Chapter III: Part 3

The colour and tone of Turner’s work must therefore be taken as strictly ideal, that is, as a medium of subjective expression, as a mode of spiritual manifestation, and not as an attempt to represent the merely abstract qualities of sense-perception. And what is true of Turner’s colour and tone is also true of his form. I doubt if he ever made a tolerably careful and elaborate drawing of a natural scene from the beginning to the end of his long career--nearly all his elaborate drawings being of architectural subjects. But instead of the prosaic and plodding drawings that other artists make (see, for example, the elaborate pencil studies of trees by Constable in the Victoria and Albert Museum), we find hundreds and hundreds of nervous, eager pencil sketches. When we come to study these ravishing sketches with care we make the astonishing discovery that the bugbear of the drawing school, the prosaic accumulation of particular physical facts known in art academies as “nature,” is simply a hideous abstraction of the theoretical mind. Nature, in this sense of the word, never existed for Turner. The world he saw around him was replete with intelligence, was permeated with spirit; where other artists see only the bare, unrelated physical fact and sensuous surface, his mind is already busy with the inner and invisible significance, and his cunning hand is instantly shaping forth a pictorial embodiment of his own insight and passionate convictions.

On the whole, then, this was Turner’s consistent attitude towards nature, though of course, in his earlier years, his sketches were comparatively less swift and eloquent than they afterwards became. And there was indeed a short period during which the merely physical fact was forced into undue prominence. This period culminated in the first visit to Italy in 1819-1820. Here the novelty of the scenery and buildings stimulated the thirst for detailed observation which had been gradually growing on Turner during the previous six or seven years. But in England the very quickness and strength of his intuitions had always prevented the desire for precise observation from gaining the upper hand. In Italy his powers of intuition were useless. He was disoriented. Everything disconcerted and thwarted him. His rapid glance no longer penetrated to the inner essence of the scenes around him. He did not understand the people and their ways, and their relation to their surroundings. For a time he seemed to become less certain than usual of his artistic mission. But he set to work with his usual pluck and energy to assimilate his strange surroundings by tireless observation of the outside. The result was a vast accumulation of disorganized or of only partially organized impressions.

It is conceded on all hands that Turner’s artistic work went all to pieces as a result of his Italian experiences. The _Bay of Baiæ_ contains faults altogether new in his completed works. Even the feeblest of his earlier works had been animated by some central idea or emotion, to which all the parts were subordinated, and which infused into them whatever of life or significance they possessed. In the _Bay of Baiæ_ the artist has an unusual quantity of material on his hands, but he can neither find nor invent a pictorial idea to give coherence to his disconnected observations. The picture is made up of bits of visual experiences elaborately dovetailed into one another, but which absolutely refuse to combine into any kind of conceptual unity.

Yet if we confine our attention to the merely formal and abstract side of art, there is assuredly much to move us even to enthusiastic admiration among the immense quantity of sketches accumulated during this Italian visit. The very fact that Turner’s inspiration was checked prevented his sketches from possessing their wonted rudimentary or forward-pointing character. Instead of being hasty drafts of the pictures that thronged instantly into his mind upon contact with the scenes of his native land, they became more like the drawings which less completely equipped creative artists are in the habit of making; they became “studies” in the modern use of the term. The conditions of their production gave full play to Turner’s marvellous powers of draughtsmanship and formal design. Before drawings like _Rome from Monte Mario_ who can help waxing enthusiastic over the exquisitely deft and graceful play of hand, the subtle observation and the almost superhuman mastery of the design? No wonder Mr. Ruskin has declared that “no drawings in the world are to be named with these ... as lessons in landscape drawing” (“Ruskin on Pictures,” p. 157). But before assenting wholly to this dictum we must remember that, in spite of all their attractiveness, Turner found these drawings worse than useless for his general artistic purposes, and that only bad and foolish pictures came from them; and the more carefully we study the matter the more clearly do we see that nothing but bad and foolish pictures could come from work in which the spirit of curiosity and of cold and accurate observation is predominant.

