W. Cosmo Monkhouse

THE life of Turner the man, that is, what we know of it, during these twenty years, may be written almost in a page—the history of his art might be made to fill many volumes. During this period he exhibited nearly eighty pictures at the Royal Academy, and about five hundred engravings were published from his drawings. If he had been famous before, he was something else, if not something more than famous now; he was “the fashion.” It was on this ground that Sir Walter Scott, who would have preferred Thomson of Duddingstone to illustrate his ‘Provincial Antiquities’ (published in 1826), agreed to the employment of Turner, who afterwards (in 1834) furnished a beautiful series of sixty-five vignettes for Cadell’s edition of Sir Walter’s prose and poetical works.

In 1819 Turner paid his first visit to Italy, which had a marked influence on his style. From this time forward his works become remarkable for their colour. Down to this time he had painted principally in browns, blues, and greys, employing red and yellow very sparingly, but he had been gradually warming his scale almost from the beginning. From the wash of sepia and Prussian blue, he had slowly proceeded in the direction of golden and reddish brown, and had produced both drawings and pictures with wonderful effects of mist and sunlight, but he had scarcely gone beyond the sober colouring of Vandevelde and Ruysdael till he began his great pictures in rivalry with Claude. In them may be seen perhaps the dawn of the new power in his art. In the Exhibition of 1815 were two prophecies of his new style, in which he was to transcend all former efforts in the painting of distance and in colour. These were Crossing the Brook, with its magical distance, and Dido building Carthage, with its blazing sky and brilliant feathery clouds. The first is the purest and most beautiful of all his oil pictures of the loveliness of English scenery, the most simple in its motive, the most tranquil in its sentiment, the perfect expression of his enjoyment of the exquisite scenery in the neighbourhood of Plymouth. The latter with all its faults was the finest of the kind he ever painted, and his greatest effect in the way of colour before his visit to Italy. In his other Carthage picture of this period, The Decline (exhibited 1817), the “brown demon,” as Mr. Ruskin calls it, was in full force, and his pictures of Dido and Æneas (1814), The Temple of Jupiter (1817), and Apuleia and Apuleius, are cold and heavy in comparison. Indeed, from 1815 to 1823 his power, judged by his exhibited pictures, seemed to be flagging. Whether his second disappointment in love had anything to do with this we have no means of judging, but if it disturbed for a time his power of painting for fame, it certainly had no ill effect either as to the quantity or quality of his water-colours for the engravers.

His most worthy and beautiful work of these years is to be found not in his oil pictures but in his drawings for Dr. Whitaker’s ‘History of Richmondshire’ (published 1823) and the ‘Rivers of England’ (1824). Both series were engraved in line in a manner worthy of the artist. One of the former, the Hornby Castle, a little faded perhaps, but still exquisite in its harmonies of blue and amber, is to be seen at South Kensington. Three more were lately exhibited by Mr. Ruskin—Heysham Village, Egglestone Abbey, and Richmond. Of this series Mr. Ruskin says, “The foliage is rich and marvellous in composition, the effects of mist more varied and true” (than in the Hakewill drawings), “the rock and hill drawing insuperable, the skies exquisite in complex form.” The engravings probably owed much to Turner’s own supervision, and many of them, such as Egglestone Abbey, by T. Higham, and Wycliffe, by John Pye, Middiman’s Moss Dale Fall, and Radcliffe’s Hornby Castle, were perfect translations of the originals, showing an advance in the art of engraving as great as that which Turner had made in water-colour drawing. Except in the heightened scale of colour there is little in this series to show the influence of Italy, their temper is that of Crossing the Brook, and the foliage and scenery that of England. Nor do we find anything but England in the ‘Rivers.’ Nothing can be more purely English than the exquisite drawing of Totnes on the Dart (of which we give a woodcut). The original is one of the treasures of the National Gallery, and is marvellous for the minuteness of its finish and the breadth and truth of its effect. The tiny group of poplars in the middle distance are painted with such dexterity that the impression of multitudinous leafage is perfectly conveyed, and the stillness of clear smooth water filled with innumerable variegated reflections, the beautiful distance with castle, church, and town, and the group of gulls in the foreground, make a picture of placid beauty in which there is no straining for effect, no mannerism, nothing to remind you of the artist. It is only in the touches of red in the fore of the river (touches unaccounted for by anything in the drawing) that you discern him at last, and find that you are looking not at nature but “a Turner.” If you are inclined to be angry with these touches, cover them with the hand and find out how much of the charm is lost.

