and unerring kind. A good illustration of this may be seen at Farnley Hall in a drawing of a “Man-of-War taking in Stores.” Some one, who had never seen a first-rate, expressed a wish to know what it looked like. Turner took a blank sheet of paper one morning after breakfast, outlined the ship, and finished the drawing in three hours, young Fawkes, a son of the house, sitting beside him from the first stroke to the last. The size of this drawing is about 16 in. by 11 in. Ruskin thus describes it: —
“The hull of a first-rate occupies nearly one half of the picture to the right, her bows toward the spectator, seen in sharp perspective from stem to stern, with all her port-holes, guns, anchors and lower rigging elaborately detailed, two other ships of the line in the middle distance drawn with equal precision, a noble breezy sea, full of delicate drawing in its waves, a store ship beneath the hull of the larger vessel and several other boats, and a complicated cloudy sky, all drawn from memory, down to the smallest rope, in a drawing-room of a mansion in the middle of Yorkshire.”
About the year 1811 Turner paid his first visit to Devonshire, the county to which his family belonged, and a curious glimpse of his simple manner of life is given by Redding, who accompanied him on some of his excursions. On one occasion they spent a night together in a small road-side inn, Turner having a great desire to see the country around at sunrise.
“Turner was content with bread and cheese and beer, tolerably good, for dinner and supper in one. In the little sanded room we conversed by the light of an attenuated candle and some aid from the moon until nearly midnight, when Turner laid his head upon the table and was soon fast asleep. Three or four hours' rest was thus obtained, and we went out as soon as the sun was up to explore the surrounding neighbourhood. It was in that early morning Turner made a sketch of the picture ‘Crossing the Brook.’” In another excursion to Borough Island, “the morning was squally and the sea rolled boisterously into the Sound. Off Stakes Point it became stormy; our Dutch boat rode bravely over the furrows. Two of the party were ill. Turner was all the while quiet, watching the troubled scene. Bolt Head, to seaward, against which the waves broke with fury, seemed to absorb his entire notice, and he scarcely spoke a syllable. While the fish were getting ready Turner mounted nearly to the highest point of the island rock, and seemed writing rather than drawing. The wind was almost too violent for either purpose.”
This and similar incidents show how careless of comfort Turner was, and how devoted to his art. The tumult and discomfort by which he was surrounded could not distract his powers of observation; and some thirty years later there is still evidence of the same kind. In the catalogue of the exhibition of 1842 one of his pictures bears the following title, “Snow-Storm: steam-boat off a harbour's mouth making signals in shallow water, and going by the lead. The author was in that storm the night the ‘Ariel’ left Harwich.”
From 1813 till 1826, in addition to his Harley Street residence, Turner had a country house at Twickenham. He kept a boat on the river, also a pony and gig, in which he used to drive about the neighbouring country on sketching expeditions. The pony, for which Turner had a great love, appears in his well-known “Frosty Morning” in the National Gallery. He appears to have had a great affection for animals, and one instance of his tenderness of heart is given by one who often joined him in the amusement of fishing, of which Turner was very fond. “I was often with him when fishing at Petworth, and also on the banks of the Thames. His success as an angler was great, although with the worst tackle in the world. Every fish he caught he showed to me, and appealed to me to decide whether the size justified him to keep it for the table or to return it to the river; his hesitation was often almost touching, and he always gave the prisoner at the bar the benefit of the doubt.”
In 1813 Turner commenced the series of drawings, forty in number, for Cooke's Southern Coast. This work was not completed till 1826. The price he at first received for these drawings was £7, 10s. each, afterwards raised to £13, 2s. 6d.
“Crossing the Brook” appeared in the Academy of 1815. It may be regarded as a typical example of Turner's art at this period, and marks the transition from his earlier style to that of his maturity. It represents a piece of Devonshire scenery, a view on the river Tamar. On the left is a group of tall pinetrees, beautifully designed and drawn with great skill and knowledge of structure; in the foreground a couple of children, with a dog carrying a bundle in its mouth across the brook; and beyond, a vast expanse of richly-wooded country, with glimpses of a winding river, an old bridge, a mill, and other buildings, and, in the far distance, the sea. Both in design and execution this work is founded upon Claude. Some critics consider it one of Turner's greatest works; but this is open to question.[1] It can hardly be called a work in full colour: it is limited to greys and quiet greens for the earth and pale blues for the sky. It is a sober but very admirable picture, full of diffused daylight, and in the painting of its distance better than any master who had preceded him. The fascination of the remote, afterwards so distinctive an element in Turner's pictures, shows itself here. Perhaps nothing tests the powers or tries the skill of the landscape painter more severely than the representation of distant effects. They come and go so rapidly, are often in a high key of light and colour, and so full of mystery and delicacy, that anything approaching to real imitation is impossible. Only the most retentive memory and the most sensitive and tender feeling will avail. These qualities Turner possessed to a remarkable degree, and as his powers matured there was an ever-increasing tendency in his art to desert the foreground, where things were definite and clear, in order to dream in the infinite suggestiveness and space of distances. “Dido Building Carthage” also belongs to this period. It hangs beside the Claudes in the National Gallery. It pertains to the old erroneous school of historical painting. Towering masses of Claudesque architecture piled up on either side, porticoes, vestibules, and stone pines, with the sun in a yellow sky, represent the Carthage of Turner's imagination. With all its faults it is still the finest work of the class he ever painted. Carthage and its fate had a strange fascination for him. It is said that he regarded it as a moral example to England in its agricultural decline, its increase of luxury, and its blindness to the insatiable ambition of a powerful rival. He returned again to this theme in 1817, when he exhibited his “Decline of the Carthaginian Empire: Hostages Leaving Carthage for Rome” — a picture which Ruskin describes as “little more than an accumulation of academy student's outlines coloured brown.”
In 1818 Turner was in Scotland making drawings for the Provincial Antiquities, for which Sir Walter Scott supplied the letterpress, and in 1819 he visited Italy for the first time. One of the results of this visit was a great change in his style, and from this time his works became remarkable for their colour. Hitherto he had painted in browns, greys and blues, using red and yellow sparingly. He had gradually been advancing from the sober grey colouring of Vandervelde and Ruysdael to the mellow and richer tones of Claude. His works now begin to show a heightened scale of colour, gradually increasing in richness and splendour and reaching its culminating point in such works as the “Ulysses,” “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,” “The Golden Bough,” and “The Fighting Téméraire.” All these works belong to the middle period of Turner's art (1820-1839), when his powers were entirely developed and entirely unabated. Much of his most beautiful work at this period is to be found in his water-colour drawings: those executed for Whitaker's History of Richmondshire (1819-1821), for Cooke's Southern Coast (1814-1826), for The Rivers of England (1824), for England and Wales (1829-1838), Provincial Antiquities (1826), Rogers's Italy (1830), Scott's Works (1834), and The Rivers of France (1833-1835) are in many instances of the greatest beauty. Of the Richmondshire drawings Ruskin says, “The foliage is rich and marvellous in composition, the rock and hill drawing insuperable, the skies exquisite in complex form.”
But perhaps one of the greatest services Turner rendered to the art of England was the education of a whole school of
- ↑ “Crossing the Brook” was a great favourite with Turner. It was painted for a patron, who, dissatisfied with it, left it on the painter's hands. The price asked (£500) seems to have been part of the objection. Turner subsequently refused an offer of £1600 for it.
