Chapter I: Part 1

EARLY ENGLISH WATER-COLOUR
DRAWINGS BY THE GREAT MASTERS

EARLY ENGLISH
WATER-COLOUR DRAWINGS
BY THE GREAT MASTERS
WITH ARTICLES BY A. J. FINBERG

1919

EDITED BY GEOFFREY HOLME
“THE STUDIO,” Lᵀᴰ^{.,} LONDON PARIS, NEW YORK

CONTENTS

ARTICLES BY A. J. FINBERG
PAGE

Introduction 1 The Turners 4 Turner’s Predecessors 22 Turner’s Contemporaries 26

Descriptive Catalogue of the Exhibition of Selected Water-Colour Drawings by Artists of the Early English School held at Messrs. Thomas Agnew & Sons’ Galleries, London, March-April 1919 33

ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOURS

After J. S. Cotman PLATE

_Rouen_ (3) xxxv

After J. R. Cozens

_A Swiss Valley_ (43) xxvii
_Villa Negroni, Rome_ (42) xxix

After J. M. W. Turner, R.A.

_Castle of Chillon_ (18) vii
_Saumur_ (23) x
_Richmond Bridge--Play_ (20) xi
_Worcester_ (25) xii
_The Longships Lighthouse, Land’s End_ (27) xiii
_Lake Nemi_ (26) xv
_The Rigi at Sunrise--Lake of Lucerne (“The Blue Rigi”)_ (28) xvii
_Lake of Lucerne: Brunnen in the Distance_ (130) xx
_Mouth of the Grand Canal_ (127) xxiii

ILLUSTRATIONS IN MONOTONE

After T. Collier
_Beeston Castle_ (82) xliv

After J. S. Cotman

_Bridge over River near a Town_ (78) xxxiii
_Gormire Lake, Yorkshire_ (74) xxxiv

After J. S. Cotman

_A Lake Scene_ (1) xxxvi
_Church in Normandy_ (9) xxxvii

After J. R. Cozens

_In the Farnesina Gardens, Rome_ (41) xxviii
_Lake Nemi_ (45) xxx

After Edward Dayes

_Norwich Cathedral_ (144) xxvi

After Copley Fielding

_The Pilot Boat_ (70) xlii

After Thomas Girtin

_Kenilworth_ (146) xxxi
_Lincoln_ (7) xxxii

After Samuel Prout

_Folkestone_ (86) xxxix

After David Roberts, R.A.

_Granada_ (88) xliii

After G. Robson

_Ben Venue, from Lanrick_ (66) xli

After Paul Sandby, R.A.

_The Swan Inn, Edmonton_ (64) xxv

After J. M. W. Turner, R.A.

_Old Abbey, Evesham_ (139) i
_Malmesbury Abbey_ (53) ii
_Water Mill_ (147) iii
_A Mountain Stream_ (152) iv
_Cassiobury: The House seen across the Park_ (16) v
_Lake of Thun_ (34) vi
_Patterdale Old Church_ (21) viii
_Rolandswerth Nunnery and Drachenfels_ (35) ix
_Valley of the Washburne, near Farnley_ (153) xiv
_Florence, from near San Miniato_ (29) xvi
_Steeton Manor, near Farnley_ (136) xviii
_Wilderness of Sinai_ (132) xix
_Saltash_ (30) xxi
_Prudhoe Castle_ (22) xxii
_A Gorge_ (115) xxiv

After William Turner of Oxford

_Kingley Vale, with Chichester Cathedral in the Distance_ (77) xl

After John Varley

_Leyton, Essex_ (1830) (122) xxxviii

THE EDITOR DESIRES TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE VALUABLE ASSISTANCE RENDERED HIM IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS VOLUME BY MESSRS. THOMAS AGNEW & SONS; AND TO THANK MR. C. MORLAND AGNEW, MR. W. J. H. JONES, AND MR. R. W. LLOYD FOR KINDLY ALLOWING THEIR DRAWINGS TO BE REPRODUCED

INTRODUCTION

Turner was one of the greatest artists this country has produced, and much of his best work--and nearly all the work by which he has endeared himself to his fellow-countrymen, was done in water-colour; yet water-colour painting, though it has played almost as important a part as oil painting in the history of British art, is not yet recognized by our authorities as an independent branch of art. That Turner the water-colour painter is represented at all in our National Gallery is purely an accident. The bulk of his water-colours are in private collections, and it is only on rare occasions that the public can get an opportunity of seeing them.

It is for these reasons that Messrs. Thomas Agnew and Sons’ annual exhibitions of English water-colours, though the outcome of the energy and enterprise of a private firm, have become artistic events of great public importance. The chief feature of these exhibitions has always been a generous supply of Turner’s finished water-colours. They have, therefore, become a regular source of instruction and pleasure to that section of the public which really cares for British art. They open the doors, at any rate for a time, to the chief private collections of Turner’s water-colours; they give students of his work valuable opportunities of enlarging their experience and increasing their knowledge; and they do much to spread and stimulate an adequate appreciation of the achievements not only of Turner but of the other great water-colour painters of this country.

The exhibition which was opened in March of this year (1919) was neither superior nor inferior to those which had gone before, but it attracted a quite unusual amount of interest and attention. This was due, I imagine, at least in part to circumstances connected with the war--to the closing of the public galleries and museums, and to the almost incredible folly of the Government in not reopening them immediately the armistice was signed. After the long-drawn-out agony of the war there was a part of the public which was disposed to turn naturally to the comfort and refreshment which art can give. But though the armistice was signed in November last year, Messrs. Agnew’s exhibition was the first opportunity offered to the public of seeing, under favourable conditions, a fine selection of some of the most beautiful work of our great artists of the past. The public was evidently grateful for such an opportunity and took full advantage of it. This was only another instance of our national good luck in finding that private enterprise and initiative so often step in and perform work of public importance which our Government is too stupid or too supine to perform.

