Turner Part 5

It may have been when at Hammersmith that he became acquainted with Mr.

Trimmer, for in a letter to Mr. Wyatt of Oxford respecting two pictures of that city, which is dated "West End, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, Feb. 4, 1810," he says, "Pray tell me likewise of a gentleman of the name of Trimmer, who has written to you to be a subscriber for the print." This gentleman was the Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, Vicar of Heston, who was one of Turner's best and most intimate friends till his death. It is said that he first went to Hammersmith to be near De Loutherbourg, and it is probable that one of his reasons for building on his free--hold at Twickenham was to be nearer Mr. Trimmer. De Loutherbourg died in 1812.

Sandycombe Lodge, first called Solus Lodge, is on the road from Twickenham to Isleworth, and is built on low lying ground and damp. The original structure has been added to, but the additions being built of brick, it is easy to see how it looked in Turner's time--a small semi-Italian villa covered with plaster and decorated with iron bal.u.s.trades and steps. It is within walking distance (4 miles) of Heston. We are able by the kindness of Mr. F. E. Trimmer, the youngest son of Turner's friend, to correct some false impressions conveyed by Thornbury's garbled account of what he was told by the eldest son.

The Rev. Henry Scott Trimmer, the son of the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer, and father of the Rev. Henry Syer Trimmer, who gave Thornbury his information, was about the same age as Turner, and very much interested in art. As an amateur painter he attained considerable skill, having a wonderful faculty for catching the manner of other artists. His great knowledge of pictures, and his continual experiments in the way of mediums, colours, and devices for obtaining effects, made his acquaintance specially interesting and valuable to Turner, and Turner's to him. No better proof of his ability can be found than the two following stories:--

There is a picture at Heston before which Turner would frequently stand studying. It is a sea-piece with the sun behind a mist, and with a golden hazy effect not unlike Turner's famous _Sun rising in a Mist_, but the sea washes up to the frame. One day Turner said to Mr. Trimmer, "I like that picture; there's a good deal in it. Where did you get it?"

(Or words to this effect.) "I painted it," was the reply; upon which the artist turned away without a word, and never looked at the picture again.

The true story of the picture, supposed to be by Sir Joshua Reynolds, to which Mr. Trimmer added a background, is this.[37] He purchased it in an unfinished condition of a dealer in Holborn, and finished it himself, and it remained in his possession till his death, when his son (Mr. F.

E. Trimmer), knowing its history, kept it out of the sale at Christie's of his father's fine collection, and sold it, among other less valuable and genuine productions, at Heston. The dealer who bought it (for 6) thought he had made a great catch, and inquired of Mr. Trimmer's son the history of the picture, which he considered a splendid Sir Joshua, speaking especially of the background as being a proof of its authenticity. When Mr. Trimmer told him that his father had bought it in his own shop and had finished it himself, he would not believe it for a long time.

Of the other stories of Turner's connection with Heston, and of his power to a.s.sist others in the composition of their pictures, the following is perhaps the most interesting:--[38]

Once when Howard (R.A.) was staying at the vicarage, painting a portrait of Mr. Trimmer's second son, the Rev. Barrington James Trimmer, Turner was always finding fault with the work in progress. It was a full-size and full-length portrait of a boy of three years old, dressed in a white frock and red morocco shoes. One day Howard, annoyed at Turner's frequent objections, told him that he had better do it himself, on which Turner said, "This is what I should do," and taking up the cat he wrapped its body in his red pocket handkerchief, and put it under the boy's arm. The effect of this, as may still be seen in the picture at the house of Mr. Trimmer's son at Heston, was excellent. The cat gave an interest to the figure which it wanted, the red morocco shoes were no longer isolated patches of bright colour at the bottom of the picture, the blank expanse of white frock was varied and lightened up by the red handkerchief and p.u.s.s.y's tabby face, and the work, which was on the brink of failure, was a decided success. Parts of the cat, handkerchief, and landscape were put in by Turner.