TOTNES ON THE DART. From “Rivers of England.”
TOTNES ON THE DART.
From “Rivers of England.”

After the ‘Rivers of England,’ Turner produced work more magnificent in colour, more transcendent in imagination, indeed the work which singles him out individually from all landscape artists, in which the essences of the material world were revealed in a manner which was not only unrealized but unconceived before; but for perfect balance of power, for the mirroring of nature as it appears to ninety-nine out of every hundred, for fidelity of colour of both sky and earth, and form (especially of trees), for carefulness and accuracy of drawing, for work that neither startles you by its eccentricity nor puzzles you as to its meaning, which satisfies without cloying, and leaves no doubt as to the truth of its illusion, there is none to compare with these drawings of his of England after his first visit to Italy—and especially (though perhaps it is because we know them best that we say so) the drawings for the ‘Rivers of England.’ We are certain at least of this, that no one has a right to form an opinion about Turner’s power generally, either to go into ecstasies over or to deride his later work, till he has seen some of these matchless drawings. They form the true centre of his artistic life, the point at which his desire for the simple truth and the imperious demands of his imagination were most nearly balanced.

In 1821 and 1824 Turner exhibited no pictures at the Royal Academy, and it would have been no loss to his fame if his pictures of 1820 and 1822, Rome, from the Vatican, and What you will, had never left his studio; but in 1823 he astonished the world with the first of those magnificent dreams of landscape loveliness with which his name will always be specially associated;—The Say of BaiÆ with Apollo and the Sibyl (1823). The three supreme works of this class, The Bay of BaiÆ, Caligula’s Palace and Bridge (1831), and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1832), are too well known to need description, and have been too much written about to need much comment. They were the realization of his impressions of Italy, with its sunny skies, its stone-pines, its ruins, its luxuriance of vegetation, its heritage of romance. How little the names given to these pictures really influence their effect, is shown by the frequency with which one of them is confused with another. What verses of what poet, what episode of history may have been in the artist’s mind is of little consequence, when the thought is expressed in the same terms of infinite sunny distance, crumbling ruin and towering tree. The artist may have meant to embody the whole of Byron’s mind in the Childe Harold, the history of Italy in Caligula’s Palace and Bridge, the folly of life in Apollo and the Sibyl, but it does not matter now, the things are “Turners,” neither more nor less; we doubt very much whether Turner cared greatly for the particular stories attached to many of his pictures. Some of them remind us of a title of a picture in the Academy of 1808, A Temple and Portico, with the drowning of Aristobulus, vide Josephus, book 15, chap. 3. In some it was no doubt his ardent desire to proclaim his thoughts on history and fate, but the result is much the same, for the medium in which he attempted to convey them was that least suited for his purpose. It was, however, his only means of expression, and there is something very sad in the idea of a mind struggling in vain to give its most serious thoughts didactic force. If these thoughts had been profound, and the mind that of a prophet, the failure would have been tragical. The language employed was the highest of its kind, but it was as inadequate for its purpose as music. It has, however, like fine music, the power of starting vibrations of sentiment full of suggestion, giving birth to endless dreams of beauty and pleasure, of sadness and foreboding, according to the personality and humour of those who are sensitive to its charm.

In 1825 were published his first illustrations to a modern poet—Byron; he contributed some more to the editions of 1833 and 1834, most of them being views of places which he had never seen, and therefore compositions from the sketches of others, like his drawings for Hakewill’s “Picturesque Tour of Italy” and Finden’s “Illustrations of the Bible.” No doubt the experience of his youth in improving the sketches of amateurs and the liberty which such work gave to his imagination, made it easy and congenial to him. These drawings show the variety of his artistic power and the perfection of his technical skill. The Hakewill series is marvellous for minute accuracy (being taken from camera sketches) and for beautiful tree drawing, and the Bible series for imagination. They are, however, of less interest in a biography than those which were based upon his own impressions of the scenes depicted, such as his illustrations to Rogers and Scott.

