Turner Part 6

"Upon mature reflection you must see I have done all in my power to satisfy you of the total impossibility of acquiescing in such a demand; it would be unjust both to my subscribers and to myself.

"The 'Coast' being my own original plan, which cost me some anxiety before I could bring it to maturity, and an immense expense before I applied to you, when I gave a commission for drawings to upwards of 400, _at my own entire risk_, in which the shareholders were not willing to take any part, I did all I could to persuade you to have one share, and which I did from a firm conviction that it would afford some remuneration for your exertions on the drawings, in addition to the amount of the contract. The share was, as it were, forced upon you by myself, with the best feelings in the world; and was, as you well know, repeatedly refused, under the idea that there was a possibility of losing money by it. You cannot deny the result: a constant dividend of profit has been made to you at various times, and will be so for some time to come.

"On Sat.u.r.day last, to my utter astonishment, you declared in my print-rooms, before three persons, who distinctly heard it, as follows: 'I will have my terms, or I will oppose the work by doing another "Coast!"' These were the words you used, and every one must allow them to be a _threat_.

"And this morning (Monday), you show me a note of my own handwriting, with these words (or words to this immediate effect): 'The drawings for the future "Coast" shall be paid twelve guineas and a half each.'

"Now, in the name of common honesty, how can you apply the above note to any drawings for the first division of the work called the 'Southern Coast,' and tell me I owe you two guineas on each of those drawings? Did you not agree to make the whole of the 'South Coast' drawings at 7 10_s._ each? and did I not continue to pay you that sum for the first four numbers? When a meeting of the partners took place, to take into consideration the great exertions that myself and my brother had made on the plates, to testify their entire satisfaction, and considering the difficulties I had placed myself in by such an agreement as I had made (dictated by my enthusiasm for the welfare of a work which had been planned and executed with so much zeal, and of my being paid the small sum only of twenty-five guineas for each plate, including the loan of the drawings, for which I received no return or consideration whatever on the part of the shareholders), they unanimously (excepting on your part) and very liberally increased the price of each plate to 40; and I agreed, on my part, to pay you ten guineas for each drawing after the fourth number. And have I not kept this agreement? Yes; you have received from me, and from Messrs. Arch on my account, the whole sum so agreed upon, and for which you have given me and them receipts. The work has now been finished upwards of six months, when you show me a note of my own handwriting, and which was written to you in reply to a part of your letter, where you say, 'Do you imagine I shall go to John O'Groat's House for the same sum I receive for the Southern part?' Is this _fair_ conduct between man and man--to apply the note (so explicit in itself) to the former work, and to endeavour to make me believe I still owe you two guineas and a-half on each drawing? Why, let me ask you, should I promise you such a sum? What possible motive could I have in heaping gold into your pockets, when you have always taken such especial care of your interests, even in the case of _Neptune's Trident_, which I can declare you _presented_ to me; and, in the spirit of _this_ understanding, I presented it again to Mrs. Cooke.

You may recollect afterwards charging me two guineas for the loan of it, and requesting me at the same time to return it to you, which has been done.

"The ungracious remarks I experienced this morning at your house, where I pointed out to you the meaning of my former note--that it referred to the future part of the work, and not to the 'Southern Coast'--were such as to convince me that you maintain a mistaken and most unaccountable idea of profit and advantage in the new work of the 'Coast,' and that no estimate or calculation will convince you to the contrary.

"Ask yourself if Hakewill's 'Italy,' 'Scottish Scenery,' or 'Yorkshire' works have either of them succeeded in the return of the capital laid out on them.

"These works have had in them as much of your individual talent as the 'Southern Coast,' being modelled on the principle of it; and although they have answered your purpose, by the commissions for drawings, yet there is considerable doubt remaining whether the shareholders and proprietors will ever be reinstated in the money laid out on them. So much for the profit of works. I a.s.sure you I must turn over an entirely new leaf to make them ever return their expenses.

"To conclude, I regret exceedingly the time I have bestowed in endeavouring to convince you in a calm and patient manner of a number of calculations made for _your_ satisfaction; and I have met in return such hostile treatment that I am positively disgusted at the mere thought of the trouble I have given myself on such a useless occasion.

"I remain,

"Your obedient servant,

"W. B. COOKE."

