early industry, 29; early 
 habits of pedestrianism, 29 ; a 
 favourite of Fortune, 30; his 
 wide range, 33 ; early travels, 
 33 ; his 'early practice iii oil, 
 38; early beginning of his career, 
 39 ; his early love affair, 40 ; 
 as a drawing-master, 46 ; his 
 two natures, 46 ; as a Pro- 
 fessor, 48 ; his interest in dif- 
 ferent kinds of subject, 52 ; 
 elected A.R.A., 55; his resi- 
 dence in Harley Street, 60 ; 
 his residence in Norton Street, 
 61; not naturally a mediiEvalist, 
 61, 63 ; his comprehensiveness, 
 63 ; elected R.A., 88 ; date of 
 his emancipation from topo- 
 graphy, 89 ; his literary inca- 
 pacity, 94 ; takes his father to 
 live with him, 97 ; as an en- 
 graver in mezzotint, 103 ; his 
 peculiar skill as an etcher, 103 ; 
 as a Writer on Art and Nature, 
 123, 124, 125, 126 ; his house 
 in Queen Anne Street, 132 ; 
 his poetry, 139, 362 ; his prose, 
 143 ; his self-control in sketch- 
 ing) 179 ; his father's death, 
 224 ; inscription on his father's 
 tomb, 226 ; could not be ac- 
 curate, 248 ; the decay of his 
 art, its peculiar character, 275 ; 
 his death, 300, 328 ; his funeral, 
 302 ; his unconcealed ambition, 
 303 ; his care for his own fame, 
 305 ; his good fortune, 312; 
 
General Index. 
 
 395 
 
 his rank as a painter, 332 ; 
 work contrasted with Pre-Ra- 
 phaelite, 334; his technical 
 quality as a painter, 341 ; as 
 an experimentalist, 344 ; supe- 
 riority in water-colour, 344 j 
 colouring, oppositions in, 352 ; 
 his imaginative power, 353 ; 
 the refinement of his taste, 
 353 ; risumi of his qualities, 
 354 ; his fame injurious to 
 other artists, 355 ; his eccen- 
 tricity, 358 ; his habits of in- 
 dustry, 359 ; reasons for his 
 unsociableness, 360 ; not a 
 Philistine, 361 ; an amateur 
 musician, 362 ; his personal 
 appearance, 363 ; his practical 
 kindness, 363 ; his bad man- 
 ners, 363 ; the English charac- 
 ter of his peculiarities, 364 ; 
 his irritability, 365, 366 ; his 
 religious views, 367 ; his mo- 
 rality, 368 ; his degree of 
 temperance, 369, 370 ; his 
 economical disposition, 371 ; 
 nobility of his character, 372 ; 
 his generosity, 372, 374, 375 ; 
 his great charitable project, 
 376 ; his pictures at the 
 National Gallery, 380 ; his 
 studies and drawings, 382 ; his 
 isolation, 385 ; the greatest 
 hiatus in his iSe, 385. 
 Twickenham, Turner's house at, 148. 
 
 Unpaintable, the, as material for 
 art, 345. 
 
 Van Eyck, his picture in the Louvre, 
 
 La Vierge all Donateur, 155. 
 Vathek, the author of, 58. 
 Venice, M. Havard's description of, 
 
 263. 
 Vernet, Joseph, 287. 
 Veron, his work on Esthetics, 
 
 quoted, 351. 
 Verrex, by Stanfield and Harding, 
 
 246. 
 Viardot, quoted, 310. 
 Vignette, the, in Turner's hands, 228. 
 Vorich, Ben, 71. 
 
 Wales, Turner in, 33. 
 
 Water, Turner's observations on its 
 
 phenomena, 124, 125. 
 Water colours, use of in Turner's 
 
 oil pictures, 135. 
 Westmoreland, 51. 
 Whalley, 172; Whitaker's History 
 
 of, 54- 
 
 Wharfe, the river, beloved by 
 Turner, 59- 
 
 Whitaker, Dr., 53, 54. 
 
 Wilson, rivalry with, 196. 
 
 Work, Turner's habits of, at Pet- 
 worth, 121. 
 
 Yorkshire, first subjects from, 
 1798, 49 ; variety of its scenery. 
 
INDEX TO TURNER'S WORKS, 
 
 DESCRIBED OR ALLUDED TO IN THE BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Abbotsford, 234. 
 
 Agrippina landing with the Ashes 
 
 of Germanicus, 278. 
 Amboise, 243. 
 yEsacus and Hesperia, 107. 
 JEness relating his story to Dido, 
 
 298. 
 Alps at Daybreak, vignette, 230. 
 Apollo and Python, 122. 
 Apuleia in search of Apuleius, 150. 
 Arveiron, Source of, a sketch, 185. 
 Avernus, Lake, 261. 
 