I have said that this exhibition was neither superior nor inferior to its immediate predecessors, but to say that it was not inferior was to give it very high praise. The exhibition, indeed, was one which would have done credit to any of our public galleries. The array of Turner’s masterpieces on the long south wall of the gallery produced an overpowering sense of his incomparable technical skill, his boundless energy, and the infinite variety of his mind. In the centre of the wall, in a place of honour, was enthroned the regal _Lake Nemi_ (Plate XV), resplendent with something brighter than the sunshine of Italy, a gorgeous and intoxicating dream of sensuous beauty. Beneath it hung the awe-inspiring _Longships Lighthouse_ (Plate XIII), and on the right the beautiful and pathetic “_Blue Rigi_” (Plate XVII), tender and wistful, in which the helplessness and restlessness of old age only made more manifest the sorrows and regrets with which the painter’s heart was filled. Grouped round these great masterpieces of his full strength and waning powers were works of his early manhood, like the _Cassiobury_ (Plate V), with its horses and dogs, a robust jovial scene, the _Lake of Thun_ (Plate VI), the restrained and elegant _Castle of Chillon_ (Plate VII), the dainty, coquettish _Scarborough_, several of the Rhine drawings of 1817, and many of his proudest and most exultant drawings, like the Byronic _Florence, from near San Miniato_ (Plate XVI), the _Saumur_ (Plate X), and the _Saltash_ (Plate XXI), _Prudhoe_ (Plate XXII), _Richmond Bridge_ (Plate XI), _Windsor Castle, Coventry_, and the somewhat operatic _Worcester_ (Plate XII), of the “England and Wales” series; nor must I forget the impressive _Lowestoft_, a grey and gloomy tragedy as grim and moving even as the _Longships_.

And as no man stands alone--not even the greatest of geniuses--the educational value of this array of masterpieces was increased by a fine display of the works of those English water-colour painters who had been born and had worked before Turner, and of his contemporaries. The early topographical draughtsmen whom Turner first set out to imitate and rival, were represented by Paul Sandby’s _The Swan Inn, Edmonton_ (Plate XXV), Thomas Hearne’s _Thaxted Church, Essex_, Thomas Malton Junior’s two quaint views of Bath, and many other drawings, mostly in the “stained” manner, by Wheatley, J. I. Richards, Ibbetson, William Payne, Dayes and others. Richard Wilson, the chief influence in directing Turner’s genius to imaginative design, was perforce unrepresented, as he does not seem to have worked in water-colour; but Gainsborough was represented by one of his charming drawings in chalk, and there was a noble group of nine of John R. Cozens’s austerely beautiful drawings, among them the large _Lake Albano_, and the charming _Villa Negroni_ (Plate XXIX). Turner’s contemporaries were well represented by over seventy drawings, which included three of his friend Girtin’s early works, and at least one fine example of his robust maturity--a masterly view of the ruined Lady Chapel of _Fountains Abbey_. Cotman had two fine early Girtinesque drawings, _Gormire Lake, Yorkshire_ (Plate XXXIV), and _Bridge over River_ (Plate XXXIII), a nobly designed _Lake Scene_ (Plate XXXVI), in monochrome, and a brilliantly coloured view of _Rouen_ (Plate XXXV). There were also two of Copley Fielding’s most ambitious sea-pieces--_The Pilot Boat_ (Plate XLII) and _Seaford from Newhaven Pier_, and a number of admirable drawings by De Wint, David Cox, Varley and Prout.

After being got together with much labour and thought, and having served its purpose for a month or two, this exhibition seemed destined to suffer the usual fate of such undertakings, which is to be speedily dispersed and soon forgotten. It occurred, however, to the Editor of THE STUDIO that a permanent record of it would make a strong appeal to many of those who had seen and enjoyed the exhibition, and would enable a large number of those lovers of British water-colours who had not been able to visit Messrs. Agnew’s gallery to realize something of its interest and beauty.

Such is the origin, such is the purpose of the present volume. It was naturally gratifying to me to be invited to supply the text for such a work. But the value of a book like this depends very little on its letterpress, and much on its illustrations. The colour processes have in recent years made extraordinary progress and the reproductions of the wonderful drawings collected by Messrs. Agnew will be sure of a very hearty and a very wide welcome.

THE TURNERS

As Turner’s drawings formed the chief feature of the exhibition I will begin my comments with them. The best way to arrange my notes seems to be to take the drawings in their chronological order, disregarding the sequence in which they were hung in the exhibition. By beginning in this way, with the earlier drawings, we shall be able to study the gradual development of Turner’s mind and skill.

[A] 128. _Church of St. Lawrence, Evesham, as seen through Tower Gateway_, 1793.

139. _Old Abbey, Evesham_, 1793 (Plate I).

These two subjects were sketched during the summer of 1792, when Turner was seventeen years of age. He was then a student at the Royal Academy schools, where he attended the life class diligently during the winter and spring months. In the early part of the summer of 1792, he went to Bristol to visit his uncle’s friends, the Narraways, and went from there to South Wales, Hereford, Great Malvern, Worcester, Evesham, Tewkesbury and Gloucester. Several of the pencil drawings made during this tour were exhibited some years ago at Mr. Walker’s gallery in Bond Street.

These two highly finished and accomplished water-colours are good examples of the work of the industrious apprentice. One searches them in vain for signs of originality, for some promise of a new way of thinking or feeling, a new vision, or a new form of expression. Their aims are conventional, and their modest triumphs are triumphs of the commonplace virtues--intelligence, docility, and above all, industry working upon a foundation of natural talent. In them Turner was trying to do exactly what the successful topographical and antiquarian draughtsmen of the day were doing,--Sandby, Rooker, Hearne and Dayes--and the precocious boy has already succeeded in doing such work nearly as well as it can be done.

53. _Malmesbury Abbey_, 1794 (Plate II).