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 ill.u.s.trate 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 a.s.sistance, 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 a.n.a.logous 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.s, 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 n.o.blest features--tragic." We are not prepared to a.s.sent 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 cla.s.sical 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.

"TO GEORGE JONES, R.A.

"ROME,

"_Oct. 13, 1828._

"DEAR JONES,

"Two months nearly in getting to this terra pictura, _and at work_; but the length of time is my own fault. I must see the South of France, which almost knocked me up, the heat was so intense, particularly at Nismes and Avignon; and until I got a plunge into the sea at Ma.r.s.eilles, I felt so weak that nothing but the change of scene kept me onwards to my distant point. Genoa, and all the sea-coast from Nice to Spezzia, is remarkably rugged and fine; so is Ma.s.sa. 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.

"Sorry to hear your friend, Sir Henry Bunbury, has lost his lady.

How did you know this? You will answer, of Captain Napier, at _Siena_. The letter announcing the sad event arrived the next day after I got there. They were on the wing--Mrs. W. Light to Leghorn, to meet Colonel Light, and Captain and Mrs. Napier for Naples; so, all things considered, I determined to quit instanter, instead of adding to the trouble.

"Hope that you have been better than usual, and that the pictures go on well. If you should be pa.s.sing Queen Anne Street, just say I am well, and in Rome, for I fear young Hakewell has written to his father of my being unwell: and may I trouble you to drop a line into the two-penny post to Mr. C. Heath, 6, Seymour Place, New Pancras Church, or send my people to tell him that, if he has anything to send me, to put it up in a letter (it is the most sure way of its reaching me), directed for me, No. 12, Piazza Mignanelli, Rome, and to which place I hope you will send me a line? Excuse my troubling you with my requests of business.

Remember me to all friends. So G.o.d bless you. Adieu.

"J. M. TURNER."

"TO FRANCIS CHANTREY, R.A.

"NO. 12, PIAZZA MIGNANELLI, ROME,

"_Nov. 6, 1828_.

"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 department 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 them _not_, I finished a small three feet four to stop their gabbling.

So now to business. Sculpture, of course, first; for it carries away all the patronage, so it is said, in Rome; but all seem to share in the good-will of the patrons of the day. Gott's studio is full. Wyatt and Rennie, Ewing, Buxton, all employed. Gibson has two groups in hand, _Venus and Cupid_; and _The Rape of Hylas_, three figures, very forward, though I doubt much if it will be in time (taking the long voyage into the scale) for the Exhibition, though it is for England. Its style is something like _The Psyche_, being two standing figures of nymphs leaning, enamoured, over the youthful Hylas, with his pitcher. The Venus is a sitting figure, with the Cupid in attendance; 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. Thorwaldsten is closely engaged on the late Pope's (Pius VII.) monument. Portraits of the superior animal, man, is to be found in all. In some, the inferior--viz. greyhounds and poodles, cats and monkeys, &c., &c.

"Pray give my remembrances to Jones and Stokes, and tell _him_ I have not seen a bit of coal stratum for months. My love to Mrs.

Chantrey, and take the same and good wishes of

"Yours most truly,

"J. M. TURNER."

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 s.p.a.ce 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:--

"DEAR JONES--I delayed answering yours until the chance of this finding you in Rome, to give you some account of the dismal prospect of Academic affairs, and of the last sad ceremonies paid yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourn from whence no traveller returns. Alas! only two short months Sir Thomas followed the coffin of Dawe to the same place. We then were his pall-bearers. Who will do the like for me, or when, G.o.d only knows how soon! However, it is something to feel that gifted talent can be acknowledged by the many who yesterday waded up to their knees in snow and muck to see the funeral pomp swelled up by carriages of the great, _without the persons themselves_."

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 n.i.g.g.ardly habits on the score of the n.o.bleness of mind shown in this doc.u.ment; 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 ill.u.s.tration as possible of the sentiment of Rogers's pretty verses, but it far transcends them in beauty and imagination; the latter is not in ill.u.s.tration of any of the poet's verses, but is a more beautiful poem than ever Rogers wrote.

The ill.u.s.tration 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 ca.n.a.ls 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 Ca.n.a.letti 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LIGHT-TOWERS OF THE HeVE.

_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_.