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and tenderness of his skies. He was among the first to practise the art of obtaining deep tone by keeping the paper he worked on constantly moist. Of Turner's best works at South Kensington, "Eastby Abbey" shows him distancing his contemporaries. The tone is subdued. "Hornby Castle, Lincolnshire," shows him nearly at the top of the tree; and "Edinburgh," and the "Mist in the Valley d'Avon," are fine examples of a later period.

In 1805, when Turner was in his thirtieth year, the water-colour painters had grown strong enough to brave the Academy and open an Exhibition of their own. They complained justly enough that their transparent small pictures were crowded into corners at the Academy by the large pretentious oil pictures, which made their simple works appear poor, thin, and flimsy..

The water-colour artists, therefore, feeling this neglect, met at the rooms of a well-known miniaturepainter named Shelley, a protégé of Sir Joshua, and at subsequent meetings obtaining the adhesion of the other members of their profession, arranged to open an Exhibition, to consist wholly of water-colour paintings and the works of the members of the new Society only.

The first Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water-colours was opened to the public on the 22nd of April, 1805, at the rooms built by Vandergucht the engraver, afterwards a picture-seller, in Lower Brook-street, Grosvenor-square. After a time their Exhibitions were removed to Bond-street, again to Spring-gardens; and finally, on the changes

made in that neighbourhood, under the direction of Nash the architect, to the rooms in Pall Mall East, where the annual Exhibition continues to be held. The original members were: G. Barrett, J. Cristall, W. J. Gilpin, J. Glover, W. Havell, R. Hills, J. Holworthy, J. C. Nattes, F. Nicholson, W. H. Pyne, S. Rigaud, S. Shelley, J. Varley, C. Varley, W. F. Wells.

year,

Girtin had died three years before; in the very in fact, Turner became a Royal Academician. Turner was all intent now on earning fame by oil painting, and he was obliged, too, to exhibit at the Academy, to which he remained always loyal.

Water-colour artists now, not having to depend entirely on topographic works, and obtaining patrons, pushed rapidly forward their new art. Many improvements in execution were made, and many ingenious artifices resorted to. The principal of these, Mr. Redgrave says, were due to the genius of Turner. Girtin had introduced coarse paper; Varley had attained deeper tones; Cozens had secured matchless simplicity and purity; but Turner, versatile, thoughtful, and inventive, discovered a hundred different means of obtaining new effects. He scratched, and scraped, and invented for himself, and improved the inventions of others. He was the first to take out lights from masses of colour by means of bread, which startled and delighted his rivals and friends when he first exhibited works so treated. He used repeated washings (as Robson and others did later) to obtain a granulated surface; he stippled (as the Cattle painter Hills afterwards did to excess).

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I do not think Turner ever cared to sacrifice the purity and transparency of his beautiful material by loading with opaque colour in hopes of obtaining crispness and solidity. He never tried to rival oil, never used gum, body-colour but rarely, and never forgot that each material had its own beauties, excellences, and drawbacks.

With the extension of water-colour painting, and the increase of professors of the art, arose the necessity for a new Exhibition; and in the year 1832 a new Society was formed, called the New Society of Painters in Water-colours. They adopted the same principle as the older society, of exhibiting only the works of members, and their first exhibition took place at No. 16, Old Bond-street, in the spring of that year; but the exclusive principle being unfortunately adopted in both societies, all young candidates for their membership have still for a time to struggle with the difficulties of their predecessors, and to make their way to public estimation by exhibiting their works in contact with the stronger and more forcible efforts of the painters in oil.

This system has been injurious to both. It has made each society a small and jealous clique, opposed to all genius that dares to spring up out of its own special hot-bed.

CHAPTER X.

TURNER IN YORKSHIRE.

THERE was no county in England to which Turner was so much attached as Yorkshire. Here his first great successes were attained, and here he met his kindest patrons. It was here, too, on the wolds and beside the banks of the Wharfe that he first (after Wales) saw really wild scenery.

I do not think his first visit to Yorkshire can be placed earlier than 1797; and in 1798 he exhibited "Autumnal Morning, Winsdale, Yorkshire;" "Refectory of Kirkstall Abbey;" and "Dormitory, Fountains Abbey."

In 1798 he contributed drawings of Sheffield and Wakefield to Walker's "Itinerant;" and in 1800 he illustrated Whitaker's "Parish of Whalley" with several drawings, among which was one of Farnley. The early Yorkshire drawings that I have seen are very fine, and chiefly in the Girtin manner; the hot and cold colour strongly opposed, but both hot and cold melted into one fine and solemn harmony of tone.

The early oil pictures of Turner, founded on Yorkshire sketches, are, as Mr. Ruskin describes, solemn and simple in subject, gloomy in chiaroscuro,

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and brown in tone. the minutiæ are often exquisitely delicate. The best of these pictures are generally mere views, or unambitious, quiet, single thoughts, such as the "Calder Bridge," belonging to Mr. Bicknell. Turner had not yet founded his system of colour, and he was feeling his way by a series of experiments.

The drawing is manly but careful,

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Turner never sketched much in oil; he always got the colour too brown, as he once told his travelling companion, Mr. Munro. When the executors were examining his boxes after his death, they suddenly came upon several oil sketches. "Now," said Sir Charles Eastlake, "we shall find many more of these, for I remember being with Turner once, in Devonshire, when he made sketches in oil." But no more were found. He generally preferred the pencil-point, writing in here and there the colours and effects.

Mr. Ruskin says, "Turner had in this respect some peculiar views induced by early associations. His first conceptions of mountain scenery seem to have been taken from Yorkshire; and its rounded hills, far-winding rivers, and broken limestone scars, to have formed a type in his mind to which he sought, as far as might be obtained, some correspondent imagery in all other landscapes. Hence he almost always preferred to have a precipice low down on the hill-side, rather than near the top; liked an extent of rounded slope above, and the vertical cliff to water or valley, better than the slope at the bottom and wall at the top; and had his attention early directed to those horizontal, or comparatively horizontal beds of rock which usually form the faces