CHAPTER XIV.

TURNER'S ART LIFE. (PART I)

TURNER'S first drawing exhibited at the Royal Academy was hung up in the humble room set apart for sculpture and drawings, miniatures and models in wax. The "Rising Squall, Hot Wells," was one of the earliest pictures that made critics think that a new poet had arisen.

In 1793 Turner went to make a drawing for Walker at Rochester, and soon after began his first oil-picture. In 1794 he contributed drawings to several works; and in 1796, his picture of Sheffield obtained loud praise from the critics; including, I believe, the bitter, but generally just art-satirist, (Pasquin) Williams.

Up to 1799 (his Associateship year) Turner had exhibited sixty-two pictures, forty of these had been architectural, the rest British topography and landscape. His first subject picture was "Fisher men at Sea," 1796. Of his thirteen exhibited religious pictures, the "Plague of Egypt," 1798, was the first: while of his thirty-seven mythological, "Jason" led the way.

One of Turner's earliest drawings was of the

Pantheon after the fire (1792). The Pantheon had been used for masquerades, and also as a theatre and an opera-house. The drawing represents the ruins of the front wall and portico. It is coloured in a dry manner, and the holes, once windows, are hung with icicles.

The "Moonlight at Millbank," exhibited 1797, when Turner was twenty-two, was his first exhibited oil-picture, as "Lambeth Palace" has been his first water-colour drawing. Anxious to avoid being too transparent and slight in manner, his early oil-pictures were dark and heavy. The next year he appeared with "Coniston Fells," evidently a great painter. His other picture of 1797 was hung in the ante-room with his four architectural drawings. As early as the age of thirteen, Turner had been copying pictures of Morland in oil.

Turner's diploma picture was "Dolbadern,” imitative of Wilson's breadth, yet full of the grand solemnity of evening. In the "Dunstanborough Castle" "the run-in of the dancing water," bright with the sunrise, shows an originality that no mere imitator could give.

But before I proceed further, let me divide Turner's art life into three periods.

Mr. Ruskin divides Turner's art life in the following way, and the division cannot be gainsaid:

In Turner's first period, 1800 to 1820, he laboured as a student, imitating various old masters.

In his second period, 1820 to 1835, he worked on the principles of art he had discovered as a student, doing what the theories of art then required, and

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ducing beautiful ideal compositions instead of mere transcripts of nature.

In the third period, 1835 to 1845, he abandoned the ideal, reproducing his own simple impressions of nature, and associating them with his own deepest feelings.

In 1845 his health gave way, and his mind and sight began to fail. The pictures of the last five years of his life (he died in 1851) are of wholly inferior value.

In his first period, the pictures are notable for a grey or brown colour, and for a sometimes heavy touch. Turner is more anxious for form than colour; the colours are simple and few, and laid on unskilfully. His colour was sober because he was studying sobercoloured landscapes, and as the touch of them was heavy, so was his touch; but he imitated without copying. He did not copy Vandervelde, but went to the sea and painted it in the Vandervelde way; so that by degrees he learnt to paint truer than Vandervelde.

Second Period.-In 1823 came his "Bay of Baiæ," which shows a change to the second period. The chief characteristics of this period are colour instead of grey, refinement instead of force, quantity instead of mass. His light is now as near the brightness of real light as possible; his shadow, not of one colour, but of various colours. He tries now for delicacy and tenderness of contrast instead of violence. He also finds that no one had yet given the quantity of nature. The drawings of this period, when not painted for display, are "faultless and magnificent."

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SCARLET SHADOWS.

The splendour and gladness of the world, not its humiliation and pain, are now his chief object.

Third Period.-There is less mechanical effort, less pride in new discoveries and less ambitious accumulation, more deep imaginative delight and quiet love of nature. Sometimes in defiance of critics, conscious of power, he painted only to astonish. The figures are chalky in the face, and scarlet in the reflected lights. After 1840 no more foliage is well painted, and it rarely occurs in any prominent mass. Speaking of Turner's third style, Mr. Ruskin says:

"Another notable characteristic of this third period is that, though his mind was in a state of comparative repose, and capable of play at idle moments, it was in its depth infinitely more serious than heretofore; nearly all the subjects on which it dwelt having now some pathetic meaning. Formerly he painted the 'Victory' in her triumph; but now the 'Old Téméraire' in her decay; formerly Napoleon at Marengo, now Napoleon at St. Helena; formerly the Ducal Palace at Venice, now the Cemetery at Murano; formerly the Life of Vandervelde, now the Burial of Wilkie.

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'Lastly, though in most respects this is the crowning period of Turner's genius, in a few there are evidences in it of approaching decline. As we have seen, in each former phase of his efforts, that the full character was not developed till about its central year; so in this last, the full character was not developed till the year 1840, and that character involved, in the very fulness of its imaginative

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beauty, some loss of distinctness, some absence of deliberation in arrangement; and, as we approach nearer and nearer the period of decline, considerable feebleness of hand. These several deficiencies, when they happen to be united in one of the fantasies struck out during retouching days at the Academy, produce results which, at the time they appeared, might have justified a regretful criticism."

PICTURES OF HIS FIRST PERIOD, 1800 To 1820.

This summary of Turner's art-career contains comments on the National Collection chiefly, as being most typical.

One of the earliest pictures in the Turner Gallery is "Moonlight, a Study at Milbank," a view of the Thames looking east; a low-toned lamplight effect, formed on Dutch theories, but painted from a real live moon. It is singular that a little west of the spot where the view is taken, near Cremorne Pier, is the cottage in which the painter died fifty-five years afterwards. How little the hopeful young genius thought of the old worn-out man who would die in the adjacent cottage long years after!

In 1797 Turner was probably at the Lakes; for in 1798 he exhibited "Buttermere Lake, with part of Cromach Water," a rainbow breaking through a shower and arching over the golden mist. Already the painter was ambitious of daring atmospheric effects.

Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads" (to which Coleridge contributed the "Ancient Mariner," the dawn of a new school of poetry) appeared this year, when