 Bacchus and Ariadne, 285. 
 
 Bay of Baise, the, 198. 
 
 Bible, the, Turner's illustrations to, 
 
 210. 
 Birds, studies of, 188. 
 Bligh Sand, near Sheerness, IJI. 
 Boccaccio relating the Tale of the 
 
 Birdcage, 218. 
 Bolton Abbey, 59. 
 Bonneville, Savoy, a sketch, 186. 
 Bridge, a Stone, -with Goats, 106. 
 Brocklesby Mausoleum, 64. 
 Brougham Castle, 200. 
 Boulevard des Italiens, 239. 
 Byron, Murray's edition of. Turner's 
 
 illustrations to, 209. 
 
 Calais Pier, 92, 153, 167. 
 Caligula's Palace and Bridge, 257. 
 Cambridge, 33. 
 Campagna, study of, 188. 
 
 Carthage pictures, the two, 197. 
 
 Carthaginian Empire, Morning of, 
 218. 
 
 Cephalus and Procris, 272. 
 
 Chapel, Gothic, vignette, 231. 
 
 Chaplet, the, vignette, 281. 
 
 Chepstow Junction of the Severn, 
 106. 
 
 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, 257. 
 
 Clairmont, 254. 
 
 Colne, river, 200. 
 
 Cologne — the Arrival of a Packet- 
 boat — Evening, 206, 207. 
 
 Columbus, vignette, 230. 
 
 Coquet, river, 200. 
 
 Corfe Castle, 151. 
 
 Corriskin, Loch, 232. 
 
 Crossing the Brook, 151, 154. 
 
 Deal, view of, 205. 
 Denbighshire, 34. 
 Derwentwater, vignette, 230. 
 Devil's Bridge, Old, St. Gothard, a. 
 
 sketch, 185. 
 Dido and .(Eneas leaving Carthage 
 
 on the morning of the Chase, 
 
 ISO. 
 Dido building Carthage, 162, 306. 
 Discord, Goddess of. In the Garden 
 
 of the Hesperides, 153. 
 Dolbadern Castle, Turner's diploma. 
 
 picture, 55, 56, 57. 
 Drawings from Nature, 178. 
 Dunblain Abbey, 114. 
 
Index to Turner's Works. 
 
 397 
 
 Dunstanborough Castle, 113. 
 Dunster Castle, 64. 
 Durham Cathedral, 201. 
 
 Eamont, river, 200. 
 East Covves Castle, 218. 
 Egypt, the Fifth Plague of, 64. 
 Egypt, the Tenth Plague of, 64. 
 Ely Cathedral, 201. 
 England and Wales, series, 200, 
 202. 
 
 Falmouth, 205. 
 
 Farmyard with Pigs, 106. 
 
 Fishes, studies of, 188. 
 
 Fishing - Boats bringing a Dis- 
 abled Ship into Port Ruysdael, 
 299. 
 
 Fonthill Abbey, 58. 
 
 Garden, the, vignette, 281. 
 Garonnelle, vignette, 230. 
 Golden Bough, the, 261. 
 Greenwich Hospital, 107. 
 Greenwich Hospital, vignette, 231. 
 Greta and Tees, junction of, 235. 
 
 Hakewill's Italian Tour, Turner's 
 
 illustrations to, 209. 
 Hannibal and his Army crossing the 
 
 Alps, 138. 
 Hannibal, 197. 
 Harbours of England, 204. 
 Hedging and Ditching, 106. 
 Hesperides, the Garden of, 98. 
 Holy Family, by Turner, 98. 
 Honfieur, sketch, l85. 
 Hdtel de Ville and Pont d'Arcole, 
 
 245. 
 
 India, Turner's Views of, 210. 
 Italy, Ancient, 278. 
 Italy, Modem, 278. 
 
 Jacqueline, vignette, 230. 
 Jason, 107. 
 
 Jupiter Panhellenius, Temple of, 
 pictures exhibited in 1816, 164. 
 
 Kirkstall Abbey, 59, 200. 
 
 Lambeth Palace, view of, 32. 
 Land's End, 151. 
 
 Liber Studiorum, the, 104," 106 ; 
 style of the publication, 108 ; 
 present cost of, 109 ; artistic 
 qualities of, 1 10 ; cost of when 
 published, 112 ; Turner's com- 
 merce in proofs of, 113; di- 
 dactic purposes of, 115, 116, 
 117. 
 
 Light and Colour, 295. 
 
 Lincoln, 33. 
 
 Little Devil's Bridge, 114. 
 
 Llandaff, 34. 
 
 Loretto Necklace, the, 222. 
 