Though a year later in execution than the Evesham drawings, this was based on sketches which had been made in 1791. These are now in the National Gallery (Turner Bequest, VII C. and D.) One is inscribed in Turner’s handwriting, “The Ruins of the Tower at the West End of Malmesbury Abbey, taken from the Friars Walk, 1791.” It is carefully worked in water-colour with brown ink outlines. The other drawing is similarly worked and represents the same tower from a point of view a little more to the left and lower down. The picturesque features of these two views have been cunningly combined in the finished drawing.

Turner exhibited a drawing of Malmesbury Abbey at the Royal Academy in 1792. I was once misled by other writers into thinking that this drawing might be the one which was then exhibited. The date, 1794, disproves this. The present drawing is probably a reduced replica of the exhibited work.

156. _Willesden Church_, circa 1796.

I believe this is the drawing which was described as “Kilburn Church” in the J. E. Taylor sale. It is worked in blue and grey washes. It is connected, I think, with Turner’s activities as a teacher of drawing.

147. _Water Mill_, 1797-1798 (Plate III). 152. _A Mountain Stream_, 1798 (Plate IV). 159. _Mountainous Landscape_, 1798.

These drawings are separated from the views of Evesham by an interval of five or six years. Turner was now twenty-three years of age. His exhibits at the Royal Academy in 1796 and 1797 had proved him to be the most accomplished topographical and antiquarian draughtsman which this country had produced, but the limitations of such work were too narrow to satisfy either his ambitions or his powers of expression. He had made up his mind by this time to be an artist and not merely a draughtsman. He had felt the glamour of Richard Wilson’s paintings, and their rich and sombre harmonies of colour were haunting his imagination. There is a small pocket-book, bound in green leather, in the National Gallery, labelled by Turner on the back, “Studies for Pictures. Copies of Wilson,” which contains many colour sketches done from memory of pictures by Wilson which he had seen in public exhibitions or private collections. All the drawings and sketches from nature Turner made at this time show the influence of Wilson’s work. He was trying hard to see nature as Wilson had seen it, and he had evidently taken a strong dislike to the neat “bit-by-bit” style of painting of the “Evesham” and “Malmesbury Abbey” period. He had also begun painting in oil on rather a large scale; another influence which made for breadth of style.

In the _Water Mill_ (Plate III) the results of his early training in topographical and antiquarian work are evident in the treatment of all the quaint details of the old mill. The irregularity of its structure, the effects of age and weather on the shapes of the roofs, and the colouring of the tiles, bricks and woodwork are rendered with intense sympathy and the most delicate and accurate observation. This delight in the irregularity and picturesqueness of old buildings, and the effects of weather, use and decay reminds one of Prout’s drawings; yet there are no traces of Prout’s mannerisms and shortcomings in this beautiful work of the young master, and there is a breadth and ease in Turner’s drawing which we look for in vain in Prout’s numerous productions.

In the first volume of “Modern Painters” Mr. Ruskin wrote: “we owe to Prout, I believe, the first perception, and certainly the only existing expression of that feeling which results from the influence among the noble lines of architecture, of the rent and the rust, the fissure, the lichen, and the weed, and from the writing upon the pages of ancient walls of the confused hieroglyphics of human history.” The _Water Mill_ shows that Turner forestalled Prout by a good many years. If it were my business to point out to people the qualities of sight, brain-power and manual dexterity which distinguish the works of great artists from those of inferior ones, I should choose the best drawing of Prout I could secure and ask my students to compare it carefully with the _Water Mill_. Such comparison would show that Turner did everything that Prout did, and did it better; every picturesque detail is rendered with the same affectionate interest and fidelity; but while Prout seems to be working with a certain stiffness and rigidity, as though practising a formula, Turner’s rendering is delicate, supple, and without any self-consciousness or display.

In _A Mountain Stream_ (Plate IV) Turner has got completely away from his early “bit-by-bit” manner of working. The scene is grasped as a whole, and every detail and part is subordinated to the general effect. This is a fine example of the early development of Turner’s executive mastery. Every touch is inspired by the general conception.

Turner spent the summer of 1798, when this drawing was made, in North Wales, visiting Kilgerran, Harlech, Conway and Carnarvon castles, and the neighbourhood of Snowdon. In the “Hereford Court” Sketch Book (Turner Bequest, XXXVIII) there are several Wilsonesque water-colours similar to this.

The _Mountainous Landscape_ is probably a leaf of the “North Wales” Sketch Book, a smaller book in use at the same time as the “Hereford Court” Sketch Book. It is slighter and more summary than the _Mountain Stream_, being worked with a few simple washes put on at once with unerring skill and knowledge. This masterly little sketch was erroneously ascribed to Alexander Cozens in the catalogue; though why, I cannot imagine, as it does not bear the faintest resemblance to that artist’s style. But the mistake was productive of an incident which caused considerable amusement amongst students of Turner’s works. The art critic of one of the leading London papers happens to be a superior person who finds Turner too “vulgar” for his refined taste. This delightful critic dismissed the whole collection of Turner’s wonderful drawings in the exhibition as mere “works of commerce,” and singled out this _Mountainous Landscape_, because he was told it was by Alexander Cozens, as one of the finest things in the exhibition. Yet there are still people who ask “What’s in a name?” Probably if Turner’s “_Blue Rigi_” had been described in the catalogue as by Alexander Cozens this amusing critic, who seems to judge pictures rather by what he is told than by what he sees, might have found that it possessed some artistic merits.

158. _Crosses and Brasses, Whalley Abbey_, circa 1799.

