tion 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 pine-trees, 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: Host ages Leaving Carthage for Rome,—a picture which Mr 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 Temeraire. All these works belong to the middle period of Turner's art (1829-39), 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 (1819-21), for Cooke's Southern Coast (1814-26), for The Rivers of England (1824), for England and Wales (1829-38), Provincial Antiquities (1826), Rogers's Italy (1830), Scott's Works (1834), and The Rivers of France (1833-35) are in many instances of the greatest beauty. Of the Richmondshire drawings Mr 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 engravers. His best qualities as a teacher came from the union of strength and delicacy in his work; subtle and delicate tonality was almost a new element for the engraver to deal with, but with Turner's teaching and careful supervision his engravers by degrees mastered it more or less successfully, and something like a new development of the art of engraving was the result. No better proof can be found of the immense advance made than by comparing the work of the landscape engravers of the pre-Turnerian period with the work of Miller, Goodall, Willmore, Cooke, Wallis, Lupton, C. Turner, Brandard, Cousen, and others who worked under his guidance. The art of steel engraving reached its highest development in England at this time. Rogers's Italy (1830) and his Poems (1834) contain perhaps the most beautiful and delicate of the many engravings executed after Turner's drawings. They are vignettes,[2] a form of art which Turner understood better than any artist ever did before, perhaps, we might add, since. The Alps at Daybreak, Columbus Discovering Land, and Datur Hora Quieti may be given as examples of the finest.
In 1828 Turner paid a second visit to Italy, this time of considerable duration, on the way visiting Nimes, Avignon, Marseilles, Genoa, Spezzia, and Siena, and in the following year he exhibited the Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, now in the National Gallery. It marks the beginning of the central and best period of Turner's power. This work is so well known that description is hardly needed. The galley of Ulysses occupies the centre of the picture; the oars are being thrust out and the sailors flocking up the masts to unfurl sail, while Ulysses waves the blazing olive tree in defiance of the giant, whose huge form is seen high on the cliffs above; and the shadowy horses of Phoebus are traced in the slanting rays of the rising sun. The impression this picture leaves is one of great power and splendour. The painting throughout is magnificent, especially in the sky. Leslie speaks of it as "a poem 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.
- ↑ "Of all the 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" (Hamerton).