 Ludlow Castle, 272. 
 
 Luhvorth Cove, 151. 
 
 Lycidas, Shipwreck of, 272. 
 
 Macon, the Vintage at, 92. 
 
 Malmesbury Abbey, 32. 
 
 Marly, studies at, 186. 
 
 Medes, the Army of the, destroyed 
 
 in the Desert by a Whirlwind, 
 
 64. 
 Melrose, 232, 233. 
 Mercury sent to admonish ^neas, 
 
 298. 
 Mer de Glace, Aiguille Charmoz, 
 
 sketch, 185. 
 Mer de Glace, Chamouni, sketch, 
 
 185. 
 Mercury and Argus, 273. 
 Messieurs les Voyageurs, on their 
 
 return from Italy, 222. 
 Meuse, Entrance of the, with Orange 
 
 Merchant going to pieces, 
 
 169. 
 Michael's, St., Mount, 151, 272. 
 Millbank, study at, 50. 
 Milton, Turner's illustrations to, 27 1 . 
 Monmouthshire, 34. 
 Moore's Epicurean, Turner's illus- 
 trations to, 280. 
 Morning of the Chase, 167. 
 Morpeth, 114. 
 Mortlake Terrace, 216. 
 Mustering of the Warrior Angels. 
 
 271. 
 
 Napoleon at St. Helena (Exile and 
 
 Rock Limpet), 293. 
 Nile, the, vignette, 281. 
 Norham Castle, 106. 
 Now for the Painter ! 214. 
 
398 
 
 The Life of J. M. W. Turner. 
 
 Okement, river, 2cio. 
 Orvieto, view of, 221. 
 Oxford Almanac, 53. 
 
 Palestrina, 222. 
 
 Pantheon, after the fire, 32. 
 
 Penmaen Mawr, 201. 
 
 Peterborough, 33. 
 
 Phryne going to the Public Bath as 
 
 Venus, 275. 
 Pilate washing his hands, 232. 
 Plymouth, harbour of, 205. 
 Pont Neuf, the, 244. 
 Poole, 151. 
 Port Ruysdael, 217 
 Ports of England, 203. 
 Procris and Cephalus, 107. 
 Provincial Antiquities of Scotland, 
 
 200. 
 
 Raglan Castle, 106, 115. 
 Rain, Steam, and Speed, 295. 
 Ring, the, vignette, 280. 
 Rivers of England, the, 199. 
 Rivers of France, the, 202, 236 ; 
 
 analysis of Turner's subjects, 
 
 239- 
 Rome from the Vatican, 171. 
 Rome, Modern, 279 ; St. Peter's, 
 
 study of, 186; study at, 186; 
 
 the Alban Mount, a sketch, 
 
 186. 
 Rouen Cathedral, 242. 
 Rouen, distant view of, 254. 
 
 Salisbury, 34. 
 
 Scarborough, 205. 
 
 Scott, Turner's illustrations to his 
 poems, 232 ; Turner's illustra- 
 tions to his prose works, 235. 
 
 Shade and Darkness, 295. 
 
 Shipwreck, the, 167. 
 
 Sky and Sea, studies of, 186. 
 
 Snovif-storm, the, 286. 
 
 Solway Moss, 106. 
 
 Somer Hill, near Tunbridge, 122, 
 
 Staffa, 235. 
 
 St. Julian's, Tours, 254. 
 
 Sun of Venice going to Sea,. 
 
 266. 
 Sun, the. Rising in Mist, 308. 
 Sun, the. Rising through Vapour 
 
 (same picture as the preceding), 
 
 98, 99, 100. 
 
 Temeraire, the, 282. 
 
 Temptation, the, on the Pinnacle,. 
 
 271. 
 Thames, the, at Kingston Bank, 
 
 149. 
 Tivoli, studies of, 187. 
 Tomb, the Visit to the, 298. 
 Trafalgar, the large picture of, 120, 
 
 168. 
 Trojan Fleet, Departure of the, 
 
 298. 
 
 Ulysses deriding Polyphemus, 223. 
 
 Venetian pictures by Turner, tlieiir 
 
 power, 269. 
 Venice, late sketches of, 186 ; the 
 
 approach to, 266. 
 Venice ; the Canal of the Giudecca, 
 
 263. 
 Venices, Turner's, 265. 
 Vesuvius from Naples, study of, 
 
 187. 
 
 Walhalla, the Bavarian, 294. 
 Waterloo, picture exhibited in 1818, 
 
 168. 
 Weymouth, 151. 
 Whalley Bridge, 122. 
 Wight, Isle of, 34. 
 Wilkie, burial of, at sea,'292. 
 
 York Minster, 59. 
 
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