This was done to be engraved in Whitaker’s “History of the Parish of Whalley,” and is therefore a mere “work of commerce.” I suppose some people must think an artist lowers himself somehow if he sells his work or accepts an order to make a drawing. Work done under these conditions, they seem to think, must be done carelessly, hastily, and half-heartedly, otherwise there would be no point in the sneer. This is a curious example of modern ways of thinking. Work has become low, plebeian; only the groundlings work; the really superior person has a private income (or his wife has) and devotes himself to doing things which will benefit humanity at large in the dim and distant future. Some of this muddle-headedness, so far as art is concerned, is probably due to the current cant about “utterance,” emotion and self-expression, though some of it may be due to a genuine though vague and unpractical desire for the general good. I will merely remark that Turner was emphatically not a superior person of this kind. He looked upon himself always as a workman. He retained even late in life, as Mr. Ruskin once happily remarked, “some little English sense and practical understanding.” He believed in work, and he was prouder of his enormous powers of work than of his genius, his success, or even his money. But he expected to be paid for his work, and he grumbled vigorously when any of his works failed to sell. On the other hand, he never scamped his job, or offered an employer work which was not done as well as he could do it.

How unsparing of his time and labour he was is proved by this drawing of the Whalley crosses and brasses. The subject gave him no chance of using those of his gifts which gave him most pleasure to use. It gave him no opportunities of what our modern sentimentalists call emotion or “utterance.” As the subject called only for sheer plodding labour, he gave that, and he gave it in full measure. The drawing once belonged to Mr. Ruskin.

145. _Norbury Park_, circa 1797.

This is a study of natural colouring and effect; a note of the autumn tints on a charming stretch of country. Wilson is quite forgotten for the moment. The young artist is content to put down on the paper, as neatly and swiftly as possible, a faithful record of what he sees. This drawing was probably made in September 1797, when Turner was at Norbury Park. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in the following year _A Study in September of the Fern House, Mr. Lock’s Park, Mickleham, Surrey_. It would be interesting to know what has become of this drawing. I can find no trace of it in Christie’s records or elsewhere.

16. _Cassiobury: The House seen across the Park_, circa 1800 (Plate V).

Another example of Turner’s “commercial work,” and like the Whalley brasses done as well as he could do it. This is one of the numerous drawings and paintings he made for the noblemen and gentlemen of England of their houses and grounds. It was done for George, 5th Earl of Essex, who was one of Turner’s earliest patrons. As Viscount Malden, before he succeeded to the earldom, he had employed Turner in 1795 to make views of the house and grounds at Hampton Court, Herefordshire. The drawing of _A Waterfall_, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (1682-’71) is a view of the cascade in those grounds.

The introduction of the huntsmen, horses and dogs in the foreground of the Cassiobury drawing gives it a sporting and jovial character which is thoroughly in harmony with the spirit of the place. Turner was quick in noting characteristic details of this kind and used them with propriety and effect. Yet the drawing has a fine spaciousness and stateliness which the artist’s noble patron would appreciate. I believe this water-colour must have been lower in tone and darker in colour when it was first done than it is now. The pencil drawing from nature of the mansion from which the water-colour was painted is in the “Fonthill” Sketch Book, p. 41. The curious will find it reproduced in my book on “Turner’s Sketches and Drawings.”

34. _Lake of Thun_, 1809 (Plate VI).

Fortunately this drawing is dated, otherwise one would be tempted to consider it as having been painted some years earlier. It was sketched during Turner’s first tour in Switzerland, in 1802, and may have been begun soon afterwards. It is Wilsonian in colour, but a certain massiveness and heaviness in the design suggest that he was thinking rather too much of the composition of Poussin and the old masters. It is in an excellent state of preservation.

18. _Castle of Chillon_, 1810 (Plate VII).

Another fruit of the 1802 tour in Switzerland, and, like the preceding drawing, painted for Sir J. E. Swinburne. It is more beautiful than the _Lake of Thun_. The colour is a lovely harmony of deep blues, russet browns and dull crimsons. There is no formalism or heaviness in the design. I hope the fortunate owner of this exquisite drawing will keep it carefully from undue exposure to a strong light, as the blues in it are very sensitive to such influences. When once they have faded they can never be coaxed back. So many of Turner’s drawings of this kind have been ruined by exposure to the light that one cannot but be anxious that this, one of the most beautiful of them all, should be preserved for the delight of the coming generations.

Turner seems to have repeated this subject, as I remember another version of it in Mrs. Stern’s possession which was sold at Christie’s in 1908. Doubtless there are some slight differences in the two drawings, but the design and general effect were similar. Mrs. Stern’s drawing had the same restraint and elegance as this one.

21. _Patterdale Old Church_, circa 1810 (Plate VIII).

Another well-preserved drawing. The indigo and other blues are unfaded. When this drawing was exhibited at the Royal Academy (Old Masters) in 1886, it was described in the catalogue as the original of an engraving of this subject which was published in Mawman’s “Excursion in the Highlands,” 1805. This must be incorrect. The “P.P.” (Professor of Perspective) at the end of Turner’s signature proves it to be a later drawing, as Turner was not elected Professor of Perspective till 1807.

36. _Vale of Pevensey, from Rosehill Park_, circa 1816.

One of a series of views of Rosehill, Sussex, (now known as Brightling Park) and of places in the neighbourhood, made for Mr. John Fuller, M.P., about 1816. These drawings were inherited by Sir Alexander Acland-Hood, who sold them at Christie’s in 1908. The present drawing has suffered from exposure to a strong light. The indigo having disappeared the general effect is lighter and the colour warmer than when it was first painted. Yet in spite of this, how fine the drawing is! Its complexion, one might say, has changed, but all its native nobility of character remains. How splendidly the subject is conceived, what a glorious composition it makes, yet how truthful and sympathetic the drawing is as a representation of the rolling downs of Sussex, its lusty and happy trees, its exhilarating vistas of the distant sea and rugged coast-line. The elaborate and beautifully drawn pencil study from which this picture was painted is in the National Gallery, in the “Views in Sussex” Sketch Book (Turner Bequest, CXXXVIII, p. 19). The drawing was engraved in aquatint by J. C. Stadler (the same size as the original) for Mr. Fuller, printed in colours, and finished by hand. These prints, Mr. Rawlinson tells us, are excessively rare.