In 1825 he exhibited only one picture, Harbour of Dieppe, and in 1826, the year when the publication of the “Southern Coast” terminated, three, of one of which there is told a story of unselfish generosity, which deserves special record. The picture was called Cologne—the arrival of a Packet-boat—Evening. Of this Mr. Hamerton writes: “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.” The picture was hung between two of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portraits, and Turner covered its glowing glory with a wash of lampblack, so as not to spoil their effect. “Poor Lawrence was so unhappy,” he said. “It will all wash off after the Exhibition.” As Mr. Hamerton truly observes, “It is not as if Turner had been indifferent to fame.”

There are many stories of apparently contrary action on Turner’s part, namely, of heightening the colour of his pictures to “kill” those of his neighbours at the Academy, but they do not spoil this story. During those merry “varnishing days” which Turner enjoyed so much, attempts to outcolour one another were ordinary jokes—give-and-take sallies of skill, made in good humour. No one entered into such contests with more zest than Turner, and he was not always the victor. This story seems to us to prove that when Turner saw that any one was really hurt, his tenderness was greater than his spirit of emulation and jest.

Leslie tells the best of the “counter stories.”

“In 1832, when Constable exhibited his Opening of Waterloo Bridge,[39] it was placed in the School of Painting—one of the small rooms at Somerset House. A sea piece,[40] by Turner, was next to it—a grey picture, beautiful and true, but with no positive colour in any part of it—Constable’s Waterloo seemed as if painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times into the room while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the decorations and flags of the City barges. Turner stood behind him, looking from the Waterloo to his own picture, and at last brought his palette from the great room, where he was touching another picture, and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey sea, went away without saying a word. The intensity of the red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of the picture, caused even the vermilion and lake of Constable to look weak. I came into the room just as Turner left it. ‘He has been here,’ said Constable, ‘and fired a gun.’”

On the opposite wall was a picture, by Jones, of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace.[41] “A coal,” said Cooper, “has bounced across the room from Jones’s picture, and set fire to Turner’s sea.” The great man did not come into the room for a day and a half; and then in the last moments that were allowed for painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his picture, and shaped it into a buoy.”[42]

This daub of red lead was rather defensive than offensive, and there is no story of Turner which shows any malice in his nature. To his brother artists he was always friendly and just; he never spoke in their disparagement, and often helped young artists with a kind word or a practical suggestion. Even Constable—between whom and Turner not much love was lost, according to Thornbury—he helped on one occasion by striking in a ripple in the foreground of his picture—the “something” just wanted to make the composition satisfactory. We think, then, that we may enjoy the beautiful story of self-sacrifice for Lawrence’s sake, without any disagreeable reflection that it is spoilt by others showing a contrary spirit towards his brother artists.

The year 1826 was his last at Sandycombe. As he had taken it for the sake of his father, so he gave it up, for “Dad” was always working in the garden and catching cold. He took this step much to his own sorrow, we believe, and much to our and his loss. Without the pleasant and wholesome neighbourhood of the Trimmers, with no home but the gloomy, dirty, disreputable Queen Anne Street, he became more solitary, more self-absorbed, or absorbed in his art (much the same thing with him), and lived only to follow unrestrained wherever his wayward genius led him, and to amass money for which he could find no use. How he still loved to grasp it, however, and how unscrupulous he was in doing so, is painfully shown in his dispute with Cooke about this time (1827), which prevented a proposed continuation of the “Southern Coast.” Mr. Cooke’s letter relating to it, though long, is too important to omit, and, though it may be said to be ex parte, carries sad conviction of its truth:—

When we realize that this was the same man that closed his connection with Mr. Lewis, because he would not both etch and aquatint the plates of the Liber for the same terms as those agreed upon for aquatinting alone, we are able to understand why he was characterized as a “great Jew,” in a letter of introduction, which he brought from a publisher in London to one in Yorkshire, when he went to that county to illustrate Dr. Whitaker’s History of Richmondshire. Mrs. Whitaker, who was his hostess at the time, hearing of this took the phrase literally, and, says Mr. Hamerton, “treated him as an Israelite indeed, possibly with reference to church attendance and the consumption of ham.”