We have fixed our attention thus far upon the sketches and drawings made from nature in the National Gallery collection, to the exclusion of the finished water-colours. This may seem all the more inexcusable, as I have preferred to treat these sketches rather with regard to their bearing upon the artist’s finished work--as stages in the development of the complete work of art--than as independent productions which can be accepted entirely for their own sake. But in a short paper like the present it is impossible to do justice to all the sides of such an important collection as the Drawings of the Turner Bequest. Numerically, the finished drawings form only a small fraction of the whole collection--about two hundred out of a total of over 20,000 drawings. Among them are about two-thirds of the “Rivers of France” drawings, and most of the “Ports” and “Rivers of England,” and Rogers’s “Vignettes.” These drawings were engraved during Turner’s lifetime and under his active superintendence; they are, therefore, amongst the best known of his works. The whole of the finished drawings have, moreover, been constantly on exhibition for more than fifty years. There remains, therefore, little either of praise or blame to be said of them that has not already been said many times. While, on the other hand, the studies and sketches are only now on the point of being made accessible to the public.

The practically complete series of Turner’s sketches and studies from nature seems to call for comprehensive treatment. Their careful study throws a wholly new and unexpected light upon the fundamental and essential qualities of Turner’s attitude towards nature, and therefore upon the essential character and limitations of his art. Or where the light is not altogether unexpected--as it would not be perhaps in the case of a diligent and methodical student of Turner’s completed works--the sketches amplify and illustrate in an abundant and forcible way what before could only have been surmised. I propose, therefore, to devote the remainder of my limited space to an attempt to indicate as briefly as possible the main features of Turner’s conception of nature, as it is revealed in his sketches, and to point out its importance both for the proper understanding of his finished work and for its bearing upon some adverse criticisms that have been brought against his work.

In my opening remarks I ventured to contrast Turner’s attitude towards nature with the attitude of the majority of contemporary artists. My intention in thus opposing these two different methods of work was not to suggest that one of them was either right or wrong in itself, or that one way was necessarily better or worse than the other. My intention was exactly the opposite. There is not one type of art production to which all artists must conform, and two totally different methods of procedure may each be positively right and equally valid. I will even go farther than this and confess that I regard the present-day method of working from nature as the only right and proper way of attaining the results that are aimed at. But it is the result, the purpose of the artist, that justifies the means, and this applies with just as much force to Turner’s way of working as to the modern way. To condemn Turner’s procedure, therefore, simply because it differs from that now in vogue, would be as unwise and unfair as to condemn the modern way because it differed from his. Different conceptions of the aim and scope of art involve different attitudes towards nature, and necessitate different methods of study.

Let us begin with the current conception--the conception of the landscape artist of to-day and of the public for which he works. The aim of this art is what is called “naturalness,” that is, the picture should be made to look as much like nature as possible. The standard of excellence here is just the ordinary common appearance of physical reality. A picture that looks like nature is good, and one that looks “unnatural” is therefore bad. This kind of art is capable of giving a great deal of innocent pleasure to people who like to be reminded of scenes they love or are interested in. But it has its limits. It cannot go beyond the bare physical world. And it is bound to treat even this limited area of experience from a strictly limited point of view. It is bound to take the physical world as something which exists in entire independence of the spectator, as something which is indeed given in sense-perception, but which the spectator emphatically finds and does not make. Now so far as we take nature in this sense we have to do with an external power which is utterly indifferent to our merely human aims and purposes, and the artist can only look upon himself as a passive recipient, a _tabula rasa_, on which external nature is reflected. This is the standpoint of the prosaic intelligence, the level upon which much of the ordinary reflection and discussion of the day moves.