17. _Mayence and Kastel_, 1817.

19. _Lurleiberg: the Bend of the River_, 1817.

35. _Rolandswerth Nunnery and Drachenfels_, 1817 (Plate IX).

37. _Mayence_, 1817.

These are four out of the fifty-one Rhine drawings which Turner made for Mr. Walter Fawkes in the summer and autumn of 1817. Thornbury dates these drawings 1819, which is a mistake, and says that they were done “at the prodigious rate of three a day.” But no man, not even Turner, marvellously rapid worker as he was, could have produced these fifty-one drawings at such a rate. What really happened was this: the sketches for these drawings were actually made in twelve days, between August 18 and 30, 1817; the fifty-one water-colours were then painted from these pencil sketches between the end of August and November 13 (the day Turner handed the complete series “in a slovenly roll” to Mr. Fawkes at Farnley Hall). We do not know exactly where the work was done, but it was probably partly at inns, for Turner could work anywhere and under any conditions, and partly when staying with Lord Darlington at Raby Castle, or with Lord Strathmore at Hylton Castle or Gibside. The documentary evidence which has enabled me to correct Thornbury’s statements is given in detail in my account of “Turner’s Water-Colours at Farnley Hall” (THE STUDIO office).

The drawings of this series are not hurried sketches from nature, they are carefully pondered and perfectly elaborated works of art. The painting of the dark cloud crossing the sun in the _Mayence and Kastel_ is a striking instance of Turner’s technical mastery. It must have been floated on while the paper was wet and allowed--or rather made--to run into just the right shapes. Its evanescent effect, its melting, imperceptible gradations, could have been got in no other way.

The broad calm river, the spacious design, and the beautifully drawn rocks in the _Rolandswerth Nunnery and Drachenfels_ (Plate IX) make it a delightful drawing. This view must have been taken from near Oberwinter, looking north, in the direction of Bonn.

Nearly all the drawings in this series were painted over a grey preparation, put on over the white paper before the work was begun. By wiping out or scraping away this preparation the white paper was laid bare and Turner was thus enabled to get his high lights and his general effect of light and dark very rapidly. But the presence of the grey preparation forces the drawings into a low key and makes grey the predominant note in the colour scheme. The colour harmonies are, therefore, generally silver rather than golden. The drawing of _Mayence_ is, however, an exception to the rule, as it is painted direct upon the white paper without any grey preparation. It therefore stands out from its companions as being more limpid in workmanship and more luminous in effect than they are.

129. _Florence from Fiesole_, circa 1817.

134. _Turin, from the Church of the Superga_, do.

137. _Lake of Nemi_, do.

These three drawings were made as illustrations to James Hakewill’s “Picturesque Tour of Italy,” and they were worked from Hakewill’s sketches, as Turner at that time had never visited Italy. They formed part of Mr. Ruskin’s collection and were exhibited at the Fine Art Society’s galleries in 1878. It is stated in the text of Hakewill’s book that the view of _Florence from Fiesole_ was “taken from the garden of the Franciscan convent at Fiesole,” but Mr. Ruskin has pointed out that the little bend of wall within which some monks are standing in the foreground on the left is not really a part of the Franciscan garden, but is one of the turns of the road in the ascent to Fiesole.

Mr. Ruskin regarded the _Turin, from the Superga_ as one of his “very chiefly valued possessions.” And well he might. It is indeed a most exquisite and delightful piece of work. Each time I see it, it gives me a fresh thrill of pleasure; its colour is so cheerful and happy, the subject-matter is so well chosen--the contrast between the distant snow-clad mountains and the comfortable sheltered existence of the people of the city--and the design is so daring, so original, and carried out with such consummate skill and resource.

Mr. Ruskin tells us that the inlaid diamond-shaped mosaics in the pavement, which complete the perspective of the distance, are Turner’s own invention. “The portico is in reality paved with square slabs of marble only.” Perhaps Turner mistook some indications in Hakewill’s sketch for these insertions, or perhaps he felt that the bare space in the foreground wanted variety and calmly invented this artifice for the purpose. I notice that though these diamond-shaped mosaics look quite plausible and satisfactory in the drawing, Turner has altered them in the engraving, reducing the width of the black band and introducing another lozenge within the white centre.

The _Lake of Nemi_ is, as Mr. Ruskin said, “consummate in all ways.” He goes on to point out how the light trees on the right have been left while the distant lake and crags were being finished; and that the towers and buildings of the Capuchin’s Convent high up on the right were painted before the sea horizon, “which is laid in afterwards with a wash that stops before touching the houses.” The town beyond the convent is Gensano, and the distant mountain on the Mediterranean is Monte Circello.

153. _Valley of the Washburne, near Farnley_, circa 1818 (Plate XIV).

136. _Steeton Manor, near Farnley_, do. (Plate XVIII).

32. _Scarborough_, 1818.[B]

Between 1812 and 1818, Turner made a series of nearly fifty drawings of views of Farnley Hall, inside and outside, and of places of interest in the grounds and in the neighbourhood. The _Valley of the Washburne_ (Plate XIV) shows us the first stages through which most of these drawings passed. The whole subject is drawn very carefully in chalk on brown paper. A few touches of body-colour in the foreground and a slight wash over part of the sky begin the later stages, but then the drawing was for some reason carried no further. Yet one cannot regret this, for there is such a freshness, such overflowing vigour and happiness in what has been done that the most exigeant criticism can demand no more. This is a good example of what I have noticed repeatedly, that Turner’s drawings were always delightful at each stage of their development; and from the commencement they had a certain completeness and finality. They never suggest “work.” They always look as though the artist were just enjoying himself by putting down on the paper, without any effort whatever, the thoughts which had taken possession of his mind.