In 1827 was published the first part of his largest series of prints, the “England and Wales,” which were engraved with matchless skill by that trained band of engravers who brought, with the artist’s assistance, the art of engraving landscapes in line to a point never before attained. The history of Turner and his engravers has yet to be fully written; the number of them from first to last is extraordinary, probably nearly one hundred. Of these, twenty, and nearly all the best, were employed on this work—Goodall, Wallis, Willmore, W. Miller, Brandard, Radcliffe, Jeavons, W. R. Smith, and others. Never before was so great an artist surrounded by such a skilled body of interpreters in black and white. The drawings were unequal in merit, but nearly all of them wonderful for power of colour and daring effect, with ever lessening regard for local accuracy. The artist threw aside all traditions and conventions, and proclaimed himself as “Turner,” the great composer of chromatic harmonies in forms of sea and sky, hills and plains, sunshine and storm, towns and shipping, castles and cathedrals. He could not do this without sacrificing much of truth, and much of what was essential truth in a work whose aim was professedly topographical. Imaginative art of all kinds has a code analogous to, but not identical with, the moral code: beauty takes the seat of virtue and harmony of truth, and when the work is purely imaginative, there is no conflict between fancy and fact which can make the strictest shake his head. But when known facts are dealt with by the imagination, the conflict arises immediately, and it would scarcely be possible to find a case in which it was more obvious than in Turner’s “England and Wales,” in which he made the familiar scenes of his own country conform to the authoritative conception of his pictorial fancy. Whether he was right or wrong in raising the cliffs of England to Alpine dignity, in saturating her verdant fields with yellow sun, in exaggerating this, in ignoring that, has been argued often, and will be argued over and over again; but all art is a compromise, and the precise justice of the compromise will ever be a matter of opinion. Art v. Nature is a cause which will last longer than any Chancery suit. Even artists cannot agree as to the amount of licence which it is proper to take, but they are all conscious that they at least keep on the right side; one thing only, all, or nearly all, are agreed upon, and that is that licence must be taken, or art becomes handicraft. About Turner almost the only thing which can be said with certainty is that he stretched his liberty to the extreme limits.

Yet to the pictorial code of morals he was the most faithful of artists, he almost always reached beauty, his harmonies were almost always perfect, and he strove after his own peculiar generalization of fact, and his own peculiar extract of truth with the greatest ardour. This extract was his impression of a place, made up generally (at least in his foreign scenes) of two or three sketches taken from different points of view, and he was very careful to study not only the principal features of the country, but the costume and employment of the inhabitants, and the description of local vehicle, on wheels or keel. From these studies would arise the conception of one scene, combining all that his mind retained as essential—a growth which, however false it might appear when compared with the actual facts of the place from one point of view, contained nothing but what had a germ of truth, and of local truth. That this applies to all his drawings we do not say, but we are confident that it does to most. Many of his drawings for the “England and Wales” were probably taken from sketches that had lain in his portfolios for years, and were dressed up by him when wanted, with such accessories of storm and rainbow as occurred to his fancy, or to his memory and feelings as connected with the spot. There is, we think, no doubt that Turner strove to be conscientious; but his conscience was a “pictorial” conscience, and no man can judge him. We can only take his works as they are, and be thankful that all the strange confusions of his mind, and mingled accidents of his life, have produced so unique and beautiful a result as the “England and Wales.” It is no use now regretting that his vast powers in their prime were used wastefully in what will appear to many as the falsification of English landscape; it is far better to rejoice that the genius and knowledge of the man were so transcendent that, in spite of all the worst that can be said, each separate drawing is precious in itself as a record of natural phenomena, and a masterly arrangement of indefinite forms and beautiful colour.