But man is not really a passive mirror in which a foreign nature is reflected, nor is he satisfied merely to submit himself to natural influences and vicissitudes. Man is never really satisfied to take the world as he finds it, but sets to work to transform it into what he feels it ought to be. The social and political world, with its realms of morality, art and religion, came into existence as a protest against the merely natural. In this world, created and sustained by human intelligence and will, the physical world is not abolished or destroyed, but it is transformed into a more or less willing accomplice of a strange and higher power. It is in this new form which nature assumes under the sway of intelligence and will that we find it in Turner’s works.[B] In his presence the external world loses its stubborn indifference to human aims and becomes saturated with purely human aspiration and emotion. Its colours and shapes cease to belong to the merely physical world. They become instead the garment in which the inward spiritual nature of the artist robes itself. Nature in this new aspect is no longer a merely hostile and mechanical system of laws; a soul has been breathed into it which we recognize as identical with our own.

Now it is evident that these two kinds of art, the passive and the active, with their totally dissimilar aims, cannot and ought not to represent nature in the same way. The art which uses nature as a medium for the expression of ideas and feelings cannot attain its object by representing physical objects in the simple and direct way appropriate to the art which aims merely at naturalness. The artist’s intention must make itself manifest even in the manner in which he represents physical objects,--indeed, he has no other way of expressing his ideas. The active or creative artist will therefore make it clear that he has broken entirely with the disconnected, accidental and prosaic look of everyday existence which it is the one aim of the passive artist to retain.

From this point of view the charges that are often brought against Turner, that his colour is forced and unnatural, will leave us cold and indifferent. To make such an objection is merely a proof of mental confusion. The creative artist _must_ break with the prosaic vision of nature, if only to make it evident that his objects are not there for their own sake and for their immediate effect, but to call forth a response and echo in the mind of the observer. Turner’s colour--“dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere”--is one of his most potent instruments of expression, and must be judged as we judge, let us say, the verbal magic of Shelley’s verse, as a work of free beauty, fashioned in response to the deepest and truest cravings of man’s nature.

That Turner’s art moves mainly among the highest interests of man’s spiritual nature accounts to some extent for the pre-eminent position he now occupies among modern artists. It is always as an artist conscious of man’s high destiny that he claims to be judged, and though he often stumbled and his hand faltered, he never once sank to the level of the passive and prosaic imitator of nature’s finitude. This is not the place to inquire minutely into Turner’s failings and shortcomings, nor to study their connection with the innumerable masterpieces in which he dared and sometimes attained the very highest of which art is capable. An adequate discussion of the subtle inter-connection of Turner’s triumphs and failings would involve the raising of questions of which English criticism seems to prefer to remain in happy ignorance. I cannot therefore attempt to justify my conviction that he is not only the greatest artist our nation has yet produced, but also one of the greatest of modern artists, a man we must rank with Rembrandt and Jean François Millet. But this at least will be generally conceded, that he fully deserves that consideration and sympathy, which the ready instinct of mankind reserves for those who devote themselves without stint and without measure to the highest and most difficult tasks.

A. J. FINBERG.

THE ARCHBISHOP’S PALACE, LAMBETH

FIRST EXHIBITED DRAWING. R.A. 1790. SIZE 15″ × 10½″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. G. RAWLINSON, ESQ.]

THE MOUTH OF THE AVON.

CIRCA 1792. SIZE 11¼″ × 8¾″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. G. RAWLINSON, ESQ.]

PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTH

CIRCA 1794. SIZE 7″ × 4¼″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. G. RAWLINSON, ESQ.]

THE PENT, DOVER

CIRCA 1794. SIZE 10¼″ × 8″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. G. RAWLINSON, ESQ.]

DISTANT VIEW OF LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL

CIRCA 1798. SIZE 30½″ × 19¾″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. G. RAWLINSON, ESQ.]