I do not know why this drawing was not “carried on,” as Turner would have expressed it. There is a superb and completely finished water-colour of a very similar view of the banks of the Washburne in the Farnley Hall collection, so perhaps Mr. Fawkes did not want another drawing of quite the same subject.

When I was at Farnley a few years before the war, I went to the Washburne intending to make a sketch of this picturesque view. But I found the banks covered with such a dense overgrowth of trees that the little river was entirely shut out from sight. The rocky crest of the Chevin was, however, still unaltered, and there was Caley Park on the slopes very much as when Turner had drawn it; and there was Leathley Church with its square tower, the Farnley place of worship, where the late owner of Farnley, the Rev. Ayscough Fawkes, was for many years incumbent.

_Steeton Manor House_ (Plate XVIII) is near Skipton. This drawing is on a smaller scale than most of the series.

The Fawkeses, in Turner’s time, were fond of Scarborough, and Turner was sometimes there in their company. Mr. Fawkes bought Turner’s large drawing of Scarborough which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1811 (there is a repetition of this drawing in the Wallace Collection). But by 1818, when Mr. Morland Agnew’s lovely drawing was made, Turner’s style had changed. The earlier “Scarborough” is reserved and stately in design, but its breadth verges on emptiness. It is as though the artist was a little afraid of nature and was determined to keep her at arm’s length, for fear of offending the shades of Poussin, Claude and the other great old masters. But by 1818 he had got over his shyness. He had by then taken nature to his bosom. He delights in the sheer loveliness and infinite variety of English scenery. His manner of painting has become more sensitive and refined, to enable him to render the subtle qualities of form and atmosphere. Our modern theorists tell us that if an artist is in love with what he sees and bent on reproducing it, he ceases to “express himself” and becomes a mere mechanic. But this is because they fail to understand that healthy and imaginative artists do not sit at home in the dark anxiously feeling their pulse and worrying about their emotions and their moods. When Turner painted this lovely drawing of Scarborough he was as passionately absorbed in the variety and ever-changing beauty of physical nature as a poet like Wordsworth. The eye was the organ of his mind and spirit. He not only looked at nature, but he understood her, and loved her with intense and self-forgetting devotion. A drawing like this proves--what nobody should ever doubt--that an artist may be a realist and also a poet.

The late Mr. Francis Bullard has drawn attention (in a privately printed catalogue of some of Turner’s engravings which he generously presented to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts) to some valuable remarks by Mr. Santayana on the subject of naturalism in poetry which apply with so much force to Turner’s realism that I will venture to quote them. After pointing out that our interest in nature need not necessarily be shallow and egotistical, Mr. Santayana writes: “Our emotion may be ingenuous; it may be concerned with what nature really is and does, has been and will do for ever. It need not arise from a selfish preoccupation with what these immense realities involve for our own persons, or may be used to suggest to our self-indulgent fancy. No, the poetry of nature may be discerned merely by the power of intuition which it awakens and the understanding which it employs. These faculties, more, I should say, than our moodiness or stuffy dreams, draw taut the strings of the soul, and bring out her full vitality and music. Naturalism is a philosophy of observation, and of an imagination that extends the observable; all the sights and sounds of nature enter into it, and lend it their directness, pungency, and coercive stress. At the same time, naturalism is an intellectual philosophy; it divines substance behind appearance, continuity behind change, law behind fortune. It therefore attaches all those sights and sounds to a hidden background that connects and explains them. So understood, nature has depth as well as surface, force and necessity as well as sensuous variety. Before the sublimity of this insight, all forms of the pathetic fallacy seem cheap and artificial. Mythology, that to a childish mind is the only possible poetry, sounds like bad rhetoric in comparison. The naturalistic poet abandons fairyland, because he has discovered nature, history, the actual passions of man. His imagination has reached maturity.”

By the time the _Valley of the Washburne_ and _Scarborough_ drawings were made Turner’s imagination had reached its maturity. In much of his work done after this period one misses something of the earlier freshness, spontaneity, and what, for want of a better word, I must call “integrity.”

These shortcomings are most noticeable in his large oil paintings. The Wordsworthian calm and absolute sincerity of the earlier paintings, like _The Frosty Morning_, Lord Essex’s _Walton Bridges_, the _Windsor_ and the _Abingdon_, give place to the Byronic _Bay of Baiæ_ (1823), the two _Mortlakes_ (1826-27), _Dido Directing the Equipment of the Fleet_ (1828) and the _Ulysses and Polyphemus_ (1829). Instead of the profoundly imaginative realism of the earlier works, we get the unrest of romanticism, with its vague and empty pomp, its cloying self-indulgence, its warm, voluptuous atmosphere. Yet even in the rush of romantic intoxication Turner could often touch the deepest chords of our imagination, especially in his water-colours, with works of the most intense sincerity and sublime insight. We have two examples of such works in the present exhibition, _The Longships Lighthouse_ and the _Lowestoft_.

But before coming to these drawings, which form part of the “England and Wales” series, I must refer to the following subjects:--

29. _Florence, from near San Miniato_, circa 1825 (Plate XVI).

23. _Saumur_, circa 1829 (Plate X).

132. _Wilderness of Sinai_, circa 1832-34 (Plate XIX).

This view of Florence is the earliest example in the exhibition of an Italian scene painted from Turner’s own impressions. Yet in spite of this it seems to me to miss something of the charm of the drawings made from Hakewill’s sketches. It is richer in colour and more gorgeous in effect than they; yet it suggests, at least to my mind, more of the opera than of reality. It might have been painted as an illustration to Byron’s “Childe Harold.” It has been stated that this drawing was engraved in “The Keepsake” for 1828, and Mr. Rawlinson says (in his valuable book on “The Engraved Work of Turner”) “there are two apparently identical drawings of this subject, one in the possession of Lord Northbourne, the other in the possession of Mr. J. Beecham.” But the foreground and figures in this drawing (which was once in Sir Joseph Beecham’s collection) are different from those in the engraving. I think therefore that Lord Northbourne’s version, which I do not remember to have seen, must be the original from which “The Keepsake” engraving was made.