Mr. Ruskin affirms that, “howsoever it came to pass, a strange, and in many respects grievous metamorphosis takes place upon him about the year 1825. Thenceforth he shows clearly the sense of a terrific wrongness, and sadness, mingled in the beautiful order of the earth; his work becomes partly satirical, partly reckless, partly—and in its greatest and noblest features—tragic.” We are not prepared to assent to this entirely, especially as Mr. Ruskin states immediately afterwards that one at least of the manifestations of “this new phase of temper” can be traced unmistakably in the “Liber,” which was concluded six years before; but there is no doubt that his work for some of these years was distinguished by recklessness and caprice in an unusual degree, and we have little doubt that his removal from Sandycombe, and the consequent loss of healthy companionship, had something to do with it. During three years he exhibited no pictures of special interest, except the Cologne of 1826, and the Ulysses deriding Polyphemus of 1829. This latter picture we take to be a sure sign of recovery, as it shows perhaps the most complete balance of power of any of his large works, being not less wonderful for happy choice of subject than for grandeur of conception and splendour of colour—the first picture in which, since the Apollo and Python of 1811, the union between the literary subject and the landscape, or (if we must use that horrid word) seascape, was perfect. This picture was no Temple and Portico, with the drowning of Aristobulus. The grand indefinite figure of the agonized giant, the crowded ship of Ulysses, the water-nymphs and the dying sun, are all parts of one conception, and show what Turner could do when his imagination was thoroughly inflamed. Whence the inspiration was derived it is difficult to say. Like most of his inspirations, it probably had more than one source. Homer’s Odyssey is the source given in the catalogue; but it is probable, as we before have hinted, that the figure of Polyphemus was suggested by the splendid description in the fourteenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Many years had lapsed since he had shown the full force of his imagination under the influence of classical story, and he was never to do so again. Subjects of the kind suited to his peculiar genius were difficult to find, and he had no such habitual intercourse with his intellectual peers as enabled him to gather suggestions for his works. He was thrown entirely on his own uneducated resources, and the result was, with his imperfect knowledge of his own strength and the limits of his art, partial failure of most, and total failure of many of his most strenuous efforts. This is one of the saddest facts of his art-life, the frequent waste, or partial waste, of unique power.

His increasing isolation of mind was mitigated no doubt by constant visits to Petworth, Farnley, and other houses of his friends and patrons, by the chaff of “varnishing days,” by social meetings of the Academy Club, and by frequent travel; but it increased notwithstanding. Not Mr. Trimmer, nor Lord Egremont, nor even his friends and fellow Academicians, Chantrey and Jones, could break through his barrier of reserve and see the man Turner face to face. From the beginning he had his secrets, and he kept them to the end. He could be merry and social in a gathering where the talk never became confidential, and with children (whom he could not distrust); but his living-rooms in Queen Anne Street, his painting-room wherever he was, and his heart, were, with scarcely an exception, opened to none. At Petworth, Lord Egremont indeed was allowed to enter his studio; but he had to give a peculiar knock agreed upon between them before he would open the door.

In 1828 he was at Rome again, from which place he wrote the following letters[43] to Chantrey and Jones of unusual length and interest.

This method of communicating with “his people” is peculiar, and shows that he was not in the habit of corresponding with them when away on his numerous visits and tours. Perhaps they could not read, perhaps he wished to save postage—whatever hypothesis we may adopt, the fact is singular. The pictures of The Banks of the Loire; The Loretto Necklace; Messieurs les Voyageurs on their return from Italy (par la Diligence) in a snowdrift upon Mount Tarra, 22nd of January, 1829—all exhibited in 1829—were the results of this tour, besides some of the pictures of 1830, one of which, View of Orvieto, is, according to Mr. Hamerton, the identical “small three feet four” which he painted to “stop the gabbling” of the folk at Rome.

In this year (1830, he being then fifty-five years old) died Sir Thomas Lawrence, whose loss he probably felt much, and of whose funeral he painted a picture (from memory); but the year had a greater sorrow for him than this—the loss of his “poor old Dad.” The removal from Twickenham did not avail to preserve the old man’s life for long. We have the testimony of the Trimmers, with whom after the event he stayed for a few days for change of scene, that “he was fearfully out of spirits, and felt his loss, he said, like that of an only child,” and that he “never appeared the same man after his father’s death.” To men like Turner, who are not accustomed to express their feelings much, or even to realize them, such blows come with all their natural violence unchecked, unforeseen, unprovided against. It had probably never occurred to him how much his father was to him, how blank a space his loss would make in his narrow garden of human affection. From this time he was to know many losses of old friends, each of which fell heavily upon him, leaving him more lonely than ever. His friends were few, and they dropped one by one, nor is there any evidence to show that their loss was ever lightened by any hope of meeting them again; the lights of his life went out one by one, and left him alone and in the dark. In 1833 Dr. Monro died, in 1836 Mr. Wells, in 1837 Lord Egremont, in 1841 Chantrey, and he was to feel the loss of Mr. Fawkes and Wilkie, and many more before his own time came.