EDINBURGH: FROM ST. MARGARET’S LOCH

CIRCA 1801. SIZE 7¾″ × 5″

IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON]

STONEHENGE: SUNSET

CIRCA 1804. SIZE 8¾″ × 6¾″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. G. RAWLINSON, ESQ.]

SCARBOROUGH

CIRCA 1812. SIZE 16″ × 11″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF C. MORLAND AGNEW, ESQ.]

LULWORTH COVE

CIRCA 1813. SIZE 8½″ × 5¾″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. G. RAWLINSON, ESQ.]

GOARHAUSEN AND KATZ CASTLE

CIRCA 1817. SIZE 12″ × 7¾″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. G. RAWLINSON, ESQ.]

THE LAKE OF NEMI

CIRCA 1818. Size 8½″ × 5½″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF C. MORLAND AGNEW, ESQ.]

TURIN: FROM THE CHURCH OF THE SUPERGA

CIRCA 1818. SIZE 8½″ × 5½″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF C. MORLAND AGNEW, ESQ.]

THE CROOK OF THE LUNE

CIRCA 1818. SIZE 16¾″ × 11¼″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF REV. WILLIAM MACGREGOR]

NORHAM CASTLE

CIRCA 1822. SIZE 8½″ × 6½″

IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. No. 175]

LAUNCESTON

CIRCA 1827. SIZE 15½″ × 11″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF J. F. SCHWANN, ESQ.]

BARNARD CASTLE

CIRCA 1827. Size 8⅞″ × 6½″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. G. RAWLINSON, ESQ.]

ON THE LAKE AT PETWORTH--EVENING

CIRCA 1830. SIZE 7½″ × 5¼″

IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. No. 425d]

COWES

CIRCA 1830. SIZE 16½″ × 11¼″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. YATES, ESQ.]

VENICE: THE SALUTE FROM S. GIORGIO MAGGIORE

CIRCA 1839. SIZE 12″ × 9½″

IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. No. 54]

VENICE: CASA GRIMANI AND THE RIALTO

CIRCA 1839. SIZE 11″ × 7½″

IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. No. 354]

LUCERNE

CIRCA 1840-41. SIZE 12⅛″ × 9-3/16″

IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. No. 288]

A SWISS LAKE

CIRCA 1840-41. SIZE 11⅜″ × 9″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF SIR HICKMAN BACON, BART.]

BELLINZONA: FROM THE SOUTH

CIRCA 1840-41. Size 12⅞″ × 8⅞″

IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. No. 764]

BELLINZONA: FROM THE ROAD TO LOCARNO

CIRCA 1840-41. SIZE 11½″ × 9″

IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. No. 84]

LAUSANNE: FROM LE SIGNAL

CIRCA 1842-43. SIZE 13″ × 9″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. G. RAWLINSON, ESQ.]

LAUSANNE

CIRCA 1842-43. SIZE 14½″ × 9-13/16″

IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. No. 824]

ZURICH

CIRCA 1840-44. SIZE 12½″ × 9-3/16″

IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. No. 287]

THE SEELISBERG: MOONLIGHT

CIRCA 1842-43. SIZE 11″ × 9″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. G. RAWLINSON, ESQ.]

SCHAFFHAUSEN: THE TOWN

CIRCA 1843-45. SIZE 18½″ × 13½″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF R. BROCKLEBANK, ESQ.]

TELL’S CHAPEL, FLUELEN

CIRCA 1845. SIZE 11⅝″ × 9″

FROM THE COLLECTION OF W. G. RAWLINSON, ESQ.]

FOOTNOTES:

[A] “Biographies of the Great Artists--J. M. W. Turner, R.A.,” Sampson Low, 1897, p. 27. Of the many biographies of Turner, this, although slight, gives probably the best and truest view of him and his work.

[B] Turner’s conception of nature, I may remark, is identical with that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who says: “My notion of nature comprehends not only the forms which nature produces, but also the nature and internal fabric and organisation ... of the human mind and imagination.” (Seventh Discourse.)