_Saumur_ (Plate X), on the other hand, was engraved for “The Keepsake” for 1831, and it was republished in Heath’s “Gallery of British Engravings.” It has a magnificent sky, full of the moving pageantry of the heavens, and it is superbly designed. Another and different view of this subject was engraved in the “Rivers of France.” One would hardly recognize the chateau of the Queen of Sicily, on the rock by the bridge, as the same building in the two engravings.

The _Wilderness of Sinai_ (Plate XIX), like the Hakewill drawings, was done from the sketch of an amateur, a Major Felix. Turner always lavished more than his usual care and labour on such work. For sheer delicacy and cunning of hand it would be hard to find its equal. The engraving was published in Finden’s “Landscape Illustrations of the Bible” (1836). The rock in the foreground is said by the Arabs to be the one which Moses struck when the Israelites were athirst. The alert figures in the foreground and the two mounted men beyond show how well Turner could draw such things when he wanted to.

We have now to turn our attention to the “England and Wales” series, the most ambitious of Turner’s publications, which occupied much of his time between 1825 and 1838. The scheme as originally planned was to include one-hundred-and-twenty drawings, but the venture was financially unsuccessful and it was abandoned after about a hundred drawings had been made and engraved. Posterity has not endorsed the contemporary indifference to this series. The plates are probably the best known and most widely appreciated of all Turner’s engravings, and the original drawings are certainly the most popular and most eagerly sought after by collectors of his water-colours. They are eminently characteristic of the artist; full to overflowing of evidence of his extraordinary knowledge, powers of observation and incomparable technical skill, and they display freely all his faults of mind and character. Parts of his work are like Shakespeare’s, incorrect, capricious and wanton. Like Shakespeare his imagination was crowded with a tumultuary confusion of images. He had all Shakespeare’s reckless and unquestioning confidence in himself and in his own powers, so that his work often seems vehement and negligent. But if he had Shakespeare’s faults he had also much of Shakespeare’s greatness. We have only to change the word poet to painter to apply Dryden’s encomium of Shakespeare to him. “All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too.... I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind.... But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him. No man can say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.”

The “England and Wales” series was represented in Messrs. Agnew’s exhibition by eight beautiful drawings:--

30. _Saltash_, 1825 (Plate XXI).

22. _Prudhoe Castle_, circa 1826 (Plate XXII).

24. _Windsor Castle_, circa 1829.

20. _Richmond Bridge--Play_, circa 1830 (Plate XI).

33. _Coventry_, circa 1832.

25. _Worcester_, circa 1833 (Plate XII).

27. _The Longships Lighthouse, Land’s End_, circa 1834 (Plate XIII).

31. _Lowestoft_, circa 1835.

The most glorious in colour of these drawings is, I think, the _Windsor Castle_, but the _Richmond Bridge_ (Plate XI) runs it very close. The latter subject is interesting because it was the first water-colour by Turner which Mr. Ruskin acquired; “my father buying it for me,” he tells us, “thinking I should not ask for another--we both then agreeing that it had nearly everything _characteristic_ of Turner in it, and more especially the gay figures!” Mr. Ruskin was naturally very much attached to this drawing and he was never tired of trying to analyse it; but “after thirty years’ endeavour, I finally surrender that hope--with all similar hopes of ever analysing true inventive or creative work.” He drew attention, however, as an instructive piece of composition, to the way the parasols in the foreground repeat and reverse the arches of the bridge, and the feather head-dresses of the ladies repeat the plumy tossing of the foliage. These are merely Turner’s habitual tricks of composition. We find these habits of design in most of his earlier and later work, but the results are not always equally fortunate. One of the most exquisite and perfect examples of this practice of placing and grouping the figures and objects so as to repeat or emphasize the most salient features of a landscape, is afforded in my opinion by the large oil painting of _Walton Bridges_, which was painted in 1809 for the Earl of Essex. In some of the later drawings and paintings the results are not always so happy.

The execution of the _Richmond Bridge_ is unequal. The group of figures in the foreground on the right is imperfectly imagined and fumbling in touch, but the smaller figures on the left are vivid and alert; the big group of trees on the right, with the sunlight striking athwart them, is dashed in with extraordinary vigour and certainty. The drawing is in splendid condition, and the general effect is breezy, reckless, gorgeous--and, I cannot help thinking, a trifle vulgar, probably on account of the gay foreground figures. It certainly has everything “characteristic” of Turner, the beauties and the defects.

In the _Coventry_ and _Worcester_ (Plate XII) there is some flagging of Turner’s power--hints of weariness and a sense of effort. There is some “swelling into bombast” in them. But the _Longships Lighthouse_ (Plate XIII) is one of the most wonderful and flawless drawings ever made by Turner, or any other artist. Turner must have been nearly sixty years of age when he made it, but there are no signs of human weakness in it. It is all pure gold and immortal work. For once Turner had found a subject exactly suited to his genius, “a fit subject for his wit.”