In February, 1830, he wrote to Jones:—

No doubt these deaths set him thinking of his own, and the disposition of his wealth so useless to him, and he probably brooded long over the will that he signed on the 10th of June in the next year (1831). Many excuses have been made for his niggardly habits on the score of the nobleness of mind shown in this document; he screwed and denied himself (we are told) when living, to make old artists comfortable after his death. We are afraid that there is no ground for this charitable view, nor any evidence that he ever denied himself anything that he preferred to hard cash, or that he ever thought of giving it, or any farthing of it, away to anybody, till he had more than he could spend, and was brought by the deaths of his friends to realize that he could not take it with him when he died. Then indeed he disposed of it; but where was the bulk to go? Not to his nearest of kin, whom he had neglected all his life—fifty pounds was enough for uncles, and twenty-five for their eldest sons; not to his mistress or mistresses, who had been devoted to him all his life, or to his children—annuities of ten and fifty pounds were enough for them; but for the perpetuation of his name and fame, as the founder of “Turner’s Gift” and the eclipser of Claude.[44]

We do not know when Turner became acquainted with Samuel Rogers; but probably some years before this, as he is named as one of the executors in the will, and the famous illustrated edition of “Italy” was published in 1830, followed by the Poems in 1834. These contain the most exquisite of all the engravings from Turner’s vignettes. Exquisite also are most of the drawings, but some of them are spoilt by the capriciousness of their colour, which seems in many cases to have been employed as an indication to the engraver rather than for the purpose of imitating the hues of nature. The most beautiful perhaps of all, Tornaro’s misty brow, seems to us far too blue, and the yellow of the sky in others is too strong to be probable or even in harmony with the rest of the drawing. It would, however, be difficult to find in the whole range of his works two really greater (though so small in size) than the Alps at Daybreak, and Datur hora quieti, of which we give woodcuts, losing of course much of the light refinement of the steel plates, but wonderfully true in general effect. The former is as perfect an illustration as possible of the sentiment of Rogers’s pretty verses, but it far transcends them in beauty and imagination; the latter is not in illustration of any of the poet’s verses, but is a more beautiful poem than ever Rogers wrote.

The illustration from “Jacqueline” which we give, though not so transcendent in imagination, is a scene of extraordinary beauty of rock and torrent, and castle-crowned steep, such as no hand but Turner’s could have drawn, while the Vision from “The Voyage of Columbus” is equally characteristic, showing how he could make an impressive picture out of the vaguest notions by his extraordinary mastery of light and shade.

In 1833 Turner exhibited his first pictures of Venice, the last home of his imagination. The date of his first visit to the “floating city” is uncertain. There are two series of Venetian sketches in the National Gallery, which mark two distinct impressions. In the first the colour is comparatively sober; the sky is noted as, before all things, a marvellously blue sky; the interest of the painter is in the watery streets, the picturesqueness of corners here and there, in narrow canals and the different-coloured marbles of the buildings; he takes the city in bits from the inside in broad daylight, and they are studies as realistic as he could make them at the time. In the other series the interest of the painter is COLOUR, not of the buildings, but of the sunsets and sunrises, the clouds of crimson and yellow, the water of green, in which the sapphire and the emerald and the beryl seem to blend their hues. The substantial marble, the solid blue sky, the strong light and sharp shadows have melted into visions of ethereal palaces and gemlike colour, like those in the Apocalypse. As he began painting the sea from Vandevelde and nature, so he began painting Venice from Canaletti and nature; but the transition from the studious beginning to the imaginative end was very swift in the latter case. Venice soon became to him the paradise of colour, and he rose to heights of chromatic daring which exceeded anything which even he had scaled before.

LIGHT-TOWERS OF THE HÈVE. From “Rivers of France.”
LIGHT-TOWERS OF THE HÈVE.
From “Rivers of France.”