Sketching with oils on a large canvas in a boat, driving out on little sketching excursions in his gig with his ill-tempered nag Crop Ear, said to have been immortalized in his picture of the _Frosty Morning_ (which was, however, painted before he went to Twickenham), fishing for trout in the Old Brent, or for roach in the Thames, with Mr. Trimmer's sons, digging his pond in his garden and planting it round with weeping willows and alders, the picture of Turner's life at Twickenham is a pleasant and healthy one. At Heston he drew his _Interior of a Church_ for the "Liber," and actually gave away two of his drawings to Mrs.

Trimmer, one of a Gainsborough, which they had seen together on an excursion to Osterley House, and one of a woman gathering watercresses, whom they had met on their way. But these gifts were asked for by the lady, and Turner would not let them go without making _replicas_. He once stood with a long rod two whole days in a pouring rain under an umbrella fishing in a small pond in the vicarage garden, without even a nibble.

In connection with the Trimmers we get other instances of his rare and bare hospitality, which showed that he never altered his manner of living after he left Maiden Lane. We must refer the reader to Mr.

Thornbury's life for the remainder of these varied, interesting, and on the whole pleasant reminiscences.

s.p.a.ce, however, we must spare for a letter, very incorrectly given by Thornbury, the only record of his second attachment, the object of which was the sister of the Rev. H. Scott Trimmer, who was at that time being courted by her future husband:--

"_Tuesday. Aug. 1. 1815._

"QUEEN ANNE ST.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"I lament that all hope of the pleasure of seeing you or getting to Heston--must for the present wholly vanish. My father told me on Sat.u.r.day last when I was as usual compelled to return to town the same day, that you and Mrs. Trimmer would leave Heston for Suffolk as tomorrow Wednesday, in the first place, I am glad to hear that her health is so far established as to be equal to the journey, and believe me your utmost hope, for her benefitting by the sea air being fully realized will give me great pleasure to hear, and the earlier the better.

"After next Tuesday--if you have a moments time to spare, a line will reach me at Farnley Hall, near Otley Yorkshire, and for some time, as Mr. Fawkes talks of keeping me in the north by a trip to the Lakes &c. until November therefore I suspect I am not to see Sandycombe. Sandycombe sounds just now in my ears as an act of folly, when I reflect how little I have been able to be there this year, and less chance (perhaps) for the next in looking forward to a Continental excursion, & poor Daddy seems as much plagued with weeds as I am with disapointments, that if Miss ---- would but wave bashfulness, or--in other words--make an offer instead of expecting one--the same might change occupiers--but not to teaze you further, allow with most sincere respects to Mrs. Trimmer and family, to consider myself

"Your most truly (or sincerely) obliged

"J. M. TURNER."

But for the a.s.surance of the present Mr. Trimmer, of Heston, that this attachment of Turner to Miss Trimmer was undoubted, and that this letter has always been considered in the family as a declaration thereof, we should have thought that the offer he wanted was one for Sandycombe Lodge and not for his hand. It is, however, past doubt that Turner was violently smitten, and though forty years old, felt it much.

The above letter was the only one known to have been written by Turner to his friend the Vicar of Heston, and it is quite untrue, as a.s.serted by Thornbury, that the Vicar's letters were burnt in sackfuls by his son. His large correspondence was patiently gone through--a task which took some years. Thornbury was probably thinking of the destruction of the celebrated Mrs. Trimmer's correspondence by her daughter, in which it is true that sackfuls of interesting letters perished.

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CHAPTER VII.

ITALY AND FRANCE.

1820 TO 1840.

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 ill.u.s.trate 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 aeneas_ (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 quant.i.ty 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 mult.i.tudinous leaf.a.ge 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.

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_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 a.s.sociated;--_The Say of Baiae with Apollo and the Sibyl_ (1823). The three supreme works of this cla.s.s, _The Bay of Baiae_, _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 t.i.tle 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 "Ill.u.s.trations 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 ill.u.s.trations to Rogers and Scott.

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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 ama.s.s 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:--

"_January 1, 1827._

"DEAR SIR,

"I cannot help regretting that you persist in demanding twenty-five sets of India proofs before the letters of the continuation of the work of the 'Coast,' besides being paid for the drawings. It is like a film before your eyes, to prevent your obtaining upwards of two thousand pounds in a commission for drawings for that work.