It is of course impossible to do justice in words to the grandeur and terrible beauty of this wonderful drawing, but Mr. Ruskin has so nearly succeeded in this impossible task that I will venture to quote his words. “In the _Longships Lighthouse, Land’s End_, we have clouds without rain--at twilight--enveloping the cliffs of the coast, but concealing nothing, every outline being visible through their gloom; and not only the outline--for it is easy to do this--but the _surface_. The bank of rocky coast approaches the spectator inch by inch, felt clearer and clearer as it withdraws from the garment of cloud--not by edges more and more refined, but by a surface more and more unveiled. We have thus the painting, not of a mere transparent veil, but of a solid body of cloud, every inch of whose increasing distance is marked and felt. But the great wonder of the picture is the intensity of gloom which is attained in warm grey, without either blackness or blueness. It is a gloom, dependent rather on the enormous space and depth indicated, than on actual pitch of colour, distant by real drawing, without a grain of blue, dark by real substance, without a stroke of blackness; and with all this, it is not formless, but full of indications of character, wild, irregular, shattered, and indefinite--full of the energy of storm, fiery in haste, and yet flinging back out of its motion the fitful swirls of bounding drift, of tortured vapour tossed up like men’s hands, as in defiance of the tempest, the jets of resulting whirlwind, hurled back from the rocks into the face of the coming darkness; which, beyond all other characters, mark the raised passion of the elements. It is this untraceable, unconnected, yet perpetual form--this fulness of character absorbed in the universal energy--which distinguishes Nature and Turner from all their imitators. To roll a volume of smoke before the wind, to indicate motion or violence by monotonous similarity of line and direction, is for the multitude; but to mark the independent passion, the tumultuous separate existence of every wreath of writhing vapour, yet swept away and overpowered by one omnipotence of storm, and thus to bid us

Be as a Presence or a motion--one
Among the many there--while the mists
Flying, and rainy vapours, call out shapes
And phantoms from the crags and solid earth,
As fast as a musician scatters sounds
Out of an instrument,--

this belongs only to Nature and to him.”

And in a later chapter of the same volume (“Modern Painters,” Vol. I.) Mr. Ruskin again refers to this drawing as “a study of sea whose whole organization has been broken up by constant recoils from a rocky coast.” “The entire disorder of the surges,” he continues, “when every one of them, divided and entangled among promontories as it rolls in, and beaten back part by part from walls of rock on this side and that side, recoils like the defeated division of a great army, throwing all behind it into disorder, breaking up the succeeding waves into vertical ridges, which in their turn, yet more totally shattered upon the shore, retire in more hopeless confusion, until the whole surface of the sea becomes one dizzy whirl of rushing, writhing, tortured, undirected rage, bounding, and crashing, and coiling in an anarchy of enormous power, subdivided into myriads of waves, of which every one is not, be it remembered, a separate surge, but part and portion of a vast one, actuated by internal power, and giving in every direction the mighty undulation of impetuous line which glides over the rocks and writhes in the wind, overwhelming the one, and piercing the other with the form, fury, and swiftness of a sheet of lambent fire. And throughout the rendering of all this, there is not a false curve given, not one which is not the perfect expression of visible motion; and the forms of the infinite sea are drawn throughout with that utmost mastery of art which, through the deepest study of every line, makes every line appear the wildest child of chance, while yet each is in itself a subject and a picture different from all else around. Of the colour of this magnificent sea I have before spoken; it is a solemn green grey (with its foam seen dimly through the darkness of twilight), modulated with the fulness, changefulness, and sadness of a deep, wild melody.”

The only drawing in the whole series which can be compared for tragic power with the _Longships Lighthouse_ is the _Lowestoft_. The time represented is an hour before sunrise in winter. A violent storm with rain is passing over the sea; through it the lighthouses and coast are dimly seen. Mr. Ruskin speaks of the “most hopeless, desolate, uncontrasted greys” in this drawing.

26. _Lake Nemi_, circa 1840 (Plate XV).

This representation of the afternoon of a hot and cloudless day was hung immediately above the _Longships_. It is a truly superb drawing, as fine in its way as the _Longships_, yet how different! It is so full of purely sensuous delight that one would suppose it the work of some voluptuary who had turned his back on all the sorrows and terrors of life; one who lived only for the gratification of his senses. That some people should shrink from the sternness and cruelty of _Longships_ I can understand; but I simply cannot imagine how any one accessible to the pleasures of pictorial art can resist the triumphal appeal of this regal and happy drawing. It would be difficult to bring together two other drawings which illustrate so well the truly Shakespearean range of Turner’s mind.

28. _The Rigi at Sunrise--Lake of Lucerne_ (“_The Blue Rigi_”) (Plate XVII).

With a fine sense of congruity Messrs. Agnew hung beside the _Lake of Nemi_ a masterpiece of Turner’s latest manner--“_The Blue Rigi_.” This was painted in 1841, in circumstances described in his own inimitable way by Mr. Ruskin, in the “Epilogue” to his notes on his own collection of Turner’s drawings. There are signs in the drawing that the painter’s age was beginning to tell on him. He was getting near the end of his career as a water-colour painter, though his career as an oil painter lasted a few years longer: for the _Burial at Sea_; _The Opening of the Walhalla_; _Rain, Steam and Speed_; _The Sun of Venice Going to Sea_, and the other late Venetian paintings were yet to come; which supports the contention that water-colour makes sterner demands on the artist’s physique than oil painting. In “_The Blue Rigi_” the laboured execution and trembling touch hint at the artist’s physical disabilities. But these signs of weakness harmonize so well with the subject-matter that they only heighten the pathos of this incomparably beautiful drawing.

I think that Turner made hardly more than a dozen finished drawings after “_The Blue Rigi_.” This was partly because the sustained effort such work demanded was too much for him, and partly because there was no demand among his patrons for such work. But he could still make sketches like the _Mouth of the Grand Canal_ (Plate XXIII), _Lake of Lucerne_: _Brunnen in the Distance_ (Plate XX) and the _Alpine Stream_, marvellous in their freshness of colour, the vigour and delicacy of their washes, and full of poetical suggestion and pictorial enchantment. The old war-horse no doubt regretted that his patrons would give him no opportunities to elaborate these wonderful sketches--for the distinction which modern criticism has obliterated between a sketch and a “finished” drawing was ingrained in Turner’s mind--but we cannot share these regrets. The gain in fullness and authority of statement would have provided little compensation for the loss of delicacy and freshness, and effortless vigour of execution.