The time at which we have now arrived was that of his earlier sketches, and he could turn away from Venice and draw with unabated zest the quieter but still lovely scenery of the Seine and the Loire. To 1833-4 and 1835 belong his beautiful series called The Rivers of France. Opinions are divided, as usual, as to the truthfulness of his art to the spirit of French scenery, and a comparison between The Light-towers of the HÈve in our woodcut, and the drawing which he made on the spot (now in the National Gallery) will show how greatly his imagination altered the literal facts of a scene. One who has patiently followed his footsteps in many parts of England and on the Continent testifies to the puzzling effects of Turner’s imaginative records. He seeks in vain on the face of the earth the original of Turner’s later drawings, but he can never see these drawings without finding all that he has seen. Indeed, to understand them rightly, they must be considered as poems in colour suggested by pictorial recollections of certain scenes on the rivers of France. Most of them are arrangements of blue, red, and yellow, some of yellow and grey, all exquisitely beautiful in arrangement of line and atmospheric effect. Nor has he in any other drawings introduced figures and animals with more skill and beauty of suggestion. The whole series palpitates with living light, although the pigments employed are opaque, and each view charms the sense of colour-harmony, although the colours are crude and disagreeable. It has always appeared wonderful to us that, with his power over water-colours and delight in clear tones, he should have been content to work with such chalky material and impure tints; it is as though he preferred to combat difficulties; but they were drawn to be engraved, and as long as he got his harmonies and his light and shade true we suppose he was content. The great skill with which he could utilize the grey paper on which these drawings were made, leaving it uncovered in the sky and other places where it would serve his purpose, conduced to swiftness of work, and may have been one of his motives. The drawing of JumiÈges, of which we give a woodcut, is one of the loveliest of the series, with its mouldering ruin standing out for a moment like a skeleton against the steely cloud, before the fierce storm covers it with gloom.

In these yearly visits to France, Turner was accompanied by Mr. Leitch Ritchie, who supplied the work with some description of the places. They travelled, however, very little together; their tastes in everything but art being exceedingly dissimilar. “I was curious,” says his companion, “in observing what he made of the objects he selected for his sketches, and was frequently surprised to find what a forcible idea he conveyed of a place with scarcely a correct detail. His exaggerations, when it suited his purpose to exaggerate, were wonderful—lifting up, for instance, by two or three stories, the steeple, or rather, stunted cone, of a village church—and when I returned to London I never failed to roast him on this habit. He took my remarks in good part, sometimes, indeed, in great glee, never attempting to defend himself otherwise than by rolling back the war into the enemy’s camp. In my account of the famous Gilles de Retz, I had attempted to identify that prototype of ‘Blue Beard’ with the hero of the nursery story, by absurdly insisting that his beard was so intensely black that it seemed to have a shade of blue. This tickled the great painter hugely, and his only reply to my bantering was—his little sharp eyes glistening the while—‘Blue Beard! Blue Beard! Black Beard!’”

JUMIÈGES. From “Rivers of France.”
JUMIÈGES.
From “Rivers of France.”

We do not know when Turner became first acquainted with Mr. Munro of Novar, one of the greatest admirers of the artist and collectors of his later works, but it was in 1836 that we first hear of them as travelling together, when, it is said, “a serious depression of spirits having fallen on Mr. Munro,” Turner proposed to divert his mind into fresh channels by travel. They went to Switzerland and Italy, and Mr. Munro found that Turner enjoyed himself in his way—a “sort of honest Diogenes way”—and that it was easy to get on very pleasantly with him “if you bore with his way,” a description which, meant to be kind, does not say much for his sociability at this period.

Indeed, he had been all his life, and especially, we expect, since he left Twickenham, developing as an artist and shrivelling as a man, and after this year (1836), though he still developed in power of colour and painted some of his finest and most distinctive works, the signs of change, if not of decline, were also visible. He was also getting out of the favour of the public, who could not see any beauty in such works as the Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, of 1835, or Juliet and her Nurse, of 1836.

FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE. Exhibited in 1839. National Gallery.
FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE.
Exhibited in 1839. National Gallery.

His fame began to oscillate, tottering with one picture and set upright by another. As long, however, as he could paint such pictures as Mercury and Argus, 1836, and the Fighting TÉmÉraire, of 1839, it was in a measure safe. He was still a great genius to whom eccentricities were natural, but the Fighting TÉmÉraire was the last picture of his at which no stone was thrown. This is in many ways the finest of all his pictures. Light and brilliant yet solemn in colour; penetrated with a sentiment which finds an echo in every heart; appealing to national feeling and to that larger sympathy with the fate of all created things; symbolic, by its contrast between the old three-decker and the little steam-tug, of the “old order,” which “changeth, yielding place to new”—the picture was and always will be as popular as it deserves. It is characteristic of Turner that the idea of the picture did not originate with him, but with Stanfield. Would that Turner had always had some friend at his elbow to hold the torch to his imagination.

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